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Windows XP and the Microsoft agenda - can it get worse?

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  • #136
    Some of the apps Asher cannot live without are Outlook and Exchange, he mentioned, and how they could handle a whole enterprise.

    They can, but do badly: Critical System At Risk describes (in a very DETAILED manner) how Outlook, NT-derivates and Exchange fit into MS' business model, and how large orgs/businesses can come to the point of no more being administrable because of weaknesses in this MS solution. Shows as well, how MS changes the software according to its marketing schemes to make it nearly unusable without adopting EXACTLY their solution...

    Found it rather interesting.
    None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely belive they are free. (Goethe)

    Comment

    • #137
      Security and MS: a mixed issue. Actually many times it's not as nice and patchy Asher wants to suggest with XP: MS failing security test?

      Though less of an issue now, it may be become one in the future: Virus writers take aim at .Net.

      A nice quote from an article stating why this .NET-virus is not an issue now (from
      Microsoft: There's a hole in W32.Donut )

      Microsoft and the antivirus vendors agreed that the risk from the virus is extremely low because so few people have .Net software installed
      Well, of course I took the worst argument they had why this .NET virus is not as important... But where's the point? Actually they want to use .NET for software services with millions of subscribers.
      None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely belive they are free. (Goethe)

      Comment

      • #138
        Originally posted by Korpo
        Some of the apps Asher cannot live without are Outlook and Exchange, he mentioned, and how they could handle a whole enterprise.

        They can, but do badly: Critical System At Risk describes (in a very DETAILED manner) how Outlook, NT-derivates and Exchange fit into MS' business model, and how large orgs/businesses can come to the point of no more being administrable because of weaknesses in this MS solution. Shows as well, how MS changes the software according to its marketing schemes to make it nearly unusable without adopting EXACTLY their solution...

        Found it rather interesting.
        I found it rather lame, you cited an editorial and interview with a Linux developer on an OpenSource news commentary site and expect objectivity?
        Most of the article (I've skimmed it, have to go in a few mins) seems to be rhetoric and comes down to "MS makes insecure products, we make secure products". Same ol', same ol'.

        Well, of course I took the worst argument they had why this .NET virus is not as important... But where's the point? Actually they want to use .NET for software services with millions of subscribers.
        Oh yes, this "proof of concept" virus was certainly newsworth. A bunch of people theoretically made a virus for a platform not even out yet. Much worthy of all the MS-bashing Slashdot and people like you tend to give it.

        Want me to make a proof of concept Linux virus? I'll trick people into running the program under root permissions, where it'll wipe out their HD. "Hahaha, Linux sux0r".
        "The issue is there are still many people out there that use religion as a crutch for bigotry and hate. Like Ben."
        Ben Kenobi: "That means I'm doing something right. "

        Comment

        • #139
          Want me to make a proof of concept Linux virus? I'll trick people into running the program under root permissions, where it'll wipe out their HD. "Hahaha, Linux sux0r".
          That is not a virus, that is a Trojan Horse. Linux is much more safe from Trojan Horses because you can have insight into the code and are able detect malicious code parts.. even without browsing the source you can avoid Trojan horses by using "trusted" sites for downloads only, and countercheck the checksums, so you can verify the origin of your software. It is very unlikely you can trick any half-sane Linux user into using a Trojan Horse, much more likely for Windows, though!

          I've skimmed it, have to go in a few mins
          Lame excuse for an excuse, isn't it? You should better read it, it has pretty good arguments, and is based on other pretty good articles. Besides, it is objective: It clearly states small businesses can adopt that MS solution with not much of a problem, but sees problems in medium- to large-sized organizations. And the articles it's based on argues to rethink the importance of mail services, it is no anti-MS article. It is a anti-PC article. It also doesn't promote Sun servers as well, it is promoting the use of mainframes for mission-critical mail-services. And their exact point is, that MS products sabotage any centralized mail setup and any switching towards it.


          Oh, besides, ZDnet or heise.de and other reliable, objective sources state that much of the MSIE holes and XP holes we were talking about ARE STILL NOT APPROPRIATELY PATCHED, though you stated otherwise.
          None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely belive they are free. (Goethe)

          Comment

          • #140
            Originally posted by Korpo
            That is not a virus, that is a Trojan Horse. Linux is much more safe from Trojan Horses because you can have insight into the code and are able detect malicious code parts.. even without browsing the source you can avoid Trojan horses by using "trusted" sites for downloads only, and countercheck the checksums, so you can verify the origin of your software. It is very unlikely you can trick any half-sane Linux user into using a Trojan Horse, much more likely for Windows, though!
            It's not Microsoft's fault it makes easier to use software that the public wants, stop blaming them for the dumb average user base.

            I fail to see how Linux is "much more safe from Trojan Horses" because you have insight into the code? Not all Linux software is open source, not all Windows software is closed source. Both are equally succeptible to trojan horses, if you know what you're doing on both sides.

            Lame excuse for an excuse, isn't it? You should better read it, it has pretty good arguments, and is based on other pretty good articles. Besides, it is objective: It clearly states small businesses can adopt that MS solution with not much of a problem, but sees problems in medium- to large-sized organizations. And the articles it's based on argues to rethink the importance of mail services, it is no anti-MS article. It is a anti-PC article. It also doesn't promote Sun servers as well, it is promoting the use of mainframes for mission-critical mail-services. And their exact point is, that MS products sabotage any centralized mail setup and any switching towards it.
            The article isn't objective. I don't know how you can possibly say it is. It doesn't even touch on the basics of easy to use APIs for developers, the overall friendliness of the thing, and the features it ships with out of the box.
            The article is simply lame. It's actually NOT very informative, it's the (very) typical anti-MS bull**** I've read hundreds of times over already. It's nothing new.

            You claim it's objective (not biased). Check out the sub title: "Does Linux on the Mainframe Provide a Way Out?". The author is the publisher of ConsultingTimes.com, and ConsultingTimes.com is labeled as "OPEN SOURCE NEWS" and other articles like "E-mail in the Enterprise: Do Proprietary Protocols Jeopardize Your System?" and the like. It's propaganda mostly, despite the fact that portions of it are true. It's like me citing Microsoft.com whitepapers as evidence that Linux is insecure.

            It also openly states that the guy they're interviewing is "an IBM business partner specializing in Linux solutions". Surely he's not biased, right? Totally objective? Not opinionated?

            Oh, besides, ZDnet or heise.de and other reliable, objective sources state that much of the MSIE holes and XP holes we were talking about ARE STILL NOT APPROPRIATELY PATCHED, though you stated otherwise.
            Can you link those for us, instead of just yammering about it without proof?
            You're probably referring to the FBI warning weeks ago, which later was retracted because the FBI admits to being totally clueless as to what the problem really was.

            Edit: I searched around on ZDnet, found the thing you're probably talking about: Almost three weeks ago, a 31-year-old Austin, Texas-based security researcher revealed a bug in IE 6. The bug could let an attacker send an HTML e-mail, which in turn could steal cookies, allow access to files, or direct the victim to a false Web site that, to the average person, would be almost indistinguishable from the real thing.

            That's the only unpatched security hole out there right now, and it's relatively minor. When did I say this one was patched?

            I realize Windows isn't the most secure OS out there. But there is a compromise to be made on desktops between ease of use, feature sets, and security. If you really cared about security as much as you seem to, why are you using Linux? Switch to OpenBSD, it's far more secure.

            Hopefully the security situation improves for Windows, like it has for UNIX. If you know much about the 70s and 80s and early 90s, you'd know that UNIX security was a complete joke back then. Patches took months to come out, years to implement on all of the systems, and it was easy to root systems remotely. The only reason UNIX is secure now is because it's had the time to mature for many decades, while Windows NT is relatively new on the scene completely. Give it time, and it'll rival the UNIX systems with a real GUI to boot, plus a real software base for consumers.
            Last edited by Asher; January 15, 2002, 06:05.
            "The issue is there are still many people out there that use religion as a crutch for bigotry and hate. Like Ben."
            Ben Kenobi: "That means I'm doing something right. "

            Comment

            • #141
              Hopefully the security situation improves for Windows, like it has for UNIX. If you know much about the 70s and 80s and early 90s, you'd know that UNIX security was a complete joke back then. Patches took months to come out, years to implement on all of the systems, and it was easy to root systems remotely. The only reason UNIX is secure now is because it's had the time to mature for many decades, while Windows NT is relatively new on the scene completely. Give it time, and it'll rival the UNIX systems with a real GUI to boot, plus a real software base for consumers.
              Actually all *nix derivates considered secure nowadays can't be compared to 70s or 80s UNIX. SELinux is GPL'd, OpenBSD is completely open-source, as is the code-base of even all commercial or non-commercial Linux products or *BSDs. This is the decisive change in *nix security, not evolution of the old, commercial UNIX dists. Most classic commercial UNIX distributions are or were known for their slow support, lack of security, etc. Even Solaris, or HP-UX, the "survivors" of the commercial UNIX market, aren't considered especially safe, though their code base is longer around than Linux, or a big part of the *BSD code.

              So I think your comparison is invalid. The momentum Linux brought into *nix (r)evolution was the decisive factor, something NT will never offer you. NT and successors will not create a community, and IMHO it will not be the platform for innovation in the next decade. How USB support was programmed in Linux is one peek at the future of innovation. All USB support was programmed and tested against the maximum of devices interconnectible by USB, 128 if I remember right. I don't know how testing and programming went with MS, because they won't tell you. I simply know, and can confirm if I want to, that they did the maximum I can expect of the core functionality developer. I can't confirm with MS. I just can sit there and swallow their marketing yak-yak, etc. And they are known for their bad support as well (as most commercial software vendors, since they outsource into call centers).

              Why should a pay for something I cannot even really confirm or compare that it is better, give money to an organization that's even trying to forge the results of comparative studies (as the DH brown study "expected" or the German TÃœV study funded by MS, that intentionally excluded security in networking as a non-important issue), polls (which MS employees tried to subvert on ZDnet about ".NET or Java") or "letter campaigns" (where dead people expressed their support for MS). They're simply not trustworthy, as long as they pull such things. It is simply not logical to see them doing these things and still trust in them, that they will not do the same thing to me or other users, or care for a fair customer relation ship, as they are too big and too much a monopolist, to care for the need individual users, organizations or small businesses. They will simply cramp their one-for-all solution down your throat, and if it isn't what you need, but you do depend on their software, they won't care a bit.

              And give Windows time? You won't consider the same for Linux (in your arguments at least, that go like: "It is inusable now, because people are dumb and dull, and have no problem with Windows at all, and it will stay like that forever... yak yak"). If you consider the evolution analogy for Linux, then we're in the Cambrium - the period in Earth's evolution, where we had an explosion in variety of life. In Linux development, as under Sourceforge, and other OS sources, we have an explosion in the number of OS programs. The next step will be consolidation - the fittest in the Linux universe will survive. For standard apps it will be as feature-rich and numerous as for Windows perhaps even by the end of the year.
              As for well-known developer tools (TogetherSoft, Borland), ports of games (Civ-CtP, Quake III) and office apps (StarOffice, Ximian
              Evolution), this is already gaining momentum as well.

              And you're taking one line out of a multi-page article without even evaluating the arguments? Perhaps you should take your MCSE degree from your forehead and turn on the light-switch. As you are simply playing advocatus diaboli, man.
              None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely belive they are free. (Goethe)

              Comment

              • #142
                So, for heise.de, some articles I was talking about:

                Neuer Virus zerstört Dateisystem unter Windows

                Erster Virus für Microsofts .NET

                From ZDNET:

                Win XP updates stopped by glitch

                Microsoft failing security test?

                IE privacy flaw still causing leaks

                etc. etc.
                None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely belive they are free. (Goethe)

                Comment

                • #143
                  Today I installed FreeBSD for the first time. Overall I am impressed with the installation.

                  Linux installs have BSD beat by a long shot in terms of ease of use.

                  But BSD's strength is that it gives you just what you need, and that's it. Sometimes I get tired of unchecking all the "wonderful apps that can do anything Windows does," just to get the damn minimum install! Why is my hard drive spinning with all these background daemons!

                  But once you get BSD installed, MAN! Now that is a real UNIX!

                  It's clean, fast, efficient, and compact.

                  With Linux I feel like I'm using a work in progress, with alot of bells and whistles.

                  With BSD I feel like I'm using a real server OS, I don't know, it just "feels" right.

                  Ted Striker, guide to the OS spirit world.
                  We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution. - Abraham Lincoln

                  Comment

                  • #144
                    Regarding Linux vs. Windows on the desktop.

                    I've said it before, and I'll have to say it again.

                    Microsoft won out not because they sold to Dilbert, but because they sold to Dilbert's Boss.

                    That, is the key.
                    We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution. - Abraham Lincoln

                    Comment

                    • #145
                      Microsoft won out not because they sold to Dilbert, but because they sold to Dilbert's Boss.
                      Some of the articles, including Critical System at Risk, do support that claim.
                      Which poor soul's boss is Asher then?

                      But BSD's strength is that it gives you just what you need, and that's it. Sometimes I get tired of unchecking all the "wonderful apps that can do anything Windows does," just to get the damn minimum install! Why is my hard drive spinning with all these background daemons!
                      One of the real hard things with Linux is finding the distribution that suits your needs. FreeBSD has become an excellent choice, especially since the adoption of the Linux compatibility layer! Though I am perfectly fine with my Debian I'll give it a partition for testing purposes. I'm strongly interested into more centralized configuration as there is on BSD systems (opposed to the Linux/System V-ish "mess").



                      Article on Asian/developing countries' governments adopting Linux solution instead of legalizing their MS solutions: Microsoft builds the government Linux market
                      None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely belive they are free. (Goethe)

                      Comment

                      • #146
                        Korpo,

                        I really liked that Critical System at Risk article.

                        I essentially see things from its perspective.
                        We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution. - Abraham Lincoln

                        Comment

                        • #147
                          Okay today I finally got around to installing XP on a test server.

                          Initial reactions:

                          Installation

                          Was the BEST EVER. Just a couple of clicks. Install detected the Red Hat partitions and removed them, including that pesky MBR that is notorious for being hard to remove from some Linux drives.

                          Default GUI

                          Yuck. This looks like some Fisher Price toy or something. After some tweaking I put it back to the classic look and everything was much easier to find.

                          Performance

                          This one is indeed a hog and will take some serious hardware to run smoothly. Though I would say the performance is about equal to KDE or Gnome.
                          We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution. - Abraham Lincoln

                          Comment

                          • #148
                            Originally posted by Ted Striker
                            Default GUI

                            Yuck. This looks like some Fisher Price toy or something. After some tweaking I put it back to the classic look and everything was much easier to find.
                            I agree. I didn't mind "Silver" that much, but the buttons were still way too large for me.

                            I've been using one for over a month now called "Rhodium Edge" that I love. Prefer it to the Classic and to the Luna UI. You can download it here: http://winxp.rb-338.com/
                            (Scroll down, it's about half way down on the left)
                            You'll need Style XP installed to user third party skins: http://www.tgtsoft.com/

                            I find the UI snappier (considerably so, actually) than KDE or GNOME on my P3 800 system. I'm using the Detonator XP drivers from Nvidia, which supposedly do lots of the flashy GUI stuff in hardware on my GeForce 3.

                            This one is indeed a hog and will take some serious hardware to run smoothly. Though I would say the performance is about equal to KDE or Gnome.
                            Yeah, especially RAM.
                            A lot of the flashy stuff can be turned off if you've got a slower system.
                            Lots of stuff is in the 'System' dialog, under the Advanced tab. You may wish to disable system restore, too.
                            "The issue is there are still many people out there that use religion as a crutch for bigotry and hate. Like Ben."
                            Ben Kenobi: "That means I'm doing something right. "

                            Comment

                            • #149
                              Thanks for the tips man.

                              I installed on a 233 MMX with only 64 MB RAM, so definatley it doesn't have the horsepower.

                              Rhodium Edge looks kinda like Solaris!
                              We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution. - Abraham Lincoln

                              Comment

                              • #150
                                Originally posted by Ted Striker
                                I installed on a 233 MMX with only 64 MB RAM, so definatley it doesn't have the horsepower.
                                Yikes.
                                I wouldn't have put it on anything less than a 500MHz box with 128MB RAM.
                                "The issue is there are still many people out there that use religion as a crutch for bigotry and hate. Like Ben."
                                Ben Kenobi: "That means I'm doing something right. "

                                Comment

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