Posts by h4rm0ny 4560 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Jul 2008
I would like it if more lower-end cards came with multi-display port outputs. I'd potentially buy one of the new R290 cards but they all seem saddled with the same HDMI/DVI/DP combo of output ports. I want three monitors driven by display ports with maximum bandwidth. You'd think at least one vendor would realise that people buying high-end graphics cards might also want modern interfaces not old DVI stuff.
Choice is good.
There are a lot of use cases people formerly used PCs for that can be filled the same or better with tablets. What we've seen and are seeing is the mass exodus of people with those needs towards tablets and to laptops as well, now that laptops are so much more powerful and light.
That doesn't mean that all use cases can be met by those - there are still a solid core of us who have needs we can't meet with a tablet or laptop. I do some serious database work. Others need to compile large chunks of code, and there's vastly more than both of us groups put together who simply want to run BattleTitanArkhamField at super high-resolutions and frame rates.
But that core of us who still need such power has been to some extent supported by those who didn't for a long time, simply because the latter didn't have any choice. Now they do and that's going to impact us. Already has, in fact. I'm about ready to upgrade my processor, I've been using AMD for a long time and was expecting to bump up to one of their Steamroller CPUs this year. Now I can't because AMD are giving up on trying to meet Intel head to head for pure power and instead are trying to do an sneaky bit of out-maneuvering with their APUs. (And that's a smart move, imo). And that's great for those who want better CPUs in terms of efficiency and cost, bad for those of us who want to throw money at them and get more power. So for the first time in years, I'm jumping over to Intel, but even there Intel are not chasing more power as much as they used to. Instead they're focusing on efficiency. Because the market has changed.
So we're seeing increasing differentiation now that the 'no choice but to use a PC' market which used to tie us all together have been freed by tablets and better laptops. With that large segment gone, the remainder are free to fragment into the small "give us all the power you got" section and the "give us something cost effective" crowd. And when a market is smaller, costs per unit need to be higher to keep a vendor invested in it. So it's bad news for the high-end enthusiast types, imo.
>>"I don't think it's been suggested to re-write all code for every iteration. "
OP wrote "Code re-cycling is bad". Other than an accompanying sentence saying that "plastic recycling is good", that was the sum total of their post. I responded pointing out that code re-use is standard practice and attempting to re-write everything would introduce more bugs.
Then you argued with me.
>>"But 10+ year old code is dragging it out a bit. At least review it, especially since it loads external data."
By that logic parts of the PATA modules in my Linux kernel should be re-written with every iteration of GNU/Linux. It loads external data and its over ten years old. Point is that the OP I replied to said re-using code was bad. That's crap and every experienced software engineer on a medium large project knows how unfeasible and counter-productive it would be to re-write everything especially legacy parts, just because a new version was coming out.
OP made an ignorant comment that code should not be re-used from one version of an Operating System to the next. You lose all credibility taking issue with me correcting the OP.
"Recycled code - bad"
Code re-use is pretty standard practice, actually. No-one is going to re-write every part of a very large software project each time an iterative version is released, especially the legacy parts. If you did that you'd (a) never release a new version and (b) introduce more bugs with each version than you would otherwise.
Sounds like the 404 page is being called twice if I understand your post correctly (you get two email alerts from the same IP address when you think there should only be one request).
Do you have anything like a CSS or JavaScript query or something in the page, perhaps included by some template, that would also result in a 404 if the first call was wrong. E.g. because of a relative path? The best thing to do is check your Apache logs and watch when you try to access one of your randomly generated non-existent pages. If you see only one request come in, then there's only been one request - no need to mess around with different browsers because you now know for sure there aren't multiples. If you see something like "nonexistentdirectory/nonexistent.html" immediately followed by "nonexistentdirectory/botched_include_file.html" then you can now see why the 404 is getting called twice - the first bogus call is causing a second bogus call.
Failing that, something bonkers in your re-write rules or similar? Check the Apache logs rather than testing different browsers without plugins. The logs will tell you whether you've made one request or two and what was being looked for each time.
I've been using Bash for well over a decade. (About fifteen years?). I'm reasonable with it. I'm now teaching myself Powershell and whilst some of it I like, the default environment is terrible. I'm not talking about the language itself, but the fact that to use Powershell I appear to have to use a single window that I can't set to the width of the screen, doesn't have tabs, has primitive cut and paste (seriously? No keyboard shortcuts and keyboard only highlighting line by line?). There's no history that can persist between sessions... The list is long and growing every time I try to do something serious with it.
Powershell the "language" seems alright. But are there any better terminals available for it? Surely people aren't tolerating this - especially anyone from a GNU/Linux background. What am I missing, here?
>>"IANAL but as far as I know the "patriot act" can be used to force them to provide data even from overseas sites, irrespective of other laws that may apply"
Yes, but lawyers are twisty things. You can split parts of companies off into separate subsidiaries, you can tweak the ways you store data to provide legalese ways of getting out of stuff. Microsoft have a very solid legal team and a lot of motivation (money). And if all else fails, they spend several million on lobbying each year in the USA. Who would you rather have on your side when trying to indluence US Congress? A few low-paid techies or a Microsoft angry that they're losing ground in the European market?
People here can't spend all their days complaining about how MS have too much influence or are sneaky lawyers and simultaneously not see it as a good thing that MS are motivated to find ways of meeting people and Europe's privacy demands. Trying to come between Microsoft and money is like damning a river. It's not easy and as the Doctor says: water finds a way. And like water, it follows the terrain. Formerly, that was comply with the NSA or you lose valuable contracts. Now, with the US government increasingly short of cash and the public and business increasingly demanding better privacy controls as a sales point, it's find ways to offer that.
MS have Google to the left of them in online free services, Apple to the right of them with the laptop market. Enterprise is their fortress and they wriggle through any loophole and narrow their eyes at any senator who they see as threatening that.
Like I say, I don't trust any big corporation, but I do trust greed. At least the old-fashioned kind that wants my money, rather than my personal information.
>>"n this context you may be interested to know that Microsoft is unexpectedly for once actually ahead of the pack. In a little-reported event a few weeks ago (translated link), they agreed to provide contracts under Swiss law, and host in Europe
Microsoft want your money. Always have and always will. And I like that. Greed is something I trust. If privacy is a selling point, they'll sell it. I'm on record to them that the reason their Azure service was not used for one of my clients is because data was hosted in the USA. And I'm small fry in customer terms. MS were bound to do this at some point as soon as they could solve technical and legal ways to do it without pissing off US government too much.
>>So let's say you have a report that takes 6 hours to run... When your boss says "and I need it yesterday!", you can say "You've got it, literally!"
Only if they get you the request before 6:00pm that day.
And typically that's when the sadists let you know there's something urgently needed right away, ime. :( >:|
I don't know what effect it has on mental arithmetic. I would say that people who grew up with the Imperial system also grew up in an age where schools drummed more mental arithmetic skills into people, so it could be mere correlation. What I would say is that pre-Decimalization coinage was much more flexible. Twelve, and obviously 240 (pennies in a pound) have many more factors than ten (and one-hundred pennies in the pound).
This makes the calculations much easier and the results much more often easy numbers.
It seems to me that Barak Obama gets a special treatment by many. When something wrong has been done, it's often because he was "badly advised" or "limited options put before him". He's a very smart person and a deft politician. When something happens - such as how US Navy Seals seized an oil tanker from Libya last week for being sold without US approval, under Obama's authority, there's no special reason to make excuses. Only that some people wish to support their preconceptions about him.
>>Kiva - www.kiva.org
That looks really interesting and I would probably support it, but I'm really interested in donating the money rather than loaning it to people. I'm not saying it's off the list, I'm going to look into it in more detail. But it seems to be very piecemeal - I have to locate a borrower, choose how much to donate, etc, repeat. I would be okay with a non-profit lending organization where I could just donate a set amount each month like I do with Oxfam, and then people who know what they're doing out there begin lending it out, and recycling any profits back into further lending. In fact, I'd love to help build up a cycle like that to build non-profit lending organizations. But this seems to require me to keep finding people, lending, finding people lending. I can see that works great for many people, but I know that the first month I have a heavy workload, it'll just fall off my radar.
Okay. I have been a long-term supporter of Oxfam. Over a decade. Disaster and famine relief was always something I wanted to support.
I also think this report is both dubious and outside the area of what I want my donations to support. So whilst not definitely deciding to drop Oxfam right now, what are people's suggestions for a replacement to give to instead?
And I guess whilst I'm here, if you can suggest a wildlife or conservation charity that doesn't campaign for more stupid wind turbines, I'd like to hear that as well as I had to drop the RSPB over it last year.
I think I am done here. Someone posted that Linux is "more secure by design" than Windows. I asked them to support that. It's now come down to people arguing that being asked to enter your password on a daily basis to install updates (on Linux) somehow makes people more wary of entering their password than the occasional flashing shield icon and big yellow box warning "something is trying to make changes to your computer" and building a case on that. Also that the Windows ACL system is too complicated so maybe people don't use it. (It isn't and they do). Oh, and a selection of digs at Windows XP which was released over thirteen years ago and has no bearing on whether or not Windows versions released in the last seven years (Vista+) are defective or not.
Weak, and clearly motivated by a desire to prove something rather than a fair assessment. The topic is dead. This is an ex-topic. It has ceased to be. Despite some people's desperate desire to nail it to the perch.
>>"Most of this is on the user. But you can't say Windows isn't to blame for making them this way."
Yeah, you can. It's pretty obvious that GNU/Linux and Windows user bases are hugely different in terms of typical users. The former user base is almost entirely made up of technical people. If you think that the stereotypical technically ignorant person is a different person depending on whether they are sitting in front of a Windows machine or an Ubuntu machine (to pick the most popular user-facing distro), you are mistaken. And it is only desire to find a "reason" to challenge my contention that GNU/Linux is more secure "by design" that possibly leads you to try and propose such a thing. Were I to posit such a ridiculous argument the other way around, you tear it apart.
>>"I am pretty baffled in with the fact that you never heard about it"
I have, but you didn't explain what you meant, you just said something about Android permissions issues. Yes, Windows 8 has a very sophisticated system of this kind in Metro, but I would bet money that you're also someone who simultaneously lambasts MS for the store and regards it as anti-freedom. Android is not Windows nor GNU/Linux and has different criteria. It is acceptable to have only "apps" on a mobile phone. Having such constraints on Windows or GNU/Linux (they both are the same in this regard) would not be acceptable. And again I must point out that you have little interest in what I'm actually saying, which which is challenging the notion that GNU/Linux is more secure than Windows "by design", and instead just want to post things that make it sound like you're proving me wrong even though they have nothing to do with what I just said.
Every post of yours is becoming an implied strawman where you act as though I'm attacking Linux and takes the pattern of "Yeah, well what about X. Isn't X good?" To which I will just respond (again), X does not say anything about whether the security models between GNU/Linux and Windows are better or worse than each other. In this case, X is something you can do with Linux (as in Android). It is also something you can do with Windows (as in Metro). In neither GNU/Linux distros nor Windows is it common, (though it is becoming more common on Windows). So it's irrelevant as a counter-argument to anything I have said.
Please stop trying to turn this into a broad-ranging "Linux is better than Windows" argument, though it is plain that is your interest.
"My question is, why didn't Microsoft invent it"
Who cares? You care because you are interested in generally praising Linux and trying to put Windows down. I do not because I'm simply disputing the OP's contention that Linux is "more secure by design" than Windows. Anything you say other than that is sleight of hand attempt to prove me wrong by widening the discussion to other topics. You've yet to show anything that supports GNU/Linux being more secure by design than Windows. In fact, you ironically keep seizing on one of the few areas where it is worse I.e. Your bizarre faith that a less capable permissions system leads to better security because you mistakenly think Windows people find the Windows ACLs too complicated. Which is doubly ironic because when I point out the advantages of that greater sophistication you then start touting the fragmented and more complicated ACL implementations that exist on GNU/Linux.
GNU/Linux is not "more secure by design" than Windows. That hasn't been true in seven years. They are pretty much equivalent in security models.
>>"Are we looking at and talking about the same thing really? Correct me if I was wrong about the xp nightmare "
I don't think we're talking about the same thing, I'm not discussing XP at all, it's outside the scope of what I was saying to the original poster and justifiably so. The OP wrote that Linux is more secure by design. I have no interest in assessing the merit of that statement on what flaws Windows had in versions released over thirteen years ago. I said in my response earlier that the days of Linux users being able to be smug about better security (if they are the sort of person predisposed to smugness) have passed since the improvements to Windows in the last six or seven years. That is my case and that is what, by the tenor of your replies, I am taking you to argue against. I mean if I were debating the merits of MySQL vs. Postgres with someone, even though I'm a database snob, I would think it valid to comment on MySQLs dearth of features (based on it's state eight years ago) or on Postgres's poor performance (based on its state six years ago). It's clear from the OP's statement they're claiming Linux has better security by design now
>>Even if it was improved in the higher versions of Windows
"Even if" ? The security model of Windows Vista onwards is far ahead of XP. And 8 actually improves it further. But I'm happy to debate the last half-decade for the discussion (7+, essentially). I'm not sure how anyone could use the phrase "even if" in that context. I have the impression, correct me if I'm wrong, that you are primarily familiar with GNU/Linux from a security standpoint. Most of what you have been coming up with is lists of the good security features of GNU/Linux which is valid, but poor as a comparative argument. E.g. your comments about POSIX compliance. That more than anything has given me the impression you do not have familiarity on both sides of the administrative fence. The comment about executable permissions has some merit (though it's obscurity, it's still security when considering ignorant users). But I cannot envisage someone familiar with both rwx model and Windows ACLs and touting the former as a security advantage.
The tragedy is that Linux does have more sophisticated ACL features available to it, but hardly anyone uses them and they're fragmented in implementation.
>>"Correct me also if it is true for every even modern version of MS Windows to not require any explicit privileges of a file to be executable?"
That is correct. Linux has the executable bit, Windows has a file extension list that it considers things it should "run". In both cases a user can go ahead and make something run if they want to. As I pointed out Xfce (and I think KDE and Ubuntu) will ask you if you want to mark something as executable if you double click on a script. There are different ways you can approach this on both Windows and GNU/Linux, but there's no "by design" security advantage here. Both allow the user to run a program under their own account. Both have ways of putting a speed bump in the way - Linux has an executable bit that a user can change with a click (and which they'll be prompted to on most distros), Windows flags up a box saying "are you sure you want to run this".
>>"When you talk about overkill in Linux or *BSD, what exactly is it?"
I don't believe I've ever used such a phrase or said anything that can be interpreted that way. Certainly not here. I haven't criticised Linux for doing too much anywhere here and I've never even mentioned BSD.
>>Have you heard about AppArmor or acl utility?
Yes. Though I prefer SELinux to AppArmour. Possibly it's an issue of familiarity but I find the latter simplistic. Anyway, you're going way off on your own implied strawmen here as well as contradicting yourself. Firstly you are again replying with responses that only make sense if I were saying Linux is bad at security. I've nowhere said anything remotely along those lines. I'm taking issue with someone who said Linux was more secure by design, and you have chosen to take up the discussion on their behalf by trying to challenge everything I say. But I'm not going to allow you to turn this into a strawman where you pretend I'm ranting about how Linux sucks because I've never done any such thing.
And as to ACL, you cannot simultaneously argue that Linux is more secure by design because people use a simpler (I would say simplistic) permissions model and then in the very next post start trying to rebut my comments by saying people can use ACLs on GNU/Linux. You're again, not arguing anything that shows Linux is more "secure by design" than Windows, you're just showing that it can do some of the same things (though you've somehow managed to pick for your chief argument one of the very few security areas in which Linux is worse!)
>>"Does Windows acl solve the same problem Android extension of the apps permissions addresses?"
I'm not really familiar with Android so I'm not quite sure what you mean. If you can explain the problem I'll hopefully be able to answer.
>>"You have to explicitly mark a file as "executable". That way, there's no danger of downloading something like "someimage.jpg.exe" and accidentally executing it."
True but when I click on a shell script on the Desktop of my Xfce system (I have one amongst my KDE installs because I really like how light it is), it pops up a window asking me if I want to "mark it as executable". And if I click yes, it runs it. Not any more secure than Windows asking if I'm sure I want to let something modify the system, except that the latter sounds more alarming.
As GNU/Linux reaches out for the same users that Windows has, it has started to make many of the same compromises.
>>"One such implementation of it is the POSIX file permission system that is easier, more simple than MS Windows. Hence, they are more usable and more used."
I addressed this in my last post but seeing as you posted it twice, I'll just say it amuses me to think about how it would be received here if in some mirror universe it were the other way round and I argued Windows was better because it was less capable than GNU/Linux. It's really quite something to take one of the few big deficiencies that GNU/Linux has relative to Windows and try to spin it as a virtue. And it doesn't work for security, it actually makes it worse. People do use the ACLs in Windows, they do it routinely. But what happens on the GNU/Linux side is because people only have a blunt instrument, they over-grant. It's always happening that someone or something is being granted powers they don't actually need because they need some tiny ability. That's the problem with your "simpler" approach - when you have no granularity, you have to give people everything or nothing.
And in addition to over-granting privileges, it leads to kludgy workarounds with contorted groups structure. If you maintained Windows for a year and then went back to GNU/Linux, the permissions system would frustrate the Hell out of you.
That's a very interesting list. I'll address things one by one. But you can drop the petty put-downs and implications that I'm "pretending to forget" about things. I'm not. I asked a very reasonable question. I hear this comment a lot from people who can't support it and when they do, it's often with reference to how things used to be. On to your points:
"-- most software on GNU/Linux is free/open source, including the kernel and utilities;"
That's a good security argument against government intrusion and I agree with that. I don't think it's a strong argument on malware issues. It takes a lot of time and a lot of specialist knowledge to even be able to understand most sophisticated software such as Apache or the Linux kernel or many other components you'll find on a modern distro, let alone identify vulnerabilities. In compensation for a handful of extra people outside a core team maybe taking the time to look at the code properly, you also have to weigh that attackers are also studying the code and maybe even contributing such as happened with phpMyAdmin or the attempt at introducing exploits into PHP. (One of the PHP team said they suspected the attempt was China trying to introduce exploits they could later use). Additionally, there needs no deliberate introduction of exploits for Open Source to be a risk. The moment a bug report is filed, or someone commits an urgent fix, you're in a mad rush to update your systems with a patch (if available) before someone monitoring that project tries to exploit it. As any sysadmin will tell you, keeping up to date is a demanding job.
Open Source is an advantage because it helps protect against deliberate subversion by powerful agencies (i.e. government agencies) and because it allows projects to grow and develop in interesting ways and be forked for the good of a community where necessary, or maintained after a company goes bust. But as a guard against malware. what we're discussing here, there's little net gain, imo.
>>"-- the kernel is modular, where a huge number of options are togglable at the compile time;"
I'm trying to remember the last time I actually compiled my own kernel and I'm pretty sure it was about three years ago when I was going through a Gentoo phase. Pre-compiled distros dwarf people compiling things themselves by orders of magnitude. Even if I were convinced that someone going "Oooh, SCSI support might have a vulnerability, lets exclude that" actually has some measurable effect on security - which I'm very far from allowing, it's academic because people are not doing that. Yes, yes, I'm sure you can find some people to point at. They're highly atypical these days and a miniscule percentage of real-world GNU/Linux deployments.
>>-- a GNU/Linux (*BSD) system can be stripped down much further, disassembled and assembled with much more ease, than can be Windows. MS Windows didn't invent a headless, bare minimum server; A Core Server -- things are improving in Redmond here after 20 some years of denial.
That's pretty much just a restatement of your previous point with an extra dig at Microsoft thrown in. And I have no interest in playing a Team vs. Team fanboy war where I have to get all upset about who invented what technology first. I don't care if Hyper-V or Server 2012 without GUI has predecessors elsewhere, they're good now, and we're supposed to be talking about malware. Or rather I am trying to - you seem to want to turn it into a general Linux is better than Windows fight.
-- more accurate POSIX hierarchical filesystem structure vs. chaotic Windows that still mixes data and software;
Yes, I used to have my home partition set to have a no execute flag on it. It was a pain in the bum, to be honest. But I used to do it. Windows handles this differently with defining the ability to execute by user / group, rather than the way Linux handles it. I know it sounds like it's the same as the UNIX rwx bits but it's not. It's interesting that you bring up "more accurate POSIX hierarchical filesystem structure". Windows ACLs are actually more sophisticated and feature rich than the POSIX standards. And I don't think "chaotic" is fair at all. Both Windows and GNU/Linux have standards about where to install and store things. They're just different, is all.
>>"-- much more numerous up-to-date versions in use, a much higher distro heterogeneity than with MS Windows;"
Are you still trying to argue against my point about malware which is what we're discussing? Because the above is a great argument for freedom and competition, but it's a terrible argument for security. Yes, a million different variations are great for consistent security and making sure your fix for your software is on all platforms in all the different packages. Surrrrre.
>>"-- lack of central secure repositories containing 99% of all used software in MS Windows"
Well that's the cost of a free and open system I'm afraid. I bet you would complain if Microsoft tried to introduce a single store where everything was centrally signed and managed. Oh yes, there it is in the very next sentence where you mock their attempt to do so. ;) But yes, this is an advantage GNU/Linux has in terms of security. Central management is a plus.
>>"Neither did MS invent the Android's apps' permissions system and its transparency to the user."
Again, you're shifting things into a weird game of My Team scores more points than Your Team. I don't care who invented what. Plenty have taken inspiration from MS's work, MS has taken plenty from others. (Often buying those others outright). It's nothing to a discussion about security in modern OSs and leads me to think you have a bias to prove GNU/Linux is better. Are you sure that you do not?
-- lack of a decent central packager paired with a repository utility (see the previous item)
Yes, "see previous item" was just what I was going to write as well. A point does not become two points, because you state it twice.
>>-- better and closer adherence to the main IT principles of modularity, KISS, software in the Linux/BSD camp of developers and sysadmins than in the proprietary camp including Microsoft folks
That I flat-out reject as straight bias. You're just stating that GNU/Linux programmers are better than MS programmers. Good programmers are good programmers, bad ones are bad ones. If you have some naïve idea that better programmers are magically drawn to the "Linux/BSD camp", you lack experience or an open mind. It's also pretty insulting to a lot of brilliant people.
>>"-- lack of a competent IT culture and infrastructure around MS Windows:"
Well now you're supporting the point that I made elsewhere - that the chief factor in security for GNU/Linux vs. Windows is that GNU/Linux has a more tech-savvy user base. That's not a quality of the OS itself and as I also wrote elsewhere, if GNU/Linux suddenly had the same userbase that Windows has, you would see the same problems of malware.
Central package management is the one advantage on your list that I agree with, and have said so myself on previous occasions. Unfortunately it's also the most problematic from a freedom point of view.
>>"I'm not so sure. You have to remember that the average* Linux desktop user will only have cause to type in the sudo password when either the system update triggers or they're installing something new from the repository"
Which is more often than the average Windows user as Windows does not require authentication to perform updates. I have to type my password into my Debian box every couple of days - it's always popping it up asking for permission for updates. Remember, I'm not arguing that this makes WIndows more secure - I repeat, the difference is trivial, I'm disputing your assertion that typing your password has any significant impact on making GNU/Linux secure for the sort of user who doesn't think twice on Windows when it flags up a large colourful warning box with a simple message and flashing Shield icon.
Personally, the fact that GNU/Linux asks them to type in the password with every update getting them used to doing so (as you pointed out) and has a non-descript little pop-up with customizable text on GNU/Linux puts such petty arguments in Windows favour if you really want to go down that route. But I do not - it's a marginal difference either way and I doubt the impact would really be measurable. The fact that you're trying to build a case on this concerns me as to your neutrality, quite honestly.
>>"It's true that the Windows confirmation box is both big and yellow but it also pops up whenever, say, a browser needs an update, which is regularly"
Actually, only the first part (the part you quoted from me) is true. I never said anything about browser updates and in fact this part is false. I have been running Windows since last October and both Firefox and Internet Explorer haven't been asking me to grant permission to update. So it can't be asking very often at all. Certainly less often than I'm asked for permissions on my Debian box as I pointed out earlier. That happens almost daily.
>>If MS did something as simple as popping up a similar big yellow box whenever Windows Update runs it might go a little way towards reinforcing in user's minds the fact that something serious is happening
The exact opposite. Even though MS clusters their updates into a once-a-week thing unlike most GNU/Linux distros, it would still just condition people to click "Okay".
Seriously, trying to build a case on this that GNU/Linux is more secure against ignorant users who trust foreign software is desperate, to be honest. Sorry to say it, but that's how it sounds. Really - I said that GNU/Linux would be pretty much the same malware-wise if it had the same user-base as Windows. That's not a dig at GNU/Linux, that's a simple and supportable opinion. And you're trying to argue against that by saying (a) typing a password will have a significantly greater effect at stopping this than Windows bright colourful warning signs and flashing shield icons. And now (b) that the fact GNU/Linux users are more used to granting such permissions will make them more likely to not grant such permissions.
There is one chief reason why modern GNU/Linux is more secure against such attacks then modern Windows, and that is because the typical GNU/Linux user is one Hell of a lot more tech-savvy than the typical Windows user.
>>"You're correct but only up to a point. On a Linux desktop such a script would result in the user having to type in their su/root password into a box, giving a vital extra couple of seconds to engage brain. On Windows all that's needed is a reflex click on an 'OK' button."
I appreciate the effort, but I really don't think that a case can be made that GNU/Linux is more secure because it will take a user two more seconds to type a password before doing something ill-thought out. I could just as easily make a case (I don't care to as I think it's marginal in either direction) that the Windows one is more secure because in KDE I get a dialogue box that just looks non-descript and boring wording whereas in Windows I get a large block of yellow with a big exclamation mark and a question: "Do you want to allow this program to make changes to this computer?"
Point is, GNU/Linux is no more secure against ignorant users (note, I say ignorant rather than stupid) than Windows is. I wrote that the reason GNU/Linux isn't vulnerable to as much malware as Windows (which is what the OP stated), is because little of it is written for GNU/Linux. And so long as we're talking about modern Windows which is the only fair way to talk, I stand by that.
>>"Using Linux as your home desktop is still much more secure by design"
Okay. I'll bite. (I use both Debian and Windows 8 daily, btw, and have a list of CentOS servers running things for my clients, though I'm not the direct sysadmin of those).
What makes GNU/Linux more "secure by design" than modern Windows (i.e. 7 or 8). Give me the features or capability differences that GNU/Linux has which make it more secure than Windows. Be specific. I'm genuinely curious to see if you're actually making a comment because you're familiar with both systems and this is your informed conclusion, or if you're about to go away and type "reasons Linux is more secure" into a search engine because you're just parroting what someone else said.
You have the floor, Anon5000 - support your case. You specifically, ideally, because I'm interested if you can back up your own comment.
>>"You didn't stay long enough. The very first post here is an MS shill/troll"
The first post doesn't make an attack on UNIX, it's just a mild joke at all the armchair sysadmins we get on this site who trumpet UNIX superiority whenever a Windows vulnerability story comes up. Which you must if you're honest admit a lot of people make such comments.
No modern and capable OS is secure if the sysadmin doesn't take care of it.
>>"Yes Linux desktop users are pretty much safe from most malware/spyware still."
That is because most malware is not written for GNU/Linux. It used to be the case that Windows security model was weaker than Linux and so some smugness was supportable (if you were inclined to be a smug person). But since Vista, their security models of equivalent. The reason today that GNU/Linux users are safe from most malware is because we get security through obscurity (to repurpose a phrase).
A very large proportion of malware on Windows depends on users running things they're not supposed to. I could create a script right now that popped up a "Would you like to install / view / X" message and asked for root access. And if GNU/Linux had the same userbase WIndows had, the same number of people would go "okay" and grant it access.
>>"Finally!! Us Windows users have got the story we've been waiting for! How is the egg on your faces now, smug Linux users :P"
Speaking as a GNU/Linux AND a Windows user, I just downvoted you. The football fan mentality of idiots who want to feel part of a team but feel excluded by sports and so turn to tech companies, does no good at all for any of us. It's downright destructive.
Not that such idiots care. They're too busy hooting at any perceived flaw in the other "side".
"How you can be "to the right of" the same is beyond me, "
The anachonism is supportable usage. What irritates me is the implication that if you're right wing == racism | sexism | homophobia.
The Fascists (as in the Italian party that introduced the word to the modern era) were formerly the Italian socialists and their policies were a fusion of left wing and right wing approaches. The Nazis were the 'National Socialists' and their progress was from early socialism to a kind of state corporatism and massive state control over business. "Right Wing" is not a synonym for everything evil in the world, even if the media and many left wing types like to present it as such. Sadly racism, sexism, et al. are traits of _humans_ first and foremost.
>>Did you have to plug the disc in?
Yes, obviously. But as you're trying to make an equivalence argument between having to plug the phone in and having to plug the disc in, let's just point out that the phone is meant to be mobile and the disc stays on the desk where you typically charge the phone from and leave those with two brain cells to work out the rest of where that's going.
>>Do you have an extra lump on your phone?
No, the wireless charging with the Lumias is just a different case you clip on in place of the standard one. It doesn't have a "lump".
>>Is the inductive charger much more expensive and much less ubiquitous than an iPhone charging lead?
Is the iPhone much more expensive than {insert other phone}? That really comes down to a cost advantage over time which is going to vary from person to person. Obviously this person thinks its worth a premium to be able to just plonk their phone down on a charging pad, just as you think it's worth a premium to buy your phone over another cheaper one. For your information, the charging case is around £16 on Amazon right now:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nokia-CC-3041-Lumia-Wireless-Charging/dp/B009SBROCY
A charging pad is around the same price:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wireless-Charger-Google-Samsung-BC252L/dp/B00FEAGZ6E/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1395247880&sr=1-1
I have a close friend, very bright person. They had a new job and wanted to buy a smartphone to celebrate their first paycheck with some wanton materialism. I started to sp... "iPhone".
"Have you se..."
"iPhone!"
"Why do y..."
"iPhone! I want a pink iPhone!"
"You can get magenta N..."
"iPhone! iPhone! iPhone!"
I'm not kidding. That's pretty much our conversation. Okay, it was funny, but it was also curious. She knows very little about different phones or different phone OSs, but she was adamant that she was going to get an iPhone.
>>"Example, I hit the windows key and type notepad. After a while, I want to open another notepad, so I hit search and type notepad again. It takes focus back to the original notepad instead of launching another instance"
I can see how that would be. (I recommend Notepad++, btw, which is tabbed). But again, that's not a rebuttal to anything I have said, yet you present it as such. I picked the most popular reasons that were hurled against Windows 8 when it came out (and still sometimes are), examined and shot them down objectively. My point was that there was a lot of hysteria about Windows 8 and it was primarily just lack of familiarity. Whilst it may be true that you're annoyed by type to search returning you to the same instance of notepad, no-one has been lambasting Windows 8 on every forum because of a problem launching two instances of notepad. That's legitimate, it's also a non-issue for the huge majority of users.
I'm saying the hysteria and hatred against Windows 8 is unjustified. If everyone was howling hatred because of wanting to launch multiple instances of notepad repeatedly, then your point would refute mine. But that's not what people were ranting about.
And each of your items reinforces my point - the issues are not ones of the Windows 8 being bad, but issues of familiarity. Nearly every responder I have had has (ignoring the personal attacks and outright disinformation) immediately dispensed with my actual points (which were explicit) and proceeded to make arguments based on having to learn something new or not already being used to something.
Now people are free to make such complaints, but the issue is that in all the hysteria when it came out, the primary attacks were on Windows 8 UI being bad. And the reason for that is it carries a lot less weight to condemn something because you have to learn it, or because you don't like change.
All I've done is deconstruct the most popular attacks on Windows 8 UI that I recall. Almost no-one has tried to address those. If people concede or agree that the issue is more one of learning, I'm happy with that.
Of course I learned it in under a day and expect to gain from that for at least half a decade of improved efficiency, so I'm not overly swayed by arguments this is an onerous task. But that's another discussion. The main thing is that your whole post is things like "unfamiliar land of rectangles". For what it's worth, the tech-inept I've taken through it have found it quite easy. Preferable to working out where something is in a system of menus that contains nearly every single executable on the system.
>>"Windows isn't your primary OS - you have control over your environment. It doesn't effect you."
You keep coming up with the weirdest rebuttals. I post actual objective comparisons of mouse and keyboard requirements for given actions in Windows 7 and Windows 8. You avoid them like the plague and say "sometimes people like what you don't like". I point out that this has nothing to do with an objective deconstruction of the arguments why Windows 8 UI is bad and that none of the arguments I wrote depended on my personal preference. So then you respond with the above. Wrongly as it happens. I use both WIndows 8 and GNU/Linux throughout the day. (I run Windows 8 and Debian in a VM which typically has a monitor to itself all day long, plus very RHEL servers I SSH into).
Your post dances around ever actually addressing what I wrote, as did your last one, and goes straight to a non sequitur that is pure argument by assertion and assumptions about me.
And then you round it out with a little offensive hyperbole to complete the post:
>>" the OS is shit"
Speaking as a former systems programmer, I'm pretty impressed with the sheer amount of effort, design and cleverness that has gone into Windows 7/8, as I am with GNU/Linux and Mac OS. Only an ignorant person would look at such immense and successful projects and say something as off-handedly uninformed as "the OS is shit". There are tonnes of clever features in Windows which are very useful. If you're repeated avoidance of actual discussion and abrupt shifts to other avenues of attack hadn't revealed your bias, this would.
>>"It is totally relevant to bring up the subject of the Office Ribbon"
Not really. I wrote an extensive post taking apart the most popular criticisms of the Windows 8 UI. It was fairly robust, therefore a lot of people who want to criticise are switching to personal attacks, misrepresentations or broadening the argument to other topics in the expectation I'll be forced to defend those. Responding to a defence of the Windows 8 UI with "well in the Ribbon X", is exactly such a tactic. It's a result of people having an Us vs. Them team mentality where the goal is not to examine the actual topic, but to make the opposing 'team' (MS in this case) look bad. Even if means switching topics from a comparison between the Windows 7 and Windows 8 UIs to MS Office's Ribbon.
>>"Do you do any work on Windows servers? It is all very well to say just hit the windows key and search, but when you are trying to work in a nested RDP 2012 session where the Windows key doesn't get passed through, this is a pain"
Very, very little. I set one up for someone once because they needed an IIS setup (I forget why), but I've got RHEL on all of my servers as I'm more familiar with GNU/Linux. Plus it's a solid set-up.
I have started learning Powershell which I'm finding very cool. (I love how you can pipeline objects which you can't do in Bash). If the Windows key isn't passed through RDP, that must be a pain. I doubt that most of the hateful comments about the Windows 8 UI are due to frustrated Server 2012 administrators, though, I hope you will concede. Question - I thought the general intent with Server 2012 was that you remotely administer via Server Manager which is supposed to obsolete RDP, no? Have you been using that, at all?
>>"While TL;DR might have been a bit glib, the point is you made a huge rant on telling us how we should be liking Win 8. We are just not holding correctly, perhaps?"
Actually I've nowhere said that anyone has to like it. When someone demanded to know why they shouldn't use GNU/Linux, my response was: I use GNU/Linux, I think it's really good. What I am doing is showing how many of the popular blandishments people dump on it don't actually stand up when tested and that's something different to saying what people have to like. In fact, you'll notice how few of the responses I get actually try to challenge the facts and instead attack on things like "you're telling people what they should like". Including yours. You don't have to like it at all if you don't want to. But if someone says Start Screen is inferior to Start Menu and claim that's for reasons other than just familiarity, then I want to examine that because I work faster with Start Screen than I did with Start Menu for reasons I've gone into in depth. And they're not reasons that are particular to me or a small sub-set. The distance you move a mouse on a given screen size is the same for everyone.
>>"What if you did not go through the tutorial because it was someone else's PC? Or life was just too short?"
Doesn't matter. It's a simple matter of knowing something once, knowing something elementary once, and then you're done and you have something faster for ever more. You're again trying to address something I never said and actually stated I wasn't saying. My contention is that the objections to Windows 8 are overwhelmingly due to familiarity issues, not things wrong with the UI itself. Those people not replying to post with character attacks or outright strawmen, are overwhelmingly then stating how someone might not know how to do something. Really just the same as how someone would not immediately know how to do something on any other OS they weren't familiar with. This is the category your post falls into. And it supports my point - the hate against Windows 8 is largely informed by people not liking change / having to learn something new, rather than objective flaws in the OS.
Everytime you attack my argument on these grounds you reinforce my point. Windows 8 UI is not bad, it's just something people don't like to learn. And the things you need to learn to use Windows 8 are very minor. There's no Start Menu button in the lower left. You can flip from common programs in the Start Screen to all programs mode. You close or sideline Metro apps by clicking at the top of them and dragging. That's pretty much the three real things a Windows 7 user needs to learn to use Windows 8. I suppose you could add clicking on the tile marked Desktop to get to Desktop if you have low standards for learning. All that stuff with, e.g. the settings in the Charms menu? Well those are new shortcuts to make things quicker, but the old ways of doing things are still there. Nothing at all stops you opening Control Panel to change a setting - it's exactly the same as it was in Windows 7.
>>"So, we should be using vi for everything then?"
That's an extreme argument. But it illustrates the principle of a little up-front learning reaping huge benefits for long-term use. I've been using vi for over a decade and I can do things with it far faster than other people faffing around with a mouse and a lesser text editor.
Now vi is far too extreme an example for most people. Sticking to something more modest, such as Windows Key + Type that we were discussing, sure. I forced myself to stop reaching for the mouse. Took a day or two of constantly reminding my hand to get back on the keyboard. The end result, I can do things far faster on Windows than most people. Given I'll probably be using Windows for years to come, that tiny amount of up-front learning will be well worth it. Same is true for many other areas of the OS and its software.
Too much gets sacrificed in the name of expediency, imo. A guitar with one string would be a lot easier to learn, but also a lot less useful. You'd need four or five guitarists to play the same piece of music. Pretty much akin to someone needing four or five mouse clicks to do what you can do with one keyboard shortcut. Now Windows lets you take both approaches, so everyone should be happy. But it's wrong to attack Windows for being a one-string guitar when the five string guitar is right there too.
>>"I thought he was the anti-Eadon, formed after the original one was nuked"
Eadon hated me. I was a GNU/Linux programmer with more experience than they had who liked Windows 7/8. I pretty much made their head explode on a daily basis.
I'd also like to point out that I've been backing up all my arguments with reasoned and supportable points.
>>"That's all."
If that is all, then you're in agreement with me. Nowhere in my initial post did I claim no-one had learn anything at all to use Windows 8. Indeed my explicit point throughout has been that objections are overwhelmingly due to people not liking change / things they are unfamiliar with.
>>"and the surprising behaviour on hitting corners or odd track-pad gestures."
I love how in the previous post, I am arguing against you for your complaining about people not knowing about the corners and here I'm arguing against you for your complaining people are surprised by hitting the active corners.
Are you just looking for things to complain about? ;)
Sometimes people try to dress up a poor job with a fancy title. I bumped into an old friend a while back and I asked them what they were doing now. They said they were an Information Engineer. I was a little surprised because I know what a real Information Engineer is and this person had never when I knew them shown leanings toward anything remotely sophisticated.
Turns out they put content on a website.
A small website.
Using Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V mostly.
IBM did a series of adverts some years back - a title, a sort scene, then the IBM boop-do-be-doop jingle and logo.
The one they did called "Hackers" featured two people looking at a company's payroll information and remarking "wow - that guy earns twice as much as that guy. I bet he doesn't know". To which the other replies: "he does now - I just emailed it to the whole company".
It's not for nothing that IBM picked that particular scenario to scare corporate viewers.
Maybe it's my UNIX background, but when I tell a system to delete something, I mean delete it. (Not hide it away in some "trash can"). It's quite possible there might be confidential or legal reasons I want to know that the data really is deleted. Your approach may be acceptable for family photos or similar, but for business use I think it's best clients know exactly what has and hasn't happened with their data.
Yep - he had strong principles and had more honesty in his little finger than most MPs have in their entire body.
He was funny too. An opposition MP called out that he was flogging a dead horse whilst he was talking on a subject in Parliament. Benn called back something about his learned (Tory) friend's ability to roll bestiality, necrophilia and bondage into one act and carried on talking.
He'll be missed. Here's to you, Tony Benn!
"I'm not a decision-maker at Mozilla. My main argument is that they're free to do what they want. IF someone was distributing MY software and making a tidy profit off it (I guarantee this won't be a break-even venture by Dell), then I'd want a cut of it."
Well that's not really in the spirit of Open Source. After all, all that code is donated by people under the GPL for the purpose of sharing.
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