Re: Does Microsoft Need a New Source Code for the Future?

Windows 9x may be dead somewhat to Microsoft but it is alive and kicking
everywhere else with Mozilla still supporting it with their web browser as
well as AVG 7.5 supporting it as well. People do not realize how stable it
has become.

Heck, 98 Second Edition for me is more stable than XP Professional. Vista
while it is stable enough for me still suffers somewhat with compatibility
issues. However, Vista is indeed tops with external security. However,
Windows 9x has the internal safety and less surface area to attack because it
does not have the services that XP has and XP likes to throw all the
information back compared to 98 Second Edition which is a lot quieter and
runs really well on older PC's. You talk about a great opportunity for all
those used computers that cannot run XP and why not have them run 98SE
instead of being tossed in the landfill. I am sure there are many people
around the world that would see having a computer as a great luxury.

Thanks for replying though and I appreciate your views and I already know
about the end of life software date of July 11, 2006. BTW, did you know this
fact on the Microsoft 98 Second Edition page:

http://support.microsoft.com/ph/1139

Last Review : February 28, 2008

It sounds like Microsoft does care for 98 Second Edition users like myself
who are looking into ways for the company to expand and explore new avenues
into the future of information technology. Microsoft is really great about
supporting their legacy users and I feel that Microsoft has a much better
track record of caring than say Apple who thinks their products are, oh so
great, that Apple can charge a huge premium for them when Apples are based
upon open source code anyway.

You talk about how ironic that is. Furthermore, Bill Gates and Microsoft
are the bad guys in many people's eyes but that is simply not true because
Microsoft is gladly willing to help its users and Bill Gates is now working
to make the world a better place for people who have limited opportunities
and are starving and sick with Aids and Malaria through his Foundation.

So you see that Windows 9x is not truly dead. The reason being is that it
still has life in it and why do you think Microsoft has not sold the 9x
source code if it is useless. The great thing about 9x is that it is
compatibility with older software and games and uses MS-DOS as a maintenance
operating system compared to Vista.
I am using 98 Second Edition as I post back to you and it never seems to
have any issues anymore as long as you don't use too much ram.

I use 512 megabytes of ram with it and editted the system.ini to recognize
less and have a 256 megabyte ATI video card. Nope, it is Windows XP Service
Pack 3 that is having the issues right now with people having trouble getting
updates for it without the proper patch to register the *.dlls again. In
addition, Windows Vista has great external security but lacks the internal
safety of a 9x operating system.

I use XP Professional in a dual-boot on the same machine on a seperate hard
drive. It is NTFS file system compared to the Fat32 file system of 98 Second
Edition.

The thing is when the APS domain was hacked into last summer (2007), the
hacker(s) got into the XP Professional side of my machine because the
external security of the network was destroyed. However, I was also using
VPN to link with the Intranet of the APS domain and 9x did not get hacked
because it has internal safety of a smaller surface area, no rpc, a true
maintenance operating system of MS-DOS, etc. So you can see how 9x machines
were meant to be stand alone. In this ever increasing digital age, I am
surprised that more home consumers do not rise up and demand another 9x
operating system to be able to be more stand-a-lone and not report in to
their boss and/or the government all of the time. Are people really that
willing to give up their precious freedoms to others and end up having the
equivalent of a network computer that does not have an essence of its own
individuality.

It surprises that so many people do not see this and the coming danger of
willing to have just one easily hackable source code out there. You must
have a comprehensive internal safety and external security solution with
closed and open source technologies available from Microsoft and others to
make the best operating systems out there possible and to help mitigate any
incoming threats that may want to harm the Matrix FrameWork and Subsystems of
the Network.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"S. Pidgorny <MVP>" wrote:

G'day:

"Dan" <Dan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:9FE39DA9-023E-49AE-9D5A-3D78E30372BA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I think we have the same ideas, but weigh things differently and
reach different conclusions - you see the 9x code base itself as
being something to be preserved at all costs, where I see the
factors that make the 9x code base safer in certain respects as
something that should inform other code base development.

Windows 3.1/9x code base is now dead. Everything is NT. Not sure about
mobile devices but will not be surprised with XP as the base for Windows
Mobile next version.

For example, an OS should be able to wipe its own *** without
RPC, and/or not expose RPC to network surfaces (especially
the Internet). It shouldn't rely on RPC to do internal things, weld
this into Internet exposure, and then rely on a firewall as a band
aid over this clickless, remotable risk surface.

RPC is as good (or bad, depending on your by-default attitude) as any other
IPC. I can disable RPC in Windows and still run software, but I see no
reason to.

--
Svyatoslav Pidgorny, MS MVP - Security, MCSE
-= F1 is the key =-

* http://sl.mvps.org * http://msmvps.com/blogs/sp *




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