UNIX, Linux, BSD, and Apple got the security model right; Microsoft didn't. That's why in Windows, security and usability is a zero sum game. Had Microsoft gotten the security model right in the first place, UAC wouldn't be an issue.
From a low-level perspective, the security model in Windows is far superior to classic UNIX.
From a high-level perspective, the security model in Windows is the same.
Why wouldn't it be DRM related? I don't know anything technical about this DRM and I am an anti-DRM zealot....And, it seems logical that no matter how well executed, DRM is an extra step on something (video output) that should logically imply some sort of cost for that extra step and if this is a very competitive field why shouldn't DRM have an impact?
Because the DRM is only active if you are playing back DRM-encumbered media with a DRM-capable player. I think it's reasonably safe to assume that neither of those conditions apply in this situation.
Seriously, I'd like to know because I'll admit I have no idea. How does the DRM impact things?
If you don't have DRM-encumbered media, it doesn't.
Believe it or not, people actually try to justify this.
I presume by "justify" you mean "look at me funny and say 'why the hell do you care'" ?
However, it still seems moronic that I don't have the choice -- how difficult can it be to simply disable the graphical subsystem? Doesn't it kind of show that Windows was never meant to be a server OS?
No. Not in the slightest. Why would it ? Nobody except OCD, anal-retentive UNIX nerds would even give it a second thought, let alone expend effort trying to "fix" such a non-problem, so why would the Windows NT developers at Microsoft ?
Sorry about that... I had to rant. Every now and then, someone comes up with yet another idea that will save Linux, or bring us closer to the Year of the Linux Desktop, in the form of something stupid like "Let's ditch X and put all the graphical stuff in the kernel!"
None of the "graphical stuff" in Windows is in the kernel. Some parts of it run in *kernel mode* (depending on the particular version), but that's not the same thing (and it's no different to, for example, the kernel modules used by ATI, nVidia, et al).
FYI, the DRM features of Vista/7 only seem to come into play when:
The _only_ time DRM in Windows "comes into play" is when:
* You have DRM-encumbered media (so not regular DVDs)
* You are using a DRM-capable player (so not VLC, etc)
Neither Vista, nor Windows 7, sit there looking for "HD video" or "mp3s", or anything else. They simple activate the Protected Path when an application asks for it, which should only happen if that application is playing back DRM-encumbered media.
But I partially agree with some of the comments here: It would make more sense (IMO) for Windows to greet you with the following choice upon initial configuration:
No, it would not. The sensible situation would be that you weren't pestered to make a choice, and could instead just get on with using the computer. This is what happens with other platforms, and it would be the same with Windows if it weren't for intrusive and user-hostile legal requirements that they present some sort of "choice".
If you want something other than the default, you know enough to find and use an alternative on your own.
The killer is that these are all just specialized applications that should be easily installed and uninstalled, just like any other application. It blows my mind that they could be so entrenched that just removing them, or not having them installed to begin with, isn't trivial.
Does it blow your mind that other major platforms - OS X, GNOME, KDE, etc - are the same ?
They're not just applications is the fundamental point so many seem unable to grasp. They're shared components that other applications - either "bundled" or third party - can leverage.
People don't seem to have trouble understanding that stuff depends on, say, glibc. Why is it they have so much trouble with the concept of other system libraries being similarly important ?
I'd say Japan. I've been there a few times and have always been amazed as I watch long distance trains pulling into the station exactly when the timetable says they should.
I've been similarly impressed with the trains (/trams/buses/ferries) here in Zurich, as well.
One particular example that always makes me chuckle - caught the TGV back from Paris and (of course) it left about 10-15 minutes late. However, on arrival at the Zurich HB, it stopped moving _exactly_ as the clock on the platform ticked over the arrival time.
As far as I'm aware, Japanese trains have to be within ~2 minutes of the schedule or the passengers get a partial refund.
Sadly, the same is not true in Sydney, where a few years back Railcorp defined "on time" to be anything up to five minutes after the scheduled arrival/departure time.
Naturally, this dramatically improved their "on time" performance statistics, which they then used to justify a fare increase.
With that said, from a technical perspective, their poor performance is apparently due to incompetence, not malice (at least according to my wife, who used to work for an engineering firm with a lot of Railcorp projects).
No, you're wrong. That's like saying that the war in Iraq was a good thing because it concentrated terrorists in one spot. It created more terrorism just like Craigslist has created more prostitution. Before a girl had to hit rock bottom before becoming a whore (literally). Now they can do it behind their husband's back.
I am not making an argument for mainframes, I am making an argument against the idea that you can have "four nines" availability out of a single server.
I get four nines quite easily with RAID on a decent server, thank you very much.
So far. What are you going to do when a motherboard or CPU failure requires a multi-hour outage to replace ? Or filesystem corruption requires a multi-hour restore ? Or a botched patching session requires an hour to roll back ?
By your standards my desktop PC has nine nines of uptime. Of course, I'm only counting from the beginning of 2009...
That's 4 min/month downtime, which is quite a lot.
No, it's not. If your availability requirements are completely dependent on any individual server not being down for more than 4 minutes a month, then all you have is a ticking bomb and it's simply a matter of when, not if, you will fail to meet them.
VMS was, I think, rather VAX-oriented in the lower layers, so, unless the idea was that Cutler knew what not to do from his VMS experience, I'm not sure that was the reason why NT was designed for portability. It might more have been that he was an ex-Mica [computer-refuge.org] guy, although that was somewhat Prism [computer-refuge.org]-oriented.
NT was designed for portability because in ~1988, which (if any) hardware platform would become dominant was very much up in the air. Any one (or more) of x86, 68k, PPC, MIPS, Alpha, etc could have "won" - Microsoft (and IBM, back then) were hedging their bets.
MS Exchange is pretty well the only thing that does in one monolithic heap all the things it does, but if you are considering nothing but email it is a very poor performer.
If you are "considering nothing but email", then Exchange probably isn't a good solution to your problem.
And you can drag and drop it into the trash can if you like. No joking: drag and drop an application icon to the trash can is the normal way to de-install software on Mac OS.
You can drag iexplore.exe to the Recycling Bin as well, if you want to.
How many Microsoft Windows XP machines are going to be running on January 18, 2038?[1] I guarantee you there will be 32 bit Unix-derived systems running then.
I'm sure there will be millions of "Windows NT-derived systems" running in 2038.
Why is it people think they can make an analogy about a case of antitrust abuse, but replacing a trust with a company that doesn't have a monopoly?
Possibly because it exposes the stupidity of "remedies" that will do nothing more than harm users, and the farce of "establishing a level playing field".
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UNIX, Linux, BSD, and Apple got the security model right; Microsoft didn't. That's why in Windows, security and usability is a zero sum game. Had Microsoft gotten the security model right in the first place, UAC wouldn't be an issue.
From a low-level perspective, the security model in Windows is far superior to classic UNIX.
From a high-level perspective, the security model in Windows is the same.
What's your problem, again ?
Currently unproven to save even one life, but proven to destroy human embryos.
Fortunately, they're a renewable resource.
I note that the tests were done using windows vista. I wonder if this could have anything to do with the encrypted video path.
Only if this Nexuiz thing enables the Protected Path. Do you seriously think it does ?
Why wouldn't it be DRM related? I don't know anything technical about this DRM and I am an anti-DRM zealot. ...And, it seems logical that no matter how well executed, DRM is an extra step on something (video output) that should logically imply some sort of cost for that extra step and if this is a very competitive field why shouldn't DRM have an impact?
Because the DRM is only active if you are playing back DRM-encumbered media with a DRM-capable player. I think it's reasonably safe to assume that neither of those conditions apply in this situation.
Seriously, I'd like to know because I'll admit I have no idea. How does the DRM impact things?
If you don't have DRM-encumbered media, it doesn't.
Believe it or not, people actually try to justify this.
I presume by "justify" you mean "look at me funny and say 'why the hell do you care'" ?
However, it still seems moronic that I don't have the choice -- how difficult can it be to simply disable the graphical subsystem? Doesn't it kind of show that Windows was never meant to be a server OS?
No. Not in the slightest. Why would it ? Nobody except OCD, anal-retentive UNIX nerds would even give it a second thought, let alone expend effort trying to "fix" such a non-problem, so why would the Windows NT developers at Microsoft ?
Sorry about that... I had to rant. Every now and then, someone comes up with yet another idea that will save Linux, or bring us closer to the Year of the Linux Desktop, in the form of something stupid like "Let's ditch X and put all the graphical stuff in the kernel!"
None of the "graphical stuff" in Windows is in the kernel. Some parts of it run in *kernel mode* (depending on the particular version), but that's not the same thing (and it's no different to, for example, the kernel modules used by ATI, nVidia, et al).
FYI, the DRM features of Vista/7 only seem to come into play when:
The _only_ time DRM in Windows "comes into play" is when:
* You have DRM-encumbered media (so not regular DVDs)
* You are using a DRM-capable player (so not VLC, etc)
Neither Vista, nor Windows 7, sit there looking for "HD video" or "mp3s", or anything else. They simple activate the Protected Path when an application asks for it, which should only happen if that application is playing back DRM-encumbered media.
But I partially agree with some of the comments here: It would make more sense (IMO) for Windows to greet you with the following choice upon initial configuration:
No, it would not. The sensible situation would be that you weren't pestered to make a choice, and could instead just get on with using the computer. This is what happens with other platforms, and it would be the same with Windows if it weren't for intrusive and user-hostile legal requirements that they present some sort of "choice".
If you want something other than the default, you know enough to find and use an alternative on your own.
The killer is that these are all just specialized applications that should be easily installed and uninstalled, just like any other application. It blows my mind that they could be so entrenched that just removing them, or not having them installed to begin with, isn't trivial.
Does it blow your mind that other major platforms - OS X, GNOME, KDE, etc - are the same ?
They're not just applications is the fundamental point so many seem unable to grasp. They're shared components that other applications - either "bundled" or third party - can leverage.
People don't seem to have trouble understanding that stuff depends on, say, glibc. Why is it they have so much trouble with the concept of other system libraries being similarly important ?
I'd say Japan. I've been there a few times and have always been amazed as I watch long distance trains pulling into the station exactly when the timetable says they should.
I've been similarly impressed with the trains (/trams/buses/ferries) here in Zurich, as well.
One particular example that always makes me chuckle - caught the TGV back from Paris and (of course) it left about 10-15 minutes late. However, on arrival at the Zurich HB, it stopped moving _exactly_ as the clock on the platform ticked over the arrival time.
I wonder how often they do that?
In the Italian part ? Probably all the time.
In the German part ? Hell, no. There are rules ...
As far as I'm aware, Japanese trains have to be within ~2 minutes of the schedule or the passengers get a partial refund.
Sadly, the same is not true in Sydney, where a few years back Railcorp defined "on time" to be anything up to five minutes after the scheduled arrival/departure time.
Naturally, this dramatically improved their "on time" performance statistics, which they then used to justify a fare increase.
With that said, from a technical perspective, their poor performance is apparently due to incompetence, not malice (at least according to my wife, who used to work for an engineering firm with a lot of Railcorp projects).
No, you're wrong. That's like saying that the war in Iraq was a good thing because it concentrated terrorists in one spot. It created more terrorism just like Craigslist has created more prostitution. Before a girl had to hit rock bottom before becoming a whore (literally). Now they can do it behind their husband's back.
s/Craigslist/Emancipation/
OpenStep (guest) installed but couldn't boot.
Wow. Quite frankly, I'm amazed you even got it to install. The last release of Openstep was what ? 1995 ?
You should read up on mac os x bundles.
I already know about OS X bundles.
I am not making an argument for mainframes, I am making an argument against the idea that you can have "four nines" availability out of a single server.
I get four nines quite easily with RAID on a decent server, thank you very much.
So far. What are you going to do when a motherboard or CPU failure requires a multi-hour outage to replace ? Or filesystem corruption requires a multi-hour restore ? Or a botched patching session requires an hour to roll back ?
By your standards my desktop PC has nine nines of uptime. Of course, I'm only counting from the beginning of 2009...
That's 4 min/month downtime, which is quite a lot.
No, it's not. If your availability requirements are completely dependent on any individual server not being down for more than 4 minutes a month, then all you have is a ticking bomb and it's simply a matter of when, not if, you will fail to meet them.
VMS was, I think, rather VAX-oriented in the lower layers, so, unless the idea was that Cutler knew what not to do from his VMS experience, I'm not sure that was the reason why NT was designed for portability. It might more have been that he was an ex-Mica [computer-refuge.org] guy, although that was somewhat Prism [computer-refuge.org]-oriented.
NT was designed for portability because in ~1988, which (if any) hardware platform would become dominant was very much up in the air. Any one (or more) of x86, 68k, PPC, MIPS, Alpha, etc could have "won" - Microsoft (and IBM, back then) were hedging their bets.
Oops. Remember you can't get 4 nines uptime because you have to patch the fuckers every month.
If your architecture cannot survive individual hardware outages, you won't be getting "4 nines uptime" no matter what your OS is.
MS Exchange is pretty well the only thing that does in one monolithic heap all the things it does, but if you are considering nothing but email it is a very poor performer.
If you are "considering nothing but email", then Exchange probably isn't a good solution to your problem.
And you can drag and drop it into the trash can if you like. No joking: drag and drop an application icon to the trash can is the normal way to de-install software on Mac OS.
You can drag iexplore.exe to the Recycling Bin as well, if you want to.
How many Microsoft Windows XP machines are going to be running on January 18, 2038?[1] I guarantee you there will be 32 bit Unix-derived systems running then.
I'm sure there will be millions of "Windows NT-derived systems" running in 2038.
Why is it people think they can make an analogy about a case of antitrust abuse, but replacing a trust with a company that doesn't have a monopoly?
Possibly because it exposes the stupidity of "remedies" that will do nothing more than harm users, and the farce of "establishing a level playing field".
Maybe not, they coupled it to avoid lawsuits and it is a bad and expensive architecture to maintain.
Yet one that has been since duplicated by all the major platforms - GNOME, KDE, OS X...
I like knowing that every piece of software on my machine is there by my choice, not by fiat.
I bet I could find hundreds of files on your Ubuntu system that have never been accessed by a single process since the machine was installed.
They do that because its performance is not that good compared to the other solutions. It is good, but no where near worth the money good.
You don't pay VMWare for performance, you pay them for manageability.