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Don't be dumb. x64 is Windows XP Pro x64 edition.

Gee, random dude on Slashdot, or Microsoft's own website? That's a tough call.

I hear what you're saying we'll get to heavily auto-generated content sooner or later with simply advancements in math, science and technology.

Your post reminds me of midtown madness...

http://www.microsoft.com/games/midtown/default.htm
http://www.microsoft.com/games/midtown/screens/feb99/bacon0033.jpg

Midtown madness had a large play area and you could drive around and do whatever you wanted but it quickly got boring, we will still need developers to tune the experience and the content. I imagine autogenerated content will not be enough, there will always be tuning required and always the need for artists and animators for art direction, and such like.

But just generating content for contents sake today is not what is going to make a game, you have to have interesting things to do and interesting characters that inhabit them. There is one thing that makes game memorable are hitting all the notes, some games get it all right (god of war comes to mind) but most others get a few right (mainly visuals) and everything else barely passable.

I can only imagine how long it took to tune the game mechanics in a game like god of war, the settings, the camera angles, etc. It's not merely content generation, it's the experience that the developers create for the gamers themselves. Why should a gamer care about game x/y/z? what's the hook? whats the draw?

The thing I loved about 8-bit games was that developers had to find the fun and expression of meaning within constraints and not depend on merely flash to sell games.

I hear what you're saying we'll get to heavily auto-generated content sooner or later with simply advancements in math, science and technology.

Your post reminds me of midtown madness...

http://www.microsoft.com/games/midtown/default.htm
http://www.microsoft.com/games/midtown/screens/feb99/bacon0033.jpg

Midtown madness had a large play area and you could drive around and do whatever you wanted but it quickly got boring, we will still need developers to tune the experience and the content. I imagine autogenerated content will not be enough, there will always be tuning required and always the need for artists and animators for art direction, and such like.

But just generating content for contents sake today is not what is going to make a game, you have to have interesting things to do and interesting characters that inhabit them. There is one thing that makes game memorable are hitting all the notes, some games get it all right (god of war comes to mind) but most others get a few right (mainly visuals) and everything else barely passable.

I can only imagine how long it took to tune the game mechanics in a game like god of war, the settings, the camera angles, etc. It's not merely content generation, it's the experience that the developers create for the gamers themselves. Why should a gamer care about game x/y/z? what's the hook? whats the draw?

The thing I loved about 8-bit games was that developers had to find the fun and expression of meaning within constraints and not depend on merely flash to sell games.

Ha ha ha...
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS07-066.mspx/ ,
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,533801,00.asp/ ,
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q231/3/68.asp/ ,
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=E877D9C1-3E7C-4551-A899-C3FCC5175BB6&displaylang=en/ ,
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2002/0909cryptoapi.html/ ,
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS02-039.mspx/ and finally http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/computersecurity/2003-07-16-microsoft-hole_x.htm/
I can go on, but i gotta get back to work...
Let me know if you need more proof.
Or better yet, put your virgin XP SP2 on 'net... the best example is by doing!

Ha ha ha...
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS07-066.mspx/ ,
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,533801,00.asp/ ,
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q231/3/68.asp/ ,
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=E877D9C1-3E7C-4551-A899-C3FCC5175BB6&displaylang=en/ ,
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2002/0909cryptoapi.html/ ,
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS02-039.mspx/ and finally http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/computersecurity/2003-07-16-microsoft-hole_x.htm/
I can go on, but i gotta get back to work...
Let me know if you need more proof.
Or better yet, put your virgin XP SP2 on 'net... the best example is by doing!

Ha ha ha...
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS07-066.mspx/ ,
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,533801,00.asp/ ,
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q231/3/68.asp/ ,
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=E877D9C1-3E7C-4551-A899-C3FCC5175BB6&displaylang=en/ ,
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2002/0909cryptoapi.html/ ,
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS02-039.mspx/ and finally http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/computersecurity/2003-07-16-microsoft-hole_x.htm/
I can go on, but i gotta get back to work...
Let me know if you need more proof.
Or better yet, put your virgin XP SP2 on 'net... the best example is by doing!

Ha ha ha...
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS07-066.mspx/ ,
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,533801,00.asp/ ,
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q231/3/68.asp/ ,
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=E877D9C1-3E7C-4551-A899-C3FCC5175BB6&displaylang=en/ ,
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2002/0909cryptoapi.html/ ,
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS02-039.mspx/ and finally http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/computersecurity/2003-07-16-microsoft-hole_x.htm/
I can go on, but i gotta get back to work...
Let me know if you need more proof.
Or better yet, put your virgin XP SP2 on 'net... the best example is by doing!

The Wiki article is wrong. Windows XP SP2 and Windows 2003 SP1 are both EAL4+ certified:

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/dec05/12-14CommonCriteriaPR.mspx

Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 are both currently undergoing the certification process, which can take a few years. ISA Server 2006 and SQL Server 2005 SP2 Enterprise Edition are both EAL4 certified.

You're falling into a common trap with Vista sales. "Not selling" in terms of Microsoft sales figures doesn't actually mean that it's literally not selling, it means it's not selling as it could have been with Microsoft's installbase.

Microsoft actually shifted 100million copies of Vista in it's first year of release (not sure how many more in the 10months since then). To put that into context, Apple has shifted only around 10million macs in the last year and only slightly less in the year previous, the story is similar for the previous few years before that.

Vista isn't doing so bad that it's causing a massive migration to the Mac in the slightest, in fact, judging by the fact there's been only a minor increase in Mac sales over the last few years despite platforms like the iPhone going from none to over 10million units in the last year providing a whole new market for mobile developers suggests that there isn't even really much of a switch to Mac development at all.

Regarding your comments on developers, that's a complete redefinition of the term as it's commonly used. Developers and programmers are nearly always cited as one and the same in computing. Artists and web designers aren't developers, they're, well, artists and web designers. If you go for a developer job as an artist people are going to look at you rather funny. It's like an IT manager saying they're a developer because they develop reports, an HR person calling themselves a developer because they help develop the underlying staff base by performing recruitment and payroll tasks. Architects are about the only profession you list that falls in the realm of developer.

http://developers.sun.com/

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/default.aspx

http://developer.intel.com/design/index.htm

oh, and even:

http://developer.apple.com/

All are focussed towards programming and software architecture.

1) You didn't read what I wrote in what you first quoted of mine. Please actually read before replying to someone.

La la la la, I'm not listening... *plugs ears and sticks out tongue*

2) I'll paraphrase from the Tao: Though a program be but 3 lines long. Some day, someone will have to maintain it. Similarly, no matter how small a program is, it will contain bugs.

Oh really? Here's a three line program in the simply typed lambda calculus with algebraic data:

data Nat where
Zero : Nat
Succ : Nat -> Nat

two = Succ (Succ Zero)

Where's the bug? Oh, that's too trivial for you? Let's try another:

data Nat where
Zero : Nat
Succ : Nat -> Nat

add : Nat -> Nat -> Nat
add m Zero = m
add (Succ m) n = Succ (add m n)

I can *prove* my add function correct here by induction on the second argument. Similarly, I can *prove* that it's an associative and commutative operation. Where's the bug? Oh, you didn't realize you can prove properties about software? Oh, you mean you were full of shit all along? Oh, I see.

By the way, purity (look it up) in proofs and proof irrelevance (look it up) mean that you don't have to "maintain" a proof in the same way you have to maintain some toy piece of software written by some amateur hacker.

3) Having to go in a check the checker defeats the purpose of the checker.

Just like checking your proof defeats the purpose of you having written it, right? Oh wait, have you ever actually written a proof of anything? Have you ever written a *formal* proof of anything? Personally, I doubt either case is true. I think you're the kind of person that sits there and reads about mathematics in popular science articles and then comes on slashdot and tries to act like you're some sort of expert. Maybe I'm wrong though. Perhaps you would be so gracious as to give us some details on your past conquests in formal proofs, or the formal, axiomatic, correct mathematics you referred to earlier.

4) It isn't my job to check the checker. Nor is it any Mathematicians job to check the checker.

Really? I happen to know several mathematicians whose paychecks are causally related to their work on ensuring that various proof assistants are correct. Here are a few of them:

INRIA TypiCal Team

Isabelle at Cambridge

Programming Principles and Tools at MSR

This is only a very, very small sampling of some of the people involved in working on proof assistants and related technology. There are hundreds, potentially thousands of others that use them in secondary projects such as in industry.

These people range from being traditional classical "working mathematicians", to logicians, to computer scientists.

Your claim about mathematicians here is a bit laughable, in part because you have zero credibility -- you haven't responded to a single claims of mine, probably because you can't. You haven't demonstrated how you are in any way representative of the so-called "Mathematician".

5) Re: well defined "A sufficiently well behaved function": You're taking what I wrote completely out of context (see (1)). Note the ()'s after that in which you quote: rigorous within context

I could go on, but I won't waste my time with someone that clearly hasn't actually read what I wrote.

I don't think you personally are capable of even giving a definition of a "well-behaved function" in ANY context, so it's a moot point. Most competent mathematicians, logicians, or computer scientists would have no problem giving such a definition, if it were sensible to do so, but they also wouldn't make the asinine cla

They sure do like to brag:

http://www.microsoft.com/hpc/en/us/case-studies.aspx

After all, both Windows and OS X allow users to share files across a network. Hmm ... French equivalent of the RIAA versus Microsoft. Who to root for?

Finally, I understand the allure of Mutually Assured Destruction...

After all, both Windows and OS X allow users to share files across a network. Hmm ... French equivalent of the RIAA versus Microsoft. Who to root for?

although I dont know if you can disable the auto-run part of the windows software. I've succeeded on cd's, but the problem still affects floppies (yeah.), HD's, and thumbdrives.

You can use TweakUI from the Microsoft Powertoys for XP to disable autorun on removable storage devices. It also allows you to manually select which drive letters are allowed to use autorun so you can disable it on floppies and fixed disks.

Microsoft is a successful PUBLISHING company. It's not a tragedy, it is the goal of any corporation to get enough market share to be the leader. There had to be some standard OS, they happened to be it at the time when it all started taking off, and they continued to improve their products enough that the public wanted them. In the later years (>1995), when Bill was arguably less in control than the board, is when they began the more deceptive business practices. Bill the man wants now to make a difference in the world with the Gates Foundation. Especially education, and Bill comes from a different mindset than the last generation of rich billionaires like the Carnegies and Rockefellers. Both of them came from industrial backgrounds, and their main goal was to reform education to improve the workforce. Bill wants to improve computer literacy, communications, both in the US and the world. I've been reading some of his more recent commentary about education and it's actually pretty fascinating. Not that I'm a fan of MSFT but I think Bill's a decent guy and he deserves a fair shake now that he's giving a lot of the money back.

Uuum,you may need to correct me since it has been about 2 years since I messed with PowerDVD or WinDVD,but since the name is DVD I'm guessing that it is offloading DVD video,yes? Which again brings me back to my point. I could not care less about offloading standard def DVD video,since my P3 733MHz with 384Mb of RAM and an old Geforce MX4000 plays DVD discs full screen without skipping. What I want is to offload H.264,MP4,and WMV9 which it says my card can do. But after about 6 months of getting "shell out some cash for this and it MIGHT work,maybe" I gave up. Does PowerDVD actually offload the formats I named,or simply standard def DVD?

As for the other poster talking about a low power HTPC,I really REALLY wouldn't. Not unless the only thing you want to watch is standard def DVD on it. I would do this if I was you: Find a driver that will actually offload the formats you wish to watch FIRST. Then test the GPU by actually using something like process monitor to see how much load is actually being offloaded to the GPU. IF you are able to get the card to actually offload using the software THEN you can build a low power HTPC.

But as I said in my post I tried for 6 months and despite the claims all I ever saw offloaded was standard def DVD,which as I said is pointless. But I'm afraid that if you try you'll find out like me that you'll get a LOT of "shell out for this program and it MIGHT work,and oh yeah we don't support it." Believe me it is not fun and so far I haven't seen anyone but Nvidia make these claims. Has anyone found independent benchmarks for anything OTHER than DVD? Hopefully with a list of software used?

What you are missing is THERE IS such a product. http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/sa/benefits/fundamentals.mspx But it was never rolled out for the end consumer. I revived a few old machines with it and it was actually fairly nice.

Yeah that's right...and now all those Mac users are feeling the pain while switching like crazy to Windows since Microsoft followed through and stopped...supporting...oh wait

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315231

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

    DefaultUserName
    DefaultPassword

You could have just used Windows SteadyState Hint: Can revert harddisks state at each reboot while still allowing windows update to run and make persistent changes, can leverage much of the same policies (restrictions) Windows allows in a domain, but without the central AD. Among other things.

• Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0, Terminal Server Edition
• Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 3.51
• Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 4.0 Developer Edition
• Microsoft Windows NT Server 3.51
• Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 Standard Edition
• Microsoft LAN Manager 4.2 Standard Edition
• Microsoft Windows for Workgroups 3.2
• Microsoft Windows 95

Something is stopping people from using an old copy of Word '97, and what's stopping them is what I stated in the g'g'grandparent post: they won't be able to read files that other people send them, written by newer versions of word.

Sorry, brainfart on my part, somehow I thought you were talking about reading files created by old versions of Word, rather than new ones.

Anyway, that doesn't stop them from using an old copy of Word '97 to create their own documents: it just stops them from reading other people's files in it. You'd have the same problem if you used Emacs or LaTeX or (to some extent) even OpenOffic.org.

But note that the converters won't work with word '97, which was the case that the g'grandparent poster proposed.

Surely they work with Word Viewer 2003 though. (Not sure why MS hasn't simply released a Word Viewer 2007. Can't make it too easy on people, I guess.)

Office 2007 (yeah yeah I know, I work with what they use), another 6 easily.

Bullshit. Straight from the horse's mouth the worst is Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 with "3 gigabyte (GB); a portion of this disk space will be freed after installation if the original download package is removed from the hard drive." An Office Pro installation is 2GB and Home is 1.5GB. I don't know how much you overbloated the other numbers but you need to back up your figures, not me.

At any rate, what's kept me from buying one so far is that it hasn't really cut it in cost and performance, it can fail at one but not both. Anandtech showed pretty nicely how flawed the MLC drives using the Jmicron controller was for random writes, and while the Intel X-25M kicks ass it's also a $600 part which is rather excessive. Size is not really an issue as such, there's plenty room for more flash chips but the price skyrockets. I'm still trying to find some info on whether the new OCZ Value series is using a new controller or not, if it does it'll be a hit.

MS makes sure that compatibility is great in the (b) direction, and lousy in the (a) direction. I guarantee you that word '97 will not be able to read all files written by word 2007.

That doesn't matter, because nothing is stopping you from using your old copy of Word '97 today. It's impossible to use an old version of Google Apps.

Besides, Microsoft did make some backwards-compatibility converters available.

For us that spend a little less time in the Windows world care to enlighten us on what sysprep is?

Sysprep is the Windows System Preparation tool, and one of the things that it can do is remove the SIDs (Security Identifiers) from the Windows Registry - when you next boot, a new, unique, SID is generated for the computer, if the option to do so was selected (and usually you want to).

Generally, you make an image of the hard drive after Sysprep shuts the computer down, and then deploy that image onto new computers.

How to Use Sysprep: An Introduction is a pretty good place to read up on it.

Windows Services for UNIX 3.5:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/interopmigration/bb380242.aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc160802.aspx

Utilities
SFU comes with more than 300 UNIX utilities as part of the Interix subsystem, with additional utilities available either from InteropSystems or by compiling from available source code. These utilities cover all the major UNIX utilities and areasâ"everything from addr to yaccâ"and behave exactly as you and your UNIX users would expect them to behave.
The utilities include familiar text processing tools, including grep, less, awk, sed, pr, and tr, batch processing tools such as at, cron, and batch, as well as job control tools like ps, nice, kill, and so on. They're all there and they work exactly as you would expect. Even the man command is just as ugly (but infinitely useful) as it's always been.
Utilities such as ps and kill work against both Interix and Win32 processes, making SFU particularly appealing for the system administrator. Need to find and kill all instances of a particular process? The script to do it in Interix is straightforward, whether the process is running in the Win32 subsystem or the Interix subsystem.
As a simplistic but useful example, suppose you have an unknown number of copies of a process running on a machine with SFU. Figure 2 shows a script that will kill them. This script would work exactly the same running on a UNIX or Linux system.

Free Grep and Tail tools for Windows:

http://blogs.officezealot.com/marc/archive/2004/01/31/2046.aspx

Real Digital Forensics:

http://www.jonesdykstra.com/index.php/real-digital-forensics-mainmenu-54

Forensic Discovery:

Wietse Venema:

http://www.porcupine.org/forensics/

Forensic Discovery (he posts it for free, but worth buying)
http://www.porcupine.org/forensics/forensic-discovery/

ftp://ftp.porcupine.org/pub/security/index.html

Dan Farmer:

http://www.fish2.com/security/

Windows Services for UNIX 3.5:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/interopmigration/bb380242.aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc160802.aspx

Utilities
SFU comes with more than 300 UNIX utilities as part of the Interix subsystem, with additional utilities available either from InteropSystems or by compiling from available source code. These utilities cover all the major UNIX utilities and areasâ"everything from addr to yaccâ"and behave exactly as you and your UNIX users would expect them to behave.
The utilities include familiar text processing tools, including grep, less, awk, sed, pr, and tr, batch processing tools such as at, cron, and batch, as well as job control tools like ps, nice, kill, and so on. They're all there and they work exactly as you would expect. Even the man command is just as ugly (but infinitely useful) as it's always been.
Utilities such as ps and kill work against both Interix and Win32 processes, making SFU particularly appealing for the system administrator. Need to find and kill all instances of a particular process? The script to do it in Interix is straightforward, whether the process is running in the Win32 subsystem or the Interix subsystem.
As a simplistic but useful example, suppose you have an unknown number of copies of a process running on a machine with SFU. Figure 2 shows a script that will kill them. This script would work exactly the same running on a UNIX or Linux system.

Free Grep and Tail tools for Windows:

http://blogs.officezealot.com/marc/archive/2004/01/31/2046.aspx

Real Digital Forensics:

http://www.jonesdykstra.com/index.php/real-digital-forensics-mainmenu-54

Forensic Discovery:

Wietse Venema:

http://www.porcupine.org/forensics/

Forensic Discovery (he posts it for free, but worth buying)
http://www.porcupine.org/forensics/forensic-discovery/

ftp://ftp.porcupine.org/pub/security/index.html

Dan Farmer:

http://www.fish2.com/security/

According to the spec, the XOs have a 433 MHz CPU and 256 MB of RAM.

Windows XP requires, a 233 MHz CPU and 64 MB of RAM.

Minimums are one thing, but from personal experience I've seen that XP isn't worth a damn without at least a 700mhz cpu and 512 mb of RAM. Now I don't know for sure, but isn't the version of XP the MS puts on these OLPC machines somewhat stripped down to run faster on fewer resources? If not, a version of Windows 2000 would have been more appropriate.

And how long will OLPC be relevant anyway? Now you've got netbooks with 1.6 gig cpu's and 1 gig of RAM running full versions of XP, and their price point is starting to close in on the under $299 mark. If that price keeps going down, how much will an underpowered OLPC (which we all knows costs more than the $100 design target) really matter when you'll eventually be able to get full power netbooks for a little over a couple of hundred bucks pretty soon?

I read this article a while back, and decided to opt-out of the AV hassles.

Between backups, automated installs, and some really simple things you can do to minimize infections, I find AV to be more 'in-the-way', than not.

I do things like disabling MS macros, java, popups, vbscript, etc ... I use adblock/noscript. I've had to rebuild a few times, sure, but I don't consider a rebuild to be a huge timesink. I have all my game/app settings on a CD, so its not real hard.

Disclaimer: I only use Windows to play games on, primarily. My situation may not fit corporate standards or grandma/grandpa usage. I'm pretty sure corps use ADS or some such, and I have no intention of putting a boot server in my Mother's house, so there is that drawback which may make it worthwhile for some to use AV.

MS had an interesting suggestion regarding which AV vendor to choose.

All in all, AV seems to take more time, and cause more problems (even simple ones) than its worth, never mind the expense. YMMV.

I read this article a while back, and decided to opt-out of the AV hassles.

Between backups, automated installs, and some really simple things you can do to minimize infections, I find AV to be more 'in-the-way', than not.

I do things like disabling MS macros, java, popups, vbscript, etc ... I use adblock/noscript. I've had to rebuild a few times, sure, but I don't consider a rebuild to be a huge timesink. I have all my game/app settings on a CD, so its not real hard.

Disclaimer: I only use Windows to play games on, primarily. My situation may not fit corporate standards or grandma/grandpa usage. I'm pretty sure corps use ADS or some such, and I have no intention of putting a boot server in my Mother's house, so there is that drawback which may make it worthwhile for some to use AV.

MS had an interesting suggestion regarding which AV vendor to choose.

All in all, AV seems to take more time, and cause more problems (even simple ones) than its worth, never mind the expense. YMMV.

Taking an initial and progressive snapshots are a good idea to start with and a VM tool will let you do this if you are just monitoring what software is doing. Go with Virtual PC 2007, it is free and will let you take the VHD images and later remount them as secondary drives on a VM to compare them.

However depending on your end goal, it might be better to 'also' just data mine the changes to the system. Use http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx (Process Explorer) as it tracks all the changes, including read/writes to everything on the OS from the File System to the registry specifically.

Process Explorer has been around for a while and is kept updated. It is a valuable tool for tracking what install software is doing on your system, what it is changing and touch and although it can produce huge logs of data, doing a bit of dataming on this data can produce a lot of information about system changes. (It is something crackers even use to see what keys or files are changed to store random information to unlock software, etc.)

On Windows, this is the key tool for monitoring the system all the way down.

So Virtual PC 2007 for VHD images and Process Explorer (always running) storing the data of all the changes.

This should give you everything you need.

Easy... is relative. Let's try to remove Unix (Linux) from the equation:

There is a weird convention used with Windows for direct drive access:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/100027

\\.\PhysicalDriveN for physical drives (0, 1, 2...), or \\.\X: for logical drives (C, D, E...). Of course, the mapping between physical and logical isn't particularly clear, given the partition tables on the physical devices.

Under Unix (linux, here) /dev/sdx is physical drive x (a b c...), /dev/sdxn (1 2 3...) is a partition. Its indeed a bit easier (insertion of an "earlier" physical drive doesn't change the designations of other drives).

But, even so, as "Administrator" on Windows, if you know the physical or logical drive, you can use the "COPY" command to duplicate the drive (I think -- never dared).

COPY \\.\E: C:\IMAGE
REM THERE IS NO STANDARD COMPRESSOR UNDER WINDOWS, USE ZIP

"TYPE" may work to stream the data, oh, and you still have to replace \\.\E: with the designator for the partition (whatever it is).

Does this help?

RegDelNull will delete Windows registry keys that contain embedded nulls: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-ca/sysinternals/bb897448.aspx

RegDelNull will delete Windows registry keys that contain embedded nulls: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-ca/sysinternals/bb897448.aspx

According to the spec, the XOs have a 433 MHz CPU and 256 MB of RAM.
Windows XP requires, a 233 MHz CPU and 64 MB of RAM.

I can just picture Microsoft suggesting that the XO is overpowered for the job, and that they should run Vista instead!

WinINSTALL LE

Download

Something like DirectX, supported by a big company so big, commercial Developers can trust relying on. I hope it will be Apple adopted (in KHTML sense) SDL in future which relies on open standards.

There was something like that in pre OS X days named Game Sprockets, http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=31236

Of course bootcamp has good DirectX support (drivers etc) but I also recommend getting the missing (?) parts via http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=2da43d38-db71-4c1b-bc6a-9b6652cd92a3&displaylang=en

It requires "Windows Validation", as you know, it is Microsoft, loves to bug their own customers.

MSKB: Alleviating acute ass-pain associated with use of Windows Recovery Console.

Allow your old PC repairman to enlighten you,grasshopper. The reason PIO mode burns out hardware is because it was never meant to go that slow. PIO mode is a leftover from the days of 1x cd drives and ancient HDDs and was kept for compatibility. For a modern drive to be stuck in PIO mode is the equivalent of driving your car at 60MPH with the emergency brakes on. See how that is a bad thing?

Now if you have a machine that keeps throwing a drive into PIO I would look for SecuROM and Starforce on the machine. They are by far the biggest culprits when it comes to throwing a false PIO mode,thanks to their crappy Trojan CD/DVD drivers. You should also look in the BIOS,as some models have a setting in the BIOS where it can refuse PIO mode for a drive. This will sometimes help but since it is nearly always a DRM,and thus userland problem,it is kinda hit and miss.

But I can tell you that if it keeps throwing the drives into PIO mode that you may need to do a full format/reinstall. This is because I have seen several times where even after the removal of Starforce/SecuROM the Windows drivers are left such a mess that stability is just shot. You can do a repair install and that will usually fix the bug,but if I'm going through all that trouble anyway I'd rather just back up the user profiles(You can use USMT to make the job easier) and nuke the thing so at the end you have a nice clean and minty fresh Windows install.

After you have installed the drivers and apps she uses most run a good backup like Acronis and you'll have an easy to use baseline install in case something goes wrong in the future. If you use XP ISO Builder to integrate the drivers,user profiles,and make an unattended CD it will also cut down on the time required. But if it were my machine I would check it every day,because that PIO bug can cause damage to your drives and short of a reinstall it is hard to kill. Good Luck!

REDMOND, Wash. -- Nov. 10, 2008 -- Microsoft Corp. today announced a search distribution deal with Sun Microsystems Inc. to offer the MSN Toolbar, powered by Microsoft Live Search, to U.S.-based Internet Explorer users when they download the Java(TM) Runtime Environment (JRE(TM)), effective as of today.

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/nov08/11-10LiveJREMPR.mspx?rss_fdn=Press%20Releases

Oddly enough they do have an online store. It took me a little googling to actually find it. I'm just surprised I never heard of it before.

http://www.microsoft.com/products/

I don't think Microsoft will have to cut significant costs to sell Windows for $25 a copy. Especially XP, which they have pretty much already paid for. As it stands, their OS sales are essentially printing money for them. Go to the following page and find the "Client" section to see what I am talking about:

http://www.microsoft.com/msft/reports/ar08/10k_fr_dis.html

From my perspective at my own work (where we tend to write smallish apps from time to time that are usually based on DotNet), I'd guess that if we were writing software that needed to generate documents that'd open in MS Office, the fastest and easiest way to do so at the moment is probably to use the OOXML SDK (yuck).

If there's something similar for ODF, we'd definitely at least look at it, especially if it ended up being easier to work with. With Microsoft at least claiming they'll support ODF with MS Office, it might easily be enough to go with, without even requiring OOXML support at all... especially since ODF is supported by a much wider range of apps than just Microsoft Office. At the very least (if I was writing it), I'd make a special effort to keep things flexible and make it as easy as possible to switch between SDKs and generate ODF documents if and when they were wanted.

No it's not, now Microsoft is an evil corporation.

Notepad has precisely one useful trick, documented here.

I just got thinking. So let's say Microsoft doesn't include the new IE in it's next Operating System -- how do you get it?

"Sorry, you do not have Internet Explorer installed. To download, please visit http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/"

wget http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/

Failing that, there's always

telnet windowsupdate.microsoft.com 80

I just got thinking. So let's say Microsoft doesn't include the new IE in it's next Operating System -- how do you get it?

"Sorry, you do not have Internet Explorer installed. To download, please visit http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/"

wget http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/

Failing that, there's always

telnet windowsupdate.microsoft.com 80

The horror! What travesty could befall Microsoft if they ever did adopt GPL code?! We can only hope they will survive the ordeal.

I just got thinking. So let's say Microsoft doesn't include the new IE in it's next Operating System -- how do you get it? "Sorry, you do not have Internet Explorer installed. To download, please visit http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/"

You don't need a web browser to transfer files from the internet, even via http.

I just got thinking. So let's say Microsoft doesn't include the new IE in it's next Operating System -- how do you get it?

"Sorry, you do not have Internet Explorer installed. To download, please visit http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/"

Sure, most of us probably have a FF install on a USB key somewhere, but what about the people who just bought their computer from the store? This'll drive them insane just like the "Keyboard error. Press any key to continue" error.