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When you "buy" Windows, you don't purchase the software.

Bullshit. Microsoft's own website says "[i]f you're ready to purchase Windows 7 for your own PC, order or download it today." It doesn't say jack about licensing. It asks if you want to "purchase Windows 7".

I challenge you to find any store offering to sell you a "license to run Windows" as opposed to "Windows".

If you have an OEM version of Windows, then replacing the motherboard requires a new licence. This is explained in the OEM System Builder Licencing FAQ, which I quote below:

Generally, an end user can upgrade or replace all of the hardware components on a computer—except the motherboard—and still retain the license for the original Microsoft OEM operating system software. If the motherboard is upgraded or replaced for reasons other than a defect, then a new computer has been created. Microsoft OEM operating system software cannot be transferred to the new computer, and the license of new operating system software is required.

If the motherboard is replaced because it is defective, you do not need to acquire a new operating system license for the PC as long as the replacement motherboard is the same make/model or the same manufacturer's replacement/equivalent, as defined by the manufacturer's warranty.

It's not the kernel. It's the filesystem.

Also wrong. Windows (and NTFS) can easily replace files that are in use with alternative versions.

There are a lot of misconceptions caused by people assuming that just because Windows doesn't usually do something it can't do something. Windows and the NT kernel also support hotpatching, but it isn't widely used do to the complicated and very careful scrutiny that needs to be made by system administrators that want to apply the patch.

Also, remember that NTFS is a fully POSIX compliant filesystem. It has a lot more functionality available that just what is exposed through the normal Win32 API.

Actually, I can stretch my imagination a bit... WGA is required to get security updates, thus it's a critical security patch because without it, you can't get the critical security patches.

None of my machines have WGA installed and all do just fine getting every security patch.

I use WSUS and have told it to decline the WGA update. It still downloads everything else, and all my machine get their patches off it.

Likewise, I built a machine for my sister that goes straight to update.microsoft.com, and still works with no WGA installed.

WGA isn't required for anything, although there are a few downloads from Microsoft where you need to run a similar authentication before they allow you to do the download. I also believe that XP64 never even attempts to download WGA as an update.

#1 is also available for Windows file shares since Windows 2003 SP1. Microsoft calls this feature "Access based enumeration".
More info: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc784710(WS.10).aspx

Yeah, I tried to convince her to switch to OO, but according to her, it's incompatible with her employer (big publisher) and she must use MS Office.

If she has a corporate e-mail address chances are good her employer participates in Microsoft's Home Use Program.

Microsoft® Office Enterprise 2007 is hers for ten bucks. Microsoft Home Use Program

WinBLOWS.

Yours In Chelyabinsk,
Kilgore Trout

Microsoft does not provide support for computers on which Windows XP is installed by duplication of fully installed copies of Windows XP. Microsoft does support computers on which Windows XP is installed by use of disk-duplication software and the System Preparation tool (Sysprep.exe).

The "but [insert mega corporation name here] requires IE 6 for internal tools" excuse is now nothing more than an excuse and is not sound a business decision. The official EOL for IE 6 is July of this year. Any company that has tools that that they wish to run on a browser supported by its vendor (to say nothing of security issues) should have either already created a new version that supports newer browsers or should be actively developing one.

A corporate app that requires an EOL'ed browser is either not important enough to the company for them to invest in basic ongoing maintenance or is so poorly written/understood that nobody dares to touch it.

If they try to install the browser, they can't because their accounts lack administrator privileges. If they try to run the version that is supposed to be able to run without being installed, they can't because of the Software Restriction Policy that the administrator has put into place.

Come on. Some people still love IE6. Moreover, I believe IE5.5 is still used by some people.

Well, that's my assumption based on the phrase "These versions include Internet Explorer 5.01 Service Pack 4 on Microsoft Windows 2000 Service 4" mentioned in http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/980088.mspx , but perhaps that's bad logic.

Microsoft does have it (some limitations and restrictions apply -- results may vary, see inside for details, etc, etc)

More of Microsoft's patches used to be available hotfixes.

This is something you would need to specifically look up on their web site. If you want a hot patch, you may find that you can do one, for some security fixes, after reading up on the fix, and following the right procedures, but not through Windows update.

Windows update by default applies security updates the safe way, by using a reboot.

Hot patching on Windows is way too dangerous to do automatically, so it's not automatic. You have to manually decide, to use HotPatching to apply some updates, after reading the KB articles, determining which patches you can HP, and do careful testing.

There was some sort of resurgence of coldfixes that require reboots, anyways. Don't try to hot patch Windows, unless you know what you are doing.

Sometimes they even confused matters by calling patches that required a reboot hotfix anyways, even though hotfix specifically means a patch that can be applied live and take effect without reboot, how insane.

Look for yourself;

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa939594(WinEmbedded.5).aspx

Both are used. I suspect the Microsoft controller is managing both battery charge and drain from the computer being in use.

Grep and wget.

Yeah, it's too bad that Windows doesn't come with a command line utility like Grep.

(Okay, I can't speak to their power, but most of the time I use grep I'm doing something that 'find' could do just fine; 99% of the rest of the time the only thing 'find' couldn't handle is a recursive search, and then 'findstr' would work.)

As for WGet, I'm surprised you selected that; I am a heavy user of both Linux and Windows + Cygwin and I use wget no more than once in a blue moon. Something like 'sed' in my mind is missing way more than wget. (For the curious, in the last ~10,000 commands stored in my shell history (dating back to July 2009, though this makes me suspicious that not everything is there), the most commonly used ones are: cd (1290), scons (1061), ls (981), python (520), make (496), cvs (484), cat (423), fg (296), git (248), and exit (196). 'wget' was used three times, which puts it about the median.)

Grep and wget.

Yeah, it's too bad that Windows doesn't come with a command line utility like Grep.

(Okay, I can't speak to their power, but most of the time I use grep I'm doing something that 'find' could do just fine; 99% of the rest of the time the only thing 'find' couldn't handle is a recursive search, and then 'findstr' would work.)

As for WGet, I'm surprised you selected that; I am a heavy user of both Linux and Windows + Cygwin and I use wget no more than once in a blue moon. Something like 'sed' in my mind is missing way more than wget. (For the curious, in the last ~10,000 commands stored in my shell history (dating back to July 2009, though this makes me suspicious that not everything is there), the most commonly used ones are: cd (1290), scons (1061), ls (981), python (520), make (496), cvs (484), cat (423), fg (296), git (248), and exit (196). 'wget' was used three times, which puts it about the median.)

The NTAPI is largely documented (at least today), the docs just come with the DDK, instead of with Visual Studio. For more in-depth documentation, there are several books available from MS authors.

You are mistaken sir.

Article is referring to this tool: disk2vhd

The guy behind sysinternals tried to, and was almost a success, but nope.

Is the failure you're talking about this?

What are the shortcomings of Sysinternals' Desktops?

I haven't tried other solutions but I occasionally use this and it works fairly well.

Heh. I'm wondering why anyone is concerned about it myself.

Welcome FAST Customers

On April, 25, 2008, Microsoft completed its acquisition of FAST Search & Transfer, opening a new chapter in enterprise search. By combining the innovation and agility of FAST with the discipline and resources of Microsoft, our customers get the best of both worlds: market-leading products from a trusted technology partner.

http://www.microsoft.com/enterprisesearch/en/us/fast-customer.aspx

So - they acquired something less than two years ago, now they decide they don't like it, can't support it, and many of us never knew about it to start with. To my knowledge, I've never made use of it. Unless it was used on the net by some god-awful behind-the-scenes server.

For the most part, Google has satisfied all my search requirements for years now. Do they use FAST? Didn't think so, LOL

The PDF doesn't specifically say that. The PDF says:

"Microsoft will grant, on a non-discriminatory basis, to any party requesting it, licenses on commercially reasonable terms and conditions, for its patent(s), if any, deemed to be necessary for the implementation of the Ecma Standard"

To me this sounds like a typical piece of legalese, most likely to satisfy some ECMA rule that published standards must have such a RAND promise.

The problem is that you are reading this as a programmer when it needs to be read when you need to read it as a lawyer (since it's a legal statement).

Furthermore, the very same PDF, in its P.S., says that any patent claims relevant to Ecma-334 are also covered by Microsoft Community Promise.

Microsoft irrevocably promises not to assert any Microsoft Necessary Claims against you for making, using, selling, offering for sale, importing or distributing any implementation, to the extent it conforms to one of the Covered Specifications, and is compliant with all of the required parts of the mandatory provisions of that specification ("Covered Implementation")

In order to interpret this we need to a) compare with a normal license grand and b) identify what they aren't saying. A normal patent grant would say something like "we have patents A,B and C related to this, we won't assert these patents against you for any implementation of this standard; contact us if you think any other patents we have may be needed and we'll be glad to assist". This "promise not to assert" avoids that. E.g. they plan to be able to sue you over any patent which covers your implementation but is not "Necessary". That's quite dangerous; they could have a patent on the fast way of doing something, allowing you only to implement the slow way. They could even have a separate patent on every single way of doing something but since no single one is "Necessary" they could, in principle sue you over that.

Going further to that; have you ever seen a large piece of software with no bugs? Of course not. It is simply impossible that software is "compliant with all of the required parts" (my emphasis). If they wanted to have a clear and safe definition they would have said something such as "passes the latest or last but one conformance test suite at the time of it's release and is sold no longer than a year after it ceases to pass the latest test suite for it's standards version". As currently phrased there is no way to prove to yourself that you are covered by this promise.

Compare these with standard patent licenses used almost everywhere and you will see that Microsoft's promises not to assert are full of holes. This isn't an accident caused by a small company that can't afford any lawyers.

My guess? This is simply a way of saying: 'If you are our friend we have an excuse not to sue you, so don't worry as long as it stays that way. If you ever step out of line, you are dead, so don't even think about it.' Working with Microsoft is a bit like working with Sauron. You had better stay servile and useful.

Actually it's 7MB

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/229077

The Windows Recovery Console is used to facilitate repairing an unbootable computer. It requires the Windows installation media (the four Setup disks or the CD-ROM). The Recovery Console can be pre-installed by running the winnt32 /cmdcons command from the Windows installation CD-ROM to place the files on the local hard disk. This option requires approximately 7 megabytes (MB) of disk space on the system partition.

OP here. So, it shall be used for quick testing stuff - so how is it superior to python or perl, which are free, run everywhere (there is no mono on our compute cluster...) and where most scientist know one or the other already?

It's a statically typed language, so you get a bit more error checking. It will also infer most types, so you don't have to spell them all out.

Its type system is actually specifically geared towards scientific and engineering computation, in that it provides support for units of measure - so your types aren't just "int" and "float", but "int<second>" and "float<meter>" - and derived ones, too, so if you divide meters by seconds, the resulting value is of type meters per seconds - e.g. "float<meter/second>". And, of course, it won't let you add meters and seconds - static type checking is still at work.

Using an interpreted language for that is the programming equivalent to the saying "throw good money after bad".

F# isn't an interpreted language. It's JIT-compiled, same as Java.

Anyway, you definitely know better, so I'll trust your expertise on this. I'm not really surprised that Fortran is still the language of choice for those kinds of things. This thing had, what, 50 years by now to polish and optimize?

At the same time, I have to note that not just scientific tasks require massive parallelization. I'd imagine that whatever they use it for in Bing is also quite heavily parallelized, for example.

From the personal rumor mill, I've heard that outside MS, F# has found some acceptance in banks, of all places - a few big ones use it for financial and statistical computations, and prediction modeling. No idea if any degree of parallelism is involved there, however.

Offer to share the information with your prof or student teacher and they will usually give you the green light or become the note taker for the class (some schools have them for hard of hearing/deaf students - R.I.T.)...

If you use something like MS OneNote you can drop all these separate pieces onto the note pages and keep them better organized. Text, your notes, the sound clips, and the diagrams...

He means, can it interoperate with stuff on a non-MS platform. See, IronPython may be an example of how flexible and interoperable it is - "gee, you can write .net in Python", but really, its still .net, not an "outsider" to the MS ecosystem.

IronPython, IronRuby and F# all explicitly support Mono on Linux and OS X.

IIRC the C# spec submitted to ECMA was for version 1.1, so missing all the cool stuff everyone takes for granted now

Actually, the ECMA version of the spec is for 2.0 (2006). Newer versions of the spec are available on Microsoft web site - here is the one for C# 3.0, and here is the draft for the upcoming C# 4.0 - and are similarly covered by a legal promise to not use patents against any compliant implementations.

He means, can it interoperate with stuff on a non-MS platform. See, IronPython may be an example of how flexible and interoperable it is - "gee, you can write .net in Python", but really, its still .net, not an "outsider" to the MS ecosystem.

IronPython, IronRuby and F# all explicitly support Mono on Linux and OS X.

IIRC the C# spec submitted to ECMA was for version 1.1, so missing all the cool stuff everyone takes for granted now

Actually, the ECMA version of the spec is for 2.0 (2006). Newer versions of the spec are available on Microsoft web site - here is the one for C# 3.0, and here is the draft for the upcoming C# 4.0 - and are similarly covered by a legal promise to not use patents against any compliant implementations.

Problem is C# is a proprietary, patent encumbered Microsoft Standard. Take a look at the link to the C# spec and there is a pdf saying so right there.

The PDF doesn't specifically say that. The PDF says:

"Microsoft will grant, on a non-discriminatory basis, to any party requesting it, licenses on commercially reasonable terms and conditions, for its patent(s), if any, deemed to be necessary for the implementation of the Ecma Standard"

To me this sounds like a typical piece of legalese, most likely to satisfy some ECMA rule that published standards must have such a RAND promise.

Furthermore, the very same PDF, in its P.S., says that any patent claims relevant to Ecma-334 are also covered by Microsoft Community Promise.

Microsoft irrevocably promises not to assert any Microsoft Necessary Claims against you for making, using, selling, offering for sale, importing or distributing any implementation, to the extent it conforms to one of the Covered Specifications, and is compliant with all of the required parts of the mandatory provisions of that specification ("Covered Implementation")

...that if women aren't highly represented in these endeavors, it might be a sign that women just aren't interested in the same damn things that men are?!

The same argument has been made historically to explain - and justify - the exclusion of women from every profession.

The same argument has been used against those of other races and religions. It has never been far distant when the geek talks about outsourcing his work to India.

Microsoft seems to care about this stuff:

Women at Microsoft, Women's Leadership Conference

And Accelerator, a MS Research project, can be used inline with F# to run code on a GPU.

The love comes from all the cool things that Python can do, for free. Dynamic typing, .append() functionality, etc. It's just awesome.

You do realize there's no dynamic typing in F#, right? It's very rigidly typed, in fact, more so than C/C#/Java - it won't let you use an int where a float is expected! (it's the price you have to pay for type inference - it doesn't play well with ambiguity)

The hate comes from the sheer lunacy that is Python syntax. Forced whitespacing doesn't suit my debugging style

F# is indentation-driven by default, much like Python (actually, more like Haskell, with more subtle rules). You can turn that off, technically, and use explicit semicolons - but that is considered legacy mode, and the community at large shuns it.

functions names like len() are just, frankly, idiotic (length() is much more readable to beginners, and takes only a few extra milliseconds to type for experienced users)

FP languages traditionally have terse names - how about the classic foldl and foldr ("fold left" and "fold right")? F# mostly follows suite - the most recent version is a tad more verbose, but you'll still be dealing with things such as Seq.mapi.

Although to be honest, I'd love to find a python front end that uses non-insane syntax and then simply precompiles it into python syntax at run-time.

On the whole, it looks like what you're looking for is actually called Ruby.

I never listened to their marketing. I was quoting Microsoft's own Windows history webpage.

Are you sure? The New Technology moniker was apparently "a rare spurt of product marketing by the original NT team members", so GP is right assuming his article is correct. The fact that you point to Microsoft's own websites almost guarantees that you've read a little marketing.

Give me a break. We're comparing apples to oranges here. MS does small too. Windows CE - Microsofts OS for portable devices. Requires 1MB of ram. Fits on pendrives, etc etc. .NET Micro - Microsoft's embedded framework, for embedded application. Will fit in 64k of memory. The entire framework takes up about 10MB.

I've known about this bug for many years - it's one of a few that date back to my college days when I had a scholarly interest in such things. Back then I used to haunt the dark corners of the Internet where these things were good for a laugh. Now they're good for a quarter million dollars because GO's haunt the dark corners now and they pay good money, and only now are ones like this coming out in common knowledge. You may be sure that if you're a high value target you've been exploited this whole time and that's why your competitors mysteriously beat you to market, or how knockoffs appeared more suddenly after your innovation than reverse engineering would allow.

What's absurd is that there are hundreds more just in the core OS. Go to apps and WMP doesn't have a streaming format that doesn't have pwnership, and let's not even talk about IE. Then there's all the forgotten formats and services, each with its vestigal exploits that still work. And then there's Office. Good Lord, as if providing multiple Turing machine capable development environments were not enough, every app includes embeds for hundreds of formats that can hose any machine that opens a document, and for each of those there's a Microsoft-only undocumented interface that's truly trusted to be exploited, because that's how they roll. And one of those apps is an email client - think about that for a bit.

Each fix only adds to the problem. Even if the patch doesn't add new exploits (most do) most people don't patch, and half of the few who do patch slowly to avoid incompatibilities. In the meantime the patch gives clues to the amateurs on which features to exploit. For 90% of systems you only need to pwn it once and leave some obvious malware and the idiot running it will clean it and think it's all good. So the smart black hat builds a database of servers running Windows he can get at from his previously Pwned boxes (yes, some of them are probably inside your firewall and most but not all of them are clients) and crafts a package to pwn the rest of your network and if necessary leave some cleanable traces. The truly nefarious black hats exploit the patching system itself - of course it has exploits and hidden hooks too.

Each rewrite leads to new problems. In 2008 how the hell do you write a server OS that hangs on a bad packet on the file sharing service? That's not what Bill promised us in 2002. In six years they couldn't even get that right? That's your clue that they're not even trying or at least they're not able. At the very least they're struggling just to copy a file as if that were a new requirement.

You would think with the billions they have to throw away on XBox and Pink, from Bing to Zune, Microsoft could afford to hire a few Pakistani code geeks to haunt the dark corners and report what they find written on the wall there. They're getting rid of their profits but they're not doing it well. You would think code security audits would extend to the historical catalog of code, but no... that group has enough to do just vetting this month's patches, let alone the output of the dev teams. I imagine the rest of them are building Bing interfaces into Yahoo's services as if they had a hope in hell of getting us to use Bing. For sure they're not throwing a ton of quality code geeks into saving their butt on WiMo 7. Fixing bugs widely known in the Underground that consumers like you don't know about? That's a 0 priority task.

Windows shops: not only are we laughing at you - we always have and we always will. You poor bastards.

I never listened to their marketing. I was quoting Microsoft's own Windows history webpage.

Windows 7 is very much still built on the NT codebase.

You lie! Longhorn (Vista, Server 2008) was built from the ground up. Microsoft told me so!

They wouldn't lie to me. <sniff>

He was speaking in absolute terms. Yes, the kernel could be much smaller. It is getting out of hand, relative to the simplicity of BSD and RTOS's and that means that in absolute terms it's bigger than it need be. Distros like dsl get around this by using older versions of the kernel, leveraging the brilliant Busybox (thanks Bruce!), leaving out unnecessary drivers and applications.

He could not have been talking relative to Windows. W7 x64 is a 20GB install - even before you add an office suite or the antimalware suites we've all come to know and love. Given the history it's reasonable to expect W8 will require continuing innovation in installation media.

I, for one, am glad Linus worries about such things in absolute rather than relative terms; instead of selling it to hardware partners as "it's a great way to drive adoption of new hardware!" This might mean that version 3.0 of the Linux kernel will be a total respin to eliminate cruft.

I know little about Silverlight, only the most general look and feel, and capabilities. Does this mean that it actually has extensible codec framework, that can be extended from managed code

Answering myself, since I looked that up, and thought it might be interesting. Yes, indeed, Silverlight now supports custom codecs, so long as they're implemented in pure managed sandboxed code - apparently, this is a new addition in Silverlight 3. Also, here is an explanation of that in context of Moonlight.

The newer version is available on TPB. Plus you dont have to give them your email address to spam.

billg@microsoft.com

Spam away.

A major difference is that IE is integrated deeper with the operating system, which means that flaws in IE can go deeper and have more serious effects

Internet Explorer is just an application and a set of libraries. They are included in the OS and reused in many places, but they cannot do more than any other user application. If iexplore.exe crashes it doesn't mean it will affect explorer.exe just because they both use mshtml.dll.

But the core problem lies in the fact that applications aren't normally started in an isolated sandbox with controlled access to the surroundings but with the access of the logged in user. So an user with full privileges will always get all apps having full privileges too, which they normally doesn't need.

Vista and newer Windows versions implement application integrity levels which run applications in a lower privilege level than the logged in user. When a user runs Internet Explorer (with Protected Mode) it actually runs under a very low integrity level which does not allow writing to user files. It is restricted to writing to special versions of folders like Cookies and Favorites, and must use broker processes to do anything that requires elevated access.

You found sites that still need IE? Here in 2010?

In the corporate environment a surprising numer of internal web based applications are dependent on IE. Fixing the software may require buying new versions and licenses, or even having to hire developers. Many departments will drag out the life of software as long as they possibly can before they have to spend money. Since the web applications are only used internally (and accessed only by their workstations), they can get away with having IT keep the older software on their images (for free).

For example, one of the companies I did contract work for just finished fixing some of their internal applications so that they no longer require the Microsoft VM to run properly. For them, it was much easier to keep the MSJVM installed on all of their workstations than to find and remove the J++ specific code in their web apps. The MSJVM has been depreciated for over a decade, but if Microsoft hadn't ended MSJVM support in June, they probably would have left it all alone.

Even worse, those kinds of applications are probably the ones you need the most!

Ever seen a blue screen crash?

(Yes I know it's sysinternals screen saver...)

Hmm what about Surface?

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/980088.mspx

When in doubt, go to the source. Microsoft has a pretty decent write-up on this one. I don't know who taranfx.com is, but the only accurate bits of information in their article are what they cut-and-pasted from the Microsoft site. The rest is, umm, "fanciful". Sorry, I gotta call 'em like I see 'em.

Oh, one other useful bit from their stie... that everyone should stop using IE. Now.

I'd also add to only run a browser that has something like NoScript available. Javascript is just chock full of vulnerabilities of its own. Any time you allow strangers to run code on your computer, you are just asking for trouble.

But by now that goes without saying, and I've already said it until I'm blue in the face, and I've given up. Don Quixote is cut out for that sort of thing, I'm not.

If you use IE in Vista or Seven, turn protected mode on. If you use IE on XP, load the file:// protocol fix outlined at Microsoft's site. Hopefully Microsoft will come out with a fix soon. Load it. Immediately.

This may not be a serious vulnerability, but the vector will surely be used for more serious ones real soon as the black hatted assholes figure out how to read your file index and get a list of files to choose from.

Protected Mode is the "sandbox" feature present in IE7 and IE8. It uses UAC that's in both Vista and 7 to run in an even more limited fashion, but not in XP. If you've got UAC disabled, you're not running Protected Mode and you're vulnerable. There are other ways which Protected Mode can be disabled.

It's best to check out the blog entry on the MSRC and the Knowledge Base article.

We now return to your regularly scheduled Microsoft bashing and Linux referrals already in progress.

"Protected mode" is a marketing term meaning IE takes advantage of Vista's new permissions model. It means it's a low-privilege process and has most of its file system access effectively jailed or redirected.

Long-winded article here, but I'm guessing the hack doesn't work in "Protected Mode" because the browser itself doesn't have much file system access.

Agreed--I'd like to see some real evidence too (Chinese language is fine). As far as I can tell, this is the story: CNNIC does have a "Chinese Language Surfing" product, which enables the use of Chinese domain names, among other things. (ICANN approved non-ASCII ccTLDs late last year, but the Chinese have been using browser plugins and the like to get the same effect for years. This probably isn't the best article about it, but it was what came up when I tried to search for an article that explained it: China's New Domain Names: Lost in Translation.)

AFAICT, "Chinese Language Surfing" isn't malware--it does what it says it does. However, it does seem unusually protective of itself once installed--but not to the point that the uninstaller doesn't work. Also, while CNNIC doesn't endorse this, apparently "Chinese Language Surfing" gets automatically installed (without user consent) by other programs. This has led to some antimalware-software vendors listing it as malware. E.g., MS calls it BrowserModifier:Win32/CNNIC, and has this to say about it:

BrowserModifier:Win32/CNNIC enables Chinese keyword searching in Internet Explorer and adds support for other applications to use Chinese domain names that registered with CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center). This program is often installed as part of a shareware or freeware program, with or without user consent. BrowserModifier:Win32/CNNIC also contains a kernel driver that protects its files and registry settings from being modified or deleted. The program also includes automatic self-update functionality.

FWIW, I tried installing CNNIC's product in a virtual machine while running Sysinternals' ProcMon, and didn't spot anything super-suspicious--it did install a driver as MS said, which did seem excessive. And it did add a menu item to IE, but it didn't cause me to get any more popup ads. Seemed well-behaved, as far as I could tell (not that I spent much time with it). I then uninstalled it, and it seemed to remove itself cleanly, including the driver.

Personally, I would definitely be annoyed if it got installed without my consent, but the program itself does not meet my definition of "malware". Now if anyone has evidence that it's secretly nefarious and does more than what it claims to, please post the details.

hence you see why many universities just tell students to shut up and buy MS office.

From what I've seen, most unis that standardize on MSOffice also have MSDNAA subscriptions, so you can get a copy for free as a student (and you actually get to keep the license even after you graduate).

And for developer tools, there's DreamSpark.

from:
http://www.microsoft.com/security/portal/Threat/Encyclopedia/Entry.aspx?Name=BrowserModifier%3AWin32%2FCNNIC

Summary
BrowserModifier:Win32/CNNIC enables Chinese keyword searching in Internet Explorer and adds support for other applications to use Chinese domain names that registered with CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center). This program is often installed as part of a shareware or freeware program, with or without user consent. BrowserModifier:Win32/CNNIC also contains a kernel driver that protects its files and registry settings from being modified or deleted. The program also includes automatic self-update functionality.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-xp/end-of-sale.aspx

O RLY?

Explain why my non-Aero i855 laptop doesn't work, or why a 915 won't either.

I submit that you're full of shit.

This is the difference between a programmer and a user. A programmer runs into a problem and says "eh, must be a quirk with my hardware." A user goes "OMG! Windows is teh broke! M$/Vista sux!!one"

Please do everyone a favor and remove yourself from this site.

P.S.: Since you can't be bothered to research your own claim, here is a relevant quote from Microsoft (unfortunately it applies to Vista, but 7 didn't change in this regard IIRC):
MSDN - Graphics APIs in Windows

While new systems shipping with Windows Vista will include video cards with WDDM drivers, and new drivers for a number of popular video cards are included in the box, Windows Vista continues to support the ability to use older XPDM drivers for upgrades and corporate editions. On systems using the old driver model, Direct3D 9 and older interfaces must be used, and the operation of the graphics system is very similar to that of Windows XP (Figure 1). WDDM is required for applications to use Direct3D 9Ex, Direct3D 10, and later versions.