Windows Vista boss on Vista
p2p news / p2pnet: Will Microsoft’s forthcoming Vista spell the end of the security problems which have plagued, and continue to plague, the company.
Not from the look of it, despite a Seattle Times intro to a Q&A with Windows Boss Jim Allchin.
He is, says the story, "putting final touches on software that could finally help people start feeling safe and secure using a PC, if all goes according to plan".
However, that opening to a talk with the retiring (literally, not figuratively) Allchin, who, "gave an overview last week of Windows Vista, the new version of Microsoft’s flagship software that Allchin’s team is set to deliver before … the end of 2006,” may be a trifle broad.
He said Vista is, "on track to go on sale by the holidays."
But Vista, formerly Longhorn, has for already suffered from one long delay after another and Allchin also says, "I will also make a cautionary notice that I will not ship this product if it doesn’t achieve the quality that’s demanded by our customers.
"So although everything looks great right now, quality will be the deciding factor. I feel pretty good right now and we’ll see how it goes the rest of the year."
Bill and the Boyz haven’t so far paid much attention to the quality demanded by their customers, especially when it comes to security issues.
But time will tell.
Meanwhile, "Will you make a version of Vista for Apple computers, now that they’re using Intel processors?" – asks the Seattle Times.
Allchin: We have no plans to move Vista to the Macintosh hardware.
On "all the security advances in Vista," will concern fade away over the next couple of years”? – wonders the Q&A.
That’s Allchin’s dream he says, "so I’ll have to see if my dream comes true. To some degree, when we did Windows 2000 and Windows XP, we worked on trying to take away the reliability stigma that PCs had. By that I mean I don’t think people even think about their machines having to be rebooted, not like they used to be in the old days.
"It used to be very common to reboot your Windows 9x machine." It was indeed. In short, the premature release of a faulty product wasn’t a problem. But, "I think we did a very good job there," says Allchin.
"I hope we can do the same thing on safety and security with Windows Vista," the story has him saying.
"We are going to do a huge change with Windows Vista on this, but it truly is something that isn’t going to go away for a very long time.
"We are going to make it much less of an issue, but it’s still going to have to be something that people are aware of."
Also See:
Seattle Times – Q&A with Jim Allchin of Microsoft, January 31, 2006
January 30th, 2006 at 9:30 pm
“… I don’t think people even think about their machines having to be rebooted, not like they used to be in the old days.”
I’m a FreeBSD user for several years now, but anytime I am forced into a situation where I must use Windows (such as at work, Win2K, or my folks home, WinXP) I still see the constant need for reboots. Whether it’s tweaking a simple setting or recovering from leaky programs and other nonsense, the reboot problem is just as bad as it always was. This guy is full of it. As everyone knows, keeping legacy support for ancient, insecure programs will ensure that Vista is as insecure as it predecessors. Geeez.
January 31st, 2006 at 2:49 am
Vista x64 will require kernal level drivers to be signed. So much for open source software that has a driver that runs at that level. They say it will be an answer to “security”. And this is true. this is a line straight from a email from Microsoft. “Unsigned kernel-mode software will not load and will not run on x64-based systems.” Also unsigned drivers that don’t run at the kernal level will require to be under a Admin account as stated here which came from the email. “Users who are not administrators cannot install device drivers that don’t have digital signatures.”
January 31st, 2006 at 4:13 am
Haha! You’re wrong. The open-source software modules you’re talking about that run at driver level don’t need to run at kernel driver level. LHDDM splits drivers into 2 levels
User Driver Level and Kernel Driver Level. Almost everything that we use now (video card drivers, sound card drivers, etc.) will run on the user driver level. Motherboard stuff will run at kernel level along with stuff like that
January 31st, 2006 at 5:42 am
There are some programs that are designed to run at kernal level. its those programs that I am talking about and as far as other drivers i covered that also. To install them u must be in admin if not signed.