Windows does not have a facility to temporarily raise privilege level like what can be found in Linux ("su", for example), nor does the default installation support/encourage that model. The net consequence for a Windows user who occasionally installs software is that they're likely to run the system with Administrator privileges (that's the equivalent of root to those that have been lucky enough never to have been near a Windows box;-). In other words, malicious code will find a wide open barn door straight into the heart of the OS. Duh.
Uh. No. Try this next time you sit at a Windows NT-based computer:
1) Select installer icon. 2) Right-click, select "Run As..." 3) Type in an administrative username and password.
Not only *can* you do it, but I find it much easier to do than the Unix way. For instance, if I don't want to give it full admin priviledges, I can run it as a 'superuser' account. Or, if I'm logging on as 'superuser' and my 6-year-old niece wants to play a game, I can run the possible-malware game as 'user'.
Now, of course, Windows 95/98/ME don't have this feature as they aren't multi-user OSes.
Sure, the user might be running as 'administrator', but that's a *user education* problem, not a flaw in the software... the software works exactly how it's supposed to.
Bash Microsoft if you want, but please don't spread lies. If you're not certain whether Windows has a feature or not, don't just declare it doesn't.
I'm guessing you never played Tribes. Alas, the game was killed by Tribes 2's release and subsequent sucking of ass, but it had pretty much all that stuff almost a decade ago.
Not to dis Battlefield 1942 any; I don't play it myself, I'm just saying that classes and vehicles in an FPS game isn't rare by any means.
(As a note, what's with all these uber-realistic games? I want to play fantasy fighting games like Unreal or Tribes! Do you know how un-fun Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is when someone playing makes a crack like "you killed him like a concentration camp jew!" And yes, I've seen that more than once.)
Uh... what? The guy was asking whether the XBox had beefier graphics hardware than the Gamecube or not. It does.
I'm not saying that it's a better console because of it, or that the graphics quality matters more than the games, or some other ridiculous thing that you seem to think I am.
Look, you don't need to *defend* the Gamecube. I was just stating facts. I couldn't care less if you like a Gamecube better or an XBox better, but the simple fact is that the XBox has more RAM, lots of swap space, and a slightly better VPU. That's it.
Back away from the computer and get a grip, man. You don't need to rabidly defend the Gamecube when I'm not even attacking it.
That's true, but it *is* a problem if the article still says it was last modified 10 hours ago.
I have no problem with them changing it, but the standard is that at the bottom of the article you provide a little 'revision history' describing the changes made and when they were made.
For instance, this virus has nothing to do with Outlook. It can spread just as easily through Lotus Notes or Eudora. (Case in point: my workplace, using Lotus Notes, got about 5 infections before we realized it was happening.)
This virus does absolutely nothing but social engineering. "Here's an email with a file; click and run the file." That works equally well in any email client. And it doesn't really require an "expect Windows programmer" to write a program that does malicious things when double-clicked... I wrote those when I was 14 years old.
In short, next time you correct an article, make sure that you are actually correct.
It might. I dunno, I never owned a PS1. But why don't we wait until a bit closer to the deadline before we simply *declare* that the XBox library is vastly inferior to the PS1 library, or at least until the XBox has been out for an equal amount of time as the PS1.
There should be a new rule here that anyone who spells "Microsoft" as "Micro$oft" or "M$," or Windows as "Windoze" is not allowed to be moderated as insightful.
Criminy, grow up people. Saying people's names wrong was real insulting in, what, third grade?
Short answer : The XBox ( and it's games ) didn't sell well enough to justify keeping any next-generation XBox compatible with previous games.
Uh, you might have a point in your post, and personally I'd be a *lot* more concerned if they decided to remove the HD than to not make it backwards-compatible... but I have to ask...
Why the past-tense? The XBox is still current, and the XBox 2 won't be ready for years. (For instance, they're still talking about issues like this... it's not like XBox 2 is being released tomorrow.)
The additional RAM and HD give the XBox the edge. Without that, the VPU would only be a teeny notch above the one in the GC.
But a game like Knights of the Old Republic would have been near-impossible to run on the meager allotment of RAM the Gamecube has and no HD to use as swap space.
The other thing to remember is that the XBox renders *everything* at 480p resolution, then downscales it to 480i before it outputs to the (standard) TV. The Gamecube renders at 480i by default unless the specific game tells it to render at 480p.
First of all, it has enough good games now that I could quite possibly still be playing in 2006.
Secondly, if you think it has a handful of good games now, well, we're talking about YEARS before the XBox 2 is ready... there will be a much larger library by that time.
Yeah, that's true, but I sure hope you're not recommending Linux as a solution. The only OS that requires more pointless tinkering to get stuff done than Windows is Linux.
In fact, the closest a person can get to this ideal is MacOS X... but OS X has its own problems. For instance, the aforementioned hardware compatibility.
Yeah, but Office 97 wasn't designed to run on NT4, the only Windows NT variant out at the time.
Your example is entirely worthless. It's perfectly acceptable for Office 97 to expect that, just as it's acceptable for a MacOS 9 program to expect that, because there's no true multi-user support in the OS.
Find a *current* application designed to run with modern copies of Windows and I'll be convinced.
Perhaps; but how does that change the man's point?
Regardless of *why* they are hard to hack, the simple fact is that they *are* hard to hack. I mean, I understand what you're saying, but it really makes no difference to this article whatsoever.
Yeah, I agree with all that, but what I don't agree with is the people who claim this is *Microsoft's* fault.
I mean, hell, I could easily write an OS X program that tried to store all its data into a system directory and required an administrator account to run... would people suddenly declare that Apple screwed up, or that my program is crap?
Look at the software Microsoft writes: All of it is perfectly usable as a plain-jane user account, just as it should be. If other software developers wrote software *correctly*, the way Microsoft does, there'd be no problem at all.
So, in short, the parent post is true entirely... but it doesn't communicate how secure or insecure Microsoft products are because the problem is not *with* the Microsoft products.
Why didn't you buy the extended warranty? The extended warranty costs $250, lasts for *three* years from the original purchase date, and covers all repairs.
I mean, come on! The absolute *cheapest* replacement part on an iBook is perhaps $400. Having a $250 plan to do these repairs for free for basically the lifetime of the machine sounds like damn good insurance to me.
In other words, you screwed up. You could have bought the extended warranty anytime before one year from the original purchase date, which would have given you plenty of time to read up on this problem and figure out that, hey, the additional protection might be a good idea!
A class action suit is silly. Apple provides the exact same out-of-the-box warranty as every other computer maker... if you decided that you wanted to be on your own after the warranty expired, then that's a choice you made.
The XBox has far more graphical power than the other two consoles. The XBox can display in every HDTV resolution, and defaults to 480p. The other consoles default to 480i. The XBox has a hard disk large enough to store every save game you'll ever need, half your CD collection, give each game tons of space for caching content, and store all the patches you'll get off Live. Then there's XBox Live, which is a tremendous feature in itself.
I mean, hell, you guys all hate XBox because it's made by Microsoft, and I understand that. But to argue that the other consoles have even CLOSE to the power of the XBox is plain delusion. There's absolutely *nothing* that a PS2 or Gamecube can do that an XBox cannot do, period.
What's even more strange is that it doesn't report Windows ME. I mean, I know that Google probably hates Windows ME as much as everyone else, but that doesn't mean they should pretend it doesn't exist.
So do Windows ME installations show up as 98? Or XP? Or are they just not counted at all?
The problem he mentions, but doesn't focus on as much as I'd hoped, is that there is simply no replacement for tabbed folders in OS X, short of buying the shareware program he recommends.
It's not unusual for software users to gripe when their favorite feature was removed from a newer version. And if you didn't use tabbed folders, you really missed out... they were great.
Slashdot Mirror
Windows does not have a facility to temporarily raise privilege level like what can be found in Linux ("su", for example), nor does the default installation support/encourage that model. The net consequence for a Windows user who occasionally installs software is that they're likely to run the system with Administrator privileges (that's the equivalent of root to those that have been lucky enough never to have been near a Windows box ;-). In other words, malicious code will find a wide open barn door straight into the heart of the OS. Duh.
Uh. No. Try this next time you sit at a Windows NT-based computer:
1) Select installer icon.
2) Right-click, select "Run As..."
3) Type in an administrative username and password.
Not only *can* you do it, but I find it much easier to do than the Unix way. For instance, if I don't want to give it full admin priviledges, I can run it as a 'superuser' account. Or, if I'm logging on as 'superuser' and my 6-year-old niece wants to play a game, I can run the possible-malware game as 'user'.
Now, of course, Windows 95/98/ME don't have this feature as they aren't multi-user OSes.
Sure, the user might be running as 'administrator', but that's a *user education* problem, not a flaw in the software... the software works exactly how it's supposed to.
Bash Microsoft if you want, but please don't spread lies. If you're not certain whether Windows has a feature or not, don't just declare it doesn't.
I'm guessing you never played Tribes. Alas, the game was killed by Tribes 2's release and subsequent sucking of ass, but it had pretty much all that stuff almost a decade ago.
Not to dis Battlefield 1942 any; I don't play it myself, I'm just saying that classes and vehicles in an FPS game isn't rare by any means.
(As a note, what's with all these uber-realistic games? I want to play fantasy fighting games like Unreal or Tribes! Do you know how un-fun Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is when someone playing makes a crack like "you killed him like a concentration camp jew!" And yes, I've seen that more than once.)
I don't know when they were introduced, but I know they were in version 6, and I'm pretty sure they were old then.
Hey Moderators, that's not "interesting" that's "off-topic."
Uh... what? The guy was asking whether the XBox had beefier graphics hardware than the Gamecube or not. It does.
I'm not saying that it's a better console because of it, or that the graphics quality matters more than the games, or some other ridiculous thing that you seem to think I am.
Look, you don't need to *defend* the Gamecube. I was just stating facts. I couldn't care less if you like a Gamecube better or an XBox better, but the simple fact is that the XBox has more RAM, lots of swap space, and a slightly better VPU. That's it.
Back away from the computer and get a grip, man. You don't need to rabidly defend the Gamecube when I'm not even attacking it.
"Violent reactionism?" Are you talking about the BBC article, or about the Slashdot reaction to the BBC article?
Either way, there are a lot of minorities that are 'violently reactive'... that doesn't make them the majority.
That's true, but it *is* a problem if the article still says it was last modified 10 hours ago.
I have no problem with them changing it, but the standard is that at the bottom of the article you provide a little 'revision history' describing the changes made and when they were made.
Uh. Your letter also contains errors.
For instance, this virus has nothing to do with Outlook. It can spread just as easily through Lotus Notes or Eudora. (Case in point: my workplace, using Lotus Notes, got about 5 infections before we realized it was happening.)
This virus does absolutely nothing but social engineering. "Here's an email with a file; click and run the file." That works equally well in any email client. And it doesn't really require an "expect Windows programmer" to write a program that does malicious things when double-clicked... I wrote those when I was 14 years old.
In short, next time you correct an article, make sure that you are actually correct.
Dude, relax.
It's no different than Nintendo consoles not including backwards compability... or are you laughing at Nintendo buyers, also?
I mean, you can be anti-Microsoft if you like, but that comment was plain stupid.
You're in luck.
It might. I dunno, I never owned a PS1. But why don't we wait until a bit closer to the deadline before we simply *declare* that the XBox library is vastly inferior to the PS1 library, or at least until the XBox has been out for an equal amount of time as the PS1.
There should be a new rule here that anyone who spells "Microsoft" as "Micro$oft" or "M$," or Windows as "Windoze" is not allowed to be moderated as insightful.
Criminy, grow up people. Saying people's names wrong was real insulting in, what, third grade?
Short answer : The XBox ( and it's games ) didn't sell well enough to justify keeping any next-generation XBox compatible with previous games.
Uh, you might have a point in your post, and personally I'd be a *lot* more concerned if they decided to remove the HD than to not make it backwards-compatible... but I have to ask...
Why the past-tense? The XBox is still current, and the XBox 2 won't be ready for years. (For instance, they're still talking about issues like this... it's not like XBox 2 is being released tomorrow.)
The additional RAM and HD give the XBox the edge. Without that, the VPU would only be a teeny notch above the one in the GC.
But a game like Knights of the Old Republic would have been near-impossible to run on the meager allotment of RAM the Gamecube has and no HD to use as swap space.
The other thing to remember is that the XBox renders *everything* at 480p resolution, then downscales it to 480i before it outputs to the (standard) TV. The Gamecube renders at 480i by default unless the specific game tells it to render at 480p.
First of all, it has enough good games now that I could quite possibly still be playing in 2006.
Secondly, if you think it has a handful of good games now, well, we're talking about YEARS before the XBox 2 is ready... there will be a much larger library by that time.
By the way, does anyone know if Dish Network's PVR phones home about my rewinding habits?
Just unplug the phone line. Disk Network PVR doesn't require it to be plugged in, and it can't 'phone home' anything with no phone line.
Sony's Cell processor is going to have 7 chips working together to be 1000x more powerful than the most powerful desktop PC now!
Like MS is the only company that releases bullshit press releases about future consoles.
Yeah, that's true, but I sure hope you're not recommending Linux as a solution. The only OS that requires more pointless tinkering to get stuff done than Windows is Linux.
In fact, the closest a person can get to this ideal is MacOS X... but OS X has its own problems. For instance, the aforementioned hardware compatibility.
Yeah, but Office 97 wasn't designed to run on NT4, the only Windows NT variant out at the time.
Your example is entirely worthless. It's perfectly acceptable for Office 97 to expect that, just as it's acceptable for a MacOS 9 program to expect that, because there's no true multi-user support in the OS.
Find a *current* application designed to run with modern copies of Windows and I'll be convinced.
Perhaps; but how does that change the man's point?
Regardless of *why* they are hard to hack, the simple fact is that they *are* hard to hack. I mean, I understand what you're saying, but it really makes no difference to this article whatsoever.
Yeah, I agree with all that, but what I don't agree with is the people who claim this is *Microsoft's* fault.
I mean, hell, I could easily write an OS X program that tried to store all its data into a system directory and required an administrator account to run... would people suddenly declare that Apple screwed up, or that my program is crap?
Look at the software Microsoft writes: All of it is perfectly usable as a plain-jane user account, just as it should be. If other software developers wrote software *correctly*, the way Microsoft does, there'd be no problem at all.
So, in short, the parent post is true entirely... but it doesn't communicate how secure or insecure Microsoft products are because the problem is not *with* the Microsoft products.
Why didn't you buy the extended warranty? The extended warranty costs $250, lasts for *three* years from the original purchase date, and covers all repairs.
I mean, come on! The absolute *cheapest* replacement part on an iBook is perhaps $400. Having a $250 plan to do these repairs for free for basically the lifetime of the machine sounds like damn good insurance to me.
In other words, you screwed up. You could have bought the extended warranty anytime before one year from the original purchase date, which would have given you plenty of time to read up on this problem and figure out that, hey, the additional protection might be a good idea!
A class action suit is silly. Apple provides the exact same out-of-the-box warranty as every other computer maker... if you decided that you wanted to be on your own after the warranty expired, then that's a choice you made.
No, that's crap.
The XBox has far more graphical power than the other two consoles. The XBox can display in every HDTV resolution, and defaults to 480p. The other consoles default to 480i. The XBox has a hard disk large enough to store every save game you'll ever need, half your CD collection, give each game tons of space for caching content, and store all the patches you'll get off Live. Then there's XBox Live, which is a tremendous feature in itself.
I mean, hell, you guys all hate XBox because it's made by Microsoft, and I understand that. But to argue that the other consoles have even CLOSE to the power of the XBox is plain delusion. There's absolutely *nothing* that a PS2 or Gamecube can do that an XBox cannot do, period.
What's even more strange is that it doesn't report Windows ME. I mean, I know that Google probably hates Windows ME as much as everyone else, but that doesn't mean they should pretend it doesn't exist.
So do Windows ME installations show up as 98? Or XP? Or are they just not counted at all?
Yes, but did you use tabbed folders?
The problem he mentions, but doesn't focus on as much as I'd hoped, is that there is simply no replacement for tabbed folders in OS X, short of buying the shareware program he recommends.
It's not unusual for software users to gripe when their favorite feature was removed from a newer version. And if you didn't use tabbed folders, you really missed out... they were great.