On 10/16/2011 20:18, Jim Henderson wrote:
> I cited a counterexample, and you changed the criteria.

Yes. I clarified.  Why, are we keeping score?

> They do indeed.  I'm sure they could work out a licensing arrangement for
> "approved by Microsoft" software if they wanted to, and take a cut for
> distribution.
>
> Apple does, after all.

Well, as I said, so does Microsoft.

Say, here's an idea. Why don't you go work for Microsoft and explain to them 
why they're losing so much money? :-)  I mean, seriously, why are you 
arguing to *me* that Microsoft should be offering this service for a fee?

> So, that can happen on both Linux and Windows.  I'm not sure what your
> point is.

My point is that in spite of how I'm interpreting your claims, Windows does 
indeed have "software management elements" in their OS and supporting software.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   How come I never get only one kudo?

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On 10/16/2011 20:15, Jim Henderson wrote:
> However, saying that using Explorer is easier than using find or locate
> is ridiculous.  I type much faster than I use the mouse.

I didn't say everything. I just said some. Are you really going to argue 
that there's no improvement possible?

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   How come I never get only one kudo?

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>> The point being, if you want to store some binary data in the middle of
>> a textual configuration file, you have to base64 encode it or something
>> (which is less efficient). If you want to stick some binary data in the
>> registry, you can just store it as binary.
>
> No, you don't have to encode it as base64.  It's perfectly legal to
> create a file with text components and binary components.  Because it's
> just a file.

It's perfectly *legal*, but nobody does it because then you wouldn't be 
able to just throw the file through grep or something and expect it to work.

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>>>> Oh, tremendously. But they're still a PITA compared to Windows'
>>>> explorer, methinks.
>>>
>>> Depends entirely on what you're used to.
>>
>> Not /entirely/, no. Many things are subjective, but not all of them.
>
> When it comes to user selection of tools, yes, they are.  If I find
> something easy to use, who are you to tell me "no, that's not easy"?

If product A is lacking a major, important feature, and product B isn't, 
then which one is better? Clearly this is objective, not subjective.

(The only way it becomes subjective is if the feature in question is 
only useful to some people.)

I'll grant you *most* things in tool selection are quite subjective. I'm 
just saying that not *all* of it is.

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On 08/10/2011 10:38 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> Obviously you don't know many Linux users.  I know at least 5,000, and
> many of them not only love and use the GUI, but tend to have religious
> wars over which GUI is better.

That is another point against Linux. Why would I want to join a 
community of religious fundamentalists?
Any day now I expect a knock on my door and open it to find two smartly 
dressed penguin missionaries.


-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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>>> A more appropriate comparison is latest against latest.
>>
>> I don't know how big the latest version of Windows is. I've never
>> installed it. More to the point, I don't know of anybody who's using it
>> yet.
>
> Windows 7.  You might have heard of it.

I've heard of it, yes. What I *said* is that I don't know how big it is. 
And that I haven't seen anybody using it.

>>> Yeah, ultimately, you gave up without asking for help.  If you'd asked
>>> for help, someone probably would've been able to help you.
>>
>> 1. You're assuming that it's /possible/ to fix this.
>
> I'm basing that assumption on years of experience in troubleshooting
> Linux systems.
>
> You're giving up and assuming it's impossible to fix it, so why bother
> even asking for help?
>
> *That's* absurd.

Ultimately, it's "possible" to fix anything. You could reimplement the 
entire OS, for example. (Isn't that how Linux came to exist in the first 
place?) But that's far beyond my level of skill. For all practical 
purposes, that's "impossible". Not every computer problem is solvable.

>> 2. You're assuming that had I asked, somebody would have actually
>> bothered to reply. And that their reply would have been helpful.
>
> Again, based on decades of experience in online forums.  Is there a
> chance of a useless answer or no answer?  Sure.  But I guarantee you you
> won't get an answer IF YOU DON'T FUCKING ASK.

My limited experience is that when you ask for help, you get no reply. 
Or you get a few replies from people who don't really know how to help 
you, but they try to offer you some kind of useful information anyway.

>> As I say, I can get Linux to /work/ OK. Indeed, my dad still uses it on
>> a daily basis. It's just that one or two things - like getting the
>> package manager to install just the packages I actually need - are
>> annoyingly fiddly.
>
> If you asked for help in understanding it, you might just learn something.
>
> Heaven forbid *that* should happen. ;)

What's to understand? Dependencies are tracked at a fairly coarse level. 
It is what it is. Just live with it...

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On 16/10/2011 11:58 PM, Darren New wrote:
> On 10/10/2011 3:11, Invisible wrote:
>> Every Windows protocol I know of sends everything unencrypted by
>> default, and most of them offer no possibility of adding encryption.
>
> Actually, every internet protocol up to about the invention of SSL sends
> everything unecrypted by default. Including the Windows protocols.
>
> Pretty much everything after SSL is encrypted.

1. Isn't it TLS now?

2. There are Internet protocols *newer* than TLS? (OK, well I'm sure 
there are, but does anybody *use* them?)

3. Since old versions of Windows send everything unencrypted, you would 
think that means that new versions have to send everything unencrypted 
too, for the sake of backwards compatibility.

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>> Fact: It doesn't matter how strong the authentication process is. This
>> does not automatically mean that the data that follows is encrypted in
>> any way at all.
>
> No, it doesn't

OK, now we agree on something.

>>> Nope, 1200 packets, nothing in the clear.
>>
>> And how do you tell whether random binary data is encrypted or not?
>
> There's nothing "in the clear".  I connected to the system, opened a CMD
> window, and listed directory contents.

Right. So it send a bunch of image bitmaps to you. And you can tell just 
from a hex dump that it was encrypted?

> That, plus the fact that it, you know, actually is *documented* to be
> encrypted.

It's news to me that there /is/ any such documentation.

> Yes, I do.  However, *weak* encryption is still, you know, *encryption*.

Weak encryption is virtually no better than no encryption at all. If you 
want encryption, you want strong encryption.

> But it's still encryption.  You asserted that it's not encrypted.  I
> proved that it was.  Now, if you want to talk about encryption
> *strength*, that's different than, you know, whether it's encrypted or
> not.

If you're sending traffic over the Internet, it needs to have strong 
encryption. Since the debate is about whether you need to add additional 
security to RDP or not, it's kinda relevant.

>> Every Windows protocol I know of sends everything
>> unencrypted by default, and most of them offer no possibility of adding
>> encryption. I'd be rather surprised if RDP is different.
>
> Well, it's just documented as being enabled by default.  Like your VPN.
> How do you know your VPN is actually encrypted?

I'm not saying that RDP isn't encrypted. I'm saying I'm extremely 
surprised that it's encrypted, given that none of the dozens of other 
Windows wire protocols offer any encryption at all.

>>> Oh, and I pointed you at an SSH server for Windows.  It comes with
>>> Cygwin.
>>
>> Right. I didn't know about that when I set this up.
>
> You knew about it before you made this post.  So now you know it's
> available so you can use it.

I set this encrypted link up *years* ago, long before this discussion 
started.

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>> Wait - YaST has documentation?
>
> Um, yes.  man yast for starters.

Surely that just tells you the command name and what switches it has?

>>> OSS is big about community.
>>
>> That sounds very nice and all, but if I'm trying to quickly set
>> something up, I don't really want to have to go onto the Internet and
>> beg for help, and then spend a week or two hoping that somebody
>> knowledgeable will just happen across my message and actually take the
>> time to give me a helpful response. I want to read a manual that tells
>> me how to do this RIGHT NOW.
>
> Right, you'd rather struggle with it for weeks and weeks and then bitch
> about how difficult it is to do anything.
>
> Instead of asking a question and getting an answer within a couple of
> days so you can actually use it.

You're assuming that I'm just doing it wrong, and not that it's actually 
a poorly designed system.

>>> I guess I imagined all those Technet articles that have the warning I
>>> sited earlier about how editing the registry can screw your system up.
>>> That must be it, because of course Microsoft would *never* recommend
>>> you do something that might bork your system.
>>
>> The warning is partly there because if you're a clueless user who
>> doesn't know how to work a computer properly, it's very easy to do a
>> hell of a lot of damage using a registry editor. Personally, I have
>> almost never borked my system by editing the registry. The only time
>> it's happened is when I started deleting stuff at random in a desperate
>> attempt to make something work. If you follow the instructions, it works
>> fine.
>
> So, modifying it is dangerous.  Or not.  The warnings don't exist.  Or
> they do.
>
> Gotcha.

FFS... Inexpert registry editing can screw up your system. Just like 
going into a random system folder and deleting files can screw up your 
system. If you're knowledgeable enough to not do things like that, then 
it's perfectly safe to edit the registry. (And yes, the documentation 
has warnings all over the place in case some random user types some 
stuff into Google and ends up on a technical information page telling 
you how to edit registry keys.)

>> My point remains: It's very uncommon to /need/ to touch the registry in
>> the first place. Whereas under Unix, the text configuration files are
>> the first port of call, not the last. That's just the difference in
>> design mentality.
>
> Unless you use YaST, webmin, or one of a myriad of other Linux
> configuration tools.

In my experience:

1. The user-friendly front-ends tend to be quite fragile. If something 
breaks, you still need to go edit the underlying text file by hand.

2. The user-friendly tools are completely different for every distro. If 
you know how to edit the Apache configuration files, you can configure 
Apache on any system. If you only know how to do it with YaST, you're 
going to have a heck of a lot of trouble setting up Apache on Debian.

Whether different distros should be considered "different products" is 
an open question, of course. But lots of people seem to think that you 
can "know Linux", and that means you can work any variant of Linux.

>>> Obviously you don't know many Linux users.  I know at least 5,000, and
>>> many of them not only love and use the GUI, but tend to have religious
>>> wars over which GUI is better.
>>
>> And yet, the vast majority of all Linux software is strictly CLI-only,
>> and developers always seem to expect somebody /else/ to build the pretty
>> front-end for it.
>
> That's just incorrect.  But since you believe it is, it must be true,
> regardless of evidence to the contrary.

I haven't seen much "evidence to the contrary". The entire Unix 
philosophy seems to revolve around doing everything from the command 
line. That's why they have powerful shells (plural), sophisticated text 
processing tools, and so forth. From what I've experienced, all the 
flashy new GUI tools are just thin skins over an OS which essentially 
hasn't changed since the days when "TTY" was a commonly-used acronym.

>> JET is no match for an enterprise database engine, sure. But it's more
>> transactional than a flat file.
>>
>> Also, I'm not completely sure that the registry is actually JET. It
>> might be, but I didn't think it was. For one thing, registry files grow
>> as needed, but never shrink. I don't think JET has that limitation.
>
> FFS, *Active Directory* is (was) JET.  Maybe they moved to something else
> now, but I know from personal discussions with AD architects at Microsoft
> that it is/was JET.
>
> JET has been MS' solution for simple database storage for a number of
> years, possibly decades.

Wikipedia concurs that AD is definitely Jet. (Jet Blue, in fact. MS 
Access is Jet Red.) I can find no mention of Jet on the registry page. 
(Which may just indicate that the page is incomplete.)

At any rate, I didn't say that the registry *is not* Jet. I said I don't 
*think* it's Jet. I explicitly said I'm not 100% sure on this point. I 
think it pre-dates Jet, but I might be mistaken.

>> Admitting you're wrong is one thing. But they did something illegal;
>> where is the *financial* pain for that?
>
> Obviously you missed the fact that they paid fines to the EC for their
> illegal activities.

Yes, I completely missed that part. Tell me, did these fines amount to 
more than 0.001% of their annual profits?

> And they had to reengineer some things

Right. That actually costs money. OOC, what did they have to change?

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On 17/10/2011 09:58 AM, Stephen wrote:

> That is another point against Linux. Why would I want to join a
> community of religious fundamentalists?
> Any day now I expect a knock on my door and open it to find two smartly
> dressed penguin missionaries.

http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/20111012

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