On Wed, 16 Jan 2013 06:20:18 -0800, "William Sommerwerck"
wrote:

"Jeff Liebermann" wrote in message
.. .
On Sun, 13 Jan 2013 14:51:24 -0800, "William Sommerwerck"
wrote:

I prefer an operating system where I can see
what's going on.

I prefer an operating system that works as advertised. I have no
interest in becoming a programmer or hacker simply to use a product.
If Windoze worked as one would expect, then I would have no need to
see what was going on under the covers.

That isn't what I'm talking about. I'm talking about operating systems that
keep you from seeing what the computer is actually doing. The best example is
the increasing tendency of Windows to make the hard drive and its contents
"invisible".

Sure. It's called the "Hardware Abstraction Layer" by Microsoft. I
forgot what Apple calls it, but it's part of their policy of "You
don't need to know that". The only time I need to dive that deep into
the system is when something goes awry or I want to trade some speed
for reliability (such as turning on HD write cacheing). As long as
the hardware is working, I don't see any benefit to me or the typical
user of knowing what goes under the covers.

Now, if you mean invisible as in where the OS hides its configuration
files and temporary workspace, yeah I can see a small problem. These
tend to get bloated, corrupted, or undersized. A few days ago, I had
to increase the icon cache database in Windoze because I dumped too
many icons on my desktop. If Windoze (and others) hide some files and
directories from the user, it's usually to protect them from
(accidental) corruption. Not a big problem methinks.

However, if you want to see everything, just download and run
UNHIDE.EXE as in:
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic405109.html
It was originally written to help recover from malware that hides file
and directories making the machine unusable. Since there was no way
to know what needed to be unhidden to recover, the program unhides
everything. Have fun, and let me know when you accidentally trash or
edit something important.

Incidentally, I come from a Unix background, where one does as little
as possible as root (superuser). All work is done as an ordinary
user. If a system file needs to be run, edited, erased, or moved, the
user gets a temporary elevation in privledges using the su or sudo
commands. This is not to isolate users, or protect user information.
It's to keep the owner of the machine from accidentally trashing it.
The same philosophy is slowly working its way into Windoze, in the
form of "Run as Administrator". If you can't see every file and every
directory, it's for your own good. I've had the OS catch me before
making a major screwup more times than I care to admit.



--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558