Windows 7 is the only Microsoft OS that is not only markedly better than its predecessor but is the only release they've made where there is not something immediately noticeable as "broken for unknown reasons". That's a pretty big accomplishment for them!
Er, how long have you been using Windows ? Other revision changes that meet your criteria:
Windows 2.0 -> Windows 3.0
Windows 3.0 -> Windows 3.1
Windows 3.1 -> Windows 95
Windows 9x -> Windows XP (depending on how you want to look at it)
Windows NT 3.51 -> Windows NT 4.0
Windows NT 4.0 -> Windows 2000
Windows 2000 Server -> Windows 2003 Server
Windows 2003 Server -> Windows 2008 Server
The poison is the erosion of authenticity from internet message boards.
You are begging the question. There is no "authenticity" in internet message boards to begin with.
None. At all. By default participants are, for all practical purposes, completely anonymous and isolated from any consequences of their behaviour. Anyone can say anything and the only way you have to verify the veracity of their input is to refer to a "primary source".
When it becomes commonly known practice for car dealers to misrepresent themselves as regular people, as on-line it's becoming increasingly common for marketing to hire people to post fake posts, fake reviews, and create fake fan websites, suddenly the same authenticity that made people value forums, review sites, or fan websites is eroded, poisoning the whole internet.
"Internet message boards" are not "losing authenticity". They never *had* any. The same is true for any communications medium that is unregulated and/or anonymous.
The attitude shown in your post is that the internet is already meaningless and we should not care about it.
No, my attitude is that you inherently have no way of knowing someone's motivations for posting in an internet forum. It is, therefore, a complete and utter waste of time - indeed, it is counter-productive - trying to second-guess them.
At best, someone's motivations for being involved in a given discussion are irrelevant to the content of the discussion itself.
It's sad that 99.9% of forums out there are reduced to meaningless trolling, astroturfing and rampant idiocy.
No, it's sad that the first thing lots of people do when someone disagrees with them is yell "astroturfer". THAT is the real problem - the refusal to even conceptually accommodate differing opinions.
I find it ironic that the technological advances that brought about the internet has done more to glorify stupidity than anything in the last hundred years.
TV has done vastly more to "glorify stupidity" than the internet ever could. The internet just gives people a voice. There are a plethora of TV shows that active encourage and reward people for acting foolishly.
They're also a business. Where do you think the "return" part of "return on investment" is generated from paying people to troll sites like Slashdot ? It must cost - conservatively - millions to do it at the scale some people like to think it happens. How do you think that expense is justified given that you (and presumably anyone else prepared to spend more than a few seconds thinking about it) agree no-one actually responsible for giving Microsoft money is likely to be influenced ?
There's a distinct difference between a zealot and an astroturfer -- Most important among them is that one of them believes what they're saying, and the other is just pretending to believe what they're saying.
How is that relevant to the content of the discussion itself ?
If someone is right, the reason they're right is irrelevant. If someone is wrong, either they're prepared to change their opinion or they're not. If they're not prepared to change their opinion, then the motivation behind that being zealotry or money is completely and utterly irrelevant to the fact they're wrong.
It's the fundamental difference in whether the conversation is honest or not that poisons internet discourse.
No, it's people like you yelling "astroturfer" every time someone has a different opinion to you, rather than actually engaging in discussion, that "poisons internet discourse".
What is striking is the sheer amount of people that has a positive bias towards Microsoft that has entered this forum these last years.
You must be reading a different Slashdot to me. The anti-Microsoft sentiment here is as strong now as it's always been - and I've been reading Slashdot for a _long_ time.
Indeed, if anything, the blind anti-Microsoft rage has significantly increased while the genuine arguments have decreased. Exhibit A: Vista's system requirements. Exhibit B: pretty much anything to do with DRM.
Astroturfing is destroying discourse on the Internet.
Rubbish. Paranoia about "astroturfing" is stressing certain individuals who in some way define themselves by their feelings about whatever-it-is that isn't being "astroturfed".
You can never know for certain if you're arguing with someone with convictions or just some paid marketing drone.
Why do you care ? What difference does it make ?
Where once you'd have to come up with a good argument, people can now just point and say "You're just being paid to express that opinion, since nobody sane would ever have it!"
Which they've done in the past, just with different words instead of "you're being paid". People who zealously and steadfastly hold true to a particularly opinion are not a new phenomenon, either on the internet or in real life. Whether they hold that opinion because of "convictions" or a paycheck, is, at most, a peripheral issue .
There are several accounts here on Slashdot, though, that not only vehemently defend Microsoft, but use Microsoft marketing clueless drivel to do so.
And probably an order of magnitude more accounts do exactly the same thing about Linux and/or OSS (although by OSS they typically mean the GPL). Guess they must be astroturfing, huh ?
Not to mention all the "Apple or die" zealots.
Saying that Windows is better because adopting Linux on your server is more costly due to retraining costs is sure to get you labeled as an "astroturfer."
Thus proving my point.
The idea that anyone is astroturfing Slashdot is, in itself, both dumb and paranoid in equal amounts. Do you seriously think anyone with both decision-making power and a lack of technical knowledge a) actually reads Slashdot in the first place and b) is going to make up their mind based on a posting here (or even a thousand of them) ?
You mean the *style* of the start menu of the functionality?
The functionality. I really can't comprehend why people do it at all, but it's rife in the "Windows power user" demographic in my experience (including a few of our Windows admins, who annoyingly enable it on any Windows server they connect to).
In my very humble opinion, and as an additional (possibly worthless) data point, people that dislike the ribbon interface are more likely to be "power users" that tinker and customize everything (like me).
IME, the only people more obstinate about UI changes than rote-learners, are the self-described "power users".
Exhibit A: The reflexive changing by such people of the Windows XP style start menu back to the "Classic" Start Menu, despite the former being functionally a superset of the latter.
I used to work at a place where we used SCP to throw files around on the local 10/100 network. Those transfers always maxed out the network speed (11MBps or so). FTP didn't go any faster... I'm guessing your problem was elsewhere:P
It's not just about bandwidth, it's about latency. OpenSSH doesn't perform well when the latency is high. This is a known problem.
For example, between two of our offices (all have 100Mbit ISP links) with a ~300ms ping time an SCP struggles to break 170K/sec. Between two offices with only ~100ms the speed is around 350K/sec. To my home machine at only ~30ms it fully saturates my 10Mbit ADSL.
For high latency links with you need to look at alternative tools like dmscp2 to fully utilise the available bandwidth.
Except that it's/not/ equivalent in any way shape or form.
Sure it is. Find some features relevant to more than a tiny minority of users that are in the Mac Pro and Precision only. If all the end user is after is a fast CPU, lots of RAM (actually, more RAM than you can put into the Quad-core Mac Pro), a good video card and multiple hard disks, then the Studio XPS is fine.
Do the Precision or Studio XPS machines have Xeon processors in them?
No, but the only difference of concern between the Core 920 and the Xeon is support for ECC RAM. Performance is the same. There's nothing magical about the "Xeon" label and hasn't been for many years. This is particularly true for single-CPU configurations.
If they only need a $900.00 machine, they shouldn't be looking at anything like a $2750.00 Mac Pro.
Thanks to the gaping hole in Apple's lineup, if you want something more than a Mini or iMac, you don't have any choice.
Gutmann's FUD has been refuted numerous times. Further, it's so stupidly trivial to demonstrate (eg: output video to an analogue connection) he is wrong, it's plainly obvious he didn't do even the most basic testing.
The only things that run better (like video) are due to MS spending all of their time streamlining the DRM code that will prevent you from using *your* legally purchased files wherever you want.
The DRM systems are only active when DRM-encumbered media is being played. Further, the apply no more restrictions than any other DRM-enabled player capable of playing such media.
If a hardware driver is not part of the OS then what the f* is?.
A hardware driver Microsoft does not provide, is not their responsibility. Windows can - and does for millions - run fine without BSODs or other forms of instability. That means stability problems are not inherent to the OS.
Your comment about X shows that you are really thinking of it in terms of a full desktop VNC instead of a way to run single applications from multiple hosts - and you can get X for MS Windows anyway although it only works in one direction (hopefully now that MS is attempting to move into clusters they will do something about that).
Doubtful, and terminal services already supports individual application sessions anyway. The main problem with the X model is the inability to disconnect from sessions and leave applications running (without additional hackery).
The mixup about DLL hell is amusing and puts all your other replies into context.
What mixup ? Windows left DLL hell behind years ago. Dependency hell is very much a part of contemporary Linux, especially if you need something that your package manager can't provide.
I also suspect that your view of the registry also stems from little experience with that obfiscated hiding place for malware which was really only possible to backup when volume shadow copy came around - when the one file that NEEDS to be backed up can't be backed up within the operating system that is a bit of a sign that things are broken.
Pretty sure you could backup the Registyr prior to Windows 2003.
The number of times people have come to me saying the backups have everything apart from the registry and the users email and could I please help recover the disk is somewhat ridiculous [...]
So they weren't competent enough to backup user emails, and your first instinct is to blame the OS ?
[...] until recently it was a hobby OS suitable for launching games that somehow got into the workplace.
Right. And by "recently" you mean back when it started dominating the business world in the '90s.
In several of your responses you cite that "typical users" don't need it, which only reinforces my comment about Windows being a toy operating system.
No, it reinforces your non-sequitur argument that only people who use computers like you do are doing "real work".
By extension, you are arguing that only a fractional percentage of people using computers are doing "real work" on them. I think you might find some disagreement from the other 99%+ of computer users that they're not doing "real work".
Upon further examination I now see this is entirely true, but that's how it effectively works. If someone emails me a file with a.exe suffix Windows will automatically execute it if I click on it wrong. In unix, I would need to manually set the execute permission. In Windows, the sender is effectively setting this. Combined with hiding file extensions by default probably makes this one of the biggest mistakes in computing history. The solution right now in the case of email is to block filenames with "bad" suffixes.
End users are happy to open password protected zip files to get at the malware goodness inside when they're being promised free stuff. Do you seriously think need to set +x would make a meaningful difference ?
The unix shells are some of the most powerful computer interfaces.
At certain tasks. For, say, designing a 100-storey skyscraper or adding digital effects to a film, they're useless.
The traditional Windows shell doesn't even come close. I read a bit about PowerShell when it came out, but I am still not convinced it even comes close either.
You should probably read up on something before you criticise it.
I am corrected again. A test with ntfs-3g allowed me to use these characters. From Windows though, the this is still effectively a limit on the filesystem. Is there an API that gives enough access to do it? I've never seen a program use it.
That's because creating filenames that can't be manipulated by the majority of existing software would be extrememely dumb.
Case of newbie hand-holding. See top of post.
No, it's a feature. Case sensitivity just increases interface complexity.
I guess you don't have much experience with a good package manager?
I do.
Dependencies are an issue that these solve, but they are really fantastic for maintaing and entire system. With a single command I can update all the software on my system. With one command I can install a number of desired packages. On Windows, each package has to do this itself, each with its own interfaces and deamons, which is a stupid way to do it.
Package managers are good right up until the point where you need software that falls outside their scope. Then they tend to cause more problems than they solve.
This has been an issue with me mostly with Cygwin. The build configure scripts that comes with source tarballs expect to be built in paths without filenames, because it would require convoluted escaping otherwise. It was annoying being on a system where I could only write under "Documents and Settings" and trying to build a package.
So the real problem is actually a poorly designed third party software package.
For example, the PATH variable was limited to a pathetic 1023 characters. Combine that with ridiculously long system path names and you have lots of problems. It was eventually doubled to a still-pathetic 2047. This has been a really serious issue for lots of people I know, with many different convoluted work arounds?
The root problem here is you're trying to use cmd for something it's not really designed for. Try out Powershell or alternative methods.
Why the hell would such a limit even exist? It just screams of incompetance.
So what does the existence of something like xargs scream ?
As I said, computers are often browser appliances, so a good browser can go a long w
MS stopped another program from running on a released version of Windows.
No, they did not. It was only a warning and only happened in a beta version of Windows. To say nothing of DR-DOS not being "an application that runs on Windows".
You never specified anything about beta/non-beta status, it was released to the public however.
The execution permission on the filesystem is stored in the filename (ie ".exe").
False.
The shell sucks.
How so ?
The filesystem has all kinds of stupid, arbitrary limitations (like no ?, , ", *,:, | characters allowed).
These are limitations within the shell, not the filesystem.
Case insensitive filenames.
This is most definitely a feature, not a problem.
No package manager (at all!).
That's because it doesn't have the dependency hell that requires such a thing in Linux.
Still use archaic "drives" for the filesystems.
Windows has supported (easily) mounting drives underneath directories for nearly a decade. People prefer drives because they are a more sensible organisation tool.
Spaces in system path names.
Irrelevant at best. Not to mention, why would you be referencing paths (that might not be consistent) across systems instead of using the environment variables or API calls ?
Severe limitations on the size of environmental variables.
For example ?
A seriously piss poor excuse for a browser.
That most people find more than adequate. Can't be that bad.
Lots of GUI-only configuration.
Irrelevant.
The registry.
What's the problem with a transactional database ?
No SSH.
Remote desktop instead.
No X.
Terminal services and remote desktop is superior in pretty much every way.
No basic commands (find, grep, ln, df, du, etc.; part of shell sucking really).
Irrelevant to most all users. Installable for those who desire it.
Extremely shitty text editor.
Irrelevant and unnecessary.
Regular BSODs (yes, even Vista; I have yet to personally see a linux kernel panic, or any other crash that required a reboot).
If your system is BSODing regularly, your hardware or drivers are broken. Not an OS issue.
No decent interpreters (even the barest unix installs always have an awk, and almost always have perl).
Also irrelevant and unnecessary to most all users. Installable if desired.
So not only is it expensive and proprietary, it's technically inferior in almost every way.
You've listed a whole bunch of stuff that's either flat-out erroneous or userspace personal preference. Nothing technical.
The shenanigans they tried with DR-DOS [wikipedia.org] is just one example, [...]
Actually it's not. It wasn't a program running on Windows, it was only present in a beta release and it didn't actually prevent running Windows on DR-DOS anyway. To say nothing of it happening nearly twenty years ago.
[...] and, if you really want to know the truth (and aren't simply an MS shill), then you can find plenty more.
I still want some examples of Microsoft preventing another company's software from running on Windows. The implication has been made that this is commonplace. It should be pretty trivial to come up with half a dozen or more examples.
For bonus points, you may also want to reconcile Microsoft's demonstrated, resource-intensive and sometimes even detrimental efforts to retain backwards compatibility.
Slashdot Mirror
Are there technically better OS's? Yes, [...]
Which ones, and how ? Assuming you're not making insane comparisons like Windows 7 and z/OS, of course.
Windows 7 is the only Microsoft OS that is not only markedly better than its predecessor but is the only release they've made where there is not something immediately noticeable as "broken for unknown reasons". That's a pretty big accomplishment for them!
Er, how long have you been using Windows ? Other revision changes that meet your criteria:
Windows 2.0 -> Windows 3.0
Windows 3.0 -> Windows 3.1
Windows 3.1 -> Windows 95
Windows 9x -> Windows XP (depending on how you want to look at it)
Windows NT 3.51 -> Windows NT 4.0
Windows NT 4.0 -> Windows 2000
Windows 2000 Server -> Windows 2003 Server
Windows 2003 Server -> Windows 2008 Server
The poison is the erosion of authenticity from internet message boards.
You are begging the question. There is no "authenticity" in internet message boards to begin with.
None. At all. By default participants are, for all practical purposes, completely anonymous and isolated from any consequences of their behaviour. Anyone can say anything and the only way you have to verify the veracity of their input is to refer to a "primary source".
When it becomes commonly known practice for car dealers to misrepresent themselves as regular people, as on-line it's becoming increasingly common for marketing to hire people to post fake posts, fake reviews, and create fake fan websites, suddenly the same authenticity that made people value forums, review sites, or fan websites is eroded, poisoning the whole internet.
"Internet message boards" are not "losing authenticity". They never *had* any. The same is true for any communications medium that is unregulated and/or anonymous.
The attitude shown in your post is that the internet is already meaningless and we should not care about it.
No, my attitude is that you inherently have no way of knowing someone's motivations for posting in an internet forum. It is, therefore, a complete and utter waste of time - indeed, it is counter-productive - trying to second-guess them.
At best, someone's motivations for being involved in a given discussion are irrelevant to the content of the discussion itself.
It's sad that 99.9% of forums out there are reduced to meaningless trolling, astroturfing and rampant idiocy.
No, it's sad that the first thing lots of people do when someone disagrees with them is yell "astroturfer". THAT is the real problem - the refusal to even conceptually accommodate differing opinions.
I find it ironic that the technological advances that brought about the internet has done more to glorify stupidity than anything in the last hundred years.
TV has done vastly more to "glorify stupidity" than the internet ever could. The internet just gives people a voice. There are a plethora of TV shows that active encourage and reward people for acting foolishly.
They are paranoid.
They're also a business. Where do you think the "return" part of "return on investment" is generated from paying people to troll sites like Slashdot ? It must cost - conservatively - millions to do it at the scale some people like to think it happens. How do you think that expense is justified given that you (and presumably anyone else prepared to spend more than a few seconds thinking about it) agree no-one actually responsible for giving Microsoft money is likely to be influenced ?
There's a distinct difference between a zealot and an astroturfer -- Most important among them is that one of them believes what they're saying, and the other is just pretending to believe what they're saying.
How is that relevant to the content of the discussion itself ?
If someone is right, the reason they're right is irrelevant. If someone is wrong, either they're prepared to change their opinion or they're not. If they're not prepared to change their opinion, then the motivation behind that being zealotry or money is completely and utterly irrelevant to the fact they're wrong.
It's the fundamental difference in whether the conversation is honest or not that poisons internet discourse.
No, it's people like you yelling "astroturfer" every time someone has a different opinion to you, rather than actually engaging in discussion, that "poisons internet discourse".
What is striking is the sheer amount of people that has a positive bias towards Microsoft that has entered this forum these last years.
You must be reading a different Slashdot to me. The anti-Microsoft sentiment here is as strong now as it's always been - and I've been reading Slashdot for a _long_ time.
Indeed, if anything, the blind anti-Microsoft rage has significantly increased while the genuine arguments have decreased. Exhibit A: Vista's system requirements. Exhibit B: pretty much anything to do with DRM.
Astroturfing is destroying discourse on the Internet.
Rubbish. Paranoia about "astroturfing" is stressing certain individuals who in some way define themselves by their feelings about whatever-it-is that isn't being "astroturfed".
You can never know for certain if you're arguing with someone with convictions or just some paid marketing drone.
Why do you care ? What difference does it make ?
Where once you'd have to come up with a good argument, people can now just point and say "You're just being paid to express that opinion, since nobody sane would ever have it!"
Which they've done in the past, just with different words instead of "you're being paid". People who zealously and steadfastly hold true to a particularly opinion are not a new phenomenon, either on the internet or in real life. Whether they hold that opinion because of "convictions" or a paycheck, is, at most, a peripheral issue .
There are several accounts here on Slashdot, though, that not only vehemently defend Microsoft, but use Microsoft marketing clueless drivel to do so.
And probably an order of magnitude more accounts do exactly the same thing about Linux and/or OSS (although by OSS they typically mean the GPL). Guess they must be astroturfing, huh ?
Not to mention all the "Apple or die" zealots.
Saying that Windows is better because adopting Linux on your server is more costly due to retraining costs is sure to get you labeled as an "astroturfer."
Thus proving my point.
The idea that anyone is astroturfing Slashdot is, in itself, both dumb and paranoid in equal amounts. Do you seriously think anyone with both decision-making power and a lack of technical knowledge a) actually reads Slashdot in the first place and b) is going to make up their mind based on a posting here (or even a thousand of them) ?
That much I can believe, but most people who want a better choice than McDonalds will go to a real restaurant.
In the OS world there is no "restaurant". They all suck, just in different ways.
What I really want to know is this: does this "anti-astroturfing" law apply to "Team Windows"?
Certainly. However, the law requires more evidence than "does not hate Microsoft, therefore is an astroturfer".
You mean the *style* of the start menu of the functionality?
The functionality. I really can't comprehend why people do it at all, but it's rife in the "Windows power user" demographic in my experience (including a few of our Windows admins, who annoyingly enable it on any Windows server they connect to).
In my very humble opinion, and as an additional (possibly worthless) data point, people that dislike the ribbon interface are more likely to be "power users" that tinker and customize everything (like me).
IME, the only people more obstinate about UI changes than rote-learners, are the self-described "power users".
Exhibit A: The reflexive changing by such people of the Windows XP style start menu back to the "Classic" Start Menu, despite the former being functionally a superset of the latter.
SCP is 4-5 times slower than FTP? What kind of CPU do you have?
It's not the CPU, it's the latency.
I used to work at a place where we used SCP to throw files around on the local 10/100 network. Those transfers always maxed out the network speed (11MBps or so). FTP didn't go any faster... I'm guessing your problem was elsewhere :P
It's not just about bandwidth, it's about latency. OpenSSH doesn't perform well when the latency is high. This is a known problem.
For example, between two of our offices (all have 100Mbit ISP links) with a ~300ms ping time an SCP struggles to break 170K/sec. Between two offices with only ~100ms the speed is around 350K/sec. To my home machine at only ~30ms it fully saturates my 10Mbit ADSL.
For high latency links with you need to look at alternative tools like dmscp2 to fully utilise the available bandwidth.
Except that it's /not/ equivalent in any way shape or form.
Sure it is. Find some features relevant to more than a tiny minority of users that are in the Mac Pro and Precision only. If all the end user is after is a fast CPU, lots of RAM (actually, more RAM than you can put into the Quad-core Mac Pro), a good video card and multiple hard disks, then the Studio XPS is fine.
Do the Precision or Studio XPS machines have Xeon processors in them?
No, but the only difference of concern between the Core 920 and the Xeon is support for ECC RAM. Performance is the same. There's nothing magical about the "Xeon" label and hasn't been for many years. This is particularly true for single-CPU configurations.
If they only need a $900.00 machine, they shouldn't be looking at anything like a $2750.00 Mac Pro.
Thanks to the gaping hole in Apple's lineup, if you want something more than a Mini or iMac, you don't have any choice.
> This is absolutely not true at all.
Gutmann's FUD has been refuted numerous times. Further, it's so stupidly trivial to demonstrate (eg: output video to an analogue connection) he is wrong, it's plainly obvious he didn't do even the most basic testing.
No DRM-encumbered media == no DRM systems active.
Quad-core Mac Pro + Applecare (to match the Dell's warranty): ~$2750.
Precision T3500, 2.66Ghz quad-core, 3GB RAM, 750GB drive: ~$1750.
Studio XPS, 2.66Ghz quad-core, 3GB RAM, 640GB drive, 3yr warranty: ~$900.
For nearly everyone, the $900 Studio XPS is equivalent to the $2750 Mac Pro.
That's not a lot to peak at for a Windows OS. It's better than ME, but nowhere near XP.
On what basis would you expect it to have marketshare even remotely close to XP's ?
The only things that run better (like video) are due to MS spending all of their time streamlining the DRM code that will prevent you from using *your* legally purchased files wherever you want.
The DRM systems are only active when DRM-encumbered media is being played. Further, the apply no more restrictions than any other DRM-enabled player capable of playing such media.
If a hardware driver is not part of the OS then what the f* is?.
A hardware driver Microsoft does not provide, is not their responsibility. Windows can - and does for millions - run fine without BSODs or other forms of instability. That means stability problems are not inherent to the OS.
Your comment about X shows that you are really thinking of it in terms of a full desktop VNC instead of a way to run single applications from multiple hosts - and you can get X for MS Windows anyway although it only works in one direction (hopefully now that MS is attempting to move into clusters they will do something about that).
Doubtful, and terminal services already supports individual application sessions anyway. The main problem with the X model is the inability to disconnect from sessions and leave applications running (without additional hackery).
The mixup about DLL hell is amusing and puts all your other replies into context.
What mixup ? Windows left DLL hell behind years ago. Dependency hell is very much a part of contemporary Linux, especially if you need something that your package manager can't provide.
I also suspect that your view of the registry also stems from little experience with that obfiscated hiding place for malware which was really only possible to backup when volume shadow copy came around - when the one file that NEEDS to be backed up can't be backed up within the operating system that is a bit of a sign that things are broken.
Pretty sure you could backup the Registyr prior to Windows 2003.
The number of times people have come to me saying the backups have everything apart from the registry and the users email and could I please help recover the disk is somewhat ridiculous [...]
So they weren't competent enough to backup user emails, and your first instinct is to blame the OS ?
[...] until recently it was a hobby OS suitable for launching games that somehow got into the workplace.
Right. And by "recently" you mean back when it started dominating the business world in the '90s.
In several of your responses you cite that "typical users" don't need it, which only reinforces my comment about Windows being a toy operating system.
No, it reinforces your non-sequitur argument that only people who use computers like you do are doing "real work".
By extension, you are arguing that only a fractional percentage of people using computers are doing "real work" on them. I think you might find some disagreement from the other 99%+ of computer users that they're not doing "real work".
Upon further examination I now see this is entirely true, but that's how it effectively works. If someone emails me a file with a .exe suffix Windows will automatically execute it if I click on it wrong. In unix, I would need to manually set the execute permission. In Windows, the sender is effectively setting this. Combined with hiding file extensions by default probably makes this one of the biggest mistakes in computing history. The solution right now in the case of email is to block filenames with "bad" suffixes.
End users are happy to open password protected zip files to get at the malware goodness inside when they're being promised free stuff. Do you seriously think need to set +x would make a meaningful difference ?
The unix shells are some of the most powerful computer interfaces.
At certain tasks. For, say, designing a 100-storey skyscraper or adding digital effects to a film, they're useless.
The traditional Windows shell doesn't even come close. I read a bit about PowerShell when it came out, but I am still not convinced it even comes close either.
You should probably read up on something before you criticise it.
I am corrected again. A test with ntfs-3g allowed me to use these characters. From Windows though, the this is still effectively a limit on the filesystem. Is there an API that gives enough access to do it? I've never seen a program use it.
That's because creating filenames that can't be manipulated by the majority of existing software would be extrememely dumb.
Case of newbie hand-holding. See top of post.
No, it's a feature. Case sensitivity just increases interface complexity.
I guess you don't have much experience with a good package manager?
I do.
Dependencies are an issue that these solve, but they are really fantastic for maintaing and entire system. With a single command I can update all the software on my system. With one command I can install a number of desired packages. On Windows, each package has to do this itself, each with its own interfaces and deamons, which is a stupid way to do it.
Package managers are good right up until the point where you need software that falls outside their scope. Then they tend to cause more problems than they solve.
This has been an issue with me mostly with Cygwin. The build configure scripts that comes with source tarballs expect to be built in paths without filenames, because it would require convoluted escaping otherwise. It was annoying being on a system where I could only write under "Documents and Settings" and trying to build a package.
So the real problem is actually a poorly designed third party software package.
For example, the PATH variable was limited to a pathetic 1023 characters. Combine that with ridiculously long system path names and you have lots of problems. It was eventually doubled to a still-pathetic 2047. This has been a really serious issue for lots of people I know, with many different convoluted work arounds?
The root problem here is you're trying to use cmd for something it's not really designed for. Try out Powershell or alternative methods.
Why the hell would such a limit even exist? It just screams of incompetance.
So what does the existence of something like xargs scream ?
As I said, computers are often browser appliances, so a good browser can go a long w
MS stopped another program from running on a released version of Windows.
No, they did not. It was only a warning and only happened in a beta version of Windows. To say nothing of DR-DOS not being "an application that runs on Windows".
You never specified anything about beta/non-beta status, it was released to the public however.
No, it was not. It was not a public beta test.
As I suspected, you're a shill.
So, no examples then ?
The execution permission on the filesystem is stored in the filename (ie ".exe").
False.
The shell sucks.
How so ?
The filesystem has all kinds of stupid, arbitrary limitations (like no ?, , ", *, :, | characters allowed).
These are limitations within the shell, not the filesystem.
Case insensitive filenames.
This is most definitely a feature, not a problem.
No package manager (at all!).
That's because it doesn't have the dependency hell that requires such a thing in Linux.
Still use archaic "drives" for the filesystems.
Windows has supported (easily) mounting drives underneath directories for nearly a decade. People prefer drives because they are a more sensible organisation tool.
Spaces in system path names.
Irrelevant at best. Not to mention, why would you be referencing paths (that might not be consistent) across systems instead of using the environment variables or API calls ?
Severe limitations on the size of environmental variables.
For example ?
A seriously piss poor excuse for a browser.
That most people find more than adequate. Can't be that bad.
Lots of GUI-only configuration.
Irrelevant.
The registry.
What's the problem with a transactional database ?
No SSH.
Remote desktop instead.
No X.
Terminal services and remote desktop is superior in pretty much every way.
No basic commands (find, grep, ln, df, du, etc.; part of shell sucking really).
Irrelevant to most all users. Installable for those who desire it.
Extremely shitty text editor.
Irrelevant and unnecessary.
Regular BSODs (yes, even Vista; I have yet to personally see a linux kernel panic, or any other crash that required a reboot).
If your system is BSODing regularly, your hardware or drivers are broken. Not an OS issue.
No decent interpreters (even the barest unix installs always have an awk, and almost always have perl).
Also irrelevant and unnecessary to most all users. Installable if desired.
So not only is it expensive and proprietary, it's technically inferior in almost every way.
You've listed a whole bunch of stuff that's either flat-out erroneous or userspace personal preference. Nothing technical.
The shenanigans they tried with DR-DOS [wikipedia.org] is just one example, [...]
Actually it's not. It wasn't a program running on Windows, it was only present in a beta release and it didn't actually prevent running Windows on DR-DOS anyway. To say nothing of it happening nearly twenty years ago.
[...] and, if you really want to know the truth (and aren't simply an MS shill), then you can find plenty more.
I still want some examples of Microsoft preventing another company's software from running on Windows. The implication has been made that this is commonplace. It should be pretty trivial to come up with half a dozen or more examples.
For bonus points, you may also want to reconcile Microsoft's demonstrated, resource-intensive and sometimes even detrimental efforts to retain backwards compatibility.