Yeah. Right! Win7 still uses the same crap brokenware kernel as NT 3.5.....
MS have not had a truly viable product since 1991 (and even then it was faulty).
Well there's a surprise! Please try to understand - this is for the benefit of the hard of thinking - the underlying structure of Unix and Linux means that they simply cannot be subject to the virus problems of Windoze.
If Windoze is the answer, you're asking a stupid question!
Oh, I have paid for legit student copies of MS products. But they always come hamstrung with things like a 1 install limit, so if you reformat you're SOL. That's why you have to resort to piracy to be able to use what you actually paid for.
No. In the Windows World of Pain you have to pay for the "software" again. That's the way the game works. If you are foolish enough to buy software with a 1 install limit, you're just going to have to pay each time you have to re-install it. Tough
Everybody knows that Windows requires regular reinstallation, so you have nobody to blame but yourself.
Windows also has open-source components. The one that pops to mind is the BSD IP stack used up through XP.
It's still used in the latest pile of rubbish. The original NT kernel, thrown together in a matter of days (for demonstration purposes, not for official release) by Dave Cutler is still there in the middle of their Windows 7. Gates decided that it was good enough and that no further development was necessary.
No he didn't. Like everything else he's been involved with, he "persuaded" someone else to develop it for him, and then he claimed the credit! Paul Allen did some of the work, but it was based on the work of a couple of grad students.
Just like all other "Microsoft technology", the developers weren't paid (their work was stolen), it didn' t work properly (because an incomplete version was released), and it was outrageously expensive (so anyone who wanted it, copied it).
Later, Bill G went to a lot of meetings inside Microsoft, but the actual work was done by others. Almost all technical design discussions were way over his head. This goes some way to explaining the fundamental insecurity of Windows - Bill didn't understand the problem, and just kept insisting that it had to be "easy to use".
Gates has never really understood computing, but made his money by lying, stealing and cheating - he would have made a great politician!
Remember - it'll all be fixed in the next release!
So, it was marketing departments that forced this upon us, but it wasn't entirely Microsoft's fault...
Of course it was entirely Microsoft's fault. Those clueless morons couldn't write small, efficient, stable code if they tried.
All that MS have done is polish the same old NT turd. The NT kernel wasn't ever meant to be used - it was just meant as a testbed - and they still persist in using the same old, broken kernel that they have been using since the early 90s. This amply demonstrates that MS don't employ any truly capable programmers.
Linux doesn't have malware only because it's desktop share is next to nothing
Nonsense. Linux doesn't have any malware because its structure doesn't allow malware to work. Windows is vulnerable because of some stupid "ease of use" decisions made in its early days, and the retarded reluctance of MS to make Windows any "harder to use".
The thing that MS have missed, and will miss until their demise, is that Linux is now easier to use, for the average user, than Windows. The user doesn't have to worry about endless, useless "anti-virus" downloads, time and hardware-wasting "malware scans", and websites deliberately set up to use the vulnerabilities inherent in Windows.
I've noticed a few companies using this as a marketing device.
It's been really funny to see the first Windows 7 targeted malware - there are several trojans and even more "scareware" nonsense. The malware writers obviously assume (often correctly) that early adopters of Windows 7 will be the usual knuckle-draggers who persist in using Windows brokenware and the Windoze fanboys who are mostly too stupid to install their own operating systems...
Those MS bastards also did it to two of my products (Stacker) back in the 1990s. My company sued them, and they tied us up in court for nearly three years. At that point, we were almost broke, and the board sold the company to MS. We each got a lot of cash from the sale, but it still rankles today.
Remember - if MS like your product, or if it poses a threat to them, they'll either kill you off in court or they will buy / steal the technology (Doublespace) and still tie you up in legal knots.
Nowadays, they screw around with other company's products, and there's (effectively) nothing that anyone can do.
Remember - anyone who can afford to buy the judge can get whatever "legal" ruling they want!
Nothing is so wrong with the iPhone The only two problems with the iPhone are that it's a very poor phone - it won't work in many areas where other phones work fine - and the Apps are ridiculously expensive (and often poorly written). When Apple address the fundamental phone problem with the device, I'll consider buying one.
I don't know what hardware your friend has, or how you set it up, but Vista flies on my machines.
I don't know which version of Vista you have, but it must be the special "Friend Of Bill" version that was unavailable to the general public. Vista is appallingly slow on most hardware, and Windows 7 isn't very much better. The release version of "7" has a nasty tendency to fall over when trying to run some third-party software, has "issues" with a lot of drivers ("Vista" ones frequently don't work at all), and has a problem copying large files (where have we seen that one before?).
Windows 7 is just the same old t*rd re-polished with shinier bits for the benefit of the slack-jawed. It's still open to every bit of malware out there, still unstable, still grossly overpriced, and still dreadfully slow.
Just compare it to OSX or Ubuntu, and you'll realise that you've just got used to waiting for the slow junkware to do something...
How did the scheme work? How were they getting users to their site instead of Hotmail? Was it something stupid, like a spam email with a link?
It's trivially easy - remember, the affected fools were Windows "users". There was a huge spam campaign that sent mails that appeared to a casual glance, to come from Hotmail. The mails asked users to log in to "Hotmail" using a convenient link in the email, because their account would soon "time out" if it was not used. When they logged in to the spurious website, they were thanked for their prompt action, and then advised to log out and restart their browser "for security", and then to log in to Hotmail again (which, of course, would work normally).
I was a Microsoft programmer, and like all the other competent ones, I left at NT4 - when the NT kernel became completely unmaintainable. MS haven't had a viable product since 1997 - they're just polishing the same old turd.
Sooner or later, even the American public will realise that MS have been fleecing them for brokenware.
That's the company that gives away their crappy printers so that they can sell their vastly overpriced ink! Their "printers" are also designed to fail just beyond the warranty period...
> because they'd bought a low-priced machine expecting Windows and opened it to find a different interface
That would then imply that once Windows 7 starts shipping on low-priced machines, returns will go through the roof because of "a different interface".
Yes, but not because of the "different" interface, but because of the truly appalling "performance" of the MS bloat-ware. Windows 7 is supposed to be less bloated than Vista, but versions seen so far are gigantic and slow. They will be both too big and too slow to run on netbooks. MS still don't understand the basic problems with Windows, and have done exactly nothing to address them. Their suicide continues!
Of course not - and who would want to except the brain-dead slack-jawed fools that still believe that "Windows came free with my computer". MS still haven't realised that Windows was superceded about 10 years ago. They can continue to make their interface ever shinier, but it's still the same old broken NT kernel underneath (and don't let the marketing hype about "completely new kernels" fool you!)
Actually they've tried it for themselves and found out that the majority of the time, something doesn't work. Sure, you're supposed to check the hardware support for yourself, but this doesn't apply on Windows because everything has drivers unless it's really old.
Er - no. Almost none of the hardware I have here has Vista drivers (and it's all brand new, current gear), and the drivers that are available are dreadful. OTOH, Ubuntu locates and correctly installs all the hardware...
Windows in any form is too bug-ridden and vulnerable to attack to be used in the "Real World". It's simply not worth the pain. Current Linux distros, on the other hand, just worth flawlessly "out of the box", have all the applications that anyone could ever really want (at an amazing price!), have simple update methodology, and are entirely secure.
Anybody that "upgrades" a Windows operating system in place from one version to another is an idiot.
Let's face it - anyone who tries to "use" Windows is an idiot.
People should reinstall their Windows from scratch at least once a year.
Make that "once a week" and you're close. Any less frequent than that and the successive patches to patches to patches become too much for the system to bear.
... and the malware becomes unmanageable.
The successive software installs and uninstalls leave hanging dependencies that slow the system to even worse of a crawl than it was at first install.
The incompetence of the software writers is just made more and more obvious.
An "upgraded" system drags with it the legacy rootkits previously installed, and those cause issues even in the best case. In the worst case the malware and crudware bog down the system so much you're lucky to get any work done at all.
Any attempt to use Windows seriously is doomed to failure - look at every large-scale commercial roll out of Windows desktops and / or servers, and the problems are clear to all but the PHBs specifying the crapware...
A fresh install of XP on modern equipment is almost as snappy as Linux.
Not in this world!
After a year you're powering up and going for coffee while it "wakes up". After an "OS Upgrade" you don't dare power the thing off unless you're going on vacation for a week. Patch Tuesday has spawned "Team Building Wednesday".
Indeed. We are now at the point that the weight of malware renders Windows entirely useless in commercial ventures. Windows 7 is just XP made shinier - it's still the same old NT rubbish underneath...
But you don't want a third-party stack crashing the OS, so write it yourself and include it.
MS never actually wrote a TCP/IP stack. The one that's still in Windows is the development one (that was quite broken) that they stole from BSD back in the early 90s...
It's going to be funny to see the first virus that specifically targets MS' own "antivirus"!
It's simple - ban Windows users from the internet - problem completely solved.
As long as Windows has any type of networking ability, it will be susceptible to all this crap-ware.
The is no way to make Windoze even close to "secure" - no matter how many patches you apply and how much "anti-this" and "anti-that" rubbish you try to "run".
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah. Right! Win7 still uses the same crap brokenware kernel as NT 3.5..... MS have not had a truly viable product since 1991 (and even then it was faulty).
Please show us all ANY viable Linux virus.....
You can't?
Well there's a surprise! Please try to understand - this is for the benefit of the hard of thinking - the underlying structure of Unix and Linux means that they simply cannot be subject to the virus problems of Windoze.
If Windoze is the answer, you're asking a stupid question!
Oh, I have paid for legit student copies of MS products. But they always come hamstrung with things like a 1 install limit, so if you reformat you're SOL. That's why you have to resort to piracy to be able to use what you actually paid for.
No. In the Windows World of Pain you have to pay for the "software" again. That's the way the game works. If you are foolish enough to buy software with a 1 install limit, you're just going to have to pay each time you have to re-install it. Tough
Everybody knows that Windows requires regular reinstallation, so you have nobody to blame but yourself.
Windows also has open-source components. The one that pops to mind is the BSD IP stack used up through XP.
It's still used in the latest pile of rubbish. The original NT kernel, thrown together in a matter of days (for demonstration purposes, not for official release) by Dave Cutler is still there in the middle of their Windows 7. Gates decided that it was good enough and that no further development was necessary.
Game Over!
He developed an early version of BASIC.
No he didn't. Like everything else he's been involved with, he "persuaded" someone else to develop it for him, and then he claimed the credit! Paul Allen did some of the work, but it was based on the work of a couple of grad students.
Just like all other "Microsoft technology", the developers weren't paid (their work was stolen), it didn' t work properly (because an incomplete version was released), and it was outrageously expensive (so anyone who wanted it, copied it).
Later, Bill G went to a lot of meetings inside Microsoft, but the actual work was done by others. Almost all technical design discussions were way over his head. This goes some way to explaining the fundamental insecurity of Windows - Bill didn't understand the problem, and just kept insisting that it had to be "easy to use".
Gates has never really understood computing, but made his money by lying, stealing and cheating - he would have made a great politician!
Remember - it'll all be fixed in the next release!
So, it was marketing departments that forced this upon us, but it wasn't entirely Microsoft's fault...
Of course it was entirely Microsoft's fault. Those clueless morons couldn't write small, efficient, stable code if they tried.
All that MS have done is polish the same old NT turd. The NT kernel wasn't ever meant to be used - it was just meant as a testbed - and they still persist in using the same old, broken kernel that they have been using since the early 90s. This amply demonstrates that MS don't employ any truly capable programmers.
Linux doesn't have malware only because it's desktop share is next to nothing
Nonsense. Linux doesn't have any malware because its structure doesn't allow malware to work. Windows is vulnerable because of some stupid "ease of use" decisions made in its early days, and the retarded reluctance of MS to make Windows any "harder to use".
The thing that MS have missed, and will miss until their demise, is that Linux is now easier to use, for the average user, than Windows. The user doesn't have to worry about endless, useless "anti-virus" downloads, time and hardware-wasting "malware scans", and websites deliberately set up to use the vulnerabilities inherent in Windows.
Game Over, Microsoft!
I've noticed a few companies using this as a marketing device.
It's been really funny to see the first Windows 7 targeted malware - there are several trojans and even more "scareware" nonsense. The malware writers obviously assume (often correctly) that early adopters of Windows 7 will be the usual knuckle-draggers who persist in using Windows brokenware and the Windoze fanboys who are mostly too stupid to install their own operating systems...
Those MS bastards also did it to two of my products (Stacker) back in the 1990s. My company sued them, and they tied us up in court for nearly three years. At that point, we were almost broke, and the board sold the company to MS. We each got a lot of cash from the sale, but it still rankles today.
Remember - if MS like your product, or if it poses a threat to them, they'll either kill you off in court or they will buy / steal the technology (Doublespace) and still tie you up in legal knots.
Nowadays, they screw around with other company's products, and there's (effectively) nothing that anyone can do.
Remember - anyone who can afford to buy the judge can get whatever "legal" ruling they want!
Nothing is so wrong with the iPhone
The only two problems with the iPhone are that it's a very poor phone - it won't work in many areas where other phones work fine - and the Apps are ridiculously expensive (and often poorly written). When Apple address the fundamental phone problem with the device, I'll consider buying one.
I don't know what hardware your friend has, or how you set it up, but Vista flies on my machines.
I don't know which version of Vista you have, but it must be the special "Friend Of Bill" version that was unavailable to the general public. Vista is appallingly slow on most hardware, and Windows 7 isn't very much better. The release version of "7" has a nasty tendency to fall over when trying to run some third-party software, has "issues" with a lot of drivers ("Vista" ones frequently don't work at all), and has a problem copying large files (where have we seen that one before?).
Windows 7 is just the same old t*rd re-polished with shinier bits for the benefit of the slack-jawed. It's still open to every bit of malware out there, still unstable, still grossly overpriced, and still dreadfully slow.
Just compare it to OSX or Ubuntu, and you'll realise that you've just got used to waiting for the slow junkware to do something...
How did the scheme work? How were they getting users to their site instead of Hotmail? Was it something stupid, like a spam email with a link?
It's trivially easy - remember, the affected fools were Windows "users". There was a huge spam campaign that sent mails that appeared to a casual glance, to come from Hotmail. The mails asked users to log in to "Hotmail" using a convenient link in the email, because their account would soon "time out" if it was not used. When they logged in to the spurious website, they were thanked for their prompt action, and then advised to log out and restart their browser "for security", and then to log in to Hotmail again (which, of course, would work normally).
There's one born every minute.....
I was a Microsoft programmer, and like all the other competent ones, I left at NT4 - when the NT kernel became completely unmaintainable. MS haven't had a viable product since 1997 - they're just polishing the same old turd.
Sooner or later, even the American public will realise that MS have been fleecing them for brokenware.
Game Over, Microsoft!
Microsoft are some kind of joke company.
No. Microsoft are an abuse company. They are supremely good at selling software that abuses their users. They're very successful at that...
Lexmark?
That's the company that gives away their crappy printers so that they can sell their vastly overpriced ink! Their "printers" are also designed to fail just beyond the warranty period...
> because they'd bought a low-priced machine expecting Windows and opened it to find a different interface
That would then imply that once Windows 7 starts shipping on low-priced machines, returns will go through the roof because of "a different interface".
Yes, but not because of the "different" interface, but because of the truly appalling "performance" of the MS bloat-ware. Windows 7 is supposed to be less bloated than Vista, but versions seen so far are gigantic and slow. They will be both too big and too slow to run on netbooks. MS still don't understand the basic problems with Windows, and have done exactly nothing to address them. Their suicide continues!
Game Over, Microsoft!
Windows?
Of course not - and who would want to except the brain-dead slack-jawed fools that still believe that "Windows came free with my computer". MS still haven't realised that Windows was superceded about 10 years ago. They can continue to make their interface ever shinier, but it's still the same old broken NT kernel underneath (and don't let the marketing hype about "completely new kernels" fool you!)
Game Over, Microsoft!
Actually they've tried it for themselves and found out that the majority of the time, something doesn't work. Sure, you're supposed to check the hardware support for yourself, but this doesn't apply on Windows because everything has drivers unless it's really old.
Er - no. Almost none of the hardware I have here has Vista drivers (and it's all brand new, current gear), and the drivers that are available are dreadful. OTOH, Ubuntu locates and correctly installs all the hardware...
Not around here!
Windows in any form is too bug-ridden and vulnerable to attack to be used in the "Real World". It's simply not worth the pain. Current Linux distros, on the other hand, just worth flawlessly "out of the box", have all the applications that anyone could ever really want (at an amazing price!), have simple update methodology, and are entirely secure.
Game Over, M$
Anybody that "upgrades" a Windows operating system in place from one version to another is an idiot.
... and the malware becomes unmanageable.
Let's face it - anyone who tries to "use" Windows is an idiot.
People should reinstall their Windows from scratch at least once a year.
Make that "once a week" and you're close. Any less frequent than that and the successive patches to patches to patches become too much for the system to bear.
The successive software installs and uninstalls leave hanging dependencies that slow the system to even worse of a crawl than it was at first install.
The incompetence of the software writers is just made more and more obvious.
An "upgraded" system drags with it the legacy rootkits previously installed, and those cause issues even in the best case. In the worst case the malware and crudware bog down the system so much you're lucky to get any work done at all.
Any attempt to use Windows seriously is doomed to failure - look at every large-scale commercial roll out of Windows desktops and / or servers, and the problems are clear to all but the PHBs specifying the crapware...
A fresh install of XP on modern equipment is almost as snappy as Linux.
Not in this world!
After a year you're powering up and going for coffee while it "wakes up". After an "OS Upgrade" you don't dare power the thing off unless you're going on vacation for a week. Patch Tuesday has spawned "Team Building Wednesday".
Indeed. We are now at the point that the weight of malware renders Windows entirely useless in commercial ventures. Windows 7 is just XP made shinier - it's still the same old NT rubbish underneath...
Err.... no it doesn't. It's just another typical MS dog. It's a bit quicker than Vista - but so is a snail on Mogadon.
It caught its first first web-borne virus after just 20 minutes connected, and it became so full of malware in the next hour that it wouldn't reboot.
Once again, it's just XP with a shiny new coat - don't believe the salesmen! That's all it is.
Also, once again, MS fail spectacularly to deliver a product that works properly. Just another polished NT turd.
Game Over MS - you have nothing to offer!
But you don't want a third-party stack crashing the OS, so write it yourself and include it.
MS never actually wrote a TCP/IP stack. The one that's still in Windows is the development one (that was quite broken) that they stole from BSD back in the early 90s...
It's going to be funny to see the first virus that specifically targets MS' own "antivirus"!
"Hanged" is the correct word. Very sad all the same...
It's the best (released) OS I've seen out of MS so far.
That doesn't say much for Vista, does it? MS have never released any software that works properly.
If it says "Microsoft" on the box, you know it's faulty!
Windows - a poor proprietary client for a Unix world.
It's simple - ban Windows users from the internet - problem completely solved.
As long as Windows has any type of networking ability, it will be susceptible to all this crap-ware.
The is no way to make Windoze even close to "secure" - no matter how many patches you apply and how much "anti-this" and "anti-that" rubbish you try to "run".