Windows XP source code has leaked • Hacker News Board

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#401

Post by segfaultbuserr » Sat, Sep 26, 2020, 8:27 AM UTC

beagle3 wrote: post #267

segfaultbuserr wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The major variables in modern compilers are just automatic timestamps, exploit mitigation random seeds, and toolchain versions, it is possible to make them immutable. The problem can be fixed, and there are already major projects to address it. Do you know that 90% of the Debian packages are already reproducible [0]? [0] https://isdebianreproducibleyet.com

That’s true. But that may also be a plausible deniability thing - you create a place to hide binary modifications by making sure no two builds are exactly the same. It could be chalked to some lack of care; however, up until 2000 or so, non reproducible builds were considered a bug in at least two places I worked in. The fact that it has become so hard to make builds reproducible could be Increased “entropy” (because…

No disagreement. It's why the problem needs to be fixed, although it's not a silver bullet (the compiler bootstrapping is still vulnerable).

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#402

Post by Aachen » Sat, Sep 26, 2020, 11:34 AM UTC

beagle3 wrote: post #265

Aachen wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> each public release had to be passed to the NSA That sounds a lot like a conspiracy theory. Any references on this?

The NSA has a dual mandate - to improve security for the US government (and by extension, US businesses to an extent), and to peek into communications outside the US. They have been pretty negligent about the first (or even malicious about it - e.g. the dual drbg case), letting the second take over - but officially they still have the first mandate. In fact, DES was considerably strengthened in its day by the NSA rev…

> Every “conspiracy” I’ve heard about the NSA and friends turned out to be true

And therefore every next thing anyone on the Internet concocted has to be true as well?

I get what you're saying though, and I'm well aware of the dual mandate. But you haven't given me anymore reason to believe this particular one, and I find it strange because I've never heard of any company in any country having to give their software to an intelligence agency before being allowed to release only the modified version. Implanting backdoors is not unheard of, but after they had great success with the clipper chip it's usually done without the company in question knowing about it.

You say the excuse was to validate some implementation, but in that case Microsoft wouldn't need to publish any modified versions, the nsa would just point out "this contains too strong crypto, can't export this" or "you made a mistake in algo X allowing attack Y". Not "please substitute this dll with our version and better not tell your customers!".

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#403

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet » Sat, Sep 26, 2020, 11:57 AM UTC

stjohnswarts wrote: post #390

oblio wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft forces them because it has to, there is no law for it. To drive a car, the car needs to pass a yearly inspection.

It saves them money in support calls.

Based on how ludicrously frequently updates are breaking things, this is a dubious assertion.

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#404

Post by HeadsUpHigh » Sat, Sep 26, 2020, 12:41 PM UTC

kwanbix wrote: post #279

HeadsUpHigh wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still have a desktop running windows XP that my parents refuse to upgrade, partially due to a piece of software licensed per computer that costs >300$. Thankfully chrome no longer opens half the websites so they are limited on the web side at least. 14+ years of service, the only times it blue screemed were due to hardware breaking down. Rock solid.

Did you try to virtualize it and run it into a VM only for that app?

No I'm not touching it with a 10 feet pole. Besides the fact that I would need new hardware for that( it's a core 2 duo system) which they are unwilling to fork the money for, anything that happens with it in the future will be my fault.

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#405

Post by kwanbix » Sat, Sep 26, 2020, 5:03 PM UTC

HeadsUpHigh wrote: post #404

kwanbix wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you try to virtualize it and run it into a VM only for that app?

No I'm not touching it with a 10 feet pole. Besides the fact that I would need new hardware for that( it's a core 2 duo system) which they are unwilling to fork the money for, anything that happens with it in the future will be my fault.

But it would be a time when the HD dies. Are you able to re-install? If no, you should try to backup/virtualize.

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#406

Post by kwanbix » Sat, Sep 26, 2020, 5:17 PM UTC

stjohnswarts wrote: post #380

kwanbix wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I admire what the community has achieve with Linux. I think is really great and I have used Linux in the past (Redhat, Fedora, Suse, Ubuntu, Mint). However, I always wonder what makes your experience so different than mine. For me I can simple replace what you said and it will still be valid: To me Linux were really frustrating to use since random parts of the system (CD-ROM, Word, Games...) would stop working at ran…

If you buy a system made with known linux compatible hardware you'll have zero problems. Just like a mac. Windows has the advantage that it gets first tier service and thus a greater chance with being stable with a broader swathe of hardware. OSX to me is much better than Windows because it doesn't get in your way. You want a new app download it and drop it in Applications. I don't know WTF windows does but some inst…

I have always used ThinkPads, which are among the best supported notebooks for Linux afaik.

I totally agree that Windows has an "unfair" advantage here as manufacturers make sure that their hardware works in Windows while for Linux most of the time they don't even provide drivers.

I have helped friends and family configure their MACs and honestly I never felt wow this does not gets in the way. Not all apps in MAC are installed the same way IIRC. For example Adobe apps. Never had issues with installers that take forever in Windows. Same with Transparency.

About the availability of the software, 99% of it is on Windows, so that is a big plus. But I am not talking so much about that, I am talking about the complexity to do things in Linux.

Most of the time, at least for a user like me that tries it/uses it sporadically, I need to search for a way to install or do something. It is good that most of the time there is a response, but I find it weird that all is so complicated.

For example, this is how I installed virtualbox some years ago (it might be better now)

wget -q https://www.virtualbox.org/download/..._vbox_2016.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add - wget -q https://www.virtualbox.org/download/oracle_vbox.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add - echo "deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian xenial contrib" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/virtualbox.list sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install virtualbox-5.0

In windows it was download, double click, next, next, next. Done.

Here is how to install MKTOOLNIX (again, a couple of years ago)

wget -q -O - https://www.bunkus.org/gpg-pub-moritzbunkus.txt | sudo apt-key add - sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://www.bunkus.org/ubuntu/xenial/ ./" >> /etc/apt/sources.list' sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install mkvtoolnix mkvtoolnix-gui

In windows, download, double click, next, next, next.

Again, if you use it all the time, maybe it becomes natural to you.

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#407

Post by nix23 » Sat, Sep 26, 2020, 5:24 PM UTC

rightbyte wrote: post #360

stuaxo wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

XP was a bit crap in the early days, but by SP2 it was a lot better and by SP3 it was really solid.

It is quite sad that we might never experience that stability and usuability of commercial big apps/os anymore in the age of penny squeezing and spyware. I had my Win XP, Photoshop and MS Office with ever lasting licsenses. You need FOSS today for that. As soon as you pay for software nowadays you are a loser, in general.

>As soon as you pay for software nowadays you are a loser, in general.

That is so true! I buy'd a Lifetime License for Insync and Jaikoz, Insync's lifetime was 4 Years (then they changed the license for updates) and Jaikoz "Lifetime" was 6 Years, change the name of the Software and split it in two different product and the 'old' one was not maintained anymore.

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#408

Post by rich_sasha » Sat, Sep 26, 2020, 8:39 PM UTC

hyperman1 wrote: post #321

rich_sasha wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me there is a step difference between things like DRM it activation count limit vs disowning the user from his PC. One is creating a channel for bona fide purchases of licenses (you don’t need to buy music with DRM, it’s fair enough if vendors want to limit distribution of a product to the original buyer). The other builds spyware into everything you do with your computer and takes away control of it from you. The…

I can't agree with you here, and in fact, I think this comment is proof of a shifted overton window. You are correct that things are not as blatant as now, of course DRM is, for example, a way to kill the second hand market or lending. I can sell my table without approval from its manufacturer, or drag it to my neighbours for a day. I can't sell my songs. In the same spirit, if I as a computer enthousiast want to upg…

I see your point, but I still think a difference remains. “Do you want to buy this non essential thing from me, that you can also buy elsewhere, with some restrictive conditions on license and reuse” is, in my eyes, a valid and honest proposal (potentially unattractive but that’s a different story). Take it or leave it. Exploiting a monopoly to force people, largely unknowingly, to surrender huge amounts of data and control over their computer, when there isn’t a practical choice (for most people it’s not really an option to switch to Linux or Mac, they are not fungible products) is a different cup of tea.

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#409

Post by hnlmorg » Sat, Sep 26, 2020, 9:09 PM UTC

int_19h wrote: post #247

hnlmorg wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

XP, when it was first released, was a more resource hungry and uglier version of Windows 2000. Win 2000 was amazing when it was released. Games (albeit not DOS ones) worked well, it was stable and really your only other options were worse (Mac OS 9 was less stable than Win 98, ME was a dumpster fire, Linux wasn't quite ready for the desktop and BeOS was awesome but barely supported). Then when XP was released, it had…

Many games did not work so well on 2K, and XP brought some substantial improvements specifically in that department.

I hear that said a lot about Windows 2000 but my experience was that it was only really true of legacy DOS games that didn't work right. Anything written for OpenGL or DirectX worked fine. In some cases even better (for example Quake 3 ran so much smoother on my BP6 board running Windows 2000).

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#410

Post by hnlmorg » Sat, Sep 26, 2020, 9:14 PM UTC

virtue3 wrote: post #365

JohnBooty wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I say this as somebody who really enjoyed W2K, but the complaints about WinXP's default theme are very difficult to understand when: - The classic theme was just a few clicks away - Of all the problems with XP, I would not even list the "easily changed default theme" in the top.... 100 or so. I would not expect to see such sentiment on HN, of all places.

Hey man, let people complain about what color the bike shed was painted. XP was a pretty damn good OS that came out of a time when there wasn't a lot of options. It was pretty stable. You could change network settings without restarting. It was built on the NT core instead of whatever 95/98/ME hot mess was. The main issue was it's exposure to viruses. Which was address in 8+ (windows actually started acting more like…

> XP was a pretty damn good OS that came out of a time when there wasn't a lot of options.

That's more true of Windows 2000 though. By the time XP was released Apple had released a few iterations of OS X and it was looking pretty decent. Not to mention desktop Linux becoming stable. Neither of which were true in 2000.

In fact with Windows 2000, I used to dual boot Win 95, Linux Slackware and BeOS 5 but I always came back to Windows 2k for day to day work. Then when Windows XP was released I gave it a try and got so fed up with it that rather than installing Win2k again I just switched to Linux full time instead (sadly BeOS had ceased development by that point).