I'm not the poster of your post's parent, but I did a bit of searching (since I was interested too), and in most cases it seems to be simply that he believed that unsigned types just add complication to little real benefit. He often cites that Java was supposed to be reasonably simple to understand the semantics of, and that unsigned types tend to dilute that. I tend to agree (I never really "got" unsigned types), but here's some indicative quotes:
In programming language design, one of the standard problems is that the language grows so complex that nobody can understand it. One of the little experiments I tried was asking people about the rules for unsigned arithmetic in C. It turns out nobody understands how unsigned arithmetic in C works. There are a few obvious things that people understand, but many people don't understand it.
Q: Programmers often talk about the advantages and disadvantages of programming in a "simple language." What does that phrase mean to you, and is [C/C++/Java] a simple language in your view?
...
Gosling: For me as a language designer, which I don't really count myself as these days, what "simple" really ended up meaning was could I expect J. Random Developer to hold the spec in his head. That definition says that, for instance, Java isn't -- and in fact a lot of these languages end up with a lot of corner cases, things that nobody really understands. Quiz any C developer about unsigned, and pretty soon you discover that almost no C developers actually understand what goes on with unsigned, what unsigned arithmetic is. Things like that made C complex. The language part of Java is, I think, pretty simple. The libraries you have to look up.
I don't use Usenet, and generally I try to help people out with computer problems. You seemed to have a lack of understanding about protocols versus implementations, so I tried to explain this. I'll let you get back to your trolling.:)
Nothing. IPv6 is a protocol, and Vista implements it. Its implementation details can only be compared to other implementations, and as such the question doesn't really make a lot of sense.
and I don't mean such feetures that are welded to the Vista API
None of the features are "welded to the Vista API". I'm not certain any of them are directly available through the Vista API.
I've been asking you for clarification! At first you asked what Vista's TCP/IP did that IPv6 didn't do; which doesn't really make sense since IPv6 doesn't "do" anything. Vista's TCP/IP stack implements IPv6, however. You then asked what Vista's TCP/IP stack did that required specific implementation; I replied to read the article. In the light of what you've said since, I should really have said "everything" — TCP and IP do not do anything, they're protocols. An implementation of a protocol is just the name given to a program which "speaks" that protocol.
You then asked why the features couldn't be put in the protocol for IPv6. The answer is that they're not protocol features, they're implementation details. They just make it work better; a similar example would be changing, say, an XML parser so that it parses XML quicker, or more efficiently. It doesn't stop the input being XML.
You then asked if non-Vista machines could implement the "full functionality" of TCP/IP. This depends on how you interpret "full functionality"; if you meant making systems which can do the same things (to the outside world) as Vista, sure. It's just TCP/IP. If you mean implementing the features, I also provided an answer for that:
If they wanted to implement the same features, I think at least some of the features might be patent-protected. Which is a bit rubbish.
You then started flaming me, claiming I was dodging the question, when in fact I had requested a clarification, provided two possible interpretations of your words, and answered both of them.
Funny. Buy a book on networking, it should explain why your original question was completely irrelevant. You seem to believe I'm debating with you, when in fact there's nothing to debate.
Right. IPv6 is a protocol. Vista's TCP/IP stack is an implementation of a protocol (actually, of several protocols).
If you were making sense, I'd respond to you. However, I can't find a way to take your words in any context other than that you do not understand what you're talking about.
If you wrote a TCP/IP stack yourself, to "speak" the TCP and IP protocols, you would have just created an implementation of TCP/IP. Note that you did not write TCP or IP. That is the distinction here. The protocol just tells people what to say, and what to listen to. The stuff in the new implementation of that protocol in Vista includes certain optimisations. They do not break the protocol. They do not change the protocol. It does not "step on the toes" of IPv6.
Thanks for that. I was beginning to think that I had some kind of mental hole for whatever he/she was asking; I just have no idea. Of course anyone can implement this - they already have!
Your wording is consistently confusing to me. You're not asking proper questions. Define "full functionality" and I might be able to help you, otherwise I think I've answered as fully as I can. "Full functionality" seems to be "a TCP implementation". And obviously everyone already has that; without licence.
They can certainly communicate with Vista happily, with no problems whatsoever (one of the requirements of Compound TCP is that it doesn't break the TCP standard, unlike some other ways of getting past this problem). If they wanted to implement the same features, I think at least some of the features might be patent-protected. Which is a bit rubbish.
I think you're still a bit confused here. IP is a protocol. It just specifies how the computers are to talk to one another. The article is about how MS's new stack implements that protocol. Because the protocol (intentionally) doesn't specify how one is to do these things (just the bounds that it has to fit within to be "correct"), there's a lot of slack in the actual way that things are implemented.
All of the features you list there are basically just ways to "tune" the way that the implementation works so that it works as well as possible.
I'm not entirely sure, it all looks very much like algorithmic tweaks and stuff. I'm aware at least of Compound TCP, which supposedly has large benefits in some scenarios.
Reading the article itself might be an idea here, though, since it is an article on the new features.
If you're referring to the article, it focuses on the "links" aspect when describing the PageRank algorithm. The summary on here is pretty misleading in that way.
I'm pretty much the same, I tend to avoid falling into debt by just being hesitant to spend, which is handy given my lack of any kind of tracking of my expenses. Not ideal though.
Yeah, I had a sneaking suspicion it might be London. I'm in Edinburgh, which is less expensive, but there's usually less consideration for the actual expense put into paycheques.
Yeah, it's a good idea, but I tend to find I just don't have the self-discipline to sort this sort of stuff out. It's something I intend to work on, though.
As for buying property, though, it's just not an option here (in the UK) at the moment, least of all in the area I'm in. There was a fairly recent boom in housing prices meaning that to be able to buy somewhere, I'd need to save up several times my (not inconsiderable) yearly salary to make up the shortfall from the largest mortgage I could reasonably get to the price of the lowest-value house that would be suitable for me. It's ridiculous.
To be completely fair, most of these are not really problems with Windows per say, in most cases:
- virtual desktops - just LOVE them
I personally hate them, but there is an official powertoy for XP which will give you them if you want them.
- gnome-vfs - seemlessly edit files/watch vids/listen to music over ssh/ftp/smb/whatever
This is really cool. Windows can do this over SMB (obviously) by default, but other virtual filesystems are not provided. Not sure how much use a non-expert user would have for it, but I'm sure I'd find some reason to use it.
- powerful terminal for automated tasks - not much to explain
Windows PowerShell isn't officially released, but it is available in a pretty-complete form. Also Cygwin provides all of the same tools in Windows. Not there by default, but these are of limited use to non-expert users anyway.
- no bloatware out-of-box - when you buy laptop you usually get system preloaded with trials, demos, etc. and with 'rescue disk' which also rescues all the demo software. so either buy another copy of windows to get a clean desktop at the beginning or just spend a lotta time cleaning up the crap
You can bet your bottom dollar that if Linux started being pre-loaded as a mainstream option, you'd get all the same (well, similar) bundled bollocks as you do with your Windows preinstallation. Unfortunate, but true.
- on linux, all my config files are stored in my home directory, and pretty much forces me to store all my data in one place - I know this can be set on windows, too, but it's extra effort
It's not extra effort. Well-written Windows software should do this by default — the difference being that on Windows "My Documents" links to a subfolder of your home folder, whereas on *nix systems the config files live in the same place, only in hidden directories. Of course, a lot of software is not well-written, but on Vista this will pop up a big ugly security notice when saving outwith the user's home, so hopefully this'll become a thing of the past.
I like my Linux machine though. I just find that a lot of reasons that people tend to cite as "superior" about a Linux install are either limited to expert users or available already.
I have a job that puts me in the top percentile of people in the world, but to have that job I have to pay the top percentile of living expenses
It merely compares wages, rather than "wealth", or offsetting expenses. But to be fair, it's not really all that surprising that someone in the top 1% can't afford to buy property and so on. These things are very expensive.
For what it's worth, I'm in the top 4% (or something) and can't afford to buy a house, but paying for food and whatnot isn't a terrible problem. But I'm in one of the most expensive places for cost of living in the UK; I'm curious to know where you live to incur such huge living expenses (I'm guessing that accommodation is your largest problem?).
My company switched to XP (I think, it was before my time) in 2004, which is about 3 years since its initial release, and we're a development firm. A lot of places take stability very seriously, and even those which don't are usually at least cautious. A year sounds pretty reasonable as an average.
I think MicroSoft's best bet at success would be a heavily stripped down version of Windows CE.
Stripped down? Have you seen the devices that CE can run on? If anything, I can imagine they'd need to bulk out CE to bring it up to the feature-set offered by the stripped-down Red Hat being run on the OLPC at present.
However, the article here talks about what is pre-installed.
To be fair, it only says that Microsoft want to "make [Windows] available" on the device, not pre-install it. There's no indication whatsoever in the article that Microsoft want to pre-install it, although one could obviously speculate that they'd like to sell units with Windows pre-installed to governments, this is not mentioned in the article.
I think I have pretty much the same opinion as you here, actually.
Throwing the word "censor" around like that seems to imply some sort of first-amendment complaint.
It's not. I was just explaining why the analogy to materials which are rejected because they have no educational value (and I've not seen the film, but that's not the reason they gave for rejecting it) was fundamentally flawed.
The solution, then, should be obvious. NSTA needs to stop taking money that has strings. Until then, they will self censor to ensure the money continues to flow.
That's basically it. Compelling someone to self-censor is still using the power of censorship, though. The fact that they're one of the only parties willing to provide the funding gives them that power of censorship, and until "better" means of funding are found, they will continue to have that power.
I think the difference would be that this could be indicative of a trend whereby private funding of institutions effectively gives those providing the funding the right to censor and/or alter the educational material being provided to those being educated. The KKK example is different because it's not the funders who are being given the right to decide the materials available.
If McDonalds were to pour funding into schools, you might expect (with the same logic) for education about the unhealthiness of fast food to "fade away" from textbooks; this is much the same as that situation.
HTML forms work just fine without Javascript. And yes, you're effectively tricked into clicking an action button. If you look at the sample "injected HTML", they make it look like the user is clicking a Flash movie when in fact they're clicking a blank image-type <input> on the page. This submits the GET-style form. So long as the user is "tricked" into clicking something, and forms are allowed, this could steal the password from the password manager.
The code is available in the text box at the bottom of the this page. Neither Flash nor Javascript is required to trigger the exploit, just a click from a user in a attacker-defined position on the page.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not the poster of your post's parent, but I did a bit of searching (since I was interested too), and in most cases it seems to be simply that he believed that unsigned types just add complication to little real benefit. He often cites that Java was supposed to be reasonably simple to understand the semantics of, and that unsigned types tend to dilute that. I tend to agree (I never really "got" unsigned types), but here's some indicative quotes:
Source
Source
Hope that's the sort of thing you were looking for. :)
Probably the network administrator, but as the article admits, they've really no idea.
I don't use Usenet, and generally I try to help people out with computer problems. You seemed to have a lack of understanding about protocols versus implementations, so I tried to explain this. I'll let you get back to your trolling. :)
Nothing. IPv6 is a protocol, and Vista implements it. Its implementation details can only be compared to other implementations, and as such the question doesn't really make a lot of sense.
None of the features are "welded to the Vista API". I'm not certain any of them are directly available through the Vista API.
I've been asking you for clarification! At first you asked what Vista's TCP/IP did that IPv6 didn't do; which doesn't really make sense since IPv6 doesn't "do" anything. Vista's TCP/IP stack implements IPv6, however. You then asked what Vista's TCP/IP stack did that required specific implementation; I replied to read the article. In the light of what you've said since, I should really have said "everything" — TCP and IP do not do anything, they're protocols. An implementation of a protocol is just the name given to a program which "speaks" that protocol.
You then asked why the features couldn't be put in the protocol for IPv6. The answer is that they're not protocol features, they're implementation details. They just make it work better; a similar example would be changing, say, an XML parser so that it parses XML quicker, or more efficiently. It doesn't stop the input being XML.
You then asked if non-Vista machines could implement the "full functionality" of TCP/IP. This depends on how you interpret "full functionality"; if you meant making systems which can do the same things (to the outside world) as Vista, sure. It's just TCP/IP. If you mean implementing the features, I also provided an answer for that:
You then started flaming me, claiming I was dodging the question, when in fact I had requested a clarification, provided two possible interpretations of your words, and answered both of them.
Funny. Buy a book on networking, it should explain why your original question was completely irrelevant. You seem to believe I'm debating with you, when in fact there's nothing to debate.
Right. IPv6 is a protocol. Vista's TCP/IP stack is an implementation of a protocol (actually, of several protocols).
If you were making sense, I'd respond to you. However, I can't find a way to take your words in any context other than that you do not understand what you're talking about.
If you wrote a TCP/IP stack yourself, to "speak" the TCP and IP protocols, you would have just created an implementation of TCP/IP. Note that you did not write TCP or IP. That is the distinction here. The protocol just tells people what to say, and what to listen to. The stuff in the new implementation of that protocol in Vista includes certain optimisations. They do not break the protocol. They do not change the protocol. It does not "step on the toes" of IPv6.
Thanks for that. I was beginning to think that I had some kind of mental hole for whatever he/she was asking; I just have no idea. Of course anyone can implement this - they already have!
Your wording is consistently confusing to me. You're not asking proper questions. Define "full functionality" and I might be able to help you, otherwise I think I've answered as fully as I can. "Full functionality" seems to be "a TCP implementation". And obviously everyone already has that; without licence.
They can certainly communicate with Vista happily, with no problems whatsoever (one of the requirements of Compound TCP is that it doesn't break the TCP standard, unlike some other ways of getting past this problem). If they wanted to implement the same features, I think at least some of the features might be patent-protected. Which is a bit rubbish.
I think you're still a bit confused here. IP is a protocol. It just specifies how the computers are to talk to one another. The article is about how MS's new stack implements that protocol. Because the protocol (intentionally) doesn't specify how one is to do these things (just the bounds that it has to fit within to be "correct"), there's a lot of slack in the actual way that things are implemented.
All of the features you list there are basically just ways to "tune" the way that the implementation works so that it works as well as possible.
I'm not entirely sure, it all looks very much like algorithmic tweaks and stuff. I'm aware at least of Compound TCP, which supposedly has large benefits in some scenarios.
Reading the article itself might be an idea here, though, since it is an article on the new features.
I think you're confused here. This is just a specific implementation of TCP/IP, not a different protocol or anything.
If you're referring to the article, it focuses on the "links" aspect when describing the PageRank algorithm. The summary on here is pretty misleading in that way.
I'm pretty much the same, I tend to avoid falling into debt by just being hesitant to spend, which is handy given my lack of any kind of tracking of my expenses. Not ideal though.
Yeah, I had a sneaking suspicion it might be London. I'm in Edinburgh, which is less expensive, but there's usually less consideration for the actual expense put into paycheques.
Yeah, it's a good idea, but I tend to find I just don't have the self-discipline to sort this sort of stuff out. It's something I intend to work on, though.
As for buying property, though, it's just not an option here (in the UK) at the moment, least of all in the area I'm in. There was a fairly recent boom in housing prices meaning that to be able to buy somewhere, I'd need to save up several times my (not inconsiderable) yearly salary to make up the shortfall from the largest mortgage I could reasonably get to the price of the lowest-value house that would be suitable for me. It's ridiculous.
To be completely fair, most of these are not really problems with Windows per say, in most cases:
I personally hate them, but there is an official powertoy for XP which will give you them if you want them.
This is really cool. Windows can do this over SMB (obviously) by default, but other virtual filesystems are not provided. Not sure how much use a non-expert user would have for it, but I'm sure I'd find some reason to use it.
Windows PowerShell isn't officially released, but it is available in a pretty-complete form. Also Cygwin provides all of the same tools in Windows. Not there by default, but these are of limited use to non-expert users anyway.
You can bet your bottom dollar that if Linux started being pre-loaded as a mainstream option, you'd get all the same (well, similar) bundled bollocks as you do with your Windows preinstallation. Unfortunate, but true.
It's not extra effort. Well-written Windows software should do this by default — the difference being that on Windows "My Documents" links to a subfolder of your home folder, whereas on *nix systems the config files live in the same place, only in hidden directories. Of course, a lot of software is not well-written, but on Vista this will pop up a big ugly security notice when saving outwith the user's home, so hopefully this'll become a thing of the past.
I like my Linux machine though. I just find that a lot of reasons that people tend to cite as "superior" about a Linux install are either limited to expert users or available already.
It merely compares wages, rather than "wealth", or offsetting expenses. But to be fair, it's not really all that surprising that someone in the top 1% can't afford to buy property and so on. These things are very expensive.
For what it's worth, I'm in the top 4% (or something) and can't afford to buy a house, but paying for food and whatnot isn't a terrible problem. But I'm in one of the most expensive places for cost of living in the UK; I'm curious to know where you live to incur such huge living expenses (I'm guessing that accommodation is your largest problem?).
My company switched to XP (I think, it was before my time) in 2004, which is about 3 years since its initial release, and we're a development firm. A lot of places take stability very seriously, and even those which don't are usually at least cautious. A year sounds pretty reasonable as an average.
Stripped down? Have you seen the devices that CE can run on? If anything, I can imagine they'd need to bulk out CE to bring it up to the feature-set offered by the stripped-down Red Hat being run on the OLPC at present.
To be fair, it only says that Microsoft want to "make [Windows] available" on the device, not pre-install it. There's no indication whatsoever in the article that Microsoft want to pre-install it, although one could obviously speculate that they'd like to sell units with Windows pre-installed to governments, this is not mentioned in the article.
I think I have pretty much the same opinion as you here, actually.
It's not. I was just explaining why the analogy to materials which are rejected because they have no educational value (and I've not seen the film, but that's not the reason they gave for rejecting it) was fundamentally flawed.
That's basically it. Compelling someone to self-censor is still using the power of censorship, though. The fact that they're one of the only parties willing to provide the funding gives them that power of censorship, and until "better" means of funding are found, they will continue to have that power.
I think the difference would be that this could be indicative of a trend whereby private funding of institutions effectively gives those providing the funding the right to censor and/or alter the educational material being provided to those being educated. The KKK example is different because it's not the funders who are being given the right to decide the materials available.
If McDonalds were to pour funding into schools, you might expect (with the same logic) for education about the unhealthiness of fast food to "fade away" from textbooks; this is much the same as that situation.
HTML forms work just fine without Javascript. And yes, you're effectively tricked into clicking an action button. If you look at the sample "injected HTML", they make it look like the user is clicking a Flash movie when in fact they're clicking a blank image-type <input> on the page. This submits the GET-style form. So long as the user is "tricked" into clicking something, and forms are allowed, this could steal the password from the password manager.
The code is available in the text box at the bottom of the this page. Neither Flash nor Javascript is required to trigger the exploit, just a click from a user in a attacker-defined position on the page.