Indeed, because Slashdot and its members are reknowned internet-wide for their gushing, unconditional praise of Microsoft's technology and business practices.
No, MS wanted to move the video drivers into kernel space in ver 1.3 (maybe 1.4?). IBM flat out refused as IBM was interested in stability whereas MS was interested in speed.(and IBM was paying the bills) So the drivers stayed in user space until ver 4.
MS ended up keeping the video drivers in user space thru 3.51 then moved them into kernel space with ver 4.0 and now their amazing idea with ver 6? (Vista) is to move them into user space.
All hail MS the great innovaters.
Personally I'm using ver 2.45
If you already paid for WinXP, why the hell should you have to pay AGAIN for the "security" that was supposed to be there...and in 2k, NT4, yadda yadda yadda?
The "security" is there - it's just most users ignore (or circumvent) it.
While OS/2 Warp was not a perfect operating system, it was miles ahead of Chicago, which was a real bastard child, unstable, with legacy support far inferior to that of OS/2.
Say what ? For all Windows 95's faults, you can't say its legacy support wasn't exceptional (hell, it's the whole reason Windows 95 was written in the first place). To say OS/2 had _better_ legacy support than Windows 95 is just laughable.
Thus we end up with all the eggs in one fragile binary basket.
It's worth pointing out that the Registry is a number of "binary baskets", one of which is carried around in the user's profile, not just one big file.
Well they ought to tell the users that to run as admin is very DANGEROUS to the health of their computer. Then tell the users they must set up a non-admin account for everyday use and put up a nasty dialog box every time a user is asked for an admin password.
Both of these practices are recommended by Microsoft.
The problem is that even the concept of "admin" and "non-admin" account is alien to the typical end user. Even the ones who say they understand, often don't (just look at the number of people who think OS X not allowing root logins means "nothing can run as root").
In school and business settings, the user should not even have the admin password at all.
That is an issue for the IT department, not Microsoft.
It seems that MS ought to have sufficient clout over their developers to FORCE them to write applications that do NOT require a user to be an admin.
The current situation would suggest they do not. Indeed, history demonstrates it is the developers - by proxy of their customers - who have the sway over Microsoft.
To be eligible for the "Made for Windows XP" sticker, applications have to run as a regular user. Microsoft have also been telling developers to write software assuming users aren't Administrators since at least 1996-97 (and probably a lot earlier, but 1996-97 was the first time DOS-based Windows supported the per-user registries and profile concepts that Windows NT had always had).
If MS had done this ages ago, most of the malware on the Internet would be diminished to a livable nuisance, like flies in the summer.
No, it wouldn't, because the vast bulk of malware doesn't need Administrator-level access to do its job.
In OSX, which is infinitely more secure (zero malware in the wild) [...]
No, it's "infinitely" less exploited. There's a difference between "secure" and "not attacked".
[...] there is no registry or other central place where application and other computer settings settings are kept.
Yes, there is. How do you think the system keeps track of global configuration and runtime data ?
Each user keeps the settings for all programs in their own user space.
Just like Windows !
Trashing the settings file(s) for that user will make the computer to create a new default set.
This is an application dependant issue. Properly-written Windows applications, also, will regenerate default settings if none are found. It's not something the OS does (or even could do).
There is no need to figure out how to edit an arcane file, which if corrupted can prevent a computer from booting.
If you want to trash preferences, however, you do have to first *find* an "arcane file" to trash. It's not markedly different from finding an "arcane" Registry key to delete.
In OSX there is also a user specific login file [...]
Just like Windows !
[...] and unlike Windows, nobody gets root access by default.
Nope, but they get "Admin" access, which in some technical ways is worse (an Admin user who enters their password at the sudo prompt gives the running process more access to an OS X system than a process running as an Administrator account has in Windows).
The whole "Administrator by default" thing gets dramatically overplayed (at least in the context of the home user - managed environments are a whole different kettle of fish). The vast bulk of malware has no real need of Administrator-level privileges to work. The only reason switching to a non-Admin account helps _now_ is because most malware is just as badly written as the average Windows program and *assumes* the user is running as Administrator. It won't be an effective defense forever.
The registry is one of Microsoft's biggest abominations.
Given your demonstrated lack of knowledge or understanding of the Registry thus far, I think any criticism you make needs to be taken with a grain of salt
What is the calculation that Windows users -- esp. businesses -- make that allows them to keep on using Windows?
The one that dictates what applications they need to run.
Somehow the Windows folks keep on choosing to use Windows, even though after the WMF exploit is history, they'll just be waiting for yet another "shoe to drop".
Very few Windows "exploits" are anywhere near as serious as this one and other platforms have had and will have the same level of exploit.
Why does it have to be based on mathematics? It's based on the logic that the faster you go, the more damage you can cause, and the less control you have.
And the only logical conclusion of that argument is don't drive. In fact, don't move at all.
The best driver in the world is still more dangerous at 60mph than 35mph.
But are they more or less dangerous than the drivers around them doing 55mph ? That's the question you should be asking, because the only logical conclusion to your line of reasoning is not moving at all, which is hardly a workable solution.
No, the general idea is that the faster you go, the less control and reaction time you have. Since most people aren't responsible enough to control their speed safely, a limit has to be set somewhere.
Funny you should say that, because just about every scientific test has shown that the safest speed for almost any given piece of road is what's know as the 85th percentile. The 85th percentile is the speed that 85% of traffic travels at (or under) in the abscence of any other influence.
Or, in other words, the safest speed to travel on the typical road is the speed that the majority of people would choose to travel at, if there weren't speed limit signs and cameras hidden around every bend.
How does it hurt you to be set an arbitrary limit?
Because an arbitrary limit is almost certainly not the safest speed for that road. Not to mention it will probably punish good drives and ignore dangerous ones.
What is the benefit of eliminating speed limits supposed to be?
It's not about eliminating speed limits, it's about a) setting *appropriate* limits and b) policing dangerous driving, not "speeding".
If someone is driving like a maniac, but doing it under the limit, they won't get caught. OTOH, is someone is driving very safely, but doing it over the limit, they're going to get punished. Can you not see the problem with this system ?
Some random person walks out onto a road, licks his finger and sticks it in the air then says "the speed limit for this bit of road is X km/h. That's how arbitrary choosing speed limits typically is.
Now, there *are* scientific methods of choosing speed limits, but they're typically only applied so the posted limit is set a bit lower, so as to maximise revenue intake.
This is before we even get to the simple fact that driving X+Y km/h is not inherently dangerous and that fining somehow after they've done it is a textbook example of closing the barn door long after the horse has bolted.
It is one of the most commonsense laws ever.
No, it's one of the dumbest ideas ever. Taking a huge brush and painting anybody exceeding an arbitrary number on the side of the road with the label of dangerous driver, taking no other factors into account, even though they might be driving ten times more safely than the guy beside them doing 5 under the limit with his bald tyres, broken brake lights and rusted-through car, is simply idiotic (assuming your objective is to make the roads safer, of course).
Secondly, they are extremely effective, if used widely. Speeding has almost been entirely eliminated since speed cameras were installed all over my city.
Great. According to the standard propaganda, that should mean the accident rate in the area should have dropped to nearly zero. Has it ? Do the statistics say the roads are safer at all ? Don't forget to compare against an area that hasn't had similarly strict speed policing, so you have something like a control group.
If there's one thing you don't want to do here, it's speed. What are the ineffective cases you are speaking of?
Stopping people from dying in cars. You don't do it by brainwashing people into believing that slower == safer. You do it by teaching them to drive and removing those who drive dangerously.
Whenever you try a serious conversation about surveillance cameras an idiot like you bring up speed cameras and instantly show that only criminals are afraid of cameras. Nice way to cloud the issue.
Actually I'd say it's a pretty good example. There are few things more arbitrarily illegal than "speeding" and ineffective as speed cameras.
The nice thing about this is that they make some damn nice harware (I'm typing this on a PowerBook), and that they have very little incentive to 'feature-pack' their OS like Microsoft does -- so you get less in the way of quirky 'features', and a hell of a lot of functionality.
Uh, if anything, OS X comes with *more* stuff "bundled" than Windows.
On the GUI side, it behaves like a Mac -- and I think you'd be hard-pressed to fault Apple for their GUI design.
The Dock ? Generall sluggishness on anything but fire-breathing G5s ? An inability to decided what their applications should look like and why ?
Best of both worlds; you just have to shell out a slight premium for the hardware, and given that you get a REAL OS with it, I'd say that Mac offers a better bargain for the desktop user than any Dell or Gateway.
This should be pretty funny. Just why isn't Windows a "REAL OS" ?
Wow. I mean... wow. Unbelievable what you read on here sometimes. You go with that, dude. My hat is off to you.
Well, if I'm as wrong as you seem to think, it should be pretty easy for you to come up with, say, ten examples of where Linux and/or OS X are architecturally superior.
No they do not... 90% af their Windows sales are bundled (PC + OS) sales... they do not need to make the best product because they know it will be sold anyway and that is the whole problem with Microsoft.
If Windows was as bad as you imply, no-one would buy PCs that came with Windows. The market for Windows-less PCs would be either a) enormous and/or b) insanely profitable for anyone participating in it.
We (consumers) need a law that would protect us from those bundled sales because we are powerless against them...
Yeah. We should have laws that stop car manufacturers "bundling" those annoying seatbelts, steering wheels and engines, as well.
You are not in the slightest "powerless" against hardware+software bundles. You can - and have always been able to - buy an x86 PC without Windows, or any other bundled software.
PC + Windows is cheaper than the same PC without Windows...
Hardly surprising. Which package deal can you think that doesn't involve the package price being less than the sum of the component costs ?
Sigh. This is nothing to do with 'pirated movies'. I live in Europe and have over three hundred region-1 DVDs: Microsoft is now telling me that I won't be allowed to play those DVDs _THAT I HAVE PAID FOR_ on my PC, with a drive that I've paid for, with an operating system that I've paid for.
No, the manufacturer of your DVD drive is "telling" you that.
The Linux Devices article, published 1 November 2005, claims the unit will be available throught Tiger Direct "this month", but a search of the Tiger Direct web site turns up no mention of this product.
Sounds like they might be hard to find in the US...
Here in Australia, you can pick one up for ~$1100 (~$800 US) with a Pentium M 740, 512M RAM, 40G hard disk and DVDRW (although that's from a seller who isn't know for being cheap, they're probably available for a couple of hundred less elsewhere).
I still wish Apple would take an iMac G5, rip out the screen, turn it sideways, rackmount it, and sell it as an iServe...
I've been wishing for a headless iMac with an upgradeable video card since the first iMacs were released. Unfortunately, no-one at Apple is listening:(.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed, because Slashdot and its members are reknowned internet-wide for their gushing, unconditional praise of Microsoft's technology and business practices.
All hail MS the great innovaters.
Personally I'm using ver 2.45
Ah, I see, you're just trolling.
My mistake - please, carry on.
They are.
Uh, no.
IBM and Microsoft "split" in 1990.
NT 4.0 (the first version with the video driver in kernel space) was released in 1996.
Considering how much more capable and complex NT was(/is), it's hardly surprising it needed more hardware resources.
Uh, Windows NT has _always_ had "protected memory".
The "security" is there - it's just most users ignore (or circumvent) it.
Say what ? For all Windows 95's faults, you can't say its legacy support wasn't exceptional (hell, it's the whole reason Windows 95 was written in the first place). To say OS/2 had _better_ legacy support than Windows 95 is just laughable.
It's worth pointing out that the Registry is a number of "binary baskets", one of which is carried around in the user's profile, not just one big file.
Because the Registry was conceived and designed back around 1990.
Both of these practices are recommended by Microsoft.
The problem is that even the concept of "admin" and "non-admin" account is alien to the typical end user. Even the ones who say they understand, often don't (just look at the number of people who think OS X not allowing root logins means "nothing can run as root").
In school and business settings, the user should not even have the admin password at all.
That is an issue for the IT department, not Microsoft.
It seems that MS ought to have sufficient clout over their developers to FORCE them to write applications that do NOT require a user to be an admin.
The current situation would suggest they do not. Indeed, history demonstrates it is the developers - by proxy of their customers - who have the sway over Microsoft.
To be eligible for the "Made for Windows XP" sticker, applications have to run as a regular user. Microsoft have also been telling developers to write software assuming users aren't Administrators since at least 1996-97 (and probably a lot earlier, but 1996-97 was the first time DOS-based Windows supported the per-user registries and profile concepts that Windows NT had always had).
If MS had done this ages ago, most of the malware on the Internet would be diminished to a livable nuisance, like flies in the summer.
No, it wouldn't, because the vast bulk of malware doesn't need Administrator-level access to do its job.
In OSX, which is infinitely more secure (zero malware in the wild) [...]
No, it's "infinitely" less exploited. There's a difference between "secure" and "not attacked".
[...] there is no registry or other central place where application and other computer settings settings are kept.
Yes, there is. How do you think the system keeps track of global configuration and runtime data ?
Each user keeps the settings for all programs in their own user space.
Just like Windows !
Trashing the settings file(s) for that user will make the computer to create a new default set.
This is an application dependant issue. Properly-written Windows applications, also, will regenerate default settings if none are found. It's not something the OS does (or even could do).
There is no need to figure out how to edit an arcane file, which if corrupted can prevent a computer from booting.
If you want to trash preferences, however, you do have to first *find* an "arcane file" to trash. It's not markedly different from finding an "arcane" Registry key to delete.
In OSX there is also a user specific login file [...]
Just like Windows !
[...] and unlike Windows, nobody gets root access by default.
Nope, but they get "Admin" access, which in some technical ways is worse (an Admin user who enters their password at the sudo prompt gives the running process more access to an OS X system than a process running as an Administrator account has in Windows).
The whole "Administrator by default" thing gets dramatically overplayed (at least in the context of the home user - managed environments are a whole different kettle of fish). The vast bulk of malware has no real need of Administrator-level privileges to work. The only reason switching to a non-Admin account helps _now_ is because most malware is just as badly written as the average Windows program and *assumes* the user is running as Administrator. It won't be an effective defense forever.
The registry is one of Microsoft's biggest abominations.
Given your demonstrated lack of knowledge or understanding of the Registry thus far, I think any criticism you make needs to be taken with a grain of salt
The one that dictates what applications they need to run.
Somehow the Windows folks keep on choosing to use Windows, even though after the WMF exploit is history, they'll just be waiting for yet another "shoe to drop".
Very few Windows "exploits" are anywhere near as serious as this one and other platforms have had and will have the same level of exploit.
No, it's a problem with software developers. If you're going to apportion blame, do it correctly.
*NIX systems, such as Linux and OSX are more secure mostly because of they do not require administrator status to run application programs.
_Windows_ doesn't "require" it either. Incompetent/lazy/ignorant software developers write software that does.
The other change would be to get rid of the registry which is used to ensure that malware runs when the system is booted, among other functions.
And how is it any different in that regard from the configuration files on any other platform ?
And the only logical conclusion of that argument is don't drive. In fact, don't move at all.
But are they more or less dangerous than the drivers around them doing 55mph ? That's the question you should be asking, because the only logical conclusion to your line of reasoning is not moving at all, which is hardly a workable solution.
Funny you should say that, because just about every scientific test has shown that the safest speed for almost any given piece of road is what's know as the 85th percentile. The 85th percentile is the speed that 85% of traffic travels at (or under) in the abscence of any other influence.
Or, in other words, the safest speed to travel on the typical road is the speed that the majority of people would choose to travel at, if there weren't speed limit signs and cameras hidden around every bend.
How does it hurt you to be set an arbitrary limit?
Because an arbitrary limit is almost certainly not the safest speed for that road. Not to mention it will probably punish good drives and ignore dangerous ones.
What is the benefit of eliminating speed limits supposed to be?
It's not about eliminating speed limits, it's about a) setting *appropriate* limits and b) policing dangerous driving, not "speeding".
If someone is driving like a maniac, but doing it under the limit, they won't get caught. OTOH, is someone is driving very safely, but doing it over the limit, they're going to get punished. Can you not see the problem with this system ?
Some random person walks out onto a road, licks his finger and sticks it in the air then says "the speed limit for this bit of road is X km/h. That's how arbitrary choosing speed limits typically is.
Now, there *are* scientific methods of choosing speed limits, but they're typically only applied so the posted limit is set a bit lower, so as to maximise revenue intake.
This is before we even get to the simple fact that driving X+Y km/h is not inherently dangerous and that fining somehow after they've done it is a textbook example of closing the barn door long after the horse has bolted.
It is one of the most commonsense laws ever.
No, it's one of the dumbest ideas ever. Taking a huge brush and painting anybody exceeding an arbitrary number on the side of the road with the label of dangerous driver, taking no other factors into account, even though they might be driving ten times more safely than the guy beside them doing 5 under the limit with his bald tyres, broken brake lights and rusted-through car, is simply idiotic (assuming your objective is to make the roads safer, of course).
Secondly, they are extremely effective, if used widely. Speeding has almost been entirely eliminated since speed cameras were installed all over my city.
Great. According to the standard propaganda, that should mean the accident rate in the area should have dropped to nearly zero. Has it ? Do the statistics say the roads are safer at all ? Don't forget to compare against an area that hasn't had similarly strict speed policing, so you have something like a control group.
If there's one thing you don't want to do here, it's speed. What are the ineffective cases you are speaking of?
Stopping people from dying in cars. You don't do it by brainwashing people into believing that slower == safer. You do it by teaching them to drive and removing those who drive dangerously.
Actually I'd say it's a pretty good example. There are few things more arbitrarily illegal than "speeding" and ineffective as speed cameras.
Cheers.
Uh, if anything, OS X comes with *more* stuff "bundled" than Windows.
On the GUI side, it behaves like a Mac -- and I think you'd be hard-pressed to fault Apple for their GUI design.
The Dock ? Generall sluggishness on anything but fire-breathing G5s ? An inability to decided what their applications should look like and why ?
Best of both worlds; you just have to shell out a slight premium for the hardware, and given that you get a REAL OS with it, I'd say that Mac offers a better bargain for the desktop user than any Dell or Gateway.
This should be pretty funny. Just why isn't Windows a "REAL OS" ?
Well, if I'm as wrong as you seem to think, it should be pretty easy for you to come up with, say, ten examples of where Linux and/or OS X are architecturally superior.
If Windows was as bad as you imply, no-one would buy PCs that came with Windows. The market for Windows-less PCs would be either a) enormous and/or b) insanely profitable for anyone participating in it.
We (consumers) need a law that would protect us from those bundled sales because we are powerless against them...
Yeah. We should have laws that stop car manufacturers "bundling" those annoying seatbelts, steering wheels and engines, as well.
You are not in the slightest "powerless" against hardware+software bundles. You can - and have always been able to - buy an x86 PC without Windows, or any other bundled software.
PC + Windows is cheaper than the same PC without Windows...
Hardly surprising. Which package deal can you think that doesn't involve the package price being less than the sum of the component costs ?
No, the manufacturer of your DVD drive is "telling" you that.
Nor did I suggest otherwise.
I hereby flunk you in Logic 101; please take the course again.
Ah, the irony. From the post I responded to:
Sounds like they might be hard to find in the US...
Here in Australia, you can pick one up for ~$1100 (~$800 US) with a Pentium M 740, 512M RAM, 40G hard disk and DVDRW (although that's from a seller who isn't know for being cheap, they're probably available for a couple of hundred less elsewhere).
I still wish Apple would take an iMac G5, rip out the screen, turn it sideways, rackmount it, and sell it as an iServe...
I've been wishing for a headless iMac with an upgradeable video card since the first iMacs were released. Unfortunately, no-one at Apple is listening :(.