Windows XP Shows the Direction Microsoft is Going

Executioner · Post by **Executioner** » Tue Mar 18, 2003 4:39 pm

This is a pretty intresting article on Window's OS's, specifically XP:
http://www.hevanet.com/peace/microsoft.htm

They also talk about SP1, and how it did not fix any of the security problems with the original release, and the items mentioned in the article. After reading this entire article, makes me want to keep using Win98 LOL.

Judg3 · Post by **Judg3** » Tue Mar 18, 2003 5:15 pm

Articles like this really piss me off.

Especially stuff such as "Windows might not be secure locally" "There's programs you can install to change the admin pass" "You can install a new copy of Windows and bypass security"

My response to that?

THATS THE WAY IT SHOULD BE DAMN IT! Physical security isn't MS's job. Give me physical access to a Linux box, I'll reboot it and at the boot prompt type "Linux single", boo-ya, there ya go - I have root and didn't need to enter a password.
Works like that with all operating systems for the most part. Network security problems? Go ahead and yell. But not being smart enough to lock the door? Don't go whining to MS.

They complain about MS making an EOL (End of Life) for Windows 98 - 7 YEARS after it was released.

Redhat won't provide support for a system that's older then 6 months.

And about MS setting it up for your OS to talk to their servers, well hell - most of those items make sense.

Time service? Well, where else is MS going to point the time servers to that they A. have permission from and B. are sure the servers will be there down the road.

File Signature Verification: Hrmmmm, If I bought a piece of hardware yesterday that's brand new, how would XP know if the driver was verified, unless it can go out and ask MS "I have this new driver, but it's not listed in my database, is it in yours?" - Perfect sense to me

Microsoft Network Availability Test - Do I even have to mention anything about this? Isn't the name more then sufficient?

Microsoft Direct Play Voice Test - Same thing here.

Yeah, some of those requests are shady, I'll agree, and MS doesn't believe in full disclosure, but overall I'm just tired of all the over-hyped crap about XP. It's like making a big deal about the fact that pouring water on your PC may kill it.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Tue Mar 18, 2003 5:49 pm

I agree with the local security issue. If someone has physical access to the box, all bets are off. It's stupid to complain about such things.

If local physical security is an issue (and it's not in most situations) then it's incumbent on the administrator to physically secure the box (IE: put it in a locked room, restrict physical access to it, etc).

In exceptional cases where physical security is EXTREMELY necessary, there are third party solutions (data encryption, file shredding, etc). Why should we all have to pay for the R&D when only an extremely small percentage of users require this kind of security?

Executioner · Post by **Executioner** » Tue Mar 18, 2003 8:45 pm

I agree with the security stuff, but what I found intresting is the resource problem and his comments of MS doing it on purpose to get more money from consumers since they would have to upgrade to prevent the OS from crashing. Remember Windows 3.x and the 2 little 64kb stacks? I remember buying a piece of software (ram doubler) that would double these heaps to prevent Windows 3.x crashing. Worked pretty well as I used it for 2 years until Win95 came out.

Deliberately allowed to crash.
Resource Meter, a Microsoft program supplied with Windows 98, is able to predict most Windows 98 crashes. It would have been easy to integrate this program into the Win 98 operating system and program it to prevent the running of additional programs or to provide an error message, rather than let the OS crash. Microsoft did not do this. See below for information about how to run a test yourself.

Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows ME (all closely related to each other) were designed in such a way that it was inevitable that they would crash. Windows 95 was originally designed with a 64 kilobyte limitation on some resources that would have caused it to crash sooner than it does. Protests by knowledgeable people at that time caused Microsoft to increase that artificial limit to 128 kilobytes. At that time, memory was very expensive. When memory became cheaper, and it became common that people would run more than one big program at the same time, crashing became extremely common.

Microsoft did nothing to solve the problem. It might not have been possible to fix the problem in an elegant way, but it was, and is, possible to fix the problem. Therefore, it seems reasonable to say that the crashing is deliberate Microsoft policy. The crashing is often given as the biggest problem users have with Windows 98 SE (Second Edition); if it were fixed with a simple patch, many people would not buy Windows XP.

Here's a test you can do easily on a Windows 98, Windows 98 SE, or Windows ME system. Start the program called Resource Meter by clicking on Programs/ Accessories/ System Tools/ Resource Meter. If you copy the icon and put it into your Startup folder, Resource Meter will start every time you start Windows.

Resource Meter displays three quantities: System Resources, User Resources, and GDI Resources. It is the limited User Resources and GDI Resources that cause Windows to crash. No matter how much memory you have in your computer, if you use close to the limit of User Resources or GDI Resources, Microsoft Windows 95, 98, or ME will crash. For 16 bit programs, User Resources and GDI Resources are limited to 128 kilobytes each. That's 128,000 bytes (approximately, because of a different scheme of counting memory), no matter how much memory you have installed. For 32 bit programs, User Resources and GDI Resources are limited to 2 Megabytes each. These limitations are known to a few computer professionals, and are sometimes discussed in technical forums. However, very few users know about the limitations, and most don't know why their systems crash.

If you run Resource Meter and watch it carefully, you can, usually, prevent crashes by closing a program whenever you get close to crashing. This doesn't work, however, when a program makes a request for memory that is unexpectedly large. Instead of refusing the request and giving a message to the user, Windows will crash.

The resource design limits are especially cruel to users because they lose their work when their systems crash. They are also cruel because users often spend money to install more memory in their computers, not realizing it won't make a difference.

Why would Microsoft allow deliberate limitations? Apparently because it be the only way to get users to spend more money to upgrade later. For most users, the only reason to buy Windows XP is because it crashes less.

Windows XP doesn't crash, it becomes less usable. Windows XP doesn't have the artificial GDI and User resource limitations of Windows 95, 98, and ME. All of the installed memory is available to the Windows XP operating system when it needs it. However Windows XP becomes shaky when enough programs are loaded that all of the installed memory is in use.

Windows XP, and all modern operating systems, have a feature called virtual memory that is supposed to put programs on the hard disk that are loaded but not being currently used. However, this feature does not work well in Windows XP. When the memory limit is reached, a Windows XP system takes a long time to respond and does a lot of disk access. Sometimes the disk access, called "thrashing" because it indicates something is not working properly, continues for 45 seconds or 90 seconds or more after clicking on a loaded program to bring it to the top of the desktop. The result is that Windows XP becomes less usable and eventually must be rebooted.

In contrast, the virtual memory feature in the Linux operating system works extremely well. There is disk access, of course, but only what would be expected.

Microsoft seems to know about the problem. If there are more than 21 programs loaded, the programs may be presented out of order on the taskbar. Some programs may not be displayed on the taskbar, and the ones that aren't displayed change as you use them. This seems to be a way of discouraging users from opening many programs at the same time, so that they won't experience the problem with virtual memory.

Sorry Judg3 if it pissed you off. I just thought the article was intresting and a different point of view.

Judg3 · Post by **Judg3** » Wed Mar 19, 2003 1:48 am

lol, don't worry ex - I wasn't *seriously* kicking and screaming pissed off, it's just I have about 450 million friends who are Linux zealots, plus I browse slashdot.org all the time, and so I hear "MS sucks" all the time. And they cite pages like this, where it's either facts taken out of context, or outright Anti-MS guesses by people.

Stuff like the Win9x resource meter being a God send and how MS makes systems crash. And how XP doesn't crash, but becomes less useable.

To me, it's almost like he's saying "Look, XP is a lot better". The 9x resource meter is notoriously known for being a major resource hog itself, as well as being buggy and not reliable.
Not only that, but MS doesn't "Artificially make Windows 9x crash", about 90% of all stability problems from the 9x series kernel (Windows 95, 98, 98se, ME) stem from DOS 16-bit compatibility. Take away full compatibility (ALA Windows 2000/XP) and emulate a DOS environment inside of Windows and stability goes through the roof and Windows can now access more of the hardware on the system, without forcing itself to be limited to a set amount because of the built in 16but subsystem.

I don't want to sound like the #1 MS fanboy, but I wish people would do some research before they write articles that end up being fodder in the Anti-MS machine.

I use all of the big 3, MS, Mac and Linux, and feel they all have their strengths and weaknesses as well as a place on the market. I don't bash any of them, because of this. I wish more people where the same.

(Note: This isn't a personal attack on you, Executioner, it's more of a rant about the billion web pages out there I run across hehe. Don't worry, I yell at Pro-MS webpages that are full of FUD as well)

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Wed Mar 19, 2003 7:07 am

The guy definitely has a vendetta for MS. Like Judg I have to say that it's WAY overboard.

So according to this guy all MS OSes are inherently unstable, including servers? Or do they remove the artificial bugs in servers? Give me a break.

There are a lot of reasons why Win9x was unstable when you ran multiple programs, and it was mostly unavoidable because Win9x ran under DOS and was not a multitasking/multithreading environment. If you needed stability you used NT or Win2K (when it was released).

NT was the paragon of stability.

Yes I'm certain Microsoft is inventing reasons to sell us a new OS (look at WinME - an OS that was almost ENTIRELY a marketing scam) but they don't have to sabotage their own code to do it, and it certainly doesn't help them to do so.

There are easier ways to do that. For example: MS was initially going to provide USB support in 95 (which it did get in a very limited fashion) and NT. Then MS changed their mind at the last minute (doubtless realizing how import USB was going to be) and killed USB until 98 and 2K was released thus guaranteeing a quicker migration to the newer OSes.

I always resented that. I loved WinNT Pro and would have stayed with NT longer if it wasn't for the lack of USB support.

Slugbait · Post by **Slugbait** » Wed Mar 19, 2003 12:01 pm

Business Week posted this past year's "101 Dumbest Moments in Business." Senior VP Brian Valentine (the guy who shipped 2K and XP) made Number 5.

5 Celebrating the can-do spirit that continues to make American capitalism the envy of the world.
At a developers conference in September, Microsoft (MSFT) senior vice president Brian Valentine describes the state of the art in OS security: "Every operating system out there is about equal.... We all suck."

If they thought it was something dumb to say, they should be including themselves in this list.