IE7 needs to run in a sandbox because users were foolish enough to run it as an admin user in the first place...
Unix has had the capability to run a browser in a sandbox (chroot) for many years, it is considered less necessary because noone runs their browser as root and linux browsers are not being targeted so heavily by hackers, but the capability is there and always has been.
You make no distinction between "available" and "easily installable through standard functionality of the os"... Most of those 25113 packages have windows ports available, or could easily be recompiled to run on cygwin.
Most of those free programs for linux have been ported to windows, or will run under cygwin... Conversely, a much smaller percentage of windows programs will run on linux through wine, but then couldn't be considered "for linux"...
The gap is inherent in having the source code available for most linux apps, and following a standardized api which is easy to duplicate. Typical windows apps have neither and are thus much harder to port to other platforms.
MacOS versions have often been faster than previous releases, while also bringing new features... and 10.6 looks to continue that trend... Even MS is getting in on the act by saying windows 7 will outperform vista.
More functionality does not necessarily mean bigger and slower.
Well, i fully agree with your points about opengl/hosts/ipfiltering on current windows versions...
In terms of VM, yes theo is right, more complexity introduces scope for bugs, but this is not relevant to the cis test (being run in a vm makes no difference to anything that it tests)... It's pretty easy to get a "perfect" score in the cis tests simply by following their guide, it's also possible to configure a more secure system and get a lower score...
It's not a security test, its a compliance test, it tests wether your system complies with their setup guide, a good example is how the guide tells you to configure X11, obviously having X11 not installed at all is more secure than any configuration where it's installed, yet not having it installed means the config files will not be present and thus you will "fail" that aspect of the test. This is less applicable to the windows variant as windows is less modular.
A linux system with a bare minimal install, selinux configured, customized hardened userland and a customized bare minimum kernel would fail cis miserably, whereas a complete install of suse with x11 and ftp enabled can pass it 100%.
Back to VM tho, theo is very right that added complexity goes against the principles of security... If you compare the complexity of windows to linux or any other unix system then windows will come out massively more complex (i believe someone posted some nice syscall flow diagrams for serving web pages a while ago).
And is that based on what google pays for the bandwidth, or what anyone else would have to pay for it? Considering google with their size and scope basically get bandwidth for free because it's in everyone's interest to peer with them.
It's painful to switch, just as it's painful to give up an addictive drug... Neither is impossible, both are extremely painful, and both allow their respective suppliers to provide inferior product at higher prices than they would if the addiction didn't exist... Less so with drugs actually, because there are usually competing suppliers of drugs.
By end of support, i mean non availability of security updates, new apps not supporting it, shutting down of the activation servers, non availability of drivers etc...
Not much third parties like geek squad can do, they will just reinstall and update to the last available version which may still have serious security holes and not run newer apps.
Having to work sitting in a datacenter must rate as one of the worst environments, especially when there's no tables or chairs and you have to stand up all day in a room that's either very hot or very cold. Datacenters are designed for computers, not humans, humans should never need to enter them except to replace hardware... thats why serial consoles and console servers were invented, unfortunately lots of places like to run boxes with video hardware (ie workstations) as servers.
MS sure can sell people what they don't want, because most users are not aware alternatives exist, or have various reasons (incompatible apps, proprietary file formats etc) why they can't use the alternatives.
This is exactly what they do, it's been their standard operating practice for years and it won't change until vendor lockin is broken.
Sure, users may try to resist the newest versions of windows because they don't like them, but sooner or later they will have no choice... They will buy new hardware which won't support the old versions either through lack of drivers or intentional crippling (ie no support for more than 3gb ram on 32bit), or which comes forcibly bundled with the latest version.
You watch, people will move to the latest versions of windows, a small number of users will be lost to linux/mac, but most will just move to the latest windows and grow to accept it's current flaws just like they accepted it's previous flaws... Windows is the reason the average man on the street considers computers to be inherently unreliable devices that cannot be trusted or relied upon.
Not sure why they changed the hosts file behavior, can you still ping 0?
Crippling of OpenGL was clearly done to force the use of DirectX, games which use OpenGL are easier to port to other platforms. MS will always do what's best for them, not what's best for the users. That's the price you pay for commercially produced software.
You can use 2003, which is much closer to XP, and supports more than 4GB ram in the 32bit version (and has a 64bit version too)... However, if you don't keep upgrading your apps to newer bigger versions, then the need for more ram won't grow so rapidly. Most businesses do exactly the same tasks with their computers as they did 10 years ago, and most could still be using 10 year old apps to do it.
The problem is security patches that bring other unrelated changes and new features... You want stable software, where the only updates released are patches for security holes and absolutely nothing else - minimize the risk of an update breaking something.
Time machine may be nothing new, but it's much simpler for people to use than previous backup options...
Multiple desktops tho, are absolutely essential, i simply couldn't live without them... I found OSX 10.4 and earlier unusable for not having them (and the third party addons sucked because none of the apps were designed with virtual desktops in mind). OSX apps have improved in this area, X11 apps have always expected multiple desktops and handle them nicely.
The GDI resources problem is still there, they just increased the size of the resources pool considerably...
Tech support over a GUI is a pain, explaining a CLI based interface is much easier over the phone, text translates to verbal instruction much better than abstract graphical concepts.
But it just goes to show, from the average user perspective there aren't huge differences, it's just the support monkeys who need retraining...
I believe they harm the market by undermining the very rights that make the market possible. People must be free to succeed or fail by their own actions. Any company that would attempt to artificially inflate prices would see their previous customers no longer buy their product, and move on to another product.
Actually, this is where monopoly steps in... If you have enough of a stranglehold over a market that users can't do without your products, or it significantly hurts them to do so, then you can inflate your prices and customers have no choice but to accept it.
In a fair competitive market what you say is true, but MS have sufficient control of the market that competitors are at a significant advantage...
Look at what Linux has done in the relatively conservative market once dominated by proprietary unix... If they weren't facing an uphill battle with proprietary lock-in linux would have forced windows out of the market by now based purely on price if nothing else.
But that's because you can price shop... What if only a single dealer offers heroin, and you're addicted to heroin, would you pay the price that dealer was demanding, or would you go and buy cocaine from someone else instead?
That's closer to how MS operates, and why it's bad for consumers.
They don't lose money on selling software products... Any and all development costs have already been covered, leaving only the duplication costs which are virtually nothing... They could sell for $1 and still make a profit. How do you think professional piracy groups who only have duplication costs (higher duplication costs than ms due to economies of scale) make money?
Entanet are largely a bt reseller too... The problem is the wholesale prices... If you have an 8mb dsl and use it 24/7 for an entire month the isp will pay 30+k for that backhaul bandwidth from bt, not to mention the isp's own infrastructure costs.
You are also thinking of fixed line phones, many people use cellphones for general voice calls these days too.
Here, i have 5 mobile operators to choose from with their own networks (and multiple resellers) and 2 fixed line providers (as well as countless resellers)... Because fixed lines cost more to roll out (ie a monopoly is pretty much unavoidable), the incumbent suppliers are heavily regulated to avoid gouging consumers.
If you want competitive voip, try finding a provider that supports SIP... You can call between sip providers for free as it's pure ip, calling non sip lines has a cost imposed by whatever telco they hand off to.
If you want to call from skype to someone using a different voip service, you're likely to pay termination charges as the call gets routed out via a telco network and back, there is no interoperability with skype.
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IE7 needs to run in a sandbox because users were foolish enough to run it as an admin user in the first place...
Unix has had the capability to run a browser in a sandbox (chroot) for many years, it is considered less necessary because noone runs their browser as root and linux browsers are not being targeted so heavily by hackers, but the capability is there and always has been.
It becomes an issue when the os vendor tells you the browser is an integral and non removable part of the os...
You make no distinction between "available" and "easily installable through standard functionality of the os"...
Most of those 25113 packages have windows ports available, or could easily be recompiled to run on cygwin.
Most of those free programs for linux have been ported to windows, or will run under cygwin...
Conversely, a much smaller percentage of windows programs will run on linux through wine, but then couldn't be considered "for linux"...
The gap is inherent in having the source code available for most linux apps, and following a standardized api which is easy to duplicate. Typical windows apps have neither and are thus much harder to port to other platforms.
MacOS versions have often been faster than previous releases, while also bringing new features... and 10.6 looks to continue that trend... Even MS is getting in on the act by saying windows 7 will outperform vista.
More functionality does not necessarily mean bigger and slower.
Run multiple OS's or livecds, if the hardware is at fault it will crash regardless of the software running...
So they're saying that their client OS vista is more secure than windows 2008?
Well, i fully agree with your points about opengl/hosts/ipfiltering on current windows versions...
In terms of VM, yes theo is right, more complexity introduces scope for bugs, but this is not relevant to the cis test (being run in a vm makes no difference to anything that it tests)... It's pretty easy to get a "perfect" score in the cis tests simply by following their guide, it's also possible to configure a more secure system and get a lower score...
It's not a security test, its a compliance test, it tests wether your system complies with their setup guide, a good example is how the guide tells you to configure X11, obviously having X11 not installed at all is more secure than any configuration where it's installed, yet not having it installed means the config files will not be present and thus you will "fail" that aspect of the test. This is less applicable to the windows variant as windows is less modular.
A linux system with a bare minimal install, selinux configured, customized hardened userland and a customized bare minimum kernel would fail cis miserably, whereas a complete install of suse with x11 and ftp enabled can pass it 100%.
Back to VM tho, theo is very right that added complexity goes against the principles of security... If you compare the complexity of windows to linux or any other unix system then windows will come out massively more complex (i believe someone posted some nice syscall flow diagrams for serving web pages a while ago).
As they say, Keep It Simple, Stupid
And is that based on what google pays for the bandwidth, or what anyone else would have to pay for it? Considering google with their size and scope basically get bandwidth for free because it's in everyone's interest to peer with them.
It's painful to switch, just as it's painful to give up an addictive drug... Neither is impossible, both are extremely painful, and both allow their respective suppliers to provide inferior product at higher prices than they would if the addiction didn't exist... Less so with drugs actually, because there are usually competing suppliers of drugs.
By end of support, i mean non availability of security updates, new apps not supporting it, shutting down of the activation servers, non availability of drivers etc...
Not much third parties like geek squad can do, they will just reinstall and update to the last available version which may still have serious security holes and not run newer apps.
Having to work sitting in a datacenter must rate as one of the worst environments, especially when there's no tables or chairs and you have to stand up all day in a room that's either very hot or very cold.
Datacenters are designed for computers, not humans, humans should never need to enter them except to replace hardware... thats why serial consoles and console servers were invented, unfortunately lots of places like to run boxes with video hardware (ie workstations) as servers.
How could you sue them for that?
You agreed to their EULA which states that they can revoke your license to use their software at any time.
But at what pace?
How long will the activation servers be kept online?
MS sure can sell people what they don't want, because most users are not aware alternatives exist, or have various reasons (incompatible apps, proprietary file formats etc) why they can't use the alternatives.
This is exactly what they do, it's been their standard operating practice for years and it won't change until vendor lockin is broken.
Sure, users may try to resist the newest versions of windows because they don't like them, but sooner or later they will have no choice... They will buy new hardware which won't support the old versions either through lack of drivers or intentional crippling (ie no support for more than 3gb ram on 32bit), or which comes forcibly bundled with the latest version.
You watch, people will move to the latest versions of windows, a small number of users will be lost to linux/mac, but most will just move to the latest windows and grow to accept it's current flaws just like they accepted it's previous flaws... Windows is the reason the average man on the street considers computers to be inherently unreliable devices that cannot be trusted or relied upon.
Not sure why they changed the hosts file behavior, can you still ping 0?
Crippling of OpenGL was clearly done to force the use of DirectX, games which use OpenGL are easier to port to other platforms. MS will always do what's best for them, not what's best for the users. That's the price you pay for commercially produced software.
You can use 2003, which is much closer to XP, and supports more than 4GB ram in the 32bit version (and has a 64bit version too)...
However, if you don't keep upgrading your apps to newer bigger versions, then the need for more ram won't grow so rapidly. Most businesses do exactly the same tasks with their computers as they did 10 years ago, and most could still be using 10 year old apps to do it.
The problem is security patches that bring other unrelated changes and new features...
You want stable software, where the only updates released are patches for security holes and absolutely nothing else - minimize the risk of an update breaking something.
Time machine may be nothing new, but it's much simpler for people to use than previous backup options...
Multiple desktops tho, are absolutely essential, i simply couldn't live without them... I found OSX 10.4 and earlier unusable for not having them (and the third party addons sucked because none of the apps were designed with virtual desktops in mind). OSX apps have improved in this area, X11 apps have always expected multiple desktops and handle them nicely.
The ending of support/availability is what will force people to upgrade, and upgrade their hardware at the same time too...
The GDI resources problem is still there, they just increased the size of the resources pool considerably...
Tech support over a GUI is a pain, explaining a CLI based interface is much easier over the phone, text translates to verbal instruction much better than abstract graphical concepts.
But it just goes to show, from the average user perspective there aren't huge differences, it's just the support monkeys who need retraining...
I believe they harm the market by undermining the very rights that make the market possible. People must be free to succeed or fail by their own actions. Any company that would attempt to artificially inflate prices would see their previous customers no longer buy their product, and move on to another product.
Actually, this is where monopoly steps in...
If you have enough of a stranglehold over a market that users can't do without your products, or it significantly hurts them to do so, then you can inflate your prices and customers have no choice but to accept it.
In a fair competitive market what you say is true, but MS have sufficient control of the market that competitors are at a significant advantage...
Look at what Linux has done in the relatively conservative market once dominated by proprietary unix... If they weren't facing an uphill battle with proprietary lock-in linux would have forced windows out of the market by now based purely on price if nothing else.
But that's because you can price shop...
What if only a single dealer offers heroin, and you're addicted to heroin, would you pay the price that dealer was demanding, or would you go and buy cocaine from someone else instead?
That's closer to how MS operates, and why it's bad for consumers.
They don't lose money on selling software products...
Any and all development costs have already been covered, leaving only the duplication costs which are virtually nothing... They could sell for $1 and still make a profit. How do you think professional piracy groups who only have duplication costs (higher duplication costs than ms due to economies of scale) make money?
Entanet are largely a bt reseller too...
The problem is the wholesale prices... If you have an 8mb dsl and use it 24/7 for an entire month the isp will pay 30+k for that backhaul bandwidth from bt, not to mention the isp's own infrastructure costs.
There is a world outside of the US...
You are also thinking of fixed line phones, many people use cellphones for general voice calls these days too.
Here, i have 5 mobile operators to choose from with their own networks (and multiple resellers) and 2 fixed line providers (as well as countless resellers)... Because fixed lines cost more to roll out (ie a monopoly is pretty much unavoidable), the incumbent suppliers are heavily regulated to avoid gouging consumers.
If you want competitive voip, try finding a provider that supports SIP... You can call between sip providers for free as it's pure ip, calling non sip lines has a cost imposed by whatever telco they hand off to.
If you want to call from skype to someone using a different voip service, you're likely to pay termination charges as the call gets routed out via a telco network and back, there is no interoperability with skype.