Informative? WinXP _sucks_ with 128 MB of memory. It is really, really bad. There is nothing fine about it. My brother-in-laws laptop came with Win2K and 128 MB and ran just OK. When I "upgraded" him to WinXP Home, it slowed to a crawl. Windows would take ages to redraw. When I upgraded his memory to 256 MB, WinXP Home ran fine. Anything less then 256 MB for Win XP, just isn't worth it. Win2K didn't even work very well with only 128 MB.
To be fair, modern Linux distros don't do well with only 128 MB if your using the latest KDE or Gnome. If you switch to Fluxbox, IceWM or another low-mem desktop like XFCE, then it works fine. But switching desktops is not really a good option under MS Windows. There are only a few poorly done desktop replacements for explorer.exe IMO. Not that I think explorer.exe is anything great. It is the cause of _all_ my problems under WinXP, but is is better then the replacements I have tried.
Huh? If it didn't have MS Windows installed, exactly where did they "remove essential drivers" from? The MS Windows install disk has its own drivers, or you can download them. How in the _world_ would Fry's "remove essential drivers" from an MS Windows install when MS Windows isn't even installed? That doesn't even make sense.
AdBlock made the site pretty fast for me. I just blocked *super_sky.html and it blocked the whole side frame. I don't think I would be able to use the web if it wasn't for Firefox and adBlock. I personally have no clue how anyone can use IE for general net usage. I personally don't block all ads. For example, Google ads are well done IMO, and I don't block those. Basically if it flashes, I kill it ; )
I would have done the same thing. I am a senior programmer for a fortune 500 with 140,000 employees. Where I work all the corporate employees have local admin on their boxes. Master ghost images are kept on read-only media. If there is an issue, pc support just comes along with a ghost CD and 20 minutes later everything is back to normal (the admins don't even need to be involved). Some users lose data from time to time. However, that is their fault since we have very big network shares for every user. I am just glad I am a programmer and not an admin who has to deal with users complaining when they lose data due to their own fault. Anything put on the network shares are scanned and backed-up.
The local admin for every user and ghosting thing works well, especially with tons of MS Windows programs that just don't work well if your not local admin, including some applications from MS. We have a good firewall and IDS and each user has AV on their desktop and a BigFix client for patches. All this keeps the network in pretty good shape. That and the fact that all our external facing servers are either on Solaris or Linux or they go through an Apache proxy running on Solaris or Linux. The only other way into the network from the outside is either a traditional VPN client or a new SSL VPN that we got that is web based.
a) Contrary to what you hear on/. there simply aren't enough Linux desktop users out there to make developing and marketing such a service commercially viable at this time
Did you read the story? There is a _native_ client for MS Windows, Mac OS X and Linux (thanks to the great QT library). So this service has the _potential_ to reach every user out there.
The only thing they need now is to get more "mainstream" music. The teeny-bopper crap that most of us/.ers don't care about, but the masses seem to.
It may be hard to to convince the big three labels to let their content out with the only DRM being limited to the previewing of the song. However, maybe the big labels will wake up soon and realize that all of their DRM efforts have failed and have not stopped or even hindered piracy (arrggh).
However, there is the chance of the "next big artist" to put their stuff up on a site like this. It is pretty good artist-wise with 75% of profits going to the artist.
That's why Apple has it exactly right. You can use a Mac like a toaster or TV.
Yup, Apple did it exactly right that no more then 3% of the population agrees with their exactly right. I can think of no point in the past 5-10 years that more then 3% or so of the population has thought that Apple did their hardware/software exactly right. I would think that if Apple did it exactly right and the population agreed, then it would be Apple and not MS that had the massive desktop market share.
Run multiple proceses, watch if another is deleted and rewrite the file and respawn it. It would be an absolute nightmare to stop.
Nah, that would be _very_ easy to stop. Linux lets you mount your partitions READ_ONLY, something MS Windows does not. Just do a quick remount as READ_ONLY and the sypware can no longer write a copy of itself to disk, problem solved.
Not to mention if it was running as root
If it was running as root, it means that you were running as root, a big no-no, and these are the type of things that can happen from doing stupid things. If the spyware got root from an exploit, then you have more problems then spyware : )
The point is, is that these types of things are far easier to prevent and remove under Linux where the norm is to _not_ run as root. While the norm under MS Windows is to always be administrator/root.
The file is still there, taking up space, it just doesn't have an entry in that directoy anymore
True. But try this little experiment. Write a simple little C program that just goes into an infinite loop and sleeps. Have the program respawn right before it exits. Compile this on Linux and MS Windows.
Run it on Linux and then delete it while it is running. Kill the app. Notice that nothing is respawned? Because even though it was physically on disk, there is no directory entry for it and nothing to spawn.
Now run the same program under MS Windows. While it is running delete it. This is as far as we can go because you cannot delete it.
Registry keys have ACLs
True. Does Win98/ME have ACL's for the registry? If not, this won't help those users. There is also the big problem that most home users are running as local admin. So spyware and viruses are running as local admin. This means you would have to deny administrator to those keys wich would probably kill MS Windows during shutdown/startup.
cleaning up an infected system is a poor substitute for preventing infection in the first place
I agree. However you have _tons_ of dumb home users who fall for some fancy cursors or desktop weather app. They install those and now they have spyware. There isn't much MS or anyone can do about that other then be reactive and try to remove the junk.
you can do the exact same one windows. Kill the process in the process list, delete the files on the file system and remove the various registry keys to stop it booting it up on startup
For some trivial spyware yes. But not all. I ran into one on a friends computer. It would not let you delete it off disk because it was locked. If you killed it in taskmgr, it would just respawn a new process. It _watched_ all important registry keys so that if you deleted them, it would put them right back in. If you put in a key to have it deleted at the next reboot, it would delete that key. If you deleted startup keys, it would put those back in.
It was a real pain to remove this due to the fact that MS windows has all users as local admin by default is what allowed this spyware to do that.
Under Linux, it would not be able keep adding itself to a startup runlevel without constantly prompting for a password. I think even the dumbest user would get suspicious with something like that.
Again, my point was how much easier it would be to deal with this type of thing under Linux. Just delete the spyware off disk while it is running and _then_ kill it. If the spyware tries to respaw, there is no longer a program to respaw. This is not the case with MS windows since it won't let you delete a file from disk that is being executed. This one problem is what makes clever viruses and spyware very hard to remove.
Here is a list of a few simple steps any virus or spyware can follow to make it a _royal_ pain to remove to MS Windows.
Respawn a process if it is killed
Lock its executable so you cannot delete it
Monitor a few registry keys to prevent you from removing it from startup or putting in a key to delete it at startup (like MoveFileEx).
Bam, you now have one really hard spyware virus to remove. Again, a scenario like this on Linux is just not possible do to the separation of user files/directories and system files/directories.
Firefox doesn't even have to prompt you for NTLM if you are logged into a windows domain. However, for security, Firefox only sends NTLM to servers you give the OK to.
In the URL bar type about:config and then filter for "ntlm". In the network.automatic-ntlm-auth.trusted-uris just put a comma separated list of servers you want Firefox to send your NTLM to. For example, double click network.automatic-ntlm-auth.trusted-uris and put in foo.com,bar.com,slashdot.org
The only thing I wish Firefox did was to allow a wild card domain name like *.mycompany.com. My network.automatic-ntlm-auth.trusted-uris entry has gotten pretty long at work : (
Yeah, the inability to delete a filename but leave the underlying inode (like UNIX does) is annoying.
But to the OS the file is gone. Just as MS windows doesn't wipe the free space, but just updates the file allocation table. The biggest problem I have using MS Windows on a day-to-day basis if file locking. Explorer.exe locks just about everything it touches. I have to kill explorer.exe at least twice a day to when moving files and directories around.
This happens before any other processes are started, before Win32 starts, and even before the pagefile is created.
The problem with that is you get some spyware like vx2(I think that is the name), that monitors the registry. Every time you change it, it just updates the registryt. So now your stuck with no real way to put that entry into to the regisitry because the spyware just deletes any entry it sees its name in. It also made sure it was a startup item. I know what MoveFileEX is, it didn't work with VX2 and neither did any of sysinternals tool. To handle more clever spyware, you need to be in a Window pre-execution environment like Partition Magic does to do filesystem operations.
Details of the Microsoft solution beyond the planned beta, including product plans,
pricing and a timeline for delivery, are not yet available.
Granted, they could still turn around and offer it for free. However I think they are going to bundle this with the anti-virus stuff they bought and sell it as an "XP Add-On" like the stupid add-on with pinball and a few lame themes.
Microsoft has published specifications to stop this from happening before 1999 but people are still doing it the old and clunky way.
A spec that they don't follow for all of their user applications? MS Project needs local admin for some unknown reason.
They are authorizing installation programs to install spyware everywhere.
Some spyware does get on by end users not knowing what they are doing, however there are a lot that get on without any user intervention. The first scenario cannot really be stopped while the second one is easy to stop if MS didn't default to giving users local admin. For example, spyware would not be able to automatically install itself under Linux. The only place it would be able to install would be the users home directory. It wouldn't be able to have itself start up on boot in a runlevel since that requires root access.
Also, under Linux you can delete a running program from disk which you cannot do under MS Windows. Under Linux you could delete the spyware from disk while it is running and just reboot and it is gone. That is not the case under MS Windows. It can take tons of reboots to remove some of the more clever spyware.
Why is it so damn hard to delete files you KNOW you don't want on your machine?
That is because of a _very_ bad design choice made by MS. The spyware makes itself auto-run at startup and just respawns if it is forced to close through taskmgr. For some unknown reason, MS loves to lock files. Running files get locked and MS won't let you delete them while they are running. I have no clue why MS won't let you delete a running program. There is no real technical reason to why you cannot since _all_ programs have to be executed from RAM.
Under Linux I can run an application and delete it while it is running. The program will just keep running since as I stated, all programs have to execute from RAM. Obviously once I closed that program, it will be gone since I deleted it from disk. But there is no reason to need the program be on disk once it is executing in RAM.
If MS allowed you to delete a running program from disk, spyware removal would be _soo_ much easier and not require tons of reboots. Heck software install under MS Windows would not require tons of reboots either.
Details of the Microsoft solution beyond the planned beta, including product plans,
pricing and a timeline for delivery, are not yet available.
MS will sell this (just like they charge you if you want to buy some extra themes from them), even if it is only $20-$30 bucks. Another way to generate money by making your customers pay extra to fix problems with your software. What a great business plan!
I agree. I was a Geico customer for _8_ years with _zero_ tickets and _zero_ accidents! I had a small commuter car to drive 27 miles to work and 27 miles home. Geico charged me a little less then $700 every 6 months (this is with 8 _years_ of a perfect driving record).
Recently I went and bought my wife a nice min-van that she drives about 20 miles per-week. Geico raised my payment to around $1,700 every _6_ months. From about $1,200 a year to $3,400 a _year_ for a Mini-Van with a _perfect_ driving record. Geico SUCKS. I went to Progressive and they charge me a little less then $700 every 6 months for both the small commuter car and the Mini-Van.
Geico cannot even compete with Progressive on price/coverage. Geico has slumped to trying to trick customers into thinking they are cool because of a stupid Gecko.
I owned a Gecko as a pet when I was in college, and while they were cool to look at, the one I had would try to bite your fingers off whenever you got close.
Sound a lot like Geico when you become too much of a "good" customer. The best thing I did for my car insurance was switch to Progressive.
Your posting to "females only" on/.? Were you smoking crack tonight or were you expecting the two/. girls to get all huffy-puffy over you and ask you to "secure their hole"?
I think the reason tech people are anal about it is because software emulation came about. Software that emulates hardware such as VMWare. In this context WINE is _very_ different from VMWare, Virtual PC, etc.
Going by the dictionary definition, WINE is an emulator. Though meanings of words do change over time, and I am sure that the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, is not taking the new "technical" meaining of emulation into account.
(a) If you're newfangled enough to figure out the bold tags, you should be able to figure out the italic ones too. <i> isn't so much harder to do than <b>
Um..., maybe because I _like_ an underscore better then a <i>? It stands out more to me.
(b) You called him an idiot first, what the Hell.
And it was valid to the poor post. ltbarcly just started bashing ReactOS and calling names like a child. I wasn't referring to just echoing back the "your and idot" crap.
Who gives half a crap if they have managed to get notepad to run on their POS
I am sure you can go back and read more of the post. ltbarcly more then likely has Zero (how was that? are you happy now) experience running and using ReactOS. So what does he do when he has no valid argument? Instead of just shutting up, he calls name.
No. Wine doesn't "intercept" anything. It is not like WINE has some _HUGE_ switch statement where it just "intercepts" Win32 calls and translates those to Linux calls. WINE has _rewritten_ the WIN32 API (well, a lot of it so far). For example, I write a program with an API to control it with functions like:
Now, you come along and rewrite those some functions for your program with the same "function signatures" (which just means the same function names, parameters and return types). Your not emulating/intercepting me, you have _totally_ rewritten what I did on your own. Granted, what I did above was very samll and the Win32 API is HUGE. That is why it has taken the WINE team (the core group is pretty small) a long time to get a large part of the WIN32 API rewritten to the Linux platform. For example there is a Win32 API called CreateWindow. That _same_ function had to be recreated under WINE in Linux. Under Win32, it creates a window with the Win32 API. Under Linux, it takse the same parameters and creates a window using the methods that the Wine team created.
You are correct in the sense that the WINE team has tried to "emulate" the look and feel of the Win32 API. That is why a Win app under WINE often looks the same. They (WINE) have tried to make the windows looks just like a window in Win32. However, at the end of the day, WINE is still not emulating or "intercepting" anyting. They are recreating API's and copying a look-n-feel.
I agree with what your saying. However, this is _still_ just a bunch of geeks seeing if the _can_ do it. There is _no_ commercial effort here. If there was, then your points about "being behind" would be valid. As I see it, this is just a cool project that has potential to become something big. In their current state I doubt that will happen though. However, if as you said, development really picks up, then it could steam-roll into something big. But for now, it is just a cool geek project with potential : )
Very mature. If you lose an argument, just call names. I love it! Nothing like an immature baby trying to make a _poor_ point on/. and then calling names!
This is at best a hobby OS.
This is what was said of Linux. And now look at Linux on the server. More then 25% of the server market where MS _does not_ have the monopoly and where MS is struggling to get the server monopoly like they have on the desktop. Linux has _stopped_ MS from having a server monopoly. And at one time, Linux was just called a "hobby" OS, and now it _exceeds_ all the MS server OS's for many server tasks and is preferred for most high-end tasks.
Nope, its not an emulator. Does an AthlonXP emulate a Pentium4? Nope. It's reimplementing x86. A _very_ differnt thing. That is why an Athlon is _much_ faster for some operatins then a P4 while a P4 can still pull ahead for some ops like multimedia. If it was _emulation_, they would be equal. Reimplementing is _not_ emulation. Reimplementing can introduce its own pros and cons. Pros can be better algorithms and cons can be worse algorithms. Emulation would create a 1-to-1 copy of something, including bugs. That would mean that everywhere NT sucks ReactOS and WINE would suck and everywhere NT was good ReactOS and WINE would be good, which is not the case.
Slashdot Mirror
To be fair, modern Linux distros don't do well with only 128 MB if your using the latest KDE or Gnome. If you switch to Fluxbox, IceWM or another low-mem desktop like XFCE, then it works fine. But switching desktops is not really a good option under MS Windows. There are only a few poorly done desktop replacements for explorer.exe IMO. Not that I think explorer.exe is anything great. It is the cause of _all_ my problems under WinXP, but is is better then the replacements I have tried.
AdBlock made the site pretty fast for me. I just blocked *super_sky.html and it blocked the whole side frame. I don't think I would be able to use the web if it wasn't for Firefox and adBlock. I personally have no clue how anyone can use IE for general net usage. I personally don't block all ads. For example, Google ads are well done IMO, and I don't block those. Basically if it flashes, I kill it ; )
The local admin for every user and ghosting thing works well, especially with tons of MS Windows programs that just don't work well if your not local admin, including some applications from MS. We have a good firewall and IDS and each user has AV on their desktop and a BigFix client for patches. All this keeps the network in pretty good shape. That and the fact that all our external facing servers are either on Solaris or Linux or they go through an Apache proxy running on Solaris or Linux. The only other way into the network from the outside is either a traditional VPN client or a new SSL VPN that we got that is web based.
The only thing they need now is to get more "mainstream" music. The teeny-bopper crap that most of us /.ers don't care about, but the masses seem to.
It may be hard to to convince the big three labels to let their content out with the only DRM being limited to the previewing of the song. However, maybe the big labels will wake up soon and realize that all of their DRM efforts have failed and have not stopped or even hindered piracy (arrggh).
However, there is the chance of the "next big artist" to put their stuff up on a site like this. It is pretty good artist-wise with 75% of profits going to the artist.
The point is, is that these types of things are far easier to prevent and remove under Linux where the norm is to _not_ run as root. While the norm under MS Windows is to always be administrator/root.
Run it on Linux and then delete it while it is running. Kill the app. Notice that nothing is respawned? Because even though it was physically on disk, there is no directory entry for it and nothing to spawn.
Now run the same program under MS Windows. While it is running delete it. This is as far as we can go because you cannot delete it.
True. Does Win98/ME have ACL's for the registry? If not, this won't help those users. There is also the big problem that most home users are running as local admin. So spyware and viruses are running as local admin. This means you would have to deny administrator to those keys wich would probably kill MS Windows during shutdown/startup.I agree. However you have _tons_ of dumb home users who fall for some fancy cursors or desktop weather app. They install those and now they have spyware. There isn't much MS or anyone can do about that other then be reactive and try to remove the junk.It was a real pain to remove this due to the fact that MS windows has all users as local admin by default is what allowed this spyware to do that.
Under Linux, it would not be able keep adding itself to a startup runlevel without constantly prompting for a password. I think even the dumbest user would get suspicious with something like that.
Again, my point was how much easier it would be to deal with this type of thing under Linux. Just delete the spyware off disk while it is running and _then_ kill it. If the spyware tries to respaw, there is no longer a program to respaw. This is not the case with MS windows since it won't let you delete a file from disk that is being executed. This one problem is what makes clever viruses and spyware very hard to remove.
Here is a list of a few simple steps any virus or spyware can follow to make it a _royal_ pain to remove to MS Windows.
Respawn a process if it is killed
Lock its executable so you cannot delete it
Monitor a few registry keys to prevent you from removing it from startup or putting in a key to delete it at startup (like MoveFileEx).
Bam, you now have one really hard spyware virus to remove. Again, a scenario like this on Linux is just not possible do to the separation of user files/directories and system files/directories.
In the URL bar type about:config and then filter for "ntlm". In the network.automatic-ntlm-auth.trusted-uris just put a comma separated list of servers you want Firefox to send your NTLM to. For example, double click network.automatic-ntlm-auth.trusted-uris and put in foo.com,bar.com,slashdot.org
The only thing I wish Firefox did was to allow a wild card domain name like *.mycompany.com. My network.automatic-ntlm-auth.trusted-uris entry has gotten pretty long at work : (
Also, under Linux you can delete a running program from disk which you cannot do under MS Windows. Under Linux you could delete the spyware from disk while it is running and just reboot and it is gone. That is not the case under MS Windows. It can take tons of reboots to remove some of the more clever spyware.
Under Linux I can run an application and delete it while it is running. The program will just keep running since as I stated, all programs have to execute from RAM. Obviously once I closed that program, it will be gone since I deleted it from disk. But there is no reason to need the program be on disk once it is executing in RAM.
If MS allowed you to delete a running program from disk, spyware removal would be _soo_ much easier and not require tons of reboots. Heck software install under MS Windows would not require tons of reboots either.
Recently I went and bought my wife a nice min-van that she drives about 20 miles per-week. Geico raised my payment to around $1,700 every _6_ months. From about $1,200 a year to $3,400 a _year_ for a Mini-Van with a _perfect_ driving record. Geico SUCKS. I went to Progressive and they charge me a little less then $700 every 6 months for both the small commuter car and the Mini-Van.
Geico cannot even compete with Progressive on price/coverage. Geico has slumped to trying to trick customers into thinking they are cool because of a stupid Gecko.
I owned a Gecko as a pet when I was in college, and while they were cool to look at, the one I had would try to bite your fingers off whenever you got close.
Sound a lot like Geico when you become too much of a "good" customer. The best thing I did for my car insurance was switch to Progressive.
Your posting to "females only" on /.? Were you smoking crack tonight or were you expecting the two /. girls to get all huffy-puffy over you and ask you to "secure their hole"?
I think the reason tech people are anal about it is because software emulation came about. Software that emulates hardware such as VMWare. In this context WINE is _very_ different from VMWare, Virtual PC, etc.
Going by the dictionary definition, WINE is an emulator. Though meanings of words do change over time, and I am sure that the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, is not taking the new "technical" meaining of emulation into account.
You are correct in the sense that the WINE team has tried to "emulate" the look and feel of the Win32 API. That is why a Win app under WINE often looks the same. They (WINE) have tried to make the windows looks just like a window in Win32. However, at the end of the day, WINE is still not emulating or "intercepting" anyting. They are recreating API's and copying a look-n-feel.
I agree with what your saying. However, this is _still_ just a bunch of geeks seeing if the _can_ do it. There is _no_ commercial effort here. If there was, then your points about "being behind" would be valid. As I see it, this is just a cool project that has potential to become something big. In their current state I doubt that will happen though. However, if as you said, development really picks up, then it could steam-roll into something big. But for now, it is just a cool geek project with potential : )
Nope, its not an emulator. Does an AthlonXP emulate a Pentium4? Nope. It's reimplementing x86. A _very_ differnt thing. That is why an Athlon is _much_ faster for some operatins then a P4 while a P4 can still pull ahead for some ops like multimedia. If it was _emulation_, they would be equal. Reimplementing is _not_ emulation. Reimplementing can introduce its own pros and cons. Pros can be better algorithms and cons can be worse algorithms. Emulation would create a 1-to-1 copy of something, including bugs. That would mean that everywhere NT sucks ReactOS and WINE would suck and everywhere NT was good ReactOS and WINE would be good, which is not the case.