Most drivers were in userspace under nt4.0 Microsoft have just moved them back again
Actually, no, it was only graphics-related drivers that were in user mode in NT 3.x (not 4.0). More importantly, they ran in the CSRSS.EXE process, which is a critical system process, and where the USER and GDI code ran. USER and GDI were moved into kernel mode in NT 4.0, and hence so were the drivers loaded by them. USER and GDI are still in kernel mode on Vista too.
Microsoft's user-mode driver framework, which is supported on both Vista and XP, is completely different to the old user-mode USER/GDI in NT 3.x, but in any case, most drivers still run in kernel mode, not user mode. Over time this may change to some extent, but direct hardware access requires a kernel mode component, even if some of the associated driver logic can be put into user mode.
I imagine the situation in Europe is not that different--no matter the popular opinion, the govts will not halt immigration. The far right seems to be the only ones trying, and they are fairly popularly reviled, from what I can tell! Denmark is maybe the most.. "progressive" about talking about the immigrant problem.
Well, there have been some changes. In Norway and Denmark, anti-immigration parties are now amongst the largest, i.e. the top three, and there is a possibility that the next governments in one or the other will include them. Even today, although they're not actually part of the government, the Danish People's Party support the centre-right government in Denmark, in exchange for reforms to reduce immigration, so there has been a real clampdown on immigration to Denmark. Some of the immigrants have just changed direction from Denmark to Sweden, leading to some complaints, but there has unquestionably been a reduction in immigration to Denmark. Even in Sweden, although none of the major parties are anti-immigration, the Social Democrats took measures to reduce immigration in the 90s, when they were threatened by an anti-immigration party, which later collapsed.
The other question is--can these societies survive without the immigrants? Low birth rates and as you said a transfer of wealth from young to old does not go well together.
The birth rates in the Nordic countries are actually high by European standards, in part because of all the benefits given to parents, to make it easier, for example, for women to both work and have children. They're still below replacement rate, but the picture isn't as clear when looking at entire cohorts, for example because of changes in the ages at which women decide to have children. In Sweden, fertility actually got above the 2.1 level in the early 1990s, and is on the way up again, after getting down to about 1.5 in the late 90s. The situation is not at all similar to Germany, much less Italy or most of the eastern countries.
The question of sustainability is actually a very easy on to answer, but the problem is most politicians don't like the answer. There are three phases of life: 1. pre-work, 2. work and 3. post-work. During the first and third phases, people consume without producing, or at least without producing much, so they have to be balanced by the second phase. What we've seen in recent decades is that more and more skills are required in the job markets, which means education takes longer. This increases the length of the first phase. At the same time, people are living longer, which increases the length of the third phase. However, people still want to retire at the traditional age, so the second phase has actually become shorter, since they're starting work at a later age.
The only solution to the growing imbalance between the working and non-working phases is to make the retirement age higher, so that the working phase becomes proportionally similar to what it was in the past. However, politicians who admit this would immediately be voted out, so they have to dance around the issue, and pretend that it's some great mystery, even as it gets worse. Some like to say that immigration will solve it, but if the immigrants retire at the traditional age, it's just delaying the problem, without doing anything to solve it, and that assumes immigrants work at the same rate as non-immigrants, which is true for some groups, such as those from other western/northern European countries, but not for all groups. Delaying the problem does of course help the current politicians, who can then leave the mess to be cleaned up by the ones who follow them.
In a democracy, if enough people are disturbed by something, they can vote for people who will curtail or ban it. I don't much care for the idea of vans owned by an advertising firm going round and taking photos of everything in sight, and if enough people agree, it can probably be made illegal, depending on the country and so on. As it is, this thing doesn't exist where I live, but maybe it would be best to put a stop to it before it starts, that is if it doesn't already violate EU privacy laws, which is something I don't know.
I find the paparazzi disturbing too, but most people would it seems rather be able to gossip about celebrities than see their privacy protected, so that's the way it is. If most people don't mind these advertising photo vans driving about and photographing them either, then I'll just have to live with that too.
That was true on XP. On Vista, switching sessions is allowed by default on domain machines, which is one of the many reasons I'm glad to have upgraded from XP to Vista. I think there's a policy to turn this off, however, since there are obvious security implications.
A bug in rendering code isn't remotely the same thing as automatically executing attachments. There's an enormous difference between an exploitable bug and an utterly stupid design decision, which is what automatically launching an attachment would be. Now, if your argument had been that HTML email is a stupid idea, well, I'd probably agree with you. In fact, I have Outlook set to display all messages as plain text, and don't even use the preview pane. I use the inline preview, which is based on plain text. However, most users like HTML email, even though it's less secure than plain text, so that's what most users get.
At any rate, security vulnerabilities are hardly unique to Microsoft's email clients, so it doesn't really make any sense to point to Microsoft in particular, and ignore all the vulnerabilities that have been found in, for example, Thunderbird. More importantly, the post I was replying to made an argument based on two assumptions, (1) that Microsoft email readers automatically launch attachments, and (2) that file extensions are ignored when opening files on Windows. Both of these assumptions are wrong, so the argument was rubbish, based on either ignorance or a deliberate intention to deceive.
Most Windows users run as an administrator, yes, that's bad. Not all of us do, however. I ran as an ordinary user under XP, for example, and continue to do on Vista.
In any case, the issue of running as an administrator is only critical on multi-user machines. Remember, the valuable information is in the user's personal files, not the system files. Since the overwhelming majority of PCs are single-user machines, running as an administrator or not doesn't really matter. On a multi-user machine it does matter, because malware run by an administrator can access the files of the other users too.
If you run a malware application with your user credentials, it has full access to your files. Do you really care whether or not it has access to the OS files too? It doesn't need administrator or superuser privileges to read/modify/delete all your files, to send all of your files to a remote location to be scanned for bank details and such, or to act as a zombie for DDOS and other attacks. In short, anyone who thinks running as an ordinary user protects them from malware is living in blissful ignorance.
Which was, of course, one of the more stupid design decisions
Every mistake appears 'stupid' in hindsight. Unix suffered from exactly the same thing early on, e.g. sending everything, including passwords, in cleartext over the network. Why did they do this? Because the network was viewed as trusted. Even in the mid-90s, Unix users continued to send their passwords in cleartext over the network -- it wasn't until 1995 that Tatu Ylonen first released ssh, remember. I believe Windows NT at least supported encryption of passwords all along, i.e. from 1993. That isn't to say that either encryption scheme was remotely adequate by modern standards.
If you think everyone designing network operating systems before the Internet era of ubiquitous connections to an untrusted network was 'stupid', I think that says a good deal more about you than it does about them.
It's a bit like office doors in a building owned by an organisation. They might have locks, but the primary security barrier is the entrance to the building itself. Most people in the building more or less expect that others inside it are trusted enough that they don't have to close and lock their doors all the time. If the building were to suddenly become open to the public, the situation would change drastically.
By the way, are you saying that NT did not have Internet access?
No, I'm saying NT was primarily used in corporate/institutional LANs, where every machine was owned and managed by the same organisation, and Internet access was rare or nonexistent. That's how the overwhelming majority of networks were in the late 80s and early 90s, when NT was designed and first deployed. Even when the Internet did catch on, most organisations restricted direct Internet access to a few hardened machines, and required all the others to proxy through them.
And when you say "log in as Administrator" you mean switch to another terminal and do it right?
I doubt that's what he means, but it isn't entirely different. Windows users don't typically use terminals, and security is managed through 'desktops' and the secure attention sequence (SAS), Ctrl+Alt+Del. There are two ways to use this:
1. Type Ctrl+Alt+Del, which switches to the secure desktop, and then choose 'switch user'. This will switch to the logon desktop, and from there you can log onto a new session as an administrator.
2. Enable the policy requiring the SAS before entering credentials. With this, you can avoid using a different session, but any time the system wants credentials, it will ask you to enter the SAS. This will switch to the secure desktop, where the credentials can be entered. If someone spoofs the UI asking for the SAS, when you actually type it you won't be prompted for credentials, but instead will be presented with the default secure desktop.
Yes, you're missing something. The most important function of AV software is not to fix security holes, it is to protect the user's data from user mistakes, such as running malicious software. Users who only run software from trusted sources, and use a firewall, don't really need AV software.
The summary says that Vista has "taken care" of buffer overflow problems.
Presumably they're referring to address-space-layout randomisation. In Vista, the layout of the address space is randomised, at boot time I think, so that even if malware manages to exploit a buffer overflow, it won't know the virtual addresses of any library functions, so can't actually do anything.
I mean, how can a company whose email clients automatically launch attachments say that they take security seriously?
Which client is that? I use Outlook, and it doesn't automatically launch attachments.
Here's an interesting exercise to see how bad things can get: rename a safe executable to a filename with a WAV extension. Now double-click it; the executable runs.
I just tried that, and no, it doesn't run. Windows starts the application associated with.wav files and tries to play it. Naturally it fails to play, since it's not actually a.wav file.
Combine that with browsers and email clients that automatically play WAV files and you've got a very exploitable platform.
However, when you consider that both of your assumptions are actually wrong, maybe you don't have such an exploitable platform after all.
What continues to amaze me is that the file type security is applied based on the file extension - but when you execute a file, the system looks at the file header to determine how to open / execute it.
'File type security'? What is that? The extension is just used to tell the shell which application to launch to handle the file. It's not a security mechanism. You may be thinking of the way CMD, the Windows command line shell, works. It has some very strange logic, but at the same time is only used by advanced users, who ought to understand its quirks.
Now if your complaint was that Windows should not include execute permission by default when a new file is created, I'd agree with that. I don't know why the default when granting read access is to grant both read and execute access. It makes no sense to do this, since read and execute are not the same.
In any case, it's actually very easy to fix this 'default to allow execute' problem, by adding a permissions entry to a user's home directory that denies execute privileges to everyone, and applies only to files. Any file created in that directory, or any subdirectories, will then not be executable, unless the user specifically changes the permissions on that file, or the directory containing it. I suppose Micrsoft haven't done this by default because most users wouldn't understand how to add execute privileges to a file, so would complain.
The reason for moving to a subscription model for Windows wouldn't be to 'provide more product for less money', it would be to allow product pricing and distribution to more closely follow costs and development.
From a technological perspective, Microsoft could easily have offered incremental updates to XP over the years, leading eventually to what Vista is now. Individual features could have been developed and released as completed, rather than grouped together into one massive release.
From a marketing perspective, it might make more sense to stick with the 'big release' model, but from a technological perspective it would make much more sense to move to an incremental model. This naturally implies a change in the pricing structure, from a periodic fee for each major upgrade to an ongoing subscription fee. I'd much prefer the latter model myself.
The problem is Windows still NEEDS to have something that stops viruses.
No it doesn't. I ran XP for years, and never needed AV software. I sometimes ran it, as an added precaution, but it never actually had to do anything.
Microsoft should not have to "include an AV program" or "provide one by default" they should eliminate the need for any such thing entirely.
The major way of infecting PCs is through tricking naive users into running malicious programs. Intercepting this sort of thing, to protect the users from themselves, is what AV software mostly does. In other words, AV software isn't primarily a way of managing flaws in the OS, it's a way of managing mistakes by the user.
You're confusing Windows 9x, which had no security model at all, with Windows NT, which has always had a security model. Windows 9x was designed to be a 'personal' OS, but NT was designed to be run in corporate and institutional LAN environments, where the user was not necessarily the owner, and not necessarily expected to have full privileges on the machine.
The big difference between earlier versions of NT and XP, which led to Microsoft's security push, was that NT was mostly deployed in the LAN environments for which it was designed, where all the systems were more or less trusted. Windows 2000, and especially XP, gained widespread use in Internet environments, where the other systems on the network are not trusted, which completely changed the security dynamics.
Taxes--we all pay our part. I'm not quite an insane libertarian, but the roadbuilders are not volunteering their time for me. Teachers are not selflessly volunteering to teach me. Doctors, private industry, etc are DEFINITELY not leaping at the chance to volunteer for me.
My point is only that even if you pay taxes and so on, there was a lot of capital, public and private, around before you started working, which was built up by earlier generations. You're benefiting from their efforts, both through the public sector and the private sector. The welfare state is just one of many ways of doing this.
The Nordic states are a good bit different in part because of their small populations and enormous wealth through oil--if anyone is the model for a succesful social state, it's them, though from reading a large number of blogs, it seems to me as if recent immigrant surges have shown some cracks in the social welfare state.
That isn't quite right. Norway's oil wealth is very high, but this is not the norm in the Nordic countries. Denmark's has some small oil reserves, but there is essentually no oil in Sweden, and Sweden is largest of the Nordic countries.
You're right that some immigrant groups are putting pressure on the welfare states. This is to me an argument against allowing immigration from these countries, not an argument against the welfare state.
Data on this? I can't say for sure about social mobility in the Nordic states--which as I mentioned earlier due to small populations, largely homogenous popluations, and great oil wealth are largely unique beasts--but I've always read that when comparing France, Germany, UK, etc thatn social mobility is far higher in the US. I would be glad to look at any studies though.
One study I've read was done by researchers at the London School of Economics. It suggests that social mobility is far higher in the Nordic countries and Canada than in the USA or the UK, and that mobility in the UK has declined in recent decades, although it is still not quite as low as in the USA. (West) Germany was also included, with a level of mobility higher than the USA or UK, but not as high as in the Nordic countries or Canada. However, the German sample size was too small to draw conclusions.
A major reason for the differences in mobility seems to be education. In the USA and UK, educational opportunities are linked to the wealth of parents, and so those from poor backgrounds are less able to make use of their full potential. I don't know how the education system in Canada works, but the Nordic model includes both free education and subsidies to students, and not just poor students, to cover the cost of living. This means anyone can be educated to the limits of their ability.
I would argue that the less the government drags you down and punishes success, the greater the motivation and the greater the chance for ability to shine through. There's a reason for startups being so huge here! My grandparents were factory workers their entire lives. My dad--somehow without going begging to the government--was able to get ahead--and now look at me, here on slashdot.
I think you can separate the welfare state from state attempts to regulate and manage the economy. An analysis by the World Bank lists the top 30 countries for doing business, and all the Nordic countries are in the top 15. Norway is number 5, Denmark 8, Iceland 12, Finland 13 and Sweden 14. This isn't as high as the USA, number 3, but it's higher than most countries in Europe. The UK was number 9, Germany number 19 and neither France nor Italy was in the top 30.
If you look at unemployment, it's 2.7% in Norway, 3.9% in Denmark and 4.6% in Sweden. Taxes in Sweden and Denmark are the hig
That question doesn't warrant a flippant response. I think it's interesting that you find my questioning what "fair" is to be silly... I don't find it silly.
I didn't mean to imply it's silly, just that everything depends on the definitions.
Why is it fair that I should work to support someone else?
Maybe because other people work to support you? How were you supported when you were too young to work? Who built the roads that you use? What about railways, schools, universities, hospitals, private industry and all the rest?
Why is it fair that if I choose not to work, others who do work should be forced to support me?
If that were the main effect of a welfare state, it would probably not be popular. That's one of the unfortunate drawbacks, so it's a matter of looking at whether or not the benefits are greater.
In any case, what is the alternative? They live in the same society, so unless you want them to starve to death, society will have to support them in some way, for example through begging.
Why is it fair that I'm not given these choices?
Do you live in a democracy? Are you free to emigrate somewhere else if you don't agree with the majority in your country? As long as you live in a society, you must live by the rules of that society, and democracy is the fairest way to set them.
Why is it fair that the government gets to control who gets what, arbitrarily assigning resources from the succesful to the unsuccesful?
The major transfers that occur in a welfare state, at least for the Nordic welfare states, are from the working years to the young/old years. Students, for example, receive a huge amount of subsidies, but later pay taxes which pay for the subsidies of the next generation of students, and so it goes on. Even individually, those who use more educational services, and so receive more subsidies, are statistically more likely to earn more later on, and so to pay more in taxes.
Maybe that's fair to you...I'm not sure it seems fair to me. But that's because we have different definitions of fair:-)
You can say that, but what is your definition of fair? To me, fairness implies giving everyone an equal start in society, and a chance to succeed or fail on the basis of their abilities, not who their parents happen to be. Research has shown that social mobility is far lower in the USA and UK than in Canada and the Nordic countries, which suggests that ability counts for less in the USA and UK, and birth counts for more. Individually, of course there are examples unfairness in every society, but looking at the overall picture, how can it be considered fairer to put more value on birth and less on ability?
Your definition of 'capital' isn't the one used in economics. When economists speak of capital, it is not an abstract measure of wealth, it refers to factories, machinery and other goods used in the production process. Capital is one of the four factors of production, the others being land, labour and enterprise. Land and labour are obvious, and enterprise refers to the ability of entrepreneurs to identify the allocation of land, labour and capital that will provide the highest return.
Capitalism is such a broad term that in some ways it is of limited value, but when used in contrast to socialism, the key difference is that capital is privately held/managed under capitalism, and held/managed by the state under socialism, with some variations on this. Under capitalism, investment in capital is based on maximising the return to the individual or firm making the investment, whereas under socialism, investment in capital is based on maximising the return to society, as defined by economic planners, who might have various goals, such as to maximise the production of goods, or to produce specific quantities of goods.
A vital thing to understand, which Marx failed to grasp and which your post suggests you might not realise, is that labour is not the source of all value. Value is produced by all four of the factors of production: without a car factory, workers would be unable to effectively produce cars, and without workers, the factory would not produce anything. Similarly, without land, the factory could not be built and without enterprise, or central planners in a planned economy, there would be no basis on which to organise the allocation of the other three factors.
Historically there has been a mixture of private and state control of production, with many ancient wonders, for example, constructed under the guidance of the state, but some individuals owned property, including capital, which was combined with labour, land and enterprise to produce goods. The main factor distinguishing capitalism in the industrial age from earlier forms is simply the scale. Before the rise of corporations, large scale projects tended to be undertaken mosly by the state, or by quasi-states like the Roman Catholic church. Capitalism just added a new type of organisation.
Even today, 'capitalist' economies tend to have a great deal of state ownership, or partial state ownership, and control, including such things as defence, police, education, health and transport. In some countries here in Europe, the state sector is over half of GDP, but much of this is actually just redistribution of income, where the economic activity is still in the private sector. In Sweden, for example, state spending is about 53% of GDP, but 22% of that is just transfers, so the state sector is only about 31% of the economy, with the private sector making up the other 69%.
Anyway, I think the idea that there is some stark choice between capitalism and socialism is silly. Some things can be done better by the private sector, and some things can be done better by the state sector. It's always been this way, and the extreme ideas of the Cold War were an aberration, derived from the flawed ideology of Marxism, and the equally flawed reaction to it.
Well, that depends on what the definition of is is!
To be serious, the context here is I think equality. The main role of the Scandinavian welfare states in is to transfer money from the working years to the early and late years, which means everyone gets a fairly equal start to life, and the elderly will not have to live in poverty. Of course there is also a transfer from richer to poorer, but most services, such as higher education, medical care and the state pension, are available to everyone, no matter how rich they are.
I am interested in how a society where people have to pay for higher education, medical care and so on can be considered fairer. We don't choose our parents, so what if you're unlucky, and your parents can't pay for these things? Is it fair that you then don't get them, and start life at a disadvantage? If your parents make poor choices or have bad luck, is it fair for you to have to support them in their old age?
Of course selfishness is a part of human behavior. I never said it wasn't.
You said:
Spin it all you like, people don't act in their own rational self interest, this has been shown over and over again in hundreds of different kinds of experiments. Our system is based on the premise that they will. Therefore, our entire economic system is based on a false premise.
When you say the notion that people act in their own self interest is a 'false premise', this suggests to me that you think the idea is wrong, not that it simply doesn't fully explain behaviour. Which do you actually mean? If your claim is only that rational self-interest does not fully explain human behaviour, then there actually isn't any disagreement between us here.
I've read a lot of modern economic research that claims that our economic models of human behavior are not as accurate as you portray them.
I'm not at all surprised you can find research into behaviour that doesn't fit with rational self interest. There will always be an interest in developing better models, but the starting point remains rational self interest, and homo economicus is still at the centre of mainstream economic theory. The idea is to build on the notion of homo economicus, not to replace it with something else, and there is certainly no consensus that a better basis for economic modelling than homo economicus has yet been developed.
The fundamental assumption of a welfare state (read:communism) is that our system has two stable modes selfish and selfless, and that effort is needed to push the system out of the local minimum, and over the hump into the other mode.
A welfare state is a completely different thing to Marxism/communism. Marxism is not particularly interesting to anyone with a background in economics, but the scope and nature of the welfare state is a very important issue for economists.
It appears as if force can not be used to enact the shift to a more fair system.
This is demonstrably false. Forced redistribution is far more extensive, for example, here in Scandinavia than in the USA, and our societies are fairer by virtually any measure than society in the USA.
If you think economists don't understand that humans are not perfectly rational, you couldn't be more wrong. The primary reason economic theory treats us as self-interested, rational agents is because rational self-interest is a major factor in human behaviour, and is easy to model. The resulting economic models tend to be statistically significant in explaining observed behaviour, so are valid. If you can come up with an altruism function that improves the statistical significance of any economic model, I am certain that many economists will be very interested in it.
Regarding selfishness and policy, it can be argued that the most fundamental assumption of the welfare state is in fact that humans are selfish. If we were primarily altriustic, we'd all share with each other, and there would be no need for forced redistribution: laissez-faire would produce the best outcomes for everyone.
Like most people in my country, I'm strongly in favour of an extensive welfare state. Is it because I'm selfish and assume everyone else must be too? No, it's because we have actually seen what happens when there isn't a welfare state, or when it is less extensive. Assumptions based on my own feelings are not necessary, and such assumptions actually might actually have led me to the opposite position, since I would prefer to share, even without a welfare state to force it.
The most interesting aspect of your post, in my view, is your insistence that anyone who accepts that selfishness is a part of human behaviour is trying for some reason to lie to or comfort themselves. Believe it or not, a lot of people work in the opposite way. We don't start with 'I think X, so let me find some evidence for it', we look at the evidence and then try to think of ways to explain it. This is the approach economists take, and the reason rational self-interest is a key part of economic theory is because it explains the evidence better than other hypotheses. Of course it doesn't explain it entirely, because there are other factors, but if we haven't figured out how to model them in a general way, what can we do other than ignore them?
'DLL hell' was a problem on old versions of Windows. Since 2001, when Windows XP was released, Windows has included a mechanism for allowing multiple versions of the same library to be installed. It's called WinSxS, and to me it looks massively over-engineered in comparison to simple version numbers and symbolic links, as used on Unix, but it's there nevertheless.
As a former Linux/BSD/Unix (which I'll just call Linux) user, I think it would probably do more to keep users away from Linux. The main reason I don't use Linux any longer is because Windows has much better hardware support, but I still often miss some Linux software. Another reason is Windows-only software, but even if it were ported to Linux, the better hardware support would be enough to keep me on Windows. If Lina makes it easier to run Linux software under Windows, it will thus reduce the attractiveness of Linux to me, compared to Windows, even if it also leads to some Windows software becoming available on Linux (something of which I'm not certain).
I think the critical question is which software is likely to be run under Lina. Linux users who have to use Windows for various reasons will want Linux software on Windows, so there will be demand for open source software running under Lina. On the other hand, I'm not convinced there will be much demand from commercial developers to give up the Win32 API in favour of the equivalent APIs on Linux. In addition to the huge installed base, Win32 has a lot of important features, and an extensive set of development tools, which many developers wouldn't be willing to give up.
From a utilitarian perspective, I like the idea of Lina, because it sounds like it will make it easier for me to run Linux software under Windows. For those whose goal is not the best experience for users, but is rather to promote migration of users from Windows to Linux, I'd be surprised if Lina helps, and I think it might well do the opposite.
More important for me than the GUI integration is integration with such things as the host file system and process list. If I use a VM, it's more difficult to work with the same files from both environments, and to manage processes and such in a unified way.
I don't know how well the GUI is integrated, but if it avoids using an X server on systems with alternative graphics support, such as Windows and Mac OS X, that would also be an important advantage.
It isn't a question of whether there is a need to build from source, but rather why such a need would or wouldn't be a bad thing. In my view, requiring ordinary users to build from source would be a disaster, not only because of potential build problems which they'd have not the faintest idea how to solve, but also because it would add even more variation from one system to the next.
One of the advantages of binary distribution on a unified, binary-distributed platform is consistency. From the application version number, it can be known precisely which machine code is running. From the OS version number, which would include update/patch levels, it can be known, at least to a large extent, which libraries will be loaded and which kernel will be involved. This means the environment is much more predictable, easier to test, easier to troubleshoot, etc.
In theory, yes. In practice, most users aren't perfectly informed about what data is saved by a search engine, how long it's saved, how it's used, whom it's shared with, etc.
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Microsoft's user-mode driver framework, which is supported on both Vista and XP, is completely different to the old user-mode USER/GDI in NT 3.x, but in any case, most drivers still run in kernel mode, not user mode. Over time this may change to some extent, but direct hardware access requires a kernel mode component, even if some of the associated driver logic can be put into user mode.
The question of sustainability is actually a very easy on to answer, but the problem is most politicians don't like the answer. There are three phases of life: 1. pre-work, 2. work and 3. post-work. During the first and third phases, people consume without producing, or at least without producing much, so they have to be balanced by the second phase. What we've seen in recent decades is that more and more skills are required in the job markets, which means education takes longer. This increases the length of the first phase. At the same time, people are living longer, which increases the length of the third phase. However, people still want to retire at the traditional age, so the second phase has actually become shorter, since they're starting work at a later age.
The only solution to the growing imbalance between the working and non-working phases is to make the retirement age higher, so that the working phase becomes proportionally similar to what it was in the past. However, politicians who admit this would immediately be voted out, so they have to dance around the issue, and pretend that it's some great mystery, even as it gets worse. Some like to say that immigration will solve it, but if the immigrants retire at the traditional age, it's just delaying the problem, without doing anything to solve it, and that assumes immigrants work at the same rate as non-immigrants, which is true for some groups, such as those from other western/northern European countries, but not for all groups. Delaying the problem does of course help the current politicians, who can then leave the mess to be cleaned up by the ones who follow them.
I find the paparazzi disturbing too, but most people would it seems rather be able to gossip about celebrities than see their privacy protected, so that's the way it is. If most people don't mind these advertising photo vans driving about and photographing them either, then I'll just have to live with that too.
That was true on XP. On Vista, switching sessions is allowed by default on domain machines, which is one of the many reasons I'm glad to have upgraded from XP to Vista. I think there's a policy to turn this off, however, since there are obvious security implications.
At any rate, security vulnerabilities are hardly unique to Microsoft's email clients, so it doesn't really make any sense to point to Microsoft in particular, and ignore all the vulnerabilities that have been found in, for example, Thunderbird. More importantly, the post I was replying to made an argument based on two assumptions, (1) that Microsoft email readers automatically launch attachments, and (2) that file extensions are ignored when opening files on Windows. Both of these assumptions are wrong, so the argument was rubbish, based on either ignorance or a deliberate intention to deceive.
In any case, the issue of running as an administrator is only critical on multi-user machines. Remember, the valuable information is in the user's personal files, not the system files. Since the overwhelming majority of PCs are single-user machines, running as an administrator or not doesn't really matter. On a multi-user machine it does matter, because malware run by an administrator can access the files of the other users too.
If you run a malware application with your user credentials, it has full access to your files. Do you really care whether or not it has access to the OS files too? It doesn't need administrator or superuser privileges to read/modify/delete all your files, to send all of your files to a remote location to be scanned for bank details and such, or to act as a zombie for DDOS and other attacks. In short, anyone who thinks running as an ordinary user protects them from malware is living in blissful ignorance.
If you think everyone designing network operating systems before the Internet era of ubiquitous connections to an untrusted network was 'stupid', I think that says a good deal more about you than it does about them.
It's a bit like office doors in a building owned by an organisation. They might have locks, but the primary security barrier is the entrance to the building itself. Most people in the building more or less expect that others inside it are trusted enough that they don't have to close and lock their doors all the time. If the building were to suddenly become open to the public, the situation would change drastically.
No, I'm saying NT was primarily used in corporate/institutional LANs, where every machine was owned and managed by the same organisation, and Internet access was rare or nonexistent. That's how the overwhelming majority of networks were in the late 80s and early 90s, when NT was designed and first deployed. Even when the Internet did catch on, most organisations restricted direct Internet access to a few hardened machines, and required all the others to proxy through them.1. Type Ctrl+Alt+Del, which switches to the secure desktop, and then choose 'switch user'. This will switch to the logon desktop, and from there you can log onto a new session as an administrator.
2. Enable the policy requiring the SAS before entering credentials. With this, you can avoid using a different session, but any time the system wants credentials, it will ask you to enter the SAS. This will switch to the secure desktop, where the credentials can be entered. If someone spoofs the UI asking for the SAS, when you actually type it you won't be prompted for credentials, but instead will be presented with the default secure desktop.
Yes, you're missing something. The most important function of AV software is not to fix security holes, it is to protect the user's data from user mistakes, such as running malicious software. Users who only run software from trusted sources, and use a firewall, don't really need AV software.
Now if your complaint was that Windows should not include execute permission by default when a new file is created, I'd agree with that. I don't know why the default when granting read access is to grant both read and execute access. It makes no sense to do this, since read and execute are not the same.
In any case, it's actually very easy to fix this 'default to allow execute' problem, by adding a permissions entry to a user's home directory that denies execute privileges to everyone, and applies only to files. Any file created in that directory, or any subdirectories, will then not be executable, unless the user specifically changes the permissions on that file, or the directory containing it. I suppose Micrsoft haven't done this by default because most users wouldn't understand how to add execute privileges to a file, so would complain.
From a technological perspective, Microsoft could easily have offered incremental updates to XP over the years, leading eventually to what Vista is now. Individual features could have been developed and released as completed, rather than grouped together into one massive release.
From a marketing perspective, it might make more sense to stick with the 'big release' model, but from a technological perspective it would make much more sense to move to an incremental model. This naturally implies a change in the pricing structure, from a periodic fee for each major upgrade to an ongoing subscription fee. I'd much prefer the latter model myself.
The big difference between earlier versions of NT and XP, which led to Microsoft's security push, was that NT was mostly deployed in the LAN environments for which it was designed, where all the systems were more or less trusted. Windows 2000, and especially XP, gained widespread use in Internet environments, where the other systems on the network are not trusted, which completely changed the security dynamics.
My point is only that even if you pay taxes and so on, there was a lot of capital, public and private, around before you started working, which was built up by earlier generations. You're benefiting from their efforts, both through the public sector and the private sector. The welfare state is just one of many ways of doing this.
That isn't quite right. Norway's oil wealth is very high, but this is not the norm in the Nordic countries. Denmark's has some small oil reserves, but there is essentually no oil in Sweden, and Sweden is largest of the Nordic countries.
You're right that some immigrant groups are putting pressure on the welfare states. This is to me an argument against allowing immigration from these countries, not an argument against the welfare state.
One study I've read was done by researchers at the London School of Economics. It suggests that social mobility is far higher in the Nordic countries and Canada than in the USA or the UK, and that mobility in the UK has declined in recent decades, although it is still not quite as low as in the USA. (West) Germany was also included, with a level of mobility higher than the USA or UK, but not as high as in the Nordic countries or Canada. However, the German sample size was too small to draw conclusions.
A major reason for the differences in mobility seems to be education. In the USA and UK, educational opportunities are linked to the wealth of parents, and so those from poor backgrounds are less able to make use of their full potential. I don't know how the education system in Canada works, but the Nordic model includes both free education and subsidies to students, and not just poor students, to cover the cost of living. This means anyone can be educated to the limits of their ability.
I think you can separate the welfare state from state attempts to regulate and manage the economy. An analysis by the World Bank lists the top 30 countries for doing business, and all the Nordic countries are in the top 15. Norway is number 5, Denmark 8, Iceland 12, Finland 13 and Sweden 14. This isn't as high as the USA, number 3, but it's higher than most countries in Europe. The UK was number 9, Germany number 19 and neither France nor Italy was in the top 30.
If you look at unemployment, it's 2.7% in Norway, 3.9% in Denmark and 4.6% in Sweden. Taxes in Sweden and Denmark are the hig
In any case, what is the alternative? They live in the same society, so unless you want them to starve to death, society will have to support them in some way, for example through begging.
Do you live in a democracy? Are you free to emigrate somewhere else if you don't agree with the majority in your country? As long as you live in a society, you must live by the rules of that society, and democracy is the fairest way to set them. The major transfers that occur in a welfare state, at least for the Nordic welfare states, are from the working years to the young/old years. Students, for example, receive a huge amount of subsidies, but later pay taxes which pay for the subsidies of the next generation of students, and so it goes on. Even individually, those who use more educational services, and so receive more subsidies, are statistically more likely to earn more later on, and so to pay more in taxes. You can say that, but what is your definition of fair? To me, fairness implies giving everyone an equal start in society, and a chance to succeed or fail on the basis of their abilities, not who their parents happen to be. Research has shown that social mobility is far lower in the USA and UK than in Canada and the Nordic countries, which suggests that ability counts for less in the USA and UK, and birth counts for more. Individually, of course there are examples unfairness in every society, but looking at the overall picture, how can it be considered fairer to put more value on birth and less on ability?Capitalism is such a broad term that in some ways it is of limited value, but when used in contrast to socialism, the key difference is that capital is privately held/managed under capitalism, and held/managed by the state under socialism, with some variations on this. Under capitalism, investment in capital is based on maximising the return to the individual or firm making the investment, whereas under socialism, investment in capital is based on maximising the return to society, as defined by economic planners, who might have various goals, such as to maximise the production of goods, or to produce specific quantities of goods.
A vital thing to understand, which Marx failed to grasp and which your post suggests you might not realise, is that labour is not the source of all value. Value is produced by all four of the factors of production: without a car factory, workers would be unable to effectively produce cars, and without workers, the factory would not produce anything. Similarly, without land, the factory could not be built and without enterprise, or central planners in a planned economy, there would be no basis on which to organise the allocation of the other three factors.
Historically there has been a mixture of private and state control of production, with many ancient wonders, for example, constructed under the guidance of the state, but some individuals owned property, including capital, which was combined with labour, land and enterprise to produce goods. The main factor distinguishing capitalism in the industrial age from earlier forms is simply the scale. Before the rise of corporations, large scale projects tended to be undertaken mosly by the state, or by quasi-states like the Roman Catholic church. Capitalism just added a new type of organisation.
Even today, 'capitalist' economies tend to have a great deal of state ownership, or partial state ownership, and control, including such things as defence, police, education, health and transport. In some countries here in Europe, the state sector is over half of GDP, but much of this is actually just redistribution of income, where the economic activity is still in the private sector. In Sweden, for example, state spending is about 53% of GDP, but 22% of that is just transfers, so the state sector is only about 31% of the economy, with the private sector making up the other 69%.
Anyway, I think the idea that there is some stark choice between capitalism and socialism is silly. Some things can be done better by the private sector, and some things can be done better by the state sector. It's always been this way, and the extreme ideas of the Cold War were an aberration, derived from the flawed ideology of Marxism, and the equally flawed reaction to it.
To be serious, the context here is I think equality. The main role of the Scandinavian welfare states in is to transfer money from the working years to the early and late years, which means everyone gets a fairly equal start to life, and the elderly will not have to live in poverty. Of course there is also a transfer from richer to poorer, but most services, such as higher education, medical care and the state pension, are available to everyone, no matter how rich they are.
I am interested in how a society where people have to pay for higher education, medical care and so on can be considered fairer. We don't choose our parents, so what if you're unlucky, and your parents can't pay for these things? Is it fair that you then don't get them, and start life at a disadvantage? If your parents make poor choices or have bad luck, is it fair for you to have to support them in their old age?
You said:
When you say the notion that people act in their own self interest is a 'false premise', this suggests to me that you think the idea is wrong, not that it simply doesn't fully explain behaviour. Which do you actually mean? If your claim is only that rational self-interest does not fully explain human behaviour, then there actually isn't any disagreement between us here.
I'm not at all surprised you can find research into behaviour that doesn't fit with rational self interest. There will always be an interest in developing better models, but the starting point remains rational self interest, and homo economicus is still at the centre of mainstream economic theory. The idea is to build on the notion of homo economicus, not to replace it with something else, and there is certainly no consensus that a better basis for economic modelling than homo economicus has yet been developed.A welfare state is a completely different thing to Marxism/communism. Marxism is not particularly interesting to anyone with a background in economics, but the scope and nature of the welfare state is a very important issue for economists. This is demonstrably false. Forced redistribution is far more extensive, for example, here in Scandinavia than in the USA, and our societies are fairer by virtually any measure than society in the USA.It is clearly more altruistic to distribute code under a BSD licence than under the GPL, and even more so to put it in the public domain.
Regarding selfishness and policy, it can be argued that the most fundamental assumption of the welfare state is in fact that humans are selfish. If we were primarily altriustic, we'd all share with each other, and there would be no need for forced redistribution: laissez-faire would produce the best outcomes for everyone.
Like most people in my country, I'm strongly in favour of an extensive welfare state. Is it because I'm selfish and assume everyone else must be too? No, it's because we have actually seen what happens when there isn't a welfare state, or when it is less extensive. Assumptions based on my own feelings are not necessary, and such assumptions actually might actually have led me to the opposite position, since I would prefer to share, even without a welfare state to force it.
The most interesting aspect of your post, in my view, is your insistence that anyone who accepts that selfishness is a part of human behaviour is trying for some reason to lie to or comfort themselves. Believe it or not, a lot of people work in the opposite way. We don't start with 'I think X, so let me find some evidence for it', we look at the evidence and then try to think of ways to explain it. This is the approach economists take, and the reason rational self-interest is a key part of economic theory is because it explains the evidence better than other hypotheses. Of course it doesn't explain it entirely, because there are other factors, but if we haven't figured out how to model them in a general way, what can we do other than ignore them?
'DLL hell' was a problem on old versions of Windows. Since 2001, when Windows XP was released, Windows has included a mechanism for allowing multiple versions of the same library to be installed. It's called WinSxS, and to me it looks massively over-engineered in comparison to simple version numbers and symbolic links, as used on Unix, but it's there nevertheless.
I think the critical question is which software is likely to be run under Lina. Linux users who have to use Windows for various reasons will want Linux software on Windows, so there will be demand for open source software running under Lina. On the other hand, I'm not convinced there will be much demand from commercial developers to give up the Win32 API in favour of the equivalent APIs on Linux. In addition to the huge installed base, Win32 has a lot of important features, and an extensive set of development tools, which many developers wouldn't be willing to give up.
From a utilitarian perspective, I like the idea of Lina, because it sounds like it will make it easier for me to run Linux software under Windows. For those whose goal is not the best experience for users, but is rather to promote migration of users from Windows to Linux, I'd be surprised if Lina helps, and I think it might well do the opposite.
I don't know how well the GUI is integrated, but if it avoids using an X server on systems with alternative graphics support, such as Windows and Mac OS X, that would also be an important advantage.
One of the advantages of binary distribution on a unified, binary-distributed platform is consistency. From the application version number, it can be known precisely which machine code is running. From the OS version number, which would include update/patch levels, it can be known, at least to a large extent, which libraries will be loaded and which kernel will be involved. This means the environment is much more predictable, easier to test, easier to troubleshoot, etc.
In theory, yes. In practice, most users aren't perfectly informed about what data is saved by a search engine, how long it's saved, how it's used, whom it's shared with, etc.