Forum: Author Hangout

Then you would have to define "personal".

The data has no context. It says, computer X crashed when doing Y.

I doesn't say Bob Stephens was watching porn at 3:15 AM on April 3 2018.

Let's face it, Microsoft is so far down the list of your privacy concerns as to be insignificant.

The most important threat to your privacy isn't Microsoft, or even the NSA. It's Google.

Linux has only one validity. It's free. Not secure, not supported, just free. I've been an IT Professional for three decades, yeah, not many can say that, and it's still crap. Well not still, it wasn't around in the 80's.

Anyone that can afford it, avoids it. Unix, AIX, Solaris and even Windows Server are always better options. Hell, Windows Server is probably the most secure sever OS available these days. But certainly it wasn't always.

"It's open source, therefore secure" has become a laughingstock in the last five years. All the headlines are on Linux and it's 10,000 variants. Your router, nanny-cam, and fucking front-door lock are unsecure pieces of shit because Linux is free and therefore unaccountable for it's failures.

Linux has an incredible place in the world, as long as it doesn't become a target. Volunteer programmers worked toward an ideal, and you get exactly the security you pay for, there is no one accountable.

Then again, it's free, and sites like SOL and a million others wouldn't exist without it.

My primary interest is with whatever OS works best for my needs. That stopped when MS decided to destroy their users' choice, their arrogant deception and dishonesty to destroy Windows 7 and 8, and force ALL users to Windows 10.

And Apple doesn't do the same? Hell they obsolete their hardware much faster than Microsoft obsoletes their software.

I'm typing this on a Core 2 Quad machine built in 2007 running Windows 10. Does a ten-year-old Apple device even exist? Windows 10 runs faster on this machine than XP ever did. Shit, I have a Atom based HP tablet (HP Steam 8) running Windows 10 on 1GB of RAM! The official requirements for it are a 1GHZ processor and 1GB of RAM. There is no drive to upgrade hardware, not even close.

Your wife has a built-in Linux advocate to cater to her every whim. You can't just tell the average Joe to download one of 49,672 Linux distros, install it, and expect them to succeed. Not even close to it.

The FUD is most certainly in the Linux camp. You, and they, have been evangelizing "open source" for two decades now. I get it, you are frustrated that the Linux Desktop has no more takers now than it had 20 years ago.

One thing I've learned over the years is that what you like, and what I like, don't matter at all. It's what the users like. What desktop users like is most certainly not a flimsy graphic shell, that comes in 39 flavors over a command line OS that comes in thousands. They want consistency, not complexity.

Linux itself is crap, and it isn't. The minute some hack whacks out a few lines of code and recompiles, it most certainly has a huge possibility of becoming bovine excrement, and it happens daily, and it's still called Linux.

There is no control over the beast. Sure you've mastered it, that's awesome. You've turned it into a useful desktop system. But saying that the other 99% of the world can do that is insane.

The user experience with Microsoft is most certainly a happy one. It's the reason that 90% of the world still uses it on their PC's and less than 1% use Linux.

No point in arguing this, however. I've followed a British site called "The Register" for IT and Tech professionals for several years now, as an interested observer.

LMGDAO! The Register, really? My guess is you actually believe Fox News is "fair and unbiased" and not the Ministry of Propaganda for the GOP. Attacking Microsoft makes them a lot of money off of people like you. Hell I've also read El Reg since the late 90's. I've just learned to separate the actual news from the click-bait.

The user experience with MS is NOT a happy one, long term. And their data-slurping goes far beyond what the government has just allowed ISP's to collect and sell.

Again, BULLSHIT. Your ISP knows who you are. It knows every site you visit and what YOU do. MS only knows what a random PC does under controlled, diagnostic circumstances. And you accuse ME of FUD?

Linux has an incredible place in the world, as long as it doesn't become a target. Volunteer programmers worked toward an ideal, and you get exactly the security you pay for, there is no one accountable.

I currently use Windows and know nothing about Linux, but I have been considering switching to Linux.

Your comment rings true to me. I have 2 reasons for considering something other than Windows as my OS:

1. Windows is DOS driven, and with all the mods MS has been making to Windows, Windows now seems even buggier than it used to.

2. Windows is a favorite target of hackers and people who plant Virus's, Worms, Trojans, and other malicious code on Internet websites.

Yesterday I was doing some on-line research on a medical website and picked something up. While on the site, I got one of those messages which I was able to cancel and continue working with no problem. When I booted my PC this morning whatever I picked up interfered with my browser booting. I normally use Internet Explorer to access my user account and delete the content of my temporary file folder, which normally fixes the problem. Unfortunately, whatever I picked up prevented Internet Explorer from displaying my C: drive, which prevented me from deleting those files. However, I managed to access the C: drive via an alternate route that the whatever I picked up didn't affect and I deleted the files. Problem solved.

Most people would use Windows Explorer for file management, as it is a file manager, and use Internet Explorer for browsing the Internet, as it is an Internet browser.

NO ONE dares use IE anymore, as it's guaranteed to download malware/ransomware. Even M$ doesn't.

Internet explorer folder is still there with a working IE

Sounds like MS. Windows 10 runs DOS, which most people think is no longer used. Edge runs IE.

The Command prompt is not DOS

Even the latest versions of MS Windows still include most of the MS-DOS code deep in there core, and when you go into the Windows Command Prompt it provides a DOS window for you to enter DOS commands it runs.

There has only been one case of MS cleaning code out of their software, and then it was more of a case of simply dumping that version and going to the prior version and reworking that - - the case was the first MS Office suite using XML used stolen code and they were forced to make a large compensation pay out for doing so, and they stopped using the code.

With all the other MS software the earlier code is till in there, which is why the MS Word 1 for DOS keyboard shortcuts still work in all the versions of MS Word, the same is true for all the other MS Office programs and their operating system. With Vista they did include code to disable some of the DOS commands in the Command Prompt by changing the command needed to be different from the old one. But the underlying DOS code and commands are buried in there.

It is not in the core of Windows,

The core code of the MS software includes large amounts of the original DOS code, the various Windows GUIs lay over that core code buried in the kernel. MS have shifted the way you can access it via a terminal window, but the code itself is in the kernel and just as it was thirty years ago.

The only way they can get rid of the DOS code in the kernel is to do a ground up total rewrite of the entire code base, something MS has never done.

The current Windows is a operating system, as DOS was an operating system. However the current Windows does not include portions of the old DOS OS.

Believe how you wish, but MS have never rewritten their kernel from scratch. What they have done is to add to the kernel and give it a different name. The very core of the MS kernel is the MS DOS code. with Win 1 to Win 3.1 the GUI was overlaid outside the kernel, but starting with Win 95 and Win NT they incorporated most of the GUI within the kernel while still sitting on on DOS code.

Since then they have changed how you can reach the DOS part of the kernel code, but the code is still there.

A place to start (an only to start) is the Wikipedia entry at:

I followed your link. The article states:

Partial MS-DOS compatibility was achieved via an integrated DOS Virtual Machine

Since I wasn't sure what DOS VM meant, I followed its link. What I found was:

Virtual DOS machine (VDM) is a technology that allows running 16-bit/32-bit DOS and 16-bit Windows programs on Intel 80386 or higher computers when there is already another operating system running and controlling the hardware.

Sounds to me as if it is saying current Window programs run DOS, or at least a modified version of DOS.

Sounds to me as if it is saying current Window programs run DOS, or at least a modified version of DOS.

It sounds to me like the modern OS provides a virtual means of running old programs that won't interfere with the modern OS.

It's why most any X86 program written will still run on Windows. Not something you would see, for instance, Apple do, but they aren't burdened by Microsoft's commitment to the business world and all those self-written legacy programs out there.

It sounds to me like the modern OS provides a virtual means of running old programs that won't interfere with the modern OS

The discussion is not about what the Modern OS can do.

* * * * *

I think we can all agree that the original DOS OS had a lot of problems. Some of us contend that the modern OS is based on a portion of that original DOS code, while others seem to take the position that there is no portion of the original DOS code in the current OS code.

I am in the group that believes the Modern OS is/includes a modified version of the original DOS code. We believe that MS has been packaging and releasing modified DOS code under different names. The other group seems to be saying MS created a new OS without retaining any of the original DOS code.

MS appears to have upgraded the DOS code with each of it subsequent versions, but it appears to retain a significant portion of the original DOS code's functionality to include its bugs.

Since we are not aware of the precise functionality of the code that was retained, and possibly modified, we cannot determine if the problems we experience with the Modern OS code are due to the retained portion of the original DOS code, the patches to that code, or to new code that added functionality to each of the subsequent releases. From my experience, I suspect a large number of the original DOS bugs were retained, and bugs were introduced in the process of trying to patch the original code and add functionality.

I think we can all agree that the original DOS OS had a lot of problems.

The funny thing is we can't. I used DOS from version 1.01 through version 6.1 or so. It was limited certainly. But it did do what asked. It was solid, seldom crashed, and ran your programs, one at a time mind you, (without third-party applications, I was a big fan of Desqview back in the day) just fine.

No one really had a problem with DOS, it just worked. It was the premiere OS for personal computers from the mid-80's to early 90's.

The Urban Legends you are basing your opinions on are the next era. When the GUI of Windows 3.x and 95 and it's successors were built on top of DOS of course there were issues. DOS had ZERO security, it was built for a single un-networked computer.

It all changed with Windows NT (a derivative not of DOS, but a joint MS/IBM version of OS/2). 3.51, 4.0, Windows 2000 followed mainly for business and Windows XP was derived from that tree, not the DOS/Windows tree. Yes the Win 95 GUI came through, but there was actually a version of NT based on the Windows 3 GUI (NT 3.51). So it's just a GUI, not an OS.

Does Windows 10 have some DOS functionality today? Sure it does. It also has the native capability to run a Linux virtual machine. No not a VM running a separate copy, NATIVE capability, out of the box.

So just because you can run DOS commands in Windows 10 doesn't mean it's "based on" DOS. If it's based on any OS from that era it's based on OS/2. You can also get a Linux and Powershell command line as well. If there is an underlying thing you want to really pick on to say modern Windows is based on it's the latter, Powershell. There is nothing you can do with the GUI that you can't do through Powershell.

No one really had a problem with DOS, it just worked. It was the premiere OS for personal computers from the mid-80's to early 90's.

EzzyB, I suggest you refer to the Versions section of the following link. The content on DOS 5 and 6 specifically states that the original release of those versions had to be rerelease due to bugs that users complained about.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOS#Versions

You will also note in that article that MS licensed DOS to many vendors and their implementations are not MS versions of DOS. Your Desqview program was such an implementation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESQview

Furthermore, OS/2 was initially a joint IBM/MS venture. Their collaboration failed and the went their separate ways with IBM continuing the OS/2 product line.

So learn Powershell. They can certainly be used in a batch file with the proper syntax. (It becomes a .scr file).

It is interesting to note that, in the entire article, DOS is only mentioned as a contrast in earlier Windows versions,

Because by then the MS people, and many others, saw the DOS/Win GUI kernel as the Windows kernel, despite the DOS code being in it and what allowed, and still allows, Windows to interact with the hardware during the boot up stage as well as during installation.

EB, Did you read the link Zom posted? The article contains a paragraph that addresses the development of Windows NT. That paragraph contains the statement:

Microsoft also continued parallel development of the DOS-based and less resource-demanding Windows environment, resulting in the release of Windows 3.0 in May 1990. Windows 3 was eventually so successful that Microsoft decided to change the primary application programming interface for the still unreleased NT OS/2 (as it was then known) from an extended OS/2 API to an extended Windows API. This decision caused tension between Microsoft and IBM and the collaboration ultimately fell apart. IBM continued OS/2 development alone while Microsoft continued work on the newly renamed Windows NT.

What that statement means to me is the current MS operating systems are based on either Windows or Windows NT and both of those operating systems are DOS based.

Where did that come from

I've read about 6 articles today. I think it was mentioned in another of the articles also, but can find the following passage in the Version section of following link.

Version 5.50 (Windows NTVDM) – All Windows NT 32-bit versions ship with files from DOS 5.0

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOS

With that logic you might as well also say that it is based on Notepad, or Internet Explorer.

The comment is a clarification indicating that in addition to DOS 5.5, the 32-bit versions ship with DOS 5.0 files (i.e. DOS 5.0 files in addition to the DOS 5.5 files.)

And your point is?

If you had followed the thread back to the post I was responding to you would have understood what my point was.

Since you didn't, Zom had asked me why I thought Windows NT had anything to do with DOS. That was my answer.

"where did that come from?"

Reinvention??? I don't see my recent post about what you ask me as a reinvention.

My first post to you was about a comment you made in a post to another poster. In that response I quoted:

The section you highlighted DOES NOT say that. Where did that come from? All that section says is that the GUI was maintained, not the kernel. Nothing there says anything about NT being DOS based.

It appeared that you where asking where I got the idea NT was DOS based, since the quote did not say that. I responded to your question with a quote about DOS 5.5. You focused in on mention of 5.0 in the quote. I responded that the quote was saying NT computers used 5.5 as its OS and the 32-bit machine had 5.0 file in addition.

"where did that come from?"

Reinvention??? I don't see my recent post about what you ask me as a reinvention.

My first post to you was about a comment you made in a post to another poster. In that response I quoted:

The section you highlighted DOES NOT say that. Where did that come from? All that section says is that the GUI was maintained, not the kernel. Nothing there says anything about NT being DOS based.

It appeared that you where asking where I got the idea NT was DOS based, since the quote did not say that. I responded to your question with a quote about DOS 5.5. You focused in on mention of 5.0 in the quote. I responded that the quote was saying NT computers used 5.5 as its OS and the 32-bit machine had 5.0 file in addition.

So I would be grateful if you could point out

I think it is the way we interpret "NT Based on DOD" and "NT having anything to do with DOS. To me if NT is based on DOS, then NT most definitely has something to do with DOS. Evidently you see it differently. I now see it as a miscommunication and don't see pursuing it further worth our effort.

There are buckets of cold hard verifiable facts involved.

I know, and I've been telling you about them. Without digging through the tonnes of old books and records I've got stored away, here'e some quick bits from Wikipedia for you:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Windows

Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985, as a graphical operating system shell for MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces (GUIs).

Note: Windows is a GUI shell on top of DOS.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_95

Windows 95 merged Microsoft's formerly separate MS-DOS and Windows products.

Note: MS merged the DOS and Windows GUI shell together so the DOS code is still there.

David Cutler was brought on-board to make changes to OS/2 for IBM and that's what they did for a long while. However, within a couple of years due to delays and issues with code David took with him from DEC, a the project was sped up to get back on target, thus the New OS /2 project morphed into NT when large amounts of code from DOS, the Win 95 shell, and the code being used to upgrade Win 95 to Win 98 was used to replace code in the New OS/2 project and make it more MS code than the original - thus NT was born. A significant part of it was the core kernel code that was still MS-DOS and a lot of the code to expand the kernel operations to 16 bit and 32 bit operations. All that code is still there as the core of the kernel. A major reason for the shift was to be compatible with the other MS Windows products at that time.

If you know what you're doing it's possible to drill down into the Disc for Win 7 and Win 10 and use DOS commands to load the OS, however, it does take a lot longer to load than if you go through the autoload process of the disc - but is useful if that part of the disc gets damaged and stops working right.

If I remember correctly - Windows NT was based on the original DOS OS. Portions, but not all, of the DOS code was updated to create a more stable version of DOS, and the upgraded OS was named Windows NT.

The original merging of DOS and GUI was Windows 3.x. I still argue that Windows 3.x was the most important OS in the history of personal computing, not 95 which was just an upgrade to the GUI from the user's perspective.

The success of Windows 3.x emboldened Microsoft on the joint OS/2 project with IBM. Remember, the first Windows NT wasn't NT 4.0, it was NT 3.51 (though I suppose there was a 3.50 somewhere, never saw it, but had a couple of 3.51 servers). It's just what you imagine, Windows NT with the Windows 3.x GUI.

Anyway IBM and MS couldn't agree on the direction of the new OS/2 NT so they parted company. Part of the agreement on that split was why NT 3.51 and NT 4.0 were required to run on IBM's Alpha RISC processor. (RISC, reduced instruction set computing, was seen as the next "big thing" at the time and lost out to X86 in the long run).

Still, saying that Windows 10 is "based on" DOS is a bit silly. It's like saying a Ford Taurus is based on a Model-T because they both have internal combustion engines. Hell, in a Taurus that engine may be made by Mazda. You can easily, for instance, replace CMD with PowerShell and that's a whole new command line processor.

The only way they can get rid of the DOS code in the kernel is to do a ground up total rewrite of the entire code base, something MS has never done.

Again, that's like saying the only way to build a new car is to throw away the internal combustion engine. Just because a piece of code that scans and reports the contents of a directory is old doesn't mean it's obsolete.

Really though, why is no one worried that Linux is "based on" Unix and OS-X is "based on" Mac OS?

why is no one worried that Linux is "based on" Unix

Has that been rewritten from the ground up or are all devices still treated as character-at-a-time teletypes?

AJ

Again, that's like saying the only way to build a new car is to throw away the internal combustion engine. Just because a piece of code that scans and reports the contents of a directory is old doesn't mean it's obsolete.

Really though, why is no one worried that Linux is "based on" Unix and OS-X is "based on" Mac OS?

In almost every case, new OSes are better designed and work more efficiently than those where they just dump more code on top of the old crap. However, no one has designed a new OS for decades (well, aside from iOS, that is).

iOS is based on the same kernel as macOS (XNU). There is no linux in any of apple's systems. The GPL is incompatible with Apple's business needs.

Well I'll stand corrected then. But how does Google get away with the GPL with Android?

Well shit, I just answered my own question. Google can do it because Android is "free". Man that must cost them a fortune in lawyers given the restrictions they put on the official versions of Android.

I'm still waiting on the lawsuit, (gotta come from the EU) because they essentially do the same thing Microsoft did back in the browser war days. They require certain defaults to use the "offical" version. The only missing piece is that it's free, but one of those requirements is Google Play.

Edge runs IE.

Not true.
It uses a different engine.

Actually, it's true. Edge is a fork off the IE Trident engine which ran MSIE. They did clean out some of the older MSIE code, but the core engine is still the Trident 11 engine used to run the MSIE in Win 7.

Edge runs IE.

Actually Edge runs..... Edge.

It was called the Edge engine for quite some time (if you ever ran the beta "insider" versions of Windows 10 before it was released you'd know this.) The new browser didn't even have a name. Eventually they just decided to call the whole browser Edge.

It's a ground-up new engine and browser. IE 11 is included in Windows 10 for backwards compatibility.

Edge isn't bad. It's certainly wicked-fast, but I still use Firefox because Edge doesn't yet support all the add-ons and plugins I've come to rely on over the years. That may be it's eventual downfall. MS has gotten a few of the major plugins written for it, but there isn't a lot out there yet.

Actually Edge runs..... Edge.

I do not run Windows 10 and after the fiasco with Windows 8, I will probably never upgrade my current OS.

My opinion is MS modifies a current product and releases that modified code under a new name, so in that context I agree with you that Edge runs Edge code.

The question is where did that Edge code come from? Is it modified IE code or did MS start from scratch and write a whole new program?

Based on MS historical practices, Edge code is modified IE code.

Given that IE only has around 15% market share these days, and people are still getting infections & hijacks in huge numbers, the problem isn't the browser.
It's the user of the system.

Except, every other browser is abandoning the whole Java methodology as being too prone to abuse. A fact I'm aware of, because the software needed to download data from my insulin pump no longer works on most browsers, Edge included. (Note: I got around it by installing an older version of FireFox, but I can never upgrade again!)

Of course, I could step out of the house and get hit by a meteorite.

Nope, more likely a falling space-station toilet seat. 'D (If nothing else, it's certainly more humorous!)

It's the user of the system.

Plus a virus checker that misses some malicious code.

I currently use Windows and know nothing about Linux, but I have been considering switching to Linux.

Your comment rings true to me. I have 2 reasons for considering something other than Windows as my OS:

As someone who started on DOS and then Windows for all my computer needs, I finally switched to the Mac. I sent my information to a friend who works for Apple to order it (she gets me the "friends and family" 15% discount). So now I have to wait to get my new laptop.

As a PC person, I'm very nervous.

As a PC person, I'm very nervous.

Fear of the new and not perfectly known does that to you.

Fear of the new and not perfectly known does that to you.

I'm a huge Word and Excel user. I hope LibreOffice is an easy conversion.

But the Mac is weird. The "delete" key functions as a back delete (like my iPhone) and there's no forward delete. No "end" or "home" key. Not even a numeric keyboard.

And even thought they have a "control" key, some idiot decided to not use it as a control key. You have to use the "command" key when you want a "control" key (like ctl/c).

So many differences.

intuitive

Intuitive simply means easy to work out from past experience so if something is outside your past experience and isn't derived from something you've done before, you're in trouble.

Yet it's rare to never you see it used in that context, certainly in the IT industry.

Well, it's because it is for the ones who say it, and their friends with similar experiences they tested it on.

Take hand guns, the reason they have a 'safety' is so the gun won't accidentally go off if dropped, thus most are a way to block the hammer from falling while the safety is in the on position. They were not intended to stop the trigger from working, although many do that as well. Thus when you have a safety like the Glock were the positive pull action on the trigger disengages the safety many people unfamiliar with the gun think it has no safety because they don't understand the reasoning behind it or the experience with one without the mechanical switch they move.

Yet it's rare to never you see it used in that context, certainly in the IT industry.

I disagree, although certain basics, like WIMP familiarity, are a given.

I had some heated discussions in my IT days. I was a strong advocate of data entry fields being self-explanatory. Others wanted a more succinct approach, claiming that once users had used the help system a few times to understand what was required in each field, they'd know what was needed without being spoon-fed.

Given all the usability problems in the UK's current medical IT systems, I think the self-explanatory approach hasn't been adopted.

AJ

I think the self-explanatory approach hasn't been adopted.

It's intuitive [ :) ] that people have problems with communicating with each other, so an explanation of what a field's title is requesting is always a good idea. But why do they hide those explanations? :)

Intuitive simply means easy to work out from past experience so if something is outside your past experience and isn't derived from something you've done before, you're in trouble.

Except, 'intuitive' typically describes a change from the traditional that's easy to learn, simple to incorporate and faster to use. That's what finally set Apple apart, not their foreign Mac software, but their easy to use iOS tools (which were widely copied by everyone, allowing other develops to build credibility quickly without as much work, but also cements the new usages in everyone's mind).

Apple's 'no one needs to see how files are handled' have been an unmitigated disaster for the past couple decades!

learning how to use something new is just a matter of trial and error & frustration

True, although if things are organized in what you think of as logical, it seems intuitive.

So we learnt how to use a toilet- monkey see, monkey do.

I sure hope not, because monkeys often do do-do wrong! Poop is for flushing (or picking up in bags), not for throwing at your friends and family. Though I do like your analogy, comparing modern OSs with poop receptacles. :)

I'm a huge Word and Excel user. I hope LibreOffice is an easy conversion.

I used MS Word and Excel for many years, even taught some classes on how to use them. If you remember what MS Word and Excel were like in the pre-ribbon days, you know what Libre Office is like. I know people who switched to Libre Office because they found that easier to do than going from the pre-ribbon Word to the Ribbon Word.

How it'll go on Mac I don't know, since I use Zorin Linux.

One thing, the LO spreadsheet calc is good, and does everything I ask for, those who do very advanced spreadsheets say it's not quite as good as Excel for the more complex uses. Although I've found it can do everything I've ever done in Excel.

So many differences.

. . . and a whole new set of terminology to learn.

As a PC person, I'm very nervous.

Expect to be lost for several days. I have problems helping my wife when she has a problem with using her MAC.

As a PC person, I'm very nervous.

Nothing to be nervous about. Check out a couple of guides to the Mac for windows users.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204216

http://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/mac/pc-users-guide-mac-how-do-things-3470332/

Plenty of details how to use a Mac for windows users.

After the first twenty days of exclusive Mac use you should be as comfortable with it as you are with windows now.

Nothing to be nervous about. Check out a couple of guides to the Mac for windows users.

I will do that. Thanks so much. :)

As a PC person, I'm very nervous.

As many have said, most of the major programs are identical between systems. There are less 3rd party programs, which in itself offers more security, and the majority of those are various games, but after the more recent Mac OS updates, the file management is much more PC like than it used to be.

1. Windows is DOS driven, and with all the mods MS has been making to Windows, Windows now seems even buggier than it used to.

Not knowing what version of Windows you use, it's hard to relate. I haven't had a "blue screen" in several years that I couldn't directly attribute to bad hardware. I went bonkers for a couple of months before I finally realized that old Soundblaster card was causing crashed.

Windows hasn't been "DOS driven" for a couple of decades now. Not that I see why that's a big deal.

2. Windows is a favorite target of hackers and people who plant Virus's, Worms, Trojans, and other malicious code on Internet websites.

This is true, and actually more accurately stated than most. Most people say Windows is less secure, which is not true, more targeted is. The most pervasive OS virus in history was actually an OS-X virus that infected 6% of all Macs worldwide. About three times the infection rate of Blaster which hit 2% of all PCs. Then again there are 20X the number of PCs in the world.

This is becoming less of an issue. Windows has made great strides in security since XP service pack 2.

What they can't do is stop you from logging in as an admin, clicking OK on the UAC screen, or failing to update things like Flash and Java. Whatever happened, it's probably your fault.

Then again my own mother handed me her I-pad once. The whole screen was, well, BOOBIES! Seems like a vulnerable version of, get this, AOL Instant Messenger, redirected all her Web views to I-Bang.com. Yes, funny as shit, my 78 year-old mom wit da pron virus! Apple had no clue and wouldn't acknowledge there was even a problem.

Really though I haven't had a virus on my personal PC in a decade, and the only thing I use is Windows Defender. Firefox, for instance, shuts down Flash when it has a reported vulnerability and I avoid Java like the plague.

Always know where software you install comes from and if it seems awesome and it's free, it's probably a scam.

Not knowing what version of Windows you use, it's hard to relate.

I run Widows 7.

Several years back the OS seemed to be a relatively stable platform that caused me no noticeable problems. Since then, MS has released numerous patches and upgrades to the OS code my computer was running.

After each MS patch, I seem to have more problems with Windows and Windows Explorer. For example, Windows used to load quickly, but now it takes much longer. Windows Explorer has a problem loading and displaying its browser screen. The error message I get indicates WE cannot locate and link with the MS website that supports WE.

The "blue screen" you refer to originated from the OS crashes of Windows NT, which was a common occurrence at the time. The crashes may have been due to hardware conflict or a conflict with the hardware's firmware. I have only experienced the "blue screen" twice in the past 40 years, and the crashes were resolved with a reboot using the same computer hardware/software/firmware configuration. So the cause was not related to my computer and I have no idea what may have caused those crashes for I was using one of my application programs and was not surfing the internet at the time of the crash.

This or PC only, but it puts to shame the Freecell that comes with Windows.
http://solitairelaboratory.com/fcpro.html

I'll try it when I get my own Mac. Thx.

Just clarifying that by PC, I meant it's a Windows program.

That's how I understood it. PC = Windows. Mac = Apple.

OK I've posted on this enough.

Where we really diverge is that, like I said, I've been an IT professional for three decades.

You aren't.

That's not a bad thing, but you must understand that it was my job. I was responsible. In most cases, with servers, my standard was 99.7% uptime. My standard earlier, was 2.3 hours from report of a desktop problem to resolution (my earlier job was running a helpdesk for the Corp of Engineers).

You simply can't do that with Linux. Where the fuck would I even find the employees to do that?

You need structure and accountability to do the job, and no matter what the strong points of Linux are, those two are the bottom of the list.

Fini

Once trust is lost, product quality is irrelevant. It no longer matters.

Which is why I decided to go Mac.

Of course the number two and number 5 selling software products for OS-X are both products that.... let you run Windows on your Mac.

Number one is Microsoft Office.

Once trust is lost, product quality is irrelevant. It no longer matters.

I agree. The problem as I see it is two fold. 1) Who should I trust to replace my current system? and 2) Does the replacement system have applications to replace those I now use that I can afford?

#2 of course is based on the replacement applications accepting my current file formats.

whatever expert advice you accept

That by itself is a problem. When we read articles on the Internet, most of the authors of the articles are not known to us. If they sound like an expert, we tend to think of them as experts. I suspect that many of these authors are self-anointed experts who are just repeating what many other self-anointed experts said in their articles. The cycle of perpetuating misinformation goes on and on.

Finding an expert when their background is not provided in an article is extremely difficult.

Just consider all the differing opinions in this thread. We aren't all right, but we may all be wrong to one degree or the other.

So... jump in and swim. The water's fine.

I have been. The same stroke is getting boring. :)

Try the breast stroke.

There are only 3 strokes of interest to me. That is one of them. :)

more than three for most of us.

Doesn't need it, don't like them, don't want one, and 1 of my 3 favorite types of strokes.

2. Unix and Linux are the two most secure computer operating systems in existence today and for a few decades.

I think that depends on your interpretation of 'secure'.

If you mean their track records of being hacked are better than eg Windows, that's true. But Windows has been targeted by a disproportionate number of hackers.

If you mean in an absolute sense, ie safe from teams of hackers starting from scratch and tackling each operating system equally, then the result could go either way. I can remember some pretty major weaknesses being found in unix and it's very unlikely they've all been found and fixed.

5. Every software project and package in the approved Linux system is heavily tested for security and errors, unlike some other OSs.

I don't believe the free community can afford to test their offerings as thoroughly as multinational giants who have paid teams of testers, and yet look how many bugs they let through!

Having said that, I would encourage anyone thinking of trying unix/linux to give it a go. The free community has no commercial interest in making their offerings regularly obsolescent, so if you want a system that will still work in the same way and run the same software in 5-10 years time, it's the obvious choice.

AJ

I think that depends on your interpretation of 'secure'.

Secure in that the software is checked for all known attacks, errors, and hacks. Secure as in as soon as a new type of attack is made known they immediately set to rewriting the code to stop the attack from working. Secure as in being so tightly and well written it's extremely hard to create a hack for it.

Now, there are other software companies that think none of the above actions are needed for most attacks, and only take action when threatened by authorities. But we aren't discussing them in this sub-thread.

..................

As to your comment on testing, most of the free community do a hell of a lot more testing than the companies that spend mega millions on advertising. Some of the free community programmer work for the big companies during the day and do their free community work on their own time, and they've often complained the big companies won't let them do the level of testing they do in the free software work. Ask Stallman about that.

But Windows has been targeted by a disproportionate number of hackers.

Is that because Windows is easier to hack?

I think that depends on your interpretation of 'secure'.

I remember Larry Ellison (Oracle) offering a "reward" to anyone who broke into their Unix servers. No one was able to do it.

Can you put a date to that offer? It didn't happen when I was around so I'd guess it was more recent.

AJ

Can you put a date to that offer?

I guess it was in 2001. Here's an article I found on it:
http://www.geek.com/news/oracle-challenges-hackers-544085/

I remember that. It wasn't Unix they were invited to hack but Oracle's latest database version.

AJ

It wasn't Unix they were invited to hack but Oracle's latest database version.

Running on Unix.

Running on Unix.

I don't remember but I would imagine so. I don't think the PC version would have been able to cope with enough users/hackers.

AJ

Every Linux distribution has someone who is responsible for everything in it, some are just more trustworthy than others. Also, every package within Linux has a person who's responsible for the project and the coding team who works with them on it. Here's some websites with some information.

WOW! Nice step-around! "Responsible" means different things to different people. I'm responsible for my stories, but if you waste a few hours of your life reading them I'm not going to refund you for your time. Nor will ANY "responsible" party for a Linux desktop distro ever answer your support call, or email, or anything. There are some companies that sell support contracts for their server distros. I mean IT'S FREE! until something goes wrong. I'm not sure you can even buy that for any desktop Linux distro.

ny software written for Unix or Linux will work with all the other forks of Unix and Linux,

Drink the kool-aid man!

Really, in the last five years (which is what we should care about) Linux is easily the most insecrue server OS. Windows server has a pretty good record over that time compared to it.

It is absolutely true that Windows desktop continues to have the most attacks among desktop operating systems, mostly phishing. Linux based IOT devices are easily the most passively targeted however.

There is never a cure for a dumb operator though. We used to close a lot of tickets with the resolution "loose nut between keyboard and chair".

Actually, I have been intimately involved in the MS upgrade path and decisions of large corporations. As a high level MS partner, we were always early in the upgrade cycle. MS promised much! No more 'Blue screens of death' was one. No more reboots was another. All lies. There are very good reasons anyone should hesitate in upgrading frequently. It costs a LOT of money, with little or no return in productivity or cost savings. When asked why they couldn't just fixed the current release of Windows, MS said it would take too long ... they had many more features they wanted to release first ... and that the new release would fix 'most' of the bugs and security issues ...
MS has improved the IT industry by providing a standard that applications can be written to and then sold. That said, I would not be an early user of any new hardware or software. This is one reason I alway buy the 's' release of an iphone. By the way, I'm not an Apple fan, even though I use an iphone. I don't use a MAC.

So Billy became rich,

If I'm remembering right, what made him rich was that he held on to the rights to sell DOS to non-IBM systems.

have

Another interesting thought is: Who came up with the idea to license DOS instead of selling the rights?

Another interesting thought is: Who came up with the idea to license DOS instead of selling the rights?

Bill Gates. That's what I said made him rich.

Bill Gates.

Or he was smart enough to listen to that other guy and became rich.

Hmm, wonder who actually did those negotiations. We assume it was Bill Gates, but could have been someone else.

It was Bill, he was the marketing guru and had done some pre-law courses, and there's accounts from way back then of the people involved on both sides saying ti was Bill.

The big reason DoS took off was it was before the free software of Linux was and Free BSD were around and the other software available was selling for ten times what MS was charging.

The big reason DoS took off

The reason DOS took off was because it was installed on the PCs people bought.

The reason DOS took off was because it was installed on the PCs people bought.

I don't know what it wa like in the USA, but down here, and also in what we could see in the advertising around the world, your choices were:

IBM with IBM or Lotus software - cost on desk with OS and office suite about AUD$7,500

Apple computer with similar software - cost on desk about AUD$10,000

or IBM Clone (Asian copy of IBM) with no software, cost about AUD$2,500 and you could buy MS-DOS, MS Word, MS Excel for about AUD$500 for the three. total cost of $3,000

right up until about 1995 when Dell and HP started to really push the market here most people bought the software separate to the PC. Then the factory built systems with factory loaded software started to become cheaper than the IBM clones in the small IT shops.

It wasn't until the early 2000 that the factory built Dells etc started to kill off the small IT shops and take over the new PC market here.

In the early days the software from everyone but MS cost about AUD$1,500 to $2,500 per package, but MS was selling the same stuff at $100 a package.

I don't know what it wa like in the USA, but down here, and also in what we could see in the advertising around the world, your choices were:

IBM with IBM or Lotus software - cost on desk with OS and office suite about AUD$7,500

My first PC was an IBM PC with DOS. The software was Wordstar and Visicalc. It had 2 floppy drives (there were no hard drives then), 64K memory, a dot matrix printer, and a color monitor. I also bought Assembler. It cost me around $5,000. It must have been around 1980.

It must have been around 1980.

Yeah, those were the horrible old days. :)

I recall having to provide a Statement of Work description for one task of a contract proposal my company was developing. I had only been a computer user for about a year; I used a typewriter before that. When I went into the proposal center, there was a guy in the process of loading something into one of the original MacIntosh computers. I think it was a 512K model, but it may have been a 128K unit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_128K#Timeline_of_compact_Macintosh_models

I observed as he kept looking at that tiny 9" screen while he swapped out 3.5" hard floppy disks. I didn't know what he was doing for I wasn't a PC user at the time, and I thought he was wasting a lot of time with his little toy. Especially when I considered he would have to retype the hard copy of the description I had given him in order to get it into his toy computer.

I used a "dumb" 14" terminal to send text and commands to our mainframe's Xedit script program to create and print documents. I didn't know what the program was; we just called it Script. All I knew were the Script commands necessary to create a document, format its contents, and save it to the mainframe's hard disk. I later learned those commands where a few of the early HTML commands.

I recall having to provide a Statement of Work description for one task of a contract proposal my company was developing. I had only been a computer user for about a year; I used a typewriter before that.

I had a friend in the "good old days" who was an engineer for the City of NY. It was when the Texas Instruments calculator came out. He got one, but the condition was they figure a way to chain it to his desk. They used the policy for computers for his calculator.

They used the policy for computers for his calculator.

I've heard of misapplication of Company Policies before, but that takes the cake.

The first PC I built, or in this case re-built was what I refer to as an IBM PC-2.

I took a chassis from an original IBM PC, replaced it with the second-gen board, (256kb of RAM, WOO-HOO!) I replaced the anemic 60w power supply, added a pair of, wait-for-it, yes, 720kb-full-height-5.25" floppy drives!

Oh and that awesome monitor. It could display text in green OR orange! With the flip of a switch!

I actually built it for my aunt who was doing a family history. (I actually do have an Aunt Rose).

I took a chassis from an original IBM PC, replaced it with the second-gen board, (256kb of RAM, WOO-HOO!) I replaced the anemic 60w power supply, added a pair of, wait-for-it, yes, 720kb-full-height-5.25" floppy drives!

LUXURY!

(courtesy of Monty Python cardboard box sketch)

AJ

Your first PC sounds a lot like the second hand PC my employer gave me. Did Aunt Rose sell it to anyone? :)

Your first PC sounds a lot like the second hand PC my employer gave me. Did Aunt Rose sell it to anyone? :)

Well that wasn't my first PC. Mine was a TI-994A. It was the first IBM compatible PC I built. I actually had a Tandy 1000HX at the time. The first "IBM Compatible" PC I built for myself was a 286. Cleverly I swapped out the 10mhz clock chip for a 12mhz version, put in an Adaptec RLL controller so I could reformat my MFM drives with about 45% more capacity, and bought a screaming 2400bps modem. :p

The next one was a 386 I used to run my BBS in the late 80's and early 90's in Savannah. It used Gap BBS under DOS/Desqview running 5 lines on US Robotics modems. It was cleverly named "The Savannah BBS".

Aunt Rose actually used that thing, along with an Okidata dot-matrix printer for quite some time. The only thing that I know of that she used it for was Wordperfect. No idea where it ended up, it would be fun to play with now.

Blame IBM. But really, Linux wasn't even a glimmer in Linu's eye then. Unix was a Mainframe OS.

More minicomputers than mainframes. The first computer to run Unix was the PDP-7. I first used it on a PDP-11/45.

More minicomputers than mainframes. The first computer to run Unix was the PDP-7. I first used it on a PDP-11/45.

When I first encountered Unix, it was on minicomputers. I was working for a company that produced mainframes and Unix simply didn't have the multi-user capability to be considered a mainframe. I don't know what changed - perhaps Unix has improved, perhaps Moore's law eroded the inadequacy.

AJ

I was working for a company that produced mainframes and Unix simply didn't have the multi-user capability to be considered a mainframe.

All computers work in what's called Machine Language right up to when IBM made the documentation on the ISA system all the computer companies had their own machine language and every one spoke a different language to the rest - this was very true of the mainframes. I'm not sure when or why, but for some reason the people working with the minicomputers had a lot of the language the same, and that meant software for one could work on another.

When the company I was working for in the early 1980s sold mainframe printers we had to find out exactly what mainframe and software the client had so we could install and test the proper communications card to allow the printer to talk to the computer. When I started there it was a lot simpler than it had been, because at that time the choices were down to only two - serial or parallel, but I heard all the horror stories of what it used to be like.

Essentially, your software and hardware for a Prime system wouldn't work on anything but a Prime system, ditto with the IBM mainframe software, etc.

Essentially, your software and hardware for a Prime system wouldn't work on anything but a Prime system, ditto with the IBM mainframe software, etc.

I worked for Prime during the transition from the 750 to the 9000 series. One of my biggest projects was working in Primix, a Unix-like environment for PRIMOS.

but for some reason

I don't know the reason either. I suspect it may have had something to do with companies not sharing (or limited sharing of) their information with other companies, so their choice was a standard within their company. Whereas, individuals running home computers wanted to share information with others, so they needed a common means for exchanging information or for translating between two or more means.

Unix was a Mainframe OS.

Not on IBM mainframes.

I started programming on the IBM 360s. They ran MFT and later MVT. When I joined the company they were replacing the 7080s (or was it 7090s?) with them. I don't know what OS they ran, but it wasn't Unix.

Not on IBM mainframes.

I do tend to lump -ix operating systems together. Was the IBM system not based on Unix? Certainly AIX was later.

I tended to come into the industry from the PC side, I learned CPM, DOS, Unix, (and Solaris and AIX, like I say, I lump them together) and Windows in that order.

https://storiesonline.net/s/49108/the-preacher-man

No even then I had a friend that installed Unix on a 286 PC. He insisted that was the only thing to worry about. Mind you Unix ran on, for the time HUGE mainframes. The OS would run on an IBM compatible PC, but zero software was available.

But you have struck into the heart of the matter. IBM put their name on the line and quite frankly IBM WAS computing in the early 80's. But it used an open patent on what was to become the ISA bus. (for those of you confused, this was essentially the way the CPU talked with everything else.)Then it compounded that failure on licensing DOS.

IBM didn't really own the PC anymore, and it didn't own the software that ran it.