Re:VB already gets the respect it deserves...
on
Lisp and Ruby
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· Score: 1
Hello there. Just wanted to drop by and introduce myself: a VB and VB.NET programmer who understands interfaces, classes (methods, properties, fields), inheritance, reference and value types and how the whole model works and who uses classes in VB.NET.
What I don't like in VB.NET is that Option Explicit is off by default and it brings whole bunch of problems. Implicit casting form string to integer and vice versa is horrible! I had this problem, which I was debugging for hours, that IDs, which was strings, implicitly converted to integers and back so that "01" -> 1 -> "1"
Other thing I don't like is = operator which is assingment operator or compare operator depending on situation. I was really puzzled for a while when following code didn't work as expected, when the same code worked in C# perfectly. After this I learned to make a little context switch inside my brain when moving between other languages and VB:)
Following your logic, Firefox own huge debt to MS for creating Windows which is what at least 75% of FF is run on. But somehow I don't think that 99% of Slashdotters agree with me on this one:)
Yes, they have URL showing but not the whole navigation bar. I think there was some way to "hack" URL so that it didn't show the whole URL if user didn't click on the URL bar but I'm unsure of this, maybe Secunia knows better.
Care to explain that design, how it is flawed and how it is less secure compared to other desings (you probably could explain those other designs a bit too)? Or is this just another Slashdot bashing with plenty of speculation but only with few (or none) details?
I personally know something about older Windows desing (XP and older), how it is flawed and how it is not flawed, but it's always nice to hear other people opinions and insights.
Errr.. Wait a minute. GPLv3 isn't legally binding? So if I release something now under current version GPLv3, tomorrow I can revoke your rights to use my stuff because license wasn't legally binding? I don't think so. GPLv3 is legally binding if you accept it in the form it is now but when they release the final version of it you probably can't call your version of the license GPLv3 (or could, but that would be little bit confusing). So what I'm trying to say, license doesn't need RMS' approval to become valid:)
I've worked in project that was/is probably the most largets VB project in the world. It started in 93 and I don't think they are going to end it soon. I personally hate VB, it's not-so-strongly-typed variables, funny rounding rules and so on, but I wouldn't say that all you can do with it is crap!
The software we were making just works. It has worked for 13 years and keeps working. Maybe it could be little faster if written with some other language and tools or it might have more fancy UI blaablaablaa but it doesn't need those. And rewriting those hundreds of thousands lines of code... Let's just say that I wouldn't like to be in that team.
Oh. I was being unclear. I meant that internal security section. My opinion, what I've read from books, is that it's not operating system's job to meddle anti-virus, anti-spyware etc stuff. OS just schedules processes, manages memory, I/O and so on.
How can OS know what is a malicious program? I mean, I write "evil script" rm -rf and mail it to someone. Recipient then executes that script. How can OS (or AV-software) know that this isn't what the user wanted? That's an lousy example, I know, but I think it's a clear one. MS could integrate somekind of anti-virus/anti-spyware stuff to Windows but I can only imagine what kind of charges would fly from F-Secure and Symantec and EU after that.
"The OS is responsible for telling users what it is doing and letting them do what they want"
Oh. Maybe then you can fix that wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_system
How many computer users there is? Millions? Hundres of millions? Who's gonna educate all of those and keep their education up-to-date when something new happens in computer business:)
"we can make it more difficult to do stupid things"
Well IE, FF any many other programs already asks "Do you really want to open this file" but it's not working since users just clikety-click that Yes button.
"Windows XP pretty much requires you to run as administrator"
Windows XP doesn't require you to run as administrator, but many programs does as you said. Those programs are poorly written and doesn't follow MSDN's guidelines. Trust me, I've been writing programs that doesn't need admin rights for years now.
"In linux, I use sudo."
And in Windows I use Run As... which works quite nice. I run my XP as normal user and when I need to do some administrating (or open that stupid program that needs admin rights, luckily it doesn't connect to network in any way) I click program's icon with right mouse button and select Run As, then I enter administrator password and voila! Simple as that.
"Or you could do it the way it used to be done (and still is in linux). The web-browser notices that you are downloading a binary file, and asks you to save it."
Now-a-days IE (don't know about other browsers) marks binary files coming from internet with a flag "came from internet." When that flag is on, situation is pretty much same as in *nix, you must explicitly tell Explorer that it's OK to run this file. But how do you know that "super-cool-firefox-plugin.exe" is valid plugin or just a piece of malware? How can operating system know that? The answer is, they can't, and that's why we have anti-virus software or at least we should have (and properly working too).
"I'm not sure why MSN messenger needs to allow plugins, and why plugins need to be able to do evil stuff."
I'm not sure why Firefox allow plugins! Everything should be compiled in the executable, no dynamically linked libraries, no external resources... Just kidding:) Executables would be huge bloats. There's nothing evil in plugins. Just that example I wrote.. well, it wasn't excatly a plugin what that that 15 year old girl installed, it was shit load of spy/mal/evil/whatever-ware.
Maybe only way to, not totally end these problems, but to prevent is, would be that user would be required to show valid computer user's license before booting the computer. To get such license user should take some exams and pass some tests like "surf in the web for 8 hours and don't download and open any suspicious looking files during that":)
Of course you could just install fresh Windows XP with SP2 to your network and do a network scan to see what ports are open and has someone actually listening to them...
The real problem, as said many times earlier, is the user. He/she surfs the web with admin rights and no matter what browser they are using they get infected. "Hey! That's a nice plugin/add-on/whatever for MSN Messenger. I'll install and download that..." said my ex-wife's cousing and then poor Weicco was forced to remove viruses, trojans and such from infected XP (it took 4 hours, I don't have much experience about cleaning Windowses).
There's no way to prevent users doing stupid things. That user I mentioned was native finninsh speaking 15 year old girl using localized finnish XP. XP/browser/AV-software/something asked question "Do you really want to run this program, it could be a virus?" in finnish and still she clicked the Yes button. Luckily I'm not married anymore:)
"Another eyewitness said that the officers had already tried unsuccessfully to restrain him with compliance holds before using his taser."
Are you saying that four officers weighting... what... 90-100 kilos (is that 200-220 lbs?) can't muscle a student weighting 70-80 kilos (estimated from the video) to ground and hand-cuff him with out a taser? If not, those officers should do some exercise in gym and maybe some martial arts training, since I, with 105 kilos, can do it myself (except that hand-cuff part, I'm not an officer).
Re:Vista? No thanks. XP or OSX will do fine.
on
Leopard Vs. Vista
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· Score: 1
You mean that when you install Firefox, user is unable to download pamela_nude.exe files from internet and execute them? It doesn't really matter which browser user has if they install all that fancy stuff (like Windows themes, screensavers, MSN Messenger plugins, heck FF plugins) that comes with bunchload of malware, spyware, whatever. But your points 5 and 6 helps alot on this.
I used to work couple of years (2000-2002) in company which made IPSEC+VPN software for Windows 98/NT/2000/XP/CE. I used first Windows NT, then Windows 2000 and finally Windows XP on my development machine. I didn't have a single BSOD at that time. Well on my dev machine, test machines exploded from time to time because of crappy driver I wrote myself:)
Anyway. Longest time I had XP running without booting was 4 months. I had apps like Visual Studio 6, SoftIce (kernel debugger), VMWare, Cygwin etc running on it. I did even test my own drivers on it (installed driver, did some registry tweaks, jumped to kernel debugger, jumped back to Windows and so on) and it didn't crash. Not a single time.
Only XP setups that crashes are here at home. My "multimedia" PC with digi-TV card throws BSOD every other hour because card's manufacturer didn't know how to read Windows DDK's documentation. Other XP machine threw couple of BSODs until I upgraded all the drivers and now it's been rock solid for half a year.
So I must say I've have plenty of experience with Windows and at least _my_ setups have been quite fine. And so has been my relative's setups maybe because I've been administrating them.
But the software IS free if it is released under GPLv2 or GPLv3 or whatever. You are free to modify the code and build it and so on. The hardware isn't free but I really think that is something _software_ license isn't supposed to deal with. If you want free hardware, you are free to build one and then you can run your modified code on it.
That's not funny at all. Even their General Manager of the Client & Web Platform and Tools Team, Scott Guthrie seems to use Firefox. At least he did when he showed new ASP.NET stuff to us here in Finland.
Okay, that sounds logical. But the weird thing is that i know people who are using Office 97 on their Windows boxes and I think they are running Windows 2000 or XP, don't remember which. And in any case your old MS software doesn't stop functioning the moment they release a new version.
But there are valid points in your reply which I didn't consider earlier. BUT when I think those cases a little more I can figure out solution for almost every case. Not a nice one, requires a lot of coding, but a working one:)
"Why not stop moaning about it and create an account (free) and post from that?"
Well, I can create account with name... let's say fiifoufam and write bogus information about me in the user info. Is that OK then? And is it any way better than writing as anonymous (coward)?
I've seen couple of my posts disappear from Groklaw and I think myself as a pretty civil person so I was amazed to see that my posts just weren't there anymore! So now I just read all the SCO vs World news from Groklaw and overlook all the usual "hey, let's bash MS/Linspire/anything we dont like" stuff.
I don't get it. If my local hifi-reseller decides to sell some amplifier with discount price for a couple of weeks or so, he is forcing me to buy it? I'm looking it at other way around, I get new amp with lower price (if I need one). Or is there something that I'm missing in the picture?
If I remember correctly, custom GINA DLLs can be stacked but it can break a lot of things if there's even one DLL which is behaving badly. I wrote such a DLL once which handled user authentication and let me tell you it was pain in the a**. Documentation was very poor on those days so it was basically try-crash-reinstall-from-Ghost-image. Debugging was pretty hard even when we had SotfIce kernel debugger. So I, for one, welcome our new Winlogon Re-architecture overlo.. architecture:)
Slashdot Mirror
SQL Express is free (don't know 'as in' what, but it's free) database. http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/sql/
Hello there. Just wanted to drop by and introduce myself: a VB and VB.NET programmer who understands interfaces, classes (methods, properties, fields), inheritance, reference and value types and how the whole model works and who uses classes in VB.NET.
:)
What I don't like in VB.NET is that Option Explicit is off by default and it brings whole bunch of problems. Implicit casting form string to integer and vice versa is horrible! I had this problem, which I was debugging for hours, that IDs, which was strings, implicitly converted to integers and back so that "01" -> 1 -> "1"
Other thing I don't like is = operator which is assingment operator or compare operator depending on situation. I was really puzzled for a while when following code didn't work as expected, when the same code worked in C# perfectly. After this I learned to make a little context switch inside my brain when moving between other languages and VB
foo = bar = baz
Following your logic, Firefox own huge debt to MS for creating Windows which is what at least 75% of FF is run on. But somehow I don't think that 99% of Slashdotters agree with me on this one :)
Yes, they have URL showing but not the whole navigation bar. I think there was some way to "hack" URL so that it didn't show the whole URL if user didn't click on the URL bar but I'm unsure of this, maybe Secunia knows better.
Care to explain that design, how it is flawed and how it is less secure compared to other desings (you probably could explain those other designs a bit too)? Or is this just another Slashdot bashing with plenty of speculation but only with few (or none) details?
I personally know something about older Windows desing (XP and older), how it is flawed and how it is not flawed, but it's always nice to hear other people opinions and insights.
Errr.. Wait a minute. GPLv3 isn't legally binding? So if I release something now under current version GPLv3, tomorrow I can revoke your rights to use my stuff because license wasn't legally binding? I don't think so. GPLv3 is legally binding if you accept it in the form it is now but when they release the final version of it you probably can't call your version of the license GPLv3 (or could, but that would be little bit confusing). So what I'm trying to say, license doesn't need RMS' approval to become valid :)
I've worked in project that was/is probably the most largets VB project in the world. It started in 93 and I don't think they are going to end it soon. I personally hate VB, it's not-so-strongly-typed variables, funny rounding rules and so on, but I wouldn't say that all you can do with it is crap!
The software we were making just works. It has worked for 13 years and keeps working. Maybe it could be little faster if written with some other language and tools or it might have more fancy UI blaablaablaa but it doesn't need those. And rewriting those hundreds of thousands lines of code... Let's just say that I wouldn't like to be in that team.
Oh. I was being unclear. I meant that internal security section. My opinion, what I've read from books, is that it's not operating system's job to meddle anti-virus, anti-spyware etc stuff. OS just schedules processes, manages memory, I/O and so on.
How can OS know what is a malicious program? I mean, I write "evil script" rm -rf and mail it to someone. Recipient then executes that script. How can OS (or AV-software) know that this isn't what the user wanted? That's an lousy example, I know, but I think it's a clear one. MS could integrate somekind of anti-virus/anti-spyware stuff to Windows but I can only imagine what kind of charges would fly from F-Secure and Symantec and EU after that.
"The OS is responsible for telling users what it is doing and letting them do what they want" Oh. Maybe then you can fix that wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_system
"Yes there is. We can educate the users"
:)
:) Executables would be huge bloats. There's nothing evil in plugins. Just that example I wrote.. well, it wasn't excatly a plugin what that that 15 year old girl installed, it was shit load of spy/mal/evil/whatever-ware.
:)
How many computer users there is? Millions? Hundres of millions? Who's gonna educate all of those and keep their education up-to-date when something new happens in computer business
"we can make it more difficult to do stupid things"
Well IE, FF any many other programs already asks "Do you really want to open this file" but it's not working since users just clikety-click that Yes button.
"Windows XP pretty much requires you to run as administrator"
Windows XP doesn't require you to run as administrator, but many programs does as you said. Those programs are poorly written and doesn't follow MSDN's guidelines. Trust me, I've been writing programs that doesn't need admin rights for years now.
"In linux, I use sudo."
And in Windows I use Run As... which works quite nice. I run my XP as normal user and when I need to do some administrating (or open that stupid program that needs admin rights, luckily it doesn't connect to network in any way) I click program's icon with right mouse button and select Run As, then I enter administrator password and voila! Simple as that.
"Or you could do it the way it used to be done (and still is in linux). The web-browser notices that you are downloading a binary file, and asks you to save it."
Now-a-days IE (don't know about other browsers) marks binary files coming from internet with a flag "came from internet." When that flag is on, situation is pretty much same as in *nix, you must explicitly tell Explorer that it's OK to run this file. But how do you know that "super-cool-firefox-plugin.exe" is valid plugin or just a piece of malware? How can operating system know that? The answer is, they can't, and that's why we have anti-virus software or at least we should have (and properly working too).
"I'm not sure why MSN messenger needs to allow plugins, and why plugins need to be able to do evil stuff."
I'm not sure why Firefox allow plugins! Everything should be compiled in the executable, no dynamically linked libraries, no external resources... Just kidding
Maybe only way to, not totally end these problems, but to prevent is, would be that user would be required to show valid computer user's license before booting the computer. To get such license user should take some exams and pass some tests like "surf in the web for 8 hours and don't download and open any suspicious looking files during that"
Of course you could just install fresh Windows XP with SP2 to your network and do a network scan to see what ports are open and has someone actually listening to them...
:)
The real problem, as said many times earlier, is the user. He/she surfs the web with admin rights and no matter what browser they are using they get infected. "Hey! That's a nice plugin/add-on/whatever for MSN Messenger. I'll install and download that..." said my ex-wife's cousing and then poor Weicco was forced to remove viruses, trojans and such from infected XP (it took 4 hours, I don't have much experience about cleaning Windowses).
There's no way to prevent users doing stupid things. That user I mentioned was native finninsh speaking 15 year old girl using localized finnish XP. XP/browser/AV-software/something asked question "Do you really want to run this program, it could be a virus?" in finnish and still she clicked the Yes button. Luckily I'm not married anymore
Getting sued by / counter-suing SCO?
Satire site? You must be kidding! If this isn't true then I don't know what is!
m l
http://www.bbspot.com/News/2000/4/MS_Buys_Evil.ht
"Another eyewitness said that the officers had already tried unsuccessfully to restrain him with compliance holds before using his taser."
... what ... 90-100 kilos (is that 200-220 lbs?) can't muscle a student weighting 70-80 kilos (estimated from the video) to ground and hand-cuff him with out a taser? If not, those officers should do some exercise in gym and maybe some martial arts training, since I, with 105 kilos, can do it myself (except that hand-cuff part, I'm not an officer).
Are you saying that four officers weighting
Read and learn
a -hardware-requirement/
http://www.vistaguide.net/2006/08/17/windows-vist
And those aren't even the absolute minimum requirements. Couln't find them though..
"9. Install Firefox"
t hs.html
You mean that when you install Firefox, user is unable to download pamela_nude.exe files from internet and execute them? It doesn't really matter which browser user has if they install all that fancy stuff (like Windows themes, screensavers, MSN Messenger plugins, heck FF plugins) that comes with bunchload of malware, spyware, whatever. But your points 5 and 6 helps alot on this.
Btw. here's a nice web page http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/FirefoxMy
OMGXIITLOL! Aimbot!
I used to work couple of years (2000-2002) in company which made IPSEC+VPN software for Windows 98/NT/2000/XP/CE. I used first Windows NT, then Windows 2000 and finally Windows XP on my development machine. I didn't have a single BSOD at that time. Well on my dev machine, test machines exploded from time to time because of crappy driver I wrote myself :)
Anyway. Longest time I had XP running without booting was 4 months. I had apps like Visual Studio 6, SoftIce (kernel debugger), VMWare, Cygwin etc running on it. I did even test my own drivers on it (installed driver, did some registry tweaks, jumped to kernel debugger, jumped back to Windows and so on) and it didn't crash. Not a single time.
Only XP setups that crashes are here at home. My "multimedia" PC with digi-TV card throws BSOD every other hour because card's manufacturer didn't know how to read Windows DDK's documentation. Other XP machine threw couple of BSODs until I upgraded all the drivers and now it's been rock solid for half a year.
So I must say I've have plenty of experience with Windows and at least _my_ setups have been quite fine. And so has been my relative's setups maybe because I've been administrating them.
But the software IS free if it is released under GPLv2 or GPLv3 or whatever. You are free to modify the code and build it and so on. The hardware isn't free but I really think that is something _software_ license isn't supposed to deal with. If you want free hardware, you are free to build one and then you can run your modified code on it.
That's not funny at all. Even their General Manager of the Client & Web Platform and Tools Team, Scott Guthrie seems to use Firefox. At least he did when he showed new ASP.NET stuff to us here in Finland.
OMG it's coming right fore us!
Okay, that sounds logical. But the weird thing is that i know people who are using Office 97 on their Windows boxes and I think they are running Windows 2000 or XP, don't remember which. And in any case your old MS software doesn't stop functioning the moment they release a new version.
:)
But there are valid points in your reply which I didn't consider earlier. BUT when I think those cases a little more I can figure out solution for almost every case. Not a nice one, requires a lot of coding, but a working one
"Why not stop moaning about it and create an account (free) and post from that?"
Well, I can create account with name... let's say fiifoufam and write bogus information about me in the user info. Is that OK then? And is it any way better than writing as anonymous (coward)?
I've seen couple of my posts disappear from Groklaw and I think myself as a pretty civil person so I was amazed to see that my posts just weren't there anymore! So now I just read all the SCO vs World news from Groklaw and overlook all the usual "hey, let's bash MS/Linspire/anything we dont like" stuff.
I don't get it. If my local hifi-reseller decides to sell some amplifier with discount price for a couple of weeks or so, he is forcing me to buy it? I'm looking it at other way around, I get new amp with lower price (if I need one). Or is there something that I'm missing in the picture?
If I remember correctly, custom GINA DLLs can be stacked but it can break a lot of things if there's even one DLL which is behaving badly. I wrote such a DLL once which handled user authentication and let me tell you it was pain in the a**. Documentation was very poor on those days so it was basically try-crash-reinstall-from-Ghost-image. Debugging was pretty hard even when we had SotfIce kernel debugger. So I, for one, welcome our new Winlogon Re-architecture overlo.. architecture :)