How come you say Samba is a competitor? It's not a different technology, it's just a copy of Microsoft's technology. It's down to Microsoft's good grace that it still exists at all.
This won't be modded up enough to be visible to anyone, but I'd like to chip in and say that Ebert is pretty much accurate. The acting is dreadfully wooden in the non-action scenes, and this is probably due to the fact that the script isn't really very good.
I was sat with a group of five or six friends watching it, some of whom weren't really massive fans of the Star Wars series and hadn't seen Phantom Menace or Attack of the Clones, and I was actually embarassed by the quality of this movie.
It's let down by the script to some degree, but I think what really killed it was the direction. Actors never seem to know what they're doing, where they are, or what they're supposed to be feeling and this makes their delivery poor and wooden. When Anakin (Hayden Christensen) turns to the dark side, he's clearly been directed to be "mad, insane, confused, evil". And here he excels; it's easy to be mad and evil. However, in the more delicate scenes he's hopeless and swimming around without direction.
Excellent examples of awesome direction are the "SHE'S LOST THE WILL TO LIVE!" line announced by a med-bot. What sort of diagnosis is that? Rather convenient. It's as if whoever voiced that line had no idea that Anakin/Vader had actually killed her with the dark force. Another is the "Noooooooo!" that Vader screams when discovering this fact. No self respecting director would use such a dreadful cliché. He might as well have added "WHY, GOD? WHY!!!?" to the end of it. It's almost as bad a cliché as the "Oh no we are approaching a perilous waterfall of lava" bit. There's also the whole wordless ending segment where Luke's foster parents just get handed a child without question and look a bit bemused, then just gaze at the sun. What?
A few things are left unexplained too. The Death Star. Why? I was desperate to find out more about the Death Star but it's just presented as a matter of course. Slapped into the film like an afterthought. All in all, I left the theatre without the sensation of awe that I'd hoped for.
In summary: cut out a few of those massive "let's have a fight on a volcano planet" bits and wrap up the end of the film a little better.
On the other hand, you could argue that extensions are useful. I know that double-clicking on a jpg file will never run it as if it's an exe, so I know that this jpg file that I downloaded is not actually an executable file in disguise. I think the unix method of "no extensions" is even more dangerous, the user has no idea what a file is and relies on the file manager to identify it for them with an icon. I can see a lot of eventualities where I get an e-mail with an executable file attached that's named "harhar.jpg" and I double-click on it in KDE and it executes because the file manager has detected it to be executable. That's much more dangerous in my book. I like that the filename tells me exactly what type of file this is.
When you click on an upper row tab, the upper row of TABS becomes the bottom row?!?
This makes sense if you think of tabs like tabs in a binder or rolodex. When you flip to a tab in a rolodex, that tab does indeed occupy the bottom row, and all other tabs occupy the top row.
The problem you're pointing out is simply a problem with the desktop paradigm. I always preferred the Amiga's "workbench" paradigm. It made a lot more sense. I agree that things need to move on. A GUI should not pretend to be a desk top, it can borrow some familiar aspects, but in most areas the analogy does not stand and innovation is needed to improve user experience and present information appropriately. The whole thing is flawed and it's not uncommon for people to get lost in a maze of overlapping windows to the extent that most people just seem to maximize every window and flip between them with the taskbar... which is... oh wait... tabs!
Oops. I got the impression from the reports that they were independent devices. Sorry. Clearly a hardware solution would've been better than buying one of those products:)
This only goes to support the claim that few open source developers are really innovating, they're just copying in the hope that users will switch to Linux because it's a familiar experience instead of promoting a better experience like Apple does. Kontact is Outlook! And if all the applications on Linux look exactly the same as the ones on Windows, and function similarly too, what on Earth is the point in switching to a Linux desktop? Does it boost my productivity? Evidently not.
I don't use Linux for the desktop, I use it for servers, something at which it excels. I find Linux desktops to be clunky and slow compared to OS X or Windows (I don't have a massively powerful machine), and I don't see anything that makes my life easier or better in a Linux desktop. All it does is make my life considerably cheaper, but less feature-rich.
Device drivers cannot obtain full "privileges" because privileges are a user mode concept. Device drivers are tied down by the kernel, they can only do what the kernel allows them to do. If they try to do something else, you get a BSOD. I'm not sure if this works the same with drivers compiled in to the Linux kernel, but I guess there's similar security there too, and nobody compiles drivers into the kernel anymore.
Any exploit on a driver would not be able to do anything too drastic other than throw up a BSOD, unless it's a driver for a hard disk, in which case you could be in trouble.
Not necessarily. In the case of network drivers, drivers installed by firewall software, and so on, the attacks can easily be performed remotely by sending stuff over the network. However, I think that any case where a network driver will contain a flaw exploitable by stuff sent over the network will be quite rare.
Drivers on Windows NT are reasonably well protected. If a driver attempts to do something it's not supposed to (like access an address outside of its assigned address space) this will be trapped by the kernel and you'll get a STOP error (BSOD). That's what the STOP errors are for, any event where a device driver has performed an action that could compromise the data in the system if the system were allowed to go on running. It's also why STOP errors drop you out to standard VGA text - to avoid using the graphics drivers anymore.
Probably the greatest security flaw you could acheive in a driver is a denial of service, although they run at the kernel level, they still don't have system-wide access. There may be some way to gain that, but I doubt it. They certainly don't have access to user mode, and to access disks and e-mail clients and so on they'd have to go up to user mode level. Due to the lockdown on their address space drivers cannot communicate with oneanother, and in order to access the disk or network they'd need to do so through another driver which they can't "see".
So the most you'd get is a BSOD, which is annoying, but you can always head into safe mode and disable the driver to fix that. If the exploit was in a disk driver or something, you could be very, very fucked though.
Windows 95 needed a 386 or better to run, and it ran in 32 bit mode on the CPU. Of course it was 32 bit. Have you ever written any software for Windows 95? Now, if you'd said "Windows 95 didn't do proper pre-emptive multitasking" I'd say you were right. You know why all those DOS games wouldn't run in Windows 95? Because they required the CPU to be running in 16-bit mode. See, the 386 had two modes, 16 bit legacy mode (default) and 32 bit-- oh wait, forget it. There's no point. You'll keep spreading this shit around whatever I say. Just do some damn research before you post. The body of your research seems to be what you read in that hilarious "... 2 bit company who can't stand for 1 bit of competition LOL!" quote.
Asking Slashdot posters to understand that different tools are used for different jobs is like trying to nail two sheets of glass together. Preconceptions always get in the way of rational thought here, and people are always ready to jump in and slam Microsoft just because they read an article on/. that was written by someone who clearly has as little idea about how an OS works as they do. I'd hazard a guess that a lot of people posting here have never written a single line of C# code, and probably thought that the Longhorn kernel would be somehow different to NT, like it'd be written in managed code or something. Credit to you for getting modded "Insightful".
You're right. Microsoft never planned to code device drivers or any kernel-level stuff in managed code. If you watch their blogs, the kernel guys at Microsoft frown on managed code and.Net and avoid it like the plague. It's not the right tool for the job and they know it. It is a good tool for writing applications that interoperate cleanly and safely, which is why Microsoft have done their best to make as much of the shell components like Avalon and WinFS accessible through managed code and are trying to promote it as a viable alternative to unmanaged code. Managed code is not a replacement, it's an alternative that Microsoft are trying to promote to enhance both security and interoperability of software. And I think that's a good thing.
I could download and use.Net 2.0 last year. It's not late. They're just clearly not going to take it out of beta until we're near a Longhorn release. The phrase "Bill Gates realized it would be foolish to build important pieces of Longhorn on top of.Net" is pure speculation. Bill Gates has little say in the matter. He's a manager. His underlings work for him to choose the best solutions for the market, and he pushes the company in a particular direction and co-ordinates hundreds of sub-teams.
Microsoft has also never built critical elements on top of instabilities. "Critical" does not mean "oh noes my browser is being exploited this is critical!". If you're a fool who can't protect yourself from the Internet, viruses, phishing and malware then you're going to be fucked whatever OS you use. The fact that there's no real threat to Linux from spyware/malware yet does not mean that the OS cannot possibly fall prey to it.
Of course, in this case slashdot moderates flamebait as funny. If I were to quote that Linux has probably ripped off more ideas and innovated even less than Microsoft has it'd be flamebait. Just as if I said that Linux is a hotchpotch of patches and improvements on Minix, has only just got a half decent office suite funded by Sun with a UI stolen from MS Office, with users still fighting over which window manager to run on top of a monolithic and outdated client/server windowing system with a file structure that would baffle any novice.
What I'm saying is, cut the Microsoft bashing. Linux has quite a way to go as well. As one Microsoft guy said on Channel9: There are really very few truly BAD operating systems. Linux is good for what Linux does well, Windows is good for what Windows does well. Just accept that different tools are good for different jobs.
Now this really will be modded flamebait. Sorry, but there it is. Mod me flamebait for promoting a liberal, less "crazy evangelist" attitude.
We've always known that Longhorn will be based on the NT kernel, NTFS, and DirectX. WinFS is a layer on top of NTFS. Avalon replaces Windows Forms and is based on DirectX. It is fully supported by.Net interfaces whereas GDI/Windows Forms was not. Of course the Longhorn OS isn't based on.Net, that'd be lunacy. Longhorn merely promotes the adoption of.Net through easy interop between.Net and Avalon/WinFS. Longhorn will try to push managed code into the mainstream, it's absolutely not based upon it, and everyone who's paid the slightest bit of attention to Longhorn knows this. This isn't news, it isn't a shock story, it's just established fact.
Is something I can understand making quite a big splash. The only thing I think that's keeping Linux from becoming a huge desktop OS is the difficult driver installation procedure. With laptops, it's unlikely that you're going to upgrade the core hardware. However I do think it might lose out on USB devices. I've had a lot of trouble with cheap USB devices and Linux in the past.
Hey sod off, I live in Birmingham UK and it's not all that bad. In fact, some people are adamant that it's not shit. Try Milton Keynes or Sheffield if you want some really shitty industrial towns. We used to be the Workshop of the World, you know. Now we're apparently just "Europe's new shopping capital". Weak.
You don't seem to understand that it's a problem to make the most popular operating system in the world secure for even the newest of newbie, without pissing off the experienced user. I think the fact that they're still the most popular operating system in the world despite everything that's happened in the last five years says a great deal about Windows: it works, and it's good enough for most people.
People on slashdot should realise that an OS is a tool and not a religion. I switch operating systems like I change my underwear. Certain tools are better for certain jobs. Windows is fine for gaming and desktop use. Linux is great for servers. OS X is great for DTP etc. This says little about the kernel underneath, but says a lot about what sort of userland software is available for those operating systems.
He switched architecture because of hardware. Apparently he foolishly decided to purchase Sony and Intel equipment, and then spent some time wondering why it didn't work and why their support departments were shit.
Somehow, I don't think the story "I'm going to switch to something more expensive because I'm incapable of making informed decisions on the hardware I buy, and I'm dumb as hell." is news-worthy.
Considering what might be in that support call to RedHat ("right, now open up this header file and uncomment line 293. Now close it. Now add the following lines to fuckedup.c:..."), I can imagine it might cost quite a lot.
This is the Mac disease. It's like a virus. You buy a Mac, then you turn into this guy. The guy who thinks Macs can do no wrong, the guy who thinks that everyone at Apple is a cosmopolitan and groovy human being with a friendly attitude and a clean, elegant way of working. The guy who cannot help but tell everyone how awesome their Apple computer is and how awesome Apple is without knowing much about either other than the things come in cool white boxes.
Apple is a company that wants to make money. It capitalises on ripping off people who don't know any better. They're good machines, they're well designed from the ground up, but I believe you're kissing their ass a great deal too much in your post. Think about that nasty widget security flaw and the KHTML stuff mentioned in other replies to your post.
Slashdot Mirror
If you mean it looks impossible to read, then you're right. Perl hacker right here.
How come you say Samba is a competitor? It's not a different technology, it's just a copy of Microsoft's technology. It's down to Microsoft's good grace that it still exists at all.
Holy crap! Better not make illegal copies of things if you don't want the terrorists to blow up America again!
Propaganda? No, no... that doesn't happen these days, does it.
This won't be modded up enough to be visible to anyone, but I'd like to chip in and say that Ebert is pretty much accurate. The acting is dreadfully wooden in the non-action scenes, and this is probably due to the fact that the script isn't really very good.
I was sat with a group of five or six friends watching it, some of whom weren't really massive fans of the Star Wars series and hadn't seen Phantom Menace or Attack of the Clones, and I was actually embarassed by the quality of this movie.
It's let down by the script to some degree, but I think what really killed it was the direction. Actors never seem to know what they're doing, where they are, or what they're supposed to be feeling and this makes their delivery poor and wooden. When Anakin (Hayden Christensen) turns to the dark side, he's clearly been directed to be "mad, insane, confused, evil". And here he excels; it's easy to be mad and evil. However, in the more delicate scenes he's hopeless and swimming around without direction.
Excellent examples of awesome direction are the "SHE'S LOST THE WILL TO LIVE!" line announced by a med-bot. What sort of diagnosis is that? Rather convenient. It's as if whoever voiced that line had no idea that Anakin/Vader had actually killed her with the dark force. Another is the "Noooooooo!" that Vader screams when discovering this fact. No self respecting director would use such a dreadful cliché. He might as well have added "WHY, GOD? WHY!!!?" to the end of it. It's almost as bad a cliché as the "Oh no we are approaching a perilous waterfall of lava" bit. There's also the whole wordless ending segment where Luke's foster parents just get handed a child without question and look a bit bemused, then just gaze at the sun. What?
A few things are left unexplained too. The Death Star. Why? I was desperate to find out more about the Death Star but it's just presented as a matter of course. Slapped into the film like an afterthought. All in all, I left the theatre without the sensation of awe that I'd hoped for.
In summary: cut out a few of those massive "let's have a fight on a volcano planet" bits and wrap up the end of the film a little better.
On the other hand, you could argue that extensions are useful. I know that double-clicking on a jpg file will never run it as if it's an exe, so I know that this jpg file that I downloaded is not actually an executable file in disguise. I think the unix method of "no extensions" is even more dangerous, the user has no idea what a file is and relies on the file manager to identify it for them with an icon. I can see a lot of eventualities where I get an e-mail with an executable file attached that's named "harhar.jpg" and I double-click on it in KDE and it executes because the file manager has detected it to be executable. That's much more dangerous in my book. I like that the filename tells me exactly what type of file this is.
When you click on an upper row tab, the upper row of TABS becomes the bottom row?!?
This makes sense if you think of tabs like tabs in a binder or rolodex. When you flip to a tab in a rolodex, that tab does indeed occupy the bottom row, and all other tabs occupy the top row.
The problem you're pointing out is simply a problem with the desktop paradigm. I always preferred the Amiga's "workbench" paradigm. It made a lot more sense. I agree that things need to move on. A GUI should not pretend to be a desk top, it can borrow some familiar aspects, but in most areas the analogy does not stand and innovation is needed to improve user experience and present information appropriately. The whole thing is flawed and it's not uncommon for people to get lost in a maze of overlapping windows to the extent that most people just seem to maximize every window and flip between them with the taskbar... which is... oh wait... tabs!
drastically improve browser performance
I hope so. I only get 12 FPS with my current browser and that's not good enough.
Oops. I got the impression from the reports that they were independent devices. Sorry. Clearly a hardware solution would've been better than buying one of those products :)
Those are not drivers. Those are flaws in device firmware, which is a different matter entirely.
This only goes to support the claim that few open source developers are really innovating, they're just copying in the hope that users will switch to Linux because it's a familiar experience instead of promoting a better experience like Apple does. Kontact is Outlook! And if all the applications on Linux look exactly the same as the ones on Windows, and function similarly too, what on Earth is the point in switching to a Linux desktop? Does it boost my productivity? Evidently not.
I don't use Linux for the desktop, I use it for servers, something at which it excels. I find Linux desktops to be clunky and slow compared to OS X or Windows (I don't have a massively powerful machine), and I don't see anything that makes my life easier or better in a Linux desktop. All it does is make my life considerably cheaper, but less feature-rich.
Device drivers cannot obtain full "privileges" because privileges are a user mode concept. Device drivers are tied down by the kernel, they can only do what the kernel allows them to do. If they try to do something else, you get a BSOD. I'm not sure if this works the same with drivers compiled in to the Linux kernel, but I guess there's similar security there too, and nobody compiles drivers into the kernel anymore.
Any exploit on a driver would not be able to do anything too drastic other than throw up a BSOD, unless it's a driver for a hard disk, in which case you could be in trouble.
Slashdot is not the greatest place to go for a civilised debate :)
Not necessarily. In the case of network drivers, drivers installed by firewall software, and so on, the attacks can easily be performed remotely by sending stuff over the network. However, I think that any case where a network driver will contain a flaw exploitable by stuff sent over the network will be quite rare.
Drivers on Windows NT are reasonably well protected. If a driver attempts to do something it's not supposed to (like access an address outside of its assigned address space) this will be trapped by the kernel and you'll get a STOP error (BSOD). That's what the STOP errors are for, any event where a device driver has performed an action that could compromise the data in the system if the system were allowed to go on running. It's also why STOP errors drop you out to standard VGA text - to avoid using the graphics drivers anymore.
Probably the greatest security flaw you could acheive in a driver is a denial of service, although they run at the kernel level, they still don't have system-wide access. There may be some way to gain that, but I doubt it. They certainly don't have access to user mode, and to access disks and e-mail clients and so on they'd have to go up to user mode level. Due to the lockdown on their address space drivers cannot communicate with oneanother, and in order to access the disk or network they'd need to do so through another driver which they can't "see".
So the most you'd get is a BSOD, which is annoying, but you can always head into safe mode and disable the driver to fix that. If the exploit was in a disk driver or something, you could be very, very fucked though.
Windows 95 needed a 386 or better to run, and it ran in 32 bit mode on the CPU. Of course it was 32 bit. Have you ever written any software for Windows 95? Now, if you'd said "Windows 95 didn't do proper pre-emptive multitasking" I'd say you were right. You know why all those DOS games wouldn't run in Windows 95? Because they required the CPU to be running in 16-bit mode. See, the 386 had two modes, 16 bit legacy mode (default) and 32 bit-- oh wait, forget it. There's no point. You'll keep spreading this shit around whatever I say. Just do some damn research before you post. The body of your research seems to be what you read in that hilarious "... 2 bit company who can't stand for 1 bit of competition LOL!" quote.
Asking Slashdot posters to understand that different tools are used for different jobs is like trying to nail two sheets of glass together. Preconceptions always get in the way of rational thought here, and people are always ready to jump in and slam Microsoft just because they read an article on /. that was written by someone who clearly has as little idea about how an OS works as they do. I'd hazard a guess that a lot of people posting here have never written a single line of C# code, and probably thought that the Longhorn kernel would be somehow different to NT, like it'd be written in managed code or something. Credit to you for getting modded "Insightful".
.Net and avoid it like the plague. It's not the right tool for the job and they know it. It is a good tool for writing applications that interoperate cleanly and safely, which is why Microsoft have done their best to make as much of the shell components like Avalon and WinFS accessible through managed code and are trying to promote it as a viable alternative to unmanaged code. Managed code is not a replacement, it's an alternative that Microsoft are trying to promote to enhance both security and interoperability of software. And I think that's a good thing.
You're right. Microsoft never planned to code device drivers or any kernel-level stuff in managed code. If you watch their blogs, the kernel guys at Microsoft frown on managed code and
I could download and use .Net 2.0 last year. It's not late. They're just clearly not going to take it out of beta until we're near a Longhorn release. The phrase "Bill Gates realized it would be foolish to build important pieces of Longhorn on top of .Net" is pure speculation. Bill Gates has little say in the matter. He's a manager. His underlings work for him to choose the best solutions for the market, and he pushes the company in a particular direction and co-ordinates hundreds of sub-teams.
Microsoft has also never built critical elements on top of instabilities. "Critical" does not mean "oh noes my browser is being exploited this is critical!". If you're a fool who can't protect yourself from the Internet, viruses, phishing and malware then you're going to be fucked whatever OS you use. The fact that there's no real threat to Linux from spyware/malware yet does not mean that the OS cannot possibly fall prey to it.
Of course, in this case slashdot moderates flamebait as funny. If I were to quote that Linux has probably ripped off more ideas and innovated even less than Microsoft has it'd be flamebait. Just as if I said that Linux is a hotchpotch of patches and improvements on Minix, has only just got a half decent office suite funded by Sun with a UI stolen from MS Office, with users still fighting over which window manager to run on top of a monolithic and outdated client/server windowing system with a file structure that would baffle any novice.
What I'm saying is, cut the Microsoft bashing. Linux has quite a way to go as well. As one Microsoft guy said on Channel9: There are really very few truly BAD operating systems. Linux is good for what Linux does well, Windows is good for what Windows does well. Just accept that different tools are good for different jobs.
Now this really will be modded flamebait. Sorry, but there it is. Mod me flamebait for promoting a liberal, less "crazy evangelist" attitude.
We've always known that Longhorn will be based on the NT kernel, NTFS, and DirectX. WinFS is a layer on top of NTFS. Avalon replaces Windows Forms and is based on DirectX. It is fully supported by .Net interfaces whereas GDI/Windows Forms was not. Of course the Longhorn OS isn't based on .Net, that'd be lunacy. Longhorn merely promotes the adoption of .Net through easy interop between .Net and Avalon/WinFS. Longhorn will try to push managed code into the mainstream, it's absolutely not based upon it, and everyone who's paid the slightest bit of attention to Longhorn knows this. This isn't news, it isn't a shock story, it's just established fact.
Bloody slashdot.
Didn't have AGP? Was it PCI Express or something? I can't imagine any other reason a new mobo would not have AGP. Even PC Chips boards have that.
Is something I can understand making quite a big splash. The only thing I think that's keeping Linux from becoming a huge desktop OS is the difficult driver installation procedure. With laptops, it's unlikely that you're going to upgrade the core hardware. However I do think it might lose out on USB devices. I've had a lot of trouble with cheap USB devices and Linux in the past.
Hey sod off, I live in Birmingham UK and it's not all that bad. In fact, some people are adamant that it's not shit. Try Milton Keynes or Sheffield if you want some really shitty industrial towns. We used to be the Workshop of the World, you know. Now we're apparently just "Europe's new shopping capital". Weak.
What on Earth makes Apple users so happy to pay for subscription-based services?
You don't seem to understand that it's a problem to make the most popular operating system in the world secure for even the newest of newbie, without pissing off the experienced user. I think the fact that they're still the most popular operating system in the world despite everything that's happened in the last five years says a great deal about Windows: it works, and it's good enough for most people.
People on slashdot should realise that an OS is a tool and not a religion. I switch operating systems like I change my underwear. Certain tools are better for certain jobs. Windows is fine for gaming and desktop use. Linux is great for servers. OS X is great for DTP etc. This says little about the kernel underneath, but says a lot about what sort of userland software is available for those operating systems.
He switched architecture because of hardware. Apparently he foolishly decided to purchase Sony and Intel equipment, and then spent some time wondering why it didn't work and why their support departments were shit.
Somehow, I don't think the story "I'm going to switch to something more expensive because I'm incapable of making informed decisions on the hardware I buy, and I'm dumb as hell." is news-worthy.
Considering what might be in that support call to RedHat ("right, now open up this header file and uncomment line 293. Now close it. Now add the following lines to fuckedup.c: ..."), I can imagine it might cost quite a lot.
This is the Mac disease. It's like a virus. You buy a Mac, then you turn into this guy. The guy who thinks Macs can do no wrong, the guy who thinks that everyone at Apple is a cosmopolitan and groovy human being with a friendly attitude and a clean, elegant way of working. The guy who cannot help but tell everyone how awesome their Apple computer is and how awesome Apple is without knowing much about either other than the things come in cool white boxes.
Apple is a company that wants to make money. It capitalises on ripping off people who don't know any better. They're good machines, they're well designed from the ground up, but I believe you're kissing their ass a great deal too much in your post. Think about that nasty widget security flaw and the KHTML stuff mentioned in other replies to your post.