"By releasing it only on their hardware, they can avoid some of the huge headaches of compatibility. One reason why Windows is so buggy is that there are millions of combinations of hardware"
This is an oft-repeated meme, but the fact of the matter is that most of the hardware support on Windows is actually provided by manufactures who supply drivers rather than MS. This is why there are so many moans from owners of peripherals whenever Windows has a new driver model, and their stuff stops working because its manufacturer won't spend money on writing new drivers for stuff they don't make anymore.
"By keeping their hardware combinations small, they can be assured of some measure of reliability"
Linux manages to be reliable without keeping its hardware selection small, so it's far more probable that Microsoft's reliability problems have been caused by crappy code and badly designed driver loading mechanisms that let a buggy one bring an entire system down than the fact they support lots of different hardware. And it's not even as if Apple aren't already supporting a bewildering variety of OS X host systems:
- it runs on three distinctly different CPUs (PPC, Intel, Arm).
- Many, many combinations of support chips have been used over the years.
- A variety of graphics cards from all three major manufacturers have been used (ATI, Intel, nVidia).
- There've been several different types of hard disk controller and CD / DVD interface.
- Several types of Firewire and USB hardware has been used.
- etc., etc.
So Apple already have a pretty comprehensive driver collection, and OS X is perfectly amenable to third party drivers that companies like Mark Of The Unicorn write for their specialist hardware, so it's just as flexible as Windows in this regard.
If this is the case, then why do they sell music and video, and write and sell a variety of their own software packages (Final Cut, Logic, iWork, iLife, Aperture, etc.)?
"There is one option that didn't exist before, virtualisation."
There's also another one: Linux-style LiveCD systems that run directly without the need (or in the case of Apple, the ability) to install them on a hard disk.
"It would be so easy to sell Taste the Apple eXperience, one bite will have you wanting more."
I reckon the LiveCD would be a really good option. You could download and burn an ISO, or pick up a ready-made disk from an Apple dealer.
"They release MacOS X only for Macs. Is there a reason why they don't release it for regular PC's?"
1) It avoids treading on Microsoft's toes. Mac versions of MS Office help to sell lot of Apple machines, so pissing the Redmond Gorilla off by competing with them in the commodity OS market wouldn't be a particularly good idea.
2) Apple tried it in the past, and ended up losing far more from lost sales revenue to clone makers than they were earning by licensing the OS. This was therefore one of the first things Jobs killed off when he took over at Apple, so it's unlikely he'd want to risk the same thing happening again.
"Yes you are. The fact that SUDO hands off elevation to a USER LEVEL root account is exactly what I am talking about."
As I have said previously, it provides _root privileges_, not a root account, because (as I have also said) there is no root account on OS X by default.
"OS X users can even enable the root USER LEVEL account, and use it to login."
Why would it have to be enabled if, as you claim, SUDO uses it?
"There is NO SUCH USER LEVEL account type in Vista, even if you wanted to enable it."
You can however completely disable UAC, which turns a user with administrative privileges into what's effectively root. Different mechanism, same effect.
"Yes, but SUDO is not used on all OSes, so making a general statement would be silly."
It is however used on most UNIX variants, is available for all of them, and always has exactly the same default behaviour, so I can only take this as an "I didn't know that, but will pretend I did".
"The fact that OS X by default leaves ROOT OPEN for ANY AMOUNT of TIME, rather than based on SINGLE process request is the security hole."
It's shared by all UNIX variants that use SUDO in its default configuration, so continuing to single out OS X is disingenuous.
"Vista does not leave elevation open for a time period, as it processes security far more granular than ANY UNIX, including OS X. This means Vista gives SPECIFIC TOKEN based permission to the process elevation request, and NOTHING is left open."
"No they don't. The only subsystem that was put in place for backwards abilities was the Win16 (Windows 3.1) subsystem, and it hasn't broke applications for 15 years, and even then the only applications that were broken demanded to install hardware level access that is forbidden in NT."
This is a blatant piece of tripe, because Microsoft claimed 90% compatibility between XP and software written for NT or Win9X _written within the three years prior to its release_. They knew that there was a lot of stuff out there which made assumptions about the low-level structure of prior versions of Windows (especially Win9X) that would not install, run, or run reliably (symptoms varied). The XP Upgrade adviser checked for and flagged software MS knew was problematic, but with there was a lot of stuff out there they didn't know about which also had compatibility problems.
Windows Vista also has an upgrade advisor that detects and flags problematic software, so once again, Microsoft's claims and actions are at odds with your claims.
Lots of obvious stuff...
You are describing is what's know as a hybrid kernel or macrokernel. A nice Wikepedia article about them is here:
As you can see, the NT kernel is far from being unique in terms of using this particular design, and it isn't something Microsoft invented.
"You took this a bit too literal. I should have said an EMULATION sandbox. OS 9 on OS X is like running PearPC OS X on Windows now, it is an emulator running inside a constrained emulation sandbox."
As I said in my last post, Apple stopped supporting the use of OS 9 with OS X when they switched to Intel processors. When they did support it, it ran as a native PowerPC system on machines with PowerPC processors, so there was no emulation. Furthermore, Rosetta (which is an emulator) doesn't run OS 9 applications at all, so there's never been an Apple supported or Apple supplied emulator that runs OS 9 applications under OS X.
"SUA was a third party subsystem project to create a full UNIX subsystem."
_Interix_ was originally written by a company called Softway Systems, but Microsoft bought the product from them quite a while ago, so SUA (and it's prior incarnation as SFA) has always been a Microsoft pro
While you conveniently fail to address the rather obvious point there were enough trees within easy reach for them to build a large wood henge prior the stone one, construct at least 300 wooden houses around the henge, and a number of wooden platforms supported by massive tree trunks. Figures.
"2. So you can't disprove those, figures."
I can't disprove the idea that pixies moved the blue stones by magic, or that Santa transported them in his sleigh either, and neither can you. So by your own measure, those hypotheses are just as strong as yours, and have as much supporting evidence (i.e. none). Figures.
"3. So you're a religious fanatic, figures."
This is a complement coming from an obvious charlatan such as yourself. So I ask you again, Mr. Denke:
- Who dated the axes that are at the centre of your claims, and how was it done?
- Where is your proof for the claim that "cave chimneys" were filled in and dug out again?
- Where is your scientific refutation of my assertion that sulphur etc. are found in significant quantities at _all_ cremation sites, and are not therefore proof that coal was used in Stonehenge cremations?
"800,000-year-old Pembrokeshire Coalfield mining artefacts have been dated. 800,000-year-old South Wales Coalfield mining artefacts have been dated."
By whom?
"1. Prove that 3100 BC Salisbury Plain was "heavily forested"."
I didn't say Salisbury plain was heavily forested. The surrounding countryside however was heavily forested (and there are remnants of forests there today), so people on the plain didn't have to walk far to find trees, hence the large numbers of wooden structures that were there.
"2. Prove that the Ancient did not cremate Dead by "coal use"."
That's not the way science works. It's your theory, so you have to prove that they _did_ use coal by producing some evidence. Asking others to provide counter-proof is the tactic of religious fanatics, not scientists with realistic theories.
"3. Prove that importing rocks 150 kilometres is not "ludicrous"."
Prove that there is even a tenuous connection between importing rocks _to_ Stonehenge and digging for coal _under_ Stonehenge.
Note that your rather long bit about the mineral composition of the land around Stonehenge just happened to slip in a bit about ancients importing anthracite, despite the fact that you've still not provided any evidence for it.
"Dr. Garry Denke, William Hawley, Robert Newall chimney vent holes' core samples have both anthracite coal and bituminous coal in them."
So your claims are based on your claims? Circular reasoning of this sort is another sign of religious rather than scientific arguments.
"John Aubrey saw Aubrey Holes not"
I don't understand your grammar. Is this some sort of poem?
It's pretty obvious by now that despite all the posturing and claims, there's absolutely no evidentiary basis whatsoever for your hypothesis, so it's something that should be filed alongside other zero evidence hypotheses for stone circles such as healing crystals, UFO landing sites, and gateways to other dimensions.
"What you are referencing is how OS X sets up and uses SUDO with the initial account as the 'administrator' account to elevate to root."
No, I am not. OS X doesn't have the root account enabled by default, i.e. there is no root user to log into. SUDO-s gives root _privileges_, but it doesn't enable the root account.
"The SUDO elevation also leaves the root account access active for a period of time after the application or user requires the elevation in the process."
I would assumed you'd know that's standard SUDO behaviour on all systems that ship with it. The default timeout after invoking SUDO is 5 minutes, i.e. root privileges will remain active for 5 minutes after SUDO is invoked. This can be changed with VISUDO (modifying SUDO configuration by other means is a bad idea) by altering the value of "timestamp_timeout" (or adding it if it's absent): the value is in seconds, and setting it to 0 will force SUDO to ask for a password for every action. Note that this is in the man pages for SUDO.
"Yes, this is called an emulator."
It's actually rather more like WINE, which isn't an emulator.
"Windows on the other hand has never needed to resort to an emulation program to support legacy applications."
It would be more correct to say that they didn't use one. The spotty legacy support in Windows XP and Vista does however indicate that they'd probably have been far better off doing what Apple did and shipping a modified version of Win98 to run legacy apps inside XP/Vista instead of using the approach of trying to fold all the bugs from previous versions into new ones without achieving full legacy compatibility.
"Even NT 3.1 had a Windows 3.1 subsystem in the OS, just as Vista has a Win32 and Win64 subsystem that work side by side on Vista x64 with no emulation."
All of those subsystems break a large number of legacy applications, including some from MS.
"NT (Vista) also takes this approach past the 'Windows' world, as early versions of NT shipped with OS/2 and POSIX subsystems that were NOT EMULATORS but real subsystems running on the NT core."
As I said before, the OS 9 system Apple provided with OS X wasn't an emulator.
"This is something Darwin can't even begin to think of doing. The MACH/BSD (UNIX model) that Darwin uses is not condusive to concepts that are inherent abilities of the NT architecture."
Indeed. However, it's debatable whether this is an advantage or a disadvantage.
"Today you see Vista has a full UNIX subsystem as well, support V5 and yes even full BSD."
SFU has been around since 1999, so this isn't something that's new to Vista (although they've changed the name to SUA now). Note though that the Vista version doesn't include server components such as NFS and NIS, has problems with filenames containing colons, so it's not a full UNIX.
"So ya, Microsoft could have created a sandbox emulator for Win9x or Even Win3.1 applications and told users to just get use to it like Apple did"
Running low-security stuff in a sandbox is generally regarded as an advantage, hence the fact that MS have adopted it for current and future versions of IE.
Note also that Apple's approach gained another notable advantage: their developers were able to devote all their efforts to a new OS instead of trying to fold old bugs into it.
"instead they chose to implement it the best way possible"
Because everything Microsoft do is by definition the best possible way, and all those broken legacy apps, and thousands of virus and worm infections are mere figments of our imagination.
"and with the NT Client/Server architecture, adding in subsystems instead of an Emulation environment was the best choice."
You clearly have no idea what emulation is, otherwise you wouldn't be confusing it with virtualisation (clue: Rosette is an emulator, the OS 9 version that shipped with OS X wasn't).
"If Apple had to make System 9 apps run natively on Darwin, OS X might not still be released."
"Given that Fox News is a big practical joke on the Americans"
It's the same joke he's been playing on the Brits for decades by buying up newspapers and filling them with tripe, and making them pay to be advertised at while watching tripe on his Sky TV empire.
"All Australians should be proud of him. Keeping that many people fooled for so long is a sign of true mastery."
The real sign of his mastery is his ability to make vast sums of money out of fooling them.
"OS X users are just as open to user engineered security problems. (I could say the same of other *nixes, but most of them get the important of root elevation.)"
The fact that there's no root account on OS X by default means that Apple get the idea rather better than most Linux distros. Administrator != root.
"Legacy support. If Apple had allowed System 9 apps to run on the desktop, they would have had to implement the same type of feature."
Apple did allow System 9 apps to run before they phased out their PPC-based systems. The difference was one of approach: a special version of System 9 shipped on the OS X disks that ran "inside" OS X whenever a System 9 application was launched, and used a dedicated subfolder for System 9 apps that emulated the layout of the OS 9 file system. It was therefore effectively a virtual environment that prevented OS 9 stuff from accessing the memory and file systems used by OS X applications, so it didn't need to use OS X confirmation dialogues when installing OS 9 applications.
NB: SheepShaver can be used to run OS 9 versions up to 9.4 on Intel-based Macs, although this isn't officially supported by Apple.
That's _one guy's theory_ which is well known in anthropological circles, and has been soundly rejected because his dating methods are (to be kind) extremely suspect. Note also that even if he was right, 700,000 years isn't 800,000 years, so you've still not provided any evidence for your claim of people in Britain using coal 800,000 years ago.
"(b) they're not..."
I presume the things that followed this are meant to be fed into Google, because all of them produce links to forum posts by yourself. Posts by you do not count as evidence that supports you claims.
"c) Caddo texas..."
The 17th century was not renowned for its accurate scientific dating methods, so claiming that some hand axes are 800,00 years old based on what a guy from that period said is nothing more than speculative nonsense.
"Phosphorus and Sulphur (Brimstone) means Coal burnt '56 Aubrey Holes."
Phosphorus and sulphur (plus other things such as potassium) are always found in cremations because they occur in both plants and animals in significant quantities, so burning a large animal or person on a wood fire (you need a lot of wood to cremate a human) produces them. Their presence is not therefore evidence of coal use.
NB: ancient Britain was very heavily forested, so wood for both building and fuel was plentiful and easily accessible almost everywhere. Neolithic people (who didn't smelt metals) did not therefore require coal for any purpose, so suggesting that they'd go to the effort of prospecting for it in a field that's so deep and of such poor quality that not even the massively coal-dependant Victorians bothered to mine it is ludicrous.
"Wars and selfishness arise from conflict over scarce resources."
History teaches us that the motivations for wars are greed, envy, and fear. Having enough of something doesn't stop people wanting more, being envious of those who have more of whatever it is, and being afraid of those who are a little different.
"Technology has the ability to eliminate scarcity for practical purposes."
We could have done so with the technology we had in the 1960s, but greed, envy, and fear meant that vast amounts of resources and scientific effort were dedicated to proving which side of the East / West divide was better at everything than the other side instead of making life better for everyone.
You are correct. The figures are average life expectancy, which is dragged down because 90% of the population of European nations died before the age of 12 throughout most of its history. If you reached 12, then you had a pretty good chance of living to 70 and beyond if a (a) a disease didn't get you, and (b) there was somebody to look after you in your old age so you didn't die of hunger, exposure, and associated maladies.
"It's the mental capabilities that makes the difference."
There is no difference between the mental capabilities of somebody from 10,000 year ago and us. They had exactly the same brain sizes, and exactly the same levels of intelligence.
"Starting out on an empty planet would shift the odds in the caveman's direction, but the modern human would probably still win."
The modern human would lose very quickly unless he was specifically trained in surviving outdoors with no technology whatsoever (i.e. no knives, clothes, boots), because the primitive would be able to make and use extremely effective weapons from stone and wood, and use them to feed and clothe himself, build a shelter, make fire, etc., all while the modern human was trying to catch the local fauna with his bare hands.
"Why do you think primitive humans are extinct now, even though they where perfectly capable of surviving harsh environments? "
The primitive humans from 10,000 years ago were exactly the same species as us, i.e. homo sapiens. So your modern human would be facing off against another human who is as intelligent as him, but physically fitter and extremely well prepared to survive for long periods without any technology that he's not capable of making for himself. Within a few hours, the savage would be carrying a spear with a stone head and a woomera to project it over long distances with considerable force, stone knives, and stone axes, all of which he would be able to use with lethal skill.
"Because modern humans outsmarted them. "
Claiming that we outsmarted ourselves is ludicrous. I suggest you actually check up on who was around 10,000 years ago to avoid embarrassing yourself with ignorant tripe like this.
"I'm 39. Oh wait, he'd be long dead. Too bad! The prime of their youth, these primitive humans, would last, what, 10 years?"
If the ancients had such short lives, then I wonder how Ramses The Great managed to live 93 years, or why the old testament says that a man's life span is between 70 and 80 years.
An ancient who managed to live past 12 and avoided being killed by infections of various types stood a pretty good chance of reaching of reaching 70, assuming that he or she had somebody to look after them in their old age so they didn't die of malnutrition, exposure, etc. 90% of people died before reaching 12, which is why the _average_ life span figures are much lower than they are now, and also why people have the strange idea that everybody was popping off at 24 before the 20th century.
No, you're not. There I was, all excited about the idea of MS finally seeing the FOSS light, only to discover that it was yet another blog about a guy who managed to use Linux for browsing, EMAIL, and basic office productivity for _a whole year_ (and he still can't get his HP Laserjet to work with it).
"Why did the Ancient dig and fill '56 cave chimney vent holes with Carboniferous Limestone?"
Where is your evidence for this claim? Few if any known inhabited caves from Europe had vent holes of any sort, hence the fact that most fire pits are found near the entrances.
"Why did the Ancient then remove '56 cave chimney vent holes' Carboniferous Limestone?"
See above.
"Why did the Ancient burn anthracite Coal in the bottom of all '56 cave chimney vent holes?"
See above.
Question 4 is a repeat of question 3.
"Why did the Ancient cremate ancient Dead in the bottom of all '56 cave chimney vent holes?"
I've seen no evidence to support your claim that ancient troglodites cremated their dead.
"Why did the Ancient cremate such Dead with anthracite Coal in all '56 of the Aubrey Holes?"
Evidence?
It's time for three questions from me:
1) Why are you claiming that there were people using coal in Britain 330,000 years before there's any archaeological evidence of people living in Britain?
2) Why are so many of tour supposed 7 questions simply repeats of prior questions?
3) Where is the supporting evidence for the assertions above?
LOL! This rather excellent post has, more or less word-for-word, been pasted all over the Internet. It's a superb troll, alhtough it would of course have been better if the author knew that there's no convincing evidence for Homo Erectus in Britain before 470,000 years ago, and they buggered off for nicer climes 30,000 years later when the place got hit by an ice age.
""country" - didn't exist 5,000 years ago, patchy local tribes, communities and chiefdoms were all that exsisted, often as small as a couple hundred people."
The fact that late neolithic grooveware pottery is found in Britain everywhere from the Orkneys to the south coast indicates that there must have been active links between the people who made it. Grooveware has a very distinctive type of geometric pattern on it that's unique to Britain, so the similarities between examples found at both ends of the place cannot have simply happened by accident.
Note also that the excavations carried out by the team from Sheffield University at Durrington Walls indicates that there was a circular village with more than 300 houses around Stonehenge, which makes it the largest settlement in Northern Europe at that time.
""royal dynasty" - Firstly it wasn't royal - that is a modern definition, and can only be used when it means what it says, I see the FA uses it as well, and it should be rightly criticised for inaccurate reporting."
This must mean that all the effort Neolithic and bronze-age inhabitants of Britain put into building long barrows must have been solely for the purpose of burying completely unimportant people who just happened to have expensive grave goods because of the community's generosity.
"We know little concrete about how stone age societies functioned - far too little to use the word "royal"."
The logistics involved in building some of Britain's Neolithic monuments indicates that they were the product of a sophisticated culture with a centralised regional power structure, not a bunch of disparate villages which rarely communicated with each other. Silbury Hil for example is thought to have required 18 million man-hours to construct, and the people working on it required ongoing support in the form of food, water, clothing, and tools. It was built over a period of about ten years, which means that at least 700 people would have been required for the building work alone (i.e excluding those in logistical support roles, who would have outnumbered the builders). People don't just happen to get the idea for major projects like this by accident, and chieftains of tiny communities wouldn't have had the capability of planning it, let alone organising everyone required for building and support roles.
"We know little concrete about how stone age societies functioned - far too little to use the word "royal"."
We know that they were capable of undertaking major projects that required significant engineering skills and the ability to organise and motivate large numbers of people over long periods, because the evidence is there for anyone to see. And we know that some barrows were used to bury people over long time periods, and given the fact that the biggest ones have around 40 burial chambers, it's fairly obvious that they were made to house only those who the builders thought were important. The heavy stones used in their construction and large amounts of earth that were put over them mean that long barrows in particular were major projects in their own right, not something a little village knocked up over a weekend to put poor old Auntie Mabel in.
"Secondly there is no evidence that it is a "dynasty" of anything."
The evidence for it being a dynasty is better in an archaeological sense than that for many royal dynasties from the same period in other parts of the world, where the only claim for them existing at all comes from (sometimes scant and fragmentary) written records.
"something with the quality / performance of Beta in a 3/4" format sounds cool"
U-Matic had better performance than Betamax (it was also _much_ more expensive), although later Betamax recorders, mainly sold in Japan, where the format continued to be successful long after it had disappeared in Europe and the US, eventually became much better the original U-Matic system.
It's actually interesting to note that U-Matic dominated the professional video market while a competing VHS-based system flopped. This is undoubtedly due to two factors:
1) U-Matic was the first professional cartridge based system (1969) by a long way, and had the market pretty much to itself for a number of years, so it became a de-facto standard in the industry.
2) In contrast with Betamax, Sony had an extremely liberal licensing policy with U-Matic, so it was supported by a wide variety of manufacturers.
Despite the fact that U-Matic is now a completely obsolete format, there's such a vast amount of unique professional material recorded with various versions of it that equipment and tapes are still being manufactured and sold, and there's an entire industry devoted to servicing existing equipment and transferring the contents of tapes to more modern formats.
"They specifically mention in the article that the OSS community is not "unified," which is actually just an opinion pulled out of the air."
He's quite right in saying that OSS developers (It's not "a community") aren't unified. The lie is in trying to pretend that this makes them somehow different from commercial closed-source developers, when the reality of the matter is that developers as a species aren't unified, irrespective of any licensing conditions that apply to the projects they're working on.
"Not to mention that Betamax was a leading industry standard in commercial video recorders, particularly in news media."
U-Matic was the professional standard. It came out before Betamax, and was based on 3/4 tapes rather than 1/2". It also had a different recording format.
"Remember those GIANT camcorders news people used to carry? Those were ALL Betamax."
They were high-band U-Matic S, which used a smaller U-Matic cartridge that still had 3/4" tape, and a maximum 20 minute playing time. High-band (also know as Broadcast Video U-Matic or BVU) had better resolution and colour than the original U-Matic, which became known as low-band U-Matic (LBU).
Note that although Betacam replaced HBU-S in the 1990s, the cameras that used it weren't the big Electronic News Gathering systems you're thinking of.
Slashdot Mirror
"By releasing it only on their hardware, they can avoid some of the huge headaches of compatibility. One reason why Windows is so buggy is that there are millions of combinations of hardware"
This is an oft-repeated meme, but the fact of the matter is that most of the hardware support on Windows is actually provided by manufactures who supply drivers rather than MS. This is why there are so many moans from owners of peripherals whenever Windows has a new driver model, and their stuff stops working because its manufacturer won't spend money on writing new drivers for stuff they don't make anymore.
"By keeping their hardware combinations small, they can be assured of some measure of reliability"
Linux manages to be reliable without keeping its hardware selection small, so it's far more probable that Microsoft's reliability problems have been caused by crappy code and badly designed driver loading mechanisms that let a buggy one bring an entire system down than the fact they support lots of different hardware. And it's not even as if Apple aren't already supporting a bewildering variety of OS X host systems:
- it runs on three distinctly different CPUs (PPC, Intel, Arm).
- Many, many combinations of support chips have been used over the years.
- A variety of graphics cards from all three major manufacturers have been used (ATI, Intel, nVidia).
- There've been several different types of hard disk controller and CD / DVD interface.
- Several types of Firewire and USB hardware has been used.
- etc., etc.
So Apple already have a pretty comprehensive driver collection, and OS X is perfectly amenable to third party drivers that companies like Mark Of The Unicorn write for their specialist hardware, so it's just as flexible as Windows in this regard.
"APPLE IS A HARDWARE COMPANY."
If this is the case, then why do they sell music and video, and write and sell a variety of their own software packages (Final Cut, Logic, iWork, iLife, Aperture, etc.)?
"There is one option that didn't exist before, virtualisation."
There's also another one: Linux-style LiveCD systems that run directly without the need (or in the case of Apple, the ability) to install them on a hard disk.
"It would be so easy to sell
Taste the Apple eXperience, one bite will have you wanting more."
I reckon the LiveCD would be a really good option. You could download and burn an ISO, or pick up a ready-made disk from an Apple dealer.
"They release MacOS X only for Macs. Is there a reason why they don't release it for regular PC's?"
1) It avoids treading on Microsoft's toes. Mac versions of MS Office help to sell lot of Apple machines, so pissing the Redmond Gorilla off by competing with them in the commodity OS market wouldn't be a particularly good idea.
2) Apple tried it in the past, and ended up losing far more from lost sales revenue to clone makers than they were earning by licensing the OS. This was therefore one of the first things Jobs killed off when he took over at Apple, so it's unlikely he'd want to risk the same thing happening again.
"Yes you are. The fact that SUDO hands off elevation to a USER LEVEL root account is exactly what I am talking about."
As I have said previously, it provides _root privileges_, not a root account, because (as I have also said) there is no root account on OS X by default.
"OS X users can even enable the root USER LEVEL account, and use it to login."
Why would it have to be enabled if, as you claim, SUDO uses it?
"There is NO SUCH USER LEVEL account type in Vista, even if you wanted to enable it."
You can however completely disable UAC, which turns a user with administrative privileges into what's effectively root. Different mechanism, same effect.
"Yes, but SUDO is not used on all OSes, so making a general statement would be silly."
It is however used on most UNIX variants, is available for all of them, and always has exactly the same default behaviour, so I can only take this as an "I didn't know that, but will pretend I did".
"The fact that OS X by default leaves ROOT OPEN for ANY AMOUNT of TIME, rather than based on SINGLE process request is the security hole."
It's shared by all UNIX variants that use SUDO in its default configuration, so continuing to single out OS X is disingenuous.
"Vista does not leave elevation open for a time period, as it processes security far more granular than ANY UNIX, including OS X. This means Vista gives SPECIFIC TOKEN based permission to the process elevation request, and NOTHING is left open."
http://news.zdnet.com/2424-1009_22-201657.html
Doesn't seem to be helping keep the malware out.
"No they don't. The only subsystem that was put in place for backwards abilities was the Win16 (Windows 3.1) subsystem, and it hasn't broke applications for 15 years, and even then the only applications that were broken demanded to install hardware level access that is forbidden in NT."
This is a blatant piece of tripe, because Microsoft claimed 90% compatibility between XP and software written for NT or Win9X _written within the three years prior to its release_. They knew that there was a lot of stuff out there which made assumptions about the low-level structure of prior versions of Windows (especially Win9X) that would not install, run, or run reliably (symptoms varied). The XP Upgrade adviser checked for and flagged software MS knew was problematic, but with there was a lot of stuff out there they didn't know about which also had compatibility problems.
Windows Vista also has an upgrade advisor that detects and flags problematic software, so once again, Microsoft's claims and actions are at odds with your claims.
Lots of obvious stuff...
You are describing is what's know as a hybrid kernel or macrokernel. A nice Wikepedia article about them is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_kernel
As you can see, the NT kernel is far from being unique in terms of using this particular design, and it isn't something Microsoft invented.
"You took this a bit too literal. I should have said an EMULATION sandbox. OS 9 on OS X is like running PearPC OS X on Windows now, it is an emulator running inside a constrained emulation sandbox."
As I said in my last post, Apple stopped supporting the use of OS 9 with OS X when they switched to Intel processors. When they did support it, it ran as a native PowerPC system on machines with PowerPC processors, so there was no emulation. Furthermore, Rosetta (which is an emulator) doesn't run OS 9 applications at all, so there's never been an Apple supported or Apple supplied emulator that runs OS 9 applications under OS X.
"SUA was a third party subsystem project to create a full UNIX subsystem."
_Interix_ was originally written by a company called Softway Systems, but Microsoft bought the product from them quite a while ago, so SUA (and it's prior incarnation as SFA) has always been a Microsoft pro
Answering yourself as an AC? How pathetic.
"1. So it wasn't heavily forested, figures."
While you conveniently fail to address the rather obvious point there were enough trees within easy reach for them to build a large wood henge prior the stone one, construct at least 300 wooden houses around the henge, and a number of wooden platforms supported by massive tree trunks. Figures.
"2. So you can't disprove those, figures."
I can't disprove the idea that pixies moved the blue stones by magic, or that Santa transported them in his sleigh either, and neither can you. So by your own measure, those hypotheses are just as strong as yours, and have as much supporting evidence (i.e. none). Figures.
"3. So you're a religious fanatic, figures."
This is a complement coming from an obvious charlatan such as yourself. So I ask you again, Mr. Denke:
- Who dated the axes that are at the centre of your claims, and how was it done?
- Where is your proof for the claim that "cave chimneys" were filled in and dug out again?
- Where is your scientific refutation of my assertion that sulphur etc. are found in significant quantities at _all_ cremation sites, and are not therefore proof that coal was used in Stonehenge cremations?
"Aubrey never saw the Holes"
Balderdash.
"800,000-year-old Pembrokeshire Coalfield mining artefacts have been dated.
800,000-year-old South Wales Coalfield mining artefacts have been dated."
By whom?
"1. Prove that 3100 BC Salisbury Plain was "heavily forested"."
I didn't say Salisbury plain was heavily forested. The surrounding countryside however was heavily forested (and there are remnants of forests there today), so people on the plain didn't have to walk far to find trees, hence the large numbers of wooden structures that were there.
"2. Prove that the Ancient did not cremate Dead by "coal use"."
That's not the way science works. It's your theory, so you have to prove that they _did_ use coal by producing some evidence. Asking others to provide counter-proof is the tactic of religious fanatics, not scientists with realistic theories.
"3. Prove that importing rocks 150 kilometres is not "ludicrous"."
Prove that there is even a tenuous connection between importing rocks _to_ Stonehenge and digging for coal _under_ Stonehenge.
Note that your rather long bit about the mineral composition of the land around Stonehenge just happened to slip in a bit about ancients importing anthracite, despite the fact that you've still not provided any evidence for it.
"Dr. Garry Denke, William Hawley, Robert Newall chimney vent holes' core samples have both anthracite coal and bituminous coal in them."
So your claims are based on your claims? Circular reasoning of this sort is another sign of religious rather than scientific arguments.
"John Aubrey saw Aubrey Holes not"
I don't understand your grammar. Is this some sort of poem?
It's pretty obvious by now that despite all the posturing and claims, there's absolutely no evidentiary basis whatsoever for your hypothesis, so it's something that should be filed alongside other zero evidence hypotheses for stone circles such as healing crystals, UFO landing sites, and gateways to other dimensions.
"What you are referencing is how OS X sets up and uses SUDO with the initial account as the 'administrator' account to elevate to root."
No, I am not. OS X doesn't have the root account enabled by default, i.e. there is no root user to log into. SUDO-s gives root _privileges_, but it doesn't enable the root account.
"The SUDO elevation also leaves the root account access active for a period of time after the application or user requires the elevation in the process."
I would assumed you'd know that's standard SUDO behaviour on all systems that ship with it. The default timeout after invoking SUDO is 5 minutes, i.e. root privileges will remain active for 5 minutes after SUDO is invoked. This can be changed with VISUDO (modifying SUDO configuration by other means is a bad idea) by altering the value of "timestamp_timeout" (or adding it if it's absent): the value is in seconds, and setting it to 0 will force SUDO to ask for a password for every action. Note that this is in the man pages for SUDO.
"Yes, this is called an emulator."
It's actually rather more like WINE, which isn't an emulator.
"Windows on the other hand has never needed to resort to an emulation program to support legacy applications."
It would be more correct to say that they didn't use one. The spotty legacy support in Windows XP and Vista does however indicate that they'd probably have been far better off doing what Apple did and shipping a modified version of Win98 to run legacy apps inside XP/Vista instead of using the approach of trying to fold all the bugs from previous versions into new ones without achieving full legacy compatibility.
"Even NT 3.1 had a Windows 3.1 subsystem in the OS, just as Vista has a Win32 and Win64 subsystem that work side by side on Vista x64 with no emulation."
All of those subsystems break a large number of legacy applications, including some from MS.
"NT (Vista) also takes this approach past the 'Windows' world, as early versions of NT shipped with OS/2 and POSIX subsystems that were NOT EMULATORS but real subsystems running on the NT core."
As I said before, the OS 9 system Apple provided with OS X wasn't an emulator.
"This is something Darwin can't even begin to think of doing. The MACH/BSD (UNIX model) that Darwin uses is not condusive to concepts that are inherent abilities of the NT architecture."
Indeed. However, it's debatable whether this is an advantage or a disadvantage.
"Today you see Vista has a full UNIX subsystem as well, support V5 and yes even full BSD."
SFU has been around since 1999, so this isn't something that's new to Vista (although they've changed the name to SUA now). Note though that the Vista version doesn't include server components such as NFS and NIS, has problems with filenames containing colons, so it's not a full UNIX.
"So ya, Microsoft could have created a sandbox emulator for Win9x or Even Win3.1 applications and told users to just get use to it like Apple did"
Running low-security stuff in a sandbox is generally regarded as an advantage, hence the fact that MS have adopted it for current and future versions of IE.
Note also that Apple's approach gained another notable advantage: their developers were able to devote all their efforts to a new OS instead of trying to fold old bugs into it.
"instead they chose to implement it the best way possible"
Because everything Microsoft do is by definition the best possible way, and all those broken legacy apps, and thousands of virus and worm infections are mere figments of our imagination.
"and with the NT Client/Server architecture, adding in subsystems instead of an Emulation environment was the best choice."
You clearly have no idea what emulation is, otherwise you wouldn't be confusing it with virtualisation (clue: Rosette is an emulator, the OS 9 version that shipped with OS X wasn't).
"If Apple had to make System 9 apps run natively on Darwin, OS X might not still be released."
W
"Given that Fox News is a big practical joke on the Americans"
It's the same joke he's been playing on the Brits for decades by buying up newspapers and filling them with tripe, and making them pay to be advertised at while watching tripe on his Sky TV empire.
"All Australians should be proud of him. Keeping that many people fooled for so long is a sign of true mastery."
The real sign of his mastery is his ability to make vast sums of money out of fooling them.
"OS X users are just as open to user engineered security problems. (I could say the same of other *nixes, but most of them get the important of root elevation.)"
The fact that there's no root account on OS X by default means that Apple get the idea rather better than most Linux distros. Administrator != root.
"Legacy support. If Apple had allowed System 9 apps to run on the desktop, they would have had to implement the same type of feature."
Apple did allow System 9 apps to run before they phased out their PPC-based systems. The difference was one of approach: a special version of System 9 shipped on the OS X disks that ran "inside" OS X whenever a System 9 application was launched, and used a dedicated subfolder for System 9 apps that emulated the layout of the OS 9 file system. It was therefore effectively a virtual environment that prevented OS 9 stuff from accessing the memory and file systems used by OS X applications, so it didn't need to use OS X confirmation dialogues when installing OS 9 applications.
NB: SheepShaver can be used to run OS 9 versions up to 9.4 on Intel-based Macs, although this isn't officially supported by Apple.
"Blue..."
What a bunch of addled tripe.
"Wikipedia article on anthracite"
What was this intended to prove? That anthracite exists? Well blow me down, I didn't know that before you told me.
"a) You're clueless.
Stone Tools Reveal Humans Lived in Britain 700000 Years Ago
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/12/1216_051216_humans_britain.html [nationalgeographic.com]"
That's _one guy's theory_ which is well known in anthropological circles, and has been soundly rejected because his dating methods are (to be kind) extremely suspect. Note also that even if he was right, 700,000 years isn't 800,000 years, so you've still not provided any evidence for your claim of people in Britain using coal 800,000 years ago.
"(b) they're not..."
I presume the things that followed this are meant to be fed into Google, because all of them produce links to forum posts by yourself. Posts by you do not count as evidence that supports you claims.
"c) Caddo texas..."
The 17th century was not renowned for its accurate scientific dating methods, so claiming that some hand axes are 800,00 years old based on what a guy from that period said is nothing more than speculative nonsense.
"Phosphorus and Sulphur (Brimstone) means Coal burnt '56 Aubrey Holes."
Phosphorus and sulphur (plus other things such as potassium) are always found in cremations because they occur in both plants and animals in significant quantities, so burning a large animal or person on a wood fire (you need a lot of wood to cremate a human) produces them. Their presence is not therefore evidence of coal use.
NB: ancient Britain was very heavily forested, so wood for both building and fuel was plentiful and easily accessible almost everywhere. Neolithic people (who didn't smelt metals) did not therefore require coal for any purpose, so suggesting that they'd go to the effort of prospecting for it in a field that's so deep and of such poor quality that not even the massively coal-dependant Victorians bothered to mine it is ludicrous.
"Wars and selfishness arise from conflict over scarce resources."
History teaches us that the motivations for wars are greed, envy, and fear. Having enough of something doesn't stop people wanting more, being envious of those who have more of whatever it is, and being afraid of those who are a little different.
"Technology has the ability to eliminate scarcity for practical purposes."
We could have done so with the technology we had in the 1960s, but greed, envy, and fear meant that vast amounts of resources and scientific effort were dedicated to proving which side of the East / West divide was better at everything than the other side instead of making life better for everyone.
You are correct. The figures are average life expectancy, which is dragged down because 90% of the population of European nations died before the age of 12 throughout most of its history. If you reached 12, then you had a pretty good chance of living to 70 and beyond if a (a) a disease didn't get you, and (b) there was somebody to look after you in your old age so you didn't die of hunger, exposure, and associated maladies.
"It's the mental capabilities that makes the difference."
There is no difference between the mental capabilities of somebody from 10,000 year ago and us. They had exactly the same brain sizes, and exactly the same levels of intelligence.
"Starting out on an empty planet would shift the odds in the caveman's direction, but the modern human would probably still win."
The modern human would lose very quickly unless he was specifically trained in surviving outdoors with no technology whatsoever (i.e. no knives, clothes, boots), because the primitive would be able to make and use extremely effective weapons from stone and wood, and use them to feed and clothe himself, build a shelter, make fire, etc., all while the modern human was trying to catch the local fauna with his bare hands.
"Why do you think primitive humans are extinct now, even though they where perfectly capable of surviving harsh environments? "
The primitive humans from 10,000 years ago were exactly the same species as us, i.e. homo sapiens. So your modern human would be facing off against another human who is as intelligent as him, but physically fitter and extremely well prepared to survive for long periods without any technology that he's not capable of making for himself. Within a few hours, the savage would be carrying a spear with a stone head and a woomera to project it over long distances with considerable force, stone knives, and stone axes, all of which he would be able to use with lethal skill.
"Because modern humans outsmarted them. "
Claiming that we outsmarted ourselves is ludicrous. I suggest you actually check up on who was around 10,000 years ago to avoid embarrassing yourself with ignorant tripe like this.
"I'm 39. Oh wait, he'd be long dead. Too bad! The prime of their youth, these primitive humans, would last, what, 10 years?"
If the ancients had such short lives, then I wonder how Ramses The Great managed to live 93 years, or why the old testament says that a man's life span is between 70 and 80 years.
An ancient who managed to live past 12 and avoided being killed by infections of various types stood a pretty good chance of reaching of reaching 70, assuming that he or she had somebody to look after them in their old age so they didn't die of malnutrition, exposure, etc. 90% of people died before reaching 12, which is why the _average_ life span figures are much lower than they are now, and also why people have the strange idea that everybody was popping off at 24 before the 20th century.
No, you're not. There I was, all excited about the idea of MS finally seeing the FOSS light, only to discover that it was yet another blog about a guy who managed to use Linux for browsing, EMAIL, and basic office productivity for _a whole year_ (and he still can't get his HP Laserjet to work with it).
Yawn.
"Why did the Ancient dig and fill '56 cave chimney vent holes with Carboniferous Limestone?"
Where is your evidence for this claim? Few if any known inhabited caves from Europe had vent holes of any sort, hence the fact that most fire pits are found near the entrances.
"Why did the Ancient then remove '56 cave chimney vent holes' Carboniferous Limestone?"
See above.
"Why did the Ancient burn anthracite Coal in the bottom of all '56 cave chimney vent holes?"
See above.
Question 4 is a repeat of question 3.
"Why did the Ancient cremate ancient Dead in the bottom of all '56 cave chimney vent holes?"
I've seen no evidence to support your claim that ancient troglodites cremated their dead.
"Why did the Ancient cremate such Dead with anthracite Coal in all '56 of the Aubrey Holes?"
Evidence?
It's time for three questions from me:
1) Why are you claiming that there were people using coal in Britain 330,000 years before there's any archaeological evidence of people living in Britain?
2) Why are so many of tour supposed 7 questions simply repeats of prior questions?
3) Where is the supporting evidence for the assertions above?
LOL! This rather excellent post has, more or less word-for-word, been pasted all over the Internet. It's a superb troll, alhtough it would of course have been better if the author knew that there's no convincing evidence for Homo Erectus in Britain before 470,000 years ago, and they buggered off for nicer climes 30,000 years later when the place got hit by an ice age.
""country" - didn't exist 5,000 years ago, patchy local tribes, communities and chiefdoms were all that exsisted, often as small as a couple hundred people."
The fact that late neolithic grooveware pottery is found in Britain everywhere from the Orkneys to the south coast indicates that there must have been active links between the people who made it. Grooveware has a very distinctive type of geometric pattern on it that's unique to Britain, so the similarities between examples found at both ends of the place cannot have simply happened by accident.
Note also that the excavations carried out by the team from Sheffield University at Durrington Walls indicates that there was a circular village with more than 300 houses around Stonehenge, which makes it the largest settlement in Northern Europe at that time.
""royal dynasty" - Firstly it wasn't royal - that is a modern definition, and can only be used when it means what it says, I see the FA uses it as well, and it should be rightly criticised for inaccurate reporting."
This must mean that all the effort Neolithic and bronze-age inhabitants of Britain put into building long barrows must have been solely for the purpose of burying completely unimportant people who just happened to have expensive grave goods because of the community's generosity.
"We know little concrete about how stone age societies functioned - far too little to use the word "royal"."
The logistics involved in building some of Britain's Neolithic monuments indicates that they were the product of a sophisticated culture with a centralised regional power structure, not a bunch of disparate villages which rarely communicated with each other. Silbury Hil for example is thought to have required 18 million man-hours to construct, and the people working on it required ongoing support in the form of food, water, clothing, and tools. It was built over a period of about ten years, which means that at least 700 people would have been required for the building work alone (i.e excluding those in logistical support roles, who would have outnumbered the builders). People don't just happen to get the idea for major projects like this by accident, and chieftains of tiny communities wouldn't have had the capability of planning it, let alone organising everyone required for building and support roles.
"We know little concrete about how stone age societies functioned - far too little to use the word "royal"."
We know that they were capable of undertaking major projects that required significant engineering skills and the ability to organise and motivate large numbers of people over long periods, because the evidence is there for anyone to see. And we know that some barrows were used to bury people over long time periods, and given the fact that the biggest ones have around 40 burial chambers, it's fairly obvious that they were made to house only those who the builders thought were important. The heavy stones used in their construction and large amounts of earth that were put over them mean that long barrows in particular were major projects in their own right, not something a little village knocked up over a weekend to put poor old Auntie Mabel in.
"Secondly there is no evidence that it is a "dynasty" of anything."
The evidence for it being a dynasty is better in an archaeological sense than that for many royal dynasties from the same period in other parts of the world, where the only claim for them existing at all comes from (sometimes scant and fragmentary) written records.
I fail to see why you wrote this long post, because I said essentially said the same thing in the bit from my post you didn't bother to quote.
"As given above, that doesn't seem to align with the info on wikipedia in the Betamax or U-Matic articles."
Wikipedia also says the following in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-matic:
"It was the U-Matic S-format decks that ushered in the beginning of ENG, or Electronic News Gathering."
And later:
"BVU gained immense popularity in ENG and location programme-making, spelling the end of 16mm film in everyday production"
So the article does in fact align with the information in my post.
"something with the quality / performance of Beta in a 3/4" format sounds cool"
U-Matic had better performance than Betamax (it was also _much_ more expensive), although later Betamax recorders, mainly sold in Japan, where the format continued to be successful long after it had disappeared in Europe and the US, eventually became much better the original U-Matic system.
It's actually interesting to note that U-Matic dominated the professional video market while a competing VHS-based system flopped. This is undoubtedly due to two factors:
1) U-Matic was the first professional cartridge based system (1969) by a long way, and had the market pretty much to itself for a number of years, so it became a de-facto standard in the industry.
2) In contrast with Betamax, Sony had an extremely liberal licensing policy with U-Matic, so it was supported by a wide variety of manufacturers.
Despite the fact that U-Matic is now a completely obsolete format, there's such a vast amount of unique professional material recorded with various versions of it that equipment and tapes are still being manufactured and sold, and there's an entire industry devoted to servicing existing equipment and transferring the contents of tapes to more modern formats.
"They specifically mention in the article that the OSS community is not "unified," which is actually just an opinion pulled out of the air."
He's quite right in saying that OSS developers (It's not "a community") aren't unified. The lie is in trying to pretend that this makes them somehow different from commercial closed-source developers, when the reality of the matter is that developers as a species aren't unified, irrespective of any licensing conditions that apply to the projects they're working on.
"Not to mention that Betamax was a leading industry standard in commercial video recorders, particularly in news media."
U-Matic was the professional standard. It came out before Betamax, and was based on 3/4 tapes rather than 1/2". It also had a different recording format.
"Remember those GIANT camcorders news people used to carry? Those were ALL Betamax."
They were high-band U-Matic S, which used a smaller U-Matic cartridge that still had 3/4" tape, and a maximum 20 minute playing time. High-band (also know as Broadcast Video U-Matic or BVU) had better resolution and colour than the original U-Matic, which became known as low-band U-Matic (LBU).
Note that although Betacam replaced HBU-S in the 1990s, the cameras that used it weren't the big Electronic News Gathering systems you're thinking of.