Say what? There are no fungal blooms on Mars. There is no evidence for any life whatsoever on Mars.
There is a pronounced darkening of many surfaces on Mars during the summer months, and I had read somewhere that it was due to some sort of fungus, however thinking about it that is pretty much absurd, and I can't seem to find the story that I had read before to support that.
The martian 'ice' caps are CO2 ice, not water ice.
Umm, yes.
Atmosphere:... water vapor (0.03%), and other trace gases.
Composition:... and polar caps that are mostly frozen carbon dioxide and some water ice.
"...As the planet chilled the surface water disappeared into underground ice..." (we're fairly certain that there is water around in the form of ice, but how much and where we have no idea.
Also look at what appears to have been recent water flows on Mars in underground sources, "indicating that liquid water may be more available on Mars than was previously thought."
The problem is that if there wasn't an atmosphere then the liquid water would evaporate off of the surface of the planet in no time and then escape into space. If there's liquid water then there is a high probability that there will also be some sort of atmosphere in order to keep the water there.
And there might be liquid water on mars, under the surface that is. and liquid being about 0C in a slushy state.
Well you see the problem is that of finding an acceptable signal/noise ratio. There is some stuff that I am missing by reading at +2 minimum, that I will agree to, but the S/N ratio gets exponentially worse the furthur down I go, and thus it isn't worth my time to read that low. I only have enough time to browse the top 20 or 30 comments usually, and perhaps more if it's really interesting.
And no, as a whole I don't trust the moderators, but lately they have been pleasantly surprising me.
Actually, we don't, that's one of the things this probe has been sent to determine
Actually we do know that there is water on mars, as is evident from watching the polar caps form during the winter season on the planet. The problem is that these caps are very very thin and aren't liquid, so they wouldn't provide for a lot of water on a sustainable basis (These caps come from the water vapour (0.03%) that is in the atmosphere). What they're looking for is a large well of liquid water that can be readily tapped and used.
We also know that there is fungal blooms that happen, so there is at least a basic rudimentary "life" "ecosystem" on the planet, however there is no sign of any sort of animal life.
I think half the poeople posting as anonymous cowards are members who have karma they have earned thru posting hard and long and simply want to make a valid comment which they fear might get them moderated down - like not 100% supporting Linux or open source or not 100% condemming Microsoft/Intel etc.
I am an avid defender of Microsoft and not a 100% supporter of Linux, take a look at many of my posts, you'll see. So then how have I been hovering around 50 karma for a long time now?
Whenever I make a point, I have things to back it up with. I don't defame or make stupid comments, I just point out things that people tend to be overlooking. Sure, occasionally I'll get modded down for it, but I post enough stuff that hits +5 that I'm always around 50.
And besides, as is stated in the FAQ, karma ain't your dick size, it means practically nothing. All it means is that you contribute more than you don't.
Removing the AC account will do nothing. People will then just create stupid accounts to post crap in, as you have very well noticed. At least by having the AC method available we provide a convenient way to filter out the garbage. Quite frankly anyone who has something worth hearing shouldn't be afraid to say it. Pack up an account and have the courage to stand behind what you say. I think that the AC method is exactly that, a way to allow someone to post who is either (a) too "coward"ly to stand behind what they say or (b) just going to post crap anyways.
Man I pity you for the world that you live in. Is all of that paranoia worth it? Do you think that you are that important of a person in order that companies will fall over themselves to track you by cookies? Is it that hard to log in each time that you go to view slashdot? Slashdot even gave you a URL that you can bookmark that will log you in so that you don't have to, so what's the big deal?
I seriously don't understand why you would be so against cookies. Or tracking for that matter. Who cares? Do you think there is some huge conspiracy out there that wants to know what web pages you visit? Do you think that it *really matters* if someone else knows what web pages you visit? You wanna know, I'll tell you. I don't care, I'm not important enough of a person for anyone to waste their time tracking me to see that I spend x minutes a day on slashdot and y minutes a day looking at porn. What does it really matter?
In my experience, posting anything negative about Linux will get you modded down. Posting positive things about Microsoft can also get you modded down, but not as often.
I do exactly that all the time, and don't get modded down very frequently for it.
but I've found that if you state an opinion that is contrary to Slashdot groupthink, you need to post anonymously.
As long as you justify your position I have found that you can state whatever you wish to. As long as you don't post defamitory or just plain stupid comments I haven't had much of a problem expressing my opinion.
Or a new moderation, "-1 Asshole."
Does it really matter? The labels don't do anything anyways as everything is filtered on score instead.
This post here, for example, is one that probably should have been posted anonymously
Why? I see absolutely nothing wrong with what you're saying, you've stated a point and you're backing it up. I'd be surprised if you got negatively modded just because you were expressing your opinion, and indeed if you were for that reason then it would be incredibly hypocritical of the people doing the moderation, since we're all trying to fight for freedom of speech et al.
I browse at 2, and I find that works out great. That means that either you're an AC who said something important enough to get +2 on it, you're a regular user who said something important enough to get at least a +1 on it, or you have a history of saying good things and thus you've probably got something interesting to say.
Personally I find it pathetic that there are loosers out there who think that it's cool to get in the first post on a story or post stupid ascii art about goatse.cx, quite frankly I think they need to get a life, but unfortunately that's part of life here. I think that the current moderation system works, not perfectly for anything pro linux is bound to get modded up, and sometimes stupid/funny gets modded up as well, but usually the moderations are fair. If anything I'd suggest to remove the cap for moderation, allow it to go as high as you want, or at least maybe to +6 or +7, and possibly give the ability to filter/sort based on the description of the moderations since right now they mean really nothing. Especially since the last moderation sets the description, it's kinda pointless if you have +4, Interesting and then a -1, Overrated so your comment is now (+4, Overrated)...
Ah well, this is but a news forum, I think we have more important battles to fight =)
I am very well versed in those psychological effects, I have studied them.
If you don't believe me, go and listen to it yourself. I brought my brother and mother into the room and said "listen" and they heard it, clear as day, without knowing what they were listening for.
As I said, go listen for it yourself and then reply.
Yes, however when the MAJORITY of people posting as Mr Anon Coward do so in order to post stupid or defamitory comments, FP/SP/TP/Xth Post comments or pictures of stupid ASCII art about goatsex, then things change considerably. Try reading at -1 and see all of the crap that is posted by these Anon Cowards and you'll get my point.
I see absolutely no reason why someone can't post as a logged in user. If, on the rare occasion, they need to have their anonimity protected, then post as an AC or make a new account. If the post is legitimate then it will be modded up to where people can read it.
Mind you, I personally see no problem with the system the way that it is.
Oh I noticed, because I was in the middle of posting a comment and instead I wasted my time because I got a "this form doesn't accept the POST method" and my comment was lost. This happens far too often for my likings, then I saw this navbar at the top, and/. was apparently screwed because I couldn't do anything except for view the static homepage...
For a site that preaches the values of open source, it sure is funny that/. can't seem to keep their site up for more than a week at a time without some sort of system failure.
I have personally listened to it, and I heard it. Take your copy of Alladin, go to that scene, and listen with the volume way up. It's something along the line of "good kitty... (takes off all her clothes)" or something, I don't remember but I remember hearing it.
Same with the dust that was in the movie... The Lion King? (I don't remember which movie it was, could have been Alladin was well) that spelled out "SEX" if you played it in slow motion. It was there, I didn't believe it at first but when I saw it, in no uncertain terms, with my own eyes...
If you don't believe me, go and rent a copy for yourself. I think it's at the scene where they're at the balcony and he's being approached by the "big cat".
I thought that Microsoft was a big propenent of screwing the little guy over
And in the spirit of keeping an open mind, maybe, just maybe, you've been reading bashdot too much and listening to too much propaganda, and maybe, just maybe, Microsoft isn't the enemy that you thought they were...
but patches and virus updates only came out after the fact
They came out after the bug was announced, which was long before the exploits were created.
How about when hackers stole some of the source code from Microsoft?
To what are you referring? I know of nothing of the sort.
I bet there is a least 1 flaw that someone other than Microsoft know about.
If this is the case then why hasn't it been exploited yet? If it has we surely would have heard about it and it surely would have spread in usage by now.
over-simplifying it to licensing is so innacurate as to be incorrect.
Actually I likened it to VHS being first out of the door. BetaMax was superior quality, I had all of my tapes in Beta, no problem. The price difference wasn't that much at all, however VHS beat Beta to the punch by getting out to market a good 6 months or so in advance, and since it was "good enough" for most people, the Beta didn't stand much of a chance.
So for $186 I can have 2x256MB CF cards. Still not 500MB for $10, but a much wider used and accepted and established standard, and with the way that memory prices are falling these will definitely come down soon too.
Any new format, to succeed needs to add value to the user to overcome the cost of changing over.
You're forgetting one big major point!
Who controls the distribution?
The RIAA sees these as being their saviours, so over the course of a year the CD prices double and these little gizmos suddenly come out at half the price of the CDs... That'll make everyone wanna switch over pretty quickly.
So say a new worm comes out in a few months and it takes a few days for MS to create a hotfix.
Is there something I'm missing?
Absolutely. You've got your timelines backwards.
Worms come out a few months after the bugs have been discovered and patches have been made available. We're talking months here. Code Red came out more than 2 months after the bug had been discovered and patches created.
Microsoft has had their patches out in the wild within a few days of a major bug being discovered. The worms however take much longer to be created/deployed/spread. Although it is possible for the worms to come out much faster, they will still be lagged behind the discovery of the bug, and the patches are issued almost immediately.
And if you have an agreement with your provider that you will have 99.999% uptime, then you better believe that they will be phoning you at 2am in the morning to tell you that they're coming over to install a new patch lest they break their contract.
You took my quote out of context, let me rephrase.
I went to AMC the night before it opened and bought 12 tickets for the showing of Episode 1 that was sometime around 8pm on the night of opening. The following day by about 4pm all tickets had sold out, and there was a 2 hour lineup to go see the show with people dressed up, but it wasn't months in the making, more like hours.
I remember all that hype about episode 1 for star wars and people lining up for months in advance.
Was it worth it?
I doubt it. I walked up to my local AMC the night before and bought 12 tickets without problem for a show around 8pm on the opening day. As much as I am for camping, I think that this is a little... too extreme, no?
Did anyone out there actually line up far in advance for Ep1?
Re:Terminal server is something different
on
Linux Kernel Bugs
·
· Score: 2
I think he meant that they are instantiated as new threads in existing processes. Just because you don't see more than one process running doesn't mean it didn't recreate a user specific part of the kernel.
You are correct, I just did another check. However the act of just logging in a second time causes a commit increase (this measures everything) of just 4.5MB, running your shell causes an increase of about 8MB in top of that. Point is that the majority of the system is not recreated for every login, and it is nowhere near a gross hack.
And perhaps those 100+ rights in Windows NT are the cause of all the insecurities
(soap box mode on)
I don't doubt that the fact that NT is far more complicated then linux (and perhaps more complicated than it needs to be) is part of the reason for the bugs, but as was just proven Windows is not the only OS that has bugs. They all do, to varying levels of severity. Without being able to see exactly what the cause of everything is I cannot comment furthur, however having a more complicated system is not much of an excuse for bugs, IMHO, you should just have more complicated testing measures.
And the majority of those rights/security settings are set secure from the start and have absolutely no need to be looked at, much less modified.
Don't forget that Windows was designed from a pleasing-the-user point of view. Things were setup lax because if they were setup more tightly users would have compained that they couldn't do things without changing settings. You're never going to please everyone. People said that they wanted to be able to install, run this, click 3 buttons and host a website, so that is what was created. I'm not absolving them of responsibility, I'm just saying that a lot of it is unwarranted. You don't get to be the biggest software company, one of the biggest companies, and the richest person in the world by unfair business practices alone. And lest you all forget, everyone's friend and linux's last-best-hope for survival 30 years ago was in almost exactly the same position that MS is in now. And why do you think they are doing it? Do you think they are doing it because they love linux or hate Microsoft? No. They're doing it because it makes buisiness sense. They believe that they can make money off it it, that they can sell more expensive hardware, and that it will strategically help their position. And you better believe that if they don't, their support will be gone like that (snap).
We are in a capitalist society ladies and gentlemen. Everything is in name of the almighty buck. Thinking that you can/do become a great company by just good business practices and being nice to everyone alone is naive and will get you belly up very shortly. Giving away software and selling support will also get you belly up, sooner or later.
what's an MSCE to do?
(the MSCE is to) Get a clue. Any MSCE worth the training they went through should easily be able to maintain a server properly. It's not brain science. You cannot blame Microsoft (entirely) for people who, with 2 months notice, were unable to take 5 minutes to run a patch on their system. If *nix users took that long they would have a huge problem as well. My W2K server has been online now, as of this moment, for just over 200 days straight. No reboots, no service pack 2, and no patches. And guess what? Because I had the scruples to tighten down the security from day 1. Code red and Nidma and everything had no impact.
I have a serious question for Microsoft dislikers out there. Put aside your hostility for a second and please give me some constructive ideas on exactly what you would like Microsoft to do? (other than things like drop dead, stop making crappy software, etc, etc)
Re:Terminal server is something different
on
Linux Kernel Bugs
·
· Score: 2
What are they? (etc)
When I talk about rights I should rephrase, I'm talking about security settings.
There are many, many things.
Check out gpedit.msc (just type it in like that to run it), secpol.msc (overlaps with gpedit.msc), rsop.msc (has/creates a redundant backup of the master policies). You can check out secedit (just run "secedit") that'll explain about security policies and how to give an easy way to tighten down your system. There are also under the registry just about everywhere, and also every single object in the system has an ACL (access control list) attached to it (including every registry key). So you could, for example, say that you are the only user allowed to use the second IDE channel or the first USB port, or even the CMOS timer. IT's pretty cool. Go to sysinternals and checkout the winobj program that shows you all objects in the system and you can change policies on them and do more stuff (be careful, you can royally fsck up your system!)
These are in all Windows NT/2K/XP systems and some are even in the 95/98/ME series as well (but not many).
Slashdot Mirror
of a relatively new vehicle
a 2 year old laptop is ancient, not "relatively new".
Say what? There are no fungal blooms on Mars. There is no evidence for any life whatsoever on Mars.
There is a pronounced darkening of many surfaces on Mars during the summer months, and I had read somewhere that it was due to some sort of fungus, however thinking about it that is pretty much absurd, and I can't seem to find the story that I had read before to support that.
Umm... No.
... water vapor (0.03%), and other trace gases.
... and polar caps that are mostly frozen carbon dioxide and some water ice.
The martian 'ice' caps are CO2 ice, not water ice.
Umm, yes.
Atmosphere:
Composition:
"...As the planet chilled the surface water disappeared into underground ice..." (we're fairly certain that there is water around in the form of ice, but how much and where we have no idea.
Also look at what appears to have been recent water flows on Mars in underground sources, "indicating that liquid water may be more available on Mars than was previously thought."
(from here)
They want me to pay a subscription to my OS (XP)?
Please point me to some sort of credible information to back up that claim.
That and the fact that we'll be that much closer to being able to travel there. That's a little bit important as well =)
How does that make us better off? Because we can do it. Because we can habitate other planets and expand our race beyond just one planet.
And because we can.
The problem is that if there wasn't an atmosphere then the liquid water would evaporate off of the surface of the planet in no time and then escape into space. If there's liquid water then there is a high probability that there will also be some sort of atmosphere in order to keep the water there.
And there might be liquid water on mars, under the surface that is. and liquid being about 0C in a slushy state.
Well you see the problem is that of finding an acceptable signal/noise ratio. There is some stuff that I am missing by reading at +2 minimum, that I will agree to, but the S/N ratio gets exponentially worse the furthur down I go, and thus it isn't worth my time to read that low. I only have enough time to browse the top 20 or 30 comments usually, and perhaps more if it's really interesting.
And no, as a whole I don't trust the moderators, but lately they have been pleasantly surprising me.
His post was meant as a joke, lighten up!
Actually, we don't, that's one of the things this probe has been sent to determine
Actually we do know that there is water on mars, as is evident from watching the polar caps form during the winter season on the planet. The problem is that these caps are very very thin and aren't liquid, so they wouldn't provide for a lot of water on a sustainable basis (These caps come from the water vapour (0.03%) that is in the atmosphere). What they're looking for is a large well of liquid water that can be readily tapped and used.
We also know that there is fungal blooms that happen, so there is at least a basic rudimentary "life" "ecosystem" on the planet, however there is no sign of any sort of animal life.
I think half the poeople posting as anonymous cowards are members who have karma they have earned thru posting hard and long and simply want to make a valid comment which they fear might get them moderated down - like not 100% supporting Linux or open source or not 100% condemming Microsoft/Intel etc.
I am an avid defender of Microsoft and not a 100% supporter of Linux, take a look at many of my posts, you'll see. So then how have I been hovering around 50 karma for a long time now?
Whenever I make a point, I have things to back it up with. I don't defame or make stupid comments, I just point out things that people tend to be overlooking. Sure, occasionally I'll get modded down for it, but I post enough stuff that hits +5 that I'm always around 50.
And besides, as is stated in the FAQ, karma ain't your dick size, it means practically nothing. All it means is that you contribute more than you don't.
Removing the AC account will do nothing. People will then just create stupid accounts to post crap in, as you have very well noticed. At least by having the AC method available we provide a convenient way to filter out the garbage. Quite frankly anyone who has something worth hearing shouldn't be afraid to say it. Pack up an account and have the courage to stand behind what you say. I think that the AC method is exactly that, a way to allow someone to post who is either (a) too "coward"ly to stand behind what they say or (b) just going to post crap anyways.
Man I pity you for the world that you live in. Is all of that paranoia worth it? Do you think that you are that important of a person in order that companies will fall over themselves to track you by cookies? Is it that hard to log in each time that you go to view slashdot? Slashdot even gave you a URL that you can bookmark that will log you in so that you don't have to, so what's the big deal?
I seriously don't understand why you would be so against cookies. Or tracking for that matter. Who cares? Do you think there is some huge conspiracy out there that wants to know what web pages you visit? Do you think that it *really matters* if someone else knows what web pages you visit? You wanna know, I'll tell you. I don't care, I'm not important enough of a person for anyone to waste their time tracking me to see that I spend x minutes a day on slashdot and y minutes a day looking at porn. What does it really matter?
In my experience, posting anything negative about Linux will get you modded down. Posting positive things about Microsoft can also get you modded down, but not as often.
I do exactly that all the time, and don't get modded down very frequently for it.
but I've found that if you state an opinion that is contrary to Slashdot groupthink, you need to post anonymously.
As long as you justify your position I have found that you can state whatever you wish to. As long as you don't post defamitory or just plain stupid comments I haven't had much of a problem expressing my opinion.
Or a new moderation, "-1 Asshole."
Does it really matter? The labels don't do anything anyways as everything is filtered on score instead.
This post here, for example, is one that probably should have been posted anonymously
Why? I see absolutely nothing wrong with what you're saying, you've stated a point and you're backing it up. I'd be surprised if you got negatively modded just because you were expressing your opinion, and indeed if you were for that reason then it would be incredibly hypocritical of the people doing the moderation, since we're all trying to fight for freedom of speech et al.
I browse at 2, and I find that works out great. That means that either you're an AC who said something important enough to get +2 on it, you're a regular user who said something important enough to get at least a +1 on it, or you have a history of saying good things and thus you've probably got something interesting to say.
Personally I find it pathetic that there are loosers out there who think that it's cool to get in the first post on a story or post stupid ascii art about goatse.cx, quite frankly I think they need to get a life, but unfortunately that's part of life here. I think that the current moderation system works, not perfectly for anything pro linux is bound to get modded up, and sometimes stupid/funny gets modded up as well, but usually the moderations are fair. If anything I'd suggest to remove the cap for moderation, allow it to go as high as you want, or at least maybe to +6 or +7, and possibly give the ability to filter/sort based on the description of the moderations since right now they mean really nothing. Especially since the last moderation sets the description, it's kinda pointless if you have +4, Interesting and then a -1, Overrated so your comment is now (+4, Overrated)...
Ah well, this is but a news forum, I think we have more important battles to fight =)
I am very well versed in those psychological effects, I have studied them.
If you don't believe me, go and listen to it yourself. I brought my brother and mother into the room and said "listen" and they heard it, clear as day, without knowing what they were listening for.
As I said, go listen for it yourself and then reply.
Yes, however when the MAJORITY of people posting as Mr Anon Coward do so in order to post stupid or defamitory comments, FP/SP/TP/Xth Post comments or pictures of stupid ASCII art about goatsex, then things change considerably. Try reading at -1 and see all of the crap that is posted by these Anon Cowards and you'll get my point.
I see absolutely no reason why someone can't post as a logged in user. If, on the rare occasion, they need to have their anonimity protected, then post as an AC or make a new account. If the post is legitimate then it will be modded up to where people can read it.
Mind you, I personally see no problem with the system the way that it is.
Oh I noticed, because I was in the middle of posting a comment and instead I wasted my time because I got a "this form doesn't accept the POST method" and my comment was lost. This happens far too often for my likings, then I saw this navbar at the top, and /. was apparently screwed because I couldn't do anything except for view the static homepage...
/. can't seem to keep their site up for more than a week at a time without some sort of system failure.
For a site that preaches the values of open source, it sure is funny that
...that this is an urban legend [snopes2.com];
NO IT IS NOT!
I have personally listened to it, and I heard it. Take your copy of Alladin, go to that scene, and listen with the volume way up. It's something along the line of "good kitty... (takes off all her clothes)" or something, I don't remember but I remember hearing it.
Same with the dust that was in the movie... The Lion King? (I don't remember which movie it was, could have been Alladin was well) that spelled out "SEX" if you played it in slow motion. It was there, I didn't believe it at first but when I saw it, in no uncertain terms, with my own eyes...
If you don't believe me, go and rent a copy for yourself. I think it's at the scene where they're at the balcony and he's being approached by the "big cat".
I thought that Microsoft was a big propenent of screwing the little guy over
And in the spirit of keeping an open mind, maybe, just maybe, you've been reading bashdot too much and listening to too much propaganda, and maybe, just maybe, Microsoft isn't the enemy that you thought they were...
but patches and virus updates only came out after the fact
They came out after the bug was announced, which was long before the exploits were created.
How about when hackers stole some of the source code from Microsoft?
To what are you referring? I know of nothing of the sort.
I bet there is a least 1 flaw that someone other than Microsoft know about.
If this is the case then why hasn't it been exploited yet? If it has we surely would have heard about it and it surely would have spread in usage by now.
over-simplifying it to licensing is so innacurate as to be incorrect.
Actually I likened it to VHS being first out of the door. BetaMax was superior quality, I had all of my tapes in Beta, no problem. The price difference wasn't that much at all, however VHS beat Beta to the punch by getting out to market a good 6 months or so in advance, and since it was "good enough" for most people, the Beta didn't stand much of a chance.
I took a quick look at B&H's website and found a 512 MB CF for $800.
What a ripoff! =)
CompactFlash 512MB : $293
CompactFlash 256MB : $93
So for $186 I can have 2x256MB CF cards. Still not 500MB for $10, but a much wider used and accepted and established standard, and with the way that memory prices are falling these will definitely come down soon too.
Any new format, to succeed needs to add value to the user to overcome the cost of changing over.
You're forgetting one big major point!
Who controls the distribution?
The RIAA sees these as being their saviours, so over the course of a year the CD prices double and these little gizmos suddenly come out at half the price of the CDs... That'll make everyone wanna switch over pretty quickly.
So say a new worm comes out in a few months and it takes a few days for MS to create a hotfix.
Is there something I'm missing?
Absolutely. You've got your timelines backwards.
Worms come out a few months after the bugs have been discovered and patches have been made available. We're talking months here. Code Red came out more than 2 months after the bug had been discovered and patches created.
Microsoft has had their patches out in the wild within a few days of a major bug being discovered. The worms however take much longer to be created/deployed/spread. Although it is possible for the worms to come out much faster, they will still be lagged behind the discovery of the bug, and the patches are issued almost immediately.
And if you have an agreement with your provider that you will have 99.999% uptime, then you better believe that they will be phoning you at 2am in the morning to tell you that they're coming over to install a new patch lest they break their contract.
You took my quote out of context, let me rephrase.
I went to AMC the night before it opened and bought 12 tickets for the showing of Episode 1 that was sometime around 8pm on the night of opening. The following day by about 4pm all tickets had sold out, and there was a 2 hour lineup to go see the show with people dressed up, but it wasn't months in the making, more like hours.
I remember all that hype about episode 1 for star wars and people lining up for months in advance.
... too extreme, no?
Was it worth it?
I doubt it. I walked up to my local AMC the night before and bought 12 tickets without problem for a show around 8pm on the opening day. As much as I am for camping, I think that this is a little
Did anyone out there actually line up far in advance for Ep1?
I think he meant that they are instantiated as new threads in existing processes. Just because you don't see more than one process running doesn't mean it didn't recreate a user specific part of the kernel.
You are correct, I just did another check. However the act of just logging in a second time causes a commit increase (this measures everything) of just 4.5MB, running your shell causes an increase of about 8MB in top of that. Point is that the majority of the system is not recreated for every login, and it is nowhere near a gross hack.
And perhaps those 100+ rights in Windows NT are the cause of all the insecurities
(soap box mode on)
I don't doubt that the fact that NT is far more complicated then linux (and perhaps more complicated than it needs to be) is part of the reason for the bugs, but as was just proven Windows is not the only OS that has bugs. They all do, to varying levels of severity. Without being able to see exactly what the cause of everything is I cannot comment furthur, however having a more complicated system is not much of an excuse for bugs, IMHO, you should just have more complicated testing measures.
And the majority of those rights/security settings are set secure from the start and have absolutely no need to be looked at, much less modified.
Don't forget that Windows was designed from a pleasing-the-user point of view. Things were setup lax because if they were setup more tightly users would have compained that they couldn't do things without changing settings. You're never going to please everyone. People said that they wanted to be able to install, run this, click 3 buttons and host a website, so that is what was created. I'm not absolving them of responsibility, I'm just saying that a lot of it is unwarranted. You don't get to be the biggest software company, one of the biggest companies, and the richest person in the world by unfair business practices alone. And lest you all forget, everyone's friend and linux's last-best-hope for survival 30 years ago was in almost exactly the same position that MS is in now. And why do you think they are doing it? Do you think they are doing it because they love linux or hate Microsoft? No. They're doing it because it makes buisiness sense. They believe that they can make money off it it, that they can sell more expensive hardware, and that it will strategically help their position. And you better believe that if they don't, their support will be gone like that (snap).
We are in a capitalist society ladies and gentlemen. Everything is in name of the almighty buck. Thinking that you can/do become a great company by just good business practices and being nice to everyone alone is naive and will get you belly up very shortly. Giving away software and selling support will also get you belly up, sooner or later.
what's an MSCE to do?
(the MSCE is to) Get a clue. Any MSCE worth the training they went through should easily be able to maintain a server properly. It's not brain science. You cannot blame Microsoft (entirely) for people who, with 2 months notice, were unable to take 5 minutes to run a patch on their system. If *nix users took that long they would have a huge problem as well. My W2K server has been online now, as of this moment, for just over 200 days straight. No reboots, no service pack 2, and no patches. And guess what? Because I had the scruples to tighten down the security from day 1. Code red and Nidma and everything had no impact.
I have a serious question for Microsoft dislikers out there. Put aside your hostility for a second and please give me some constructive ideas on exactly what you would like Microsoft to do? (other than things like drop dead, stop making crappy software, etc, etc)
What are they?
(etc)
When I talk about rights I should rephrase, I'm talking about security settings.
There are many, many things.
Check out gpedit.msc (just type it in like that to run it), secpol.msc (overlaps with gpedit.msc), rsop.msc (has/creates a redundant backup of the master policies). You can check out secedit (just run "secedit") that'll explain about security policies and how to give an easy way to tighten down your system. There are also under the registry just about everywhere, and also every single object in the system has an ACL (access control list) attached to it (including every registry key). So you could, for example, say that you are the only user allowed to use the second IDE channel or the first USB port, or even the CMOS timer. IT's pretty cool. Go to sysinternals and checkout the winobj program that shows you all objects in the system and you can change policies on them and do more stuff (be careful, you can royally fsck up your system!)
These are in all Windows NT/2K/XP systems and some are even in the 95/98/ME series as well (but not many).