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The port of the Windows 95 Start Menu was not all it seemed

theregister.com

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Re: The port of the Windows 95 Start Menu was not all it seemed

#41

Post by graynk »

eknkc wrote: post #11

I’ve seen a couple videos of Dave Plummer and they were fun. Gave some insight to internals of Windows etc. I even followed him on YT back then. But lately it feels like I see him all the time and there is something off with the guy. Can’t name what it is. Feels like he’s trying to milk whatever fame he got around the nerd circles as much as possible.

Every time I see his videos I think “haven’t you already made a video on this exact topic already”? Like, how many times can you make the “I made Task Manager” video, we got the idea the first time round..

Re: The port of the Windows 95 Start Menu was not all it seemed

#42

Post by mixmastamyk »

gertop wrote: post #39
h4ck_th3_pl4n3t wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet you still decided to accuse somebody of malicious intent and of being a scammer. That's not how a wise person should act online. (that you seem to imply to be by using your published books as an argument, as if that would validate any accusatory statements)

> Yet you still decided to accuse somebody of malicious intent and of being a scammer. https://youtube.com/watch?v=1GeF9AjlqP8 He is a scammer and was convicted for it.

Have any non-youtube links?

Re: The port of the Windows 95 Start Menu was not all it seemed

#43

Post by gertop »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #42
gertop wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yet you still decided to accuse somebody of malicious intent and of being a scammer. https://youtube.com/watch?v=1GeF9AjlqP8 He is a scammer and was convicted for it.

Have any non-youtube links?

https://www.atg.wa.gov/news/news-releases/attorney-general-s...

Re: The port of the Windows 95 Start Menu was not all it seemed

#44

Post by hulitu »

badlibrarian wrote: post #23
Kwpolska wrote: post #8

This claim was so easy to verify with a Windows NT 4 ISO and a resource editor, but nobody did. And nobody thought the bitmap has much better font rendering than NT 4. Dave retired from Microsoft and started a business that sold scareware: https://youtube.com/watch?v=1GeF9AjlqP8

"In 2006, Plummer's SoftwareOnline.com company was sued by The Washington State Attorney General’s Office for alleged violations of the Consumer Protection Act after complaints were made about two products called Registry Cleaner and InternetShield" People at this site are notoriously anti-Windows. We love to talk about dark patterns. Those products were total bullshit built to scare people, leveraging knowledge of W…

So those people were the forefathers of modern computing. (Android: "If you don't install updates, you will lose the right to make legal claims." "For your security, turn on Play protect to check apps outside of Play Store")

Re: The port of the Windows 95 Start Menu was not all it seemed

#45

Post by mixmastamyk »

rollcat wrote: post #31
mjevans wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss the magic SysRq key... Xorg / graphical systems blocked it decades ago, I've forgotten how to invoke it without looking it up, though I do remember REISUB. The security perspective of the SysRq commands is: a human is on a hard-wired console. If they want they can pull the power or press buttons on the outside of the PC that aren't on the keyboard. It's probably OK to obey some small list of actions that are u…

Yep that's my line of thinking, if you have physical access it's game over for security anyway (evil maid etc). Whether the kernel recognizes SysRq or CAD or whatever else is a matter of a patch, X11 or Wayland can't intercept (that's the entire point of having a very very low level kernel routine for that). The funky part would be the user space integration, the kernel would probably have to selectively resume a cou…

It ran like shit in 4MB—I remember telling the IT boss that we’ll need 8MB on every W95 machine, unless we want to wait 5 seconds to open a menu or run only one app at a time. Still 8 is impressive for the functionality.

Re: The port of the Windows 95 Start Menu was not all it seemed

#46

Post by hulitu »

raverbashing wrote: post #21
M95D wrote: post #10

WinNT task manager is not the same as Win9x. I doubt it was "ported". In Win9x calling the task manager (CTRL-ALT-DEL) instantly stopped all tasks except the Task Manager itself, and the Task Manager was always in memory. Most mis-behaving apps could be closed that way. Only a system that was frozen on I/O would not respond to CTRL-ALT-DEL with the Task Manager, and open a blue screen instead (the "system is busy: pr…

If I had to bet the reasons why would be that the 9x kernel was extremely frail and if you want to have any chance of Task Manager actually running it had to run from the start

Taskinfo was running fine on Win9x

Re: The port of the Windows 95 Start Menu was not all it seemed

#48

Post by h4ck_th3_pl4n3t »

gertop wrote: post #39
h4ck_th3_pl4n3t wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet you still decided to accuse somebody of malicious intent and of being a scammer. That's not how a wise person should act online. (that you seem to imply to be by using your published books as an argument, as if that would validate any accusatory statements)

> Yet you still decided to accuse somebody of malicious intent and of being a scammer. https://youtube.com/watch?v=1GeF9AjlqP8 He is a scammer and was convicted for it.

> He is a scammer and was convicted for it.

A settlement is not a conviction.

Re: The port of the Windows 95 Start Menu was not all it seemed

#49

Post by 47282847 »

bc_programming wrote: post #27
bilekas wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why it's related what he did after leaving Microsoft but okay, the article clearly states that he said the were using it internally at least and doesn't know why the programmatic sideways text was taken out but that everything else he touched on was right. It seems you have an opinion on Dave and that's fine but unrelated to the article here.

It's related because that past suggests a history of being untrustworthy. I mean we're talking about running a company that literally stole money from people and intentionally infected peoples computers to try to trick them into giving you more money, not just something he did by accident one weekend but something he dedicated years of his life to. Him leaning heavily on how he worked at a company two decades ago doe…

You seem to be of the opinion that people cannot learn from mistakes and cannot change and should not be given second (third? fourth?) chances to rehabilitate themselves and recover from bad decisions or habits?

Re: The port of the Windows 95 Start Menu was not all it seemed

#50

Post by 47282847 »

rollcat wrote: post #31
mjevans wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss the magic SysRq key... Xorg / graphical systems blocked it decades ago, I've forgotten how to invoke it without looking it up, though I do remember REISUB. The security perspective of the SysRq commands is: a human is on a hard-wired console. If they want they can pull the power or press buttons on the outside of the PC that aren't on the keyboard. It's probably OK to obey some small list of actions that are u…

Yep that's my line of thinking, if you have physical access it's game over for security anyway (evil maid etc). Whether the kernel recognizes SysRq or CAD or whatever else is a matter of a patch, X11 or Wayland can't intercept (that's the entire point of having a very very low level kernel routine for that). The funky part would be the user space integration, the kernel would probably have to selectively resume a cou…

Reboot gives you disk access. Access to the running system additionally gives you memory access. There may be something in memory you want to keep safe, like encryption keys and other credentials. Evil maid means you had to kill everything that was running, which may in itself signal that something is off.

Stealing my iPhone and replacing it with another is not the same as having access to my data on it.

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