Max: Divorce Windows Style
For the better part of the last year, I have been playing with Windows XP on my laptop. After all that time, I can say I officially hate it and look forward to the day when I have the cash to build a Linux box or get a Powerbook.
I have never been religious about my OS. As far as I was concerned, it was a tool, a means to an end. Windows had the most software, Mac had the neatest interface and Linux had power and adaptability. I just seemed to keep ending up with Windows systems. Outside of boredom with the same old interface and taste for Linux command line utilities, I felt no overwhelming desire to kill Windows until I eXPerienced XP.
It wasn't the cartoony interface. I felt it was a nice break from the past. It wasn't because it was evil. I feel evil has gotten a bad rap, on the whole. No, it was because of Windows File Protection. WFP is a feature added to Win2k and XP. The stated purpose was to prevent programs from overwriting critical system files and destabilizing the system. The problem was, the protection was extended to non-critical files.
I discovered this when I first installed Win2k. I am not fond of the default text editor that comes with Windows. For a while now, I have been making a habit of renaming my preferred editor notepad.exe and dropping it on top of the Windows version. When I tried it on Win2k, it didn't work. My text editor kept disappearing and being replaced by the Windows default. A little research I found out about WFP. Apparently Microsoft considers their crappy little text editor to be a critical system file. A little more research and I found the registry hack that turned off WFP. I was somewhat annoyed, but I could almost see some measure of wisdom in the system. If someone is looking up and using registry hacks, they either know they are doing or are morons destined to destroy their system anyway. Otherwise, keep the lusers from trashing their systems and blaming MS.
Then along came XP. I have a taste for the new and exciting, and I like to keep on top of new tech, so I went along and installed it. Along with XP came WFP and the oh so precious default text editor. So, I fired up regedit, did my hack and dropped my text editor on top of with default editor. Only, the hack did not work. MS had turned the hack off. Here I was, MS certified, years of experience as a tech and I was being forbidden from choosing my own text editor for my own bloody protection and now I was not even allowed to hack it out. A little research and I found a new hack. This involved actually using a hex editor to manually hack a .dll file to kill WFP. By the time I found out about this hack, MS had already included an update that modified the .dll to not allow for the hack. So, someone competent enough to find, download and install a hex editor, to actually research how to manually modify a .dll file, is not competent in MS's eyes to choose their own bloody, fucking text editor.
This is emblematic of an unhealthy world view in some sectors of the tech industry, the view that companies like MS, not computer owners, should be master and commander of computers. We as users should only be allowed to use our computers in the time and manner MS and company allow. And computer are turned from interactive to just another cultural sedative.
Then I look at the Linux and open source camp. Their very reason for being is freeing users to define their own computing experience. Don't like it? Hack it and make it behave. What a contrast it is, rather like comparing a totalitarian state with a democracy. It's like comparing dark to light, like comparing Shrub to Clinton.
Of course, at this point I have only two computers. One is a desktop that is mainly my wife's territory and she is happy with Win98. The other is my laptop. I have successfully loaded Linux onto it. But I could not get X top run. While there are some who live and die by the CLI (and don't get me wrong, I love the CLI), not having a GUI takes the fun out of downloading porn. So, for the moment I am stuck with Windows. But, at least I can use a more obedient version. I took advantage of a system crash (so much for stability) to do a clean install of pre-WFP Win98. It will have to do until I can get the cash together to get a box that knows I am the master,
I have never been religious about my OS. As far as I was concerned, it was a tool, a means to an end. Windows had the most software, Mac had the neatest interface and Linux had power and adaptability. I just seemed to keep ending up with Windows systems. Outside of boredom with the same old interface and taste for Linux command line utilities, I felt no overwhelming desire to kill Windows until I eXPerienced XP.
It wasn't the cartoony interface. I felt it was a nice break from the past. It wasn't because it was evil. I feel evil has gotten a bad rap, on the whole. No, it was because of Windows File Protection. WFP is a feature added to Win2k and XP. The stated purpose was to prevent programs from overwriting critical system files and destabilizing the system. The problem was, the protection was extended to non-critical files.
I discovered this when I first installed Win2k. I am not fond of the default text editor that comes with Windows. For a while now, I have been making a habit of renaming my preferred editor notepad.exe and dropping it on top of the Windows version. When I tried it on Win2k, it didn't work. My text editor kept disappearing and being replaced by the Windows default. A little research I found out about WFP. Apparently Microsoft considers their crappy little text editor to be a critical system file. A little more research and I found the registry hack that turned off WFP. I was somewhat annoyed, but I could almost see some measure of wisdom in the system. If someone is looking up and using registry hacks, they either know they are doing or are morons destined to destroy their system anyway. Otherwise, keep the lusers from trashing their systems and blaming MS.
Then along came XP. I have a taste for the new and exciting, and I like to keep on top of new tech, so I went along and installed it. Along with XP came WFP and the oh so precious default text editor. So, I fired up regedit, did my hack and dropped my text editor on top of with default editor. Only, the hack did not work. MS had turned the hack off. Here I was, MS certified, years of experience as a tech and I was being forbidden from choosing my own text editor for my own bloody protection and now I was not even allowed to hack it out. A little research and I found a new hack. This involved actually using a hex editor to manually hack a .dll file to kill WFP. By the time I found out about this hack, MS had already included an update that modified the .dll to not allow for the hack. So, someone competent enough to find, download and install a hex editor, to actually research how to manually modify a .dll file, is not competent in MS's eyes to choose their own bloody, fucking text editor.
This is emblematic of an unhealthy world view in some sectors of the tech industry, the view that companies like MS, not computer owners, should be master and commander of computers. We as users should only be allowed to use our computers in the time and manner MS and company allow. And computer are turned from interactive to just another cultural sedative.
Then I look at the Linux and open source camp. Their very reason for being is freeing users to define their own computing experience. Don't like it? Hack it and make it behave. What a contrast it is, rather like comparing a totalitarian state with a democracy. It's like comparing dark to light, like comparing Shrub to Clinton.
Of course, at this point I have only two computers. One is a desktop that is mainly my wife's territory and she is happy with Win98. The other is my laptop. I have successfully loaded Linux onto it. But I could not get X top run. While there are some who live and die by the CLI (and don't get me wrong, I love the CLI), not having a GUI takes the fun out of downloading porn. So, for the moment I am stuck with Windows. But, at least I can use a more obedient version. I took advantage of a system crash (so much for stability) to do a clean install of pre-WFP Win98. It will have to do until I can get the cash together to get a box that knows I am the master,
posted by Max Dobberstein at 12/02/2003 01:24:00 PM
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