difference between thread and process

Hi,

I'd like to understand what's the difference between a
thread and a process and how this is related to Java's
threading mechanism.

For example it used to be that, under Linux, every Java
thread would appear as a single process (using the 'ps'
command that reports a snapshot of the current
processes).

One thing that I particularly don't understand is the
following: the Thread class's stop() method is
deprecated. And, sure enough, I've been able to
write quite some amount of multi-threaded Java
code without ever needing to brutally 'stop' threads.

Why does Windows provides a TerminateProcess()
and Unix a kill() facility to terminate/kill processes?

Is it bad programming style to call TerminateProcess()
and kill() ? If not, would it be bad to have in Java
a "correct" way to kill a Thread ? (not stop(), which is
broken, but something else?)

What makes these processes so fundamentally different
than Java threads that it is possible to terminate/kill
them?

.

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