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And so can all the malware, spyware, crippleware, middleware, trojans, worms, viruses, and anyone with even a mild desire to make life difficult for people around them. I bet it'll be even easier to hide shadow processes on the system from the unwary user thus increasing Microsoft's ability to sell the world's desktop out to corporate marketing departments. Imagine banner ads, not in your browser, but legally (via click through EULAs) on your desktop. There's nothing you'll be able to do about it.

Registry + ActiveX + a functional shell (finally) + .NET == cataclysmic user-base catastrophe waiting to happen

Windows admins are screwed. Get out of IT now if you're still sane, get out even if you're long past sane. Life will become hell very soon.

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no thanks, I would rather just download it.
http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/4/6/746ec 8ff-c4eb-41f3-884e-981bf39997b7/monad_b2_50215_x86 .zip
taken from
http://www.leeholmes.com/blog/CommentView,guid,8b2 6fea1-723d-4bd6-93c1-19d681af9276.aspx
(which also has the 64 bit version)

It's a security best practice in a multi-user system, so I'm not sure what your point is. It was in Unix long before it was in Windows, but that doesn't change anything. The flow goes both ways.

That said, Monad does offer many things that make it incredibly unique as a shell. You can try it for yourself, or simply read commentary from people who have. There are a lot of unix geeks (myself included) that really think it is a lot of fun. I have a lot of Monad examples on my blog, should you be interested.

Read Lee's post or my post for more opinion.

- adam

Actually, code signing does partially solve this problem, so that's one of the avenues we've taken. See my post about it (although I feel like a whore for posting it again.)

That said, once you have a code signing infrastructure to save you from untrusted script publishers, your signing keys become the attack point. Malicious code can create another malicious script, and then sign it with your keys. To prevent that threat, always password protect your signing keys. When you do so, Windows brings up a dialog asking for your permission before it signs the file in question.

You got it right when you said "it might as well be a batch script." These are just Monad scripts running on the system, just like batch files, perl scripts, Cygwin bash scripts, Ruby scripts, etc.

There is nothing intrinsic in Monad that enables these attacks, aside from it being a new language. In fact, Monad implements several features that help mitigate the dangers of traditional script viruses, as I outline here.

The fact that MSH is used as the execution vehicle is really a side-note, as it does not exploit any vulnerabilities in Monad. The guidance on shell script viruses is the same as the guidance on all viruses and malware: protect yourself against the point of entry, and limit the amount of damage that the malicious code can do.

That's not to belittle the dangers of script viruses, though.

I wrote a blog entry about it here, in relation to Monad.

## search-yubnub.msh
## Search yubnub from your Monad shell
## For help, use "search-yubnub ge"

## Load the System.Web assembly
[void] [Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("System .Web")

$url = "http://www.yubnub.org/parser/parse?command={0}" -f [System.Web.HttpUtility]::UrlEncode($args)
[Diagn ostics.Process]::Start($url)

Yes, there have been apps that have done this forever. But they've all been standalone, and don't travel with you between machines. I wrote a post about interfacting with YubNub via Monad here: http://www.leeholmes.com/blog/MSHAndYubNubACommuni tyCommandline.aspx

I wrote this SVG editor in SVG back when I wanted to learn a bit more about it. It's not fully complete, but does allow you do to some interesting things: SVG Editor in SVG.

I wrote a C# performance comparison tool to help me in this respect. When you're trying to optimize a hot-spot in your program, you can click on the "ILDasm Result" tab to see how .Net compiles it down to its Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL) representation.

I've also got the book, "Inside Microsoft .Net IL Assembler" that's very helpful. For whatever reason, you can get it for like $2 + shipping used from Amazon.

You're right-on there. I wrote an introduction to programming (w/ Javascript as the language) and thought about the IDE / language problem as well. I ended up writing a "Javascript Testbed" for people to use as their "IDE." Although I would have loved to use Java as the starting language, my main prerequisite was a _zero_ barrier to entry.

You're right-on there. I wrote an introduction to programming (w/ Javascript as the language) and thought about the IDE / language problem as well. I ended up writing a "Javascript Testbed" for people to use as their "IDE." Although I would have loved to use Java as the starting language, my main prerequisite was a _zero_ barrier to entry.

I wrote an introduction to programming (w/ Javascript as the language) and thought about the IDE problem as well. I ended up writing a "Javascript Testbed" for people to use as their "IDE."

Not the best, but my main focus was _zero_ barrier to entry.

I wrote an introduction to programming (w/ Javascript as the language) and thought about the IDE problem as well. I ended up writing a "Javascript Testbed" for people to use as their "IDE."

Not the best, but my main focus was _zero_ barrier to entry.

Sure it's free, but it's not installed.

Think about the first experience you had with programming. For most people, the barrier to entry was very, very low. I.e.: They turned on their computer, and saw a GWBASIC prompt blinking at them. They were at a friend's house who had everything set up already.

I learned Basic that way. I then learned C when my Dad's friend left it on our computer after showing it to me.

It's a factor I spent quite a bit of time thinking about when I wrote my own introduction to computer programming. I really wanted to use Java as my introductory language, but that still requires an install (and command-line interaction.)

I went on a kick awhile back on how to make Anaglyphs from 2D photos in Photoshop. If you're mildly handy with the computer, you should have no problem :)

I think this should do it: Halo Jump (High Res) Torrent

They like to leave them in their RSS feed, though!

But at least they save us the trouble of having to realize it's a dupe :)

You might also enjoy my browser-based searchpad (click on "Search Pad.") It's like all of those windows programs, but it's browser-based. That means it works on any holy OS :)

For those interested in a not-hardcore-but-still-technical look into Seti@Home, I wrote an overview of it awhile back.

Disregard the misdated quotes that "the world's fastest computer runs at 2 teraflops," and it's still a good read :)