(05-15-2014 12:48 PM)oklalittledixie Wrote:  There are a few guys on here that still use Windows 95.

I still have that disk around somewhere so I can watch the Weezer video on it.

(05-15-2014 12:25 PM)mlb Wrote:  

(05-15-2014 11:41 AM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote:  - Do you honestly think the NSA doesn't have its tentacles in OS X and Windows?

I agree on that point, but I also believe that they have their tentacles on Linux as well. Either through different distributions, through different add-ons (apache, MySQL, Oracle, etc., etc.), and other purposefully place back doors that would be extremely hard to find and can be protected at some level by the different GPL licenses.

Unless you write your own operating system then I believe the back doors are there.

I think the Linux back door is in, ironically, SELinux. Think about it. The NSA developed it. It is massively inefficient and complex like all things from government. And the smart people opt-out (GRSEC and other alternatives)... just like with most things from government. And SELinux ships as standard in RHEL, Unbreakable, and SLES ... and those are the three big enterprise variants.

It is a total sack of dungholio....

(05-15-2014 02:58 PM)stinkfist Wrote:  It is a total sack of dungholio....

Too hard for you huh?

(05-15-2014 11:43 AM)Machiavelli Wrote:  Do what you do. Stop trying to be something else. Upgrade XP would be my suggestion. People loved XP. People wanted to still use XP. People understood XP. It's just a darn shame.

XP had to be replaced sooner or later for something that was designed to have better security. I don't think anyone that used XP would have trouble with Windows/7, and I think Windows/8 machines have a downgrade license for 7. 8 is ok for tablets, but I wouldn't want to mess with it on a laptop or desktop.

(05-15-2014 11:41 AM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote:  - Not having a powerful and versatile command line. Windows Powershell is like somebody tried to make MS-DOS as good as a Linux shell from 1999 and gave up half way through. Utter ****. OS X's command line is somewhat different but pretty close, and with some hammering you can get a proper Linux CLI in there. ...

Cygwin.

I know it's not the same thing as a linux machine, but I can't survive on Windows without it.

(05-15-2014 05:17 PM)I45owl Wrote:  

(05-15-2014 11:43 AM)Machiavelli Wrote:  Do what you do. Stop trying to be something else. Upgrade XP would be my suggestion. People loved XP. People wanted to still use XP. People understood XP. It's just a darn shame.

XP had to be replaced sooner or later for something that was designed to have better security. I don't think anyone that used XP would have trouble with Windows/7, and I think Windows/8 machines have a downgrade license for 7. 8 is ok for tablets, but I wouldn't want to mess with it on a laptop or desktop.

Windows 7 is not substantially better than XP after SP3. XP's bad reputation (which it justly earned) was due to some decisions made at XP's launch that were remedied ... but some changes took a half decade to come about. A few:

- RPC Messenger running by default
- No firewall
- Supported raw sockets (whatttttt aaaaaaaa f'nnnnnnnnnnn HORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRIBLE decision to have UNIX style sockets in the NERF romper room of computing idiocy that is Windows)
- Runs as admin by default (a lot of stuff still does this)


There are still some truly ghastly design decisions in Windows to this day. Most of the graphics stack in Windows is in the kernel. That would be like compiling X into your Linux kernel. WTF?

(05-15-2014 05:50 PM)smudge12 Wrote:  Our office recently upgraded from 7 to 8.1 Pro and while the learning curve (which isn't that bad) kinda frustrated people who hadn't seen 8 before, it's been generally well received. From an engineering POV, it handles AutoDesk, Revit, and Microstation better than 7, although I always thought that was more dependent on your hardware (can anyone here answer why 8 might be better than 7 at handling CPU intensive stuff when using identical hardware?).

The caching, memory manager, and scheduler were tweaked slightly in Windows 8. And it is slightly less bloaty. Fastest OS'es:

1) Gentoo Linux / Linux From Scratch
(gap)
2) Debian Linux variants (Mint, Ubuntu, Debian, etc)
3) Red Hat Linux variants (RHEL, Fedora, CentOS, SLES, SLED, etc)
(big gap)
4) A pristine OEM Windows 8
5) A pristine OEM Windows 7
(gap)
6) BSD Variants (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, PC-BSD)
7) OS X (yes, all the way down here ... that is the price you pay for a Mach kernel)
(big gap)
8) Windows (any) after most desktop users have gotten a hold of it for a week and installed all kinds of crap. In particular the Windows version of iTunes which is a galactic sized turd.


Sadly I'm no longer allowed to make fun of PPC OS X since it is fairly dead now. PowerPC: Because AMD wants to point and laugh like Intel does too.

(05-15-2014 05:33 PM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote:  

(05-15-2014 05:17 PM)I45owl Wrote:  

(05-15-2014 11:43 AM)Machiavelli Wrote:  Do what you do. Stop trying to be something else. Upgrade XP would be my suggestion. People loved XP. People wanted to still use XP. People understood XP. It's just a darn shame.

XP had to be replaced sooner or later for something that was designed to have better security. I don't think anyone that used XP would have trouble with Windows/7, and I think Windows/8 machines have a downgrade license for 7. 8 is ok for tablets, but I wouldn't want to mess with it on a laptop or desktop.

Windows 7 is not substantially better than XP after SP3. XP's bad reputation (which it justly earned) was due to some decisions made at XP's launch that were remedied ... but some changes took a half decade to come about. A few:

- RPC Messenger running by default
- No firewall
- Supported raw sockets (whatttttt aaaaaaaa f'nnnnnnnnnnn HORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRIBLE decision to have UNIX style sockets in the NERF romper room of computing idiocy that is Windows)
- Runs as admin by default (a lot of stuff still does this)


There are still some truly ghastly design decisions in Windows to this day. Most of the graphics stack in Windows is in the kernel. That would be like compiling X into your Linux kernel. WTF?

(05-15-2014 07:15 PM)smudge12 Wrote:  I wouldn't be opposed to having Linux as my next operating system (I'll be building a desktop soon), but I'm fairly uneducated about it. I can't do programming other than simple C++ stuff and Macros, have very little knowledge on how Linux actually works or interacts with other programs/existing operating systems, don't know how it's updated, or how I even download it.

The easiest way to get a taste is to download Knoppix (a Live CD/DVD/USB Linux) so you can boot it on your existing machine without having to install anything. It runs off the CD/DVD/USB without touching your hard drive. This means it is a little slower obviously ... but it is an easy no-risk way to get a taste.

http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html

You'll want to download the version you want (CD/DVD) then burn it to a disc. Importantly ... you must burn it to disc in "ISO" or "Disc Image" or "Image" format. DO NOT USE DATA FORMAT. If you do, the resulting disc is useless. Then you just reboot your computer, and while booting press whatever button it says to to alter the boot order. Like on Lenovo laptops it is "Press F12 to choose boot device". Look for something like that. Then in the menu it gives you, tell it to boot from disc. Job done.

It is possible to do this with USB instead of CD/DVD on newer (read: after ~2008 or so) machines. But it takes some additional steps to take the ISO file of Knoppix you downloaded and format it into a USB drive. And some cheap *** USB drives won't work.

(05-15-2014 05:33 PM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote:  

(05-15-2014 05:17 PM)I45owl Wrote:  

(05-15-2014 11:43 AM)Machiavelli Wrote:  Do what you do. Stop trying to be something else. Upgrade XP would be my suggestion. People loved XP. People wanted to still use XP. People understood XP. It's just a darn shame.

XP had to be replaced sooner or later for something that was designed to have better security. I don't think anyone that used XP would have trouble with Windows/7, and I think Windows/8 machines have a downgrade license for 7. 8 is ok for tablets, but I wouldn't want to mess with it on a laptop or desktop.

Windows 7 is not substantially better than XP after SP3. XP's bad reputation (which it justly earned) was due to some decisions made at XP's launch that were remedied ... but some changes took a half decade to come about. A few:

- RPC Messenger running by default
- No firewall
- Supported raw sockets (whatttttt aaaaaaaa f'nnnnnnnnnnn HORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRIBLE decision to have UNIX style sockets in the NERF romper room of computing idiocy that is Windows)
- Runs as admin by default (a lot of stuff still does this)


There are still some truly ghastly design decisions in Windows to this day. Most of the graphics stack in Windows is in the kernel. That would be like compiling X into your Linux kernel. WTF?

I thought they made a big deal about bringing a C-level exec that was in charge of implementing a security-based "rewrite" of the kernel for Windows/7, but that may have been 8.

On the simple stuff like you mention, Microsoft will nearly always screw the pooch to make things simpler for the end user in favor of being secure (and I don't know why they'd have made those decisions, but it just seems typical of them).

Regarding the kernel, there's no question Microsoft does gui design better than Linux. We just had someone doing a remote training session for us push things back about three weeks because of one comment in an email chain about ssh being slow for remote access. I responded by setting up a VNC session for the guy, which worked fine (and he said as much), but the PMs took that and whined about us not giving them fast VPN access and rescheduled on us. X-Windows is close to 30 years old now and I can recall one (failed, IMHO) initiative to make it work well over remote links. ssh and VNC have improved the situation, but it's still not a good system for remote access, IMHO, and probably should've been replaced wholesale in that time period.

(05-15-2014 07:55 PM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote:  

(05-15-2014 07:15 PM)smudge12 Wrote:  I wouldn't be opposed to having Linux as my next operating system (I'll be building a desktop soon), but I'm fairly uneducated about it. I can't do programming other than simple C++ stuff and Macros, have very little knowledge on how Linux actually works or interacts with other programs/existing operating systems, don't know how it's updated, or how I even download it.

The easiest way to get a taste is to download Knoppix (a Live CD/DVD/USB Linux) so you can boot it on your existing machine without having to install anything. It runs off the CD/DVD/USB without touching your hard drive. This means it is a little slower obviously ... but it is an easy no-risk way to get a taste.

http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html

You'll want to download the version you want (CD/DVD) then burn it to a disc. Importantly ... you must burn it to disc in "ISO" or "Disc Image" or "Image" format. DO NOT USE DATA FORMAT. If you do, the resulting disc is useless. Then you just reboot your computer, and while booting press whatever button it says to to alter the boot order. Like on Lenovo laptops it is "Press F12 to choose boot device". Look for something like that. Then in the menu it gives you, tell it to boot from disc. Job done.

It is possible to do this with USB instead of CD/DVD on newer (read: after ~2008 or so) machines. But it takes some additional steps to take the ISO file of Knoppix you downloaded and format it into a USB drive. And some cheap *** USB drives won't work.

I'd also recommend downloading VMware Player and using the Knoppix iso file to get your feet wet in Linux, or play with another Linux distro if you like. I even have a VMware image of some Android version, in the realm of utterly useless and pointless efforts.

I just wish the raspberry pi had a decent enough browser to stream college sports. I'm still looking for a way to stream college baseball to a TV without tying up my laptop.

edit: on the topic of iTunes, it's utterly astounding that a product has been allowed to be so bad for such an extended period. I would almost wager that among contributions to greenhouse gas are: coal power plants > automobiles > iTunes > internet data centers > ios based devices and the associated network computing power > (any other single component, including air conditioning, refrigerators, etc). And, I'm being serious on how much of a power draw iTunes collectively exerts on the planet when it is running in it's full 100% CPU consumption glory.

(05-15-2014 09:17 PM)I45owl Wrote:  Regarding the kernel, there's no question Microsoft does gui design better than Linux. We just had someone doing a remote training session for us push things back about three weeks because of one comment in an email chain about ssh being slow for remote access. I responded by setting up a VNC session for the guy, which worked fine (and he said as much), but the PMs took that and whined about us not giving them fast VPN access and rescheduled on us. X-Windows is close to 30 years old now and I can recall one (failed, IMHO) initiative to make it work well over remote links. ssh and VNC have improved the situation, but it's still not a good system for remote access, IMHO, and probably should've been replaced wholesale in that time period.

GDI in the kernel is not better design.

Allow me to bring you up to speed on remote Linux graphical sessions: https://www.nomachine.com/

(05-15-2014 09:17 PM)I45owl Wrote:  I just wish the raspberry pi had a decent enough browser to stream college sports. I'm still looking for a way to stream college baseball to a TV without tying up my laptop.

XBMC can do this because it has a custom client written to hardware accelerate everything. So ... if you have Raspbian as your Pi's distro ... add the XBMC repo ... install XBMC ... make sure you have at least 128 MB of RAM dedicated to the GPU ... drop out of GUI ... fire up XBMC. Add the WatchESPN/ESPN3 Video Add On. Profit.

On my PC build back in November, I installed Windows 7 Home Premium.

Windows 7 is quite possibly their best work. Then they ruin a good thing with Windows 8.

I have no problem with them creating a new OS for mobile/tablets...but don't force the consumer to adopt it for platforms it is not optimized for (desktops, laptops and ultrabooks).

(05-15-2014 05:33 PM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote:  Windows 7 is not substantially better than XP after SP3. XP's bad reputation (which it justly earned) was due to some decisions made at XP's launch that were remedied ... but some changes took a half decade to come about. A few:

XP was a bad design from the get go because they wanted it to be backwards compatible with Windows software all the way back to Windows 3.1. It had to go... the biggest security vulnerabilities were never going to be fixed due to that. Too many different pieces of software had direct access to the kernel and it had to be changed.

Windows Vista took those rights away and broke a lot of software, users were "outraged." Windows 7 didn't add any of those back, but since Vista set the expectation of being "broken" users all the sudden thought Windows 7 was better (it is essentially the same OS).

My biggest problem with Windows OS releases has been Windows ME and Windows 8. Windows 2000 was a welcome upgrade from NT4, and merging Windows 2000 desktop with Windows 9X (AKA Windows XP) was very welcome from the user community. Windows Vista/7 was everything that XP should have been from a security stand point but the corporate base was so upset that it was going to break their old software that they threw a fit (even though they developed software totally against the Windows APIs and made direct calls to the kernel which should never have been allowed by Microsoft). Microsoft made a profitability call to add back in backwards support in XP while sacrificing security, and we all know just how bad XP was about getting hit with malware and such.

We should all just install windows 3.1 and like it.

(05-15-2014 10:03 PM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote:  

(05-15-2014 09:17 PM)I45owl Wrote:  I just wish the raspberry pi had a decent enough browser to stream college sports. I'm still looking for a way to stream college baseball to a TV without tying up my laptop.

XBMC can do this because it has a custom client written to hardware accelerate everything. So ... if you have Raspbian as your Pi's distro ... add the XBMC repo ... install XBMC ... make sure you have at least 128 MB of RAM dedicated to the GPU ... drop out of GUI ... fire up XBMC. Add the WatchESPN/ESPN3 Video Add On. Profit.

When I looked at one of the XMBC variants and ran it briefly, I found that the browser didn't support flash. There was some discussion that it would never support flash, but I found some instructions on how to install a flash-compatible package. However, when I did that and tried to run a simple page through it, it couldn't handle the stream. I don't think youtube worked on it, either. I abandoned it, as my primary purpose was to create a VPN, which I haven't gotten back to recently. I'd also like to be able to get it to run as a thin vmware client.

Off-topic but still interesting...

How to test your catastrophic backup procedures: Emory LITS: Information Technology | Windows 7 incident

http://it.emory.edu/windows7-incident/ Wrote:A Windows 7 deployment image was accidently sent to all Windows machines, including laptops, desktops, and even servers. This image started with a repartition / reformat set of tasks.

As soon as the accident was discovered, the SCCM server was powered off – however, by that time, the SCCM server itself had been repartitioned and reformatted.

Yikes. That is a HUGE mistake.