The process does not, however, end there. When run the OS warns the user that the program would like access to the internet and provide basic information about the communication manner. Since the program has no access to any files it could send your IP address along somewhere, but that is about it. In order to gain access to any files the program would have to specifically ask for access to those files. Even more strongly worded warning again appear and require a choice by the user to access the root level files, the buddy list, the e-mail address book, etc. The same goes for any other unusual behavior like access to the keyboard input when other programs are in the foreground.
It's been demonstrated time and time again that a barrage of dialog boxes will not solve the problem. The user either a) figures out the appropriate set of yes/no answers to get the result they desire (ie: running the program) or b) gets so frustrated with the "broken software that won't let me do anything" they move to some other product that doesn't have the same "problems".
You are trying to create a solution from a technical person's perspective, with the assumption of a technical person's knowledge, experience and cognitive ability. More specifically, you're assuming you can develop a suitable barrage of dialog boxes that will eventually manage to engender the end user with sufficient technical knowledge and experience to be able to divine whether some random application is "safe" or "dangerous".
Well, it won't work. It's really no more than a slight extension of the systems we have in place, which have conclusively demonstrated their uselessness at wide-scale protection of ignorant users from themselves.
Except that common sense tells me not to apply Microsoft's patches immediately, so 1) and 2) are mutually exclusive.
As long as they don't post to Slashdot, this doesn't apply, since IME only Slashdot posters have problems with Windows patches breaking something more than once in a blue moon.
Unlike Windows, it's perfectly safe to run full-time as the "Administrator" user, and nearly every OS X user does.
This might have something to do with "Administrator" on Windows and "Administrator" on OS X being completely different things.
Your comment is like me creating a regular user called 'root' on my Windows machines and saying "unlike unix, it's perfectly safe to run full-time as the 'root' user in Windows".
There should be a table in the OS of hashes of things not to run ever with a second table of overrides for the local admin/user to maintain independently than the one that could get updated every time software update gets run.
In other words, it offers about as much of a defence as we have now.
There is no excuse for malware other than incompetence on the part of the OS vendor.
Bullshit. No OS can defend against the end user deliberately running malicious code (which covers about 90% of malware infections).
Since windows came along, each and every release from the Microsoft Corporation demanded a stronger machine and more dependancy on using my mouse. I don't know why we bother having a keyboard anymore. Just make a virtual keyboard instead and add a second mouse for my other hand. Maybe I'll get more out windows that way.
Windows's "keyboardability" is excellent (and one of its best features). Indeed, the quickest way to do most things - if you know what you're doing - is via the keyboard.
I used to be able to dish out 50 page research papers in less time but now I spend more time formatting my document using my mouse and waiting for my software to do actually do the action.
Sounds like the problem is not the software but your usage of the software.
Why on earth on we always forced to upgrade? Software is supposed to get better not worse.
You're not forced to upgrade. If DOS 3.0 on that Tandy was doing everything you do now, then there's nothing stopping you going back to it.
Or, maybe you can't because today's software really *is* better, and it's doing things that DOS 3.0 on that Tandy couldn't ?
I can do my work using just my keyboard, type documentation using latex, write scripts like I used to with batch files, i can stay in my console all the time again. On top of that I'm still using a Pentium III with just 500 Megs of Ram and its fast enough!
The only thing stopping you doing that with Windows is you.
While this is true for desktop systems, it's still very difficult to find laptops without windows. Not impossible, but difficult. Difficult enough that the non-motivated customer doesn't care enough to bother, and just pays the standard 120 Euro Micro$oft tax.
Which has vastly more to do with the vanishly small interest in Linux for both laptops and desktops, than anything Microsoft could do.
Apple's version of "Aero" is Aqua. Aqua was released with the first version of OS X on the G3 iMac.
And ran - well, walked - like an absolute dog.
Even today, you need a high end G5 machine for OS X not to be sluggish under any non-trivial load (up until I used OS X on a G5, I'd just assumed its atrocious performance was because of the poor old G4 processor, but afterwards I concluded there must be some architectural or implementation problems in the OS or display system itself that make it so slow).
OS X on my 1Ghz, 768M RAM iBook is only marginally more responsive than Windows 2003 on my 550Mhz, 384M RAM PC laptop. Obviously the iBook has a bit more headroom and finishes CPU-intensive tasks quicker, but running only one or two apps (say, Firefox/Thunderbird and Safari/Mail.app) it's pretty much a wash in terms of UI responsiveness. I've no doubt that if I could get 768M of RAM into the PC laptop, it would be *far* more responsive in general usage than the iBook. Considering the iBook is at least twice as fast in terms of processing power, that's pretty poor.
Jobs got there and cut it down in three: iMac, Laptop and Server. Down from dozens to three, very clearly potitionned. In no time, they got back in the market.
Actually it was cut down to Professional Desktop (PowerMac), Professional Laptop (PowerBook), Home Desktop (iMac), Home Laptop (iBook). Later this was expanded to Servers (Xserve) and Educational Desktop (eMac). That gave us - wait for it - size different products to choose from. Then came the Mac Mini, increasing the number of systems to 7 (and still no damn headless iMac).
I believe the eMac is now no longer available at all, although the four different iMac variants and six different laptop variants add more than enough potential confusion to make up for that.
Take a look at the findings of fact from the 1998 case.
I find it difficult to take a "Findings of Fact" seriously that says Microsoft and Apple weren't competitors (and thus alternatives) in the same market.
Why does some "version" of "Windows" absolutely have to have media player included, or internet explorer included, or outlook/express included or...?
Because the majority of customers want them.
Why not just ship the core of the OS, without any applications that play videos, music, display web pages, or show emails?
What's the "core" of the OS ? Does it include the GUI ? The widget libraries ? The Win32 API ? A text editor ? A TCP/IP stack ? Hardware drivers ?
I honestly don't understand the mindset Microsoft has that requires some "version" of "Windows" must have a music/video player on the same CD as the OS. Or an email program on the same CD as the OS. Or a web browser on the same CD as the OS.
That's probably because you're not running a billion dollar software company.
I never did see any reason to split Home and Pro versions.
Same reason you can get small, medium and large Big Mac meals. Same reason you can get a BMW 316, 318, 320 and 330. Same reason Apple sells 2 different types of iMac. Same reason *every* company has multiple product lines - to try and ream the customer for as much money as possible.
The law now says I can't bundle anything with my cars that is sold in another market. For example, since most people are forced to buy my cars if they need a car it is illegal for me to give away a free television with every car.
So how do you sell a car at all, given every single component of a car "is sold in another market" ? How can you justify selling your car with a stereo, seats, steering wheel, engine, gearbox, or just about anything else, given all these things are available seperately ?
On a Mac, or in Linux, you can swap out the parts. Don't like QT? it can be easily uninstalled.
No, it can't. Quicktime is more than that litle icon in the Applications folder. Safari is in the same boat. Both of them are basically just shells around a bunch of OS shared libraries.
Try doing that on Windows, and everything will either break, or you'll be called a pirate..
Delete the files iexplore.exe and msimn.exe and you will have done the same thing on Windows that you have on OS X.
Sure, you can find some obscure places that will sell you a "naked" machine, or one with Linux, but it's not very common. There is nothing wrong with retailers offering an OS installed on the machines they sell, but there seems to be a problem finding name brand computers that you can buy a la carte.
Well, given you "consider yourself libertarian and fully support the free market", you shouldn't have any problems whatsoever figuring out why this is so.
During the browser contreversy you could not uninstall IE. You could not remove it from the desktop and there were active hooks in windows to prevent other browsers from installing/running properly.
Bollocks.
Microsoft is welcome to bundle whatever they choose so long as they dont prevent/cripple users from installing products from competing vendors.
At no stage has Microsoft ever stopped people from running alternatives.
WMP does not establish a monopoly. The issue is that the OS monopoloy is being leveraged to restrict competition with other media players. Consumers (or so the theory goes) need not buy or even acquire another media player because WMP is already there. This stifles competition. And it is illegal.
Why is this same logic not applicable to widget sets, GUIs, TCP/IP stacks, text editors, APIs and the like ? What's so special about media players and web browsers ?
The result of Microsoft's abuse of power was that the leaders in the market (RealPlayer and Quicktime) effectively lost their places overnight, and the upstarts who were just starting to compete disappeared at the same time. (Remember when Quicktime was the defacto video player for multimedia programs, and RealPlayer was the defacto choice for streaming content?)
This might just have something to do with how awful both Realplayer and Quicktime are.
can someone explain to me why people care about windows media player being bundled with windows? i could maybe understand internet explorer, maybe. but wmp? what?
Because many "media player" companies believe the non-success of their product is because WMP is bundled, not because their products are black holes of suckage.
Yes, it is. Consider even the most *basic* and *superficial* comparisons:
* Is anyone looking for the functionality of Windows XP, going to find anything even remotely close with Linux on a 386 ? No.
* Is anyone looking at a PC capable of running Windows XP going to be satisfied with the performance of a 386 ? No.
* Is anyone for whom Linux on a 386 *is* a suitable fit to their requirements, going to even _consider_ using XP for the same task ? No.
This is before we even get to the simple factual errors of your statement. Windows XP runs fine on 5 year old PCs, perhaps requiring a minor RAM upgrade. Very few contemporary Linux distributions will even boot on a 386 (*particularly* a typical 386 that has - being generous - 8 MB of RAM) without tweaking, let alone install and run.
No rational person would try and compare Linux running on a 386 to anything running Windows XP (and vice versa). The target markets, possible uses and probable users are so completely different, that it's like comparing a B-double to a motorised skateboard, then stating the B-double sucks because it uses more fuel.
Your comment, however, has no value. There is no information or relevant opinion. Your statement attacks me directly despite the fact that you do not know anything about me. The wording is clumsy. The sentence is grammatically incorrect. You use a word that does not exist and one that is ambiguous. There is a missing word. You also make two absurd statements. You have created a piece of putrid mumbling, dense with stupidity, void of meaning and not worthy of a six year old reader.
This would be more entertaining if it didn't read like you copied it from a book. The fact that most of it's inaccurate, if not outright incorrect, doesn't help.
You, sir, are flamebait and I a ball of hydrogen plasma.
You're a dickhead trolling for bites with FUD, a ridiculous comparison, a chip on your shoulder about Microsoft you almost certainly have no reason to bear and a massively overestimated, self-administered measure of your own cleverness. In other words, you fit the Slashdot stereotype to a 'T'.
But real backward compatibility is not about software but hardware. I can not run XP on a computer that is 5 years old. I can run just about any Linux distro I want on a 386 without any need for support.
This is such a breathtakingly stupid statement, it's amazing anyone could even think it, let alone post it.
The only differnce between it and the dos/win3.1 compat in win2k/xp is that it's fully ingrained in windows and windows starts the emulation at startup so its absolutely transparent, while OSX only brings up "classic" if you run a pre-osx app.
This isn't correct. NTVDM (the "DOS/Win3.x compatibility" is only loaded on demand - it just isn't obvious about it like Classic is.
Slashdot Mirror
It's been demonstrated time and time again that a barrage of dialog boxes will not solve the problem. The user either a) figures out the appropriate set of yes/no answers to get the result they desire (ie: running the program) or b) gets so frustrated with the "broken software that won't let me do anything" they move to some other product that doesn't have the same "problems".
You are trying to create a solution from a technical person's perspective, with the assumption of a technical person's knowledge, experience and cognitive ability. More specifically, you're assuming you can develop a suitable barrage of dialog boxes that will eventually manage to engender the end user with sufficient technical knowledge and experience to be able to divine whether some random application is "safe" or "dangerous".
Well, it won't work. It's really no more than a slight extension of the systems we have in place, which have conclusively demonstrated their uselessness at wide-scale protection of ignorant users from themselves.
OS X has no more "security" than Windows (less, if anything).
As long as they don't post to Slashdot, this doesn't apply, since IME only Slashdot posters have problems with Windows patches breaking something more than once in a blue moon.
This might have something to do with "Administrator" on Windows and "Administrator" on OS X being completely different things.
Your comment is like me creating a regular user called 'root' on my Windows machines and saying "unlike unix, it's perfectly safe to run full-time as the 'root' user in Windows".
In other words, it offers about as much of a defence as we have now.
There is no excuse for malware other than incompetence on the part of the OS vendor.
Bullshit. No OS can defend against the end user deliberately running malicious code (which covers about 90% of malware infections).
Windows's "keyboardability" is excellent (and one of its best features). Indeed, the quickest way to do most things - if you know what you're doing - is via the keyboard.
I used to be able to dish out 50 page research papers in less time but now I spend more time formatting my document using my mouse and waiting for my software to do actually do the action.
Sounds like the problem is not the software but your usage of the software.
Why on earth on we always forced to upgrade? Software is supposed to get better not worse.
You're not forced to upgrade. If DOS 3.0 on that Tandy was doing everything you do now, then there's nothing stopping you going back to it.
Or, maybe you can't because today's software really *is* better, and it's doing things that DOS 3.0 on that Tandy couldn't ?
I can do my work using just my keyboard, type documentation using latex, write scripts like I used to with batch files, i can stay in my console all the time again. On top of that I'm still using a Pentium III with just 500 Megs of Ram and its fast enough!
The only thing stopping you doing that with Windows is you.
Which has vastly more to do with the vanishly small interest in Linux for both laptops and desktops, than anything Microsoft could do.
And ran - well, walked - like an absolute dog.
Even today, you need a high end G5 machine for OS X not to be sluggish under any non-trivial load (up until I used OS X on a G5, I'd just assumed its atrocious performance was because of the poor old G4 processor, but afterwards I concluded there must be some architectural or implementation problems in the OS or display system itself that make it so slow).
OS X on my 1Ghz, 768M RAM iBook is only marginally more responsive than Windows 2003 on my 550Mhz, 384M RAM PC laptop. Obviously the iBook has a bit more headroom and finishes CPU-intensive tasks quicker, but running only one or two apps (say, Firefox/Thunderbird and Safari/Mail.app) it's pretty much a wash in terms of UI responsiveness. I've no doubt that if I could get 768M of RAM into the PC laptop, it would be *far* more responsive in general usage than the iBook. Considering the iBook is at least twice as fast in terms of processing power, that's pretty poor.
Actually it was cut down to Professional Desktop (PowerMac), Professional Laptop (PowerBook), Home Desktop (iMac), Home Laptop (iBook). Later this was expanded to Servers (Xserve) and Educational Desktop (eMac). That gave us - wait for it - size different products to choose from. Then came the Mac Mini, increasing the number of systems to 7 (and still no damn headless iMac).
I believe the eMac is now no longer available at all, although the four different iMac variants and six different laptop variants add more than enough potential confusion to make up for that.
I find it difficult to take a "Findings of Fact" seriously that says Microsoft and Apple weren't competitors (and thus alternatives) in the same market.
Because the majority of customers want them.
Why not just ship the core of the OS, without any applications that play videos, music, display web pages, or show emails?
What's the "core" of the OS ? Does it include the GUI ? The widget libraries ? The Win32 API ? A text editor ? A TCP/IP stack ? Hardware drivers ?
I honestly don't understand the mindset Microsoft has that requires some "version" of "Windows" must have a music/video player on the same CD as the OS. Or an email program on the same CD as the OS. Or a web browser on the same CD as the OS.
That's probably because you're not running a billion dollar software company.
I never did see any reason to split Home and Pro versions.
Same reason you can get small, medium and large Big Mac meals. Same reason you can get a BMW 316, 318, 320 and 330. Same reason Apple sells 2 different types of iMac. Same reason *every* company has multiple product lines - to try and ream the customer for as much money as possible.
So how do you sell a car at all, given every single component of a car "is sold in another market" ? How can you justify selling your car with a stereo, seats, steering wheel, engine, gearbox, or just about anything else, given all these things are available seperately ?
No, it can't. Quicktime is more than that litle icon in the Applications folder. Safari is in the same boat. Both of them are basically just shells around a bunch of OS shared libraries.
Try doing that on Windows, and everything will either break, or you'll be called a pirate..
Delete the files iexplore.exe and msimn.exe and you will have done the same thing on Windows that you have on OS X.
No, I didn't, because it didn't change the cost of the original product and is also available elsewhere for free.
Well, given you "consider yourself libertarian and fully support the free market", you shouldn't have any problems whatsoever figuring out why this is so.
Delete init(8) from your machine and see how well it works.
Bollocks.
Microsoft is welcome to bundle whatever they choose so long as they dont prevent/cripple users from installing products from competing vendors.
At no stage has Microsoft ever stopped people from running alternatives.
Wo why were the versions of IE that snatched the market from Netscape those that *weren't* bundled with the OS ?
Why is this same logic not applicable to widget sets, GUIs, TCP/IP stacks, text editors, APIs and the like ? What's so special about media players and web browsers ?
So in your opinion an OS shouldn't include shared libraries and all applications should be statically compiled ?
This might just have something to do with how awful both Realplayer and Quicktime are.
Because many "media player" companies believe the non-success of their product is because WMP is bundled, not because their products are black holes of suckage.
Basically, the same reason Netscape complained.
Yes, it is. Consider even the most *basic* and *superficial* comparisons:
* Is anyone looking for the functionality of Windows XP, going to find anything even remotely close with Linux on a 386 ? No.
* Is anyone looking at a PC capable of running Windows XP going to be satisfied with the performance of a 386 ? No.
* Is anyone for whom Linux on a 386 *is* a suitable fit to their requirements, going to even _consider_ using XP for the same task ? No.
This is before we even get to the simple factual errors of your statement. Windows XP runs fine on 5 year old PCs, perhaps requiring a minor RAM upgrade. Very few contemporary Linux distributions will even boot on a 386 (*particularly* a typical 386 that has - being generous - 8 MB of RAM) without tweaking, let alone install and run.
No rational person would try and compare Linux running on a 386 to anything running Windows XP (and vice versa). The target markets, possible uses and probable users are so completely different, that it's like comparing a B-double to a motorised skateboard, then stating the B-double sucks because it uses more fuel.
Your comment, however, has no value. There is no information or relevant opinion. Your statement attacks me directly despite the fact that you do not know anything about me. The wording is clumsy. The sentence is grammatically incorrect. You use a word that does not exist and one that is ambiguous. There is a missing word. You also make two absurd statements. You have created a piece of putrid mumbling, dense with stupidity, void of meaning and not worthy of a six year old reader.
This would be more entertaining if it didn't read like you copied it from a book. The fact that most of it's inaccurate, if not outright incorrect, doesn't help.
You, sir, are flamebait and I a ball of hydrogen plasma.
You're a dickhead trolling for bites with FUD, a ridiculous comparison, a chip on your shoulder about Microsoft you almost certainly have no reason to bear and a massively overestimated, self-administered measure of your own cleverness. In other words, you fit the Slashdot stereotype to a 'T'.
This is such a breathtakingly stupid statement, it's amazing anyone could even think it, let alone post it.
This isn't correct. NTVDM (the "DOS/Win3.x compatibility" is only loaded on demand - it just isn't obvious about it like Classic is.