2) Integrate better security to show you're trying to fix the problems in the OS (which is what Symantec has made it's livelihood doing for MS) and have Symantec sue you for being evil enough to produce a good product which makes theirs less needed or obsolete.
The problem is that Microsoft isn't fixing the OS. They are simply bundling their own software that does the same thing that Symantec (or McAfee, or NOD, or Trend, or...) does. The problem is that from what I've seen of the betas, OneCare sucks, big time. If OneCare was like Windows Defender, ie. a product that they put out FOR FREE that addressed the problems of the oeprating system then everything would be peachy keen. That's not what is happening though. Microsoft isn't making their OS virus free. They are just making it so that 95% of the "dumb users" in the world will spend money on the Microsoft "solution" instead of the Symantec et al solution.
...burns half as long? I worry about people who are so task oriented. I bet the guy gets anxious when he isn't working towards a deadline and has some free time.
I remember the same thing said about the WinXP theme. It was different, but I actually like it over the old Win9x win2k style buttons.
I agree with you. When WinXP first came out and they moved everything from the desktop and onto the Start button I was upset and I switched all the computers that I worked with to "Classic" view. These days I leave it in the default config and I like the Start button. Between the Windows+(E, R, etc) hotkeys and the Start button, everything is right where I need it. My most common used programs showed up under Start so I don't have to clutter the desktop with the icons. I can get right at My Computer, Email, Internet, Printers, settings... the whole enchilada.
So ya, sometimes I grumble and wonder what the hell the guys were thinking, but eventually it turns out that most of the improvements really do make things better. However on the other hand, I'll never get over Word trying to anticipate what I want to do.
You make a good point about legacy systems. I have a few clients that are running CNC machines and those all run on legacy hardware via serial communications. All of those machines are running Windows 95 or 98. They aren't plugged into a network so they don't need to worry about viruses or any of that other nonsense. They just sit there cranking out parts all day long. A lot of them are even using old software that I used to use to dial into BBS' like ProComm Plus. =) I had to laugh when we used Y-Modem to transfer layout files from a floppy to the CNC machine. I made a joke about how we should use leech Z-modem instead but the guy didn't get it.
Microsoft has put API hardpoints where antivirus products can hook into certain operating system functions, without raping the kernel.
That does seem to be inline with the way Microsoft has developed their other products, most specifically Exchange. There are numerous hooks in Exchange that allow third party developers access to the system. There is the VAPI for anti-virus scanning of messages passing through the MTA and a similar interface that allows anti-spam software to filter incoming messages. There is also an API to allow backup software (ie. Backup Exec and Arcserve) to run real-time backups on the message stores.
I suppose some day the sofware companies that do bussiness with Microsoft and so help it consolidate its grip on the desktops of this world will take note and start thinking about alternative platforms.
Probably not. They're betting that Microsoft is the best bet and they're going to stick with it. As much as everyone lambasts Microsoft, their software does get the job done for a large segment of the computer using world. I don't think that you're going to see anyone jumping ship until Microsoft makes a huge blunder akin to what Novell did by sticking with IPX instead of embracing IP. Until they fail to see and then completely ignore some paradigm shifting technology, they will maintain their market dominance with a substandard, but STANDARD none the less software offering.
The first issue that I saw companies complaining about is not being able to disable Windows Security Center. I don't see that as being a problem. Right now I run Symantec AV on XP SP2 and Windows Security Center (WSC) identifies Symantec and the two co-exist. WSC doesn't display warning messages about "No anti-virus software installed" because it recognizes that Symantec is an AV program and life is good. It seems to me that Microsoft has a way of extorting money from companies. They will charge companies a fee to develop a WSC compliant application. They won't allow companies to replace WSC because WSC provides "important functionality" to the computing environment. I tend to agree. I'm glad that Microsoft is making sure that the key pieces of protective software (firewall and AV) are installed and running. I don't think it's too much to ask that other 3rd party developers play nice with WSC.
The second issue, and the bigger issue is that Microsoft seems be denying companies access to the low level hooks that they need to properly integrate their applications with the operating system. I kind of understand where MS is coming from. After all if they allow Symantec access to the system call table and the various other, kernel level hooks, then they might as well allow everyone access. On the other hand, those who want access to the lower level functions of the OS are going to hack them anyway. It's a Catch-22. Personally, I'd rather that EVERYONE have access to the low level functions. That way the market can sort out who will do the best job of securing it.
Have you ever run two anti-virus programs on a computer at the same time? More often than not your file system performance completely tanks because every time a file is accessed you have two programs trying to scan it and verify it's integrity. You will also frequently run into problems where one AV program will label the other AV program as a virus.
As to your comments about the enterprise services Windows provides, well lets just say that out of Active Directory, group policy, Automatic updates, msi installers, ghost and RDP, there is not one technology listed there that isn't relatively simple to implement in a Linux/BSD environment if you're not a Microsoft admin who refuses to learn.
I just got done setting up Ubuntu and have been playing around with it. Hopefully by the time Linux has an sort of momentum to threaten the entrenched Microsoft enterprise environment I'll be living in Colorado teaching martial arts instead of hacking away at a computer. Yet just incase, it never hurts to keep my skills up to date.
If that happened (or, for example, you got a bad video driver that borked graphical mode - this has happened to me before) in Windows and you didn't have the recovery console installed, you're fucked.
Unless of course you just hit F8 and choose boot VGA mode. =) You should choose an example that doesn't have an easy workaround... like when you get a BSOD because your SCSI driver doesn't like the latest BIOS flash.
Once you've got Linux installed properly, you *don't* need to ass-about with it. Unlike dos.
Once you have ANY OS installed properly you don't need to ass-about with it, PERIOD. I have hundreds of users spread across dozens of clients whose workstations I never even see until it's time to upgrade something. Then on the other hand, there are a few users I see all the time because of something like "the Exchange server mysteriously decided to wreck one of their contact records... despite hundreds of other users who contact records are just fine." Ie. the user is full of shit and it's easier to blame the "stupid computer" than it is to blame themselves. In fact, by far the biggest whiners on any network I've dealt with are the Mac users in various design departments with their stupid font problems and InDesign file corruption problems and 500MB print jobs.
People like you are what this country needs, by the hundred thousands. It's easy to get emotional and irrate and to berate people who have been duped by the media, and whose mental processes have succumbed to incessent bombardment by a well oiled psyops machine. It takes a much stronger kind of character to calmly and rationally question in a Socratic manner the beliefs of those around you so that they can see, whether or not they accept, the gaping holes in the version of reality they've temporarily adopted.
It is my fervent hope that we (the true intellectual elite) can move this country forward without jingoism and without nationalism, racism, and religious intolerance.
Yet for the minority to lead the majority, they need to embrace and work with the very things like nationalism, racism and religious intolerance that bind the comman man together. Unfortunately things like racism are deeply ingrained, and the people who tell others that it is okay to be racist are going to get a lot further with those people than those who tell them that racism is bad.
Here is the statistic that I like to use when people talk about how bad terrorists are. More people died automobile accidents in the United States last year than have died in terrorist attacks around the world in the last five years (if you acknowledge that the "terrorist" attacks in Iraq are really asymmetrical warfare). Despite that, we don't have a huge campaign to save America from the dangers of maniac drivers and their life stealing automobiles.
It seems to me like just yesterday Microsoft was touting lower Total Cost of Ownership for their products and how running their products would allow fewer system administrators to do more. Now that Vista is coming out, they're talking about how many more people are going to be employed running their software? Huh? What's next? They're going to say, "Screw video games, we're getting into desktop publishing!" ????
Also useful for quickly passing those pesky "auto-pilot" animation sequences in Wing Commander. Just make sure to take turbo off before you have to fight those pesky Ferrangi.
All technologies that Linux implements "out of the box". They come from a Unix backgroup, and PREDATE the Microsoft "equivalents". Coming from a Unix and Solaris background, I find Microsoft frustrating.
It's definitely all about what you are used to. I find the Unix equivalents to be frustrating, but there is also a lot that I dislike about Microsoft software. At this point in my life, I realize that no matter what OS you're using, they all do the same thing on the lowest level. They read and write files to a disk and execute program code that provides an interface for interacting with what is on the disk.
Having said that I've started playing with Ubuntu because my interest has been rekindled after having been nearly extinguished by working in IT for over a decade. Maybe one of these days I'll become multi-lingual and figure out that rm works as well as del and cp is just as good as copy. =)
The only reason I can see for this behaviour is that MS is trying to induce lock-in.
What do you mean by that? There are "Microsoft" tools for a "Microsoft" world, just like there are the Unix equivalents for the Unix world. I don't think it's so much vendor lock-in as simply providing your users with adequate tools to get the job done. In my eyes, it would be lock-in if Microsoft setup their OS so that RDP was the ONLY way to connect to remote systems, and there weren't VNC or SSH clients that ran on Windows.
That is all said and good, but for many people, spending a frustrating amount of time searching with Google to find obscure walkthrough's and patches to get certain hardware to work isn't acceptable.
As I read this I was reminded of my own experience with DOS 5.0 and my 386/25. Back before the days of the Internet the only resource I had was the DOS 5.0 manual (which actually documented all of the information that I needed to know). My dad used the computer for Lotus123 and WordPerfect, I used it to play games. Every game I wanted to play needed a different bootdisk with a subtly tweaked version of Autoexec.bat and Config.sys to load the right drivers and free up enough of the 640k to play the game right.
Linux today reminds me of DOS fifteen plus years ago. Sure, they have a GUI, but it's a lot like Windows 3.11... just some graphics that are sitting ontop of a command shell that you still do most of your real work in. When something breaks you don't fix it through the GUI, you drop down to the command line and go to work (a la the recent Ubuntu fiasco).
I honestly believe that there is a certain point in life when it's fun to figure out how a computer works. For me, that period of time was the late 1980s and early 1990s. The OS I was using was DOS. I didn't mind having to hack stuff together because I didn't know any better. For kids today, that OS might be Linux and to a certain extent I encourage that, because by using Linux, you're closer to the core of the computer. You're still manually loading drivers and compiling modules and mounting file systems.
From my perspective though, that crap is for the kids with too much time on their hands. I want my operating system to work like I expect it to, and yes... I will "deal" with viruses and malware and all of that crap because I know enough about how computers work to not have to sweat it. But there is no way in hell I'm going to take three steps backwards and wait for Linux to catchup with what Microsoft already has. I like my Active Directory and Group Policy and Automatic Updates and.msi installers and Ghost and RDP and all of the stuff that allows me to easily manage thousands of desktops across disperate, geographically disconnected locations. I like the fact that I can lay down Exchange, then open up my Samsung i730, type in a URL, click "use SSL" and have a secure, wireless connection to my enterprise messaging system.
Oh man that was some funny shit. My diction and grammar are pretty pathetic to begin with, but I couldn't even come up with some of that stuff is I tried. "...embiggen the productionality..." Verrryy nice.
I just had this visual of this poor Chinese guy surrounded by a bunch of blinking screens, his hand hovering over a big red button, praying, "No whammies, no whammies!!"
I doubt it. Maybe you can blow a 2600 tone down the line and get uber rewt access to the automated call system. =) Or maybe you can redbox it and they'll send you a check for as much money as you put into the phone.
In both instances, it makes sense to compress that data on a case by case basis. I'd draw the analogy to using.zip compression to compress a few files. The kind of compression that I'm saying is a bad idea to use is the compression that compresses EVERYTHING on the entire volume / partition. That's the kind of compression that will come back and bite you in the ass. I'm not sure if you remember the days of DOS 6.2 and DoubleSpace, but after experiencing that shoddy product first hand, I'm wary of trusting anything Microsoft puts out that proports to safely compress your data.
All I'm trying to point out is that you look like a complete, POMPOUS jackass for getting up on a soapbox and trying to rewrite the linguistic rules of the computer underground to fit your narrowly defined paradigm of right and wrong. Perhaps narrowly defined is a bit misspoken given that you're simply trying to adapt mainstream linguistic consistency to a subsect of the mainstream that wants little to do with it. However you want to try to logic your way out of looking pompous, be my guest. Perhaps you're just being helpful in your own condescending way? Or maybe I'm just being condescending in my own unhelpful way? Maybe your just wound so tight that your mental compiler goes TILT when presented with malformed English syntax, and it calls your fix() function without doing a check to verify whether or not anyone wants your fix() in the first place? Maybe... no, definitely I've spent enough time on this, and realize that you'd rather be "right" than to go with the flow.
Here's some logic for you. Accept things as they are for what they are.
Actually with sufficient processing power, it can be a performance win, since you're reading less from the disk.
I could believe that. But whether or not it's a performance hit, I'm still going to stick to the school of thought that says your asking for trouble if you're compressing your files. That might show that I'm stuck in the neolithic days of the mid-1990s, but so be it. =)
WoW, on the other hand, has a far more widespread acceptance.
Accepted by who? I've never met an adult who played WoW who wasn't already a gamer. WoW gamers are looked down on by other "real" gamers (those who play face to face) as the true losers who have no lives and so have hours and hours to grind. You've got your stereotypes 100% backwards.
My girl friend is the perfect example. She doesn't understand Shadowrun at all. She laughs at the idea of me getting together with some of my friends and pretending to live in the future of 2050ish Seattle. Before she met me, she barely used a computer. Now she's really into WoW and enjoys playing with me, and has even made some acquiantances with others through WoW.
I do agree that a WoW player is not a "real" gamer tho. A real gamer will always be looked at funny when he stands up and says, "I'm going to zap the lich with my magic missile spell!!" A "fake" gamer won't get a second look when he clicks away on a spell a lot like magic missile while staring at a computer screen for hours.
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The problem is that Microsoft isn't fixing the OS. They are simply bundling their own software that does the same thing that Symantec (or McAfee, or NOD, or Trend, or...) does. The problem is that from what I've seen of the betas, OneCare sucks, big time. If OneCare was like Windows Defender, ie. a product that they put out FOR FREE that addressed the problems of the oeprating system then everything would be peachy keen. That's not what is happening though. Microsoft isn't making their OS virus free. They are just making it so that 95% of the "dumb users" in the world will spend money on the Microsoft "solution" instead of the Symantec et al solution.
PDF is also an OPEN format. Adobe didn't develop PDF, so if Microsoft wants to use PDF then Adobe can go suck a big fat nut.
And i won't whine for symantec, they just made all the veritas products more sucky.
I hear you on that one.
...burns half as long? I worry about people who are so task oriented. I bet the guy gets anxious when he isn't working towards a deadline and has some free time.
I agree with you. When WinXP first came out and they moved everything from the desktop and onto the Start button I was upset and I switched all the computers that I worked with to "Classic" view. These days I leave it in the default config and I like the Start button. Between the Windows+(E, R, etc) hotkeys and the Start button, everything is right where I need it. My most common used programs showed up under Start so I don't have to clutter the desktop with the icons. I can get right at My Computer, Email, Internet, Printers, settings... the whole enchilada.
So ya, sometimes I grumble and wonder what the hell the guys were thinking, but eventually it turns out that most of the improvements really do make things better. However on the other hand, I'll never get over Word trying to anticipate what I want to do.
You make a good point about legacy systems. I have a few clients that are running CNC machines and those all run on legacy hardware via serial communications. All of those machines are running Windows 95 or 98. They aren't plugged into a network so they don't need to worry about viruses or any of that other nonsense. They just sit there cranking out parts all day long. A lot of them are even using old software that I used to use to dial into BBS' like ProComm Plus. =) I had to laugh when we used Y-Modem to transfer layout files from a floppy to the CNC machine. I made a joke about how we should use leech Z-modem instead but the guy didn't get it.
That does seem to be inline with the way Microsoft has developed their other products, most specifically Exchange. There are numerous hooks in Exchange that allow third party developers access to the system. There is the VAPI for anti-virus scanning of messages passing through the MTA and a similar interface that allows anti-spam software to filter incoming messages. There is also an API to allow backup software (ie. Backup Exec and Arcserve) to run real-time backups on the message stores.
Probably not. They're betting that Microsoft is the best bet and they're going to stick with it. As much as everyone lambasts Microsoft, their software does get the job done for a large segment of the computer using world. I don't think that you're going to see anyone jumping ship until Microsoft makes a huge blunder akin to what Novell did by sticking with IPX instead of embracing IP. Until they fail to see and then completely ignore some paradigm shifting technology, they will maintain their market dominance with a substandard, but STANDARD none the less software offering.
The second issue, and the bigger issue is that Microsoft seems be denying companies access to the low level hooks that they need to properly integrate their applications with the operating system. I kind of understand where MS is coming from. After all if they allow Symantec access to the system call table and the various other, kernel level hooks, then they might as well allow everyone access. On the other hand, those who want access to the lower level functions of the OS are going to hack them anyway. It's a Catch-22. Personally, I'd rather that EVERYONE have access to the low level functions. That way the market can sort out who will do the best job of securing it.
Have you ever run two anti-virus programs on a computer at the same time? More often than not your file system performance completely tanks because every time a file is accessed you have two programs trying to scan it and verify it's integrity. You will also frequently run into problems where one AV program will label the other AV program as a virus.
I just got done setting up Ubuntu and have been playing around with it. Hopefully by the time Linux has an sort of momentum to threaten the entrenched Microsoft enterprise environment I'll be living in Colorado teaching martial arts instead of hacking away at a computer. Yet just incase, it never hurts to keep my skills up to date.
If that happened (or, for example, you got a bad video driver that borked graphical mode - this has happened to me before) in Windows and you didn't have the recovery console installed, you're fucked.
Unless of course you just hit F8 and choose boot VGA mode. =) You should choose an example that doesn't have an easy workaround... like when you get a BSOD because your SCSI driver doesn't like the latest BIOS flash.
Once you've got Linux installed properly, you *don't* need to ass-about with it. Unlike dos.
Once you have ANY OS installed properly you don't need to ass-about with it, PERIOD. I have hundreds of users spread across dozens of clients whose workstations I never even see until it's time to upgrade something. Then on the other hand, there are a few users I see all the time because of something like "the Exchange server mysteriously decided to wreck one of their contact records... despite hundreds of other users who contact records are just fine." Ie. the user is full of shit and it's easier to blame the "stupid computer" than it is to blame themselves. In fact, by far the biggest whiners on any network I've dealt with are the Mac users in various design departments with their stupid font problems and InDesign file corruption problems and 500MB print jobs.
People like you are what this country needs, by the hundred thousands. It's easy to get emotional and irrate and to berate people who have been duped by the media, and whose mental processes have succumbed to incessent bombardment by a well oiled psyops machine. It takes a much stronger kind of character to calmly and rationally question in a Socratic manner the beliefs of those around you so that they can see, whether or not they accept, the gaping holes in the version of reality they've temporarily adopted.
Yet for the minority to lead the majority, they need to embrace and work with the very things like nationalism, racism and religious intolerance that bind the comman man together. Unfortunately things like racism are deeply ingrained, and the people who tell others that it is okay to be racist are going to get a lot further with those people than those who tell them that racism is bad.
Here is the statistic that I like to use when people talk about how bad terrorists are. More people died automobile accidents in the United States last year than have died in terrorist attacks around the world in the last five years (if you acknowledge that the "terrorist" attacks in Iraq are really asymmetrical warfare). Despite that, we don't have a huge campaign to save America from the dangers of maniac drivers and their life stealing automobiles.
It seems to me like just yesterday Microsoft was touting lower Total Cost of Ownership for their products and how running their products would allow fewer system administrators to do more. Now that Vista is coming out, they're talking about how many more people are going to be employed running their software? Huh? What's next? They're going to say, "Screw video games, we're getting into desktop publishing!" ????
Also useful for quickly passing those pesky "auto-pilot" animation sequences in Wing Commander. Just make sure to take turbo off before you have to fight those pesky Ferrangi.
It's definitely all about what you are used to. I find the Unix equivalents to be frustrating, but there is also a lot that I dislike about Microsoft software. At this point in my life, I realize that no matter what OS you're using, they all do the same thing on the lowest level. They read and write files to a disk and execute program code that provides an interface for interacting with what is on the disk.
Having said that I've started playing with Ubuntu because my interest has been rekindled after having been nearly extinguished by working in IT for over a decade. Maybe one of these days I'll become multi-lingual and figure out that rm works as well as del and cp is just as good as copy. =)
The only reason I can see for this behaviour is that MS is trying to induce lock-in.
What do you mean by that? There are "Microsoft" tools for a "Microsoft" world, just like there are the Unix equivalents for the Unix world. I don't think it's so much vendor lock-in as simply providing your users with adequate tools to get the job done. In my eyes, it would be lock-in if Microsoft setup their OS so that RDP was the ONLY way to connect to remote systems, and there weren't VNC or SSH clients that ran on Windows.
As I read this I was reminded of my own experience with DOS 5.0 and my 386/25. Back before the days of the Internet the only resource I had was the DOS 5.0 manual (which actually documented all of the information that I needed to know). My dad used the computer for Lotus123 and WordPerfect, I used it to play games. Every game I wanted to play needed a different bootdisk with a subtly tweaked version of Autoexec.bat and Config.sys to load the right drivers and free up enough of the 640k to play the game right.
Linux today reminds me of DOS fifteen plus years ago. Sure, they have a GUI, but it's a lot like Windows 3.11... just some graphics that are sitting ontop of a command shell that you still do most of your real work in. When something breaks you don't fix it through the GUI, you drop down to the command line and go to work (a la the recent Ubuntu fiasco).
I honestly believe that there is a certain point in life when it's fun to figure out how a computer works. For me, that period of time was the late 1980s and early 1990s. The OS I was using was DOS. I didn't mind having to hack stuff together because I didn't know any better. For kids today, that OS might be Linux and to a certain extent I encourage that, because by using Linux, you're closer to the core of the computer. You're still manually loading drivers and compiling modules and mounting file systems.
From my perspective though, that crap is for the kids with too much time on their hands. I want my operating system to work like I expect it to, and yes... I will "deal" with viruses and malware and all of that crap because I know enough about how computers work to not have to sweat it. But there is no way in hell I'm going to take three steps backwards and wait for Linux to catchup with what Microsoft already has. I like my Active Directory and Group Policy and Automatic Updates and .msi installers and Ghost and RDP and all of the stuff that allows me to easily manage thousands of desktops across disperate, geographically disconnected locations. I like the fact that I can lay down Exchange, then open up my Samsung i730, type in a URL, click "use SSL" and have a secure, wireless connection to my enterprise messaging system.
Oh man that was some funny shit. My diction and grammar are pretty pathetic to begin with, but I couldn't even come up with some of that stuff is I tried. "...embiggen the productionality..." Verrryy nice.
I just had this visual of this poor Chinese guy surrounded by a bunch of blinking screens, his hand hovering over a big red button, praying, "No whammies, no whammies!!"
I doubt it. Maybe you can blow a 2600 tone down the line and get uber rewt access to the automated call system. =) Or maybe you can redbox it and they'll send you a check for as much money as you put into the phone.
Those aren't volume wide compression algorithms. Apples and oranges man.
In both instances, it makes sense to compress that data on a case by case basis. I'd draw the analogy to using .zip compression to compress a few files. The kind of compression that I'm saying is a bad idea to use is the compression that compresses EVERYTHING on the entire volume / partition. That's the kind of compression that will come back and bite you in the ass. I'm not sure if you remember the days of DOS 6.2 and DoubleSpace, but after experiencing that shoddy product first hand, I'm wary of trusting anything Microsoft puts out that proports to safely compress your data.
Here's some logic for you. Accept things as they are for what they are.
I could believe that. But whether or not it's a performance hit, I'm still going to stick to the school of thought that says your asking for trouble if you're compressing your files. That might show that I'm stuck in the neolithic days of the mid-1990s, but so be it. =)
My girl friend is the perfect example. She doesn't understand Shadowrun at all. She laughs at the idea of me getting together with some of my friends and pretending to live in the future of 2050ish Seattle. Before she met me, she barely used a computer. Now she's really into WoW and enjoys playing with me, and has even made some acquiantances with others through WoW.
I do agree that a WoW player is not a "real" gamer tho. A real gamer will always be looked at funny when he stands up and says, "I'm going to zap the lich with my magic missile spell!!" A "fake" gamer won't get a second look when he clicks away on a spell a lot like magic missile while staring at a computer screen for hours.