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Looking at both the websites that Gizmondo links, no. Although, F4 does give the same message and a link too :v

And have you tried looking for documentation on Microsoft APIs that are over a year old? (Try the http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb153255(VS.85).aspx link to Microsoft.DirectX.DirectDraw)

Or that the MSDN documentation for IDirect3DDevice9::SetMaterial (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb174437(VS.85).aspx) says that it returns "D3DERR_INVALIDCALL if the pMaterial parameter is invalid." but the tests on Wine show that D3D9 crashes with SetMaterial(NULL), whereas the DirectDraw version (no longer available on MSDN) *does* return D3DERR_INVALIDCALL!

They didn't abandon Managed DirectX. I was just renamed to XNA and productized as a framework for developing games on Windows, XBox 360 and Zune.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/xna/default.aspx

with Andriod, you already *can* develop your own apps.....there was a whole competition sponsored by Google for it. For that matter, you can develop your own apps for Windows Mobile, too....and Blackberry....and Symbian...and even the *gasp* iPhone.....

Android SDK - http://code.google.com/android/download.html
Windows Mobile (Compact Framework) SDK - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/aa497273.aspx
Blackberry SDK - http://na.blackberry.com/eng/developers/
Symbian OS SDK - http://www.symbian.com/developer/techlib/v8.1adocs/doc_source/index.html
iPhone SDK - http://developer.apple.com/iphone/

Let us know when you've developed something cool. Maybe even post a Slashvertisement.

Layne

Just for clarity, I don't want to use a VOIP solution; I need to use my plain old landline. My reason is this: if I'm watching a movie or listening to an MP3 while I'm waiting for a call, I don't want it to ever be apparent to the person who is on the phone with me, and I want to route all the audio I use through a single headset.

I use an LX-3000 headset I won with points from Live Search Club. There is no "Stereo Mix" option so WAV audio is totally separate from microphone input. Your callers will never hear your media.

1. Sign up for a number with FreeDigits or GrandCentral.
2. Configure X-Lite to use either service.
3. Forward your POTS line to your VOIP number.

The process is totally transparent to incoming callers. Only one USB headset required.

I have fiddled around with Windows/Linux integration for central authentication and found that the only alternative TODAY that works acceptable is to use the "Windows Services for Unix" (SFU) add-on for Windows Server. And you can download that from Microsoft.

It is possible to set up Linux as a LDAP server and with Samba as a domain controller for Windows, but currently it's tricky. I haven't done any digging in Samba4 yet, so all my experience is from Samba 3.

To me it seems like there is a lot of work to be done yet. But the most important thing is in reality that the administration of accounts for both environments has to be both easy and central for an IT organization to be adopted.

For a pure *NIX environment there is no big issues setting up an LDAP server using OpenLDAP and then let the *NIX boxes authenticate against that. At least it is a lot easier to get that to work than to get a working environment using NIS+.

I wouldn't claim that SFU is the best solution or without flaws, but at least it contains an acceptable level of functionality.

As for LDAP servers, OpenLDAP is one that are relatively well-known. I have been fiddling around with the 2.4 branch for the issues of symmetrical replication. The disadvantage of OpenLDAP is that it's quirky to work with, but that's another story.

"The presenters demonstrated clever ways to get around many of these protections, but by showing how tricky it was to do so, they actually showed how effective the protections are against applications other than web browsers, jesser

Given that dotNET is supposed to run in the context of 'browsers' it can hardly be much worse. security totally compromised by a badly written plugin .. :)

Web Browser Applications

Wrong. http://www.microsoft.com/express/product/default.aspx

If you have an antivirus, it apparently hasn't caught anything. If you don't have one, you'd be hard pressed to do a scan of your system, which is the other thing I'd recommend... in that case try getting a free antivirus (AVG is a well-known one) and do a scan. I personally dislike the antiviruses that do on-access scans because they slow your computer down, but I'll admit there is a benefit to having them.

At any rate, I'd recommend you get a utility that lets you see what's running on boot (try AutoRuns) and Google the names of the programs that it shows. That should give you a good idea of what your computer is doing without your knowledge... you'll probably be surprised how many things like to check for updates when your computer starts up... Java, QuickTime, Real, etc. Most of them are unnecessary and they make Windows take ages to load...

Requires Microsoft Windows Vista and Microsoft Office.

If you are lazy, maybe.
1 copy of standard linux distribution (free)
1 copy of wine (free)
Power point viewer from microsoft (free)

Microsoft Inc. has a technology initiative to make technology products accessible to illiterate people. They call it "Text-free U.I.. Technology can have miraculous benefits, but it does have limits.

Call me cynical and biased, but this does nothing to improve literacy, it simply extends the customer base of a technology company to people who cannot even read. However Microsoft can't be blamed too much for this, because most large corporations would pounce on an opportunity to expand the consumer base.

My question is this: As a literacy advocate, what merit do you see in offering the personal computer to people who cannot even read, write, and can barely feed themselves?

then Bitlocker will work fine. Otherwise you won't have it.

In fact, on a active directory, you can configure bitlocker for your entire network to automatically encrypt volumes and backup the TPM recovery information to the Active Directory if you so desire - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc766015.aspx

Other than that, TrueCrypt works just as well for standalone machines.

Microsoft actually does have some products with such ridiculous licensing terms, though. Office SharePoint Server, for example, has a special "Internet" version for if your site is on the Internet. You either have to pay per client, or accept restrictions placed on your content that, frankly, are completely asinine. From Microsoft's FAQ:

If I am using SharePoint for an Internet facing website do I still need to purchase Client Access Licenses ("CALs")?

If you are creating an Internet- or Extranet-facing website, it is recommended that you use Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Internet sites. This license does not require the purchase of Client Access Licenses. However, all content, information, and applications on the "Internet Sites" edition must be accessible to non-employees. Websites hosted using an "Internet Sites" edition cannot be accessed by employees creating, sharing, or collaborating on content which is solely for internal use only, such as an intranet portal scenario.

Yeah, but can we lay it down on say, a table?

1. You get the operating system, that has been developed *only* to connect to M$.
2. All your data are stored in virtualized OSes and virtualized applications of M$.
3. Your box contains only access keys to your data on those boxes, that's why it's so portable.
4. It's not designed to make you secure, it's designed to make Microsoft's software "secure" in a way of enforcing payments for usage of M$ software.
5. Software runs on foreign M$ servers, applications accept remote connections and control, that's made by something like Citrix.
6. There will be no need and no way to download your copy of Office, nor a copy of any other application Microsoft produced.
7. You just pay per month for online access to it, all your data will be stored online on foreign PCs of M$ and your PC will be nothing, but a lighweight client.
8. What I described is what I strongly believe and what the facts I found contain.

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/sep07/09-11VirtualizedDesktopPR.mspx
You can access the virtualized version of Office already today, just download Citrix-client, or wait until M$ makes an OS from it.

No doubt that approach remains dominant, but it's too simplistic. The article seems to conclude that Microsoft is after hearts and minds, developers, specifically, but anyone else within earshot would help just the same. That would make the latest developments more akin to Walmart's "our valued associates" commercials, oil companies touting "green" initiatives, US car makers promising economic turnarounds with concept cars, or, if you're so inclined, presidential political political strategies that ranged from compassionate conservatism, to "restoring honor", to the latest "I'm Different (honest!)" by McCain.

Right. That's step 1, "Embrace". I'm interested to see what "Extend" is in this context. Possibly a new open source license? They've made steps down that road, but not seriously.

Possibly a new open source license?

You mean other than these?

There is a free update for Office 2000 and Office 2003 that allows you to read Office 2007 formats: Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack.

Shared memory is very fast, easy to use, and very safe (as long as the programmer isn't an idiot).

The problem is that the programmers on either side of the interface can't be idiots. Or hostile. You probably don't want to talk to a secure database via shared memory.

Shared memory requires that both sides cooperate on locking. If one side doesn't obey the locking rules, the data can change while the other side is reading it. (There have been schemes where only one side at a time had write permission; I think Mach supported that. The idea was to speed up bulk interprocess communication by using the MMU, thereby eliminating a copy. In practice, the additional fooling around to eliminate the copy wasn't a big win over the copy.)

If there's linking and allocation within the shared memory, one side can screw up the other side. This happens. Search for "shared memory" and "bug".

and this is even part of most if not all Human Interface Guidelines - do a Usability Study.

Apple's human interface guidelines section for this.

Microsoft's guidelines - Step 18, which doesn't really give detail.

    I prefer Apple's, which give you a lot better idea on how to do the study and what to look for, which is much more useful for smaller software developers that can't afford a dedicated usability team specializing in this area and need to do something like the mom test (you have your mom try to use it and observe her actions). In my case I have to do the dad test, because my mom is a bit of a power user and my dad an ignorant nit when it comes to computers. A video camera or two (a second camera to study the user's eye movements is useful) is a necessity, so it's not a zero cost operation, but it can certainly be done on the cheap (heck, I've used a video camera on a phone for a second camera). Most people can ignore a camera better than a person looking over their shoulder (and at their face).

As for design philosophy, that is a different issue - most FOSS programmers are "feature first" programmers - you get the app up and running and then worry about stuff like the GUI. A "design first" philosophy works with the GUI and app being designed from the ground up before implementation and has the advantage of being able to catch critical design flaws before the code is written. From a FOSS programmer's perspective, I have to admit I often fall more in the former, and I bet it costs me more time in the long run, but due to time constraints and schedule (yes, we set one) I'm often forced to start coding with an incomplete design so I don't hold up other developers, even though that has a cost in the long run. We're hoping to get better at this - in fact, my main OSS project has been redesigned from the ground up twice now to fix architecture problems (the second was probably not catch-able due to an infusion of new tech that required a design change, but the first certainly was).

No, no. Microsoft didn't invent SaaS, so they vehemently deny ever having heard of it.

Instead, they "invented" Software + Service (S+S).

Being a multi-billion-dollar megalomaniac seems positively funderful.

Microsoft has a history of having loose guidelines that revolve around some set of rules. I've never understood that - why would you have rules as guidelines? If you notice, almost all of them tell you specific things to do that don't apply to all cases. The biggest problem I've had with MS apps is consistency, something Apple has been much better at (assigning certain keys to certain actions, for instance, and making them logical - alt-F4 is NOT logical for quit)

For a while, Apple neglected their HIG for so long a wikiwas set up to address them (note that the wiki is down for revamp), but they've since updated the document. There were a number of new controls that went unaddressed for something like 2 years.

I've not had time or necessity to read GNOME or KDE guidelines.

The real problem is many apps need to be developed with HIG in mind from the ground up and in OSS they usually aren't, resulting in a jumbled mess like GIMP (called "feature first" design), then they try to fix it and the power users complain because they're used to the "old" way.

Such documents exist; Apple and Gnome have great HIGs (Human Interface Guidelines). Microsoft provides similar documentation for Vista.

The problem, in my opinion, is caused by the following:
- people think "I don't have time for the HIG, I already know what I need";
- they get started using UI design tools and simply drag'n'drop widgets (Borland's IDEs are so easy to use, they gave birth to an entire generation of coders who "can do GUI"); afterwards they are too lazy to start from scratch because "so much has been done".

I once started a quest for HIGs, and downloaded and read every single one I could find. Since then I became more aware of the existing problems, and learned about their solutions.

In the end it boils down to taking your time to read a text (they are quite short too, I remember that after the Gnome HIG I was upset it ended so fast).

URLs:
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/AppleHIGuidelines/XHIGIntro/chapter_1_section_1.html
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa511258.aspx

A quick read of the web's history, such as the Tim Berners-Lee book Weaving the Web, and you'd *learn* that the first web browser was, in fact, open-source.

Actually, a quick read says "Despite persistent rumors to the contrary, however, Mosaic was never released as open source software during its brief reign as a major browser; there were always constraints on permissible uses without payment." And in any case, Microsoft licenced the code from Spyglass which had licenced it from Mosaic. Presumably, there was payment.

You are just a linux fanboy and don't even know or care to know what MS does apart from OS.
Microsoft velocity - distributed cache
ASP.NET MVC
Microsoft sandcastle - automatic documentation generation
etc...
Sure Vista was a let-down, but things are getting done. Windows 2008 server fixes most of the problems people have with vista. And contrary to popular belief, newer Microsoft OS just don't crash because of software problems. Period. They don't. I have 3 months uptime on my desktop computer. Running windows. When i was using linux i had to restart X all the time.
Other great things MS has done? THE best IDE for software developers. Other IDEs don't come even close to visual studio. (Maybe slickEdit for C/C++)
Office and accompanying products (MS Project, visio,...) Why is everyone copying them?

but do they invest enough money in preventing problems like http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/954960.mspx ?

If they're spending so much on R&D, where are the fucking results?

Here: http://research.microsoft.com/research/projects/default.aspx

This is lunacy.

Taken to its logical conclusion, it means that no one but a coder as any business playing any part in the development of a program.

Because human-computer interaction studies a human and a machine in conjunction, it draws from supporting knowledge on both the machine and the human side. On the machine side, techniques in computer graphics, operating systems, programming languages, and development environments are relevant. On the human side, communication theory, graphic and industrial design disciplines, linguistics, social sciences, cognitive psychology, and human performance are relevant. Engineering and design methods are also relevant. Human-computer interaction

While it would be nice to have someone with the perfect knowledge and perfect balance needed to navigate all these disciplines on your team, in the real world it doesn't happen --- and it is on the human side where FOSS fails.

(1) "Usability" is in the mind of the user. If you learned how to use some other system first and now expect that any other way of doing things isn't "usable" enough, that's just plain old resistance to change. It says more about you than it does about the usability of the software.

The geek can never quite forgive the user for being more intractable than the machine --- or the success of those who have profited from that simple truth.

It sticks in his craw even more when it is the enemy who moves forward first and most successfully. The Microsoft Office Fluent user interface overview

Which means you can disable signing for development purposes. You cannot sign something for your local machine only. So we can either disable the signing feature, or let microsoft decide for us what we trust. The better option is to disable it, which adds exactly 0 to our security... and this option doesn't even seem to be available for bootloaders, which is what this thread is about.

That is exactly the sort of misinformation that I'm talking about.

Read the following from microsoft:

"In general, software that is used in a development environment must comply with the same code signing requirements that apply to any software application on Windows Vista. For software that is widely distributed for internal use within a large enterprises, network managers should use code signing to ensure that the installation and execution of the software is free of unnecessary security warnings and dialog boxes. As with signing software for public release, signing software for deployment on a managed network uses a trusted code-signing service that performs all operations that are related to code-signing. The code-signing service can be configured to add the necessary certificates to the certificates stores on the computers that sign the software and the computers that run the software. The code-signing certificates can be obtained from a trusted third-party commercial certification authority (CA) or an internal CA that an organization manages. Additional information about code signing services in large enterprises is beyond the scope of this documentation. For more information about code signing within an enterprise, see the Introduction to Code Signing Web site and the Code Signing Best Practices whitepaper.

For an overview of a simplified signing process that uses test certificates to sign software for internal use in a driver development environment , see Managing the Software Signing Process. This process does not require the administrative overhead of setting up a code-signing server on a managed network. This simplified approach applies primarily to small development teams that manage their own development environment and their own signing process. This process is the same as the process used to sign drivers during development and test."

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa906288.aspx

also see:

You should use either self-signed test certificates that are generated by the MakeCert tool or test certificates that are issued by an Enterprise certification authority (CA). By using MakeCert test certificates, signing and running development software can be supported on a small scale with only the tools that are provided in the Windows Driver Kit (WDK). More generally, by using Enterprise CA test certificates, the creation and issuance of test signing certificates can be centrally administered on a larger scale within a corporate network. Test certificates are valid only within a specific development environment and do not require the same type of controlled process as production signing of software that is released to the public or that is released for general use within an enterprise.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa906249.aspx

So:

1) You -can- make self signed code that runs on a single machine, by adding your own root certificate.
2) You -can- make self signed code that runs within an enterprise network, signed with an *internally managed* certificate authority. (CA)
3) This code signing system applies to all code: applications, device drivers, and I can reasonably assume, bootloaders.

The only exception to the above, is the "Protected Media Path" (PMP), which has a code signing policy that does NOT accept self-signed code, that requires all software in the 'path' to be approved by the RIAA/MPAA/etc. So you absolutely can write an

Which means you can disable signing for development purposes. You cannot sign something for your local machine only. So we can either disable the signing feature, or let microsoft decide for us what we trust. The better option is to disable it, which adds exactly 0 to our security... and this option doesn't even seem to be available for bootloaders, which is what this thread is about.

That is exactly the sort of misinformation that I'm talking about.

Read the following from microsoft:

"In general, software that is used in a development environment must comply with the same code signing requirements that apply to any software application on Windows Vista. For software that is widely distributed for internal use within a large enterprises, network managers should use code signing to ensure that the installation and execution of the software is free of unnecessary security warnings and dialog boxes. As with signing software for public release, signing software for deployment on a managed network uses a trusted code-signing service that performs all operations that are related to code-signing. The code-signing service can be configured to add the necessary certificates to the certificates stores on the computers that sign the software and the computers that run the software. The code-signing certificates can be obtained from a trusted third-party commercial certification authority (CA) or an internal CA that an organization manages. Additional information about code signing services in large enterprises is beyond the scope of this documentation. For more information about code signing within an enterprise, see the Introduction to Code Signing Web site and the Code Signing Best Practices whitepaper.

For an overview of a simplified signing process that uses test certificates to sign software for internal use in a driver development environment , see Managing the Software Signing Process. This process does not require the administrative overhead of setting up a code-signing server on a managed network. This simplified approach applies primarily to small development teams that manage their own development environment and their own signing process. This process is the same as the process used to sign drivers during development and test."

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa906288.aspx

also see:

You should use either self-signed test certificates that are generated by the MakeCert tool or test certificates that are issued by an Enterprise certification authority (CA). By using MakeCert test certificates, signing and running development software can be supported on a small scale with only the tools that are provided in the Windows Driver Kit (WDK). More generally, by using Enterprise CA test certificates, the creation and issuance of test signing certificates can be centrally administered on a larger scale within a corporate network. Test certificates are valid only within a specific development environment and do not require the same type of controlled process as production signing of software that is released to the public or that is released for general use within an enterprise.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa906249.aspx

So:

1) You -can- make self signed code that runs on a single machine, by adding your own root certificate.
2) You -can- make self signed code that runs within an enterprise network, signed with an *internally managed* certificate authority. (CA)
3) This code signing system applies to all code: applications, device drivers, and I can reasonably assume, bootloaders.

The only exception to the above, is the "Protected Media Path" (PMP), which has a code signing policy that does NOT accept self-signed code, that requires all software in the 'path' to be approved by the RIAA/MPAA/etc. So you absolutely can write an

No, it's not. It shouldn't prevent me from doing anything on my machine.

Correct. It shouldn't prevent you from doing anything on your machine. But it should take steps to ensure that you actually are doing things.

It should prevent other people from doing it behind my back.

And how is the OS supposed to know the difference? How does it know that you installed grub, and that it wasn't installed behind your back? How does it know that the grub installed hasn't been modified or tampered with? How does it know grub isn't a rootkit?

Taking the control of the computer's private key away from the user is not the only solution to this technical problem. Another one would be to have an option in the bios (which requires physical access and a password) to have the TPM sign a bootloader if I want to. I'm not saying this is the optimal solution, I'm sure there are better ones that could have been designed if the goal were really the user's security.

Vista's digital signatures requirements and checks -does- protect you from that sort of tampering. Its a good thing.

The only flaw, as I said in my post, is that vista doesn't give us a well defined method of trusting code that it doesn't trust by default.

I agree 100%. Except in my opinion this flaw is fundamental enough to make the entire feature harmful rather than useful.

The problem with Vista is that the process of 'signing' a copy of grub and getting Vista to trust it is not an established and well documented procedure, if it is even possible.

However, given that you can develop windows device drivers and test driver signing etc, and you can create 'developer signatures' that will apply to just your machine(s), there apparently **IS** a process for doing it.

So rather than disable Vista's driver signing and so forth, we should be signing GRUB so Vista knows that we trust it.

That would be nice, but Vista does not allow it. From some quick googling, this site came up:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa906239.aspx

Where it says:

For development and testing purposes only, kernel-mode code signing enforcement can be temporarily disabled. For more information, see Installing an Unsigned Driver During Development and Test (Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista).

For general information about how to sign a Windows Server 2008 or Windows Vista driver for public release, see Signing Drivers For Public Release (Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista).

Which means you can disable signing for development purposes. You cannot sign something for your local machine only. So we can either disable the signing feature, or let microsoft decide for us what we trust. The better option is to disable it, which adds exactly 0 to our security... and this option doesn't even seem to be available for bootloaders, which is what this thread is about.

You can see Microsoft's code quite easily if you'd like to qualify for it. Head to their site and look for it.

Actually, here's a link:
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/default.mspx

Stupidly bad software patents are there in the U.S. because of our friend IBM, who brought the lawsuit against the government forcing them to allow software to be patented in the 80's.

You forgot to mention that MS hired the guy who essentially built IBM's patent licensing division from scratch -- Marshall Phelps. Presumably to do for MS what he did for IBM.

Well, Microsoft, a company famed around here for 'planned obsolescence', managed to patch both XP and 2000. You'll note that both of those are more than 7 years old.

Wait, you're bitching about Microsoft not supporting X11, something that just doesn't work with their windowing system? Are you seriously for real?

And they support NFS just fucking fine, cretin. Here's a HOWTO. They support NIS, too. Here's another HOWTO.

Fucking freetards.

Wait, you're bitching about Microsoft not supporting X11, something that just doesn't work with their windowing system? Are you seriously for real?

And they support NFS just fucking fine, cretin. Here's a HOWTO. They support NIS, too. Here's another HOWTO.

Fucking freetards.

Who is the current chair at Microsoft?

It's still Bill: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/billg/default.aspx

Well, to be fair, a lot of MSR stuff isn't available. A few researchers there put out a paper that talked about recording a trace from a binary's execution, one of the applications of which was a time-traveling debugger a la the Omnipotent Debugger for Java. I looked, but I couldn't find it online.

MSR is probably the best industry research lab in CS (at least that publishes; Google I'm sure has one that rivals it, but Google rarely publishes) on par with a darn good university, but I wouldn't call them OSS-friendly.

The closest they have come has been...

Shared Source Licensing Programs:
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/Licensing/default.mspx

That program hasn't really changed much since '02 or so though I understand some license changes (progressively towarards allowing derivatives but not anywhere NEAR open in the true sense) have taken place.

Date of article you reference: October 13, 2006

Date of KB935509 update which breaks this: January 7, 2008

1. single address spaces are more common than you think. Not everyone runs Windows (where virtual memory models - in software - were put in place because of legacy CPU architectures)(read up on Large Memory Model windows programming with near and far pointers).
Such things are obsolete today (on 64-bit architectures), but still around in the form of PAE on 32-bit.

2. VMM access is done through hardware, this is not slow.

3. Often the issue with memory safety is not 1 app overwriting anothers, but one app overwriting the same apps - a lot of code runs in "aggregated" processes (eg a web server running code).

4. Remember that a managed memory model (with a GC) does not guarantee memory safety. You can easily get objects that are permanently used and exhaust your memory as a simple example.

5. even if the managed memory model got rid of all the "hardware-costs", it introduces much more serious software costs. In the singularily overview the authors admit they had to make big changes to the GC and admit it is not suitable for all types of application (quote: For example, a
generational garbage collector may introduce seconds-long pauses in program execution, which
would disrupt a media player or operating system. On the other hand, a real-time collector
suitable for the media player might penalize a computational task)

6. Next do a search for 'Java memory safety' and see the links that pop up.

Singularity is interesting, but I doubt they'd really make an OS out of it, especially a web-based one. Possibly some of it will find its way into Windows though.

Look at this: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163603.aspx

Aggressive interprocedural optimization is possible because Singularity processes are closed--they do not permit code loading after the process starts executing. This is a dramatic change, since dynamic code loading is a popular, but problematic, mechanism for loading plug-ins. Giving plug-ins access to a program's internals presents serious security and reliability problems (did you know that 85 percent of blue screens in Windows are caused by third-party plug-ins and device drivers?). Dynamic loading frustrates program analysis in compilers or defect-detection tools, which can't see all code that might execute. To be safe, the analysis must be conservative, which precludes many optimizations and dulls the accuracy of defect detection.

Java has had full safety and sandboxing, dynamic loading and interprocedural optimization for more than a decade, and it wasn't even the first.

When I press 's', slashdot.org is still right there.

If you don't want myspace to show up when you press 't', grow up and stop going to myspace.

You can disable the awesomebar.

In addition to biking excessively (To work, to the store to get milk ... to your friends parties). I have found that standard resistance training 15 to 20 well formed push ups and 25 to 30 sit-ups worked well for me. Generally speaking hitting your target heart rate for 1/2 hour every day will see you lose weight in conjunction with a low fat, no sugar, no high cholesterol, no monounsaturated fat, little red meat, lots of white meat and the key being eating less more frequently. (5 to 6 small meals per day evenly spaced and calculated to meet all vitamin and essential amino acid requirements or RDA's)
I once weighed 230Lbs, I'm 6'1" however due to previous weight training and a natural muscular build i could not use a BMI as an indicator. Instead my personal trainer mentioned I should use how my clothes fit and how well defined my musculature was.
Instead I used how my clothes fit, I used to buy 38" pants and they were tight. Now 36" is loose, it's been that way forever. (4+ Years)
Now it's 36" loose, my weight fluctuates with the seasons (195 in the summer to 210 in the winter) however this is due to my regimens, weight training in the winter and more cardio in the summer. My weight also fluctuates with the time of day, water intake and alcohol consumption (best to be avoided as well since beer is empty calories).
You probably have a naturally fast metabolism that is slowing down due to age, this is perfectly normal, ideally you may use dietary supplements in conjunction with exercise and negative or low calorie snacks that aren't fried or cooked in oil.
Since you are not averted to energy drinks, try making your own to further enhance your workout regimen, I routinely mix nootropics, BCAA's, Glutamene, Lysine, and many others to off set the development of Lactic Acid in my muscles during and after training. Not only does my standing blood pressure remain very very low but it also allows me to burn more when I am working out at a higher rate.
I sit in front of a computer in excess of 8 hours a day, I spend 15 to 20 minutes inverted (I have gravity boots and resistance training equipment) and I must say that the few hundred dollars spent on the equipment I have has been worth it. A pull up bar is by far and away the best investment, they cost around $20, fit in a door frame and make you gain about an inch over your entire upper body with regular use, there's a reason marines and infantry use them.
Some links to get you started: http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/index.html (look at the exercises and schedules including how to not overtrain) http://hundredpushups.com/test.html (A good simple regimen to build your upper body strength) http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/TC010219661033.aspx (a fitness chart for you to begin with)
Apart from studying your diet more carefully, try to develop a flexible schedule that meets your needs. The nice thing about resistance training is no equipment is needed and since you are averted to gym's circuit training is out of the question although it's the best way to loose weight and increase your metabolism. A good place to start is to check out the standard training regimen of the american infantry, it's been over 50 years in development and turns out 1000's of athlete grade men every year, when you need to carry an 80lb bag while running with an assault weapon and 20lb's of protective gear on you you need to be in good shape, not an option to be slow if you are getting shot at.
Things to think about: Push Up Bars, Chin Up bar (optionally with gravity boots), Resistance Bar, Pilates ball (push ups are a lot harder when you elevate your feet). All can be had for less than $500. Vs 6 months of insulin?

What are you going to do if you can't push OSX, and Microsoft is dying? You start pushing Linux. Maybe this won't happen, but it isn't an unreasonable scenerio.

It is a completely unreasonable scenario. And where do get off saying that Microsoft is a dying company? Here's their FY 2008 earnings release. Tell me again how $60B a year is a dying company. Perhaps you were talking out your ass?

Microsoft failed to set standards for their other products or give some guideline to third parties.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa511447.aspx

Windows Vista UI Guidelines relating to the start menu. They'd prefer you didn't do the whole "Vendor Name" scheme, but Adobe or the likes can get away with it because they have a lot of software that would make a mess if you just threw icons for each into the top level. (unfortunately I'm pretty sure that they do that instead of grouping them together the way MS recommends). Office does the same thing, if I'm not mistaken. It includes links inside the folders to a lot of useless stuff but clutters your start menu by adding 6 or 7 icons to the bottom of your list. So MS should really follow their own guidelines...

Hmmm ... I don't grok that at all. If you're using Unicode, you must be using at least one codepage, right? That's how Unicode is organized. Obviously I don't understand something.

Eh... "code page" is an overloaded term. Yes, "code page" = "character encoding". I prefer to call the old 256-char 8 bit code page system "code pages", vs Unicode and "character encodings". What I should have said was non-Unicode code pages.

The old method (what I was calling "code pages"):
You had 256 characters. The first 128 stay the same; you swapped out the top 127 for different characters. For example in default CP1251 (Latin-1), character D9 is a U with a backward accent mark (in Unicode, it's U+00D9). In CP1251 (Cyrillic), character D9 is the W with a foot (U+0429). There is no way to represent both characters at the same time.

http://www.microsoft.com/OpenType/unicode/unicodecp.htm
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/unicode/1251.gif
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/unicode/1252.gif

Note that you are using the same byte, D9, to represent different characters depending on what global code page you have set. How do you know whether it's a CP1251 D9 or a CP1252 D9? You don't, except by setting a system setting.

In Unicode, you can have both characters at the same time. U+00D9 is always a U with a backward accent mark; U+0429 is always the W with a foot. There's no swapping out of characters for others, like trading one code page for another. How U+0429 is written to disk is determined by the Unicode encoding. UTF8 is one such encoding (the best/most popular IMHO), but there are others (UTF16, UTF7, etc). Think of it like taking a text file and then storing that text file in ZIP or TAR or CAB. So in this sense Unicode has "code pages" - UTF8 for example - but they're not like the old code pages since there is no swapping out of one set of characters for another, only different ways of representing the same character set.

So - what I was originally saying, you may have had accented characters in CP1251 for example, and when the other system sees it, it has no way of knowing if the characters are encoded in CP1252 or CP1251 or CP874 unless you specify, so it defaults to CP1252. Which, if you meant a different code page, means your accented characters will get messed up.

Most systems will recognize UTF8 on the other hand, so once you've converted to UTF8 there's no configuration needed. You don't have to tell receiving systems that D9 is a Cyrillic D9, or a Latin D9, or whatever - in Unicode, U+0429 is U+0429 and that's it.

(Whether or not your font has a way to show U+0429 on the screen is a font problem, not character encoding)

So - the old code page system (CP1252, etc) was a way of swapping out some characters to represent a subset of all available characters plus a way of encoding that subset. Unicode code pages (UTF8, etc) are just different ways of encoding the whole Unicode character set, no swapping out, all characters are available simultaneously.

Oh and Slashdot sucks for not supported Unicode, would've made this explanation easier. :)

It'd be nice to find a good forum where one can ask dumb questions about i18n on various platforms without being flamed for being an idiot. I've found a lot of forums, but most of my (and others') questions seem to go unanswered on all of them. I have a query out on ubuntuforums.org right now about Chinese and Arabic text in uxterm, but it's not getting any answers. Maybe later, though.

Most English-speaking people don't care since they stick to unaccented letters. Speakers of languages represented in the default Latin set (CP1252) such as most of Western Europe don't care since it just w

Hmmm ... I don't grok that at all. If you're using Unicode, you must be using at least one codepage, right? That's how Unicode is organized. Obviously I don't understand something.

Eh... "code page" is an overloaded term. Yes, "code page" = "character encoding". I prefer to call the old 256-char 8 bit code page system "code pages", vs Unicode and "character encodings". What I should have said was non-Unicode code pages.

The old method (what I was calling "code pages"):
You had 256 characters. The first 128 stay the same; you swapped out the top 127 for different characters. For example in default CP1251 (Latin-1), character D9 is a U with a backward accent mark (in Unicode, it's U+00D9). In CP1251 (Cyrillic), character D9 is the W with a foot (U+0429). There is no way to represent both characters at the same time.

http://www.microsoft.com/OpenType/unicode/unicodecp.htm
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/unicode/1251.gif
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/unicode/1252.gif

Note that you are using the same byte, D9, to represent different characters depending on what global code page you have set. How do you know whether it's a CP1251 D9 or a CP1252 D9? You don't, except by setting a system setting.

In Unicode, you can have both characters at the same time. U+00D9 is always a U with a backward accent mark; U+0429 is always the W with a foot. There's no swapping out of characters for others, like trading one code page for another. How U+0429 is written to disk is determined by the Unicode encoding. UTF8 is one such encoding (the best/most popular IMHO), but there are others (UTF16, UTF7, etc). Think of it like taking a text file and then storing that text file in ZIP or TAR or CAB. So in this sense Unicode has "code pages" - UTF8 for example - but they're not like the old code pages since there is no swapping out of one set of characters for another, only different ways of representing the same character set.

So - what I was originally saying, you may have had accented characters in CP1251 for example, and when the other system sees it, it has no way of knowing if the characters are encoded in CP1252 or CP1251 or CP874 unless you specify, so it defaults to CP1252. Which, if you meant a different code page, means your accented characters will get messed up.

Most systems will recognize UTF8 on the other hand, so once you've converted to UTF8 there's no configuration needed. You don't have to tell receiving systems that D9 is a Cyrillic D9, or a Latin D9, or whatever - in Unicode, U+0429 is U+0429 and that's it.

(Whether or not your font has a way to show U+0429 on the screen is a font problem, not character encoding)

So - the old code page system (CP1252, etc) was a way of swapping out some characters to represent a subset of all available characters plus a way of encoding that subset. Unicode code pages (UTF8, etc) are just different ways of encoding the whole Unicode character set, no swapping out, all characters are available simultaneously.

Oh and Slashdot sucks for not supported Unicode, would've made this explanation easier. :)

It'd be nice to find a good forum where one can ask dumb questions about i18n on various platforms without being flamed for being an idiot. I've found a lot of forums, but most of my (and others') questions seem to go unanswered on all of them. I have a query out on ubuntuforums.org right now about Chinese and Arabic text in uxterm, but it's not getting any answers. Maybe later, though.

Most English-speaking people don't care since they stick to unaccented letters. Speakers of languages represented in the default Latin set (CP1252) such as most of Western Europe don't care since it just w

Hmmm ... I don't grok that at all. If you're using Unicode, you must be using at least one codepage, right? That's how Unicode is organized. Obviously I don't understand something.

Eh... "code page" is an overloaded term. Yes, "code page" = "character encoding". I prefer to call the old 256-char 8 bit code page system "code pages", vs Unicode and "character encodings". What I should have said was non-Unicode code pages.

The old method (what I was calling "code pages"):
You had 256 characters. The first 128 stay the same; you swapped out the top 127 for different characters. For example in default CP1251 (Latin-1), character D9 is a U with a backward accent mark (in Unicode, it's U+00D9). In CP1251 (Cyrillic), character D9 is the W with a foot (U+0429). There is no way to represent both characters at the same time.

http://www.microsoft.com/OpenType/unicode/unicodecp.htm
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/unicode/1251.gif
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/unicode/1252.gif

Note that you are using the same byte, D9, to represent different characters depending on what global code page you have set. How do you know whether it's a CP1251 D9 or a CP1252 D9? You don't, except by setting a system setting.

In Unicode, you can have both characters at the same time. U+00D9 is always a U with a backward accent mark; U+0429 is always the W with a foot. There's no swapping out of characters for others, like trading one code page for another. How U+0429 is written to disk is determined by the Unicode encoding. UTF8 is one such encoding (the best/most popular IMHO), but there are others (UTF16, UTF7, etc). Think of it like taking a text file and then storing that text file in ZIP or TAR or CAB. So in this sense Unicode has "code pages" - UTF8 for example - but they're not like the old code pages since there is no swapping out of one set of characters for another, only different ways of representing the same character set.

So - what I was originally saying, you may have had accented characters in CP1251 for example, and when the other system sees it, it has no way of knowing if the characters are encoded in CP1252 or CP1251 or CP874 unless you specify, so it defaults to CP1252. Which, if you meant a different code page, means your accented characters will get messed up.

Most systems will recognize UTF8 on the other hand, so once you've converted to UTF8 there's no configuration needed. You don't have to tell receiving systems that D9 is a Cyrillic D9, or a Latin D9, or whatever - in Unicode, U+0429 is U+0429 and that's it.

(Whether or not your font has a way to show U+0429 on the screen is a font problem, not character encoding)

So - the old code page system (CP1252, etc) was a way of swapping out some characters to represent a subset of all available characters plus a way of encoding that subset. Unicode code pages (UTF8, etc) are just different ways of encoding the whole Unicode character set, no swapping out, all characters are available simultaneously.

Oh and Slashdot sucks for not supported Unicode, would've made this explanation easier. :)

It'd be nice to find a good forum where one can ask dumb questions about i18n on various platforms without being flamed for being an idiot. I've found a lot of forums, but most of my (and others') questions seem to go unanswered on all of them. I have a query out on ubuntuforums.org right now about Chinese and Arabic text in uxterm, but it's not getting any answers. Maybe later, though.

Most English-speaking people don't care since they stick to unaccented letters. Speakers of languages represented in the default Latin set (CP1252) such as most of Western Europe don't care since it just w

One shortcut might be to learn from the hideous mistakes of others:

http://www.math.leidenuniv.nl/~xmath/mirror/www.iarchitect.com/mshame.htm

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA100898951033.aspx

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZegWedG-jk4

http://www.cs.rutgers.edu/LCSR-Computing/some-docs/emacs-chart.html

I've used only three guides to LaTeX to get along with it so far. The first two are free to download, and the third is a book by the father of LaTeX:
1)The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX2?
2)User's Guide for the amsmath Package (Version 2.0)
3)LaTeX: A Document Preparation System