explorer is not a "Window manager". It is a desktop manager, just like KDE is not really a "window manager" (though it includes one in *nix). If KDE were ported to Windows, it would use the built in window manager in Windows and act as the desktop manager - just like other shell replacements like litestep.
As for your anecdote about replacing explorer, I've installed replacement shells that completely eliminates the XP styles. I'm not sure what it takes to do that, but I know it can be done.
That being said, Apple is still nuts for not enabling the firewall by default (technically it is enabled and running, but its configuration is empty). It is my understanding that OSX comes with no daemons listening by default. If this is the case, the firewall being enabled by default only adds to the attackable surface area of the OS.
Also, (I'm just being curious here) can you define "empty configuration"? Is ipfw in OSX set up to "default to allow" by default?o
One small correction that doesn't refute your point. It *rained* for 40 days, but after the rain stopped, the Ark was adrift for several months before finding land again.
Extra expense is an understatement. Right now, there are HD encoder cards, but they cost around $800 last time I checked.
My solution right now is to feed the HD signal from my DirecTV HD receiver to my TV Tuner card via S-Video. Once it gets to the MCE machine, the picture is "only" 720x480, but an HD signal downsized to DVD quality still looks much, much better than a SD picture. I have hard time seeing the quality difference between the downsized MCE picture and the picture fed directly to my TV.
I built a shuttle based MCE PC myself, and really like it. I have the PC connected to an LCD HD TV and use it to play music, surf the interweb, and even play sega genesis EMU game, and older PC games. The media center part of it is very easy to use - certainly as easy any TIVO-like device I've ever seen.
That said, it failing on a mass-market scale does not surprise me one bit. While a properly set up MCE system can be really cool, it still requires too much knowledge to set up to succeed on a mass scale.
I also must refute your assumption that people that know what they're doing would always use MythTV. Since the OEM copy of MCE 2005 I bought cost me $110, I of course looked into the possibility of going the MythTV route, but chose to go with MCE instead because based on comments from across the net and my experience getting it set up on my machine beforehand, MythTV is a huge piece of buggy shit that needs a ton of work to become anything more than a toy for someone with tons of spare time.
One of my other Directv receivers hooked to a FreeBSD machine, and I watch and record using the 'cat dev/cxm0 > xxx' method. Since the pvrxxx driver in FreeBSD doesn't come with a GUI channel changing utility and there is no TV viewing app for FreeBSD that supports non-brooktree capture cards, I was forced to write a shell script to change the channels and emulate a TV viewing app via mplayer. The whole hacked-up setup I have on FreeBSD was no more frustrating than my test run with MythTV (I had a few package issues, and configuration of the whole thing was a massive PITA).
http://ha.ckers.org/weird/popup.html (pop-up bomb that will suck up all of your memory. I actually was able to recvoer from this using the task manager, but it was not easy.)
We have both of those models here at work, and have had numerous problems with both. You certainly don't need Linux to make those particular laptops fail.
I get where you're going and I agree. Unfortunately due to the state of third party software for Windows, it will probably take until "windows 2045" for the false positives to finally die down to a point where a warning prompt actually garners serious attention from the average user.:(
I don't think you understand the mindset of the average user. If user downloads "dancing bunnies.exe (or.rpm if some other OS was dominant), and the MAC in the OS causes it to not work, then to them, the computer is not doing what it is supposed to do.
That doesn't mean I think a well designed MAC system shouldn't be enabled by default in OSs (Microsoft is starting with Vista with MIC, but has a loooong way to go), I'm just skeptical about how effective they will be in the face of users who just *have* to see those dancing bunnies.
Well it can protect against unknown exploits, but a very substantial percentage of malware is user initiated - i.e. they download it and execute it on purpose.
Things like MAC will *not* protect idiots. People want control over their computers. If you try and sell them an "appliance", they will not buy it.
That's the problem.
"Toasters aren't idiot proof either and people kill themselves with them every year." You're right.
After writing that I thought of a person I know who stuck a butter knife in a toaster one to try and fish something out.:/
Believe it or not, some OS's let you run arbitrary binaries, by default, without giving those binaries access to do any useful, malicious activity. So, which consumer OS does that in it's default configuration? Please don't answer "OS X" or "Linux" or "*BSD", because that answer would be wrong.
"People told me it was hardware problems, but, running on the same hardware, the new installation would run for months with no downtime."
Well, drivers need to be available for your hardware and they need to be installed before they can cause a crash.
*/ducks/*
1) Because our society has decided that the father bears part of the responsibility for raising a child.
2) I brought the point of women wanting double standards to my wife once. I wont do that again.
3) That's fantastic that she chose to not abort the baby. I am the result of a woman choosing not to have an abortion despite people around her suggesting she get one. I personally would *never* advocate *anyone* getting a abortion, but I'm not the one who has to endure what is in essence, an enormous parasite sucking the life out of me for ten months. I have two (planned) children, so I've witnessed, second hand, the enormous psychological and physical drain that pregnancy causes on a person. Instead of trying to decide on totally subjective matters like "when life starts", our efforts would be best spent giving more support to women who have unwanted pregnancies.
I'm defining a security problem as some type of breach. Your definition is obviously different. For the record, the last security issue I had with Windows was in 2001, when a worm hit my box via a remote exploit in Trillian, but I had never used any of the BSDs at that time, so I didn't count it.
I OS's I currently use are Windows, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD.
Now go somewhere else and pretend you have a clue. I'm sure there are plenty of Linux newbs and mac zealots out there that would love to hear you preach.
"Nevermind the 15 megs of "unused" space at the end of the volume." If "Secret Homo-Erotic Transvestite Fetish" is the mild stuff, I'm not sure if I'd want to see the porn on the 15meg drive.
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explorer is not a "Window manager". It is a desktop manager, just like KDE is not really a "window manager" (though it includes one in *nix). If KDE were ported to Windows, it would use the built in window manager in Windows and act as the desktop manager - just like other shell replacements like litestep.
As for your anecdote about replacing explorer, I've installed replacement shells that completely eliminates the XP styles. I'm not sure what it takes to do that, but I know it can be done.
Also, (I'm just being curious here) can you define "empty configuration"? Is ipfw in OSX set up to "default to allow" by default?o
One small correction that doesn't refute your point. It *rained* for 40 days, but after the rain stopped, the Ark was adrift for several months before finding land again.
Extra expense is an understatement. Right now, there are HD encoder cards, but they cost around $800 last time I checked. My solution right now is to feed the HD signal from my DirecTV HD receiver to my TV Tuner card via S-Video. Once it gets to the MCE machine, the picture is "only" 720x480, but an HD signal downsized to DVD quality still looks much, much better than a SD picture. I have hard time seeing the quality difference between the downsized MCE picture and the picture fed directly to my TV.
I built a shuttle based MCE PC myself, and really like it. I have the PC connected to an LCD HD TV and use it to play music, surf the interweb, and even play sega genesis EMU game, and older PC games. The media center part of it is very easy to use - certainly as easy any TIVO-like device I've ever seen.
That said, it failing on a mass-market scale does not surprise me one bit. While a properly set up MCE system can be really cool, it still requires too much knowledge to set up to succeed on a mass scale.
I also must refute your assumption that people that know what they're doing would always use MythTV. Since the OEM copy of MCE 2005 I bought cost me $110, I of course looked into the possibility of going the MythTV route, but chose to go with MCE instead because based on comments from across the net and my experience getting it set up on my machine beforehand, MythTV is a huge piece of buggy shit that needs a ton of work to become anything more than a toy for someone with tons of spare time.
One of my other Directv receivers hooked to a FreeBSD machine, and I watch and record using the 'cat dev/cxm0 > xxx' method. Since the pvrxxx driver in FreeBSD doesn't come with a GUI channel changing utility and there is no TV viewing app for FreeBSD that supports non-brooktree capture cards, I was forced to write a shell script to change the channels and emulate a TV viewing app via mplayer. The whole hacked-up setup I have on FreeBSD was no more frustrating than my test run with MythTV (I had a few package issues, and configuration of the whole thing was a massive PITA).
Try these...
http://ha.ckers.org/imagecrash.html (may be fixed by now, but it BSOD'd Windows for a long time)
http://ha.ckers.org/weird/popup.html (pop-up bomb that will suck up all of your memory. I actually was able to recvoer from this using the task manager, but it was not easy.)
We have both of those models here at work, and have had numerous problems with both. You certainly don't need Linux to make those particular laptops fail.
For most companies, data breaches usually fall into the #7 slot.
I get where you're going and I agree. Unfortunately due to the state of third party software for Windows, it will probably take until "windows 2045" for the false positives to finally die down to a point where a warning prompt actually garners serious attention from the average user. :(
I don't think you understand the mindset of the average user. If user downloads "dancing bunnies.exe (or .rpm if some other OS was dominant), and the MAC in the OS causes it to not work, then to them, the computer is not doing what it is supposed to do.
That doesn't mean I think a well designed MAC system shouldn't be enabled by default in OSs (Microsoft is starting with Vista with MIC, but has a loooong way to go), I'm just skeptical about how effective they will be in the face of users who just *have* to see those dancing bunnies.
The cable news channels would all bust a nut over that.
Well it can protect against unknown exploits, but a very substantial percentage of malware is user initiated - i.e. they download it and execute it on purpose.
http://www.toadlife.net/stuff/forum_stuff/crash_d
Things like MAC will *not* protect idiots. People want control over their computers. If you try and sell them an "appliance", they will not buy it. That's the problem.
The only way to make a computer idiot proof, is to make it so that new binaries cannot be loaded onto the system. Computers are not toasters.
"People told me it was hardware problems, but, running on the same hardware, the new installation would run for months with no downtime." Well, drivers need to be available for your hardware and they need to be installed before they can cause a crash. */ducks/*
1) Because our society has decided that the father bears part of the responsibility for raising a child.
2) I brought the point of women wanting double standards to my wife once. I wont do that again.
3) That's fantastic that she chose to not abort the baby. I am the result of a woman choosing not to have an abortion despite people around her suggesting she get one. I personally would *never* advocate *anyone* getting a abortion, but I'm not the one who has to endure what is in essence, an enormous parasite sucking the life out of me for ten months. I have two (planned) children, so I've witnessed, second hand, the enormous psychological and physical drain that pregnancy causes on a person. Instead of trying to decide on totally subjective matters like "when life starts", our efforts would be best spent giving more support to women who have unwanted pregnancies.
The law shouldn't worry about "when life begins". As long as it's inside a woman's body, the woman should be able to do whatever she wants to it.
I'm defining a security problem as some type of breach. Your definition is obviously different. For the record, the last security issue I had with Windows was in 2001, when a worm hit my box via a remote exploit in Trillian, but I had never used any of the BSDs at that time, so I didn't count it.
What book teaches how to have less than zero security problems? Can I get it on Amazon?
I OS's I currently use are Windows, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD. Now go somewhere else and pretend you have a clue. I'm sure there are plenty of Linux newbs and mac zealots out there that would love to hear you preach.
I can see that you fall into the third category.