Why do you still use Windows XP?

BillW50 used improper usenet message composition style by unnecessarily
full-quoting:

And what is the deal with no AV? As I totally believe for total
protection all you need is a stealth firewall (a router works too)
and a real time AV scanner

If you have NAT functionality in your modem or router, then you don't
need to be running a software firewall.

And I would go further and say that even if you never had NAT, win-98
never did need the protection of a firewall. It was never vunerable to
network worms. Win-2k/XP, on the other hand, were legendary at being
hacked by worms.

I don't run AV on my win-98 systems, at least not for the past 3 years.
The simple truth is that there are no exploits in current use (web
exploits) that try to leverage win-98 vulnerabilities (at least the very
few that have been documented to exist, as compared to the hundreds that
have been patched for 2k/XP).

I do know that NAV 2002 can be updated via the symantec intelligent
updater if you want real-time and on-demand scanning.

(nav 2002 is not bloatware - nav 2003 and later IS bloatware)

On Thu, 16 Feb 2012 17:34:09 -0600, Lostgallifreyan
wrote:

"BillW50" wrote in :

Oh really? I loaded lots of crap at boot with Windows 98. And what is
the deal with no AV? As I totally believe for total protection all you
need is a stealth firewall (a router works too) and a real time AV
scanner.

I agree about the firewall, but no AV here. Instead, I use the firewall to
catch anything trying to get online. The only other thing a virus might
profit from is nuking its host, so I watch the boot sector and keep backups
of it (and entire OS partition images).

"Nuking its host" is so last decade. Malware rarely does that anymore.
If I'm a piece of malware and I kill my host, I die, too. OTOH, if I
work hard to keep my host alive and keep myself out of the way, I can
do a lot of things, none of them good.

AV sounds useful, but there are many false positives,

I can't remember the last time I saw a false positive. I'm guessing
it's been a few years.


especially when
'heuristics' are used. Looking for specific signatures is a bit like a doctor
taking a blood sample, finding sickle cell anemia, 'deducing' that the
pateint is likely black and therefore a thief! Harsh, but the analogy is fair
in principle if not in degree (and plenty of innocent program writers will
agree, as all it takes is ONE major false positive published as if it were
a certainty, to seriously harm their reputations). At least with a good anti-
trojan, we catch the thief by his actions.

On Thu, 16 Feb 2012 17:50:25 -0600, Lostgallifreyan
wrote:

Char Jackson wrote in
:

On Thu, 16 Feb 2012 14:19:53 -0600, Lostgallifreyan
wrote:

"Mayayana" wrote in news:jhjnds$320$1@dont-
email.me:

No, they lied. They offered a driver download. And they said
there was no Win9x version. But they didn't mention that
actually the drivers were not theirs in the first place. The
drivers are for the chipset. The chipset was Via. Via
supported Win98. To offer repackaged drivers but say Win98
is not supported was deliberately misleading.... which was known
as "lying" in the days before P.C. speech.


It is at least seriously disingenous.

I don't see how.



I just posted about that.. Basically, unless Via gave them leave to claim
less for the Via driver and chipset, they're limited to making claims ONLY
about their own end product.

It sounds like neither of us knows the details of the business
relationship between the mobo maker and the chipset maker. Thus, this
entire conversation is a wild goose chase. Sorry, the claim of lying
is rejected.

On Thu, 16 Feb 2012 17:57:42 -0600, Lostgallifreyan
wrote:

Char Jackson wrote in
:

On Thu, 16 Feb 2012 14:11:27 -0600, wrote:

On Thu, 16 Feb 2012 05:38:21 -0600, "BillW50" wrote:


You did a great job of comparing the versions of Windows.
3.1 sucked, 95 needed help, but 98 was and still is the best.

I guess we all have opinions, and it's no surprise that they differ. I
would say 98 was the best for a very short time, only until 98SE
became available. After that, 98SE was only best until 2000 became
available. Then XP became the best, and now 7 is the best. IMHO, WinME
and Vista never carried the crown, but it seems completely whack to
claim that an OS that was long ago obsolete was and is best. I guess
there's no single definition for 'best'.



Context is everything. If we want a strong 32 bit Windows API, but also want
easy boots to real mode and DOS, then W98 SE is pretty much the only game in
town. Add NUSB and a few other things like 48 bit LBA addressing, and it
starts to give later OS'a a fast run for their money. I'd never argue that it
was absolute best in any way, but I'd also never give it up. I might use
other stuff, as I do at times, but W98 SE in minimal and improved form is
amazing.

That little word "if" is the key. The vast majority of computer users
don't want or care about any APIs. APIs are used by developers, not by
end users. Likewise, the vast majority of today's end users don't want
or care about real mode or the old DOS. A person would have to put
themselves into the tiniest niche imaginable in order for any of those
things to be a consideration.

On Thu, 16 Feb 2012 17:18:58 -0700, "Bill in Co"
wrote:

Char Jackson wrote:
On Thu, 16 Feb 2012 14:11:27 -0600, wrote:

On Thu, 16 Feb 2012 05:38:21 -0600, "BillW50" wrote:


You did a great job of comparing the versions of Windows.
3.1 sucked, 95 needed help, but 98 was and still is the best.

I guess we all have opinions, and it's no surprise that they differ. I
would say 98 was the best for a very short time, only until 98SE
became available. After that, 98SE was only best until 2000 became
available. Then XP became the best, and now 7 is the best. IMHO, WinME
and Vista never carried the crown, but it seems completely whack to
claim that an OS that was long ago obsolete was and is best. I guess
there's no single definition for 'best'.

Why is "7" the best? What does it offer over XP (besides extra bloat) for
a seasoned veteran?

I find it interesting that you would put bloat into the "what does it
offer" category, as if that was an advantage. It's hard to say
definitively whether it's more bloated or not, though. Additional
functionality is rarely accompanied by LESS code, you know.

To answer your question, Microsoft has some decent comparisons online
somewhere. I don't have links handy, but they shouldn't be hard to
find if you're interested.

Char Jackson wrote in
:

On Thu, 16 Feb 2012 17:50:25 -0600, Lostgallifreyan
wrote:

Char Jackson wrote in
m:

On Thu, 16 Feb 2012 14:19:53 -0600, Lostgallifreyan
wrote:

"Mayayana" wrote in news:jhjnds$320$1@dont-
email.me:

No, they lied. They offered a driver download. And they said
there was no Win9x version. But they didn't mention that
actually the drivers were not theirs in the first place. The
drivers are for the chipset. The chipset was Via. Via
supported Win98. To offer repackaged drivers but say Win98
is not supported was deliberately misleading.... which was known
as "lying" in the days before P.C. speech.


It is at least seriously disingenous.

I don't see how.



I just posted about that.. Basically, unless Via gave them leave to claim
less for the Via driver and chipset, they're limited to making claims ONLY
about their own end product.

It sounds like neither of us knows the details of the business
relationship between the mobo maker and the chipset maker. Thus, this
entire conversation is a wild goose chase. Sorry, the claim of lying
is rejected.



You did get that this claim was not mine, didn't you? Why must I tell you yet
again? I said 'disingenuous'. Look it up. If I meant lying, I'd have maybe
said 'mendacious'. So take the 'lying' issue up with the OTHER guy, not me.
All I'm concerned with is that when people say that something 'is not
supported' they should say 'we do not support it' or 'it is not supported by
us'. Anything else is like citing the omnipresent and hypothetical 'they' as
so many do to back up a personal line of argument. The only way there IS ever
anything to discuss is when assertions come from direct experience, and not
from some imaginary hotline to god. The conversation maight seem like that to
you already, meaningless, but only because you are happy to blur the
distinction. That plays into the kind of game people want to play when they
need you to believe for them. You'd do better trying to nail the specifics
like the other guy tried to do, whatever his claims were. You seem unable to
resolve the difference between me and the other guy claiming that the firm
actually lied, you wrap the lot up in trite denial. That's like a kid hiding
his eyes behind his hands and thinking the world does not see him.

On Fri, 17 Feb 2012 00:29:33 +0000, choro wrote:

But ne'er worry. Soon we'll have Windows 8 that will right some things
and mess up other things. And so it goes on... All in the name of
progress... though sometimes we have to take a backward step just to
make life complicated. Windows Media Center springs to mind here... Nice
GUI but crap as a practical interface!

My family, friends, coworkers, and customers are nearly universal in
praising the easy functionality and simplicity of Windows 7's Media
center. I've used it myself, too, and it works very well. What problem
are you having with it?

I haven't used the old XP MCE so I don't have a basis for comparison
with that version. I only know that 7's MCE works very well and is
extremely easy to use.

Char Jackson wrote in
:

"Nuking its host" is so last decade. Malware rarely does that anymore.
If I'm a piece of malware and I kill my host, I die, too. OTOH, if I
work hard to keep my host alive and keep myself out of the way, I can
do a lot of things, none of them good.


Exactly so. 'Nuking its host' was my flippant way of saying 'nothing to worry
about'. As to imaging an OS, that's just good sense, it lets all kinds of fun
stuff happen, there's always a fast way back if it borks.

Basically, a remote attacker needs to get feedback, otherwise whatever they
do it is no more use to them than if they nuked the host.

Re false postives, that's not old news, it still happens, I recently came
across a site where coders were warning each other about use of the UPX
executable code compressor, not because it's bad, but because it apparently
makes several innocent programs appear to be malware according to scanners
that aren't savvy enough to handle UPX'd code. I can't remember the previous
time I came across mention of false postives, but I do see them mentioned, I
just don't usually need to think about it, but the UPX thing interested me.

On principle I like tools that act according to what code does, not to what
they think it looks like. The line between 'pre-emptive' and 'stupid
prejudice' is extremely thin, especially when machines are trusted to make
the decision. Machine logic is better aimed at a bank of switches, which is
basically what a firewall is.

On Thu, 16 Feb 2012 17:48:06 -0600, Lostgallifreyan
wrote:

Char Jackson wrote in
:

On Thu, 16 Feb 2012 14:24:00 -0600, Lostgallifreyan
wrote:

Char Jackson wrote in
:

I completely disagree. You seem to be confused about the meaning of
the word 'support'. You originally said above that Asus or MSI said
your OS was no longer supported. They get to make that decision, and
whatever they say, goes. The fact that you found a driver somewhere
else doesn't change anything.


Actually it does. They can claim not to support it, but they cannot claim
that it 'is not supported' as if that is universal.

Now you're playing word games. I don't know what they claimed.
Everything I know about it came from this thread, and I saw no
evidence of the mobo maker lying in this thread. They get to choose
what they support or not.


Of course. Not contesting that. What they do NOT have a right to do is use
another firm's drivers, as if they were their own, and attempt to claim that
the limited support is universal when the original supplier does offer that
support.

No offense, but I don't think you (or I) have any clue what they have
or don't have a right to do. All of that will be spelled out in the
business relationship they have with each other, and I haven't seen
that. I don't think you've seen it, either, nor has the other person
active in this thread. It's just a bunch of hot air so far.

The ONE exception is if there is some specific written clause in
their contract with the driver supplier than lets them do it.

We haven't seen the agreement, so we don't know how many exceptions
there are, or what they say. I appreciate the effort, though.

Note that 'lying' wasn't my charge. I just agreed with Mayayana to some
extent, sayign that is at least disingenous. It is, given that they likely
knew what he also discovered to be true.

Except that it's not a given, which blows the entire argument and is
why I disagreed with the two of you.

The vagueness of this interpretation is exactly what is being used to lead
people to beleive that the OEM's limitation is over-riding, when it isn't.

You're probably being serious, but I find that to be silly. If you're
looking for a driver and you don't find it in the first place you
look, you can either give up or continue searching. If you give up,
that's your choice. It wasn't forced on you by the lack of a solution
in the first place you looked.

I'm not a judge so I won't try to say which one will win in law, but I bet
either interpretation could, depending who spent the mosty money on lawyers's
time to keep pushing their angle. There may ne a test case, but I don't know
if there is or not.

I have no idea what you're trying to test. Contract law is fairly
settled, so it's probably something else. *shrug*

98 Guy wrote in :

If you have NAT functionality in your modem or router, then you don't
need to be running a software firewall.


Are you one of those people who make strict distinctions between firewalls
and antitrojans? NAT is useless against stuff trying to get OUT, so something
like LnS is indispensible. It's software, it's a firewall by name, but unless
you want to risk all kinds of stuff opening up listening sockets or worse,
it's wise to run it, NAT or no NAT. The main reason people used in the past
against either firewalls OR antivirus was use of resources, slowing a system
down, but LnS won't do that.

Another thing about NAT, is it's fiddly, often awkward to set up, and limited
in detail, so peopel often find a block they can't negotiate, then switch it
to DMZ to drop all of the security it's meant to offer. A good firewall is
usually better at handling that kind of need. A switch is only as good as the
control logic that operates it. Router firewalls aren't as smart as a good
software firewall. Nothing wrong with using both though.