Slashdot Mirror

We need to stop having bad security questions. http://www.geekswithblogs.net/...

To illustrate just how much content I'm talking about, here is a list of BBSs just in the Cleveland area code of Ohio where I grew up:
http://bbslist.textfiles.com/2...

There are 759 BBSs in that list, representing just one little slice of Ohio. Each one was a microcosm all unto itself. There are dozens of different types of BBS software represented there. Each BBS was hand-crafted and configured by the individual sysop with the style, color, behavior, etc, and hardly any two of them were even remotely similar. It was a point of pride for sysops to have a unique looking board, and they were updated often. Some where awful, some were great, but they were all handcrafted extensions of the people who made them. Each had its own character and personality, and the discussion forums and online games drew different types of people together. Some were mainly gaming BBSs, running multi-player online games like Trade Wars ( http://geekswithblogs.net/cwil... ), others had tons of shareware files you could download, others focused on discussion forums and communication, and of course others delved into the darker realms of illegal file sharing, etc. But again, they were all unique, and they are all gone.

Ask them how well they score on The Joel Test (see also this post with some suggested updates). This won't necessarily teach you about how much legacy code they have floating around, but it's a useful barometer. Part of what favorably impressed me about the place I am working now is that the VP I talked to (1) knew what it was, and (2) knew how they scored.

Ask how refactoring is viewed, if time is scheduled for specific cleanups of known "code rot"; if at least it is possible to include refactoring of relevant code as part of building new features. A too loose policy (which I've never seen but I suppose is possible) could be as bad as not budgeting for it at all; either can produce "legacy" quality code. Intelligent refactoring is part of the cost of maintenance (code "taxes", even).

Citation please? Because everything I've seen on Metro is that pretty much everything that doesn't run on ARM got thrown under a bus and i just don't see how you are gonna get DirectX, an API designed for killer graphics above battery life, to run on your average ARM tablet or even one of the midrange units.

I don't know where you've getting your information on Win8 so far, but it's clearly not the primary sources (i.e. MSDN library & blogs), because the fact that DirectX is available in Metro has been publicly known since Developer Preview release last year, which had both the docs and the SDK.

Anyway, as far as primary sources go: this gives an exhaustive list of supported D3D API surface, and here is a D3D Metro sample. Good enough?

By the way, what makes you think that Direct3D is "designed for killer graphics above battery life"? I mean, sure, it's designed to allow for it - same as OpenGL - but there's nothing inherent in the API design that mandates that. Again, if OpenGL can downscale to ARM, what makes you think D3D can't?

. ARM is low power above all and its IPC is worse than even Atom, much less Bobcat or a normal AMD or Intel CPU, yet they are trying to get devs to swallow they can "write once, use everywhere" when you are talking about arches THAT dissimilar? Are they stoned? Either the ARM version will suck a battery dry so fast it will make your head swim or it'll be using so little of the hardware because it was designed for WOA that it'll be like some fart app on the PC.

So, what exactly is "THAT dissimilar" about the architectures that makes it impossible to write portable apps? Linux world has been managing that just fine. As for battery, the techniques to conserve it are exactly the same on both Intel and ARM, namely - don't run stuff in background unless absolutely needed, let the OS put your app to sleep and out of RAM, and awake it when it's re-activated. Metro is specifically designed for that - apps can be expected to be unloaded at any moment and have to save/restore state transparently, and practically all APIs follow the asynchronous callback model to force programmers to use the reactor pattern rather than polling or doing other stupid (battery-wise) things.

The poster has a severe case of rectal caranial inversion. And with Microsoft bashers, flamers, trolls and all the others making mostly useless comments I found it necessary to write a blog here. http://geekswithblogs.net/GGBlogger/Default.aspx Craig Mundie is simply pointing out potential futures for end user interfaces. There is NO WAY this is going to be the LOOK of Windows 8. It will evolve over time as computing hardware gets more powerful and less expensive but folks I think we're stuck with the mouse, keyboard and non-touch displays for another 10 years.

That looks just like C# 4.0's named parameters.

Because there is no way to prioritize I/O!

MS does have a solution, it's called Windows Federated Search. Windows 7 with 2008R2 has it .. there might be a way to do with Windows Desktop Search 4.0. Here's some info on it - http://geekswithblogs.net/sdorman/archive/2009/05/14/windows-7-federated-search.aspx

You don't know what you're talking about, Federated Search has nothing to do with this; it's just a system for search plugins in Explorer. (link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd940456(VS.85).aspx )

This was addressed with the release of Vista. Even though the first user defaults to a member of the Administrators group it runs with standard privileges until elevated through UAC.

Which of course, has proven itself totally foolproof.

RE the OEM XP alternative to Microsoft's VECD Connection License;

There was one US Enterprise VMware customer who blogged about having had their Blade hardware vendor (HP or Dell, can't remember) issue OEM XP's licenses for their Virtual Desktops on the given server serial, but Microsoft aren't likely to let that happen again.

I believe that this is the reference the Parent is referring to;

http://geekswithblogs.net/WallabyFan/archive/2007/05/31/112867.aspx

MS Licensing for XP Desktops in VDI/DDI/Virtual Desktop design - VECD (Vista Enteprise Centralized Desktop) - how does it work, and what License do you have to buy?

Hi All,

I had an Integrator ask me for the details on how they could solve the MS Licensing dilemma around a relatively simple (??) VMware XP SP2 Desktops being delivered from an ESX VMware Server. As this was essentially a VDI scenario I found it somewhat interesting that this info didn't appear to be readily available.

As I knew that Prudential UK was listed as a Success Story by VMware at
  http://www.vmware.com/customers/stories/prudential.html

I was able to find that a chap called Andy Ruby was the guy who designed/installed this. Via LinkedIn I was able to contact him and the answer is listed below

As I also have some contacts here in Australia with VMware I was also able to get their response as well (see link to VECD from MS) and below I have passed on my 2 cents worth to the Integrator. I hope all of this makes sense? and I hope you find it useful? VECD Datasheet

With regards to Prudential in the UK:

Hi David
Prudential used an OEM licence issued by HP. Each XP OEM licences was tied to the serial number of the DL360 servers Prudential deployed. However, I'm not sure this helps you since MS were reluctant to continue with this policy and wanted full XP licences to be purchased for future deployments.

Andy

And this ties in neatly with the Answer from VMware:

The above licensing discusses the Licensing for Vista and the bullet point below is at the bottom of the text. So if all you have is the XPSP2 license then you are not going to be covered. Smart move by Microsoft, as it make any VMware customer a Microsoft customer.

• In both cases customers can install an unlimited number of copies of Windows Vista Enterprise or downgrade operating systems on server hardware and access up to 4 concurrent running instances from a licensed device.

So in Summary, my reading on it at the moment is that if you want to deploy the XP SP2 solution today you effectively have 2 options:

• Purchase full XP SP2 Licenses and go ahead, although you might be on thin ice but it is unlikely MS will complain too loudly
• Purchase Vista with VECD - this leaves you completely in the clear, but at a significant cost disadvantage

That sums it up pretty much at the moment? Please let me know if you disagree or you'd like to discuss this further?

posted on Thursday, May 31, 2007 1:10 PM

And don't forget the power of geeks. They usually have some money to spare for gadgets,...

Had the same problem, found the solution at http://geekswithblogs.net/redwards/archive/2007/06/18/113287.aspx. Not sure if your problem is the same, but it helped out several of us here after one of the automatic updates my employer pushed down.

Just a random observation. I bought an HD-DVD player by Toshiba this weekend. (Along with a lot of other people who jumped on the $99 player deal that was out there)

Guess what operating system it's running? Here's a clue, they have the GPL printed in the back of the manual.

So now I have a player that came with 10 free HD-DVD's and is running Linux, and which upconverts my DVD's so they look amazingly better and which cost me only $99.

Look more closely and you'll probably find more things are running Linux then you'd think.

Actually, the original HD-A1 was apparently running Red Hat. ( http://geekswithblogs.net/lorint/archive/2006/04/21/75795.aspx )

Sorry, but I use IE7 every day to read .CHM files (MS Press books). No one else I know has a problem viewing .CHM files with IE7. Maybe you have a corrupted file? Did you allow access to the .CHM file as described in http://geekswithblogs.net/evjen/archive/2006/06/29/83567.aspx ?

The thing is, Vista is actually quite a enhancement over XP and previous renditions of Windows. This isn't actually debatable; see:

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/vista/kernel- en.mspx
http://geekswithblogs.net/sdorman/archive/2006/06/ 17/82188.aspx

Changes are top-to-bottom too; everything from thread scheduling, to the entire driver model, to the TCP/IP implementation, to kernel-security has been completely re-done. And good on them I say for doing it - operating systems must evolve.

The problem is that such fundamental changes can cause some fundamental breakages, and this is what we're seeing now, and indeed, expecting. Even with Microsoft's "it must be backwards compatible" philosophy, things will break. People are just waiting for things to start working again, that's all.
I think it's unfair to bash Microsoft because of these changes and breakages too; vendors have had years to prepare for vista (god knows it's been coming to long enough) so I'd suggest the slow adoption is largely the fault of vendors. Never-the-less, Vista is a positive re-write IMHO (the DRM is a separate issue of course).

Now, next question; was the time & money investment worth it for the consumer to pay for it? Maybe; maybe not. I can't see even my geeky mates wanting to upgrade on the basis of kernel enhancements alone. The pretty backgrounds, maybe, but certainly not for a re-written TCP/IP stack.

First, ASICs are not expensive. They are in fact extremely cheap to produce, and the development costs are not that high and are easily justified in a mass-market application. Nobody in their right mind would use an FPGA in a consumer application -- they are far too expensive.

Funnily enough, apparently one of the early standalone HD-DVD players does have a FPGA on board, as well as a CPLD.

i'm going to have to see if this works:
http://geekswithblogs.net/ehammersley/archive/2005 /08/04/49143.aspx

I don't know. A 4Ghz Pentium-4 seems like an awful lot of processing power for a DVD player :)

What is a new HD DVD set top box going to look like, a cray supercomputer?

Nope. It's going to look like a 2.5GHz P4 with 1GB RAM and a USB card running Red Hat.

• http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000555.h tml
• http://geekswithblogs.net/cbreisch/archive/2006/04 /11/74818.aspx
• http://www.neowin.net/index.php?act=view&id=34631

Well, your knowledge sucks then. The first HD-DVD player on the market runs redhat Linux, so there ALREADY IS a hd-dvd player for Linux.. just comes bundled with hardware.

Well, since there aren't even sanctioned ways to play *regular* DVDs on a Linux computer, expect the lack of support to continue.

I know of a widely-available Red Hat box you can buy that will play both DVDs and HD-DVDs.

XP Sp2 limiting the number of connection/sec This feature/function can be handy from security point of view. Bink.Nu links to a functionality in Windows XP SP2 that limits conncurrent TCP/IP connections. I vaguely remember reading some relating when I was using Windows 2000 as well about a setting in registry where we can limit the number of TCP/IP Connections. On Googling I found the following link and on this forum . You can save your computer from P2P programs trying to make many connections at the same time and this can also apply to some of the viruses and worms.

Wasn't self-checkout, like some chains have, supposed to be super fast and easy? They've been far from that the 3 or 4 times I've tried it.