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It works fine, you just have to be registered with the Windows 7 in Connect. If you downloaded the beta from MSDN or TechNet you are not registered. If you got the beta from a torrent you are also not registered. Being registered on Connect is not the same as being registered specifically to the Windows 7 public beta project on Connect.

To register, go to the following URL:

http://connect.microsoft.com/InvitationUse.aspx?ProgramID=2819&SiteID=647&InvitationID=MSDN-D7QX-9PRC

You'll be prompted to log onto Connect and after that you'll be registered. Use the same login in the Send Feedback applet and you can report bugs, etc.

but the other stuff like ToDos is appalling, and nothing like the outliner/task oriented ToDo functionality that I would prefer. Indeed everyone I know ignores the ToDo bar in Outlook because it is so inadequate.

The Todo functionality is great at what it does, I use it all the time; however, I use it as a ToDo list, you seem to be asking for a project management tool. MS has other software for that. Why would they give it to you free as part of Outlook?

Don't be messin' with Microsoft's Freedom to Innovate, dude!

http://www.microsoft.com/protocols/

Actually, it does fall under that category.

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

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

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

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

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

Hi All,

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

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

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

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

With regards to Prudential in the UK:

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

Andy

And this ties in neatly with the Answer from VMware:

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

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

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

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

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

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

XP wasn't terrible (when free of malware)

As I remember it, that blissful idyll lasted about six hours, until the 0day universal PnP vulnerability surfaced.

Although, actually, wouldn't this now make changing your system time an offence under the DCMA?

In other news, Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington, were raided today for distributing a circumvention device as defined under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, 17 USC 1201a.

The circumvention device in question was called How to set the clock, available from a nefarious den of black market hacker activity known in the hacker underground as the "Windows Help and How-to" website.

"These criminal hackers cost our economy an estimated $4,523 quintillion dollars in the last year by promoting piracy, terrorism, drug abuse, and the growing new epidemic of late middle-age virginity," said Jack Me Hoff, of the Business Software Alliance. "If we let these criminal enterprises get away with this, our entire economy will be ruined."

The citrix approach sounds silly to me, at least for most corporate scenarios. It seems wasteful to not use all that power, and such a centralized approach is unlikely to ever scale well for modern applications (I've seen firefox use hundreds of MB).

I'd think a good approach would be using something like Windows SteadyState[1] (which can freeze a system to a particular state - so all user changes are temporary), and having the user's data stored on network drives (where they can be backed up). Swap and temporary storage (e.g. photoshop scratch disks) can be on local drives.

If there's any problems, just reboot and everything is reverted to a clean state (all work saved on network drives is retained- if you are paranoid and have resources to sapre you might even allow some versioning on network drives).

This way most of a local PC's power can be used; while important data (and user profiles/preferences) can be saved, backed up and restored; and control over the system image can be maintained.

It'll be good to be able to start the boot over the network first - which then can either boot a Windows SteadyState image locally, or boot something that will update the local image (and then reboot again).

[1] http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=D077A52D-93E9-4B02-BD95-9D770CCDB431&displaylang=en

There are other similar products - many commonly used in cybercafes.

You could always use ClickOnce. No hassle, user just "clicks once" and be done with it.

I personally hate web apps. I hate to use them and I especially hate to write them. When customer wants web app it means he wants an app which works just like rich Windows app but on the allmight internet. This means lines and lines of hard-to-debug JavaScript, AJAX, heck load of CSS and headaches. And in 99,5 percent of cases they use single OS and single browser (Windows XP/IE 7) inside their own secured LAN thus demeaning the whole idea of web app. What I've understood is that the central idea of web application is that it is platform agnostic and mobile.

So in 99,9 percent of cases simple Windows Forms or WPF .NET application would do the trick with much less lines of code.

I guess that's ok, if all you need to filter are objects. If I have tabular data emailed to me as text files, and I need to extract a column, what do I do?

In .NET (and therefore PSh), strings are objects, too, so you can split and parse them to your heart's content. Then, of course, there are regex.

Microsoft Project Server can only be acessed trough IE http://office.microsoft.com/pt-br/projectserver/default.aspx

NTFS has had Symbolic Links built into the file system for years.... it's just unsupported in the default installation of windows.

You can download junction.exe (the NTFS version of ln) from Microsoft's Technet.

Wasn't microsoft not allowed to include those things from the antitrust lawsuits? A free PDF add in for office is there but not included. I wish it worked for any program not just office, but that is what cute PDF and a slew of other programs are for. If PDF is an open standard and companies are free to implement it if they want too, why is all but microsoft allowed? The trend is that Apple and Linux are gaining ground, so if microsoft drops to 50% or less will the antitrust rules go away?

Here is the long ass link for the office add in for those interested:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=4D951911-3E7E-4AE6-B059-A2E79ED87041&displaylang=en

What prevents a trojan from turning on...

I recall that when the ATA security features were added to the ATA standard, it included the Security Freeze command. The command disables access to the security features -- passwords and data security erasure -- until the drive is power cycled. The intent is to disable attacks on ATA security from within a compromized OS.

Normal operations allow ATA security commands -- setting passwords, conducting erasure -- to be executed by the operator from within the BIOS console prior to boot. And such BIOS features are commonly available on laptops.

It is my understanding that modern OSes which are follow the ATA standards will issue the security freeze during hardware probe. At least, my *BSD systems do, and I've seen indications that even Windows does.

Distributing Linux is criminal! It's a threat to our native industries and to the people who work in them!!! It must be true, since I read it here - look 'Linux servers crash once a week'...

http://www.microsoft.com/canada/getthefacts/default.mspx

It's pretty easy to see what is going on. Basic is kinda stupid, it who would want that?

The pricing (Retail) difference between Business and Ultimate is only $20.00, who would not just get Ultimate?

I built a new computer recently and just got the OEM (no tech support) version of Premium for $100.00 so the prices on the Microsoft site can be adjusted from the retail.

The Basic and Business versions are a little on the silly side.

It should be Home and Ultimate(AKA XP Pro) like before. Good Enough.

There is only one Linux kernel. The different distributions, to oversimplify, are like software bundles. Different window managers etc. And for telling the difference, there's always distrowatch. It even highlights beta components in red.

There is only one Windows kernel. The different editions, to oversimplify, are like software bundles. Home Premium and Ultimate include Media Centre, but Home Basic and Business don't, etc. And for telling the difference, there's always Microsoft's website.

Microsoft might have something to say about that.

Server 2003 was the NT5.1 (xp) kernel, Server 2008 the NT6 (Vista) kernel. The client for Server 2003 was Windows xp Professional.

Apparently, Server 2008 makes a very stable client OS when all the server gumph has been disabled and Aero installed.

Exactly. The only place I've heard about the "Disasterous Confusion" of vista's multiple versions is on Slashdot.

Who's up for guessing what the difference is between Windows 7 'Starter' and Windows 7 'Home Basic?

There is another method... it's far more effective than guessing. You could... look at the feature list.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/compare-editions/default.aspx

OMG The confusion!!!

Let me break it down for ya'all

Do you need remote desktop?
Ultimate or Business.

Do you need Faxes?
Ultimate or Business.

Do you need Media Center?
Home Premium or Ultimate.

Do you want to burn DVDs and HD-DVDs out of the box?
Home Premium or Ultimate.

Do you live in a third world country and have flies on your face?
Home Basic

Was that REALLY so difficult?

Addressing the clearly biased and stupid summary, there's no need to guess; a Google search for "Windows Vista Editions" has a link to Windows Vista: Compare editions as the first result.

This outlines what the major differences are between the four main editions. I can only assume the poster isn't familiar with search engines. Yes, there are others, but they aren't for everyday consumers, so you don't need to know about them except for certain specific circumstances. If you meet those, look up the additional details on Technet.

That being said, I do agree that the number of editions is excessive, and should be reduced, not because I find it confusing, but because it's just unnecessary. I'd suggest reducing down from six to four, with only two of those as "mainstream" versions.

Windows 7 Home Premium (equiv. to XP Home, remove the Premium suffix) and Windows 7 Ultimate (equiv. to XP Professional). They can have their Business/Enterprise edition for corporate customers, and finally, a Starter edition for emerging markets. As such, the everyday consumer only chooses between two, business has their own one tailored for business networks, and the asian/middle-east markets have their thoroughly crippled edition that no one will buy.

For the record, XP is even worse than Vista, here's a list of XP editions:
Windows XP Embedded (not the same as below)
Windows XP for Embedded Systems
Windows XP Home Edition
Windows XP for Legacy PCs
Windows XP Media Center Edition
Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004
Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005
Windows XP Professional Edition
Windows XP Professional x64 Edition
Windows XP Tablet PC Edition
Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005
Windows XP Starter Edition

It's possible I've missed some, and of course, this doesn't include region specific releases, such as the European mandated "N" editions.

This trend of having an enormous number of different editions didn't start with Vista, it started with XP, and isn't anything new as some would like to think.

Vista has this, with the Windows Anytime Upgrade. Windows 7 most likely will, also.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/get/anytime-upgrade-overview.aspx

You can upgrade from any of the lower versions to Ultimate, and also from Home Basic to Home Premium.

The 32GB limit in Windows when formatting FAT drives is by design. I guess they tried to get people to migrate towards NTFS.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/howto/articles/UnderstandingHDFormats.aspx#storageneedsforhdcapture

Short answer: hell no.

We will always find something more to store. See above for a concrete example, recording raw HD video. For a more abstract version, see: everyone's DNA, biometrics, IRS/similar, etc. etc. forever.

Use a Windows Home Server?

When you put together a complete test suite, it's possible that both browsers score around the same -- just saying..

I understand what you're trying to get at, but it's simply not correct. Take DOM2 support for example. IE8 is missing the ENTIRE Events section of the standard. In fact, most of DOM2 is MIA. That's a rather massive hole right there. And if you go through the list of items I posted above, you can find how many of the bugs they documented went unfixed in IE8.

You know the most frustrating part about the lack of DOM2 Events support? Microsoft closed the bug on DOM 2 Events with "Closed (By Design)". BY DESIGN?!?! What the--?

Worse yet, Microsoft ventured into HTML5 territory with IE8 but decided to pay it little more than lip service. The comments I've seen on the WHATWG list have them pushing proprietary extensions that would already be covered if they'd just implement the entire part of that spec! (e.g. They implement local storage, then attempt to include a transaction model for it. All while ignoring the part of the storage spec for local, transactional database storage.) Somehow Microsoft is attempting to implement various events features from HTML5 without supporting DOM2 Events. How in the world can they suggest that such broken implementations would even be close to the spec if their event system is wrong? (Closed "by design" remember!)

Interestingly, Microsoft has also seen fit to ignore the most implemented part of the HTML5 standard: The CANVAS tag. Internet Explorer thus remains the only web browser with no Canvas support.

These features that Microsoft is ignoring are the very foundations of modern web browsers. Without them, web developers have to work on a variety of workarounds to make their sites work with IE. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish is the name of the game.

That's a little strong, to say the least. It works, it's fast, it's feature rich, and it's secure.

I posted a link above so that you could understand how BROKEN IE is. Why don't you take a tour and see how broken it is? Or more to the point, take a look at my sig. The game in it is a real-world application that is written to the standards. With no special work, the game worked in Opera, FireFox, Chrome, and Safari. If I had another standards compliant browser to throw at it, I'm sure it would work as well.

Yet nearly every feature it needs to operate is not supported by any version of Internet Explorer. No canvas, no DOM 2 Events, no Opacity (also "Closed (By Design)"), NUTH-ING. It simply will not operate in IE8.

I have the technology to patch IE8 at runtime. A Java Applet with a LiveConnect interface, a wrapper around Microsoft's event system, conditional use of opacity, it could all be made to work. But the God's honest truth is that I simply don't want to. Microsoft's piss-poor attitude toward developers has finally caught up with them. From the day I saw their blasted "closed by design" bug, I decided that it's simply not worth investing the effort in Microsoft any longer. Microsoft refuses to invest in their customers, so they can burn for all I care.

Apologies if I'm getting a bit melodramatic, but your comment about IE8 being "feature rich" is a bit of a trigger for me. As a web developer I have patiently worked around IE for the better part of a decade. I figured that support for the (OVER!) decade-old W3C standards would eventually arrive in future IE versions. But first Microsoft ignored pleas in their IE7 development. That was somewhat ok. They were just getting started again. IE8 was supposed to be the big standards fix'em up. Microsoft promised the development community upside down and backwards that IE8 would be the most standards compliant browser yet. In fact, they advertise I

Both IE6 and IE7 leak memory even after you close the page. Most well known Ajax apps don't leak memory because they have spent plenty of man-hours working through the problems and designing the libraries around the issues by using leak detection tools. I personally have spent weeks and weeks resolving leaks.

Stability? You what?! It bloody crashes all the time. Their own web outlook client completely crashes IE regularly (and no, I am not talking about ActiveX plugins crashing IE - I have been forces to implement many hacks to work around plenty of horrid crashes in IE.)

On second thought perhaps you have just trolled me - although I try not to underestimate an IE user.

couldn't you use IETab with Firebug to actually figure out how to fix all of the stupid rendering problems caused by IE (read: screw with the CSS via Firebug until it works)?

If you want to screw with the CSS, do it for free at an element level using the Microsoft devtoolbar (google for it). Also AFAIK there are other non-free tools that allow you to fiddle at the CSS rule level. Your suggestion doesn't work because Firebug is integrated with the Gecko engine. IETab just uses the firefox tab purely as a rendering area using ActiveX so Firebug knows nothing about the IE CSS.

Alternatively you can dynamically add css changes for IE by pasting into the address bar:

javascript:(function() { var src = 'http://localhost:8000/Files/ggg.css'; var link = document.createElement('<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="all" href="'+src+'" />'); link.src = src; document.documentElement.firstChild.appendChild(link);})()

Similarly you can insert javascript into any page cross-browser using:

javascript:(function() { var src = 'http://localhost:8000/Files/my.js'; var script = document.createElement('script'); script.src = src; document.documentElement.firstChild.appendChild(script);})()

or you can dynamically change the css using the IE stylesheet rules DOM manually too.

There's no standard format and library for executable files.

There's no single standard, but there are several competing standards, and the one that Windows uses - PE - is actually well-documented. As for OS libraries - the docs are out there on http://msdn.microsoft.com/ - how do you think Wine guys do what they do?

...no one bought it.

It seems that only 1,787 copies of Windows XP N were sold so far in 2006. http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/legal/european/04-24-06windowsxpnsalesfs.mspx

Windows Autoplay was a major aggravating factor in that case.

Which is why I turn off auto-play on every one of my Windows computers, and advise everyone within earshot to do the same.

Tweak UI is a Microsoft "Power Toy" that allows you to turn off auto-play on all devices easily. There might be a way to do it without the power toy, but I don't know it off-hand.

Unfortunately, it's only available for Windows XP. I've read that someone has developed a similar utility with nearly equivalent functionality for Vista, but I don't use Vista.

Actually they're quite good at making HCI hardware (sometimes).

I love the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000. Prior to that, I loved the Microsoft Natural Keyboard Pro. Sometimes they're terrible at it though. Other bizarre screw ups include mice that have notchless wheels. I cannot figure out how that's in any way a good thing, yet half of their mice lack them.

Funny thing is I'm using a Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 to type this and a Microsoft Wireless Mobile Mouse 3000 on a laptop running Ubuntu 8.04.

In Slashdot's defense, note that the dept. of this story is "too-insane-to-ignore-forever". I can only imagine that since Songsmith's release several weeks ago Slashdot's submission queue has been overflowing with stories like this one. They probably could have gone with a little less blatant title, though.

Personally I think Songsmith is hilarious and should have been released as an XNA Community Game on XBox Live, like Kodu, or maybe even as a part of Kodu.

There's a public demo up at Microsoft Research http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/songsmith/

If you were joking, lol. If you weren't, I wish you were right but they actually mean it.

This is my favorite to show the "fair" comparision

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver/compare/windows-server-comparison-screencasts-and-webcasts.mspx

They have a screenshot of usermangament and policies compared to windows server 2008 versus SElinux

http://download.microsoft.com/download/E/D/D/EDD40B84-7889-4B7F-9EEE-D9D690751DB2/selinux_features.wmv

I think they found the most obscure ways to use SElinux to put up on the screencast.

This is my favorite to show the "fair" comparision

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver/compare/windows-server-comparison-screencasts-and-webcasts.mspx

They have a screenshot of usermangament and policies compared to windows server 2008 versus SElinux

http://download.microsoft.com/download/E/D/D/EDD40B84-7889-4B7F-9EEE-D9D690751DB2/selinux_features.wmv

I think they found the most obscure ways to use SElinux to put up on the screencast.

Feed this into this into this.

The E&D Division is composed of five main businesses: the Interactive Entertainment Business, home to the Xbox and Games for Windows gaming platforms; the Mobile Communications Business, which develops and markets Windows Mobile software, services and applications; the Music Business, developers of Zune portable entertainment devices and services; the Connected TV Business, which includes Microsoft Mediaroom and Windows Media Center; and the Specialized Devices and Applications Business, which includes the Hardware Group, Microsoft Surface, Office for Mac, Microsoft Auto and Windows Embedded software.

So $16 million split among 4 divisions. I don't know what the breakdown is but that's not a whole lot considered the Mac Business Unit is in there, the MS Embedded systems, Media Center, and Windows Mobile.

Oh, certainly. My point was really that this isn't going to work and hasn't been working. The closest it's come to working is the XBox 360 - a game box that's good and popular in its own right - but they cut so many corners in manufacture that this joke is immediately comprehensible, and yet again snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

Microsoft has to learn the scary and difficult art of making things that are actually good and that people actually want because they're good. The closest I've seen to awareness of this is Songsmith - which is hardly company-saving stuff, but will show them that they can in fact sell a fun and cool toy because it's fun and cool.

Fact: Did you know that if you haven't applied the patch then the worm exploits the service itself and no password cracking is required?

Did you know this isn't the first exploit on this service? Don't you think it's reasonable to expect there will be another one?

• "Threats and Countermeasures: Security Settings in Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP"
• "Threats and Countermeasures Guide"

(Those might be the same doc, I'm not sure.) Poke around here for a bit and you'll find a lot of other useful docs and tools.

• "Threats and Countermeasures: Security Settings in Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP"
• "Threats and Countermeasures Guide"

(Those might be the same doc, I'm not sure.) Poke around here for a bit and you'll find a lot of other useful docs and tools.

• "Threats and Countermeasures: Security Settings in Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP"
• "Threats and Countermeasures Guide"

(Those might be the same doc, I'm not sure.) Poke around here for a bit and you'll find a lot of other useful docs and tools.

(MANDATORY) do not use Internet Explorer.
as an example, this?
Yes, December was last year so you can argue it is a year old....
Your suggestions are good and will minimize risks. The UAC nagware needs to be addressed so that people don't get the urge to through a brick through their "Windows" though.
I am also a little nervous about the "don't need realtime anti-virus software" with Windows - I think that Windows security has been improved but it could do with some more improvements - hopefully Vista SP3 (AKA Windows 7) will do this - I haven't looked at it yet but sounds like it is addressing some major issues, if so, thank you Microsoft.
[taunt]I still prefer my Debian systems though[/taunt].

Actually it's a several hundred page document which lays out what makes a machine eligible for the premium SKU. And that document is on the web for any customer who wants to read it :).

"If Microsoft really said Linux was hurting them (and I didn't see where in TFA it says they did, please point me to it if you did)"

"Client faces strong competition from well-established companies with differing approaches to the PC market .. The Linux operating system, which is also derived from Unix and is available without payment under a General Public License, has gained some acceptance as competitive pressures lead PC OEMs to reduce costs and new, lower price PC form factors gain adoption"

This transition happened, for the most part, somewhere around the beginning of the decade.

Unfortunately, it didn't happen for Microsoft until 2006 and it still requires a HOTFIX! Note that even Windows Server 2008 does not include this functionality. Why? Because AVI files over 2GB will break ALL KINDS OF APPLICATIONS (more legacy kind of stuff of course) and it's a compatibility issue.

In other words, the problem is anything but solved, and if you can avoid it, you should really never use an AVI. You wouldn't send a document to the printer in MS Word format... Well, not if you have a brain.

Understanding the situation before you comment? YOU FAIL IT

The MSDN subscription for Visual Studio Team Edition costs $10,000 per seat per year (USD, even though that isn't worth much any more). (1)

Linux hasn't put a plug in MSFT's tax increases at all.

1) http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/bb841434.aspx

OS+Libraries tells me that you didn't really understand what I wrote above. Libraries are loaded in user space, not kernel space.

What the kernel does with the lower 2GB, I don't precisely know, nor do I really care. But it sounds like you don't believe me, so perhaps I should quote Microsoft:

On Windows, by default, the lower 2 GB are reserved for user-mode programs and the upper 2 GB are reserved for kernel-mode programs. You can use this parameter to test the performance of your driver when it is running in a 1 GB kernel.

but Apache has had FastCGI for years, whereas IIS7 (on Vista SP1 IIRC) is quite new. and even then, requires a patch or two

Not to mention that FastCGI is pretty much the same thing on both webservers, or that Apache doesn't require such things as they tend to be built into the server as modules.

Enjoy your stupid bias though.

I think Sony would be much better off giving the PS3 a minor upgrade in a few years and calling it a PS4

Why limit yourself? Just call it PS7. Oh, I guess that's been done.