You can't rely on things that worked just fine to work in a later version.
You can't rely on the same settings on different servers
There isn't a Database Astraction Layer that is reliably installed by default.
Examples:
$HTTP_GET_VARS vs. $_GET.
4.0.x: $HTTP_GET_VARS was supported.
4.[1-3].x: $_GET and $HTTP_GET_VARS were supported
5.0.x: Only $_GET works "out of the box", although $HTTP_GET_VARS can be enabled in php.ini
You have to check get_magic_quotes_gpc() and get_magic_quotes_runtime() to know whether or not you need to remove from slashes from input / add slashes for output
The dbx module isn't compiled by default, PEAR can be disabled, and ADODB isn't part of the PHP distribution. Of the three, most projects I've seen use ADODB or roll their own, simply because you can't rely on the other two being present.
Cleartext signon and transfer are problems relieved by using FTP over TLS/SSL, or in a worst case scenario, scp or sftp, which really aren't FTP at all.
To address the services you explicitly mentioned, while I think Remote Registry being on by default is a Bad Item (tm), the other two have legitimate uses.
Secondary Login is the Windows equivalent of the su command. I wouldn't recommend removing it. Not all users run with Administrator access. I'm posting this from my gaming machine, a Windows XP machine, as a Limited User.
Server is part of the SMB networking system. While not useful in a corporate network, it is useful in a Peer to Peer network. As far as I can tell, disabling this is the same as disabling Samba's nmbd.
If you're compiling code that only works on Prescott Pentium 4s, blindly checking the manufacturer would work. However, here's a little chart showing when instruction sets were introduced:
Even if the chip is a P4, Intel's compiler can't just assume it supports SSE3. At some point, it must check the CPUID for supported instruction sets. If the CPUID alone were checked, the code compiled would optimize correctly on AMD Chips.
Therefore, it certainly looks to me like AMD has a case.
There is a big difference in the power structures of Europe and the United States. In the U.S., the Federal Government has more power than the member states. In Europe, the member states have more power than the European Parliament.
Of course, when the U.S. was formed, the U.S. Federal Government snatched up the rights to issue Patents and Copyrights:
The Congress shall have Power... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries; -- Article 1, Section 8, Paragraph 8 of the Constitution of the United States of America.
Before comparing websites to houses, you should take a look around.
See those neat banner ads on this site, for instance? They're trying to sell you stuff. We call this practice "soft sell" and it's part of "running a business." Businesses make more money by selling to the public, not just a select group of friends.
Show me a WinXX hack as cool as QuickSilver. Hell, windows doesn't even have hot corners.
AppRocket sounds like it does the same thing QuickSilver does. Some other cool hacks for Windows are ObjectDock and ObjectDesktop, which make Windows look like OS X. ObjectDesktop includes WindowBlinds, an alternative skinning product for Windows.
Hot corners on the other hand, I thought Windows supported those. Maybe it was just the After Dark screensaver I used to use... Regardless, one thing you should have noticed about Windows is that it isn't hard to find software to do whatever you're searching for.
Want to talk about rigidity? How about the fact that in Windows you only have one command line interpreter? And cmd.exe can't even copy/paste like a normal app.
There's a few things you can change to fix that. For instance, I change the defaults to use Quick Edit mode (hightlight then right-click to copy, right-click by itself to paste) and turn on Autocomplete (tab completion). Makes it feel a bit more like a UNIX shell. Too bad ls doesn't work in it. *writes up a quick.bat file to run dir/w when ls is typed*
Besides, as someone already pointed out, bash has been ported to Windows. You can use it with or without cygwin.
For me, none of your methods work well because thy're all browser-dependent. I work for hours and hours without having a browser open. For me, pressing F12 to get to the calculator is a lot more convenient than starting up the browser and waiting for a web page to load.
I would certainly hope that OS X includes a calculator.
Personally, I have one of those "Internet" keyboards, and one of the buttons it has is labeled Calculator. Which loads the Windows Calculator when pressed.
no convenient place for temporarily storing a folder one needs temporary access to --- currently at work I'm updating links to some art w/ munged filenames in an InDesign document --- I drag the current destination folder into the sidebar to drag files into, then I can click on the same folder in the sidebar in the file open dialog in ID to get there w/ a single click, when I'm done w/ that folder I drag it out of the Sidebar and it goes ``poof'' --- how does one do something like that in Windows w/ anywhere near the efficiency?
There's really two choices for locations for temporary folders in Windows XP: My Documents or Desktop. If you have My Computer/Windows Explorer open, you can click the Folders button in the toolbar to get the folder heirarchy to show up in the tasks pane. Desktop is the top level element, My Documents is inside Desktop. Dragging items into it is really easy.
Both of the above have buttons on the left side of the Windows standard File Open dialog. Unfortunately, it's going to take one more double-click to get to it than it would on OSX, but it's still not that much more difficult.
the Dock affords one a single place to launch and switch applications --- why is it that in XP I click in one place to launch (the Start Menu) but use another area (the Task Bar) to switch --- in Mac OS X I click on the same icon either way.
The Task Bar and Start Menu both first appeared 10 years ago in Windows 95. The Start Menu is used to launch applications and the Task Bar is to show you what programs are running, and to allow you to easily switch between them.
Microsoft made a few minor changes to the Task Bar and Start Menu, but they have otherwise stayed the same. This is to ensure that if someone has used Windows before, they'll still know how to use it.
On the flip side, I can't help but note that, if something isn't on the Dock, you have to locate it in Finder to launch it. I would find that even more tedious than searching through the Windows Start menu.
I now see one of the differences - you're comparing a Windows SERVER to a Mac DESKTOP: The "Services" of which you speak aren't available on my win2k laptop (work provided), but I've seen them on win2k SERVER (or Server Advanced) builds.
That's because you have to install them from the Windows CD first. They're in the Windows Components part of Add/Remove Programs.
3. Keeping it all in one place (i.e. registry) sounds like a great idea... until you realize you can't readily *do* anything with it from a user's perspective because guess what... the OS won't let you do a simple "c:>copy registry to registry.backup".
What's wrong with copy system.dat system.dat.backup ?
I guess you have never tried this procedure with different versions of windows involved at the same time?
How's this?
95/98/ME: Right-click, 'Sharing...', click the radio button next to Shared As, and at your option, change the Access Mode to Full.
XP Home/XP Pro (in Simple mode):
right-click, 'sharing and security', click on 'Share this folder on the network', and at your option, 'Allow network users to change my files'
2000 (All)/XP Pro (in Complex mode)/2003:
Right-click, 'Sharing and security', click on 'Share this folder'. If you wish to give them write access, you will need to click the Permissions button and check the box next to Write.
NT 3.51/4: No clue.
If you're missing the Share or Sharing and Security menu options, make sure that File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks is installed.
Even though I made the switch in 2000, I'm still pleasantly delighted when things just work the way I would hope they would, like when I copied World of Warcraft onto my iPod, and it ran on other Macs!
Amazing, it does the same thing when we copied it from PC to PC in the computer lab on campus!
...because it doesn't use the Registry in Windows. Now if it'd only use the user directory structure to store its configuration file, we'd be all set!
Uh, no. I have a cell phone that doesn't run windows at all. Just about every machine that runs windows was MADE to run windows, just as nearly every machine that runs MacOS runs MacOS. Only Linux, BSD, and other community-developed software (i.e. anything that has almost NO hardware that was MADE for it) tend to break those barriers.
I suggest you re-read the comment you replied to, as it has to do with Windows recognizing devices and peripherals, not devices themselves running Windows.
Disclaimer: I'm intentionally acting as the Devil's Advocate in the following article. I hate Microsoft and only use Windows because: 1. I own lots of games for Windows. 2. I'm a college student and the instructors have a nasty habit of requiring random Windows programs to be installed, 3. I have yet to find a Windowing system for Linux/BSD that I like.
Keeping that in mind, on with the show.
2. Intelligent filebrowsing with the finder. I was using list view in Windows Explorer the other day and renamed a file in it. I was shocked to discover it didn't automatically reposition itself in the list based on its new name. Quick and convenient file search is available in a search box in every finder window. You can easily force-quit the Finder without having to worry about OS X crashing.
Windows Explorer not immediately moving things around when you rename something is actually a design decision. This is so that the currently selected icon doesn't go moving around on you. Go up a directory, then back, and you'll notice that it has been rearranged (provided you didn't turn off Auto Arrange).
I'm not sure why you'd need to force-quit something. It's been quite some time since I've had to kill Windows Explorer. Of course, if I was having trouble with it, I'd turn on the handy-dandy "Run Explorer Windows in a separate process" setting in the Folder Options preferences.
3. Security. I don't have the link on me but it's been shown that OS X and other FreeBSD derivatives are the most secure operating systems on the planet. There was an article on slashdot a few months ago about this, but I'm too lazy to search for it. Windows security... heh, oxymoron.
While Windows security is notoriously bad, a lot of flack that it gets is from users doing stupid things, and Microsoft's idiotic policy of making all users members of the Administrators group by default. NTFS itself has an excellent Access Control List based security model, almost as good as Novell's, but it's pointless when all users have access to do anything.
4. iApps - Free. Buy a mac and get many aplpications for free (iMovie, iPhoto, iTunes, GarageBand, Mail, etc). If you've actually used these, you'll realize how great they are. They're not simply little toys, but they are real, near-professional quality applications that can do amazing things. Get a windows box, and you will have none of this (Windows Movie Maker, a poor rip off of iMovie, is so crappy it does not count).
I haven't used most of them, but don't even get me started on iTunes. If the Mac version of iTunes/Quicktime is anything even remotely similar to the versions for Windows, the source code to them needs to be erased and written over with random data as many times as it takes to make sure its completely gone.
5. Built in Java VM. It makes Java developers happy (like me).
Microsoft had one of those, but lawsuits from Sun forced them to remove it. Since they aren't playing nice with Sun, they aren't including theirs either. Of course, with a decent connection, it only takes a few minutes to install one from java.com.
6. Built in Python. It makes Python developers happy.
As a Perl developer, I'm disappointed that you skipped mentioning Perl. Granted, Activestate has Windows versions of both Python and Perl (and probably others like TCL) available for download from their site.
7. Intelligent file sharing with permissions; in windows you have to go through hell to get this working.
Windows XP has two file sharing modes:
Simple Sharing:
I go to the Share tab of a Folder's properties and click one checkbox to give people read access and another to give them write access.
ACL Sharing:
This can be enabled in XP Professional by going to Folder Options (in Explorer or Control Panel), View tab, and unchecking Enable Simple File Sharing (recommended)
In a PHP script, using $1$12345678$ as the salt, "something" is crypted as $1$12345678$xu3jxEIwJ9shBYfldViSF0.
In my brand new MediaWiki 1.4.4 setup, the password "something" is inserted into the database as 812289532fadbec6239d25743103018d
I suggest you do a code audit, because that password is clearly a non-crypted MD5, even though PHP's constants and the output from crypt show support for it.
Unfortunately, this begs the question Why doesn't MediaWiki use salted hashes to store passwords?
I've noticed that most projects done in PHP don't utilize crypted MD5, even though crypt on most OSes support it.
It's really easy to programmatically check to see if the OS crypt supports MD5. Simply pass an 8 character salt to crypt as its first argument, then check the first three characters of the output. If they're $1$, your OS's crypt library supports crypted MD5. This will work in any programming language whose crypt command sends data to the system's crypt command: C/C++, Perl, and PHP to name a few.
Slashdot Mirror
- You can't rely on things that worked just fine to work in a later version.
- You can't rely on the same settings on different servers
- There isn't a Database Astraction Layer that is reliably installed by default.
Examples:Of the three, most projects I've seen use ADODB or roll their own, simply because you can't rely on the other two being present.
You mean it isn't as easy as 1-2-3?
Oh wait, maybe that's the problem...
Cleartext signon and transfer are problems relieved by using FTP over TLS/SSL, or in a worst case scenario, scp or sftp, which really aren't FTP at all.
Secondary Login is the Windows equivalent of the su command. I wouldn't recommend removing it. Not all users run with Administrator access. I'm posting this from my gaming machine, a Windows XP machine, as a Limited User.
Server is part of the SMB networking system. While not useful in a corporate network, it is useful in a Peer to Peer network. As far as I can tell, disabling this is the same as disabling Samba's nmbd.
If you're compiling code that only works on Prescott Pentium 4s, blindly checking the manufacturer would work. However, here's a little chart showing when instruction sets were introduced:
MMX - Intel Pentium MMX / AMD K6
SSE - Intel Pentium 3 / AMD Athlon XP
SSE2 - Pentium 4 / AMD Sempron Paris / AMD Athlon 64
SSE3 - Pentium 4 Prescott / AMD Athlon 64 Revision E
Even if the chip is a P4, Intel's compiler can't just assume it supports SSE3. At some point, it must check the CPUID for supported instruction sets. If the CPUID alone were checked, the code compiled would optimize correctly on AMD Chips.
Therefore, it certainly looks to me like AMD has a case.
The Congress shall have Power... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries; -- Article 1, Section 8, Paragraph 8 of the Constitution of the United States of America.
Before comparing websites to houses, you should take a look around.
See those neat banner ads on this site, for instance? They're trying to sell you stuff. We call this practice "soft sell" and it's part of "running a business." Businesses make more money by selling to the public, not just a select group of friends.
For example:
- Office 2000 always looks like Windows 2000.
- Office XP always looks like Windows XP.
- Office 2003 always looks like Windows 2003.
Which makes it look weird if you use Office 2003 on Windows 2000, as well as lags things if too many windows are open.AppRocket sounds like it does the same thing QuickSilver does. Some other cool hacks for Windows are ObjectDock and ObjectDesktop, which make Windows look like OS X. ObjectDesktop includes WindowBlinds, an alternative skinning product for Windows.
Hot corners on the other hand, I thought Windows supported those. Maybe it was just the After Dark screensaver I used to use... Regardless, one thing you should have noticed about Windows is that it isn't hard to find software to do whatever you're searching for.
Want to talk about rigidity? How about the fact that in Windows you only have one command line interpreter? And cmd.exe can't even copy/paste like a normal app.
There's a few things you can change to fix that. For instance, I change the defaults to use Quick Edit mode (hightlight then right-click to copy, right-click by itself to paste) and turn on Autocomplete (tab completion). Makes it feel a bit more like a UNIX shell. Too bad ls doesn't work in it. *writes up a quick .bat file to run dir/w when ls is typed*
Besides, as someone already pointed out, bash has been ported to Windows. You can use it with or without cygwin.
I would certainly hope that OS X includes a calculator.
Personally, I have one of those "Internet" keyboards, and one of the buttons it has is labeled Calculator. Which loads the Windows Calculator when pressed.
You can find it on the Windows XP PowerToys page. And yes, it predates Panther.
P.S. Windows-D hides all windows to display the Desktop, and has for several versions.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, HKEY_USERS_[UID].
As a side note, Windows also has a per-user "Library" directory named "Application Data".
If this were my login name on my machine, it'd be C:\Documents and Settings\vgpowerlord\Application Data\
Really? Do you have any examples of software designed for Windows XP not "just working"?
There's really two choices for locations for temporary folders in Windows XP: My Documents or Desktop. If you have My Computer/Windows Explorer open, you can click the Folders button in the toolbar to get the folder heirarchy to show up in the tasks pane. Desktop is the top level element, My Documents is inside Desktop. Dragging items into it is really easy.
Both of the above have buttons on the left side of the Windows standard File Open dialog. Unfortunately, it's going to take one more double-click to get to it than it would on OSX, but it's still not that much more difficult.
the Dock affords one a single place to launch and switch applications --- why is it that in XP I click in one place to launch (the Start Menu) but use another area (the Task Bar) to switch --- in Mac OS X I click on the same icon either way.
The Task Bar and Start Menu both first appeared 10 years ago in Windows 95. The Start Menu is used to launch applications and the Task Bar is to show you what programs are running, and to allow you to easily switch between them.
Microsoft made a few minor changes to the Task Bar and Start Menu, but they have otherwise stayed the same. This is to ensure that if someone has used Windows before, they'll still know how to use it.
On the flip side, I can't help but note that, if something isn't on the Dock, you have to locate it in Finder to launch it. I would find that even more tedious than searching through the Windows Start menu.
I now see one of the differences - you're comparing a Windows SERVER to a Mac DESKTOP: The "Services" of which you speak aren't available on my win2k laptop (work provided), but I've seen them on win2k SERVER (or Server Advanced) builds. That's because you have to install them from the Windows CD first. They're in the Windows Components part of Add/Remove Programs.
What's wrong with copy system.dat system.dat.backup ?
How's this?
95/98/ME: Right-click, 'Sharing...', click the radio button next to Shared As, and at your option, change the Access Mode to Full.
XP Home/XP Pro (in Simple mode): right-click, 'sharing and security', click on 'Share this folder on the network', and at your option, 'Allow network users to change my files'
2000 (All) /XP Pro (in Complex mode)/2003:
Right-click, 'Sharing and security', click on 'Share this folder'. If you wish to give them write access, you will need to click the Permissions button and check the box next to Write.
NT 3.51/4: No clue.
If you're missing the Share or Sharing and Security menu options, make sure that File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks is installed.
Amazing, it does the same thing when we copied it from PC to PC in the computer lab on campus!
I suggest you re-read the comment you replied to, as it has to do with Windows recognizing devices and peripherals, not devices themselves running Windows.
Oops, I changed the part above "...including the registry" and didn't change that section to reflect the removal.
Keeping that in mind, on with the show.
2. Intelligent filebrowsing with the finder. I was using list view in Windows Explorer the other day and renamed a file in it. I was shocked to discover it didn't automatically reposition itself in the list based on its new name. Quick and convenient file search is available in a search box in every finder window. You can easily force-quit the Finder without having to worry about OS X crashing.
Windows Explorer not immediately moving things around when you rename something is actually a design decision. This is so that the currently selected icon doesn't go moving around on you. Go up a directory, then back, and you'll notice that it has been rearranged (provided you didn't turn off Auto Arrange).
I'm not sure why you'd need to force-quit something. It's been quite some time since I've had to kill Windows Explorer. Of course, if I was having trouble with it, I'd turn on the handy-dandy "Run Explorer Windows in a separate process" setting in the Folder Options preferences.
3. Security. I don't have the link on me but it's been shown that OS X and other FreeBSD derivatives are the most secure operating systems on the planet. There was an article on slashdot a few months ago about this, but I'm too lazy to search for it. Windows security... heh, oxymoron.
While Windows security is notoriously bad, a lot of flack that it gets is from users doing stupid things, and Microsoft's idiotic policy of making all users members of the Administrators group by default. NTFS itself has an excellent Access Control List based security model, almost as good as Novell's, but it's pointless when all users have access to do anything.
4. iApps - Free. Buy a mac and get many aplpications for free (iMovie, iPhoto, iTunes, GarageBand, Mail, etc). If you've actually used these, you'll realize how great they are. They're not simply little toys, but they are real, near-professional quality applications that can do amazing things. Get a windows box, and you will have none of this (Windows Movie Maker, a poor rip off of iMovie, is so crappy it does not count).
I haven't used most of them, but don't even get me started on iTunes. If the Mac version of iTunes/Quicktime is anything even remotely similar to the versions for Windows, the source code to them needs to be erased and written over with random data as many times as it takes to make sure its completely gone.
5. Built in Java VM. It makes Java developers happy (like me).
Microsoft had one of those, but lawsuits from Sun forced them to remove it. Since they aren't playing nice with Sun, they aren't including theirs either. Of course, with a decent connection, it only takes a few minutes to install one from java.com.
6. Built in Python. It makes Python developers happy.
As a Perl developer, I'm disappointed that you skipped mentioning Perl. Granted, Activestate has Windows versions of both Python and Perl (and probably others like TCL) available for download from their site.
7. Intelligent file sharing with permissions; in windows you have to go through hell to get this working.
Windows XP has two file sharing modes:
Simple Sharing:
I go to the Share tab of a Folder's properties and click one checkbox to give people read access and another to give them write access.
ACL Sharing:
This can be enabled in XP Professional by going to Folder Options (in Explorer or Control Panel), View tab, and unchecking Enable Simple File Sharing (recommended)
I don't necessarily block things from an ad network, unless it tries to set a cookie. Then it gets the boot.
Open Source already has someone abrasive. His name is Richard Stallman, perhaps you've heard of him?
I installed MediaWiki 2 minutes ago creating a new database user and account as I went.
System:
PHP Constants:In a PHP script, using $1$12345678$ as the salt, "something" is crypted as $1$12345678$xu3jxEIwJ9shBYfldViSF0.In my brand new MediaWiki 1.4.4 setup, the password "something" is inserted into the database as 812289532fadbec6239d25743103018d
I suggest you do a code audit, because that password is clearly a non-crypted MD5, even though PHP's constants and the output from crypt show support for it.
I've noticed that most projects done in PHP don't utilize crypted MD5, even though crypt on most OSes support it.
It's really easy to programmatically check to see if the OS crypt supports MD5. Simply pass an 8 character salt to crypt as its first argument, then check the first three characters of the output. If they're $1$, your OS's crypt library supports crypted MD5. This will work in any programming language whose crypt command sends data to the system's crypt command: C/C++, Perl, and PHP to name a few.