MS: Doze is too predictable

It seems, disguised as an advantage, MS’s Ryan Gavin has confessed that MS-Windows is too simple, too predictable, or in other words has only limited possibilities.

Ryan complained that one always knows what to expect with 'Doze, but not always with Linux. If I was a virus-author, this would be a red flag to my eyes.
Well, no, in Linux we don’t constantly get a stream of security invasions and layer upon layer of code dedicated to the prevention of this.

For example, it’s technically impossible to secure display-function invokations in ’Doze, but it works safely in Linux. Is this absence of risk supposed to be a dis-advantage, somehow? Well... only if one is looking for control over one’s customers as the big aim, rather than indepoendence and safety. So... MS’s grand aims still haven’t materially changed all that much over the years, have they?

I myself will stick with flexibility instead, thanks, where everything is documented for this very reason and a virus’s life is uphill at every step. Now at least we understand why ’Doze is Virus City — from their own official mouth, no less.

And why so many (but not all) ’Doze technicians apparently got their crdentials from the back of a cereal packet.

And why administering ’Doze feels so much like a big RolePlaying Game. It is.

Comments

Leon RJ Brooks said…

I should add a disclaimer that this predictability is only true at certain levels of focus. MS do leave out useful predictability at many levels; as in, things which should be simple and consistent aren't, often because they were written by a different generation of designers hewing to different ideas than earlier or later designers.

09 August, 2006 15:14

new life for an old (FTX) PSU, improved life for one human

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I have a LibreOffice Impress slideshow that I wish to turn into a narrated video. 1. export the slideshow as PNG images (if that is partially broken — as at now — at higher resolutions, Export Directly as PDF then use ‘pdftoppm’ (from the poppler-utils package) to do the same). 2. write a small C program (63 lines including comments) to display those images one at a time, writing a config file entry for Imagination (default transition: ‘cross fade’) based on when the image-viewer application (‘display,’ from the GraphicsMagick suite) is closed on each one; run that, read each image aloud, then close each image in turn. 3. run ‘Imagination’ over the config file to produce a silent MP4 video with the correct timings. 4. run ‘Audacity’ to record speech while using ‘SMPlayer’ to display the silent video, then export that recording as a WAV file. 4a. optionally, use ‘TiMIDIty’ to convert a non-copyright-encumbered MIDI tune to WAV, then import that and blend it with the speech (as a quiet b...

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Plantagenet Penguinista

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