Mark Hill:
> To suggest a great disservice has been created by suggesting Windows
> is "easy", is a ridiculous statement.

Actually, a great disservice has been created by suggesting computing in general is easy. Windows is just one of the more visible examples, with
quite a lot of its advertising suggesting so, sometimes implicitly, sometimes overtly.

(The other visible culprits are books of the "for dummies", "in 24 hours" sort.)

> You're second statement is correct, Windows is EXTREMELY complex.

Precisely. Suggesting that it is otherwise is a disservice at best.

Jiri
--
Jiri Baum <[email protected]> http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jirib
MAT LinuxPLC project --- http://mat.sf.net --- Machine Automation Tools

 

Amen! Look, driving a car may be a common skill, but doing it well is not easy. Let's not confuse the commonplace with the simple.

Windows attempts to encapsulate a lot of details so that you can get up and running as fast as possible. However, there are down sides to this:

1) It's not particularly efficient.

2) Security is typically wide open so that it doesn't get in the way of the user's applications.

3) If your hardware or application requires adjustments to something less common, you may run in to all sorts of unexpected problems and since the details and controls of the Windows platform are not widely known or understood nearly as well as most POSIX type systems, performance and reliability may suffer.

The bottom line is that Windows is a good compromise between many parameters and it makes a good starting point for those who may not know exactly where they want to go today. But for those who DO know, it's a PITA.

 

after being in the Computer Industry for over 26 year..IM totatly baffled By the statement suggesting Windows > is "easy", is Ridiculous.... maybe im missing Somthing here?? ever been infront of a VAX or PDP8 PDP11 Windows IS EASY.its a very Simple to operate O/S.. That Stament Floors me.. ROTFL

 

Brian E Boothe:
> after being in the Computer Industry for over 26 year..IM totatly
> baffled By the statement suggesting Windows > is "easy", is
> Ridiculous.... maybe im missing Somthing here?? ever been infront of a
> VAX or PDP8 PDP11 Windows IS EASY.its a very Simple to operate O/S..
> That Stament Floors me.. ROTFL

OK, then - what are the security implications of adding users to the Backup Operators group? To the Power Users group? On what occassions should the Administrator account be used?

These are the kinds of things an administrator needs to know (or at least know where to look up) in order to administer Windows securely, yet it is not particularly obvious from the GUI what the answers are.

(FTR: Backup Operators can read all files and directories, even those they otherwise wouldn't have access to. Power Users can create user accounts and manage them, among other things. The Administrator account should be renamed and the password secured for emergency use only.)

Jiri
--
Jiri Baum <[email protected]> http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jirib
MAT LinuxPLC project --- http://mat.sf.net --- Machine Automation Tools

 

Hi Brian

I've been in front of all three. I have a PDP-11 in my basement. Try running Windows from a teletype machine :^)

Actually, doing what is provided for you and allowed under Windows is easy. Doing anything else is pretty difficult. But to keep it in perspective, _users_ on UNIX/Linux systems are seldom faced with greater difficulty running their apps and doing their work. Admins need to know more in both systems. Admins in Windows are in much the same arena as users, typically they do what is provided on menus, etc. They can also play with the registry, etc. Admins in UNIX/Linux can do literally anything possible with the system. At least 90% of this is out of your control in Windows, so this 90% is simply impossible. So which is the more difficult? It depends on who you are and what you need to do. Both are complex, only one lets you know and address that complexity. The other asks that you pretend it doesn't exist and reload if it breaks.

Regards

cww

 

On December 1, 2002 01:47 pm, Jiri Baum wrote:
<clip>
> OK, then - what are the security implications of adding users to the
> Backup Operators group? To the Power Users group? On what occassions
> should the Administrator account be used?
>
> These are the kinds of things an administrator needs to know (or at
> least know where to look up) in order to administer Windows securely,
> yet it is not particularly obvious from the GUI what the answers are.
<clip>

More to the point, there is a significant difference between something which actually is "easy", and something which merely has all the difficult bits hidden from plain view. There is no "magic" in any operating system to take
inherently difficult problems and make them go away, however attractive that prospect might be.
The only way to make something inherently "easy" is to remove any features which are inherently difficult, or at least to remove them from outside your control. Then instead of being faced with the difficulty of figuring out
*how* to do something, you are simply faced with the "easy" prospect of not being able to do it at all.

************************
Michael Griffin
London, Ont. Canada
************************

 

Don't forget that NT is just VAX VMS re-branded.

Without the GUI they are all the same and NT has a really awful user interface when compared to the UNIX command line interface.

Jiri hit the nail on the head.

They are all difficult once you peel off the outer layer (operating systems are onions, just like ogres).

RA

 

> Don't forget that NT is just VAX VMS re-branded.

That is crap. Many of the people that worked on VAX VMS then went to Microsoft to design NT. They're similar, but they don't share code.

http://www.winntmag.com/Articles/Index.cfm?IssueID=97&ArticleID=4494

That doesn't make NT a "rebranded VMS" by any means. A better comparison would be Mac OS X. Now that's a rebranded BSD/NeXT hybrid, because Mac OS X does have BSD tech underneath.

> Without the GUI they are all the same and NT has a really awful user
> interface when compared to the UNIX command line interface.
>
> Jiri hit the nail on the head.
>
> They are all difficult once you peel off the outer layer (operating
> systems are onions, just like ogres).

That is true.

Alex Pavloff - [email protected]
Eason Technology -- www.eason.com

 

On December 2, 2002 04:21 pm, Ranjan Acharya wrote:
<clip>
> Don't forget that NT is just VAX VMS re-branded.
>
> Without the GUI they are all the same and NT has a really awful user
> interface when compared to the UNIX command line interface.

While I won't disagree with the gist of your argument, NT is not a version of or a direct copy of VAX VMS. When Microsoft was planning to abandon OS/2 they hired one of the senior software designers from DEC to take over the NT
project. This fellow had been responsible for VMS at his former employer.

The result was that Windows NT copied quite extensively from VMS, but it was a separate operating system. There have been extensive changes to Windows NT since then, so I don't know how much of the original VMS core design remains. We should remember that the first really commercially successful version of Windows NT was version 4.

One of the things that is interesting about this subject is that the original design of WIndows NT was intended to allow it to emulate other operating systems, including UNIX. The emulation layer sat on top of the core operating system, and you could have several emulation layers operating in parallel simultaneously. This would make it easier to port software from other operating systems to Windows NT, or possibly even to run it as is. This was intended to address what was seen as the main drawback to NT - the lack of application software to run on it. This idea and a number of others were dropped at some point, I believe as part of an effort to improve the decidedly pokey performance of Windows.

I would not however, suggest that anyone attempt to do with Windows what Microsoft did with VMS. It is one thing for Microsoft to copy someone else's ideas. It is quite another for you to try to copy their's.

> Jiri hit the nail on the head.
>
> They are all difficult once you peel off the outer layer (operating
> systems are onions, just like ogres).
<clip>

--

************************
Michael Griffin
London, Ont. Canada
************************

 

Not to mention that VMS is much more reliable
even on vintage equipment. :^)

Regards
cww

 

Alex,

A bit of a flame I would say. I am quite familiar with the history of NT down to the folks from DEC, the MIPS processor and so on (I cannot imagine them sharing code because they are quite different and DEC would have been quite happy to sue Microsoft). That really wat not the point. All I wanted to push was the point by Jiri that NT is not easy at all. I always thought that "crap" was a bad word, but oh well, times have changed.

The point again is that whereas DOS or Windows 3.X were quite "simple", NT is not. The history of NT, from loose connections to VMS are important to consider when noting the complexity of NT.

RA