I'll Never Get Used to This!

She's Crystal and she wants it simple. Sorry, Crystal.

Get It Try It

LONDON (Rixstep) -- Crystal sure told Microsoft where to get off. But the taskbar's not everything, Crystal. How about security?

Sophos researcher Chester Wisniewski says Windows 7 will fall prey to 8 out of 10 virus attacks. That's not particularly encouraging.



But OK - how about ordinary file system maintenance? And privacy? How are we going to fare there, Crystal? Will things be simple enough for you?

Unix and Windows are built completely differently. Unix was built as a plan. All 25 or so CSRC PhDs were to share the same secondary storage with apportioned areas for their own files and the ability to easily keep others out. Based on VMS, Windows prefers to have workstations communicating with servers through named pipes, RPC, stuff like that.

Unix uses a simple but elegant and powerful permissions system. File and directory owners get to set permissions. And they can allow or deny themselves, a user group they belong to, and the world at large. It's very simple. But better still: it works.

Windows users are either stuck with the archaic MS-DOS system which doesn't even begin to dream of file ownership, where the simplistic attributes 'read-only', 'hidden', and 'system' can be added or removed by anyone - or they can advance to VMS-style 'special permissions' (and in some cases have to reboot into 'Safe Mode' to do so).

Here's what those special permissions look like.



That simple enough for you, Crystal?

See Also
The Technological: I Could Really Get Used to This!
The Technological: Windows 7 Falls Prey to 80% of Virus Attacks
The Technological: Windows-Generated Spam At All-Time High of 101%