winscape 2313

This is a device driver not an application.

That depends on the architecture of the OS. Most device drivers have to be intimate with the kernal in some fashion. I don't know about 386 instruction architecture, but with DEC equipment there were machine instructions that could not be done by a user at the application level.

This is one of problems that has to be addressed and solved. How do you firewall applets if your business is to provide ports that download random code. Vetting code has always been an interesting problem. In the past, the firewall was human beings doing controlled tests, field tests, staged production levels, etc. Now that individuals can "own" any combination of hard-software, there just isn't any method to do controlled tests. One would like to be able to examine bits getting downloaded for problems as they fly by.

Oh, honey. Take a good look at Microsoft's business model. It is happening right now to all systems that have not unclicked themselves.

IMO, that was one of the huge design flaws. A single owner does not mean single user, ever. Just because, you, the owner of cheap hardware, wears all the computer maintenance hats, does not ever imply that you will constrain yourself to doing one thing at a time. Even a game doesn't do that.

Those files will be you bank accounts, your money, your pay, your medical status, your citizen status, your felon status.

Now think about patching services. Those all require a backdoor.

Sure. My experience with "compiler thinkers" cannot deal with having flow charts that do two things at once.

They do. OS people also have to be able to consider synchronized that are asynchronous and asynchronous that are synchronized. Consider a network packet that is bad. The packet receiver needs to have the sender resend the packet.

Now think about how slow a network would be if a receiver can only deal with packets that have to come in the correct order.

Sure. That was Java's restriction. What will force Microsoft from not honoring that. They've broken the poo out of mail with magic incantations if the first word of any mail is a certain set of letters. This was horrible. Nobody in their right mind would have ever coded that.

Well, of course. Dangerous things are supposed to be tough.

BAH