On Sun, 18 Feb 2007 12:08:06 -0600, "Michael Jennings"
Thanks for the info! Jim Allchin impolitely pleaded for simplicity - his
message may have been heeded only hypocritically at MS for now,
but who knows? Quieting complexity for the user *is* the trick.
Einstein said "things should be made as simple as possible, but no
simpler". So, how simple can we make things, without the user losing
control of what they are doing and thus get malware'd?
A use needs to know:
- whether something is from their PC or "out there"
- that what they think they're doing, is what they're really doing
- whether a file is data that's safe to view, or code unsafe to run
As it was, the user didn't know whether a "system alert" dialog box
was from the OS or some scumbag web site, because web sites were given
the power to automate pop-ups that could look like internal dialogs.
As it is, sometimes what you think you are doing (say, "opening"
D:\Data\Readme.txt after a search-as-you-type "Read<enter>" finds
E:\Suspect\ReadMe.exe instead) isn't what you're really doing.
And as to the difference between "viewing data" and "running code", MS
has steadily eroded the old ".BAT, .COM, .EXE" certainties (via macros
in Office "documents", scripts in HTML "message text", a plethora of
new code file types, and hiding of extensions) while not creating new
ones. You shouldn't have to know 50 file name extensions and bash the
OS over the head to see them, to know whether a file is safe to view
or risky to run. The meaningless word "open" is dumbing things down
too far; we should be using "Run", "Edit" and "View" instead.
Whenever there's a mismatch between the low risk the user things they
are taking, and a greater risk they are in fact taking, there will be
malware that will exploit this. No shortage of "Exhibit A" there.
BING doesn't bother much with this ideal, but in return for
accepting its complexity you get a much better value than with
image and partition management alternatives, we agree?
I'd think so, yes. I don't find it difficult - IMO, if you're axing
around in a partitioner, you really should know what you're doing - as
long as you know to refuse the install if using it to manage
partitions rather than as a boot manager.
I am not alone in preferring once-in-a-while BING images to
system restore, but in disliking that you have the majority opinion.
I don't see SR and partition images as having much to do with each
other at all. It's like shoes and a car; yes, I could drive to the
letterbox to get the post and I could walk to Jozi, but each situation
so radically favours one of these tools over the other that I can't
see myself walking everywhere or driving everywhere.
For example, let's say I try some new beta device drivers for my
graphics card. (bear with me, maybe I need to, for some reason!
I could make an SR point, try the drivers, go AAAACK!, do an SR
restore to undo the damage.
Or, I could leave Windows, change my boot order, boot my BING CDR,
start a partition image of C: to logical volume E:, go out to lunch,
come back, wait for the image to complete, go back into Windows, try
the drivers, go AAAACK!, boot BING again, restore the image, have a
bath, make tea, get fresh milk, reboot back into Windows, and get
clobbered by a rogue CDR next week because I forgot to set the boot
order back to HD before CD.
Now try the above on a "great unwashed" one-big-doomed-C: 200G hard
drive. Take the day off while BING images, and the night off while
BING restores the partition. Scratch your head about where you're
going to put up to 200G of image, when you have one 200G HD.
My reason is emotional - I don't trust Microsoft not to screw up.
I don't trust myself not to screw up, let alone anyone else
If it becomes clear that this view is irrational, then I may change it.
Machines stay on rails quite reliably.
Humans can go off the rails to find other solutions, but also tend to
accidentally fall off the rails when there's no need to so.
Machines are made by humans, so the rails they follow so well, do not
always take you to a sane destination.
When you turn off XP's system restore for the Vista partition, both
systems being visible to each other, does XP still mess with volsnap?
Now THAT's a good question!
XP, like WinME before it, duuuuufaults to enabling SR for every new HD
it sees - and you cannot turn off this behaviour without turning off
SR entirely (which is another option, mind you).
I'm surprised XP's screwing up on thios one. I really thought XP had
learned many of the lessons from WinME when it came to SR, in that it
uses an installation-specific CLSID in the SR data store path.
That means dropping an XP HD into another XP system will not cause the
one installation to splat the other's SR store - unlike WinME, which
screws up in about the worst possible way (kills all SR stores on all
installations on all drives)
So I can't understand why XP kills Vista's SR data, unless it's by
design for some reason. It's crazy... Vista knows XP's code logic and
should be able to stay out of XP's way, and there's no
legacy-compatibility reason to limit design of Vista's SR.
As to why MS screws around in partitions that are marked as not
theirs, that is IMO inexcusible. It may be to stay compatible with
GoBack, which fiddles around with partition type bytes while (to the
naked DiskEditing eye) maintaining internal file system compatibility,
but I think MS should have stayed within the lines of what an OS may
or may not do, and to hell with GoBack's shenannigans.
--------------- ---- --- -- - - - -
Saws are too hard to use.
Be easier to use!
