In article <002901beb640$17c91990$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
John Wiltshire <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>i) NT has had all the failings it was predicted to have.
>FALSE. NT was predicted to have many failings, and did have some of
>them and not others. Many predictions have likened
>it to Windows 3.x and 9x which have *not* come true - the NT kernel is
>still NT and has not been merged into the others.
To a larger degree than I'm comfortable with, it has, because it
couldn't run inherently insecure applications like Office if it had
a reasonable level of security, and rather than modifying Office so
it doesn't require write-access to shared files they lowered the system
security to allow write access to shared files.
What I want to pare down out of NT is the Win32 subsystem. That's the
part that's straight from Windows 95, and the part that's cause of most
of the security holes.
>NT was supposed to not have any penetration into the marketplace - this
>has not happened. NT was not supposed to be as
>reliable, robust and securable as Unix. This is also false.
NT is not as reliable and robust and securable as UNIX.
>ii) NT has a history of bugs and failings.
>So does Unix (countless root exploits etc.). So (especially) do
>products such as Sendmail and Apache, but people still
>use them and swear by their security.
Hands up everyone running sendmail on a box exposed the the Internet.
>iii) Coding standards at Redmond.
>Blatant generalisation. Some of the coders at Redmond aren't so great,
>sure. Can you say NT is no good because Excel
>on your Mac crashed?
No, I can say NT is no good because of what I know of NT.
NT has been shown to perform no bounds checking on many system calls, for
example. That's unacceptable. On a UNIX box that would mean an immediate
patch. On NT, well, Microsoft forced the people who did the work to shut
down their web site. Security by lawyers.
>Garbage. Microsoft still supports NT 3.51 as an operating system. They
>are not "forcing" you to upgrade and are not
>dropping support for all the things you have working. This is a great
>big strawman.
Where can I buy a copy of NT 3.51 today?
Does it run IIS4?
>Now, on the NT bashing, would you care to contrast with Linux which is
>vastly more volatile? How about Solaris which
>ripped up the stable SunOS and dropped in a completely different system?
That's like blaming NT for the lack of security in Windows 98.
When I can pick an operating system from Redmond that has the characteristics
I want, let me know. Two of my requirements are multiuser protection and no
Win32 subsystem.
--
In hoc signo hack, Peter da Silva <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
`-_-' Ar rug t� barr�g ar do mhact�re inniu?
'U` "Be vewy vewy quiet...I'm hunting Jedi." -- Darth Fudd
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