Re: FW: Re: The term "operating system"

[Pieter Nagel <pieter.nagel@epiuse.co.za>]

  On Wed, 19 Nov 1997, chuck wrote:
  
  > Pieter Nagel <pieter.nagel@epiuse.co.za> writes:
  
  > >Yes, well, instead of clicking 3000 times to grant each of 3000 users
  > >the same additional rights, I'd much prefer a less clickety-click UI
  > >which allowed me to grant those rights once to an Organistional Unit.
  > 
  > Well, ignorance of another product is no excuse to call it inferior!
  > You can assign rights to groups of users in NT.
  
  I am guilty of having spoken in a too vague shorthand.
  
  Yes, *some* rights can be inherited from NT groups to users. But look
  at the NT User Manager again. Some types of rights can be assigned to
  individual users only. A totally different set of rights are
  associated with Groups. And yet another set with Policies which
  affect the entire Domain. Compare the set up right you can assign to
  a group/user with the set of events you can audit. Not the same. Its
  a totally non-orthogonal mishmash.
  
  Try assigning the "User must change password at next logon" right to
  a group. Or "password expires every 10 days" to a specific group, and
  not to the entire Domain.
  
  Then look at all those funny prosaically described User/Group rights.
  You can make someone a "power user". Hmmm, what does that mean? Oh,
  they can share drives. It conjures up image in my head of what the NT
  source code might look like:
  
  	share_drive()
  	{
  		if ( user_has_right ( POWER_USER ) )
  			do_share_drive();
  		else
  			deny( AUTH_ERR );
  	}
  
  Look at the length of that list and imagine how many "if's" could be
  forgotten by programmers.
  
  What is the underluying mathematical unifying framework of Window's
  rights system; short and sweet that one can *trust* it?
  
  > I can understand a company likes 'brand loyalty' to a product, but
  > people who want to stand by their Apple products unto the death
  > like it's supposed to be some kind of eternal religion...
  
  You are begging the question. 
  
  Just because *some* brands and products were rendered technically
  obsolete does not prove that, specifically, NetWare is now obsolete.
  If you want to make that claim, base it on the qualities of NetWare,
  and not of Steam locomotives or Macintoshes.
  
  > within 4 clicks of a blank desktop I can bring up a visual pie chart
  > showing how much disk space any of my servers have.
  
  Did you know that I can too? 
  
  To paraphrase: ignorance of another product is no excuse to call
  yours superior.
  
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