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It's a decent IDE, refactoring tools are a bit crap though. Personaly I use resharper plugin for my VS 2008, which makes VS work a bit more like IntelliJ (the bestest Java IDE ever), but it's dotnet only. However, there's a free tool for VS out there called Refactor. Never tried it so cannot say if it's good, but migt be worth a try.

Review their web site. Microsoft Visual Studio Express is free.

validates each character as it is keyed, and reacts immediately if it gets an invalid-in-context character. The effect is that it's not possible to enter an invalid string. Whether you think this is novel or not, it's not ordinary.

Hogwash: dBASE has been doing just that since the early 80's using "format templates", specifically the "Picture" clause.

True, it didn't do it over the web, but adding such to web browsers could use similar technology. Here are some examples from Microsoft Foxpro (a dBASE clone, more or less):

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/119691

It's still not groundbreaking, but it's not quite as trivial as it sounds.

You're right. The usual way to do this, in Windows applications, is to simply not allow the character and to beep. See: MaskedTextBox for the .NET version, which also triggers an event so programmers can add custom logic.

Yes, that is a Windows Forms thing and not a web form thing, but there's nothing stopping you from hooking a text input's onkeypress event.

Oh, but wait! Web forms don't allow you to set colors on specific characters in input or textarea! How exactly does IBM plan on doing this?

download a copy of Visual [C++|C#|VB] and you can do all kinds of fun stuff.

I prefer the Qt SDK - yeah, it works on Windows (as well as Visual C++ does), and after you've invested 3000 hours learning the tool, you're not locked in.

If you're writing a program and using the default print preview control, then according to Microsoft you have to enforce all of your customers set their measurement to the U.S. imperial system in the regional options: http://support.microsoft.com/?id=814355
This was the final straw in a series of .NET programming frustrations/woes (binding anyone?) that made me decide to never go back to .NET ever again if I can help it.

Just download a copy of Visual [C++|C#|VB] and you can do all kinds of fun stuff.

Or, if you're doing games on Windows, you might want Microsoft's XNA instead, a game development environment, with the advantage that if you pay a little bit of money, you can play them on your Xbox360. It's effectively a sanctioned way to do homebrew on the 360.

They probably just need the C++ runtime:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9b2da534-3e03-4391-8a4d-074b9f2bc1bf

There's a separate download for x64, but express won't usually target that.

It's not like it's that hard to *get* a programming language for Windows, though.

Just download a copy of Visual [C++|C#|VB] and you can do all kinds of fun stuff.

Windows doesn't have a programming language at boot because it's an OS for the masses, and the masses would get confused by a "READY." prompt.

For some versions of OE the string "begin " at the start of a line would cause the remainder of the email to be erroneously interpreted as an attachment. It would prove to be not a valid attachment and so not show up at all.

At first they suggested, in all seriousness, "do not use the word 'begin' in emails". Later they updated the workaround to basically:

• View source on the msg
• Copy contents to Notepad
• Search and replace "begin" at SOL with some other word
• Save file with magic extension
• Import file back into OE

Even better, if your bug only affects your competitors software, it makes you look good!

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q154312/

I know, I was trying to say that maybe the MS/Oracle thing was a similar case, but they just assumed they'd get enough randomness without telling people

Well, you answered your own question. Compare how MS collects random input:

SYMPTOMS

When you try to return data from Microsoft Query 97 to a Microsoft Excel 97 worksheet, the spinning globe icon (which signifies that a query is processing) may appear for a long time, and then the query returns no data to your worksheet.

WORKAROUND

*snip*

Method 2: Move Your Mouse Pointer

If you move your mouse pointer continuously while the data is being returned to Microsoft Excel, the query may not fail. Do not stop moving the mouse until all the data has been returned to Microsoft Excel.

NOTE: Depending on your query, it may take several minutes to return the results of your query to the worksheet.

To the way Putty collects it:

Please generate some randomness by moving the mouse over the blank area.

See where the bug is now?

"My guess is that Excel implements some non-OS sleep functionality similar to their non-OS multiple document window." - by dna_(c)(tm)(r) (618003) on Monday May 25, @09:28AM (#28082393)

The "EnableBackGroundRefresh" setting for Excel's "work-around" while waiting on Oracle returned recordsets here -> http://support.microsoft.com/kb/168702

(Thus, if that settings is set "OFF", this setting prohibits anything else from occurring, probably leaving the app in what APPEARED to be a "hung" state, while processing incoming data from a return recordset from Oracle's middleware)

AND, that sounds more like it is using something called an application's "idle loop" (& I know this responds to mouse movements DIRECTLY OVER AN INVOLVED APP's WINDOW, because I have used it in code before via the creation of an IdleHandler to do so in my code in the past).

To do this, you have to create what is called an "Idle Handler" in your code!

(MY guess is this is what MS had in mind when they had you reset that configuration setting for Excel, so you would NOT see what appears to be a "hung app" while it is working punching the data into the spreadsheet cells from a returned recordset from Orcle's middleware layer)...

APK

Everybody was up in arms over that situation. Even people within Microsoft thought it was a bad idea. The community at large made that change happen. If anything the EU was just another voice within thousands.

No, it was the thing which MS change its mind:

"this step clearly removes this question as a potential legal and regulatory issue"

The only company to go under because of IE was Netscape. And Technicially it got bought out by AOL for 4.2 Billion.

How do you know that NS was the only company to go under? And you are ignoring the massive damage MS has done to the web as a whole, holding it back for multiple years.

All of that money is being made in the Mobile phone and Settop industry.

False. Mozilla Corporation is making lots of money from desktop browser. Opera's desktop browser makes up a quarter of their total revenues or so. But this is besides the point. The fact is that there is and was a browser market, and Microsoft has messed it up.

Honestly, this was one of Opera's smartest moves to ally with Nintendo. I don't see anyone buying browsers for any Windows, Mac, or Linux platforms, and if they are, they are making very little there.

So you are saying that Google isn't making money off of searches because the search service is free? Please.

Firefox share is the result of solid code coupled with a word of mouth advertising system and a languishing competitor. It also helps when just about every tech publication puts it as the top browser.

Again, Firefox is an anomaly. It took a non-profit organization which relied on donations and free work to even make a dent.

Mozilla wasn't ready, Opera had a niche market at best and Netscape 6 was Basicially AOL Lite with all of it's skinning and links all over the place. firefox 2 was the first real browser to overcome all of the shortcomings of IE and offer a stable expandable codebase to work against.

And why was that, you think? Because Microsoft destroyed the market, and it took a non-profit organization which relied on donations and free work to do anything.

Report to the US antitrust trial. Sun reported, Novell reported, Caldera (SCO) reported. Where was Opera? As soon as the EU starts doing an Antitrust trial, there they are.

Actually, it was Opera which got the EU case started by reporting

Getting a Guilty verdict here gives Opera (as well as anyone else for that matter) a stronger case in court to go civil suit, since they can use this case as a precedent.

This is pure garbage. Opera isn't doing this because it's planning to sue Microsoft.

THen who is right?

No browser stats are reliable. However, when it comes to reporting what you actually see in the market, StatCounter gets it more right than the rest.

First off, where are your numbers coming from? None of these Stat firms are right remember...

Around 3% is what you get if you look at the overall internet population compared to the number of Opera users on the desktop.

Second, If it's been free for over 3 years, I would think that it would have more share than Safari (althogh Apple Bundles it with OSX) or at least be much higher than chrome.

Opera does have a higher market share than both Safari and Chrome. And the fact that even Google has failed so far shows just how screwed up the market is. They have spent massive amounts of advertising money to push Chrome out there, and yet it hasn't even caught up with a small software company fr

It has come to my attention that the entire Linux community is a hotbed of so called 'alternative sexuality,' which includes anything from hedonistic orgies to homosexuality to pedophilia.

What better way of demonstrating this than by looking at the hidden messages contained within the names of some of Linux's most outspoken advocates:

• Linus Torvalds is an anagram of slit anus or VD 'L,' clearly referring to himself by the first initial.
• Richard M. Stallman, spokespervert for the Gaysex's Not Unusual 'movement' is an anagram of mans cram thrill ad.
• Alan Cox is barely an anagram of anal cox which is just so filthy and unchristian it unnerves me.

I'm sure that Eric S. Raymond, composer of the satanic homosexual propaganda diatribe The Cathedral and the Bizarre, is probably an anagram of something queer, but we don't need to look that far as we know he's always shoving a gun up some poor little boy's rectum. Update: Eric S. Raymond is actually an anagram for secondary rim and cord in my arse. It just goes to show you that he is indeed queer.

Update the Second: It is also documented that Evil Sicko Gaymond is responsible for a nauseating piece of code called Fetchmail, which is obviously sinister sodomite slang for 'Felch Male' -- a disgusting practise. For those not in the know, 'felching' is the act performed by two perverts wherein one sucks their own post-coital ejaculate out of the other's rectum. In fact, it appears that the dirty Linux faggots set out to undermine the good Republican institution of e-mail, turning it into 'e-male.'

As far as Richard 'Master' Stallman goes, that filthy fudge-packer was actually quoted on leftist commie propaganda site Salon.com as saying the following: 'I've been resistant to the pressure to conform in any circumstance,' he says. 'It's about being able to question conventional wisdom,' he asserts. 'I believe in love, but not monogamy,' he says plainly.

And this isn't a made up troll bullshit either! He actually stated this tripe, which makes it obvious that he is trying to politely say that he's a flaming homo slut!

Speaking about 'flaming,' who better to point out as a filthy chutney ferret than Slashdot's very own self-confessed pederast Jon Katz. Although an obvious deviant anagram cannot be found from his name, he has already confessed, nay boasted of the homosexual perversion of corrupting the innocence of young children. To quote from the article linked:

'I've got a rare kidney disease,' I told her. 'I have to go to the bathroom a lot. You can come with me if you want, but it takes a while. Is that okay with you? Do you want a note from my doctor?'

Is this why you were touching your penis in the cinema, Jon? And letting the other boys touch it too?

We should also point out that Jon Katz refers to himself as 'Slashdot's resident Gasbag.' Is there any more doubt? For those fortunate few who aren't aware of the list of homosexual terminology found inside the Linux 'Sauce Code,' a 'Gasbag' is a pervert who gains sexual gratification from having a thin straw inserted into his urethra (or to use the common parlance, 'piss-pipe'), then his homosexual lover blows firmly down the straw to inflate his scrotum. This is, of course, when he's not busy violating the dignity and copyright of posters to Slashdot by gathering

It has come to my attention that the entire Linux community is a hotbed of so called 'alternative sexuality,' which includes anything from hedonistic orgies to homosexuality to pedophilia.

What better way of demonstrating this than by looking at the hidden messages contained within the names of some of Linux's most outspoken advocates:

• Linus Torvalds is an anagram of slit anus or VD 'L,' clearly referring to himself by the first initial.
• Richard M. Stallman, spokespervert for the Gaysex's Not Unusual 'movement' is an anagram of mans cram thrill ad.
• Alan Cox is barely an anagram of anal cox which is just so filthy and unchristian it unnerves me.

I'm sure that Eric S. Raymond, composer of the satanic homosexual propaganda diatribe The Cathedral and the Bizarre, is probably an anagram of something queer, but we don't need to look that far as we know he's always shoving a gun up some poor little boy's rectum. Update: Eric S. Raymond is actually an anagram for secondary rim and cord in my arse. It just goes to show you that he is indeed queer.

Update the Second: It is also documented that Evil Sicko Gaymond is responsible for a nauseating piece of code called Fetchmail, which is obviously sinister sodomite slang for 'Felch Male' -- a disgusting practise. For those not in the know, 'felching' is the act performed by two perverts wherein one sucks their own post-coital ejaculate out of the other's rectum. In fact, it appears that the dirty Linux faggots set out to undermine the good Republican institution of e-mail, turning it into 'e-male.'

As far as Richard 'Master' Stallman goes, that filthy fudge-packer was actually quoted on leftist commie propaganda site Salon.com as saying the following: 'I've been resistant to the pressure to conform in any circumstance,' he says. 'It's about being able to question conventional wisdom,' he asserts. 'I believe in love, but not monogamy,' he says plainly.

And this isn't a made up troll bullshit either! He actually stated this tripe, which makes it obvious that he is trying to politely say that he's a flaming homo slut!

Speaking about 'flaming,' who better to point out as a filthy chutney ferret than Slashdot's very own self-confessed pederast Jon Katz. Although an obvious deviant anagram cannot be found from his name, he has already confessed, nay boasted of the homosexual perversion of corrupting the innocence of young children. To quote from the article linked:

'I've got a rare kidney disease,' I told her. 'I have to go to the bathroom a lot. You can come with me if you want, but it takes a while. Is that okay with you? Do you want a note from my doctor?'

Is this why you were touching your penis in the cinema, Jon? And letting the other boys touch it too?

We should also point out that Jon Katz refers to himself as 'Slashdot's resident Gasbag.' Is there any more doubt? For those fortunate few who aren't aware of the list of homosexual terminology found inside the Linux 'Sauce Code,' a 'Gasbag' is a pervert who gains sexual gratification from having a thin straw inserted into his urethra (or to use the common parlance, 'piss-pipe'), then his homosexual lover blows firmly down the straw to inflate his scrotum. This is, of course, when he's not busy violating the dignity and copyright of posters to Slashdot by gathering

It has come to my attention that the entire Linux community is a hotbed of so called 'alternative sexuality,' which includes anything from hedonistic orgies to homosexuality to pedophilia.

What better way of demonstrating this than by looking at the hidden messages contained within the names of some of Linux's most outspoken advocates:

• Linus Torvalds is an anagram of slit anus or VD 'L,' clearly referring to himself by the first initial.
• Richard M. Stallman, spokespervert for the Gaysex's Not Unusual 'movement' is an anagram of mans cram thrill ad.
• Alan Cox is barely an anagram of anal cox which is just so filthy and unchristian it unnerves me.

I'm sure that Eric S. Raymond, composer of the satanic homosexual propaganda diatribe The Cathedral and the Bizarre, is probably an anagram of something queer, but we don't need to look that far as we know he's always shoving a gun up some poor little boy's rectum. Update: Eric S. Raymond is actually an anagram for secondary rim and cord in my arse. It just goes to show you that he is indeed queer.

Update the Second: It is also documented that Evil Sicko Gaymond is responsible for a nauseating piece of code called Fetchmail, which is obviously sinister sodomite slang for 'Felch Male' -- a disgusting practise. For those not in the know, 'felching' is the act performed by two perverts wherein one sucks their own post-coital ejaculate out of the other's rectum. In fact, it appears that the dirty Linux faggots set out to undermine the good Republican institution of e-mail, turning it into 'e-male.'

As far as Richard 'Master' Stallman goes, that filthy fudge-packer was actually quoted on leftist commie propaganda site Salon.com as saying the following: 'I've been resistant to the pressure to conform in any circumstance,' he says. 'It's about being able to question conventional wisdom,' he asserts. 'I believe in love, but not monogamy,' he says plainly.

And this isn't a made up troll bullshit either! He actually stated this tripe, which makes it obvious that he is trying to politely say that he's a flaming homo slut!

Speaking about 'flaming,' who better to point out as a filthy chutney ferret than Slashdot's very own self-confessed pederast Jon Katz. Although an obvious deviant anagram cannot be found from his name, he has already confessed, nay boasted of the homosexual perversion of corrupting the innocence of young children. To quote from the article linked:

'I've got a rare kidney disease,' I told her. 'I have to go to the bathroom a lot. You can come with me if you want, but it takes a while. Is that okay with you? Do you want a note from my doctor?'

Is this why you were touching your penis in the cinema, Jon? And letting the other boys touch it too?

We should also point out that Jon Katz refers to himself as 'Slashdot's resident Gasbag.' Is there any more doubt? For those fortunate few who aren't aware of the list of homosexual terminology found inside the Linux 'Sauce Code,' a 'Gasbag' is a pervert who gains sexual gratification from having a thin straw inserted into his urethra (or to use the common parlance, 'piss-pipe'), then his homosexual lover blows firmly down the straw to inflate his scrotum. This is, of course, when he's not busy violating the dignity and copyright of posters to Slashdot by gathering

That would be great if the leading browser worked right, but it returns "Buy Now!" in IE (up to and including 7. Looks like it's finally fixed in 8).

Can't the army just requisition the code on the basis of national security and fix the bug themselves ...?

They can. See Microsoft's Government Security Program.

We deal with a number of legacy apps. Use filemon/regmon to see what a app is doing wrong:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx

I'm able to trace down and grant file/directory/hkey_lm permissions for most legacy apps in 15 minutes or so. Login as a User and "runas" the tool above ("process monitor") as an admin.

Also, you can tell the vendor what they did wrong in your bug report.

And yes, there are brand-new "Enterprise" developers that STILL DON'T FSCKING GET IT and refuse to fix their code.

No, it will be like the Windows N versions. The EU made MS release a version of Windows without Media Player because Real whined like a baby, as opposed to making their player suck less. And what happened? No OEMs installed it. The thing is there's nothing to stop OEMs installing other browsers, it's just, unless it's Opera why would they? They don't make anything from it. All that crapware you see from Google Desktop, to Roxio burner, to Adobe Reader and so on, the OEMs get cash for each of those installations. And at the end of the day users don't care. Those who want a browser other than IE already know where to get it from. Mom and Pop? They just want to browse their kids photos on flickr.

No, there is a difference in this example between the selected and the sorted-on field. Plus, the selected field may not be unique (which is the main reason for getting an arbitrary amount of results). If I make a webapp in which I produce a subset of one or more tables that are the result of a query that I want to present to the user in the form of pages, I may, for example select on everybody in Houston (which gives me a subset), and sort on name. If I get to use offset and limit, I can do something like this:

SELECT * FROM PEOPLE WHERE CITY='Houston' ORDER BY NAME OFFSET 0 LIMIT 20;

For the next page, I would then replace '0' with '20', to give me the next 'page' of the result set. Fantastic. However, if I did this:

SELECT * FROM PEOPLE WHERE CITY='Houston' AND ROWNUM() >= 0 AND ROWNUM() < 20 ORDER BY NAME;

I would first select the first twenty (arbitrary) results from the database, and only *then* sort them. My result could contain names beginning with 'a' through 'z' for every page ! The 'solution' proposed here, says that you should be aware of your resultset.

To put it simply: no.

Look: I'm not sure if we don't understand each other, if you're teasing me around for trolling purposes or if you are genuinely uneducated on the ROW_NUMBER() windowing function (which has nothing to do with Oracle's ROWNUM pseudo-column); but it doesn't work as you say.

To prove it, you just need a copy of SQL Server 2008 (express edition should do) and the last version (available on Codeplex) of the AdventureWorks2008 sample database. Then just run this query against it and play with the numbers as you want:

SELECT *
FROM (
SELECT ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY P1.FirstName) AS rn
, P1.FirstName, P1.LastName, A1.City
FROM Person.Person AS P1
JOIN Person.BusinessEntityAddress AS T1
ON P1.BusinessEntityID = T1.BusinessEntityID
JOIN Person.Address AS A1
ON T1.AddressID = A1.AddressID
WHERE A1.City = 'Redmond'
) AS T
WHERE rn BETWEEN 1 AND 21;

Ordering is applied right after the A1.City = 'Redmond' predicate while generating row numbers with the ROW_NUMBER() function.

So

• there's absolutely no arbitrary selection for assignment of row numbers, they are assigned base on FirstName ordering
• because of this, there can't be names beginning with 'a' through 'z' for every page (unless, of course, they all fit in a single page)

I suspect you are simply wasting my time because you don't know how windowing functions work but still you are arrogant enough to try and bend Oracle's ROWNUM into a possible behavior without simply looking up some documentation. Have you *at least* seen and contemplated that the ROW_NUMBER() function comes with an OVER (PARTITION BY ..., ORDER BY ...) clause???? And that ORDER BY clause is different from the ORDER BY clause that come at the end of a SQL statement?

Let me quote from Oracle's documentation:

A ROWNUM value is assigned to a row after it passes the predicate phase of the query but before the query does any sorting or aggregation.

This is simply *NOT* how the ROW_NUMBER() windowing function works! Look it up in both Oracle's and SQL Server's documentation.

There are some additional considerations that may apply because of determinism of the sort order or duplicates because of the chosen attributes in the partitioning/ordering clause, but these are considerations that applies also to LIMIT.

Before starting again running in circles, because you have no clue about how this windowing function works,

Even UAC is a bizarre hack of a permissive userland, and doesn't use the kernel's security features.

If you can get past the idea that UAC is only the UAC prompt you will see that UAC is indeed much more, and that UAC very much so use the kernel's security features.

Among other things, UAC manipulates the security token of the process, stripping away access rights. This is what is used for both the sandboxing of low integrity processes as well as the elevation prompt.

Normal processes launched by the user is stripped of admin rights by default. Only if the user is actually an admin and only when he tries to access something which requires those rights will the prompt appear. Confirming the UAC elevation prompt will grant the access rights to the process token.

Certain processes - such as Google Chrome and Internet Explorer - are launched in low integrity mode. The process token is stripped of even more rights, preventing it from writing to the registry or to the file system except for an isolated region.

The kernel also ensures that a lower integrity process cannot send messages (or otherwise access) a higher integrity process. So while applications you start on the desktop may send messages to eachother, the IE or Chrome instances cannot send similar messages to desktop apps, even if taken over by an attacker.

Essentially Vista/7 subdivides the user's account based on what he/she is doing. Surfing the internet: low integrity. Running normal, local applications: Normal integrity. Performing admin tasks: Elevated integrity. Installing new applications: Trusted installer integrity.

I don't know about you, but this is distinctly a kernel feature in my book. Specifics here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc138019.aspx

Er, no?

While Moonlight is a Novell product based on Mono, GPL'ed and all that, it also gets support from Microsoft in providing unit tests and that kind of thing.

And there's this agreement explicitly waiving the right to sue users of Moonlight getting it from Novell:
http://www.microsoft.com/interop/msnovellcollab/moonlight.mspx

I think of Silverlight as having three pillars: .NET runtime, XAML, and media.

C# and the .NET CLI are both ECMA specs:
http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-335.htm
http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-334.htm

The specification for XAML has been published under the Open Specification Promise:
http://www.betanews.com/article/XAML-specification-published-added-to-Microsofts-open-promise/1206482161

And for media formats, Silverlight 3 supports:
WMV (VC-1 is a SMPTE standard, other components under RAND licensing)
MPEG-4 with H.264 and AAC-LC (ISO spec)
MP3 (ISO spec)
Generic extensibility via Raw AV MediaStreamSource

There's even a royalty-paid codec pack for Moonlight provided by Microsoft.

If you've got practical suggestions for how we could be more open than this, I'd love to hear them, but I think there has already been a lot of traction in that direction. It certainly goes well beyond what Adobe does for Gnash, and Moonlight is already capable of handling many more high-profile Silverlight sites than any non-Adobe Flash player is. Even:

http://www.smoothhd.com/

Yeah, but can it do this?

http://www.nextcdn.com/Silverlight.htm

HTML5 is very much a media techology built like a web browser. But while the presentation layer is important, it only part of what makes a good media experience.

Smooth Streaming is dynamically and seamlessly between multiple bitrates based on real-time measurements of bandwidth, availble CPU, and window size. And it requires a decoder architecture like MediaStreamSource where demuxing happens in the sandbox, with decoders that can take appended sequences of raw audio and video samples.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.media.mediastreamsource_members(VS.95).aspx
http://alexzambelli.com/blog/2009/02/10/smooth-streaming-architecture/

Flash has something somewhat similar with Dynamic Streaming.

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashmediaserver/articles/dynstream_advanced_pt1_04.html

The key thing about a runtime like Silverlight or Flash is that the bytecode engine, decoders, and rendering layer are tightly coupled, and so can make assumptions about how long it takes a video sample to get from networking stack to demuxer to decoder to rendering engine to screen. It's complex stuff, and it's hard to see HTML5 specified tightly enough to make that kind of thing feasible.

For another extreme, there's the Raw AV pipeline: video and audio decoders running inside the managed code sandbox. Javascript is getting faster, sure, but it's a long way from being THAT fast.

Or to look at it another way, it'd be easier to support HTML5 in Silverlight than it would be to replace Silverlight with HTML5.

In general it is compatible - but only in one direction. You can load MSOffice n documents in MSOffice n+1 but not the other way around.

Microsoft Office 2007 Compatibility Pack

ISVs can create a "manifest" with their application telling Windows which shims need to be in-place to run the application correctly, without changing their code and without having access to the Windows source code. That's the point.

Microsoft already ships a compatibility checker utility: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=24da89e9-b581-47b0-b45e-492dd6da2971

But they can't force ISVs to run it, and they can't force ISVs to fix the problems it finds. What they can do is say, "hey, this shim is an easier fix than the compatibility checker you're already too fucking lazy to run" and hope that sticks.

When my company eventually switched over to Vista, the software just took a few tweaks here and there, e.g, what can be found here. So far in our tests on the RC, we haven't *had* to run anything as a SU, and everything has been "curable" with little hacks here and there.

If you are smart, you are usually on software support anyway, and your publisher can help you out. When we tried AutoCAD Inventor in Vista/Seven, it was just a quick call to AutoDesk to get it working. My thoughts on legacy software? Stay away from it!!!

Interesting... but it seems NASDAQ and the London Stock Exchange, among several others, do not agree with your field experience.

As another example take the Bwin case study:

The bwin Data Management Systems group uses SQL Server 2008 to continue its tradition of providing world-class performance for its sports betting customers. During peak loads SQL Server handles more than 6,000 financial transactions per second, which Grohser says translates into more than 30,000 database transactions per second.

Anon to preserve moderation.

Security flies out of the window any time you let an idiot loose on a computer, whether it's windows or linux. The person who opens all email attachments on windows is the same one who will pick up rootkits in linux.

Reliability: My kids turn off their windows machine by pulling the plug, at least twice a day. It comes back up every time with no fuss, and will only force a disk check once a month or so.
The same thing on all the linux filesystems I've tried will force a full disk check and quite often result in corrupt data.

Speed is no longer something to write home about. For the past few years, every distro I've tried at home is as slow or slower than windows.
Yes, you can get minimalist distros or compile everything by hand for specific optimizations, but that's not something you could sell to the average home user.

For hardware requirements, compare fedora with XP
Where fedora wants 400MHz, 256MB and 2.7GB HDD for a desktop system, XP wants 300MHz, 128MB and 1.5GB HDD.

For servers, I wouldn't even consider running windows, but for the home desktop linux just doesn't offer me enough to switch (no matter how much I wish it was otherwise).

Well, I do still remember Word97 crashing after being fed with Word 6.0 documents. I had to export to RTF first to be able to open them... So - have you checked you can really open them, or are you guessing? And have you read this: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/938810

Note 1: see this Microsoft article for the official documentation.

Note 2: I suspect that "Negotiate" might actually mean "use the operating-system-level security configurations of the client and the server to determine which protocol is acceptable", so that in order to truly *force* Kerberos you might also have to disallow all varieties of NTLM in the security policy for the server. That's just a guess though.

The system-wide WebDAV isn't required. Exchange installs its own, separate WebDAV components, which are.

See:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/309508/ ("Exchange 2000 components use Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) and other Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) verbs that are not allowed by the default configuration [of the IIS Lockdown and URLScan tools].")

http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/38396/critical-webdav-vulnerability-are-your-exchange-servers-safe.html ("You can't disable WebDAV on your Exchange 2000 servers because OWA 2000 depends on WebDAV")

and

http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/45356/deciding-if-and-how-to-disable-webdav-access.html ("If you're trying to disable Exchange 2003's DAV implementation, be aware that Outlook Web Access (OWA) and several other Exchange components depend on DAV. By blocking specific DAV verbs at the network level (through a firewall) or by installing URLScan, you will break the Exchange DAV implementation."). This last article specifically mentions the separate DAV DLLs for Exchange.

IIRC, WebDAV *is* configured by default on IIS 5. Here's a link to instructions on disabling it (the procedure involves adding a registry value and restarting IIS):

Microsoft KB Article #241520

Workaround #1: Turn off WebDAV
Turning off WebDAV might be a good option if you are not using it or can live without out until we have a security update available. You can find instructions at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/241520.

Source: http://blogs.technet.com/srd/archive/2009/05/18/more-information-about-the-iis-authentication-bypass.aspx

Gordon Bell is a supercomputer expert who migrated over to MicroSoft Research. His recent project is MyLifeBits, a complete digital record of one's life.

I am not sure where I read this, but some peopel are experimenting with wearable cameras to take snapshots of your entire day. The camera has a motion sensor in it to increase rates when the wearer appears more active. I suppose an iPhone could be programmed to track both motion and vocal activity of its host.

I further read that psychologists are using this for memory studies. Some hosts report an eerie telepresence effect when they review recent day or two's video. Researchers are studying the effect of periodic memory reinforcement. Perhaps an appliance could be developed for those with memory defects like early Alzheimers.

So let's talk about linux on a desktop for professional use. I am studying many/multi core architectures with numa memory. The goal is to achieve the best parallelism possible on small data size. It requires a very fine tuning of the machine. No graphics (too much process running), custom kernel to change scheduling policies, custom kernel to access hardware counters (basically, PAPI support). This cannot be done on windows, so the testing machine runs linux.

First off, you just mentioned some lame pet project that has nothing to do with the desktop then added a quick addendum mentioning that a Windows desktop somehow *couldn't* access this. This is a stretch of the imagination in terms of desktop use. You're studying NUMA? So you're a student fiddling around with the linux kernel? Or- don't tell me some unfortunate company is paying you to waste your time with that instead of licensing a professional operating system...

What's this? NUMA support!

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa363804(VS.85).aspx

You actually don't need to recompile windows to get to these features because it's got a more modern modular design.

Obviously the desktop that controls it runs linux also. Otherwise it would be pain in the ass.

So you couldn't SSH into your little toy system with PuTTy or connect using serial over HyperTerminal? This certainly doesn't sound impressive enough for you to be using a probe or anything. Why, if you used Windows on the host desktop then you'd have access to Outlook and enterprise-level networking and productivity applications on your workstation. Why, your company might even be able to enforce group policies! But somehow it just doesn't seem like any company would be wasting their time with this unless they were completely incapable of cost-benefit analysis. They'd be slow-cooking themselves a product while burning expensive engineer and IT time and implementation downtime instead of simply licensing something and having it implemented rapidly.

So what is this linux desktop really offering you?

Or maybe you're in school. The more educational institutions rely on linux to teach operating system concepts, the more we'll be preparing students to design the future operating systems of the 1970's.

You can say that it a niche. Well Gaming is a niche too.

Fiddling with a linux system to try to make it do complex tasks is a niche or hobby or what have you. Gaming is a simply massive market that's packed to the brim with revenue. So it may be a niche, but not in the same way.

Bullshit. My Windows Vista was able to play DVDs and Divx videos right out of the box.

Microsoft itself says DVD playback capability is included only for some versions of Vista.

They didn't ship the PDF export with Office because Adobe sued them to remove. (Yes, your precious "open" format! The current Adobe management is full of asshats.) If you want someone to blame for that fiasco, blame Adobe, not Microsoft!

Despite that, you can easily download and install it-- it's a free add-on: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=4d951911-3e7e-4ae6-b059-a2e79ed87041&displaylang=en

I have everything I need in OpenOffice, and it is better priced too...

Microsoft doesn't sell an office suite.

It sells MS Office as part of a working environment that scales smoothly from the home user to the enterprise.

Microsoft has client side solutions.

It has server side solutions. It has web based solutions.

If your employer has a volume licensing agreement with Microsoft the home-use copy of MS Office is the price of the media plus S&H. Microsoft Software Assurance

If you have student ID, the price is $60. The Ultimate Steal

I have everything I need in OpenOffice, and it is better priced too...

Microsoft doesn't sell an office suite.

It sells MS Office as part of a working environment that scales smoothly from the home user to the enterprise.

Microsoft has client side solutions.

It has server side solutions. It has web based solutions.

If your employer has a volume licensing agreement with Microsoft the home-use copy of MS Office is the price of the media plus S&H. Microsoft Software Assurance

If you have student ID, the price is $60. The Ultimate Steal

This is a good point, but I think Office has these special UI elements for psychological, not technical reasons - they differentiate Office from the rest of the OS (and horizontal competitors like OO.org) in your mind & make you think Office is somehow special/unique/valuable. The earliest example I can think of is Office 2000 (iirc), which had gradients in the title bars before the rest of the OS supported it.

Then why Wordpad and Paint in Windows 7 have ribbons, too?

In practice, Microsoft has been pushing for Ribbon as the new standard of Windows UI for some time now. There's a long-winded document describing all the dos and dont's of Ribbon (it's patented, and the license to use it only allows you to do so if you comply strictly with the UI design). Visual Studio 2008 SP1 includes Ribbon support for MFC applications. And there is a WPF Ribbon control developed by Microsoft and available for free via CodePlex.

As a power user of Word and Excel I find the inclusion of a native 64 bit version to be very welcomed indeed.

Excel 2007 added some much needed features that has truely turned it into a portable database program, whereby increasing the amount of rows from 64k to over 1 million, and from 256 columns to over 10k among other notable changes. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa730921.aspx#Office2007excelPerf_BigGridIncreasedLimitsExcel

Like most people, I was apprehensive of the ribbon UI however after about 2 weeks of solid use I fell in love with it. Microsoft really nailed it, something had to be done given the shear amount of features available in a modern editor.

I hope to see some innovation from the OOo team to give their program a fresh face although I was impressed to see some improvements in their 3.1 release.

If all the clients are Windows XP or later, you might be able to use Software Restriction Policies.

I had to buy the new Office for home because those who upgraded never remember to downgrade.

Ooops. You could've just downloaded a free MS reader/converter from Microsoft. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/downloads/HA010449811033.aspx

I think you misunderstand his point... the 'size' parameter isn't the number of bytes in either buffer, it's the number of bytes you want to move. Obviously this has a lot to do with the size of either allocated buffer, but it's not the same thing.

That's right, but that doesn't change my argument. In the general case, if you wanted to use memcpy in a manner I would consider secure, you still need the min in there with memcpy and not with memcpy_s. ...but that's really not the language's responsibility to enforce...

We have a bit different ideas of what the language should do. And even if the language doesn't actually enforce that you don't run out of bounds (which even memcpy_s doesn't do), it can still make it easier to use correctly and harder to use incorrectly.

My take is that memcpy_s probably does that, and I think that's a worthwhile step to take, especially when it's almost free.

Let's say, If I only want to copy the first 3 bytes of src to dest, do I put in "3" for the source length or the destination length?

I would say that depends on the motivation. If it's because you only want the first 3 bytes of src, it should go in the source length. If it's because the destination buffer is only 3 bytes, it goes into the dest size.

(Of course, you'll probably do some testing before calling memcpy_s in the first place, because of what your sibling post said about there really being 3 sizes involved. To be completely defensive, you'll at least need to test it against whichever buffer size 3 replaces.)

And I'd better test that against the length of both first, because if the function fails, was it because there's only 2 bytes available in dest, or because there's only 2 available in src?

I would say that if you need to do those tests with memcpy_s, you need to do those tests before calling plain memcpy anyway, for almost any definition of "need".

OR, if I'm starting at byte 2 of src to dest, do I put "1" in for srcLength, because that's alll that's left in the array, or "3," because that's how big the array is? I know it probably should be the first one, but the people who don't know better, the people this function is theoretically trying to engineer against, probably will make the wrong choice, because they have it in their head the array is length "3" and this function wants to know the length of the array, right?

I can sort of see where you're coming from, in that the terminology we're using has shifted a little bit (from bytes-to-copy to sizes of buffers). However, I don't think this is that much of a greater issue than with plain memcpy. Also, the MS documentation for memcpy_s, while it uses a really crappy name for the second parameter, the name and description of the last one are about the same as for memcpy -- the number of bytes to copy. (It says "characters", but 1 char = 1 byte.)

And putting in new formats for the next Office iteration. I had to buy the new Office for home because those who upgraded never remember to downgrade.

That may have been the case in the past, but with Office 2007 Microsoft released a very good free file conversion tool for older versions of office.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=941b3470-3ae9-4aee-8f43-c6bb74cd1466&displaylang=en

In fact, the file converter is so good that my company feels no reason to upgrade to Office 2007 (not to mention the learning curve with the new interface).

Or, better yet, if security really was the goal, develop a C-like language that was secure by design?

And then why don't you make it compile to non-native code, so you can do code analysis at runtime? Might as well give it a good standard library that uses all the features so people would try writing stuff. Of course, you can't name it C then, maybe you should give it a catchier name with some punctuation or other pun on the language.

Hey, wait a minute...

So why is strncpy in the banned function list?

I think this is just Microsoft trying to embrace and extend. There's no better way to do that then making most existing C and C++ code invalid. The quickest alternative, of course, is to write it in C# or some other embraced language.

Hypocritically, Microsoft did NOT add memset to the banned list despite it having almost exactly the same problems as memcpy. Why? Almost every MSDN example begins with "memset(somestruct,0,sizeof(somestruct))" and invalidating every MSDN example would probably look bad.

As you pointed out, the size of the destination buffer makes no sense when dealing with pure pointers. Often memcpy is used to move memory around inside larger buffers, which completely invalidates memcpy_s as a safe replacement. memcpy is also often used to copy smaller buffers into larger ones, and accidentally copying the uninitialized (or carefully crafted by some exploit) data that comes after the source object can be just as dangerous. The correct replacement, memcpy_overkill(void *source_object, size_t source_size, size_t source_offet, void *dest_object, size_t dest_size, size_t dest_offset, size_t count) is what they're REALLY looking for, but this is impractical primarily because of the heavy use of context-less pointers (to objects within arrays, or within some other structure; the void * in memcpy's prototype hints at further possibilities) in C and C++.

Lots of hand-waving marketing bullshit. I'm sure they're going to keep using it internally, and the exploits will still happen with Microsoft code. Just like Microsoft applications will be ignored by UAC in Windows 7.

If they wanted to do something useful, they should have removed createRemoteThread instead.