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

[chequita guevara]

Drake Tungsten! I will be your nemisis, but only on the condition that you send me a box of Runzas (plain, freeze them and overnight 'em in a cooler).

I used to live in Lincoln, NE from 1973-77 when I was a wee bit. Was a wonderful place to be a kid. I still fondly remember Pioneer Park and Colonel Lee's Fried Chicken (best fried chicken livers in the USA) and the RUNZA!!!!!

Don't suppose you know a guy by the name of Chris Anderson? He and I were best friends as kids when we lived on Woodbine Ave., '73-'76. (In '77 we moved over to 39th St.) Went to school at Maude Rousseau.

o/`
There is no place like Nebraska!
Good old Nebraska U!
Where the boys are the squarest
the girls are the fairest
o/~
etc. . . .

Asher, I've got concerns about XP. I'm concerned about the massive overhead that it puts on the system. I do a lotta graphics work, as well as gaming, and I don't want all that OS running in the background, taking up resources. I've got a quad boot system, Win2K/Win98/BeOS/Linux (later two aren't working p[erfectly since I haven't bothered to tweak them). Win98's been freezing up on me lately or failing to load (either or, everytime) and I'm considering giving up on it all together and upgrading 2K to XP.

BTW, why do you leave your PC on 24/7? Haven't you heard about energy conservation? I do, but that's because my CMOS battery died and the local computer stores don't carry any.

[Asher]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Asher, I've got concerns about XP. I'm concerned about the massive overhead that it puts on the system. I do a lotta graphics work, as well as gaming, and I don't want all that OS running in the background, taking up resources. I've got a quad boot system, Win2K/Win98/BeOS/Linux (later two aren't working p[erfectly since I haven't bothered to tweak them). Win98's been freezing up on me lately or failing to load (either or, everytime) and I'm considering giving up on it all together and upgrading 2K to XP.

XP doesn't actually use much more resources at all from 2K. Just keep your RAM count high: It's cheap and makes a world of difference.

BTW, why do you leave your PC on 24/7? Haven't you heard about energy conservation? I do, but that's because my CMOS battery died and the local computer stores don't carry any.

I don't run an Athlon or something, my computer doesn't suck too much power.
I use it quite a lot, so why bother shutting it down and booting it up constantly?
It's also less health to be constantly booted up and shut down because that forces the hardware to expand and contract with heat change.

[Korpo]

BTW, why do you leave your PC on 24/7? Haven't you heard about energy
conservation? I do, but that's because my CMOS battery died and the local computer stores don't carry any.

Modern computer systems are actually more energy conservative when run 24/7 as if started up once or twice a day for work.
This is thanks to power management in most components, and because components as the monitor tend to suck a lot of power
when turned on. Actually components live longer when run continously . For example SCSI hard disks can be only shut
down and restarted a certain (though high enough..) amount of times.
Friend of mine tested this with a computer he had half a year running continously and half a year with shutdown
after use. He had a power counter, and running continously was a lot more energy conservative.

Shouldn´ t these batteries recharge when run anyway? I thought them to be accumulators anyway, that die after about
5 years. There are only 2 reasons to shut the computer when not used: the danger of every complex electrical device
to malfunction and catch fire (a lot of houses burning down because of computer, TV etc. catched fire).
And the noise of ventilation etc. this PC hardware produces.

[Drake Tungsten]

Well, I just got back into town from the football game at CU and I have some bad news. It appears that the city of Lincoln went into civil disorder after the ass kicking and was promptly disbanded. The resulting settler unit is going to found a new city in Florida (easier recruiting down there). Consequently, there are no Runzaâ„¢ restaurants left. Sorry to disappoint you, Che. I also don't know you're friend, maybe he's relocating with the rest of town.

[Korpo]

Back with a vengeance!

If I remember right, Asher mentioned something about Windows XP being able to efficiently support Multithreading, which thread-enabled apps like Mozilla do greatly take advantage of....

Over at apache.org I ran over an article about when multithreading is needed: if system´s do not support light-weight processes. Repeat: Multi-threading means creating light-weight "processes" in a "real" process, a well known feature of the Java VM for example. So, Asher, we do not exactly know if there´s a significant performance increase generally, or if only optimized apps do take advantage, and which are?

I know of Mozilla (where it is greatly waste of time... the program is sluggish, everybody knows.. and it´s not your standard browser on Wintel neither I bet). Apache does take advantage, or some versions do, because every session needs its own process/thread to be handled.


Besides, though Win XP did nicely in reviews of features, it was criticized for incorporating some security/stability measures as well. And of course a lot of apps were incorporated into the system, that needn´ t be direct part of the OS. Again this is part of a new settlement between 9 states and MS. MS should unbundle this apps...


Security: "Feature" raw sockets allows to completely bypass any protocol, and therefore any security measures, and intrude into a Win XP system. Therefore the internal firewall is useless (to a certain degree). DirectX "breaches" HAL. HAL is what made NT stable by preventing direct driver access. DirectX is allowed direct access for performance gain. No solution in sight, since MS programmers that originally wrote HAL nearly all left. And a friend of mine monitored, that on every time he went online a message was set off to MS. Did only prevent this by his own firewall. Could be illegal by German laws to do this!

Well, the sockets were by far the worst. By default, the system is REALLY insecure because of this useless (!!!) feature.

[Korpo]

Another approach is to serve each request in a separate thread: this is the model used by most NT-based web servers. Although this approach eliminates most of the protection between tasks, it allows the module programmer more flexibility and it can be faster on systems where threads are cheaper than processes, such as Windows NT and AIX.

from http://www.apache.org

Multithreading is useful, but not a requirement for performance gains. They just can give performance gains on systems with heavy-weight processes (which Linux isn´t):

Traditionally TCP/IP servers fork a new child to handle incoming requests from clients. However, in the situation of a busy web site, the overhead of forking a huge number of children will simply suffocate the server. As a consequence, Apache uses a different technique. It forks a fixed number of children right from the beginning. The children service incoming requests independently, using different address spaces. Apache can dynamically control the number of children it forks based on current load. This design has worked well and proved to be both reliable and efficient; one of its best features is that the server can survive the death of children and is also reliable. It is also more efficient than the canonical UNIX model of forking a new child for every request. This traditional Apache design works well up to quite high loads on modern UNIX systems. On Linux in particular, context switches and forking new processes are cheap, and accordingly this simple design is nearly optimal. One drawback, however, of the isolation between processes is that they cannot easily share data, and consequently sharing session data across the server takes a little work.

from http://www.apache.org

This is one possible example for comparison. Everybody should know Apache (the "2/3 standard of the web") and its reliability, so this should be valid.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Korpo
If I remember right, Asher mentioned something about Windows XP being able to efficiently support Multithreading, which thread-enabled apps like Mozilla do greatly take advantage of....

Over at apache.org I ran over an article about when multithreading is needed: if system´s do not support light-weight processes. Repeat: Multi-threading means creating light-weight "processes" in a "real" process, a well known feature of the Java VM for example. So, Asher, we do not exactly know if there´s a significant performance increase generally, or if only optimized apps do take advantage, and which are?

I know of Mozilla (where it is greatly waste of time... the program is sluggish, everybody knows.. and it´s not your standard browser on Wintel neither I bet). Apache does take advantage, or some versions do, because every session needs its own process/thread to be handled.

I don't recall saying that it gave a performance boost, but rather the design of NT supports multi-threading far better than Linux does. Theoretically, Linux supports multiple processes better. They're just different designs in the OS, is all. Mozilla relies heavily on threads, and that's why it's a great deal faster on Windows XP than Linux.

Besides, though Win XP did nicely in reviews of features, it was criticized for incorporating some security/stability measures as well. And of course a lot of apps were incorporated into the system, that needn´ t be direct part of the OS. Again this is part of a new settlement between 9 states and MS. MS should unbundle this apps...

Like what?

Fecurity: "Feature" raw sockets allows to completely bypass any protocol, and therefore any security measures, and intrude into a Win XP system. Therefore the internal firewall is useless (to a certain degree). DirectX "breaches" HAL. HAL is what made NT stable by preventing direct driver access. DirectX is allowed direct access for performance gain. No solution in sight, since MS programmers that originally wrote HAL nearly all left. And a friend of mine monitored, that on every time he went online a message was set off to MS. Did only prevent this by his own firewall. Could be illegal by German laws to do this!

Well, the sockets were by far the worst. By default, the system is REALLY insecure because of this useless (!!!) feature.

I see you've been reading Gibson's stuff.
You've been reading some pretty bad hype about raw sockets. Linux/BSD/etc have had those since their very beginning, Winsock did not. In the sake of having complying with the standards of all of the other OSes, Windows 2000 and XP added "raw sockets", which allow the OS complete control over its outgoing transmissions. I'm wondering why you're saying it makes the internal firewall useless, because the internal firewall doesn't deal with outbound transmissions at all, it only blocks incoming when applied to certain rules.

And you are right, DirectX bypasses the HAL. That's it's purpose. You wouldn't get decent game performance running the DirectX through the HAL also, gamers would not switch from Windows 98. If you really need the absolute stability (in servers), you don't use DirectX. I think that's a good way to do things, myself.

But if you think the raw sockets make XP/2000 more insecure, you should do some research. The only "threat" they really pose is it allows worms to spoof IPs when doing DDoS attacks (Gibson told us the release of XP would spell the end of the internet, because no one would know who was doing the DDoS attacks). The Register ran an article a while back strongly criticizing Gibson, because once the Internal Firewall is enabled in XP, there's essentially no way for hackers to exploit the raw sockets (which, again, exist in all of your *nixes)

[Zealot]

Originally posted by Asher
I will give you this: I respect you a lot more than other people on these boards because you don't cave into the childish temptation to spell MS as M$.

Oh really? And what's childish about spelling M$? May you grant us a wise explanation about it?
Do you really think Microsoft is one of those companies interested in the well-being of their clients?

[Asher]

Originally posted by Zealot
Oh really? And what's childish about spelling M$? May you grant us a wise explanation about it?
Do you really think Microsoft is one of those companies interested in the well-being of their clients?

Microsoft is a company, of course they're after money.
ALL companies are. DUH.

But changing their name abbreviation to M$ is just really stupid. It's not funny, it's not creative, and it's frickin' annoying. The same people call Netscape "Nutscrape", IE "Internet Exploiter", etc. At least be creative and/or funny with them, and don't rehash them in every single debate.

[Zealot]

Originally posted by Asher
Microsoft is a company, of course they're after money.
ALL companies are. DUH.

But changing their name abbreviation to M$ is just really stupid. It's not funny, it's not creative, and it's frickin' annoying. The same people call Netscape "Nutscrape", IE "Internet Exploiter", etc. At least be creative and/or funny with them, and don't rehash them in every single debate.

Hey Asher, chill, ok?
Well I think using M$, Nutscrape and Internet Exploiter are funnier than their day-to-day ordinary and boring names. And I think a forum is the right place to express those words. I don't think they're childish or stupid.

But I do think that you should ponder more often before attacking (directly or indirectly) people that use a sarcastic type of humour, and people who like to read things written that way.
Because I find Avatars saying "INFOGREED" amusing doesn't make me a stupid person, nor the people who modified its original picture saying Infogrames.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Zealot
Hey Asher, chill, ok?
Well I think using M$, Nutscrape and Internet Exploiter are funnier than their day-to-day ordinary and boring names. And I think a forum is the right place to express those words. I don't think they're childish or stupid.

But I do think that you should ponder more often before attacking (directly or indirectly) people that use a sarcastic type of humour, and people who like to read things written that way.
Because I find Avatars saying "INFOGREED" amusing doesn't make me a stupid person, nor the people who modified its original picture saying Infogrames.

*sneer*
It's just that it reminds me of elementary school, where kids names are mutilated because it's fun and funny and cool. This is just an extension of that, but with corporation names. And like most jokes, they get old, and seeing them rehashed constantly just annoys the hell out of me.

[Zealot]

Originally posted by Asher
*sneer*
It's just that it reminds me of elementary school, where kids names are mutilated because it's fun and funny and cool. This is just an extension of that, but with corporation names. And like most jokes, they get old, and seeing them rehashed constantly just annoys the hell out of me.

Hum, interesting point of view.
It's just that kids do have feelings, and that isn't any way cool. But huge multinational corporations like Microsoft?!? Ahh, come on! You know MS will always be M$ until it declares bankrupcy! (like it'll ever happen ).
But ok, I got your point of view. Thanks anyway.

One more thing:

Originally posted by Asher
It's just that it reminds me of elementary school, where kids names are mutilated because it's fun and funny and cool.

Traumas from childhood, Asher?

[Korpo]

Well, next Asher blames his neuroses on Linux.. That's what Wintel trolls do!

[Asher]

Originally posted by Korpo
Well, next Asher blames his neuroses on Linux.. That's what Wintel trolls do!

I don't blame anything on Linux.

[Ted Striker]

Linux Installation of the Day

Well I installed Debian 1.343532a to the AMD processor on my microwave oven and hacked the kernel to interface with the touch pad.

Then when I was done I ripped out the picture of Bill Gates from Fortune magazine and put it in a bowl of boiling water and cooked it in the oven for 10 minutes!!!