Buy Vista or Else 539
theodp writes "Upgrade or keep crashing was the tagline when Windows XP was introduced. So how will Windows Vista be marketed? 'I'd hate to see something bad happen to your PC,' seems to be one pitch. Even if new features won't get you to upgrade to Vista, you should buy Vista for the security, urged Windows Chief Jim Allchin. Are commercials featuring Tony Soprano next? Bada Bing!"
linux? OS X? (Score:3, Interesting)
WTF, now Slashdot is bashing security? (Score:1, Interesting)
Guys, make up your mind. It's very clear that no matter what Microsoft does, you guys are against it, even if they start embracing Linux. I mean, what would Slashdot do if Microsoft became pro-Linux? They would have no one to demonize... maybe they'll start hating Linux too?
Lost trust (Score:5, Interesting)
But we've all seen how Trustworthy Computing didn't really change things. New products came through that obviously weren't vetted, and plenty of legacy problems remained. I don't know who's really going to buy Vista because they'll believe the security "threat" perpetuated by MS.
Re:linux? OS X? (Score:3, Interesting)
It may be underground marketing, but it is still marketing.
Talking out of both sides of his mouth (Score:5, Interesting)
"Even if they are not into home entertainment or in any of the specialty areas, they are just going to feel safer and more secure by using it."
"...[Alchin] demonstrated a collaboration tool that uses a "People Near Me" feature, which searches over a Wi-Fi connection for other Vista users nearby and then sets up a peer-to-peer network with them."
Your computer must be more secure -- it can automatically network wirelessly with other computers to share your files.
Re:Security (Score:5, Interesting)
What worries me more about rebuilding any codebase is the possibility of introducing whole new categories of bugs.
The problem is implementation rather than design (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft frankly can't be arsed and there's no profit in a secured system when they can instead continually be selling you upgrades as security fixes.
It isn't rocket science, it's just segregation of responsibility. Unix has been doing it for 30 years. No wait, it must be closer to 35 now.
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Lost trust (Score:2, Interesting)
The problem isn't that no one says this, it's that they've been saying it about every version since Windows 95. They constantly spread FUD about using their old versions so that people will upgrade.
MS aren't the only people guilty of this though. Every try to ask for help on a slightly older version of an open source application? You'll most likely get 10 people bashing you for running a version that came out more than 2 months ago.
And the same was true of Mac users. OS 9 was the best thing since sliced bread if you were to listen to the Mac users at the time. A few months after OS X came out and they got over the intial cognitive dissonance, all you could hear about was how much OS 9 sucked from mac users.
Yes, they charge for it. However... (Score:3, Interesting)
So... for most people (no, not slashdot readers), this will just happen as a new machine rotates into their life anyway. For a lot of users, "Oooh! Shiny!" is a reason to spend +/-$100. But upgrades are disruptive for people (not slashdotters) who don't actively like doing them, and the Grandma You've Talked Into Using Mandrake Who Probably Should Be Using Mandriva vX.whatever Which Means New Hardware And That Means While We're At It Let's Change Some Apps scenario is just as ugly. Never mind the dollars.
Microsoft to support file sharing? (Score:2, Interesting)
In particular, he demonstrated a collaboration tool that uses a "People Near Me" feature, which searches over a Wi-Fi connection for other Vista users nearby and then sets up a peer-to-peer network with them. The tool is meant mostly to enable laptop users to share applications and files, among other things.
So Microsoft is, in effect, creating its own file sharing network? I wonder how the *AA will react?
Buy Vista or Else.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Security (Score:2, Interesting)
I mean, seriously, just who is your post directed too? I can tell my clients: Use Firefox instead of IE, I sometimes tell them use OSX instead of XP. I even see situations where I might suggest Linux over XP or OSX.
But for the life of me, I don't ever ever see a situation where I go: " Yeah!, use BSD - it's a viable alternative to XP or OSX".
Trying to be fair about it (Score:5, Interesting)
Of what I have read, there will be, at least, one thing that could improve Vista's security. Also, several people have commented on it without having read anything about Vista. Users will login to a limited access user account, rather then an administrator account as the default.
Unfortunately, there are several bad points with Vista that will make me hesitate on upgrading:
Re:linux? OS X? (Score:1, Interesting)
Called XPS, and microsoft has already patented it. Its just move by microsoft to try to use their OS monopoly to take over everything involved with PostScript and PDF. This is one of those classic things microsoft does to try to destroy all competetition and anything that would prevent windows from the ONLY choice to do any sort of computing.
Re:Security (Score:4, Interesting)
You misunderstand, sorry my wording was ambiguous. OpenBSD and OSX have the same roots, XP and Vista have the same roots, was my point. The point that the article was trying to get across is that these two systems with the same roots have different characteristics in terms of security, which is also the case with OSX and OpenBSD. Of course, I'm not saying that OSX is as insecure as XP, however.
Re:Security (Score:5, Interesting)
I worked at one firm that was having problems with the computer systems their secretaries and finance department were using. Many of the workers would play games, or worse, they'd manage to infect the existing Windows XP systems with spyware.
Considering they were doing basic word processing, spreadsheet and web-based data entry tasks, we decided that Windows XP was excessive. OpenBSD, OpenOffice, and Konqueror would be sufficient.
The main benefit was that the systems just plain didn't get infected with viruses, spyware, and some such software. The price was a big benefit, too. And the ignorance of the general staff towards OpenBSD, and UNIX in general, helped. Instead of playing games and chatting, the employees had little to do but work. Productivity rose significantly within the weeks after switching over to OpenBSD.
Re:Security (Score:2, Interesting)
I keep hearing the argument that it is not worth it to write a virus for Linux because of a lower installed base. It seems to me that some Windows zealot would have done it by now just to prove it can be done if it is as easy as they imply.
This leads me to believe that either:
A: Windows zealots can't code
or
B: Linux is much more secure than Windows
Re:Security (Score:3, Interesting)
I spent over 16 hours *attempting* to install IVTV (the "official" Linux drivers for the Hauppauge capture cards) before giving up.
During this period of time, I had help from two Linux experts. The best output I ever got from the cat was a postage-stamp-size mpeg2 movie with no sound and no way to change the channel. (Needless to say, the GUI TV viewer apps didn't work at all, and didn't give any clues as to why they wouldn't work.) That was on Ubuntu.
Then I looked at other Linux distributions, and noticed that SUSE claims to support Hauppauge hardware out of the box. So I spend the hours downloaded 5 freakin' CDs worth of CRAP so I do a single task (not counted in the 16 hours) and install SUSE with default settings to my PC. During the install, it gives me an encouraging message, reading something like: "We've detected a video capture card in your computer, so you should install these TV viewer applications." I hit yes, install. Get a working, booting system, open the TV viewer app and... nothing! No error message, it just froze.
Now, given, this was on Linux. But I can't imagine how it could be any easier on BSD.
Re:linux? OS X? (Score:3, Interesting)
There's lots of things in Vista that nobody has even started talking about yet, particularly in the area of mobility.
- Laptops will start shipping with a secondary LCD screen that's accessible when the machine is closed. So you will be able to do things like checking the status of your e-mail, IM, stocks, weather, whatever -- without taking the machine out of sleep mode, spinning up the hard drives, etc.
- Tablet PCs will have touch screen functionality in addition to just pen-based input. In addition, the handwriting recognition will "learn" from the files that Vista has indexed on your hard drive -- so if you're a doctor and you're always using words like "phenylketonuria," it will pick that up and recognize those words more readily.
- As I mentioned in another post, Vista will ship with Windows Collaboration, a Groove-like networking feature that lets wireless users quickly form ad-hoc network and share files and even screen real estate in an easy way.
- Microsoft will stop talking about power states like "Standby" and "Hibernate" when Vista ships. There will only be "on" or "off." When you hit the power button on your laptop, essentially it goes into Standby. Meanwhile it will be writing out a Hibernate file. After it figures out you won't be coming back, it sinks into Hibernate mode. But (and I'm a little unclear on this) even then it will still be sending a trickle of power to the memory only to keep the memory alive. The idea is that fast on and off will be a way of life and people won't be rebooting their computers all the time.
- You will be able to associate with a new generation of LCD projectors wirelessly. No more showing up to a meeting and fumbling with monitor cables etc. Just find the projector and route PowerPoint through it.
Outside of all that, WinFX should be a huge deal and there are a number of APIs that will be shipping in or be closely related to Vista that represent really serious innovations. I know the
Vista is going to be a major, major upgrade... way more than anybody is giving it credit for yet and enough so that Apple should definitely be looking over its shoulder. Maybe Microsoft still won't be able to offer customers anything to compare with the iPod experience on a Mac, but business users in particular are going to be all over this.
Seamless switch? (Score:2, Interesting)
I am not saying that OpenBSD is a bad choice for this task from a purely technical point of view. But there must have been some problems during comissioning. It would be interesting to learn how you solved them.
Re:Seamless switch? (Score:5, Interesting)
We labelled the OpenOffice Writer icon as "Microsoft Word", for instance, and people didn't know the difference.
We imported the Word templates and Excel spreadsheets they were using, tested them out with the OpenOffice equivalents, and for the most part they worked. The one problem we ran into was the font on the standard company letterhead was a bit too large under OpenOffice. That took about a second or so to remedy, of course.
When they asked about the games and MSN, they were simply told that they were deleted.
A little bit of preparation, forethought, and the use of quality software lead to a transition that went very well.
Re:linux? OS X? (Score:5, Interesting)
"New printer technology (way beyond postscript)"
This is interesting. What could be "way beyond Postscript"? Postscript is a general purpose language, with rendering support. It has even been extended into a GUI (although that is irrelevant from the perspective of printing). By utilizing a common language for print rendering, different vendor OSs and systems can actually share printers. The reference implementation of Postscript is now (arguably) Ghostscript, which is Open Source. Postscript is also behind PDF technology.
If there is a new rendering technology, how will it be incorporated into heterogenous network?
"Support for user mode drivers"
Is this a good thing? I know that there have been attempts at providing "user mode drivers" to Linux, and other OSs, but that is a REALLY BAD thing to do wrt security. Transitions from less trusted code to more trusted code are ok, because the more trusted code can check its inputs. The reverse transition is not ok -- simply because the code is less trusted.
Of course the "user mode driver" may require signing, but then why not test it and put it back into kernel mode? The only other reason I can see for "user mode drivers" is that you want the driver code and data to participate in standard OS semantics (scheduling, swapping, etc.). Which may be a good reason to do it. But the security implications are immense: maybe front layer drivers only, that cannot do anything with the OS core or data, and where data only flows "user->user driver->kernel" -- you get the idea.
Still, I was under the impression that Windows was a micro-kernel (in some sense), which is supposed to eliminate the need for this hack.
"Application level audio control"
Can you elaborate on this? I was under the impression that that was ALREADY a feature (or are you referring to OS control on the application audio, which is more interesting - specifically, the ability to route the audio output from an application to another application which can provide filtering: say, low-pass. Of course, this provides a security hole for the media, and so I doubt that this will be implemented).
The other features will be welcome.
Ratboy.
MS Has Gone Backwards Since Windows 2000 (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Security (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyhow, the point of the post, is that if you seriously would like to be able to migrate away from Windows, and need to be able to maintain compatablilty, then look at VMware. Unlike some of the other virtualization solutions, VMware is extremely professional, polished, and does a slick job. I am the president of a Linux and Unix User group and we distribute VMware disk images for use in VMPlayer (which is free) to help people get farmiliar with Linux. The quaility of VMware is such that after using a beta release for two months I couldn't help but buy it after the beta expired -- their beta was so professional, I was really impressed.
And no, I don't work for VMware.
Re:Security (Score:2, Interesting)
Whether you meant to or not, you ended up sounding like a Linux fanboy, and that takes so much punch from your argument. Neither Linux nor Windows are perfect, yet you are basically claiming Linux is a field of daisies compared to the hellish swamp of Windows. Grow up.
Good joke... (Score:2, Interesting)
Bashing a clearly more stable OS, and then being thankful for a toyish DB? Wow. 100% FUD.
I don't think your position makes any sense.. (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think so.
I think "security" is a blend of many things.. the _correctness_ of non-security features, the selection and depth of security-focused features, the process around resolving defects (because there will be defects), and the conditions under which a user can use the machine.
Even if Microsoft had done everything they knew how to do to make XP "secure" when they had made it, would it be secure today? No. Because today new threats are understood and being used that weren't in existance when XP was designed and shipped. Is XP retroactively insecure? Or it just less secure than something newer, all things otherwise equal, that was developed with the context of the threats that have emerged since XP was released?
In the specific case of Vista vs XP, some of the things that are "better" this time around are
- more credible run-as-non-admin story
- better sandboxing and least-priviledge stuff, even within a normal user account (i.e. its not necessarily true that IE running as you can do anything you can)
The run-as-non-admin thing "worked" in XP, but with enough caveats that it was hard to credibly say "everyone, do it that way". The POR for XP was to ship with non-admin-by-default until very, very late in the ship cycle, where there was just too much stuff that didn't work as non-admin. They made the hard decisino to make users=admin by default, and nobody was happy about it. This is a problem that Microsoft has been chipping away at for a while now, because the goal is "let everyone run with as few permissions as possible" and it often conflicts with the other goal of "20 year old software written by 3rd party people needs to keep running"
I have no problem buying that Vista has more security-focused features than XP. I have no problem buying that Vista has better code correctness in non-security features than XP. I don't think the security response process will be any worse in vista, infact, i know of at least one technology that makes it better (but im not sure if its public yet?).
Will Vista be "more secure" than XP? I think so. Will it be "as secure" as OpenBSD? Probably not. Will it do more things that more users want than OpenBSD? Definiately. Will Vista have a better intersection of practical security vs functionality than OpenBSD?
Microsoft thinks so, and I think I agree with them.
Re:Security (Score:3, Interesting)
I built 2 64bit AMD boxes, and purchased WinXP X64 for both. I figured one would be a Win box for my wife, the other would be dual boot, Win for games, Fedora Core 4 for development.
I spent about 2 weeks finding and downloading drivers for the Windows installs. Everything on the motherboard (including 1Gb network card), the DVD RW, video card...
I was ALMOST afraid of putting Fedora Core 4 64bit on it, but figured I could get it working with some work. So installing Fedora was a much, different experience. Put in the DVD and follow the install screens. No drivers to find and everything worked out of the box.
So in MY case, Windows took days, Linux was less than an hour.
Re:Security (Score:3, Interesting)
2) The computer didn't freeze, and it wasn't a hardware error. (The hardware works flawlessly in Windows.) It was the TV viewer application that froze.
3) Hauppauge cards don't work on OS X. But at least OS X doesn't *claim* that they do, unlike SUSE.
Re:Security (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Linux is doomed (Score:3, Interesting)
* A monolithic kernel
You're kidding, right? Microsoft has pretty much gutted Cutler's NT microkernel design, what with moving so many subsystems back into the kernel and all. And OS X? It's a full fledged BSD kernel running on top of a Mach microkernel - really, a microkernel arrangement in name only. The only reason they keep it around is because Mach provides some... interesting IPC facilities, which OS X exploits heavily. Everyone has either moved back toward the monolithic kernel, or hasn't strayed *that* far from it; outside of research or very limited, purpose specific OSes, a full-blown microkernel layout is pretty much nonexistant.