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Am I the only one who thinks this sounds a lot like Singularity OS from Microsoft Research?

funny, cause i had the same problem and google found me a working link. note the big "Fix It" button? just below that there's a note that suggests downloading to a computer the fix doesn't apply to is just fine:

"If you are not on the computer that has the problem, you can save the automatic fix to a flash drive or to a CD and then run it on the computer that has the problem."

I downloaded and ran the fix in question on an XP box.

It responded: This "Fix It" does not apply to your system.

Then it gives you an option of going to their blog or providing feedback via email.

Nothing to see here.

The refresh rate needed to avoid flicker with an impulse light characteristic display is unrelated to the frame rate needed for perfectly realistic motion quality. Note however that non-flicking sample and hold displays such as LCDs will produce lower motion quality than impulse response displays of the same refresh rate because of the temporal smearing. (see http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/archive/TempRate.mspx for explanation).

This is an old myth, the human eye can see a difference far higher that 25fps.

http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm
"So what is "Enough fps"? I don't know, because nobody went there so far."
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/archive/TempRate.mspx
"Whatever temporal sampling rate you choose, it's unlikely to be fast enough"

Standard 24fps film is nowhere near high enough to reproduce real motion, as anybody who's watched 60fps Showscan film will know. The difference between 60fps gaming and 100fps or higher gaming is also obvious. And if you carefully examine high contrast fast motion you can notice a difference at even higher frame rates.

And while 10ms latency may not be perceptible, latency is cumulative from all sources, and every millisecond added to your reaction time puts you at a competitive disadvantage.

It took 1s to find the correct link fix-it.

You could probably hack Virtual Desktop Manager to do it.

A simple Google Search shows rather more than just being a vendor of some random proprietary software. Fortify is a Microsoft partner which has indulged in joint product launches with them and this isn't even mentioned in the original article.

This is yet another example of a Microsoft inspired campaign of lies. This group never changes and they and their software should be automatically excluded from all state contracts for ethical violations.

Suppose you are right and MS does want mono to be implemented and succeed in Linux, BSD, etc. Why? Out of the goodness of their hearts?!!

No, simply to promote the platform. For this same reason, Microsoft provides free and open source (yes, true Open Source) implementations of Python, Ruby and PHP for .NET that run on Mono; and F# supports Mono as well.

Now, to say that UAC is inferior to the unix security arrangement is another matter entirely.

How so? The only difference is that if you're in the Administrators group you don't need a password. Since the prompt is on a secure desktop, there's no chance of a rogue program "clicking" for you. The effects end up being almost identical, so I'm not sure why one would claim it inferior.

Linux is much better in the realms of indexing, disk/memory usage, and file fragmentation. These things drastically affect HDD usage and general system performance.

No, it's not. That's bleated blindly often, but I found it not to be the case. I was running Linux on the same machine I previously ran XP, and currently run Vista. I believe the worst offender in Linux was the slocate which would run.. and run, and run, and run, and grind. It hurt performance quite a bit... as did some other things. Also, nothing was more fun that something with my DVD burner causing linux to hard freeze. In XP it would cause a freeze, but after a while the drive vanished. Haven't had any issue since going to Vista though.

Yes, it is an HP problem. It is also a problem with Windows; there's no reason a printer driver should fuck up the display subsystem.

IIRC, it caused a blue screen. In other words, it caused the kernel to crash. And the same can happen in Linux too.. I've experienced it... with an HP print driver no less. Also, in the late 90s, I seem to remember Linux crashing with a kernel panic just because it got an IPX packet, and at the time didn't understand them. So let's not pretend that Linux is somehow immune to bad drivers; it's not.

You may also have a slight misunderstanding about the warning you refer to. You should not file bug reports regarding that system; you are free to apply to any other resource for technical support.

Yes, the oh so helpful Linux community. Their advice: don't use the driver, and then come back and we'll help you. Even for stupid userland services / programs. Trust me, I tried to use Linux on the desktop.

I'd imagine that if you paid for support services, you could get assistance with almost anything.

Well, if I have to pay, what was the point of using Linux? Also, I think the paid support was more expensive than a license for Windows.

The only difference between that level of support and Microsoft's is that you can't file a bug report with Microsoft.

http://connect.microsoft.com/

Also, each time I've contacted support, they resolved my issue. It was using the support phone / email option for MS Money.

Actually, for most Windows installations you have zero expectation of support from M$ anyway; OEM installs are handled by the manufacturer or vendor.

Who better, since the OEM likely did some customizations to Windows before they shipped it? Does it matter if support comes directly from MS or the vendor that sold you the computer?

Perhaps you have never heard of run as.

It allows you to "run as" another account when you such as administrator. This means you can run installers, Explorer, Admin tools, etc, all without ever having to log out of your current session.

About the only reason you might buy the retail copy as a builder is that you get both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions.

Only Vista Ultimate contains the 64-bit version in the box. The other editions require you to send away for a 64-bit DVD.

(Reference: Last paragraph of this page)

Hyper-V Server 2008 is a free download.

The virtualization is free, the workstation OS to manage it, and the OSes to install on top of it are not.

Yeah I don't understand why you need to file for a patent at all. [...] Can protocols even be patented?

Microsoft says, "Yes!" http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc224428(PROT.10).aspx

Not to mention the cost, free with a Windows Server 2008 license.

That's not very free...

Microsoft offers Virtual Server for free as a standalone download. My understanding is that it's a minimal Windows Server OS as the hypervisor.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc794852.aspx

Latest update (Feb 4, 2009) on how to do just that. but it's not free, just free to try.

Not to mention the cost, free with a Windows Server 2008 license.

That's not very free...

Microsoft offers Virtual Server for free as a standalone download. My understanding is that it's a minimal Windows Server OS as the hypervisor.

The hypervisor one is HyperV. See here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/trial-software.aspx

The one referenced above required a host OS:
"Supported Host Operating Systems :
        * Windows Server 2003 Standard SP2
        * Windows Server 2003 Enterprise SP2
        * Windows Server 2003 Datacenter SP2
        * Windows Server 2003 Standard R2
        * Windows Server 2003 Enterprise R2
        * Windows Server 2003 Datacenter R2
        * Windows Server 2003 Standard SP1
        * Windows Server 2003 Enterprise SP1
        * Windows Server 2003 Datacenter SP1
        * Windows Server 2003 Standard x64 SP2
        * Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 SP2
        * Windows Server 2003 Datacenter x64 SP2
        * Windows Server 2003 Standard x64
        * Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64
        * Windows Server 2003 Datacenter x64
        * Windows Server 2003 Standard x64 R2
        * Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 R2
        * Windows Server 2003 Datacenter x64 R2
        * Windows Small Business Server 2003 Standard R2
        * Windows Small Business Server 2003 Premium R2
        * Windows Server 2008 Beta 3 (non-Production only)
        * Windows XP Professional SP2 (non-Production only)
        * Windows XP Professional x64 Edition (non-Production only)
        * Windows Vista Ultimate (non-Production only)
        * Windows Vista Business (non-Production only)
        * Windows Vista Enterprise (non-Production only)

5 million people used Frontpage in 2001

IE 6 still has 20% marketshare

Numbers mean nothing.

Microsoft offers Virtual Server for free as a standalone download. My understanding is that it's a minimal Windows Server OS as the hypervisor.

Your understanding is wrong. Microsoft Virtual Server is an old MS product from the Virtual PC line. It does not have anything to do with Hyper-V.

What you probably meant is Microsoft Hyper-V Server. And yes, that one is actually free too.

Microsoft offers Virtual Server for free as a standalone download. My understanding is that it's a minimal Windows Server OS as the hypervisor.

Your understanding is wrong. Microsoft Virtual Server is an old MS product from the Virtual PC line. It does not have anything to do with Hyper-V.

What you probably meant is Microsoft Hyper-V Server. And yes, that one is actually free too.

It's also free without a Windows Server 2008 license. Link

Not to mention the cost, free with a Windows Server 2008 license.

That's not very free...

Microsoft offers Virtual Server for free as a standalone download. My understanding is that it's a minimal Windows Server OS as the hypervisor.

and do you really want the average moron to be playing around with whole disk encryption?

thats just a recipe for disaster.

If you're a domain admin, you can set up certificate-based EFS recovery policy, where you (or other delegated admins) can recover users encrypted files in scenarios where they forget their password, get fired, get turned into a vegetable in a horrible accident, etc.

MS has already an excellent XP edition for netbooks but they keep hiding it to prevent further XP installs (I guess).

http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/sa/benefits/fundamentals.mspx

Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs

In fact, if you ask me, it should be installed to anything including Virtual machines. It is the "bare" XP. Nothing else and it works perfectly. If netbook people insist on running Windows, it would be my only recommendation.

Microsoft's minimum recommended specs say it'll run on anything down to a 233mhz machine with 64mb of RAM, but I imagine the end user would be long dead by the time it got round to doing anything useful.

Going on those facts, Vista should be fairly useable by 2015 :)

From TFA:

Starter Edition: A lightweight version for netbook computers, that will only be capable of running three applications concurrently.

Maybe someone can educate me here: are EeePCs and subnotebooks so underpowered that they can only run three programs at a time? It seems like a purely artificial limit repackaged as a "performance" feature.

Yeah, I don't know where they got that data point in the article. From the original source, Mike Ybarra mentions netbooks twice:

The second change is that we have designed Windows 7 so different editions of Windows 7 can run on a very broad set of hardware, from small-notebook PCs (sometimes referred to as netbooks) to full gaming desktops. This way, customers can enable the scenarios they want across the broad hardware choices they have.

Ybarra: At beta we've had a lot of people running our most premium, full-featured offering on small-notebook PCs (netbooks) with good experiences and good results. So we're pleased to see that on this class of hardware Windows 7 is running well. And of course we will continue to tune Windows 7 for performance as we move through the engineering cycle.

Nowhere does he say anything about the 3 app limitation and you'll note he mentions that in beta their most full featured offering runs on netbooks.

I do not know where PCPro got their information but I think this Q&A session is what started it. He seems optimistic about all versions of Windows 7 being usable on netbooks but who knows without getting field results (Vista capable, anyone)?

I would hesitate to use the strong language of "confirmed" as the sites in the summary just link to other PCPro articles and it's all PCPro. I can't seem to find any really formal news release or website with Microsoft's official stance on this. I think this is a bad decision but they know their business better than I do.

From Paul Thurrott's site (which breaks each version down by feature--don't ask me how he got them).

Here's the most reliable source I can find where it is revealed in a Q&A with the general manager for Windows at Microsoft.

The AP has picked it and quotes passages from the Q&A session. So I think the majority of this is coming from a Q&A session with Mike Ybarra, general manager for Windows.

Which gives me pause and causes me to wonder ... are they really going to use the same marketing strategy they did with Vista?

Additionally, in the interim, you can use the NoDriveTypeAutoRun key to adjust how Autorun reacts. http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windows2000serv/reskit/regentry/93502.mspx?mfr=true 0x4 is the bit you are after. More information is here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953252 I'll recommend this to the Fix it team and we'll see what happens.

Additionally, in the interim, you can use the NoDriveTypeAutoRun key to adjust how Autorun reacts. http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windows2000serv/reskit/regentry/93502.mspx?mfr=true 0x4 is the bit you are after. More information is here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953252 I'll recommend this to the Fix it team and we'll see what happens.

I would rather download a nice little utility, but Microsoft seems to want to take this direction. Now that's progress!

You may find it easier to follow the steps if you burn down your house first.

I would rather download a nice little utility, but Microsoft seems to want to take this direction. Now that's progress!

You may find it easier to follow the steps if you burn down your house first.

As a proprietary product, I am unable to prove or disprove what is or is not in Windows.

Sure you can. You can sniff for leaks. That's how people found out about the "personal information" in WGA.

You're not seriously going to do a line-by-line code review of Windows, even if you had the source. It would take you months or years. It would take you even longer in Linux, Nobody's going to do a line-by-line review of that either. AND NOBODY EVER HAS. Show me the line-by-line code review of Fedora 10.

We do, however, have plenty of evidence that "NSA Key" does not have an adequate explanation,

No, we don't. NSA uses it's own special sauce separate from FIPS for encryption/signing/etc. That special sauce is in Windows so NSA can use it. You need to turn it on with registry keys and it doesn't implement anything remotely similar to a backdoor. It affects logins, EFS, and network filesharing.

WGA does send personal information despite microsoft's claims to the contrary,

What personal information is that? It sends system details. It DOESN'T send the Owner or Company strings which is the ONLY "personal information" stored in a standard Windows install. Unless you consider what motherboard you have installed to be "personal information". Link:
http://blogs.msdn.com/wga/archive/2007/03/07/wga-notifications-and-download-and-install-telemetry.aspx

By whom? Not by me. Not under circumstances that I trust. By the same people who've requested its inclusion in the first place, perhaps?

The University of Washington has done a code review of Windows 2000 and I think XP. And more importantly, the European Union has the source and their special masters have been doing a code review as part of the antitrust and other lawsuits against Microsoft. Like you, they're paranoid of the supposed "NSA backdoor". I think the British government has done the same thing independently. So have the Australians. Links:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2003/jan03/01-14GSPrelease.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/default.mspx

There's also the fact that the Windows 2000 source has leaked and independents reviewed that and found no backdoors.

It is a server intended for very broad access to the system, however it is proprietary and impossible to audit. So you can't check the access execution path to verify that it is secure.

You can't attach a debugger? You can find out everything it's doing pretty easily.

More over, it uses AES encryption which, while fairly secure in theory, does not prevent MITM and does not prevent eavesdropping.

AES is the most widely-used algorithm in encryption today. If you've got a problem with AES you've got a big problem with encryption in general.

All you need to do is get the password and that's easier than you think.

Please tell me how it's "easier" to crack passwords on RDP than SSH. Assume password ONLY on SSH. I'm not aware of any known vulnerabilties on the password engine so you have to brute force it. Limit login attempts to 3. What's the problem?

Even WITH the passphrase, you can't eavesdrop and if properly configured, can't do an MITM with ssh.

Not true, but I don't want to get into it. What you're talking about is probably pre-sharing private keys rather than passwords. As I said before, Remote Desktop has just about every feature of SSH, including this one.

As a proprietary product, I am unable to prove or disprove what is or is not in Windows.

Sure you can. You can sniff for leaks. That's how people found out about the "personal information" in WGA.

You're not seriously going to do a line-by-line code review of Windows, even if you had the source. It would take you months or years. It would take you even longer in Linux, Nobody's going to do a line-by-line review of that either. AND NOBODY EVER HAS. Show me the line-by-line code review of Fedora 10.

We do, however, have plenty of evidence that "NSA Key" does not have an adequate explanation,

No, we don't. NSA uses it's own special sauce separate from FIPS for encryption/signing/etc. That special sauce is in Windows so NSA can use it. You need to turn it on with registry keys and it doesn't implement anything remotely similar to a backdoor. It affects logins, EFS, and network filesharing.

WGA does send personal information despite microsoft's claims to the contrary,

What personal information is that? It sends system details. It DOESN'T send the Owner or Company strings which is the ONLY "personal information" stored in a standard Windows install. Unless you consider what motherboard you have installed to be "personal information". Link:
http://blogs.msdn.com/wga/archive/2007/03/07/wga-notifications-and-download-and-install-telemetry.aspx

By whom? Not by me. Not under circumstances that I trust. By the same people who've requested its inclusion in the first place, perhaps?

The University of Washington has done a code review of Windows 2000 and I think XP. And more importantly, the European Union has the source and their special masters have been doing a code review as part of the antitrust and other lawsuits against Microsoft. Like you, they're paranoid of the supposed "NSA backdoor". I think the British government has done the same thing independently. So have the Australians. Links:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2003/jan03/01-14GSPrelease.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/default.mspx

There's also the fact that the Windows 2000 source has leaked and independents reviewed that and found no backdoors.

It is a server intended for very broad access to the system, however it is proprietary and impossible to audit. So you can't check the access execution path to verify that it is secure.

You can't attach a debugger? You can find out everything it's doing pretty easily.

More over, it uses AES encryption which, while fairly secure in theory, does not prevent MITM and does not prevent eavesdropping.

AES is the most widely-used algorithm in encryption today. If you've got a problem with AES you've got a big problem with encryption in general.

All you need to do is get the password and that's easier than you think.

Please tell me how it's "easier" to crack passwords on RDP than SSH. Assume password ONLY on SSH. I'm not aware of any known vulnerabilties on the password engine so you have to brute force it. Limit login attempts to 3. What's the problem?

Even WITH the passphrase, you can't eavesdrop and if properly configured, can't do an MITM with ssh.

Not true, but I don't want to get into it. What you're talking about is probably pre-sharing private keys rather than passwords. As I said before, Remote Desktop has just about every feature of SSH, including this one.

Here you go. Apparently it could be either error 14 or error 182, and it was in Visual FoxPro 7.0.

The Ritual is getting rid of crapware. In the past, I've done this by reinstalling the OS and drivers.

You didn't have to go through this ritual. Rather than spend a little time with the right tools, you decide to scrap it all and start from scratch, only to dump all that and move to Linux? Something about this story doesn't add up, and I'm quite sure you omitted any problems you've ever had with Linux, both in terms of it's configuration and problem solving, but that's a whole other fish.

Like it or not, if your solution to any windows problem is "Format and Reinstall", you really don't know what you're doing. Given that your move to Linux was so easy, you were quite capable of learning, you just wanted to blame the OS rather than make the effort.

Really? http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc758834.aspx

...when are you going to drop the zero and get with the hero? yip yip.

The only thing that would be better than being able to run CS3 or even CS4 in wine? Running it natively in a *nix.

2.4 Internet Gaming/Update Features. If you choose to utilize the Internet gaming or update features within the Software, it is necessary to use certain computer system, hardware, and software information to implement the features. By using these features, you explicitly authorize Microsoft or its designated agent to access and utilize the necessary information for Internet gaming and/or updating purposes. Microsoft may use this information solely to improve our software or to provide customized services or technologies to you. Microsoft may disclose this information to others, but not in a form that personally identifies you.

I read this as them allowing to install software and updates. It would likely fall under the improve our software bit (third party web browser support.)

It is there, as vague as it is...

Take a look at MS's forums. There are posts from last August about this add-on crashing Firefox.
Hmm... Seems they deleted one already. This is the only one left.
http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/Workaround.aspx?FeedbackID=361360

I'd think that the availability of Microsoft Portrait (now at version 3.1) for Windows Mobile phones would count as prior art.

It is true that the brief description of the update as displayed within Microsoft Update does not mention the plugin. However, to be fair the full release notes for .NET 3.5 do mention that .NET WPF applications are now supported within Firefox. They even mention that a plug-in for Firefox is included.

There are 500 comments in here and not one mentioning the "clickonce" technology made it to the top ?

Now I know why I stopped reading slashdot.

Microsoft has been installing plugins in firefox for a long time... so has Adobe, google (picasa), Apple(quicktime,itunes) and others. What freaks me out is how this issue is blown out of proportion for the wrong reason.

ClickOnce is similar to Java's webstart technology for those who understand Java and you can get more information here
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163973.aspx

If you let java do it, and apple do it and apple do it why are you so surprised that microsoft is doing it ? Is it because its part of Office suite ? And how is that different from Picasa or itunes ?

Please read before you reply to or rate comments on a website like this.

You know what really bugs me with this .NET update?
This is the list of fixes included in the .NET update I installed.
It has details on a bunch of fixes, but I can't see anything about a plugin that will be installed.

Can anyone point out to me where Microsoft says that it'll install this plugin?

The preference files in the Windows user directories are hidden in arcane locations.

It took me 5 seconds to google some docs for user profile paths: User Data and Settings Management

Makes sense that the Outlook data would be in C:\Documents and Settings\\Program Data\Microsoft\Outlook but it's not.

Instead, the roaming stuff goes into:
C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook
And the non-roaming stuff goes into
C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook
Doesn't seem so awful.

The only way to ehfin find it is to back the stuff up! What if the computer crashed and I can't RUN outlook???? I'm hosed (this actually happened)

Copy the user profile over?

Yeah because when you choose to install software on your computer its completely wrong of them to actually install that software on your computer.

This program is mentioned in the new features list of .NET Framework 3.5.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb613588.aspx

Firefox Support for XBAPs

A plug-in for WPF 3.5 enables XBAPs to be run from Firefox 2.0, a feature that is not available from WPF 3.0.

No big deal. Return to your homes. Disaster averted.

It sounds like its there to aid Visual Studio in prototyping web apps with firefox (for those who use firefox) and other general junks.. it's not exactly a trojan

Well, if you don't know what it is, surely its ok.... I think that's called security-through-obscurity (or ignorance?) :)

ClickOnce is a technology that allows .NET applications to be downloaded and run on the user's PC with a single click. Its MS's way of getting a "rich user interface" in your browser without having to worry about pesky things like security dialogs (you have to buy a certificate from MS for a year in order to allow this though - see they have thought long and hard about it). Unfortunately, it also allows these .NET apps to be downloaded and run as non-browser, offline, applications.

They say its secure, but I'm not that convinced. Especially as the application can be mandated to be updated by the publisher without further notification to the end-user.

there is a doc about that extension, written by M$:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc716877.aspx

according to that site, its present sice *July* 2008

Most universities are not-for-profit in Europe. Also, check out the actual cost of MSDNAA membership. £268 per annum, for the whole academic department. Frankly that is peanuts.

Either they are rushing it, or it's really just a minor change to Vista.

Doesn't anybody remember the Mojave Experiment? The one where MS showed random (but cooperative and photogenic) people a new and exciting OS called Mojave but was really just Vista underneath? In what was supposed to be a marketing stunt, they only really managed to prove that Vista had such a bad reputation that the only way to convince consumers into using it was by tricking them.

And now it looks like Mojave is going to be sold as Windows 7.

"Either they are rushing it, or it's really just a minor change to Vista."

Yes

Yes... there's no reason to debate the whole "minor changes" thingy...

Get your info straight from the proverbial horses mouth...

http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/C/D/8CD43224-5A47-436C-A21E-9DF78F1E9AFC/The_Business_Value_of_Windows_Vista.pdf

Page 16, paragraph two... Or just search the PDF for the string "minor changes"

Besides, Apple releases new versions of OS X that are basically service packs at full price all the time

I'm running OS X 10.5.6 at the moment, I view it as Leopard SP6 (with service packs being smaller, but more frequent than on Windows). And yes, I also get security and other patches which don't increase the minor version.

And concerning the price, Apple releases a new version +/- each 18 months for $129, that's a lot less than even Vista Home Basic ($199), the version without Aero and a lot of other features. Yes, OS X has different versions too, but the home user has no need for them (except for the 5-installations family pack for $199).

OMG, I have turned into a Mac fanboy! :-)