On Sat, 2005-11-19 at 15:02 -0500, Lamar Owen wrote: > If you look at the problem Windows NT and its children have is that it > must have compatibility with the simpler, but less secure, Windows 3.0 > Enhanced Mode kernel (as Win95, 98, and ME are all based off this code, > which actually dates from late in the Windows 2.x 386 cycle). Yes! The problem isn't the NT kernel, the _original_ NT/Win32 model isn't half bad. It's all the legacy APIs that have _tainted_ the NT/Win32 kernel. That's the problem. Even being a UNIX and OS/2 administrator in 1993, I was a _huge_ fan of the Windows NT 3.1 design and release in 1994 (I saw the 3.1 Beta early on). When Gates gave the go-ahead to MS-DOS 7.0 in 1994, and the continuation of 386Enhanced Mode in MS-Windows 4.0 -- the bundled project "Chicago" turned product in Windows 95 -- that was the problem. A probably that continued through Visual Studio 6.0, which was still being used internally by MS itself (let alone ISVs) just a few years ago. The problem isn't the original RBAC/MAC complexity of NT. The problem is all the hacks, fixes and non-sense that has been built around it -- all the meanwhile _core_ "Chicago" subsystems have become a part of the heavilyi tainted NT/Win32 model. It was _never_ the original design. RBAC/MAC does _nothing_ to hurt the simplicity of the UNIX piecemeal model. You need no further proof of this than other UNIX flavors like Solaris, who have added RBAC/MAC quite well. If Linux users refuse to adopt RBAC/MAC, then many of us will look at Solaris and other UNIX platforms increasingly. -- Bryan J. Smith b.j.smith at ieee.org http://thebs413.blogspot.com ------------------------------------------------------------------- For everything else *COUGH*commercials*COUGH* there's "ManningCard"