Wasn't managed kernel code supposed to stop this from happening? Is Microsoft finally admiting that they messed up with managed code. We've had Smalltalk for 20 years, and C# doesn't have half the features Squek does
Yes it would, but considering the only known 'managed code' OS and kernel in existence is a R&D protype OS made by Microsoft.
Since current managed development outside the MS test OS do not meet the performance needed for OS kernel levels, why would you think Vista would be all managed code?
A managed code kernel 'consumer' OS is about 5-10 years away.
PS What does your comment on Smalltalk have anything to do with this? I think you don't fully understand object or safe code vs managed code.
How will they submit crash reports if it's the NIC driver that's hosed?
Also how long before some hardware company resorts to spyware tactics so people can't click the "submit crash report" button?
1) Crashes are logged, especially in Vista, as the system will note a driver that starts performing 'slowly' or 'boots' slower than it should and it will get flagged in the Admin logs that the user can review and report at any time. So this actually go beyond just crashes, you can report 'poorly' performing drivers as well.
2) Wouldn't it just be easier to put effort into fixing the bug than to try to circumvent the security of Vista? Also do you think MS would allow such a type of driver or application to ever get 'certified' in the first place?
None of those things you mentioned are particularly innovative. They all have been around in lots of products and open source projects. By innovation I don't mean putting out a MS flavored implementation of some other technology. I mean something that is genuinely innovative.
Saying that vista has voice recognition when Mac has had for two years or that SQL server has a new indexing algorithm doesn't wash. Sorry.
Just picky aren't ya?
A new way of indexing is 'innovative', but somehow unless this is something an end user can see and touch I don't think you will accept it as an innovation.
Computing and innovation exists beyond, end user touchable features. Complex code and the mathematics behind them are 'innovations' from an intellecutal standpoint and are 'new' ways of doing things. I'm sorry you don't hold the same definition.
As for all the other things I mentioned 'already' being available, that is not true. Find even ONE product or paper that address what the WDDM model in Vista is doing? There is none outside of Microsoft, even ATI and NVidia have not dealt with the new technologies 'MICROSOFT' introduced.
Also the 'way' the speech technologies in Vista work are new. Oh and BTW MS had Speech recognition back in 1992, far before you could get it on a Mac. (Go look up MS Sound System)
I'm truly not going to hold your hand and teach you what innovation is, or give you another 500 examples. There are tons of things MS brought forth that NEVER existed before that you are using on your Mac or *nix box as well. Even highlight a word and change the font to bold. That was a 'Select and modify' concept Microsoft introduced in MS Word for the Mac back in the mid 80s. Since then all GUI OSes have copied the select and modify model as well for interacting with objects and text.
But hey, MS just copies stuff in your world right?
Vista is a beta which generally meansfeature complete but buggy. Dozens of changes to UAP now means that it wasn't properly thought out when implented. I appauld the effort of windows developers, but they are doing far less with far more people than any other OS project.
Actually from my dialog with the people at MS, the UAP was something that was a major basis of the entire OS security revamp and enforcement.
What has taken 'ironing out' is the application compatibility that either doesn't check security or tries to do things applications should do. (Even a game saving information on a non-user portion of the Hard Drive for example)
Because Win9x didn't have a 'real' security model and was coming from a pre-internet world where systems were closed, applicaitons for the Win9x era just assumed they could do anything to the computer and the OS they wanted to.
When MS first approach Windows 2000 and XP, they considered 'enforcing' the NT security model, but at this time it broke 'far' too many applications expecting admin levels of access to the HD and the OS. MS made a choice, and probably a bad one in going for application compatibility rather than hard line NT security. Although if they would have forced the security at that point, people may not have easily moved to WindowsXP and the NT Architecture.
Windows Vista is the result of finally enforcing the NT security model, but in a way that will hopefully not break too many applications, and start forcing new applications to understand Security and take it into account.
So during the Beta Process and the changes of the UAP most of the work Microsoft has been dealing with is in how 3rd Party applications run and expect to run on the OS and ways Microsoft can 'allow' or disallow certain operations. UAP has even went as far to do some things that were introduced in WindowsXP but on a larger scale. Like the Registry for example, if an application makes Admin level changes, these are allowed based on criteria setup and refined during the Beta cycle, but even the allowed operations are kept 'separate' from the real registry, just like WindowsXP would 'allow' changes to system files, but was only pretending to allow this and instead put the system changes in the application folders so that the applications would not break, yet they are not truly allowed to do anything to the OS.
The UAP is a big step and MS knew it was going to take a lot of refining because a blanket set of rules could not be applied without forcing the users to have tons of UAP prompts or on the other hand breaking the application's ability to run.
People in the beta from the begining knew the UAP would keep changing based on what people found applications to be doing. So this is why the UAP model itself hasn't changed, but its behaviors have.
A few years from now, when developers realize they can't write applications without paying attention to security anymore, the UAP will be something that will be only seen on true 'root' level operations instead of a silly application trying to do stuff it shouldn't.
If Active X requires to be locked down that hard in order to secure a system why bother keeping it? Toss the crap. Toss the crude. Build fresh. With Vista MSFT had a chance to wipe out all the old, buggy, insecure API's that they had been piling on the windows codebase and do a fresh start. Then using a customized VPC/winxp layer to run old apps provide their customers with an easy way to transition customers to the new API over 5-6 year time frame.(ala mac OS 9 to OS X 10.4 which still includes the OS 9 classic layer as an extra)
Instead they are porting the old libraries directly bugs and all. It's why Vista has already had a virus for it. As instead of rewriting an image library they just ported it.
I'm not sure where you are coming at with this, but the WinAPI has been completely gone through, just as it was with Win2k and Windows 2003 Server. The WinAPI also is being 'replaced' in Vista as developers
Name five things that came out of MS reasearch in the last five years. Five things that are now MS products and are innovative. I dare you
In Vista alone, or you want to cover things from all the products from the last 5 years?
Indexing Algorithms like in SQL Server 2005 and Vista? Flash Memory techniques for HD & I/O Caching in Vista? Language Usage beyond Grammar (the new blue lines) in Word 2007? Speech Recognition - The new speech engine in Vista? GPU Multi-Tasking Technologies - like the WDDM model in Vista for both GPU and GPU RAM Virtualization?
Is 5 enough to satisfy the proof of your lack of understand regarding MS's R&D or shall we just make it 300 next?
Just off the top of 'my limited' knowledge we could go on with things regarding XHTML papers, the whole XAML constructs, the 3D scripting concepts from WPF, Windows Media Technologies (like you will use on your HD-DVD or Blu-Ray player) to 100s of other things...
I truly suggest you spend some time going through the public portion of MS R&D, there is a lot of stuff there that is demonstration of theory and other core technologies that will be a part of computing for years to come. MS may suck at business, but they have never hired stupid people when it comes to hard line engineering and theory.
MS Compiler technology is a very good demonstration that they have people that 'get' computing at its core and are very capable of using these concepts in practice. Oh, I didn't even touch on 50 or 60 things from R&D that is a part of Visual Studio 2005 compiler technologies, do you 'need' someone to point them out for you like a child also?
It's also the one thing MSFT won't do. Not even with Vista. They are keeping activeX and while they are trying to use their fine grained permissions control as a basic level they are finding that it doesn't work well. (just look at all the reviews on the vista Beta, 7 steps to delete an icon?)
This is already outdated information and partially incorrect. ActiveX is severly disabled and limited even in WindowsXP at this point. To install an ActiveX control after SP2 takes the user to approve it, and that is if ActiveX is even enabled.
Secondly, the UAP in Vista is 'still' changing, even the Beta2 of Vista does not fully represent the level of protection.
UAP throughout the beta cycle of Vista has been a 'big' work in progress due to the strict enforcement of the NT security model that applications were never forced to adhere to on XP, as they probably should have been even if would have made a lot of applications fail to run properly.
Your information about the 'amount of clicks' to delete an icon is also outdated and wrong. You can find videos at www.microsoft.com that demonstrate the changes in the UAP even since Beta2, and no longer are 'several' prompts required to do anything, in fact UAP is less annoying than 'admin' or 'root' prompts in *nix or OSX at this point. Also since there is no user equivalent to a 'root' account AT ALL on Vista, it offers even a higher level of security past the older *nix model.
As in XP and past version of NT, Administrators were semi-equivalent to root in the *nix model; however this has changed, and even the highest level Administator account still does not have uncontrolled 'root' access. (This is why in earlier versions like Beta2, there were several prompts to confirm operations that required root level access.)
Also everyone here that is not familar with the ActiveX locks and protections introduced with SP2, should look this information up if they are dealing with customers or working with XP at all. As WindowsXP stands now it is harder to get an ActiveX control to install and run than it is to fake a MIME type to get something to run on OSX and several *nixes.
ActiveX is truly not a problem since it was locked down with SP2. Calling for it to be abandon is also not an intelligent way to address the issue, as there are still viable uses for it in corporate environments and where users need more than browser level functionality. In this regard it is NO different than Plug-in technology that everyone here uses in their browsers on other platforms, and not that it has to be user approved and installed like a plug-in is not any more dangerous.
(In the past, I agree that ActiveX was dangerous as it could self install or applications could elevate ActiveX permissions, but this ended with SP2, putting it on the same level of any other downloaded application or plugin type of technology.)
It is easy to pick on MS for not enforcing the NT security model for application compatibility with Win2K and WinXP; however, to pick on MS about Vista because it is 'too' secure is stupid.
In your post alone you argue that MS is not being secure enough and then in the next paragraph you are arguing that they are too secure. Pick a reason to hate them and stick with it.
Yes, they have some clever people working for them, but this is Microsoft we're talking about. They're a business, not an academic institute, and that worries me. And to claim that current R-and-D could be "crucial" in ten years' time is somewhat debatable; Microsoft seems to "make" things "crucial" regardless of necessity by strongarming the marketplace.
To make a distinction between 'academic institute' and business you must not understand what does happen at 'academic institutes' if you think it is all for the good of the people. Most R&D at academic institutes become businesses as well.
We are also at a time when the US Goverment has stopped pouring money into research and 'science', so we had better hope that companies like Microsoft help take up a portion of this slack or the 'next' big things are screwed.
Nanotechnology is already suffering greatly from lack of government funding in the US.
Also just because R&D work comes from a business, does not mean it is only ever used for that business. MS's R&D tends to be more of an exception to the rule, they are not like Sun's R&D where it is only stuff used at Sun, period.
There have been many things from MS R&D that are published and open for free use, even if it does not carry a standard 'open source' license. There is also a lot of work ouside the standard software engineering models, which MS has no interest in using itself and instead is technology given away to the hardware and other science markets.
No offense, but you don't have the facts about MS R&D budget correct, let alone know much about the people or the projects and what has come out of them or you wouldn't discount MS R&D so easily...
have to agree with you there. WinXP is quite painful on 128 MB of RAM. 256 is where it gets usable. 512 is where it is happy. It's not the CPU usage but the RAM usage that kills it. This is pretty true of other modern OS's though.
There is a sweet spot depending on the applications you run and with each RAM increase. However the orginal point was that on the same hardware, WinXP will run faster than Win98 if you have 128mb of RAM. In fact if you are at 80mb of RAM that seems to be where the XP overhead stops slowing the system in comparative performance.
A lot of the lore of Win98 being faster is that in the transition from 98 to XP, people were just moving to 64 and 128mb of RAM on upgraded systems.
Once the RAM overhead is taken out of the picture the NT OSes have always been faster than the Win9x OSes. Even Windows NT 4.0 would run 20% faster than Windows95 with 32mb of RAM. (You can even find old MS articles on this, and 'their own' surprise since Win95 was assembly optimized and NT was Cross Platform C.)
The 386SX is internally identical to the 386DX No, its not. Extenal yes. Internal No.
You are insane, two people have explained this to you and yet you are still insisting the 'opposite' of what is true.
Go look up the 386 architecture, and the differences between the SX and DX. I don't think any of us here have the time to educate you on this any further.
Also I really don't care what upgrades you did your parents computers, as your basis of reference. Some of us here actually are engineers and go a bit further than working on mommy's old computer.
I might be inclined to agree, but if you pay attention to the R&D of Microsoft, both of what is publically published and mass amounts of money into stuff that is unseen, I wouldn't count them out on anything...
They still put more into R&D than any other company, even IBM at its height ($$ or %).
This also isn't money flipped to crazy projects or ideas, but to some of the best engineers and theorists in the world.
Everyone here should drop by the Public portion of the MS R&D site once in a while, some of the concepts showcased are seeds of things that could be crucial in society next month or even 10 years from now.
Not that I disagree with you on this topic, but your post is almost word for word what the industry said of Microsoft when it entered the Server market competing against Novell.
Microsoft was considered to be the 'me to servers' of the time, yet as it turns out the MS servers 'did' offer features that the Novell servers of the time didn't and application servers progressed to the point that MS kicked Novell's butt.
The push for application servers also opened the door for *nixes to enter back into the mainstream 'server' environments, as Novell was a pretty closed Server technology and applications running on the Novell server were a joke.
So if history repeats, don't be surprisd if MS does have an ace up its sleeve and its approach to the clustered server model using that ace and companies do find real advantages when using the Microsoft concepts.
However, even if MS does have an Ace, it would be kind of nice to see the technology envelope challenged, and see this back progression into other OSes and *nixes.
I guess it is the same old story, never underestimate MS...
The 386SX was designed for systems designers who were looking for 386 capabilities at 286 system prices. Like the 286, the 386SX is restricted to only 16 bits when communicating with other system components, such as memory. What part of 386sx did you not read in my orginal post? You should have asked how I got Win95 running on a 386sx because the installer won't run.
And again, I WILL FREAKING REPEAT.. The 386 (being SX or NOT) is a 32bit PROCESSOR. Windows 95 did not GIVE A CRAP ABOUT how it talked to Memory, which was 16bits. This is outside the out 32bit OS concepts, GET IT?
You even responded to show that you were serious about this, how freaking stupid do you think others are, and why do you think you are gaining any respect with this argument. #1) Your argument has no bearing on the conversation #2) You are a freaking under-educated when it comes to 32bit processs and the concepts.
You KEEP REPEATING that it is a 386SX. I don't care if it was 386 Donkey Donkey... ALL, and I MEAN ALL 386 CPUs were 32bit, and had memory and process protection that was used by 32bit OSes. PERIOD (And No I don't care it only talked to RAM in a 16bit pipeline, as that has NOTHING to do with the OS running on it. (386SX were designed for cheaper and easier migration to the new 32bit processor, by using older 286 RAM and chipsets. But again the CPU was 32bit, and that is WHAT the difference was).
This is so insane, I'm not even sure how to respond properly.
Go read up on x86 32bit architectures on wikipedia, and understand that Win95 would NOT give a CRAP about the 16bit bus to RAM. OK?
my original post, right back at you. "might I suggest Windows System Programming Secrets by Matt Pietrek or any Windows programming book by Andrew Schulman."
Ya you can suggest them, in fact I have read them, and even know one of these people. Does that help you at all? No, why because you have a serious deficiency of knowledge on this subject.
Andrew was brilliant in demonstrating the flaws of the Win95 kernel, how it still was held captive to a 16bit Mutext if the OS was running ANY 16bit application, and tons of other information.
However most of his work in this area is OLD, DEAD and NO LONGER MATTERS. Win9X is dead, MS never claimed it was a perfect or the best OS kernel technology, even as Win9X was being developed, MS had plans then to move everyone from the world of DOS and Win9x to NT eventually, and guess what they did.
From a simple programs perspective, there is no difference between the two platforms. Win32 binaries run the same on both. A bad driver on both will BSOD
Ok, this isn't even true. Yes applicatoin binaries run the same on both, but the drivers truly don't. (Even with the Common Driver technology dropped into Win98 and Win2K, the drivers are still fundamentally DIFFERENT.) (There are a few exceptions to this, depending on the ring level of the driver, but for the most part, the common push allowed hardware manufacturers to create a 'separate' driver for Win2k/WinXP from the same code base, but a different compiled version)
You cannot use a driver designed for Win98 on Win2k or WinXP unless it was designed for the NT common driver and 'includes' SEPARATE driver files for Win2k and WinXP.
So there is NO way the SAME driver could cause both OSes to crash. Additionally, even if the drivers were compiled from the same common code base, if it crashes on Win9x, it DOES NOT MEAN it would be allowed to do the same things and crash on Win2k/WinXP.
Add on to that, in WinXP, the OS does internal call checking, even at the driver level, and many 'bad' calls are corrected in realtime, saving the driver/application from failing and also preventing any damage to the OS running.
And thirdly, a driver that could drop the Win9x kernel, does NOT have the elevated Ring Access on Win2k/XP (except for Video), so most drivers would never be able to 'crash' Win2k/XP even if the same driver was so faulty and using
And now.NET 3.0 is literally an entirely different platform family from.NET 2.0?? Kind of like how JavaScript has nothing to do with Java?
I love how the well informed respond...
Actually,.NET 3.0 is.NET 2.0 with all the new Vista stuff strapped on it, like WinFX, etc..NET 3.0 STILL USES THE 2.0 CLR. (Get where I am going here?) It is.NET 2.0 with new features that also run under the same.NET 2.0 CLR...
This time they didn't change the.NET 2.0 platform, they just added new stuff to it, and new features that also run on the same CLR.
So instead of changes in the CLR, you just a bunch of new features and technology to use, like 3D application desing using XAML as an example.
I'm not sure whether to even respond or just send you to wikipedia...
Sort of. The kernals are different, the DLL's are pretty much the same. The Win32 API is an abstract layer that Microsoft sold us on. One of the selling points was "code for win32 and your programs will run on 9.x and NT based systems". Win98SE runs wicked fast on my wifes AMD64 and has an uptime of over three months.
The Win32API is from NT, not Win9x. Binary compatibility is because the NT Win32 APi was used in Win9x, however the underlying kernel of the OS was NOT the same.
If you would notice Windows NT can also run Win16 and also could run OS/2 16 applications 'binary' compatible because of the subsystem nature of the NT kernel. The same reason you can run 'BSD' binaries in the Windows NT BSD Unix subsystem. Understand?
As for any DLLs being the same, this was only true of 'applications' running on the OS, NOT THE OS itself. Even the 'common' DLLs that existed on both Win9X and NT4 at the OS level were 'different' DLLs for the most part, try dropping a common DLL from Win9x to NT4 and notice the DLL fails. There are many reasons for this, many stemming from the security in the NT version of the DLLs to the Unicode differences.
The Win32 (Subsystem) runs on the NT Architecture, that is why it is binary compatible with Win9x. NT is a client/server kernel architecture, that is why it can also run Win16 and even BSD subsystems 'equally' along side the Win32 or Win64 subsystems.
Um, Win95 ran on my 386/16sx (PS/1). I have screen shots. It worked fine until you enabled 32bit disk support. If you don't know the differences between the 9.x and NT kernels might I suggest Windows System Programming Secrets by Pietrek or any Windows programming book by Andrew Schulman.
Um, of course it ran... Ok, you do REALIZE that a 386 processor is 32bit? What the hell are you smoking? Also the 32bit disk support in Win9x had NOTHING to do with the kernel or even the CPU it was running on, it had to with whether your mainboard chipsets would allow Win9x to bypass the Bios for I/O to this device and not use a version of Real Mode to access your hard drives. Even Win3.x had this feature. You are seriously confused on several things here.
The Win9x kernel was NOTHING like the NT kernel, you seriously need to read 'Inside WindowsNT' or at least go to WikiPedia.
XP Modern kernal my ass. Its the same HAL/Kernal that was released with Windows NT 3.1 It has more kernal calls with some code reviews thrown in. Disassemble or do a bdiff someday on the different NT kernels. You will get sued by Microsoft if you publish the results.
Well, wrong again, surprise. The HAL has changed, as the x86 architecture has 'changed' over the years. The HAL from NT 3.1 was under 64KB, the current HAL in XP is around 128KB. That would be a 'bit' of a change considering how little takes place in the HAL. (Hardware Abstraction Layer)
Also you seem to think the only aspect of the NT Kernel is the HAL. Again, wrong. This is just the 'platform' Hardware Abstraction Layer, that provides the hardware interface to the NT Kernel. The NT Kernel was well designed for its time, but it also has evolved over the years, the process scheduling, handling of drivers (like Video dropping Rings and Back up in Vista) to 100s of other KERNEL level changes.
NT is a Hybrid Kernel, and even for people that study Kernels, it is a bit hard to 'lump' into a category, some will call it a microkernel, others will say it is the opposite. What the NT kernel DOES do, is it allows multi-process communication at the Kernel level without the performance loss that other non-monolitic kernels fight.
The hybrid nature of the NT kernel is what made it unique, and even to this day it is still Unique in the world of Kernels. Again, this is why NT can have full binary subsystems that run on the Kernel, and function as their own OSes. Hence why if you would take a look at WindowsNT/2K/XP/Vista you will notice the default OS that
The resposes to this article are more proof that a majority of people on SlashDot don't realize that Win9x and Win2k/XP are ENTIRELY different OSes. Different code bases, actually different code all around.
Windows 101 for Slashdot People
Win3.x was 16bit OS for the x86 only platform and was programmed primarily in C and Assembly Win9x was a 32bit OS built on top of Win3.x technology and again was programmed using C and Assembly in a lot of areas. WinNT was a New OS technology with a 'real' kernel and subsystem technology that was built entirely in portable C for Cross Platform Support WinXP is the modern version of WindowsNT, still built completely in portable C and C++ with no assembly optimization allowed outside of the HAL.
The ONLY reason that Win9X and WinXP 'look' a bit alike is purely cosmetic for end user ease.
So people that are still running Win9x, they deserve the blue screens, you won't have them with XP unless you have hardware failure - you know, like a *nix...
Also as for Win98 being lighter for test environments, you are doing a disservice, especially if you are using it for development testing. Applications run differently on WinXP. Also as for Win9x being lighter, the only truth in this is that Win9x will run well on 32mb of RAM, where WindowsXP requires 64mb of RAM for the 'same level' of performance, and with 128MB of RAM WinXP will run 'faster' than Win98.
I run into people all the time that still associate Windows 'instablity' with Win9x and a 8 year old OS that was mothballed with WinXP was released.
I understand that a lot of peeps and friends in the *nix world run Dual boots or VM versions of Win98, but you need to really move on even if you have to run a hacked version of XP. There are things that will still make you mad at MS but your computer crashing under Windows won't be one of them.
Just as this article and all the anti-MS trolling in here demonstrates, people really just don't get it.
VMWare is not a 'competitor' to MS in the traditional sense, in fact the two products have a vastly different target base and vastly different lineage.
The MS technology is this, a way for Server Administrators to consolidate servers and outdated OS and technology on to new hardware. Specifically MS's newer Server technologies. PERIOD.
VMWare has a vastly different Market as it is used more in testing environments and also in the non server industry more than the Microsoft product.
Sure, they both hit on a common thread, but that doesn't give one a superior mark over the other in areas they are not designed to for.
Let's be realistic, a large portion of the VMWare market is running Hosts on non-Microsoft OSes. MS's Virtual Server is a Host on a single OS.
VMWare is a cross platform tool that will 'eat MS's lunch', especially in the *nix markets.
But what MS VS does is allow companies to take older NT4,Win2k, and even *nix OS that all ran fine on 1Ghz systems and drop them onto a new 4Ghz 64bit Server running Windows 2003 or Longhorn Server.
MS is only a corporate product in this respect, it is also going to run the MS OSes in the clients a bit faster, it is also going to Host a bit faster as it is designed specifically for these target OS platforms. MS also has invested heavily in Network performance from the clients, and Dropping an existing Win2K server on a new Win2003 Server in a VS environment will still meet the speed and needs that the original server provided, yet give companies a path to move up to Win2003 server in smaller increments.
Ok, I think we all should pretty much know that. But here is where VS wins in the Server Market. It not only allows Companies to migrate and upgrade their servers to the new MS OS more frequently, but will allow these same companies that have invested in a *nix to move that *nix over to the Win2003 platform during the transistion. So even if MS VS isn't the best VM technology in the world, it is good enough that companies will use it and MS will leverage it for 'Virtual Hosting' in the future all the way to increasing market share for Windows 2003 Server, which is where VS wins, even if not for itself directly.
We all remember the shift to Virtual Hosting of HTTP servers and IIS was a big push of this as it made this transition for companies very easy. Now imagine the next shift where people can get full server Virtual Hosting and the Hosting company only has to provide one Decked out server running serveral copies of whatever OS the clients want. Yes this is already starting to become an industry move, but with the new virtualization in hardware and supporting software technologies included on the server for free with 'leaner' licensing, MS will push the Windows Server Platform into this market as an 'enclosed' solution to meet these needs.
As the story goes, neither Ballmer nor Microsoft's top engineers could fix the infested computer.
The articles says they found 100 items that were 'nearly impossible' to remove, and they spent more time studying the types of malware, the time was not spent 'removing it'.
Our company has also come across some amazingly levels of malware infested system, but to this date, we have NEVER failed at FULLY removing the malware. And this means we have NEVER had to reinstall an OS to remove malware EVER.
I seriously doubt that our techs are brighter than the engineers at Microsoft, so the summary stating that they "couldn't" fix the infested system is a bit misleading...
But hey, this is Slashdot, I guess I shouldn't expect accurate reporting over bias. (It would be like watching Fox News for facts instead of conservative talking points.)
Ok, ya typing D[tab] is hard for some people. (geesh)
But ya, the naming is a little messed up, that I agree with.
The problem with 'your' approach is you assume one user per machine. Not a good idea, even if you have a guest account active on the machine so you don't have to turn over your email and profile to someone that just wants to use the computer to type a letter or view the web.
One other note, in Vista the folder naming has changed to \Users with a 'Public' folder instead of a 'All Users'. Better naming, and makes more sense to geeks and non-geeks alike.
Also Vista drops users to \Users\ instead of the desktop folder being the root for users. More conventional, and familiar in the *nix world too.
Yes it is rare and PDFs are mainly used outside of the Press industry; however, in the press industry that has been rapidly moving to digital, PDF and Adobe are the defacto standard, or are now at least.
And this is a large $$ market, Adobe makes nothing off you producing PDFs unless you purchased their creator software, however the digital press market pays 'tons' of money to Adobe, as well as any printer manufacturer that provides a postscript/PDF device - look at an Epson Printer for example, just adding the Adobe package on it is $100 minimum and it is nothing but licensing and software on most models.
So not only is Adobe Pissing Off MS, they are giving MS an open excuse to drive XPS into every printer and digital press in the world.
And when you think about it, why wouldn't printer manufacturers, and digital press companies use XPS? Unlike PDF and Postscript, there is no licensing they would have to pay to Microsoft to use and be XPS printing devices.
There are already a bunch of home and professional desktop printers in the works that have native XPS support, at least at the driver level, if not in the printer's hardware itself. And if the digital press market can drop the Adobe licensing fees and deliver a 'better' document format to their clients at the same time, there is nothing binding them to Adobe except non-Windows XPS support, and that is also something that you will see before long on BSD, Linux and OSX. (OSX being the biggest smack to Adobe's hold on the digital markets.)
In the end, the users will win, because even if Adobe comes out swinging and innovates to keep ahead instead of sueing, then the document format from them will get better too. And let's face it, PDF & Postscript even in the latest versions look quite dated compared to other things out there, especially XPS. (Although I think Adobe will try to sue or find litigation to help them instead of just making their formats better at first. Call it innovation the way of Oracle Lesson #1.)
I for one welcome the changes, as a old time Graphic Designer, having a better 'to page' format with more control is a great thing, changes in lpi or other subtle changes can stretch the abilities of any printing device, and that is not even factoring what new is available in XPS.
Also maintaining non print elements in the document format like transitions also opens the door for a true digital printed world, as electronic Ink technologies take off, you will be able to print your XPS document that has all the animations and transistions and they will print/display on the next generation of digital output devices that are no longer static pages.
Well my sources at Adobe and MS tell me that XPS has Adobe POed, even though Microsoft has pulled Adobe into every XPS event and even has provided them with more development and technical details than developers are getting access to.
XPS is basically what the Print Engine, or Vector compose in Vista uses to pass data around, although it can be dropped into a file format. Even MS admits that XPS is not in the same category as PDF, nor includes the features of PDF.
However, for whatever reason, Adobe's bargaining with MS was to have them RIP XPS out of Vista. (Hard to do, since it is how the Video and Applications and Printers pass data around - although I guess MS could pull the mechanism that turns this data into a file.) However, XPS technology is what Adobe should be using to BUILD their Vista version of Acrobat, but instead see it as a threat.
MS refused to pull XPS out of Vista, so Adobe came back to the table telling them to rip PDF out of Office 2007 then. PDF is NOT an open standard, even though Adobe has let companies make software with PDF Export/Save abilities for years without fighting them on it. (Corel, Open Office, etc etc...)
So now that MS was going to use it, (actually a good thing for PDF, because people wouldn't be so apt to use XPS or OfficeXML), but instead Adobe is more concerned of the XPS threat from Vista, and is requested that MS pay 'fees' for each copy of Office to Adobe. (Again, not so on the table, as they have not asked for these fees from Corel or anyone else that also does PDF creation)
So maybe it isn't just Adobe wanting $$ from MS, but Adobe is still the ones stiring the pot.
My sources at MS that have been working with Adobe over the past couple of years on XPS and PDF in Office 2007 were freaking shocked that Adobe has taken the road it has in the past negotiations. With Adobe not only giving MS the finger basically, but using threat tatics of the EU and also trying to get additional help from the US govt.
MS DID offer to bundle everything from Acrobat Reader to Flash in Vista as a way to offset any concerns Adobe had. Adobe still refused wanting $$ for the PDF support in Office 2007.
It is almost like Adobe is cutting off their nose to spite their face.
I remember when SGI and the rest of the OpenGL group that MS was a strong proponent of told MS to pound sand when Microsoft wanted to advance the OpenGL api for gaming and push 3d gaming GPU technology from the OpenGL APIs. MS said fine and went off to create their own technologies and why we now have DirectX.
I can see this thing from Adobe doing the same, pushing MS to ratify XPS and OfficeXML as 'industry' document standards and tell Adobe to go pound PDF sand. MS at least is giving away the source and usage rights to XPS, something Adobe hasn't even done with PDF.
All it would take is a few tools and some encouragement to get *nix and Mac developers to support MS's 'open' document format to seriously hurt Adobe. Now Adobe has given MS every reason to do so.
Not only is this story a repeat, but it is worth mentioning that the Tom's review is basically pictures of the OS with almost NO technical details on Vista. They even are incorrect on features of DirectX 10 in the review.
All these 'wonderful' reviews running around on Vista, and still none exist that talk about the OS itself, all the reviews are doing is throwing up some pictures of the desktop and talking about AERO.
For example have you yet seen a review that mentions key points of the new OS of things that changed, like kernel changes, new memory management, new process scheduling, how the Video Driver is moved up from kernel level to user level, but still getting kernel level performace or even anytyhing on the vector based composer that is behind the AERO or WPF?
Nope...
Until you see these types of reviews, all you are going to get is a taste of the freaking eye candy and nerds going, "Here is the control panel" (Picture)
Errr, right, your fluff (it was all attributed to a MS spokesperson) piece link pretty much confirmed what this guy said
Well, I'm sure this person's theory is more accurate than MS saying they are pulling XPS out of Office. Sure, this post you reference has to be more CORRECT than MS's official press statements about removing XPS from Office 2007.
Adobe was trying to get $$ from the great MS and threatening them with going to the EU if Microsoft didn't pony up royalties, and people here are rushing to defend Adobe even if they have to make it up...
The irony, this story doesn't mean much as the PDF and XPS capabilities will still be free downloads for Office 2007. The real story here is watching Adobe try to bully $$ from MS by threatening them with the EU.
How many other companies that can Export or Save in PDF format have you seen Adobe go after, and if they haven't why is MS so special? It is called getting greedy because they think they can pull strings between pulling the feature from Office 2007 and EU threats.
If this is how Adobe handles business maybe we should consider kicking PDF and Adobe's Memory Hog Viewer and crappy PDF creation tools to the curb once and for all...
(One sad note, as a Office 2007 tester, the MS PDF Save feature in Office 2007 worked better than using the real Adobe PDF Creation tools, maybe this is what POed Adobe.)
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Wasn't managed kernel code supposed to stop this from happening? Is Microsoft finally admiting that they messed up with managed code. We've had Smalltalk for 20 years, and C# doesn't have half the features Squek does
Yes it would, but considering the only known 'managed code' OS and kernel in existence is a R&D protype OS made by Microsoft.
Since current managed development outside the MS test OS do not meet the performance needed for OS kernel levels, why would you think Vista would be all managed code?
A managed code kernel 'consumer' OS is about 5-10 years away.
PS What does your comment on Smalltalk have anything to do with this? I think you don't fully understand object or safe code vs managed code.
How will they submit crash reports if it's the NIC driver that's hosed?
Also how long before some hardware company resorts to spyware tactics so people can't click the "submit crash report" button?
1) Crashes are logged, especially in Vista, as the system will note a driver that starts performing 'slowly' or 'boots' slower than it should and it will get flagged in the Admin logs that the user can review and report at any time. So this actually go beyond just crashes, you can report 'poorly' performing drivers as well.
2) Wouldn't it just be easier to put effort into fixing the bug than to try to circumvent the security of Vista? Also do you think MS would allow such a type of driver or application to ever get 'certified' in the first place?
Take Care...
I apologize, I assumed you would be smart enough to understand. Next time I see your name, I will just pass out the crayons and move on...
None of those things you mentioned are particularly innovative. They all have been around in lots of products and open source projects. By innovation I don't mean putting out a MS flavored implementation of some other technology. I mean something that is genuinely innovative.
Saying that vista has voice recognition when Mac has had for two years or that SQL server has a new indexing algorithm doesn't wash. Sorry.
Just picky aren't ya?
A new way of indexing is 'innovative', but somehow unless this is something an end user can see and touch I don't think you will accept it as an innovation.
Computing and innovation exists beyond, end user touchable features. Complex code and the mathematics behind them are 'innovations' from an intellecutal standpoint and are 'new' ways of doing things. I'm sorry you don't hold the same definition.
As for all the other things I mentioned 'already' being available, that is not true. Find even ONE product or paper that address what the WDDM model in Vista is doing? There is none outside of Microsoft, even ATI and NVidia have not dealt with the new technologies 'MICROSOFT' introduced.
Also the 'way' the speech technologies in Vista work are new. Oh and BTW MS had Speech recognition back in 1992, far before you could get it on a Mac. (Go look up MS Sound System)
I'm truly not going to hold your hand and teach you what innovation is, or give you another 500 examples. There are tons of things MS brought forth that NEVER existed before that you are using on your Mac or *nix box as well. Even highlight a word and change the font to bold. That was a 'Select and modify' concept Microsoft introduced in MS Word for the Mac back in the mid 80s. Since then all GUI OSes have copied the select and modify model as well for interacting with objects and text.
But hey, MS just copies stuff in your world right?
Vista is a beta which generally meansfeature complete but buggy. Dozens of changes to UAP now means that it wasn't properly thought out when implented. I appauld the effort of windows developers, but they are doing far less with far more people than any other OS project.
Actually from my dialog with the people at MS, the UAP was something that was a major basis of the entire OS security revamp and enforcement.
What has taken 'ironing out' is the application compatibility that either doesn't check security or tries to do things applications should do. (Even a game saving information on a non-user portion of the Hard Drive for example)
Because Win9x didn't have a 'real' security model and was coming from a pre-internet world where systems were closed, applicaitons for the Win9x era just assumed they could do anything to the computer and the OS they wanted to.
When MS first approach Windows 2000 and XP, they considered 'enforcing' the NT security model, but at this time it broke 'far' too many applications expecting admin levels of access to the HD and the OS. MS made a choice, and probably a bad one in going for application compatibility rather than hard line NT security. Although if they would have forced the security at that point, people may not have easily moved to WindowsXP and the NT Architecture.
Windows Vista is the result of finally enforcing the NT security model, but in a way that will hopefully not break too many applications, and start forcing new applications to understand Security and take it into account.
So during the Beta Process and the changes of the UAP most of the work Microsoft has been dealing with is in how 3rd Party applications run and expect to run on the OS and ways Microsoft can 'allow' or disallow certain operations. UAP has even went as far to do some things that were introduced in WindowsXP but on a larger scale. Like the Registry for example, if an application makes Admin level changes, these are allowed based on criteria setup and refined during the Beta cycle, but even the allowed operations are kept 'separate' from the real registry, just like WindowsXP would 'allow' changes to system files, but was only pretending to allow this and instead put the system changes in the application folders so that the applications would not break, yet they are not truly allowed to do anything to the OS.
The UAP is a big step and MS knew it was going to take a lot of refining because a blanket set of rules could not be applied without forcing the users to have tons of UAP prompts or on the other hand breaking the application's ability to run.
People in the beta from the begining knew the UAP would keep changing based on what people found applications to be doing. So this is why the UAP model itself hasn't changed, but its behaviors have.
A few years from now, when developers realize they can't write applications without paying attention to security anymore, the UAP will be something that will be only seen on true 'root' level operations instead of a silly application trying to do stuff it shouldn't.
If Active X requires to be locked down that hard in order to secure a system why bother keeping it? Toss the crap. Toss the crude. Build fresh. With Vista MSFT had a chance to wipe out all the old, buggy, insecure API's that they had been piling on the windows codebase and do a fresh start. Then using a customized VPC/winxp layer to run old apps provide their customers with an easy way to transition customers to the new API over 5-6 year time frame.(ala mac OS 9 to OS X 10.4 which still includes the OS 9 classic layer as an extra)
Instead they are porting the old libraries directly bugs and all. It's why Vista has already had a virus for it. As instead of rewriting an image library they just ported it.
I'm not sure where you are coming at with this, but the WinAPI has been completely gone through, just as it was with Win2k and Windows 2003 Server. The WinAPI also is being 'replaced' in Vista as developers
Name five things that came out of MS reasearch in the last five years. Five things that are now MS products and are innovative. I dare you
In Vista alone, or you want to cover things from all the products from the last 5 years?
Indexing Algorithms like in SQL Server 2005 and Vista?
Flash Memory techniques for HD & I/O Caching in Vista?
Language Usage beyond Grammar (the new blue lines) in Word 2007?
Speech Recognition - The new speech engine in Vista?
GPU Multi-Tasking Technologies - like the WDDM model in Vista for both GPU and GPU RAM Virtualization?
Is 5 enough to satisfy the proof of your lack of understand regarding MS's R&D or shall we just make it 300 next?
Just off the top of 'my limited' knowledge we could go on with things regarding XHTML papers, the whole XAML constructs, the 3D scripting concepts from WPF, Windows Media Technologies (like you will use on your HD-DVD or Blu-Ray player) to 100s of other things...
I truly suggest you spend some time going through the public portion of MS R&D, there is a lot of stuff there that is demonstration of theory and other core technologies that will be a part of computing for years to come. MS may suck at business, but they have never hired stupid people when it comes to hard line engineering and theory.
MS Compiler technology is a very good demonstration that they have people that 'get' computing at its core and are very capable of using these concepts in practice. Oh, I didn't even touch on 50 or 60 things from R&D that is a part of Visual Studio 2005 compiler technologies, do you 'need' someone to point them out for you like a child also?
It's also the one thing MSFT won't do. Not even with Vista. They are keeping activeX and while they are trying to use their fine grained permissions control as a basic level they are finding that it doesn't work well. (just look at all the reviews on the vista Beta, 7 steps to delete an icon?)
This is already outdated information and partially incorrect. ActiveX is severly disabled and limited even in WindowsXP at this point. To install an ActiveX control after SP2 takes the user to approve it, and that is if ActiveX is even enabled.
Secondly, the UAP in Vista is 'still' changing, even the Beta2 of Vista does not fully represent the level of protection.
UAP throughout the beta cycle of Vista has been a 'big' work in progress due to the strict enforcement of the NT security model that applications were never forced to adhere to on XP, as they probably should have been even if would have made a lot of applications fail to run properly.
Your information about the 'amount of clicks' to delete an icon is also outdated and wrong. You can find videos at www.microsoft.com that demonstrate the changes in the UAP even since Beta2, and no longer are 'several' prompts required to do anything, in fact UAP is less annoying than 'admin' or 'root' prompts in *nix or OSX at this point. Also since there is no user equivalent to a 'root' account AT ALL on Vista, it offers even a higher level of security past the older *nix model.
As in XP and past version of NT, Administrators were semi-equivalent to root in the *nix model; however this has changed, and even the highest level Administator account still does not have uncontrolled 'root' access. (This is why in earlier versions like Beta2, there were several prompts to confirm operations that required root level access.)
Also everyone here that is not familar with the ActiveX locks and protections introduced with SP2, should look this information up if they are dealing with customers or working with XP at all. As WindowsXP stands now it is harder to get an ActiveX control to install and run than it is to fake a MIME type to get something to run on OSX and several *nixes.
ActiveX is truly not a problem since it was locked down with SP2. Calling for it to be abandon is also not an intelligent way to address the issue, as there are still viable uses for it in corporate environments and where users need more than browser level functionality. In this regard it is NO different than Plug-in technology that everyone here uses in their browsers on other platforms, and not that it has to be user approved and installed like a plug-in is not any more dangerous.
(In the past, I agree that ActiveX was dangerous as it could self install or applications could elevate ActiveX permissions, but this ended with SP2, putting it on the same level of any other downloaded application or plugin type of technology.)
It is easy to pick on MS for not enforcing the NT security model for application compatibility with Win2K and WinXP; however, to pick on MS about Vista because it is 'too' secure is stupid.
In your post alone you argue that MS is not being secure enough and then in the next paragraph you are arguing that they are too secure. Pick a reason to hate them and stick with it.
Yes, they have some clever people working for them, but this is Microsoft we're talking about. They're a business, not an academic institute, and that worries me. And to claim that current R-and-D could be "crucial" in ten years' time is somewhat debatable; Microsoft seems to "make" things "crucial" regardless of necessity by strongarming the marketplace.
To make a distinction between 'academic institute' and business you must not understand what does happen at 'academic institutes' if you think it is all for the good of the people. Most R&D at academic institutes become businesses as well.
We are also at a time when the US Goverment has stopped pouring money into research and 'science', so we had better hope that companies like Microsoft help take up a portion of this slack or the 'next' big things are screwed.
Nanotechnology is already suffering greatly from lack of government funding in the US.
Also just because R&D work comes from a business, does not mean it is only ever used for that business. MS's R&D tends to be more of an exception to the rule, they are not like Sun's R&D where it is only stuff used at Sun, period.
There have been many things from MS R&D that are published and open for free use, even if it does not carry a standard 'open source' license. There is also a lot of work ouside the standard software engineering models, which MS has no interest in using itself and instead is technology given away to the hardware and other science markets.
No offense, but you don't have the facts about MS R&D budget correct, let alone know much about the people or the projects and what has come out of them or you wouldn't discount MS R&D so easily...
have to agree with you there. WinXP is quite painful on 128 MB of RAM. 256 is where it gets usable. 512 is where it is happy. It's not the CPU usage but the RAM usage that kills it. This is pretty true of other modern OS's though.
There is a sweet spot depending on the applications you run and with each RAM increase. However the orginal point was that on the same hardware, WinXP will run faster than Win98 if you have 128mb of RAM. In fact if you are at 80mb of RAM that seems to be where the XP overhead stops slowing the system in comparative performance.
A lot of the lore of Win98 being faster is that in the transition from 98 to XP, people were just moving to 64 and 128mb of RAM on upgraded systems.
Once the RAM overhead is taken out of the picture the NT OSes have always been faster than the Win9x OSes. Even Windows NT 4.0 would run 20% faster than Windows95 with 32mb of RAM. (You can even find old MS articles on this, and 'their own' surprise since Win95 was assembly optimized and NT was Cross Platform C.)
The 386SX is internally identical to the 386DX
No, its not. Extenal yes. Internal No.
You are insane, two people have explained this to you and yet you are still insisting the 'opposite' of what is true.
Go look up the 386 architecture, and the differences between the SX and DX. I don't think any of us here have the time to educate you on this any further.
Also I really don't care what upgrades you did your parents computers, as your basis of reference. Some of us here actually are engineers and go a bit further than working on mommy's old computer.
I might be inclined to agree, but if you pay attention to the R&D of Microsoft, both of what is publically published and mass amounts of money into stuff that is unseen, I wouldn't count them out on anything...
They still put more into R&D than any other company, even IBM at its height ($$ or %).
This also isn't money flipped to crazy projects or ideas, but to some of the best engineers and theorists in the world.
Everyone here should drop by the Public portion of the MS R&D site once in a while, some of the concepts showcased are seeds of things that could be crucial in society next month or even 10 years from now.
Meanwhile, the (Win9X/NT/Linux) POS drivers I wrote are still running fine across the planet. 6000+ at last count (US/Canada/Mexico/Peru).
Is this where I say that I have software running on the International Space Station or do I just pull out my penis to see whos is longer?
I feel sorry for your customers, if you really thought running a 32bit OS on a 386sx was special...
(PS. I actually do have software on the Space Station, so you can keep your penis in your pants.)
Not that I disagree with you on this topic, but your post is almost word for word what the industry said of Microsoft when it entered the Server market competing against Novell.
Microsoft was considered to be the 'me to servers' of the time, yet as it turns out the MS servers 'did' offer features that the Novell servers of the time didn't and application servers progressed to the point that MS kicked Novell's butt.
The push for application servers also opened the door for *nixes to enter back into the mainstream 'server' environments, as Novell was a pretty closed Server technology and applications running on the Novell server were a joke.
So if history repeats, don't be surprisd if MS does have an ace up its sleeve and its approach to the clustered server model using that ace and companies do find real advantages when using the Microsoft concepts.
However, even if MS does have an Ace, it would be kind of nice to see the technology envelope challenged, and see this back progression into other OSes and *nixes.
I guess it is the same old story, never underestimate MS...
The 386SX was designed for systems designers who were looking for 386 capabilities at 286 system prices. Like the 286, the 386SX is restricted to only 16 bits when communicating with other system components, such as memory. What part of 386sx did you not read in my orginal post? You should have asked how I got Win95 running on a 386sx because the installer won't run.
."
And again, I WILL FREAKING REPEAT.. The 386 (being SX or NOT) is a 32bit PROCESSOR. Windows 95 did not GIVE A CRAP ABOUT how it talked to Memory, which was 16bits. This is outside the out 32bit OS concepts, GET IT?
You even responded to show that you were serious about this, how freaking stupid do you think others are, and why do you think you are gaining any respect with this argument. #1) Your argument has no bearing on the conversation #2) You are a freaking under-educated when it comes to 32bit processs and the concepts.
You KEEP REPEATING that it is a 386SX. I don't care if it was 386 Donkey Donkey... ALL, and I MEAN ALL 386 CPUs were 32bit, and had memory and process protection that was used by 32bit OSes. PERIOD (And No I don't care it only talked to RAM in a 16bit pipeline, as that has NOTHING to do with the OS running on it. (386SX were designed for cheaper and easier migration to the new 32bit processor, by using older 286 RAM and chipsets. But again the CPU was 32bit, and that is WHAT the difference was).
This is so insane, I'm not even sure how to respond properly.
Go read up on x86 32bit architectures on wikipedia, and understand that Win95 would NOT give a CRAP about the 16bit bus to RAM. OK?
my original post, right back at you. "might I suggest Windows System Programming Secrets by Matt Pietrek or any Windows programming book by Andrew Schulman
Ya you can suggest them, in fact I have read them, and even know one of these people. Does that help you at all? No, why because you have a serious deficiency of knowledge on this subject.
Andrew was brilliant in demonstrating the flaws of the Win95 kernel, how it still was held captive to a 16bit Mutext if the OS was running ANY 16bit application, and tons of other information.
However most of his work in this area is OLD, DEAD and NO LONGER MATTERS. Win9X is dead, MS never claimed it was a perfect or the best OS kernel technology, even as Win9X was being developed, MS had plans then to move everyone from the world of DOS and Win9x to NT eventually, and guess what they did.
From a simple programs perspective, there is no difference between the two platforms. Win32 binaries run the same on both. A bad driver on both will BSOD
Ok, this isn't even true. Yes applicatoin binaries run the same on both, but the drivers truly don't. (Even with the Common Driver technology dropped into Win98 and Win2K, the drivers are still fundamentally DIFFERENT.) (There are a few exceptions to this, depending on the ring level of the driver, but for the most part, the common push allowed hardware manufacturers to create a 'separate' driver for Win2k/WinXP from the same code base, but a different compiled version)
You cannot use a driver designed for Win98 on Win2k or WinXP unless it was designed for the NT common driver and 'includes' SEPARATE driver files for Win2k and WinXP.
So there is NO way the SAME driver could cause both OSes to crash. Additionally, even if the drivers were compiled from the same common code base, if it crashes on Win9x, it DOES NOT MEAN it would be allowed to do the same things and crash on Win2k/WinXP.
Add on to that, in WinXP, the OS does internal call checking, even at the driver level, and many 'bad' calls are corrected in realtime, saving the driver/application from failing and also preventing any damage to the OS running.
And thirdly, a driver that could drop the Win9x kernel, does NOT have the elevated Ring Access on Win2k/XP (except for Video), so most drivers would never be able to 'crash' Win2k/XP even if the same driver was so faulty and using
And now .NET 3.0 is literally an entirely different platform family from .NET 2.0?? Kind of like how JavaScript has nothing to do with Java?
.NET 3.0 is .NET 2.0 with all the new Vista stuff strapped on it, like WinFX, etc. .NET 3.0 STILL USES THE 2.0 CLR. (Get where I am going here?) It is .NET 2.0 with new features that also run under the same .NET 2.0 CLR...
.NET 2.0 platform, they just added new stuff to it, and new features that also run on the same CLR.
I love how the well informed respond...
Actually,
This time they didn't change the
So instead of changes in the CLR, you just a bunch of new features and technology to use, like 3D application desing using XAML as an example.
Understand?
I'm not sure whether to even respond or just send you to wikipedia...
Sort of. The kernals are different, the DLL's are pretty much the same. The Win32 API is an abstract layer that Microsoft sold us on. One of the selling points was "code for win32 and your programs will run on 9.x and NT based systems". Win98SE runs wicked fast on my wifes AMD64 and has an uptime of over three months.
The Win32API is from NT, not Win9x. Binary compatibility is because the NT Win32 APi was used in Win9x, however the underlying kernel of the OS was NOT the same.
If you would notice Windows NT can also run Win16 and also could run OS/2 16 applications 'binary' compatible because of the subsystem nature of the NT kernel. The same reason you can run 'BSD' binaries in the Windows NT BSD Unix subsystem. Understand?
As for any DLLs being the same, this was only true of 'applications' running on the OS, NOT THE OS itself. Even the 'common' DLLs that existed on both Win9X and NT4 at the OS level were 'different' DLLs for the most part, try dropping a common DLL from Win9x to NT4 and notice the DLL fails. There are many reasons for this, many stemming from the security in the NT version of the DLLs to the Unicode differences.
The Win32 (Subsystem) runs on the NT Architecture, that is why it is binary compatible with Win9x. NT is a client/server kernel architecture, that is why it can also run Win16 and even BSD subsystems 'equally' along side the Win32 or Win64 subsystems.
Um, Win95 ran on my 386/16sx (PS/1). I have screen shots. It worked fine until you enabled 32bit disk support. If you don't know the differences between the 9.x and NT kernels might I suggest Windows System Programming Secrets by Pietrek or any Windows programming book by Andrew Schulman.
Um, of course it ran... Ok, you do REALIZE that a 386 processor is 32bit? What the hell are you smoking? Also the 32bit disk support in Win9x had NOTHING to do with the kernel or even the CPU it was running on, it had to with whether your mainboard chipsets would allow Win9x to bypass the Bios for I/O to this device and not use a version of Real Mode to access your hard drives. Even Win3.x had this feature. You are seriously confused on several things here.
The Win9x kernel was NOTHING like the NT kernel, you seriously need to read 'Inside WindowsNT' or at least go to WikiPedia.
XP Modern kernal my ass. Its the same HAL/Kernal that was released with Windows NT 3.1
It has more kernal calls with some code reviews thrown in. Disassemble or do a bdiff someday on the different NT kernels. You will get sued by Microsoft if you publish the results.
Well, wrong again, surprise. The HAL has changed, as the x86 architecture has 'changed' over the years. The HAL from NT 3.1 was under 64KB, the current HAL in XP is around 128KB. That would be a 'bit' of a change considering how little takes place in the HAL. (Hardware Abstraction Layer)
Also you seem to think the only aspect of the NT Kernel is the HAL. Again, wrong. This is just the 'platform' Hardware Abstraction Layer, that provides the hardware interface to the NT Kernel. The NT Kernel was well designed for its time, but it also has evolved over the years, the process scheduling, handling of drivers (like Video dropping Rings and Back up in Vista) to 100s of other KERNEL level changes.
NT is a Hybrid Kernel, and even for people that study Kernels, it is a bit hard to 'lump' into a category, some will call it a microkernel, others will say it is the opposite. What the NT kernel DOES do, is it allows multi-process communication at the Kernel level without the performance loss that other non-monolitic kernels fight.
The hybrid nature of the NT kernel is what made it unique, and even to this day it is still Unique in the world of Kernels. Again, this is why NT can have full binary subsystems that run on the Kernel, and function as their own OSes. Hence why if you would take a look at WindowsNT/2K/XP/Vista you will notice the default OS that
The resposes to this article are more proof that a majority of people on SlashDot don't realize that Win9x and Win2k/XP are ENTIRELY different OSes. Different code bases, actually different code all around.
Windows 101 for Slashdot People
Win3.x was 16bit OS for the x86 only platform and was programmed primarily in C and Assembly
Win9x was a 32bit OS built on top of Win3.x technology and again was programmed using C and Assembly in a lot of areas.
WinNT was a New OS technology with a 'real' kernel and subsystem technology that was built entirely in portable C for Cross Platform Support
WinXP is the modern version of WindowsNT, still built completely in portable C and C++ with no assembly optimization allowed outside of the HAL.
The ONLY reason that Win9X and WinXP 'look' a bit alike is purely cosmetic for end user ease.
So people that are still running Win9x, they deserve the blue screens, you won't have them with XP unless you have hardware failure - you know, like a *nix...
Also as for Win98 being lighter for test environments, you are doing a disservice, especially if you are using it for development testing. Applications run differently on WinXP. Also as for Win9x being lighter, the only truth in this is that Win9x will run well on 32mb of RAM, where WindowsXP requires 64mb of RAM for the 'same level' of performance, and with 128MB of RAM WinXP will run 'faster' than Win98.
I run into people all the time that still associate Windows 'instablity' with Win9x and a 8 year old OS that was mothballed with WinXP was released.
I understand that a lot of peeps and friends in the *nix world run Dual boots or VM versions of Win98, but you need to really move on even if you have to run a hacked version of XP. There are things that will still make you mad at MS but your computer crashing under Windows won't be one of them.
People do not seem to understand...
Just as this article and all the anti-MS trolling in here demonstrates, people really just don't get it.
VMWare is not a 'competitor' to MS in the traditional sense, in fact the two products have a vastly different target base and vastly different lineage.
The MS technology is this, a way for Server Administrators to consolidate servers and outdated OS and technology on to new hardware. Specifically MS's newer Server technologies. PERIOD.
VMWare has a vastly different Market as it is used more in testing environments and also in the non server industry more than the Microsoft product.
Sure, they both hit on a common thread, but that doesn't give one a superior mark over the other in areas they are not designed to for.
Let's be realistic, a large portion of the VMWare market is running Hosts on non-Microsoft OSes. MS's Virtual Server is a Host on a single OS.
VMWare is a cross platform tool that will 'eat MS's lunch', especially in the *nix markets.
But what MS VS does is allow companies to take older NT4,Win2k, and even *nix OS that all ran fine on 1Ghz systems and drop them onto a new 4Ghz 64bit Server running Windows 2003 or Longhorn Server.
MS is only a corporate product in this respect, it is also going to run the MS OSes in the clients a bit faster, it is also going to Host a bit faster as it is designed specifically for these target OS platforms. MS also has invested heavily in Network performance from the clients, and Dropping an existing Win2K server on a new Win2003 Server in a VS environment will still meet the speed and needs that the original server provided, yet give companies a path to move up to Win2003 server in smaller increments.
Ok, I think we all should pretty much know that. But here is where VS wins in the Server Market. It not only allows Companies to migrate and upgrade their servers to the new MS OS more frequently, but will allow these same companies that have invested in a *nix to move that *nix over to the Win2003 platform during the transistion. So even if MS VS isn't the best VM technology in the world, it is good enough that companies will use it and MS will leverage it for 'Virtual Hosting' in the future all the way to increasing market share for Windows 2003 Server, which is where VS wins, even if not for itself directly.
We all remember the shift to Virtual Hosting of HTTP servers and IIS was a big push of this as it made this transition for companies very easy. Now imagine the next shift where people can get full server Virtual Hosting and the Hosting company only has to provide one Decked out server running serveral copies of whatever OS the clients want. Yes this is already starting to become an industry move, but with the new virtualization in hardware and supporting software technologies included on the server for free with 'leaner' licensing, MS will push the Windows Server Platform into this market as an 'enclosed' solution to meet these needs.
Ok, the summary on Slashdot doesn't match Article
As the story goes, neither Ballmer nor Microsoft's top engineers could fix the infested computer.
The articles says they found 100 items that were 'nearly impossible' to remove, and they spent more time studying the types of malware, the time was not spent 'removing it'.
Our company has also come across some amazingly levels of malware infested system, but to this date, we have NEVER failed at FULLY removing the malware. And this means we have NEVER had to reinstall an OS to remove malware EVER.
I seriously doubt that our techs are brighter than the engineers at Microsoft, so the summary stating that they "couldn't" fix the infested system is a bit misleading...
But hey, this is Slashdot, I guess I shouldn't expect accurate reporting over bias. (It would be like watching Fox News for facts instead of conservative talking points.)
Ok, ya typing D[tab] is hard for some people. (geesh)
But ya, the naming is a little messed up, that I agree with.
The problem with 'your' approach is you assume one user per machine. Not a good idea, even if you have a guest account active on the machine so you don't have to turn over your email and profile to someone that just wants to use the computer to type a letter or view the web.
One other note, in Vista the folder naming has changed to \Users with a 'Public' folder instead of a 'All Users'. Better naming, and makes more sense to geeks and non-geeks alike.
Also Vista drops users to \Users\ instead of the desktop folder being the root for users. More conventional, and familiar in the *nix world too.
Yes it is rare and PDFs are mainly used outside of the Press industry; however, in the press industry that has been rapidly moving to digital, PDF and Adobe are the defacto standard, or are now at least.
And this is a large $$ market, Adobe makes nothing off you producing PDFs unless you purchased their creator software, however the digital press market pays 'tons' of money to Adobe, as well as any printer manufacturer that provides a postscript/PDF device - look at an Epson Printer for example, just adding the Adobe package on it is $100 minimum and it is nothing but licensing and software on most models.
So not only is Adobe Pissing Off MS, they are giving MS an open excuse to drive XPS into every printer and digital press in the world.
And when you think about it, why wouldn't printer manufacturers, and digital press companies use XPS? Unlike PDF and Postscript, there is no licensing they would have to pay to Microsoft to use and be XPS printing devices.
There are already a bunch of home and professional desktop printers in the works that have native XPS support, at least at the driver level, if not in the printer's hardware itself. And if the digital press market can drop the Adobe licensing fees and deliver a 'better' document format to their clients at the same time, there is nothing binding them to Adobe except non-Windows XPS support, and that is also something that you will see before long on BSD, Linux and OSX. (OSX being the biggest smack to Adobe's hold on the digital markets.)
In the end, the users will win, because even if Adobe comes out swinging and innovates to keep ahead instead of sueing, then the document format from them will get better too. And let's face it, PDF & Postscript even in the latest versions look quite dated compared to other things out there, especially XPS. (Although I think Adobe will try to sue or find litigation to help them instead of just making their formats better at first. Call it innovation the way of Oracle Lesson #1.)
I for one welcome the changes, as a old time Graphic Designer, having a better 'to page' format with more control is a great thing, changes in lpi or other subtle changes can stretch the abilities of any printing device, and that is not even factoring what new is available in XPS.
Also maintaining non print elements in the document format like transitions also opens the door for a true digital printed world, as electronic Ink technologies take off, you will be able to print your XPS document that has all the animations and transistions and they will print/display on the next generation of digital output devices that are no longer static pages.
Well my sources at Adobe and MS tell me that XPS has Adobe POed, even though Microsoft has pulled Adobe into every XPS event and even has provided them with more development and technical details than developers are getting access to.
XPS is basically what the Print Engine, or Vector compose in Vista uses to pass data around, although it can be dropped into a file format. Even MS admits that XPS is not in the same category as PDF, nor includes the features of PDF.
However, for whatever reason, Adobe's bargaining with MS was to have them RIP XPS out of Vista. (Hard to do, since it is how the Video and Applications and Printers pass data around - although I guess MS could pull the mechanism that turns this data into a file.) However, XPS technology is what Adobe should be using to BUILD their Vista version of Acrobat, but instead see it as a threat.
MS refused to pull XPS out of Vista, so Adobe came back to the table telling them to rip PDF out of Office 2007 then. PDF is NOT an open standard, even though Adobe has let companies make software with PDF Export/Save abilities for years without fighting them on it. (Corel, Open Office, etc etc...)
So now that MS was going to use it, (actually a good thing for PDF, because people wouldn't be so apt to use XPS or OfficeXML), but instead Adobe is more concerned of the XPS threat from Vista, and is requested that MS pay 'fees' for each copy of Office to Adobe. (Again, not so on the table, as they have not asked for these fees from Corel or anyone else that also does PDF creation)
So maybe it isn't just Adobe wanting $$ from MS, but Adobe is still the ones stiring the pot.
My sources at MS that have been working with Adobe over the past couple of years on XPS and PDF in Office 2007 were freaking shocked that Adobe has taken the road it has in the past negotiations. With Adobe not only giving MS the finger basically, but using threat tatics of the EU and also trying to get additional help from the US govt.
MS DID offer to bundle everything from Acrobat Reader to Flash in Vista as a way to offset any concerns Adobe had. Adobe still refused wanting $$ for the PDF support in Office 2007.
It is almost like Adobe is cutting off their nose to spite their face.
I remember when SGI and the rest of the OpenGL group that MS was a strong proponent of told MS to pound sand when Microsoft wanted to advance the OpenGL api for gaming and push 3d gaming GPU technology from the OpenGL APIs. MS said fine and went off to create their own technologies and why we now have DirectX.
I can see this thing from Adobe doing the same, pushing MS to ratify XPS and OfficeXML as 'industry' document standards and tell Adobe to go pound PDF sand. MS at least is giving away the source and usage rights to XPS, something Adobe hasn't even done with PDF.
All it would take is a few tools and some encouragement to get *nix and Mac developers to support MS's 'open' document format to seriously hurt Adobe. Now Adobe has given MS every reason to do so.
Not only is this story a repeat, but it is worth mentioning that the Tom's review is basically pictures of the OS with almost NO technical details on Vista. They even are incorrect on features of DirectX 10 in the review.
All these 'wonderful' reviews running around on Vista, and still none exist that talk about the OS itself, all the reviews are doing is throwing up some pictures of the desktop and talking about AERO.
For example have you yet seen a review that mentions key points of the new OS of things that changed, like kernel changes, new memory management, new process scheduling, how the Video Driver is moved up from kernel level to user level, but still getting kernel level performace or even anytyhing on the vector based composer that is behind the AERO or WPF?
Nope...
Until you see these types of reviews, all you are going to get is a taste of the freaking eye candy and nerds going, "Here is the control panel" (Picture)
Errr, right, your fluff (it was all attributed to a MS spokesperson) piece link pretty much confirmed what this guy said
Well, I'm sure this person's theory is more accurate than MS saying they are pulling XPS out of Office. Sure, this post you reference has to be more CORRECT than MS's official press statements about removing XPS from Office 2007.
Adobe was trying to get $$ from the great MS and threatening them with going to the EU if Microsoft didn't pony up royalties, and people here are rushing to defend Adobe even if they have to make it up...
The irony, this story doesn't mean much as the PDF and XPS capabilities will still be free downloads for Office 2007. The real story here is watching Adobe try to bully $$ from MS by threatening them with the EU.
How many other companies that can Export or Save in PDF format have you seen Adobe go after, and if they haven't why is MS so special? It is called getting greedy because they think they can pull strings between pulling the feature from Office 2007 and EU threats.
If this is how Adobe handles business maybe we should consider kicking PDF and Adobe's Memory Hog Viewer and crappy PDF creation tools to the curb once and for all...
(One sad note, as a Office 2007 tester, the MS PDF Save feature in Office 2007 worked better than using the real Adobe PDF Creation tools, maybe this is what POed Adobe.)
Give me a break...