Is Windows Operating System a virus?

With the recent problems being encountered by Windows users all across the country, people are begin to ask themselves if windows is a virus. In response to the high demand for an answer to that question a study was done and concluded the following.

1. Viruses replicate quickly.

Windows does this.

2. Viruses use up valuable system resources, slowing down the system as they do so.

Windows does this.

3. Viruses will, from time to time, trash your hard disk.

Windows does this.

4. Viruses are usually carried, unkown to the user, along with valuable programs and systems.

Windows does that too.

5. Viruses will occasionally make the user suspect their system is too slow (see 2) and the user will buy new hardware.

Same with Windows, yet again.

Maybe Windows really is a virus.

Nope! There is a difference!

Viruses are well supported by their authors, are frequently updated, and tend to become more sophisticated as they mature. So there! Windows is not a virus.

Yea that was pretty dumb… Here is the thing, you do not need to run vista. You can run a computer just fine on XP. Vista is for people can afford that much RAM and like tech stuff like that. RAM is pretty cheat nowa days anyway, so I don't think it will matter much.

1) Windows does not replicate? What does not even mean for an OS?

2) Every thing does this. 50 million lines of code is a lot of code to read, give them a break. I don't see you making anything more efficient.

3) Windows trashs your HDD, eh? You mean a virus does this. You only have this problem because you use Windows a lot. Had you been on an Apple, you would notice a whole new set of problems much worse. For one, Apple's OS's are not written as ergonomicly friendly as Windows, and that is a very bad idea. You can never assume a user will just know something, and that is why they only have 2% of the market.

4) WTF does this mean? Windows is carried with some valuable program? So you mean when you download solitare off a shady website you are also getting windows?

5) You constantly need to upgrade your computer if you wish for it to reamin quick. This is not windows fault, but rapid moving technology allows the market to change every 6 months. If the USER does a good job maintaining his computer, it should run just as quickly as when it was purchased, so it is really the User's fault that his computer gets slower.

Maybe you are dumb? I've never seen such ignorance in my life. Also, who is making 7 million dollers a day? You or Bill Gates? You can hate on Windows all you want, but that fact will still be true at the end of the day. Oh and if you Windows XP is just as sophisticated as Windows 3.2, you really are dumb.

Actually, Windows is prefectly fine as long as you aren't stupid and go around the web getting viruses, and if you have a proper firewall, anti spyware, and anti virus. I've never, ever encountered a problem with my PC. It depends soley on the user, especially with Windows.

Err… So? Technology advances fast, and pretty soon you'll see price drops in top of the line hardware right now for new hardware. By the time Vista comes out, 2GB will, and should be normal.

First off, I read the virus joke about three years ago, and it is still not funny…

Now, although I am an avid Linus fan, and spend 90% of my time using the newest SuSe release, Windows is alot like George Bush, in that people make fun of it for all the wrong reasons and usually have no fucking clue what they are spouting. To anyone intelligent, it is evident how moronic they are.

Now, as you said, Vista will take much more in the way of resources. That is true, but there is one thing that is going to bring any intelligent and avid gamer to buy Vista and any upgrades they need for it.

Let me explain….

The reason that people use consoles is not just because they are simpler and less prone to viruses and the like. Consoles use a technology where games are built exactly for the hardware, so the information doesnt need to be translated for the specific hardware to understand it. Therefore, unless current windows releases, the information does not have to go through a program, be translated, go to the hardware, and then have it run… instead, on consoles it goes automatically. Tests show that this gives an increase of around 20% in speed of hardware processing for console games.

Now, Vista is utilizing a new technology that many people reading it's features do not comprehend with their tiny, tiny minds [i.e. all of you]. That is that Vista is currently utilizing this idea that Microsoft now fully understands the power of (due to them being a large run in the console wars now) and creating a system in which games that are programmed a certain way (referred to as "made for Windows Vista") can be given information when starting that tells the game what sort of hardware the computer has, and the game will then return messages that don't have to be translated.

So, on a Vista-capable system, games will run at an average of 30% faster than normal PC games run today.

…and THAT, my friends, is why you are all speaking out of your ass about things you can never hope to understand. Good day.

I tend to like DOS. and no, I'm not joking. I like the low level acces and the lack of interruption by the system. Now don't get me wrong, standardization is fine, but only when it actually helps matters. Putting all sorts of akward abstraction layers over top of everything doesn't mean it's standardized. It just means now I have to lear how interactions with those abstraction layers will ACTUALLY affect the system. Add that to the need to understand the system in the first place, and it creates more work, puts a higher strain on the programmer's memory, and generally makes it more difficult to do anything unique.

The overhead of various APIs often doesn't seem worth the trouble. As an example, consider Game Maker. GM itself can be considered an extremely complicated API. You learn some commands that are specific to GM and use those instead of handling all the problems yourself. Cool, eh? It takes care of sound for you. It takes care of graphics, and even some physics. Sounds nice, but at the same time, you might notice that games people make in GM share quite a few issues.

Because everyone is using the same sound engine, the same graphics engine, and the same physics engine, the games come out feeling prety similar most of the time. The games that don't, the ones that stand out, tend to ignore the built in physics and write their own. They include DLLs to handle sound differently. They do MORE with the graphics than GM is really meant for. Ignoring the wants of the API allows for more freedom. In the case of GM, that works, because you're ALLOWED to bend the rules a bit. In Windows, the API is so central to the system that escaping it becomes difficult if not impossible in many cases.

The only way to escape the API prison when you CAN tends to involve far more code for circumvention than would have been needed to accomplish the same thing if there was no API at all. That's what DOS gives me. That's what an oldschool console gives me. That's what I want. And Windows will never give me that. Only more levels of abstraction.

I miss changing the speed and functionality of the PIT. Adding an extra plug to my SNES controllers and reading them through the printer port. Changing the font in text mode. Even copper bars. None of these things are possible without direct access to the hardware unless the hardware abstraction layer specifically provides calls for them. Guess what… It doesn't. The same is true for so many tricks. When you work at the lowest level, you can make the computer do things its creators didn't even know were possible. After abstraction, the difficult again becomes impossible, and the possible becomes mundane.

Thank you for bringing some common sense into this conversation. I really don't see why people like Apple so much. They make shitty computers and mp3 players.