Re: Drag it to the trash...

Daniel Johnson wrote:

"GreyCloud" <mist@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:VbCdnUzKk732FMzZnZ2dnUVZ_v-dnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Daniel Johnson wrote:

Yes, you can delete keys, but you can't delete *other people's*
keys.


Not even as admin?
Surely the admin can do that.


An administrator can take ownership of other
registry hives on the same machine and change them;
but this is likely to cause problems for the original
owner. There is no "root" equivalent on Windows,
for which security checks are turned off.


Ah, that explains their problem then.

Even if an admin is willing to do that, finding roaming
profiles is not possible, so he can only get the ones that
do not roam.

There might be a piece of software utility out there to help in finding and administering these "roaming profiles" for windows.
Not exactly what I'd expect tho. Other systems don't have that problem.


[snip]

Me. I was pointing out that on Windows, you can't actually get
every registry key that your software installs. You can do it in
limited cases (ie, only 1 user), but most uninstallers don't
even bother to do that.

True, they don't bother. Very sloppy of them isn't it.


It is. But like I said: lazy ISVs who Just Don't Care.

[snip]

What is the OpenVMS way, then? If it involves manual intervention
by an admin, then it's no better than Mac OS X.

They have been doing it for the last two decades. Either remotely or online. The SYS$STARTUP.COM file controls everything on one local node, and logging into another node you get to make changes in that systems SYS$STARTUP.COM file... or for most purposes each user has a SYS$LOGIN.COM file that has all the program presets there. And all of these files are plain text.


That's like DOS's AUTOEXEC.BAT!

Which Gates copied from DEC. And history shows that Bill did do some dumpster diving in Bellevue when he was a lad. Of course the DEC DCL is quite a bit more advanced and comprehensive than dos was.

The DEC system hardwired some names to the kernel. These are SYS$LOGIN.COM, SYS$STARTUP.COM, SYS$LOGICALNAMES, and a few more that can't make it thru to the top.
Hard drives are somewhat prewired by name to an extent, like DMA0: or DMA1:, MUA0: etc. But then the user can just poke into his own sys$login.com file as alias : $ DMA0: == Bert. Then when he needs to make a sub directory, all he has to do is use CREATE/DIR [Bert:mydirectory].
There are a lot of things one can do, but if it goes too far it can get confusing with too many aliases. Even the DCL commands dictionary can be customized for the end user by deleting most of the commands you don't want them to have access to or by renaming some commands that fit the users needs. And its all in text form.


These sorts of files are not "plain text"; they are *programs*
(written in DCL I should think) and expecting installers to modify them
is a bit much. Expecting ordinary users to do so is out of the question.


No, just plain text files. You have to realize that the VMS file system is ISAM by default if you need to access things in a sorted order. But all one has to do from a terminal is type in EDIT SYS$LOGIN and the file appears onscreen. A normal text editor. No installation program at all. When the sysadmin loads a new large commercial program onto a vms system, the so called installer is basically just a script that has been given priviledges to create files and directories, make changes to the system logical tables, and creating new aliases. But these are all text files.


The fact that the VAX and Alpha architectures have 5 levels of security in hardware actually makes the sys admins job a whole lot easier.


This is really sort of archaic. It's a lot of complexity for no real
benefit; you only need 2 levels in hardware and you can do everything
else in software, where you can at least fix the bugs.


It still qualifies for the higher levels of certs than any UNIX system can attain. VMS is really for those companies that need hard security at the system level and yet the company must also add physical security to attain an A level.


Most of my sysadmin techniques relied on programming a dedicated terminals function keys to do different tasks... by logging in and pushing the correct (1) function key.


That is pretty poor UI by modern standards, of course.


From a terminal it allows the user to customize things to their own needs, not hardwired by someone else that thinks that is what you need.
Each installation is going to be different.

[snip]

The registry API describes several disconnected 'hives',
like HKEY_CURRENT_USER, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE,
and so on. You can see this in regedit.

Why do you keep calling it 'hive'?


That's what MS calls it.

Okay. Not sure it really helps one to mentally focus on what is going on tho. I suppose it is just a matter of getting used to.


Here's a link with a (possibly apocrypal) explanation:

http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2003/08/08/54618.aspx


Never heard the term except in sci-fi books or beekeepers.


:D


It does not look like one file to programs, and it does not behave
like one file: each user gets his own preferences.

Sounds to me more like it would be easier for a problem to occur using their methods. Database type structures tend to get corrupted from time to time.


This is *not* true. Databases are very corruption-resistant
because of the journalling techniques they use.

Well then, is the registry journalled and is XP a journaling file system?
I know that Linux 2.6 using ResierFS is journaling. So is VMS.
As well as Tiger.


Even non-database-like binary files are more robust than text
files as a rule. Text files are more complex so that they may be
made human-readable: they support comments and
non-significant whitespace. They must tolerate ASCII,
UTF-8, UTF-16, and gawd knows what other encodings.


Uh, that is what text files are... straight ASCII.

Worse, human-readable files are almost always seen as
human-writable first. The text file can easily be *structurally*
corrupted by a careless user. And even careful users make
mistakes sometimes.


From that point of view, yes, but not being able to be corrupted without human interference. I'm thinking along the lines of having a file open and then the power goes out.
A text file won't corrupt. I've never seen one yet that did it.
I've seen IBM ISAM files get easily corrupted from a power failure.


I wonder... is there a rebuild command for the registry?


No. This is the great weakness of the design. This is why
you sometimes really do need to rebuild a Windows system
from scratch.

Sounds like an opportunity for a programmer to make one.
Would be very helpful for those that have to work with windows.


[snip- text vs binary again]

But not *that* much really.

Except that prefs are individual and go with the app.
There isn't a central registry that gets involved.


Prefs files do not go with the app: they go in your
~/Library/Preferences directory. They aren't all
kept in one file, but this does not make any difference
since they *are* all in the same directory.


Everything technically is in one directory... the hard drive. If it fails everything goes.

[snip]

This is the big difference: the registry contains object
registrations that can't be regenerated.

Is that where, when looking in the registry, you see something that looks like a very long serial number?


Yes.


Ok. I went thru that learning visual C++ a long time ago about serialization of files.
Not sure I like the approach tho.


If so, I can understand why it couldn't regenerate itself.


I wonder. But maybe you do. In any case, it can't. It can
regenerate prefs like the Mac does, but the bulk of the
registry is not prefs.


I know. Things like the title bar for IE modified by AT&T.
Try and hunt down all of their modifications. A true PITA.

[snip]

Funny things when windows media player in OS X started and then mysteriously quit, I called Apple up about it. They just said to drag the main Caches directory to the trash. I did and the problem went away. This is probably still a big mystery to me as to what can make an app just shut down or crash, but by throwing out the main cache it works. Never seen anything like that happen in windows.


It can happen, but presumably MS works a little harder to make
Windows Media Player solid on Windows.

Caches do differ from prefs in one respect: caches are about
making a program *fast*, so there is a temptation to omit validation
if it would be expensive. After all, caches are private files of
the app, no-one should be editing them. So nothing can go wrong,
right? :D

Like all things, according to Murphys' law, it will happen.
The cure at least is easy.


Windows and the Mac handle caches in essentially the same
way: per user directories in the profile/home folder.

[snip]

Sun is doing Java.

Getting a bit long in the tooth tho. Plus I really don't like the style of java that much.


Java was first released in 1996. It's still on the young
side, as languages go.


I thought it was derived from a project called OAK?
Back in the late 80s?


Microsoft has pretty well caught up,
but nevertheless Sun deserves credit for the innovation.

Sun started java back in the early 90s.


These things take time. It seems to be faster with
Apple partly because Apple sticks to unambitious
or proven technologies, but mostly because they
keep everything secret.


Remember when we had just MS-DOS and then out came the Amiga?
That was what made things exciting.


That was when things really were stagnating.

No, that was when real graphics took off at an affordable price.
Also had multitasking and a linear address space vs the 8088.


MS-DOS was just a CP/M knockoff.


Agreed.

There were still good ideas then: the Amiga's graphics
architecture, the Macs GUI. But they stayed bottled up
on niche platforms.

But that's what made it interesting. I don't want everything standardized on one platform. That just breeds monopolization and more stagnation.


The lack of compatibility you had back then was crippling;
the result was that most of the effort expended back then
was expending on copying things from other platforms;
quite a lot simply on copying the Mac.


Microsoft is not any less innovative today than it usually
is, I would say. :D

Due to their dominance, they have actually stagnated the industry by not putting out any new and trully innovative products out there. Right now, about all M$ does is search the country or world looking for innovative companies to buy out. But still, this stagnates the industry. They've made it almost impossible for a new company to jump in and compete with a new o/s and hardware.


I do not wish to exagerate MS's own innovation: but they have
been an enabler for innovation. Their software makes each hardware
and software component independent, thereby making it possible for
other vendors to produce innovative products without having
to build 'a new o/s and hardware'.

But I see this as just a new level of stagnation. IOW, everything is now made to the MS standard and leaves out any possibility of real innovation.


Without Windows, there would be no WinModems or WinPrinters;
there would have been no 3D revolution in gaming. No 3d-sound
cards.

I don't believe that. I don't like WinModems. They don't work with UNIX. Better left in hardware. 3D revolution in Gaming? I think the Amiga got started there first. Plus the fact that the dedicated graphics chips allowed for true 3D screens that I've yet to see in any of todays games. Amiga also had stereo sound and I'd believe that if the CEO hadn't screwed up, that they'd be the first with 3D sound.


Even simple things like high-resolution, high-color screens are extremely
difficult without this technology.

Whose technology? Sure isn't from M$. Remember it was their software, not the hardware that drove their market. Hi-Res screens were available long before M$ got into the fray.


I doubt we'd even have scroll wheels.


They had track balls back in the late 60s on expensive systems. The idea isn't innovative by a long shot.


--
Where are we going?
And why am I in this handbasket?
.

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