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Except, of course, that they've got Mac OS X and Linux versions of the Silverlight client. Hmm, according to the System Requirements, the Linux version seems to have vanished, and PowerPC support on OS X is for the not-that-useful Silverlight 1.0...

The next question is, of course, whether Mono can run the ASP.NET side of the Silverlight app or not.

Hey, at least they didn't pick a 3 letter word, with punctuation, that is used in all of the URLs of a major top level domain, and is also not searchable in most forum softwares like others

"Silverlight on the desktop" would be WPF and XAML.

Actually, that was last year.

"Silverlight on the desktop" would be WPF and XAML.

Actually, that was last year.

Except that nearly all EULAs I only have access to after I buy the product and I have no recourse if I refuse it. Try it, buy some software and try to get a refund because you reject the EULA.

Oh really?
http://www.microsoft.com/about/legal/useterms/default.aspx

http://www.apple.com/legal/sla/

You were saying?

http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/resources/install.aspx#sysreq

Platforms for Silverlight 2:
Windows Vista (including Windows Server 2008)
Windows XP SP2
Windows 2000
Windows Server 2003
Mac OS 10.4.8+ (Intel only)

Browsers:
Internet Explorer 6 and 7
FireFox 1.5, 2, and 3
Safari

http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/resources/install.aspx?mode=sysreq&reason=unsupportedplatform

Seems I am safe after all.

(sorry for the ugly linkage...)

Ah. So you think Microsoft should include it in Windows update?

So what exactly do you think this is?

I'm not sure about the ps2 controller with the usb converter but if you plug in your xbox 360 guitar to your computer there is a driver you can download from microsoft to use it. You can try it though. Here is the link for the driver. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0e989b12-576b-42f2-b7c1-2a17ce25188b&displaylang=en

I did think about it. Do software publishers pay tax? Do you have evidence one way or another?

'cause I couldn't find any.

On Microsoft's Investor Relations Page, They have their Yearly Income statements in Excel format: http://www.microsoft.com/msft/download/Yearly%20Income%20Statements.xls

The line you're looking for is "Provision for Income Taxes," and it looks like MS paid $6B in income taxes (that would be worldwide) last year.

Every major ISP in Canada logs all web site access, using software developed for the Totonto Police Service and the RCMP by Microsoft. It is freely available to anyone who wants to use it, and used around the world:

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2005/apr05/04-07CETS.mspx

A friend of mine works at a major ISP, and claims that "tens of thousands" of IP addresses (out of maybe a quarter million) are captured for accessing "child pornography" web sites.

So far, prosecutors and police have limited the use to go after producers of child porn, who are the ones really victimizing children, and not the viewers, but rest assured everyone is monitored across Canada.

It probably is illegal under Canadian law, but nobody is looking at it too closely. I don't know if it will be abused in the future - Canada is ranked as one of the least corrupt nations in the world. But given time, I wouldn't be surprised.

Some idiot called this a "space shooter". If this is a space shooter then so was Doom 2.

Freelancer is a space shooter.

BTW, before I get bombed for this, I included the link for their hosted service, but the subset that is damn close to what you described is Microsoft Exchange Hosted Continuity

http://www.microsoft.com/online/exchange-hosted-services/continuity.mspx

And yes, I know there are likely tons of other non-evil alternatives to MS for this, just mentioning MS has this since the parent said they should...

True, too bad they haven't thought of it yet

http://www.microsoft.com/online/exchange-hosted-services/learn.mspx

Okay, so they just need to promote it more.

You can even get C++ working if you compile it with /clr:safe.

In other words, you're suggesting a model written in verifiably type-safe C++ with a C# view on XNA, and the same C++ with a C++ view on SomeOtherPlatform. Has anyone published a post-mortem of a game that has used an approach like this?

http://www.microsoft.com/express/download/

Download the all-in-one DVD.

Took me about 15 seconds thanks to google.

Perhaps the first thing you should do is write a package manager for Windows so you can be lazier in the future, my solution was to just buy the product since I use it professionally as well.

You forgot "3.5 SP1", which was another major version - it included a major 2.0 VM/runtime update which, among other things, broke existing code. And of course introduction of some new major stuff such as ADO.NET Entity Framework and ASP.NET Dynamic Data, plus a plethora of updates across the existing libs (WPF, ASP.NET etc).

By the way, 3.5 pre-SP1 also updated the 2.0 runtime and libs (to "2.0 SP1" - 3.5 SP1 updates them to "2.0 SP2"), so it also had some minor irks - but much fewer than 3.5 SP1, because of the magnitude of changes in the VM. It did add a few new types to the base libraries, too (such as INotifyPropertyChanging), so if you develop on a machine with 3.5 installed, but want your code to run on plain 2.0, do watch out!

By the way, 4.0 will be a major version for sure (it has been said many times on the blogs and Connect), so it's going to be side-by-side, no doubt about that now.

Here is what Microsoft says for its Desktop OS history.. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/WinHistoryDesktop.mspx

Seriously, does this guy look like he could count to seven?

It definitely uses ActiveX. Check out this MS Knowledgebase article detailing problems with the ActiveX control in Vista.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928233

There's some other registry tweaks that may apply and you can google for them. The above referenced MS article makes it sound as if all those DHCP servers are implemented incorrectly but then when Vista is the only client having trouble.........

I think what most of these responses fail to address is that your question does not match your headline. Since you have no programming experience no place is going to hire you as an entry level programmer. Luck = opportunity + preparedness. So be prepared. The first day you pick up a book and start working your butt off is the day you are a programmer. All of the tools are out there for you. Despite what all of linux zealots will scream about you will have a much better chance of getting a job if you learn something a little more mainstream right like Visual Studio, C# and SQL Server. Right now ASP.NET developers are in huge demand. I know because I am looking for some and I cannot find them here. Go get all of the tools you need to learn for free at: http://www.microsoft.com/express/ 1. Get Visual Studio Expres web developer edition 2. Get SQL Server 2008 Express 3. Take advangtage of all of the other free stuff MS offers developers. Training videos, etc. Get to B&N or Amazon and get some entry level books. Then you can start calling yourself an entry level programmer. Most important think: Work harder than the guy next to you and create your own luck. That is how I now own my own company.

Besides - it's got a cool blue screen

PowerShell FTW

SL Eclipse Tools project
    http://www.eclipse4sl.org/

MS Press release (interestly enough, it plans linux as a supported platform)
    http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/oct08/10-13Silverlight2PR.mspx

Silverlight 2 release is imminent.

even though I have licences for 4 different versions of MS Office I can now only read the documents people send me, by using a free program

This might be more down to your own lack of knowledge than any failing of Microsoft.

They choose to spy user more (possibly asking for money later) instead of fixing their OS.

Even Apple with dedicated and trusting userbase can't dare to offer such thing. Apple has almost hidden from user "Send system information to Apple" in "System Profiler" (in Utilities). What it does is produce a XML file, bzip2 it and send that plain compressed file to Apple without and cryptic stuff. A complete opt-in thing promises nothing! That is the way to go. You can't promise user to "enhance".

If MS suspects third party stuff (devices) for Vista problems, they should travel to the building providing these:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/winlogo/default.mspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHQL_Testing

I have seen 20% CPU using WHQL certified network drivers, programs certified by MS developed by people who doesn't really know how MS Installer arch works etc.

While spending my time writing this, MS already knows a lot about the users computer. They just make it official now. Also they have stolen concept of http://www.pcpitstop.com/ (lame looking but clean). PC Pitstop _does_ suggest really meaningful things in return.

Don't need O#, O is already on the scene - Oslo

and STILL hasn't made Entourage into a first-class Exchange client

Anyone find it funny that the iPhone got ActiveSync/Exchange support before Entourage did? Maybe the MBU wasn't willing to pay the licensing fees?

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technologies/management/powershell/default.mspx At first I thought we finally had a real shell on windows, but we don't. Once you get used to it, it is much nicer than the cmd shell. You can access .NET/COM stuff from a powershell script. e.g. PS C:\Users\jake> $now = [DateTime]::Now
PS C:\Users\jake> [Console]::WriteLine($now)
10/10/2008 10:44:10 PM
PS C:\Users\jake>

I can see you're a little slow, and don't actually know anything about how computers work.

A program gets an "event" as it's called, something like MouseClick or something. These events can be generated by MORE than than just the mouse... it allows automated GUI testing programs, letting a click on a transparent "top" window be filtered down to a lower one, and so on. Basically, Windows CAN'T know that you're "THE ONE HOLDING THE FUCKING MOUSE" from just that.

What UAC does is it takes control away from ALL programs, and only allows local input devices to generate events, so it CAN be sure that it's you that clicked that button.

It's ok... lots of people yell when they don't know what they're talking about ;)

There was no IE in 1995, there wasn't even a Netscape (which still came before Internet Explorer). you had to use Mosaic.

IE came out in 1995 - I bought it with the "plus pack" when I bought Windows 95: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/WinHistoryIE.mspx

Netscape was already called "Netscape" in 1994: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape_Communications_Corporation

Now, some of Spider's code (possibly all of it) was based on the TCP/IP stack in the BSD flavors of Unix.

Oops!
http://www.hu.freebsd.org/hu/arch/2001/Jun/2413.html
And here we have testimony of the vast similarities between the BSD stack and NT's TCP stack. It's a good summary of a long discussion on the mailing list - read the mails leading up to it if you need more facts.

Or why not cut straight to the chase: http://research.microsoft.com/invisible/include/winsock.h.htm

You may notice things like

This file includes parts which are Copyright (c) 1982-1986 Regents * of the University of California. All rights reserved. The * Berkeley Software License Agreement specifies the terms and * conditions for redistribution

in there. Or read a whopping 20ish lines down to see

Basic system type definitions, taken from the BSD file sys/types.h.

I was with you up to "simply".

Because copy-pasting six pieces of text is so hard. :)

Next you're going to tell me it's easier to do the equivalent on Windows - which is usually not a option, ever.

Normally if you're in a situation where the hardware manufacturer doesn't care about a piece of their hardware working on a newer version of the OS you're running, that's pretty much it. Nothing you can do with that hardware.

The equivalent being that one grab C compilers from Microsoft, install the relevant platform SDK, (after validating WGA of course ;)

Opening a cmd.exe window, CD'ing to the path and running a compile (provided the people who made the driver made it that easy - unfortunately I have never seen compiling a windows driver being just that simple).

I haven't even taken into account that some of the lower level nativeapi functions that some drivers use will not have the needed development libraries available for free from Microsoft and if they're using them - it is likely they can't redistribute the source to you without making you sign some NDA first.

Part of the motherboard ACPI problem is that Windows expects, and uses, some functions within ACPI that are not compliant with the ACPI specification ... you know the drill: embrace, extend, obscure, try to screw the opposition

Yet Windows works around more 'crap' ACPI implementations than it 'takes advantage of' non-compliant specifications.

This is really a goofy argument, as there is very little mainboard ACPI implementations that are Windows specific, let alone off spec to be Windows specific.

Instead you find crap Motherboards that still have exceptions for OS/2 RAM usage, non-Windows features like VGA palette crawling, cobbled Sx states, and horrid USB support for 'legacy' OS methods that Windows hasn't used in 10 years. (Yes we know these are not all ACPI specific)

I'm sure it is fun to blame windows for ACPI sucking and Linux's support of ACPI sucking.

The bottom line is, ACPI tends to suck, and Linux doesn't have the development resources to make it work in all circumstances, even though it does a pretty good job. Apple has trouble with their hardware, yet have few model, moved to EFI and still have some of the same inconsistent behavior Linux and Windows users encounter or messed up combinations of hardware.

As for ACPI, MS tried to push the industry on ACPI and move past it back in the 90s, and it was hobbists that were using non-Windows OSes like Linux that screamed and stopped EFI type suggestions from taking hold. MS shoved for legacy free BIOS concepts, and there is some hardware even out there that used a generic proprietary EFI type of legacy free BIOS system, go look at Toshiba laptops from 2002 that required OS level drivers, as there was no traditional BIOS. They also didn't have legacy ISA or older device support and could boot WindowsXP in less than 10secs on some machines, and return from a full hibernate in under 2 secs because of no BIOS time delay.

Just to blow your argument to the side, crap like this link would not exist if Windows did have more control over ACPI compliance as you suggest. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/831691

Specifications and variations in the specification is an area that 'logic' would dictate that the OSS model would be supreme; however, in reality, the complexity and diversity of the implementations favors larger production OSes like Windows where exceptions have to be implemented, and a large vendor like Microsoft can force Motherboard companies to clean up their crappy implementations or work around them, as Windows often does.

One of the biggest bitches users had with Vista and hibernation and Standby were because of Vista adhereing to the specifications and trying to force vendors to do the same, so that S1,S2,S3 etc were consistent. Instead MS had to write a bunch of 'exception' code for motherboards and even up until SP1 was still adding code to deal with crappy motherboard implementations to get the hibernation and standby back in line so that hybrid sleep could work consistently.

Microsoft doesn't have control over the hardware markets like people assume they do, and never really have. If they did, they would not have had to resort to proprietary hardware for the XBox 360, as some of the hardware specifications in the console are things MS shoved for in the PC market years before. Just an example would be unified shaders, and this didn't finally get shoved to PC users until Vista's DX10 required them, even though the benefits of a more agnostic GPU shader system was known years and years ago.

The following white paper was written by Andrew D. Birrell of Microsoft Research and it is free. If you are looking for an introduction to multithreaded programming in general OR especially if you are using C# then it will probably be worth your while.

An Introduction to Programming with C# Threads (PDF)

check out the latest MSDN magazine: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc992993.aspx it focuses on parallelism, and highlights some of the upcoming features in C++ (lambda expressions) and the .NET framework (PLINK/TPL).

Yep.

You do it here: http://connect.microsoft.com/

To be frank, its extremely unlikely that you will encounter a showstopper bug that nobody else will, given their install base. I don't know of any developers who have been in this position. However, if it did happen, call your local MS office and you'll be able to pay to get work done (same way you can pay for patches to out of lifecycle products).

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/301583

F5 key (Update the active window)

# Can I use Express Editions for commercial use? Yes, there are no licensing restrictions for applications built using Visual Studio Express Editions.

http://www.microsoft.com/express/support/faq/

It took me all of 32 seconds to hunt down that FAQ page, so your research must not have been much at all... ;)

I just got the latest issue of MSDN Magazine. There were quite a few articles related to multi-threaded (I haven't opened the plastic yet, so I'm not sure if they are good or not). http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/default.aspx

Also hints that the next version of Visual Studio will be better tailored towards multi-threaded programming.

Layne

Andrew Birrell of DEC and Microsoft has a couple of great papers on threaded programming:

• An Introduction to Programming with Threads
• An Introduction to Programming with C# Threads

Microsoft's Windows Messenger (MSN Messenger, Live Messenger... whatever they call it these days) Group wrote an awesome abstract of how they cycle servers on & off to handle the load while saving power.

Now, for reasons pointed out in other comments, TFA from Infoworld is a mix of good info and horseshit.

Until you've seen in real life a compiler error telling you that you accidentally tried to add a variable holding a distance in meters to one with a distance in feet, you don't know what you're talking about. Although people can find a way to break any language, some programming languages indeed are much more resistant to bugs than others.

In fact, the latest version of F# not only gives a compiler error, but Visual Studio shows the error in real time when units of measure don't match up. And it comes with a full set of SI units.

They (Microsoft & The Press) never claimed Vista would be an entirely new codebase either. It was always going to be the next major release of the Windows NT OS, namely, version 6.0. They did claim that many fundamental system components would be rewritten or undergo significant changes, which they did. The NT kernel had numerous changes implemented, for instance, and so did many other low-level system components, e.g. the GUI subsystem. These aren't down to perspective, these are facts.

I doubt Windows 7 will be vapour, it will be released, the quality of the release remains to be seen, but calling it "vapor" is ridiculous. Further, just because it is based on the Vista codebase doesn't instantly relegate it to the status of garbage. The Vista internals are on the whole very stable, now that the large video/audio hardware makers seem to have smoothed out their driver issues and got to grips with the new driver model. Windows 7 is aimed at giving Vista the sandpaper treatment, smoothing out the rough edges. Whether it's successful I have no idea, but if it is, you'll be left with a pretty decent OS on the whole.

If you're after a legitimately entirely new codebase, I'd suggest you check out Singularity:
http://research.microsoft.com/os/Singularity/

The first research release is publicly available, and interestingly, comes with the full source code for the OS, which you can download and compile yourself here:
http://www.codeplex.com/singularity

This is also what Midori is based on, but there's very little publicly known about that. Regardless, you might want to get your facts straight.

Actually there is a reason. They announced plans to incorporate native ODF support into Microsoft Office starting with a free service pack early next year. Now, granted, they don't need to be on a standards committee to work with a standard, but Microsoft has always been quite involved with standards committees for technologies that they utilize.

With the release of Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) scheduled for the first half of 2009, the list [of supported file formats] will grow to include support for XML Paper Specification (XPS), Portable Document Format (PDF) 1.5, PDF/A and Open Document Format (ODF) v1.1.

http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2008/may08/05-21ExpandedFormatsPR.mspx

This could be a bad thing. This could be Microsoft trying to abscond with the direction of the format for their own favor. Or they could be trying to close a number of known gaps, such as a complete lack of standard spreadsheet functions.

I said it is not as slow on a dual core with 4Gb of RAM,which was kinda the point. It is an OPERATING SYSTEM people! It is supposed to give you access to your hardware and get the hell out of your way! I can put 2K,XP,any Linux,BSD,etc on a 3GHz Celeron with 2Gb of RAM and have it boot and be ready to go so fast I barely get my cigarette lit and my coffee poured before I am ready to work. With Vista anything less than a dual core is nearly always painful.

Note that I said nearly always. That is for the EEE guy. I have found that if you are lucky,and the company has excellent drivers,and you do the Ballmer monkey dance under the full moon you can get an okay experience if you are REALLY lucky. And while it is nice that you managed to get it to go on a EEE,try picking up any Vista machine on sale at Best Buy or Wal Mart and see how long you can stand running it without pulling out your hair. You see,most folks aren't tech nerds like us and buy strictly on price. Thanks to MSFT lying so incredibly hard on the Vista requirements which they put so insanely low it is pathetic,and killing XP which was perfect for low end machines,you have places like Best Buy selling Vista Basic on a Sempron with 512Mb of RAM. You ever have to work on a machine running Vista with those specs? I would rather be kicked in the nuts,it is less painful.

If you want to know what killed Vista,more than the incompatibilities,more than the slow networking,major battery suckage,etc the answer is simple....MSFT. Instead of simply accepting the fact that Vista takes a lot more system resources than any other Operating System in history,which they could have used to marketing effect(a next gen OS for next gen hardware) they lowered and lowered the system requirements,first with that God awful Vista Capable claptrap,and then later by killing XP Home,forcing the OEMs to put Vista on too many machines which simply don't have the power to run it.

From my experience Vista should NEVER be on a Celeron or Sempron based machine PERIOD,and it should NEVER be on a machine with less than 2Gb of RAM. If MSFT would have pushed Vista towards the high end while keeping XP for the low instead of trying to force everyone onto an OS than often simply wouldn't run well on the given hardware we wouldn't be avoiding Vista like the clap now. Instead we get headlines like this and Microsoft has no one but themselves to blame. For their sake Win7 better be a LOT more like XP and a LOT less like Vista or they or going to be giving Apple and Linux a whole bunch of disgruntled ex Microsoft users.

It's simple. It works.

I was being a little generous. Windows 3.1 was mostly 16 bit; windows nt, 2000 xp et.al were mostly 32 bit; windows vista is mostly 64 bit. Microsoft OS's tend to bridge two major processor technologies. Windows 3.1 ran on 286's:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;79749

System requirements for standard mode are:

â Intel 80286 (or higher) processor
â 1 MB or more of memory (640K conventional and 256K extended)
â 6.5 MB of free disk space (9 MB is recommended)
System requirements for enhanced mode are:

â Intel 80386 (or higher) processor
â 2 MB or more of memory (640K conventional and 1024K extended)
â 8 MB of of free disk space (10.5 MB is recommended)

Gah, did you even read the post? look into what PAE is? of course not, that would be actual facts, and that would hurt your MS fanboi status.

Here is is straight from the horse mouth:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/PAEmem.mspx

"Physical Address Extension. PAE is an Intel-provided memory address extension that enables support of up to 64 GB of physical memory for applications running on most 32-bit (IA-32) Intel Pentium Pro and later platforms. Support for PAE is provided under Windows 2000 and 32-bit versions of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. 64-bit versions of Windows do not support PAE."

I'm sorry, that was a mistake..Apple fans are called Fanbois, MS fans are called suckers~

Things that don't, for example, interface directly with the kernel shouldn't have problems running. If they do, that's a huge architectural flaw that MS should fix instead of trying to get all of their developers (who, one could argue, are their most important customers) to update their code.

Microsoft already does a ton of compatibility testing and Vista has compatibility shims that only there to provide backward compatibility with old applications. Some of these shims can even redirect reads and writes to the proper folders if an application has folder paths hard coded in them. See Application Compatibility and UAC.

I have found that a lot of applications that are broken in Vista are broken precisely because they DO insist on accessing the kernel directly even though they shouldn't. DRM and copy protection schemes (such as starforce or GameGuard) used in games are one of the worst offenders but I have seen simular things with some (poorly written) video capture software.