Fucking Microsoft (Vista Edition)

[MegaRock]

Haha, what a bunch of flakes. Vista isn't even out yet and it's already fucking buggy.

I was bored the other day so I decided to download the 'Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor' just to see how my system would stack up against the Vista requirements.

I'll never know if it's good enough or not since their fucking upgrade advisor doesn't work on any of the three in house systems I have running. All are Windows XP boxes, all running the very latest in Microsoft Patch Technology and all running very industry standard motherboards, memory, hard drives, video cards and the such. The damn thing crashed out on all three systems so I can't even figure out if I can run their POS software.

If this is any indication of how far Microsoft has come since XP I'm not even going to consider paying for Vista (might steal it though). I also read that Support Pack 3 for XP has been delayed to possibly as far as 2008.

Maybe MS should worry less about pushing out a product in time for the 'big ass holiday shopping sprees' than just getting a bug free product on the market for once in it's miserable fucking existence.

[dlichterman]

What, did you expect a microsoft product to work the first time. Wait for 2 patches for it to work

[Schmeet]

Originally posted by MegaRock
Vista isn't even out yet and it's already fucking buggy.

Maybe there's a correlation?

[k_rock923]

Your problem was with the upgrade advisor. Where in your post did you say that Vista crashed your PC?

I know that it's trendy to bash Microsoft, but come on.

[zootm]

OH MY CHRIST PRERELEASE SOFTWARE HAS BUGS! ALSO A SMALL APP WITH "VISTA" IN THE NAME DOESN'T WORK THEREFORE VISTA ITSELF IS BUGGY AS HELL.



As for getting a "bug-free product" out; there's simply no such thing. Linux is full of bugs. OS X is full of bugs. Full full full. The problems which made Windows seem worse were largely to do with the (default) security setup and architecture. These are mostly fixed (or, in the case of things like shatter attacks, mitigated) now.

But saying MS software is especially buggy is quite inaccurate.

[MegaRock]

Yes, it was the 'Upgrade Advisor' but seriously - how hard is it to get something like that to work? Check the memory, CPU, video card and hard drive space and that tell you 90% of what you need to know on compatibility - and it couldn't even do that...not one one but three different computers.

As far as Vista itself is concerned according to virtually every report MS is not even close to being ready to release it as hardware manufacturers can't get hardware ready because of Vista's driver issues, software manufactureres haven't received the API's to properly write software, antivirus vendors are being denied access to the kernel, beta testers are still reporting some pretty serious problems...

Sounds like Windows XP all over again...and we're to expect it's going to be ready to ship in two months?

[k_rock923]

Not going to disect that post, but the whole AV being denied access to the kernel thing is crap.

So let me get this straight. . . MS didn't do security well, and anyone could do whatever the fuck they want with the kernel. . .not OK. MS makes things more secure and does not give people access to the kernel. . also not OK.

Which do you want?

[zootm]

Originally posted by MegaRock
hardware manufacturers can't get hardware ready because of Vista's driver issues

The driver issues are the fault of the hardware manufacturers (who, you guessed it, write the majority of the problemic drivers), and they've had plenty time.

Originally posted by MegaRock
software manufactureres haven't received the API's to properly write software

However, in the real world I am a software developer and I can verify that they have.

Originally posted by MegaRock
antivirus vendors are being denied access to the kernel

This is actually a puzzling one. Technically they shouldn't need access to the kernel (especially not any more) but there does seem to be some valid issues there.

Originally posted by MegaRock
beta testers are still reporting some pretty serious problems...

I guess the RC testers are now reporting they're gone, then? It's pre-release software, and most remaining issues I know of are minor or driver-related. And most things seem to work fine.

Originally posted by MegaRock
Sounds like Windows XP all over again...and we're to expect it's going to be ready to ship in two months?

It certainly looks like it will. But please keep chiming in with your biased, uninformed opinions on the matter. They're fun.

Originally posted by k_rock923
So let me get this straight. . . MS didn't do security well, and anyone could do whatever the fuck they want with the kernel. . .not OK. MS makes things more secure and does not give people access to the kernel. . also not OK.

MS are actually not terrible with security in the large (if you look at XP, it's remarkable how secure it is considering that most users work with elevated privileges as a matter of course); as for the kernel thing, I'm not sure what the security vendors do in there, but the nature of the NT kernel is such that people probably shouldn't be prodding it without good reason. I personally think that MS locked down the kernel with good security justification, but then didn't realise what security vendors were used to doing with the kernel. This isn't a particular area of expertise for me, but your summary seems accurate.

I've been meaning to check into that in more detail for a while, actually, if I do I'll post up a wee summary later.

[k_rock923]

I've always found the real problem with MS security to be that most security features are disabled by default. A properly configured Windows system is just as secure as a *nix system, well. . . maybe not OpenBSD, but nobody can compare to that.

[zootm]

Well, yeah, that's the thing. I think that MS deserved quite a grilling for their decision to have the administrator-by-default setup, but a lot of the things that people jump on them for are pretty fickle and minor. It bugs me since software development is what I do.

[fc*uk]

I was able to run the upgrade advisor....

Ummmmmm.....

Computer scored a 3.9/10 ...

wtf!?!?!?!?!?!

AMD x2 4800+
2 gb ram
400 gb SATA II
ati aiw x1800 pcie

because I thought that would be considered a high end system. Yet it pulls in a 3.9...

So....

Just what the fuck does one must have to hit a 5 --- quad cores????

[k_rock923]

cluster

[Too-DAMN-Much]

Originally posted by MegaRock
If this is any indication of how far Microsoft has come since XP I'm not even going to consider paying for Vista (might steal it though).

good luck with that, XP was hard to pirate in the first part, now it's impossible (thanks to WGA), you really think they're going to let you steal vista when you can't even currently steal XP?

have fun! and don't come crying to me when vista freezes your hard drive (at least i'm guessing it will, just like XP can)

[zootm]

Originally posted by fc*uk
I was able to run the upgrade advisor....

Ummmmmm.....

Computer scored a 3.9/10 ...

wtf!?!?!?!?!?!

AMD x2 4800+
2 gb ram
400 gb SATA II
ati aiw x1800 pcie

because I thought that would be considered a high end system. Yet it pulls in a 3.9...

So....

Just what the fuck does one must have to hit a 5 --- quad cores????

Maximum is 6, not 10, if it's the same scale as the one inside Vista itself (my guess is that they're going to increment that by one each year, "6" being for "2006", but I'm probably wrong). And, again if it's like the one inside Vista, it's graded entirely on the lowest score.

Edit: I just ran the upgrade advisor, and it doesn't give you a score out of anything, anywhere. I'm assuming you're using the "experience index" feature of Vista, in which case what I said in the last paragraph applies.

Originally posted by Too-DAMN-Much
good luck with that, XP was hard to pirate in the first part, now it's impossible (thanks to WGA), you really think they're going to let you steal vista when you can't even currently steal XP?

have fun! and don't come crying to me when vista freezes your hard drive (at least i'm guessing it will, just like XP can)

Neither XP nor Vista can or will "freeze your hard drive" if they detect piracy. XP will not install anything other than critical updates, and Vista will (apparently) go into "reduced functionality mode" (or some similar terminology) until the piracy issue is resolved.

[Too-DAMN-Much]

oh yes it will boyo, i had an early copy or winxp home do it to my best friend's computer, it happens when you don't "activate" after the 30 day period.

i remember it required purchasing some weird highly specialised data recovery program to fix also.

[Mattress]

stop bitching and switch to linux.

[zootm]

Originally posted by Too-DAMN-Much
oh yes it will boyo, i had an early copy or winxp home do it to my best friend's computer, it happens when you don't "activate" after the 30 day period.

It doesn't "freeze your hard drive", it just stops working until you activate it. It's non-destructive.

Originally posted by Too-DAMN-Much
i remember it required purchasing some weird highly specialised data recovery program to fix also.

Like a Windows-based system disk or a Linux LiveCD. Linux didn't always have good NTFS reading capability, which is why you couldn't always use it. You never needed a specialised tool, though - just something capable of reading the Windows filesystem.

Edit: And what the hell would you be doing storing information where your only way of accessing that data times out after 30 days?

Edit 2: I just checked up on this, and Safe Mode still works when Activation has timed out, with full access to your data.

[Too-DAMN-Much]

they may have changed it then, because when i experienced it it did :
1. render the harddrive in need of repair (tools).
2. make the computer XP was installed on completely useless for the duration.

any possibility your using a later version than i was?

[EDIT] also, it wasn't a linux cd or anything similar that fixed it, it was a western digital "data lifeguard" disc i believe (this disc contains various data recovery tools, and one of them worked) [/EDIT]

[fc*uk]

zootm... I know i pulled that 10 from some where... how did you find out it is out of 6???

[zootm]

Originally posted by fc*uk
zootm... I know i pulled that 10 from some where... how did you find out it is out of 6???

Oh, I just know the Vista "Experience Index" is out of 6; and since I ran the "Upgrade Advisor" and it didn't give me a rating at all (it just tells you whether your software and hardware is compatible with Vista) it's the only thing that would give you a rating that I'm aware of. If it's some other tool you've run just say though!

Edit:
If you didn't see the interface shown on that page, you were probably running another tool, I just don't know what it is

Originally posted by Too-DAMN-Much
they may have changed it then, because when i experienced it it did :
1. render the harddrive in need of repair (tools).
2. make the computer XP was installed on completely useless for the duration.

any possibility your using a later version than i was?

I wasn't using a version, this is from the official documentation (and is generally accepted as the way it works and has always worked). I can't find any reference that it works or has ever worked any other way.

Originally posted by Too-DAMN-Much
[EDIT] also, it wasn't a linux cd or anything similar that fixed it, it was a western digital "data lifeguard" disc i believe (this disc contains various data recovery tools, and one of them worked) [/EDIT]

That doesn't mean Linux (or Safe Mode) wouldn't have fixed it, it just means it's the first working thing you tried.

[Too-DAMN-Much]

oh well... no more need to debate it.

[MegaRock]

Originally posted by zootm
The driver issues are the fault of the hardware manufacturers (who, you guessed it, write the majority of the problemic drivers), and they've had plenty time.

Actually they are because MS hasn't released a considerable portion of the code required to make the drivers work properly not to mention the driver signing that first appeared with Windows XP. It's kinda hard to write a driver for an OS without the proper information, no?

Results 1 - 10 of about 4,050,000 for vista driver issues.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...+driver+issues

This is actually a puzzling one. Technically they shouldn't need access to the kernel (especially not any more) but there does seem to be some valid issues there.

This was just funny to follow up with:

Security software maker Authentium says that it has created a new version of its flagship product that circumvents the PatchGuard kernel protection technology being added to Microsoft's next-generation Vista operating system.

The company, based in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., maintains that it has built a version of its Authentium ESP Enterprise Platform that can bypass PatchGuard without setting off the desktop alarms produced by the security feature when the Vista kernel is compromised.

With that said a few days ago MS decided to release new API's so the other software vendors could allow their software greater interoperability so it was a good move on their part as originally it seemed they were trying to squeeze out the other vendors. This wasn't by choice however.

Microsoft has altered its plans to keep a lock on the kernel of its upcoming Vista OS amid criticism that the move would prohibit security software vendors from developing compatibile third-party products. Apparently due in part to antitrust concerns raised by the European Commission, Microsoft has agreed to make portions of key Vista data available to firms such as Symantec and McAfee.

Nothing like being up to their old tricks, eh?

I guess the RC testers are now reporting they're gone, then? It's pre-release software, and most remaining issues I know of are minor or driver-related. And most things seem to work fine.

I pulled this from ZDNet just a few minutes ago:

[quote]“Is Vista ready? In an ideal world, I'd say ‘hell no,’” says Robert McLaws, the founder of the Windows-Now (formerly Longhorn Blogs.com) site and president of Phoenix-based Interscape Technologies. "No software is perfect, at some point you have to ship it. So it's still going to have a bunch of bugs and quirks. What I'm concerned with are the 'surprises' that Jim (Allchin) told everyone to be on the lookout for. It's cool that Microsoft still has a few tricks left, but it's an enormous risk putting code into RTM builds that the TechBeta (testers) can't beat up first," McLaws says.

Driver compatibility also is on the radar screen of Carlos Echenique, the site owner of the PlanetX64 and PlanetAMD64 sites.

“There are ‘this is a new OS’ symptoms,” such as immature drivers, Echenique says. “Nvidia's new drivers, for example, have dismal gaming performance and until this is remedied, the enthusiast community will not move to Vista.”

The signed-driver requirement for Vista’s x64 versions also have been “a bit of a sticking point,” Echenique says, “as it prevents x64 users from testing beta driver builds. The workaround involves pressing F8 at boot time and overriding the Driver Signing Requirement every single time you boot. But that’s very annoying for the enthusiast community.”
{/quote]

Sounds like issues to me. In credit though beta testers are saying RC2 has improved somewhat over RC1 but considering they are doing a RTM in a week or two they're considering the product pretty much done which I think is a huge mistake.

It certainly looks like it will. But please keep chiming in with your biased, uninformed opinions on the matter. They're fun.

I'm just as uninformed as ZDNet and the rest of the tech community then I guess. So be it.

MS are actually not terrible with security in the large (if you look at XP, it's remarkable how secure it is considering that most users work with elevated privileges as a matter of course

Considering just last month MS released a record number of patches and fixes for XP as well as most of the rest of it's product line I'm having a hard time believing this. And as far as the elevated privileges most users operate under who setup the default user configurations? Microsoft maybe?

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/secur..._26_secur.html

On the day of Internet Explorer 7's release a security patch also had to be released just hours later. IE7 is an integrated part of Vista so three months before it's even released there is already a security issue.

But for one final bit of information this should be a good read:

The following sections document the 40 most recent patches to security vulnerabilities in Windows Server 2003 (arguably the most secure version of Windows) and Linux Red Hat Enterprise AS v.3 (arguably the competitive equivalent of Windows Server 2003). The data for the Windows Server 2003 patches and vulnerabilities was taken directly from the Microsoft web site, and the data for Red Hat Enterprise AS v.3 was taken from the Red Hat web site.

Windows Server 2003 has experienced the most severe security holes. Microsoft's own classification of the flaws shows that 38% of the patched programs are rated as Critical. If we apply the metrics outlined in the previous sections, we would have to raise that to between 40-50%. Many of the flaws that are assigned the Critical rank in Windows XP or other versions are downplayed for Windows Server 2003 simply because the default settings for Internet Explorer and Outlook are now severely restrictive - so restrictive that these programs are practically unusable without reversing at least some of these defaults.

In sharp contrast, of the 40 vulnerabilities listed by Red Hat, only 4 are rated as Critical by our metrics (Red Hat does not list a severity rank for its alerts). That means 10% of the most recent 40 updates are of Critical severity. This score is actually generous to Microsoft, since two of the flaws could easily be argued to rank lower than Critical, thus also lowering the percentage of Critical flaws to 5%.

Enough said. If Linux could just develop a user friendly interface I think they'd kick ass.

[zootm]

I don't believe how hard it was to get you to cite references

You have still provided no reference for Microsoft not releasing code required to make drivers, and the Google search you post doesn't have any blame for Microsoft, so I'm assuming you mean that Vista shouldn't be released until third-party vendors have gotten their act together as regards drivers? I suppose that makes sense. But you do keep claiming that vendors don't have the resource they need to make drivers, which is clearly not the case...

MS releasing extra kernel APIs was announced a couple weeks ago, and was in response to the security vendors being upset. I maintain that they shouldn't need that access, but it makes sense that they would want it.

McLaw's claim that they're adding beta code without proper test is valid; this isn't something I'd ever do. First valid criticism

The "enthusiasts can't install unsigned drivers" is a weird issue; on one hand the driver signing is supposed to make the system far more stable, on the other that's really not what "enthusiasts" want, they want bleeding-edge. This is more a matter of personal taste than anything else.

Originally posted by MegaRock
Considering just last month MS released a record number of patches and fixes for XP as well as most of the rest of it's product line I'm having a hard time believing this. And as far as the elevated privileges most users operate under who setup the default user configurations? Microsoft maybe?

Well duh. But the point is that that configuration cannot be changed without a major update to Windows (which Vista is, and it does change it), and the security on XP is remarkable given it. As for patches and fixes, this is a good thing

I'm not sure what the Server 2003 metrics have to do with Vista, but the differences in metrics, packages, and functionality make a proper comparison far more difficult than the source seems to imply.

Originally posted by MegaRock
Enough said. If Linux could just develop a user friendly interface I think they'd kick ass.

Try Ubuntu Edgy. It is awesome, I've got it running on all but my main system these days . I'd be using it on the main system too but my games and mobile phone aren't properly supported; although I could do the mobile firmware upgrades here at work, I suppose.

[rockouthippie]

Without prejudice, you can always say that new windows releases have stability and security problems for a year or more. It's been true of every release since windows 95.

I am not recommending the upgrade to clients except as a non-mission critical upgrade. It's home consumers and these non mission critical tasks that will get the bugs out. Eventually this will be stable, just as XP is now.

Business adoption will be slow, as I know other consultants are recommending the same thing.

But guys, this is the new OS, and it's what computers will be using for at least a decade, so we best get used to it.

Linux is still about 10 years off, waiting for patents to expire.

For my linux favorite (and I use it on my best dual core Athlon), I use Fedora Core. Mainly that's because I think it has the best distribution set of gpl software that works.

I find they'res very little that I have to build from source.

Mainly when I use windows these days, it's Windows 2000 running on VMware. About the only time I use my windows XP box is to play Halo. The main reason that I use vmware is to confirm web pages work with the IE browser.

Actually, if you are running a dual core machine, running windows in a virtual machine is fully practical, except for anything that needs accelerated graphics. It operates at about 80-90% speed of what a single core would do.

Another thing that is cool is that when you get your windows "machine" loaded with all your favorite goodies, you can bac k it up or transfer it to another machine.

One more goody. If you are using compute intensive 32-bit apps like windows media encoder, running two vm's (one on each core), will give you a higher throughput than running windows barefoot on your unsupported 64 bit dual core.

[k_rock923]

Ubuntu edgy, eh? I've never tried it. Perhaps it's worth a shot as one of my machines is in sore need of an OS upgrade.

[rockouthippie]

Ubuntu?. It's brown debian. It's also not really a bad choice. I had a little more trouble than fedora getting multimedia, bluetooth and wireless lan working, so I don't use it. Maybe I think if you're gonna run debian.... you should run debian and spare me world peace. That icky brown is enough to make you depressed all by itself.

But that could just be it's because it's what a guy is used to. I think I started using Fedora-ish stuff with RedHat 5.

If you are going to use Fedora on a A64 system, I would use Fedora 4 for a while longer. 5 has a few unnecessary bugs as of yet.

[Shang_Tsung]

Yeah fucking Windows Vista.
But in my city one laptop store sale one laptop that work with them.
thats stupid.

[k_rock923]

How about something a bit more specific than "Yah fucking Windows Vista."

[Mattress]

Originally posted by rockouthippie
Eventually this will be stable, just as XP is now.

So if XP is stable and stuff, why is Vista even necessary? What does Vista do that XP doesn't?

[tuckerm]

It has better and cleaner graphics mattress, don't you want that aero look!

[k_rock923]

and it does ipv6 better

[tuckerm]

Originally posted by k_rock923
Ubuntu edgy, eh? I've never tried it. Perhaps it's worth a shot as one of my machines is in sore need of an OS upgrade.

I'm putting it on an HDD in my dell as something to play around with, i'm going to have that be my secondary hdd and win xp on my main, i just downloaded it so i'm going to install it in a few.

Btw: It's not the crappy dell k rock

[k_rock923]

Phew! Did you ever get anything running on that old thing?

[tuckerm]

Nope, it's my parts machine now. Err, the IBM is, the Dell has windows 98 on it still, ubuntu went fine, just messing with some boot issues i need to correct

[zootm]

Originally posted by rockouthippie
Ubuntu?. It's brown debian.

No. Debian is tuned for server use and stability, Ubuntu is tuned for desktop use (generally) and to be more up-to-date. The package managers are the same, but the stable distributions of either are worlds apart.

Originally posted by rockouthippie
It's also not really a bad choice. I had a little more trouble than fedora getting multimedia, bluetooth and wireless lan working, so I don't use it. Maybe I think if you're gonna run debian.... you should run debian and spare me world peace. That icky brown is enough to make you depressed all by itself.

The hardware recognition has improved greatly with the last couple releases. From what I've heard it seems to have the best recognition of all of the major distributions.

Also, I like the brown colour. It's quite bright, upbeat, and natural. If you want a clinical blue look, the more-standard GNOME theme is installed by default and about 4 clicks away

Originally posted by rockouthippie
But that could just be it's because it's what a guy is used to. I think I started using Fedora-ish stuff with RedHat 5.

Hopefully that's becoming a thing of the past; essentially the main difference in systems is becoming the package management, and that is (completely rightly) being pushed into the background. I'd rather most systems had a better (more Windows-y) way of installing applications (you can double-click install .deb files on Ubuntu now, but you need to privilege escalate, which is less than ideal when you're the only one who's going to be using a package) for a single user, though.

Originally posted by rockouthippie
If you are going to use Fedora on a A64 system, I would use Fedora 4 for a while longer. 5 has a few unnecessary bugs as of yet.

I've not used either on A64, but I love the Beagle integration (which Ubuntu now has too) in 5. Desktop search is where things have been going for ages.

Originally posted by Mattress
So if XP is stable and stuff, why is Vista even necessary? What does Vista do that XP doesn't?

Lots and lots of things. Things that would mean breaking or sweeping changes to XP, in particular, and a lot of architectural changes. A great deal of the features aren't particularly user-visible. Wikipedia's list is pretty good. Ignore DRM-related features if you don't intend to use them, there's no obligation

[dlichterman]

I run Ubuntu on my IBM Thinkpad because everything just works. Im running 6.06 because this needs to get to DEC, then once school is over im going to try upgrading to 6.10 I think. Even my thinkpad keys work, because there is a thinkpad module for Ubuntu/Debian. Apt-get is AWESOME. You can find almost ANYTHING in there and if not someone usually has a package for it. There is also Automatix and EasyUbuntu which help install software such as audio codecs that are not legal in the US because of the DMCA crap.

[tuckerm]

Yeah, I'm liking Ubuntu, It's easy and friendly to use. I'm still working on dual screens with it

[Shang_Tsung]

Originally posted by k_rock923
How about something a bit more specific than "Yah fucking Windows Vista."

Sorry

[k_rock923]

007?

[Shang_Tsung]

Who is he?