Or......a million others. I thought it was highly interesting that there were a high number of flaws in the Windows Office, but only one in the Mac Office. What say you/.?
Office for Mac is largely a separate codebase to Office for Windows. Added to that, Office for Mac is a significantly newer codebase that has relatively recently been exposed to some signficant workovers (for OS X). It isn't surprising at all that it would a) have fewer bugs and b) have bugs that were not present in Office for Windows.
Of course, facts rarely get in the way of irrational paranoia, *especially* when it coes to Slashdot and Microsoft...
If an automaker and its unhappy vict^H^H^H^Hcustomers keep finding major safety issues and design flaws in a line of cars, flaws that required fix after repair after parts replacement, all of which fail to correct the underlying problem(s), I think the manufacturer would be forced to recall the cars. Certainly lemon laws would apply in many states!
So which OS are you thinking of that _wouldn't_ be classified as a 'lemon' ?
'security' isn't something you can just slap on top after the fact, it's the foundation of a solid system. If you just paint over the holes, you will keep on doing that forever.
Fortunate, then, that the "foundation" of Windows is quite good.
Then why did the fastest period of Internet Explorer's marketshare growth occur with IE4, in the time period before and shortly after the release of Windows 98 ?
In case your memory is hazy (or you weren't there), IE4 was only availble as a manual install prior to Windows 98, and the adoption rate of Windows 98 was very slow.
The latest 2.4 version of the Linux kernel is: 2.4.33.3 2006-08-31 20:20 UTC
The latest prepatch for the 2.4 Linux kernel tree is: 2.4.34-pre4 2006-10-02 20:45 UTC
One could make the case that Microsoft uses their odd naming scheme (such as "Vista" for "NT 5.3") mostly to disguise the fact that they're charging more and more money for less and less meaningful version updates.
Vista is most certainly NT 6.0. The changes *easily* justify a major version bump.
Close button in the active tab. Argh !
on
Firefox 2.0 RC2 Review
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Whoever came up with this idea needs to be slapped. It's not _quite_ as bad as having a close button in every tab (which commits the additional sin of wasting a section of screen space that's already scarce), but it still makes a destructive action (closing a tab) _far_ too easy to trigger accidentally (by clicking _just_ the wrong part of a tab).
Having the tab bar suddenly become scrollable when you open "too many" tabs is another stupid idea. Took me a minute the first time it happened to realise I wasn't seeing a bug (tabs not being created) but a piece of awful UI.
Proper way to do it: When the user needs to perform an administrative task, have them enter a password, then allow ALL administrative tasks performed within the next several minutes without asking.
The way OS X and Linux do this with sudo is a gaping security hole.
Added to that, I strongly suspect the functionality you are asking for is fundamentally incompatible with Windows's security model.
What sort of "administrative tasks" are you doing that are resulting in so many UAC prompts so quickly ?
It was most definitely based on and inspired by UNIX.
Rrrrright. So exactly which part of a microkernel-esque, pervasively multithreaded, single-user OS with a C++ API and GUI interface do you think was "based on and inspired by UNIX" ?
Indeed, apart from a certain level of POSIX compliance, what _similarities_ are there between UNIXes and BeOS ?
OS X supports things like SMP far better than NT does.
Rubbish. OS X's SMP support is basic, at best. NT has been running on - and being tuned for - multiprocessor machines far longer than OS X has, and it shows. Heck, it's only with 10.4 that OS X has improved on the equivalent of a single kernel lock.
Being somewhat generous, OS X's SMP capabilities are currently on par with Windows NT 4.0 (or, say, Linux 2.0 or FreeBSD 4.x). OTOH, now that multi-CPU machines are commonplace instead of high-end, it will probably advance to NT's current and immediate future level (Vista) a lot quicker than it took NT (and Linux) to get there.
Apple's other choice before NeXT was BeOS, also based on UNIX.
BeOS was not UNIX-based. Heck, BeOS wasn't even multiuser.
Because Apple was desperate for a new OS doesn't mean the fact that they went with a UNIX-based solution was a mistake or something they settled on with reservations. On the contrary, I'm surprised anyone is arguing such given all the open source software that now happily runs on OS X and how open the system really is.
Because releasing Yet Another Unix is a) not particularly interesting technologically, b) surprising from a company infamous for NIH-syndrome and c) a bit lame in todays world.
With that said, OS X doesn't really walk, look or quack like a unix for the vast majority of users and developers (unless they want it to). Apple could quite reasonably have released OS X based on a Windows-NT-derived core (and it was considered) and most users and developers wouldn't be able to tell the difference (although it probably would have had better performance, SMP, memory management, etc - albeit at the price of being at Microsoft's mercy, something Apple probably, understandably, didn't want to do).
The Win32 API unfortunately has only gotten larger with each new version as MS had decided to make backwards compatibility more of a priority than other goals. I think there are some 40,000 documented API calls. Then there are the undocumented ones. At some point MS has to clean up their API and deprecate some of them. At this point it will be very painful and legacy systems will not work. I'm not sure if Vista is headed in that direction.
It's funny, though, that neither you nor I nor a lot of other/.'ers would even touch a brand new release of Windows. I just see it as moving from 500,000 beta-testers to 50,000,000 beta-testers.
On the contrary, I've used every version of Windows NT (except Vista[0]) as my full-time desktop OS since late in its beta cycle.
NT4's beta 2 was the OS that got me off OS/2, with better performance, stability and software support.
Windows 2000 never gave me any trouble from the RCs onwards.
XP was fine from the RCs (although its changes over 2000 were minimal, so that's hardly surprising).
Windows 2003 was a distinct improvement in performance and stability over XP.
I have *never* had a significant problem doing this. Indeed, I could probably count the total number of BSODs my desktop PCs have had since early 1996 on two hands and still have some fingers left over (take out the ones that were caused by hardware failures, and the count might even fit on one hand).
[0] I haven't really bothered with Vista because Windows 2003 has been serving me so well. However, having started to delve into the Vista waters with the RCs, it seems to me to be following the pattern I have become used to - usable in the late beta to RC phase. The biggest problem I've bumped into thus far is finding some CD writing and ISO-mounting tools that work (and given the level of internal changes, I'm willing to be understanding about that).
Microsoft wanted a more reliable machine, improved memory management, a better filesystem, etc... Instead of throwing resources at doing these things from scratch, why didn't they just
Because there is zero benefit to them in doing so.
Re:You Misunderstand: Feature Good, Process Bad
on
IE7 Toolbar Mayhem
·
· Score: 1
With earlier IE versions, the user is NOT ASKED, as both the GP post and you say, but the action IS ALLOWED.
Untrue. Particularly with more recent/fully updated versions of IE, the user has to approve installation of _all_ ActiveX controls in the default configuration, as far as I know. A website cannot self-install anything without the user having to answer at least one dialog box allowing it to (software bugs aside).
Now, I'll agree the UI for this could be better than "Install ActiveX control, Yes/No", but no matter how "easy to understand" you make that dialog, people are still going to click "Yes" so they can see whatever it is they want to see on the website telling them to install the toolbar/spyware/whatever.
The short version is simple: if you want to allow the user the ability to run anything they want, you cannot stop them from running malicious code.
Re:You Misunderstand: Feature Good, Process Bad
on
IE7 Toolbar Mayhem
·
· Score: 1
The point is worth repeating: Adding a toolbar to IE7 isn't a bad thing. The real problem is the way the process works and it isn't getting better for Vista. For each plugin there should be one and only one confirmation. If it fails **any hard defined requirements** then it the plugin is not installed. They should not be asked to elevate their privilages. They should not be asked if they want to activate secondary controls (Active X). They should not be asked if the install can modify the registry.
This is how the system has worked up until Vista. Do you think it has been a success ?
But these systems can of course be bypassed. And it appears that the protections against bypassing them amount to a bunch of warning dialog boxes. This is a problem.
Nowhere near as big a problem as Vista only running software on an "approved list" would be, to the average Slashdotter.
A system that allows the execution of arbitrary code is inherently insecurable. To put it bluntly, if you want the ability to run software of your choosing, you cannot protect against malicious software.
Education, not dialog boxes, is the answer.
Education only works with the voluntary participation of the other party. You can't force people to learn.
Besides, if "education" was the solution, there never would have been a problem in the first place.
You're right, it's not that much, it's only two thirds.
Fossil fuels != oil.
Most fossil-fuel related *electricity production*, by my understanding, comes from coal (and gas ?), not oil (or derivatives like petrol).
(Heating with oil was something I hadn't considered, however, largely because it's not very common here in Australia (neither is really cold weather, for that matter).)
There is one viable option to reduce oil dependancy : nuclear power.
Nuclear power (especially on its own) isn't going to do much to reduce oil dependency. It's not like much electricity comes from burning oil or derivatives.
Although it took them 10 years to develop an truly usable and reliable OS (1985-1995), and another 5 years to implement a real memory manager, there was progress all the way.
You completely ignore Windows NT before XP.
I think what people are chafing at with Vista is that this is the first major release where the improvements are not so apparent.
That's because the vast majority of them are not (and can not be) visible to the casual user.
The changes from XP (strictly, Windows 2003) to Vista, are *signficant*. Well and truly on the scale of Windows NT 4.0 to Windows 2000. If you'd like a comparison on another platform, they're on par with the changes Apple did to NeXT to get to OS X.
It is certainly not the difference between Windows 95 and XP.
Windows 95 and XP are completely different OSes. Vista, OTOH, is a (major) revision of XP.
Try posting something pro copyright or against downloading copyrighted material. It's an automatic Troll or at best you get modded down. There's party line and troll on Slashdot about some subjects. There's no real discussion of the subject it just turns into a bashing of copyright holders everytime.
That's because the average "pro copyright" post is either the standard (and utterly worthless) "it's illegal so you shouldn't do it [because it's wrong]" or something that roughly equates downloading a song with breaking into a house, tying up the residents, taking everything of value and burning it down.
Slashdot Mirror
Isn't it the applications that make the computer useful, while the OS simply provides an interface between apps and hardware?
Well, yes, but that's the view from orbit - it's in no way a "simple" task with modern OSes.
Or......a million others. I thought it was highly interesting that there were a high number of flaws in the Windows Office, but only one in the Mac Office. What say you /.?
Office for Mac is largely a separate codebase to Office for Windows. Added to that, Office for Mac is a significantly newer codebase that has relatively recently been exposed to some signficant workovers (for OS X). It isn't surprising at all that it would a) have fewer bugs and b) have bugs that were not present in Office for Windows.
Of course, facts rarely get in the way of irrational paranoia, *especially* when it coes to Slashdot and Microsoft...
If an automaker and its unhappy vict^H^H^H^Hcustomers keep finding major safety issues and design flaws in a line of cars, flaws that required fix after repair after parts replacement, all of which fail to correct the underlying problem(s), I think the manufacturer would be forced to recall the cars. Certainly lemon laws would apply in many states!
So which OS are you thinking of that _wouldn't_ be classified as a 'lemon' ?
'security' isn't something you can just slap on top after the fact, it's the foundation of a solid system. If you just paint over the holes, you will keep on doing that forever.
Fortunate, then, that the "foundation" of Windows is quite good.
and no factor more effective.
Then why did the fastest period of Internet Explorer's marketshare growth occur with IE4, in the time period before and shortly after the release of Windows 98 ?
In case your memory is hazy (or you weren't there), IE4 was only availble as a manual install prior to Windows 98, and the adoption rate of Windows 98 was very slow.
A stable, secure, open, easy to use OS is lame? What would not be lame in your opinion?
Yet another reimplementation of a thirty year old OS (including its flaws) is 'lame'. Particularly when so much progress has been made since then.
Now, the stuff they've got sitting on top of it, that's pretty cool.
The latest 2.4 version of the Linux kernel is: 2.4.33.3 2006-08-31 20:20 UTC
The latest prepatch for the 2.4 Linux kernel tree is: 2.4.34-pre4 2006-10-02 20:45 UTC
You are comparing apples and oranges.
One could make the case that Microsoft uses their odd naming scheme (such as "Vista" for "NT 5.3") mostly to disguise the fact that they're charging more and more money for less and less meaningful version updates.
Vista is most certainly NT 6.0. The changes *easily* justify a major version bump.
Whoever came up with this idea needs to be slapped. It's not _quite_ as bad as having a close button in every tab (which commits the additional sin of wasting a section of screen space that's already scarce), but it still makes a destructive action (closing a tab) _far_ too easy to trigger accidentally (by clicking _just_ the wrong part of a tab).
Having the tab bar suddenly become scrollable when you open "too many" tabs is another stupid idea. Took me a minute the first time it happened to realise I wasn't seeing a bug (tabs not being created) but a piece of awful UI.
Proper way to do it: When the user needs to perform an administrative task, have them enter a password, then allow ALL administrative tasks performed within the next several minutes without asking.
The way OS X and Linux do this with sudo is a gaping security hole.
Added to that, I strongly suspect the functionality you are asking for is fundamentally incompatible with Windows's security model.
What sort of "administrative tasks" are you doing that are resulting in so many UAC prompts so quickly ?
It was most definitely based on and inspired by UNIX.
Rrrrright. So exactly which part of a microkernel-esque, pervasively multithreaded, single-user OS with a C++ API and GUI interface do you think was "based on and inspired by UNIX" ?
Indeed, apart from a certain level of POSIX compliance, what _similarities_ are there between UNIXes and BeOS ?
OS X supports things like SMP far better than NT does.
Rubbish. OS X's SMP support is basic, at best. NT has been running on - and being tuned for - multiprocessor machines far longer than OS X has, and it shows. Heck, it's only with 10.4 that OS X has improved on the equivalent of a single kernel lock.
Being somewhat generous, OS X's SMP capabilities are currently on par with Windows NT 4.0 (or, say, Linux 2.0 or FreeBSD 4.x). OTOH, now that multi-CPU machines are commonplace instead of high-end, it will probably advance to NT's current and immediate future level (Vista) a lot quicker than it took NT (and Linux) to get there.
Apple's other choice before NeXT was BeOS, also based on UNIX.
BeOS was not UNIX-based. Heck, BeOS wasn't even multiuser.
Because Apple was desperate for a new OS doesn't mean the fact that they went with a UNIX-based solution was a mistake or something they settled on with reservations. On the contrary, I'm surprised anyone is arguing such given all the open source software that now happily runs on OS X and how open the system really is.
Because releasing Yet Another Unix is a) not particularly interesting technologically, b) surprising from a company infamous for NIH-syndrome and c) a bit lame in todays world.
With that said, OS X doesn't really walk, look or quack like a unix for the vast majority of users and developers (unless they want it to). Apple could quite reasonably have released OS X based on a Windows-NT-derived core (and it was considered) and most users and developers wouldn't be able to tell the difference (although it probably would have had better performance, SMP, memory management, etc - albeit at the price of being at Microsoft's mercy, something Apple probably, understandably, didn't want to do).
The Win32 API unfortunately has only gotten larger with each new version as MS had decided to make backwards compatibility more of a priority than other goals. I think there are some 40,000 documented API calls. Then there are the undocumented ones. At some point MS has to clean up their API and deprecate some of them. At this point it will be very painful and legacy systems will not work. I'm not sure if Vista is headed in that direction.
What do you think .Net is ?
It's funny, though, that neither you nor I nor a lot of other /.'ers would even touch a brand new release of Windows. I just see it as moving from 500,000 beta-testers to 50,000,000 beta-testers.
On the contrary, I've used every version of Windows NT (except Vista[0]) as my full-time desktop OS since late in its beta cycle.
NT4's beta 2 was the OS that got me off OS/2, with better performance, stability and software support.
Windows 2000 never gave me any trouble from the RCs onwards.
XP was fine from the RCs (although its changes over 2000 were minimal, so that's hardly surprising).
Windows 2003 was a distinct improvement in performance and stability over XP.
I have *never* had a significant problem doing this. Indeed, I could probably count the total number of BSODs my desktop PCs have had since early 1996 on two hands and still have some fingers left over (take out the ones that were caused by hardware failures, and the count might even fit on one hand).
[0] I haven't really bothered with Vista because Windows 2003 has been serving me so well. However, having started to delve into the Vista waters with the RCs, it seems to me to be following the pattern I have become used to - usable in the late beta to RC phase. The biggest problem I've bumped into thus far is finding some CD writing and ISO-mounting tools that work (and given the level of internal changes, I'm willing to be understanding about that).
Microsoft wanted a more reliable machine, improved memory management, a better filesystem, etc... Instead of throwing resources at doing these things from scratch, why didn't they just
Because there is zero benefit to them in doing so.
With earlier IE versions, the user is NOT ASKED, as both the GP post and you say, but the action IS ALLOWED.
Untrue. Particularly with more recent/fully updated versions of IE, the user has to approve installation of _all_ ActiveX controls in the default configuration, as far as I know. A website cannot self-install anything without the user having to answer at least one dialog box allowing it to (software bugs aside).
Now, I'll agree the UI for this could be better than "Install ActiveX control, Yes/No", but no matter how "easy to understand" you make that dialog, people are still going to click "Yes" so they can see whatever it is they want to see on the website telling them to install the toolbar/spyware/whatever.
The short version is simple: if you want to allow the user the ability to run anything they want, you cannot stop them from running malicious code.
The point is worth repeating: Adding a toolbar to IE7 isn't a bad thing. The real problem is the way the process works and it isn't getting better for Vista. For each plugin there should be one and only one confirmation. If it fails **any hard defined requirements** then it the plugin is not installed. They should not be asked to elevate their privilages. They should not be asked if they want to activate secondary controls (Active X). They should not be asked if the install can modify the registry.
This is how the system has worked up until Vista. Do you think it has been a success ?
But these systems can of course be bypassed. And it appears that the protections against bypassing them amount to a bunch of warning dialog boxes. This is a problem.
Nowhere near as big a problem as Vista only running software on an "approved list" would be, to the average Slashdotter.
A system that allows the execution of arbitrary code is inherently insecurable. To put it bluntly, if you want the ability to run software of your choosing, you cannot protect against malicious software.
Education, not dialog boxes, is the answer.
Education only works with the voluntary participation of the other party. You can't force people to learn.
Besides, if "education" was the solution, there never would have been a problem in the first place.
You're right, it's not that much, it's only two thirds.
Fossil fuels != oil.
Most fossil-fuel related *electricity production*, by my understanding, comes from coal (and gas ?), not oil (or derivatives like petrol).
(Heating with oil was something I hadn't considered, however, largely because it's not very common here in Australia (neither is really cold weather, for that matter).)
There is one viable option to reduce oil dependancy : nuclear power.
Nuclear power (especially on its own) isn't going to do much to reduce oil dependency. It's not like much electricity comes from burning oil or derivatives.
Seriously, who the fuck do they think they are?
A company trying to deliver product improvements *that their customers want* but the law says they can't.
Although it took them 10 years to develop an truly usable and reliable OS (1985-1995), and another 5 years to implement a real memory manager, there was progress all the way.
You completely ignore Windows NT before XP.
I think what people are chafing at with Vista is that this is the first major release where the improvements are not so apparent.
That's because the vast majority of them are not (and can not be) visible to the casual user.
The changes from XP (strictly, Windows 2003) to Vista, are *signficant*. Well and truly on the scale of Windows NT 4.0 to Windows 2000. If you'd like a comparison on another platform, they're on par with the changes Apple did to NeXT to get to OS X.
It is certainly not the difference between Windows 95 and XP.
Windows 95 and XP are completely different OSes. Vista, OTOH, is a (major) revision of XP.
Try posting something pro copyright or against downloading copyrighted material. It's an automatic Troll or at best you get modded down. There's party line and troll on Slashdot about some subjects. There's no real discussion of the subject it just turns into a bashing of copyright holders everytime.
That's because the average "pro copyright" post is either the standard (and utterly worthless) "it's illegal so you shouldn't do it [because it's wrong]" or something that roughly equates downloading a song with breaking into a house, tying up the residents, taking everything of value and burning it down.
Except that they feel that the end user has given them permission to do this, by virtue of clicking "Okay" on the license agreement.
I don't see anything in either the EULA or actual behaviour to suggest this.
So my point was really that this might be the use that takes EULAs just a little bit too far, that finally gets click-through licenses killed.
AFAIK, click-through licenses aren't legally binding anyway (might depend on your jurisdiction).
Point to the number on the bottom line that's a gain for companies with Vista.
Impossible without knowing their requests and requirements.
Just like Terminal Server, really.