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Comment by sandworm | Hacker News Reader

It's a flaw. A bad one. But things like this get patched every day. Only an idiot would believe there aren't plenty of other undiscovered security flaws in windows, or any other OS. What matters is whether this flaw was ever exploited, whether it was ever spotted in the wild, before it was patched.

I am more than happy to criticize microsoft. I truly hate windows and everything it represents. But the system seems to have worked here. The bug was reported and patched before it became a widespread issue. I'll save my venom for those all-to-common days where Microsoft fails to address a problem in a timely manner. (or also Apple, plenty of venom for them too.)

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I am more than happy to criticize microsoft. I truly hate windows and everything it represents.

Why's that?

I'm hoping for an in-depth substantive analysis of the factors leading you to come to such a conclusion, but I don't want to take up a bunch of your time or make it seem like I'm asking you to justify anything.

Windows is a proprietary ecosystem where choices are made for the benefit of microsoft's shareholders and nobody else. It is full of compromise. From DRM to hamstrung "student" versions, Windows is not your friend. Microsoft's business practices, specifically the way they market windows on oem machines, are also downright deceptive. I never use windows at home but, because I buy laptops, I actually own many windows licenses. Those "sales" are part of Microsoft's bottom line and are pitched to shareholders as if I am actually using microsoft products.

I have never met anyone who truly likes windows. They tolerate it. They are used to it. But they never say "Yes, I am happy with this new version. The upgrade sure made my life easier!" I'd rather have my wisdom teeth re-installed and re-pulled than be part of another office transitioning from one version of windows to another.

I gave up on windows when, after buying a little netbook, I decided to give it a chance. I plugged in an MS-brand optical mouse and was told that windows needed to connect to the internet to download the driver to run the mouse. That was windows's last breath on any of my personal machines.

And death to docx.

> I have never met anyone who truly likes windows.

I like windows.

I'm not sure you qualify, except (of course) he has met you...

He should have started with "Nice to meet you."

I'm old enough to believe that meeting on an online forum doesn't qualify 'met'. "I met the President on twitter" doesn't count.

To offer an alternative:

I used to have the same "that upgrade DIDN'T make my life easier" with every new version of Fedora that I installed, until GNOME3, which completely removed any trace of productivity that I had.

I then ditched desktop Linux.

I don't think people enjoy new versions of anything (look at the backlash to Lion since Snow Leopard), there are still vocal complaints about Yosemite in OSX land.

My parents like Windows.

My brother likes Windows.

I use it daily and find it tolerable, like you.

But I think it would be naive to say that nobody likes Windows, don't you? Try giving any of my family or my wife my MacBook and see how angry they get in a short space of time.

If you didn't go "man gnome3 sucks, I'm reverting back to gnome2 (or never upgrading gnome in the first place), or moving to the mate fork, or using the comparable xfce until mate stabilizes" like the rest of us who can't stand gnome3, maybe you were never meant to have Linux on the desktop for long. I mean, GP's first complaint, my emphasis:

>Windows is a proprietary ecosystem where choices are made for the benefit of microsoft's shareholders and nobody else.

All software distributors make choices for someone's benefit, maybe sometimes even for the users', but the difference with non proprietary ecosystems, like Linux, is that users can make their own choices if they don't like the ones made for them. Sometimes this requires coordinated effort (like forking gnome2) that can sometimes be so effortful it might as well be as out of reach as changing choices in the closed ecosystem, but many other times it's as simple as installing a different desktop environment through your distro's package manager. What if I don't like the new look of Windows or OS X? I can choose not to upgrade the entire platform, but that's it, unlike in Linux land where I can upgrade piecemeal. It's even worse if I don't like a webapp's new look -- I can't even use the old version. I can of course stop using it. Great choice that, when it's the only alternative to 'tolerate'.

I agree with you that it's silly to say no one genuinely in a non-fanboy way likes Windows. (I live with such a person.) Personally I find Windows intolerable for anything but playing games on Steam and NoMachining into a Linux workstation. If my day-job was programming C# applications, I'd probably tolerate Visual Studio too. If that was my hobby and all my time was with Windows, and I forgot all I know of the Linux world, and like my housemate I installed various 3rd-party tools to change the boneheaded choices Microsoft occasionally makes (this does make my last paragraph hyperbole) then I might even like Windows as a whole.

Actually, I stuck with GNOME2 for as long as I could. But then it got to feel like I was running Windows 3.11 in amongst Windows 7 contemporaries. Combined with the fact that I was writing OSX software, it made sense to buy a MacBook and virtualise all the OSes I was running, so Windows and my ancient comfortable version of Linux have their VMs still running.

You're right though - it's impossible to change the UI on OSX (other than grey or blue for the buttons, that is all, and now with a "dark" menubar which I like) and Windows is limited. I too keep my proper Windows dualboot partition for playing games (hurray for Homeworld Remastered this month eh!).

I think once we've been exposed to other OSes and use them daily for different things (I used to maintain racks of Linux and Windows servers of differing ages, some ancient machines along with new), the differences sort of fade and the rabid fanboyism for each OS gets wearisome. They each have their faults, their good points, and are all useful for getting stuff done, each with differing or potentially irritating approaches for doing that!

I myself sigh using Windows 8/8.1 and find Explorer under Windows 7 to be irritating compared to the XP one but that's just me and I should get used to it. It will be interesting to see what Windows 10 brings.

It is possible to change the UI in OS X! http://flavours.interacto.net/ – they're working on a new version with 10.10 support now.

Looks interesting! Hopefully it doesn't cause instability? I know in Obj-C you can link in low-level but such hackery isn't always rewarded with stability.

>What if I don't like the new look of Windows or OS X? I can choose not to upgrade the entire platform, but that's it, unlike in Linux land where I can upgrade piecemeal.

You underestimate the customisability of Windows. Its ecosystem is mostly proprietary and closed-source, but that didn't stop people from modding what they could - just look at all the "post your desktop" threads that appear in various forums and you'll see lots of examples that are barely recognisable as Windows anymore. A lot of these involve little more than copying/replacing a few files, or some registry editing, so it's actually not so difficult at all.

In fact I'd say that "upgrade piecemeal" with Linux is made more complex because of all the dependencies that often arise with various apps all wanting very specific versions of libraries, multiple competing standards that do not interoperate (count all the GUI toolkits...), and emphasis on portability that tends to reduce the availability of binaries.

Some people go as far as replacing the shell:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_alternative_shells_for_...

...or even removing/replacing more fundamental components:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_remastering#Microsoft_...

As for OS X... I agree there's not much customisation going on there, but I'd attribute that more to the demographic of Apple users. If Apple had the same marketshare with Mac OS as Microsoft has with Windows, I bet there would be a ton more modding happening.

I've used both Windows and Linux, and can say that I like and hate both, but for different reasons.

It’s easy enough to buy laptops without Windows licences

https://system76.com/ https://www.apple.com/macbook-air/ https://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-m3800-workstati...

"I have never met anyone who truly likes windows"

Interestingly, I've seen a small group of Windows fanbois arise within the last couple of years. Very much like the Apple fanbois; just as irrational and quick to take offense at any criticism of MS and Windows.

But I agree with you that most people I know also tolerate windows. Some are even happy with it because they can do things with a computer that has windows.

That was until Windows 8 came out. I was surprised by the amount of hate windows 8 received, and it was well deserved IMHO. But then I was also surprised by the few people who didn't hate Windows 8, some even liked it. The fanbois.

I shelled out money for a 8.1 license.

It's not fanbois, it's actual real-life users who love it. (Not all of them, but a high proportion, in my experience.)

Windows 8.1 is terrific on tablets and devices with touch screens. My wife loves it. I think most if not all the hate came from stuck-in-the-mud XP users, and from Windows 7 users with non-touch screens. Which is fair enough.

Those are, of course, the vast majority of Windows users, so -- even though most of them have never used it seriously -- they drown out the real Windows 8/8.1 users.

In my experience, most users don't have surface or windows tablets. And they came from XP or 7. As far as I can tell, they use windows 8 as seriously as when they used xp and 7.

You can dismiss the vast majority of people who have that experience, but that would be ignoring the reality for most people. Fortunately for Microsoft, MS has decided to listen to the huge amount of complaints and get rid of the problematic interface.

I've always wondered what the win8/8.1 supporters would have MS do about the situation. Tell the vast majority of "unserious" users to suck it up, shut up, and use Win8? No change is necessary, you just have to get serious about using it? I'm asking because I don't understand the point of view of win8 supporters.

BTW, I really do think that there are MS fanbois out there. Not trying to be insulting or anything, just something that seems to be a new trend. Peace.

I'm not dismissing their experience (if any), just pointing out that it's not the whole story. I like Windows 8/8.1 a lot, but I'm still using Windows 7 on my desktop....

My point is that there is no discontinuity between lots of people loving Windows 8 on touch-based 2-in-1s and tablets and lots of people hating it -- or, more often, hating the idea of it -- on non-touch machines.

So, the solution is to retain the best parts of Windows 8 on touch-based devices while making it more usable on non-touch devices. Which is what Microsoft is doing.

Either way, you'll note that Windows 7 Pro is still available from Microsoft as a current product, and that it will be supported until 2020.

"I'm not dismissing their experience (if any)"

Does that mean if someone doesn't like Win8, they don't have any experience? Or they're not serious? Sounds like an insulting dig at people you don't agree with.

"My point is that there is no discontinuity between lots of people loving Windows 8 on touch-based 2-in-1s and tablets and lots of people hating it -- or, more often, hating the idea of it -- on non-touch machines."

??? Not sure what you're trying to say here.

"Windows 7 Pro is still available from Microsoft as a current product"

Good news if you don't want Win8 on your laptop/desktop. I guess you'll have peace when Windows 10 comes out, and you don't have to hear any negative comments about Windows 8.

> Sounds like an insulting dig at people you don't agree with.

Yes, I shouldn't insult people just because they're ignorant and can't be bothered to learn how to use Windows 8, which in my experience, is predominantly the case.

It's certainly usable on desktops etc without touch screens, but it's suboptimal on those systems, which is why I don't load it on them. That doesn't mean I can't use it and appreciate its qualities on touch-screen PCs.

> I have never met anyone who truly likes windows. They tolerate it. They are used to it. But they never say "Yes, I am happy with this new version. The upgrade sure made my life easier!"

Plenty of people felt that way about the Vista to Windows 7 upgrade. (fewer felt that way about the 7 to 8 transition)

> And death to docx.

I wouldn't mind some elaboration on this point; I would think it's a step up from .doc at the least.

Docx doesn't play nice. At a time when they could have contributed to open standards such as odt, and as projects like Openoffice were getting a handle on the doc format, Microsoft rolled out DocX to stir the pot.

DocX has some silly compression built in. Microsoft pitched this to some large customers on the basis of all the disk space it would save. How large are text documents? Are they really in need of compression? Only he most massive of corporations see any appreciable reduction in storage needs over the old doc format.

ODF also uses compression.

You don't have to justify that comment to me. I used used Windows since it was a 286-PM DOS program serving as a proof-of-concept, through present. I am so unimpressed with their technical management of a product that should have been mature more than a decade ago.

Well...

CP/M (circa 1974) had a command line prompt like this: "C>"

Windows (circa 2014) has a command line prompt like this: "C:>"

Basically the same after 40 years. Forty ... years. Same old totally obsolete "drive letter" file system architecture.

Although the comparison is to be obviously taken with a grain of salt, it is clear to old-timers like me that Windows has been ultra-conservative with advanced software technologies (modular filesystems, ZFS, etc...) and this has hurt tremendously the evolution of OS software "for the masses".

It does not require a big leap of faith to believe that we could have had a far more advanced <consumer> OS if Windows had not existed.

Quite a pity.

Don't get too hung up on the drive letter. It's a bit like saying UNIX is out of date because everything starts as '/'. Besides, the Windows filesystem is actually modular under the covers. https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/dn... And Windows CE is (mostly) source-compatible and has no drive letters.

You can have filesystem drivers, filesystem filter drivers, and pseudo-filesystems. It's just that the documentation is buried in the DDK. And there isn't a "community" of users for Windows in the way there is for Open Source.

To the extent Microsoft keeps giving us fun things to play with, we will see more and more hackers doing fun things with Microsoft.

That's the cool thing, we don't really have a huge attachment or loyalty over any reasonable time frame. We use the best tools for the job. There's plenty of room for Microsoft to start providing incredible value to its developers.

I'm looking forward to containers on Windows. I'm looking forward to faster upgrades and better package management. I'm looking forward to seeing the best they can do. There's a lot of talent in there somewhere, I hope they let us see it.

This is my biggest difficulty with * nix. With drive letters, I know for a fact that Windows is installed on C: and I can format all the other volumes. But in what volume is the system installed on a * nix?

Your invective dismisses your analysis as always subjective.

Considering Microsoft doesn't seem to fix some bugs even within 3 months of finding out about them (see the Project Zero vs Microsoft case), and that Microsoft's policy is to first announce the NSA and other government agencies about bugs in Windows before it gets a chance to fix them, then hell yes it's being exploited.

http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/06/nsa-gets-early-acces...

They love the taste of boot leather. What can I say.

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