Why do you still use Windows XP?

On Thu, 16 Feb 2012 21:38:15 -0600, Lostgallifreyan
wrote:

Char Jackson wrote in
:

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.

To be honest, I don't really care. He said they lied and you said you
partly agreed, calling it at least disingenuous. That makes both of
you wrong. ;-)

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'.

Or, you could just read it that way yourself. That's already what "not
supported" means to me.

Char Jackson wrote in
:

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*



I'm not trying to test anything. I'm just aware that whiel contract law
exists, it's not exactly 'settled', more money is spent on contract dispoutes
than anythign else, if you include patent law, which is closely enough
related to consider similar.

All this boils down to one thing: we should speak for ourselves, and not
claim to speak for some majority. Plenty of people are vague about that, and
in the case of commercial enterprises, often deliberately. To assume
otherwise is naive. The really careful and honest ones are STRICT about the
extent of their claims.

On Thu, 16 Feb 2012 22:04:58 -0600, Lostgallifreyan
wrote:

All this boils down to one thing: we should speak for ourselves, and not
claim to speak for some majority. Plenty of people are vague about that, and
in the case of commercial enterprises, often deliberately. To assume
otherwise is naive. The really careful and honest ones are STRICT about the
extent of their claims.

I agree, but then why call something disingenuous when you know next
to nothing about it? While I'm happy to see you've come to my side of
the discussion, I'm puzzled by why it took so long.

Char Jackson wrote in
:

Or, you could just read it that way yourself. That's already what "not
supported" means to me.


But not to me. Look, it's like an unbounded regular expression, logically. My
first assumption is that the claimant has limits they do not declare, so all
it does is goad me to go looking wider because they either don't knmow them,
or they refuse to tell me, or they don't even think about it at all, which
doesn't help anyone much. It's always easier to trust a statement as
complete if it comes with explicit statement of its limits on context.

Maybe most people don't think like that, but maybe they should. They'd spend
a lot less money on lawyers, and need a lot less tech support for basic
problems. I remember that schools once used to actually teach logic. I can't
think of any that do now, even when teaching computer programming.

On Thu, 16 Feb 2012 21:58:52 -0600, Lostgallifreyan
wrote:

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.


snip

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.

You haven't kept up with what's available in the last 5-8 years or so.
NAT is a breeze to set up now, not like it was 15 years ago. Any kid
can do it. Heck, most of my customers are adults, many of them senior,
and they can do it.

Char Jackson wrote in
:

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.

Actually, they just don't know they want it. If it vanished, they'd soon be
asking why all the things they took for granted vanished like bad
metaphysics.

Char Jackson wrote in
:

Additional
functionality is rarely accompanied by LESS code, you know.

Just to play devil's advocate, I'll say that the entire concept of the DLL
was based on exactly the desire to do more with less. And then there's all
the other reductions. We can do away with MFC and .NET and any number of
other things, and get right down to C and the API (hence my earlier post juts
now on that) and we could even go to assembler if we're gluttons for
punishment.

If you look at poets and mathematicians (and composing musicians), they'll
spend some time containing the construct, then a whole lot MORE time refining
and reducing it to what they generally express in the shared term of
'elegance'. The main reason for bloat is simple: Too many coders are not
willing to take the time.

Lostgallifreyan wrote:

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?

I know and understand the difference between an in-bound and out-bound
firewall, and that a NAT-router can't be an out-bound firewall - but a
NAT-router makes for an in-bound fire-wall that's indistinguishable from
the equivalent software service running on a PC, except that's a lot
more efficient.

As for anti-trojans, I've long since given up waiting for my win-98
systems to become infected by them. I've studied the operational
details of many such infectors, vulnerabilities and exploits over the
years and have come to the realization that hardly any of them were
designed for or could ever infect win-98 systems - at least not through
"drive-by" web browsing (ie - a javascript or heap-overflow browser
exploit).

NAT is useless against stuff trying to get OUT

I've asked many people running win-98 what their firewall has ever
detected, and have never heard any of them say it detected a real trojan
or some other malware trying to make an out-bound connection from their
PC.

In probing further, it seems to almost always be the case that people
run software firewalls to be able to exert more control over their
system and it's programs. In the case of XP, it's always amusing to
find that quite a lot of malware knows how to de-active the internal
firewall and get on with the business of installing trojans, keyloggers,
backdoors, etc.

Another thing about NAT, is it's fiddly, often awkward to set up,

Most people have no need to change the NAT settings on their modem or
router. So that's not really a valid argument.

Broadband consumer modems and routers have come with NAT functionality
enabled by default for at least the past 6 or 7 years. Nothing to setup
or change - unless you play on-line games or do torrenting. And if you
do either of those, then you're probably going to have the smarts to get
your ports forwarded correctly.

Char Jackson wrote in
:

On Thu, 16 Feb 2012 22:04:58 -0600, Lostgallifreyan
wrote:

All this boils down to one thing: we should speak for ourselves, and not
claim to speak for some majority. Plenty of people are vague about that,
and in the case of commercial enterprises, often deliberately. To assume
otherwise is naive. The really careful and honest ones are STRICT about
the extent of their claims.

I agree, but then why call something disingenuous when you know next
to nothing about it? While I'm happy to see you've come to my side of
the discussion, I'm puzzled by why it took so long.



I just think that being deliberately vague while representing a company's
authority is disingenous, or at least a sort of unprofessional cock-up. And
I'm neither agreeing or disagreeing, more exploring, if anything.

I suppose 'ingenous' is really just about speaking one's mind openly, so
perhaps a claim of 'not supported' really is just that, but in this case it
just means that the firm's reprentative was wrong enough that it got up
someone's nose. I suspect some bits of hardware on that board may not have
been fully supported by the Via generic driver, but evidently enough of it
was. If someone is willign to support something, then credit where credit is
due. It's reasonable to expect that a third party seller of stuff using Via
drivers might have stated what seems obvious in hindsight. Basically,
whatever we make of it, they can easily do better than they did.

Char Jackson wrote in
:

You haven't kept up with what's available in the last 5-8 years or so.
NAT is a breeze to set up now, not like it was 15 years ago. Any kid
can do it. Heck, most of my customers are adults, many of them senior,
and they can do it.



Got a Linksys thinger (wireless access point, but it can do other stuff too),
and NAT in the BT hub. Both recent devices. I still like LnS better.