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To top it off:
I just had to reinstall a Windows XP x64 machine with all the updates and everything.
Now it warns me about -every- file I try to open from the internet or from my LAN.
See: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/303650
WHY ME?

Meet Your Local Microsoft Evangelists

Hahahaha, C is obsolete? Ever heard of the Linux kernel. I'd like to see you try to write a C++ embedded driver that would be picked up by linus.

Oh, and most of those benefits are unavailable or cut down in kernel mode:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/driver/kernel/KMcode.mspx

... Excel doesn't adhere to IEEE 754. Why Microsoft feels that they know more about numerics than William Kahan I cannot fathom.

I appreciate seeing this cross-reference--thanks for posting it.

However, I do disagree with your conclusion. The regions of non-conformance that Excel cites are issues that are commonly discussed and sometimes actively disputed, and in any case that often require very skilled understanding to navigate. Although I've not been in on any internal discussions at Microsoft about how they organize their product line and who they intend to sell to, I feel confident in saying that Excel's target customer is not typifically a physics student. This is a product for business, and the mathematics of binary-coded decimal (BCD) seems more appropriate to its intended end, even if they don't actually use BCD in practice, probably for efficiency or convenience. But the banking community is not wrong in preferring to do things in variance from IEEE's floating point standard either.

Note that Microsoft has not assigned an incompatible meaning to the situations on which they don't conform (although it might not be unreasonable if they did), it has merely said that it doesn't support some cases. I actually think that even the brief passage you cite offers credible justifications for their decisions. (I'm frankly surprised that the things they do are classified as non-conformances. There are other standards where the decision to simply not implement part of a standard and to signal an error in that case is considered a subset and therefore to be strictly conforming. Maybe there is some subtle way they deviate, or maybe they're just being careful in classifying what they did as non-conforming when it's really a judgment call so they aren't accused of hiding the issue.)

But back to the point of this thread, there are two take-home points:

(1) Excel does not seem to me an appropriate first choice as a tool for doing math or science, and especially as a tool for learning about that. A program in those areas should pick one or more tools that accommodate the notation, computational power, library base, and other factors required to support serious computations.

(2) Students of math and science should be taught not that there is one particular way that numerical computation is done, but rather should be taught why fixed point / BCD is different than floating point / IEEE 754 so that they can make informed decisions about which tools suffice in which circumstances. For that matter, I'd also like them to understand the difference between numeric computation and symbolic computation, and why each of those has its place. School ought not be about dispensing dogma. It ought to be about preparing people to be good decision makers as circumstances change.

I'm fully aware that many developers contribute as a hobby, and are happy to do so for free; rewards are personal satisfaction with a well-crafted product, a level of fame or renown for having built something good and useful, the joy of learning/expanding software development skills, the feeling of collaborating with other smart people... this is well known and I'm not convinced it needs to be covered in depth at this point in history.

What I tend to focus on is "what could be improved?" For example, I've had a customer (a multi-billion dollar financial services company) tell me that they were relying on an open source project written by college students in Europe; when those students graduated, the project was no longer maintained, and the company had to look for something else. So a large company obtained value, none of which flowed back to the students, who arguably could have used the money and the reference to find great jobs or start a company. This is an area I think could be improved.

I do think it's funny to be criticized by software developers on Slashdot that I think we should find more ways to pay software developers.

Cheers,

Sam
mailto:sramji@microsoft.com

Well, why not ask Novell's business partner:

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

With friends like that...

I'm sorry I should have been more descriptive on my position:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/driver/kernel/KMcode.mspx

for writing C++ drivers in kernel mode for windows. As you see, many of those improvements over C are lost in kernel mode. Also, many people that I know consider it bad form to try and use C++ for drivers in the Linux kernel, since it is written in C.

They should upgrade to Excel Advanced Clustering edition. Hmm, that's a joke, but I wouldn't be surprised if ends up a product at some point.

I'd like to point out to the Excel fanbois that Excel doesn't adhere to IEEE 754. Why Microsoft feels that they know more about numerics than William Kahan I cannot fathom.

DT

"um win .1 couldn't run on a 286 it specifically needed a 386 or greater."

The system requirements for Windows 3.1 are at:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q32905

"- IBM compatible 80286 or higher (386 recommended)".

If you want to compare their desktop search software, you must look further back to the MSN Toolbar:

REDMOND, Wash., Dec. 13, 2004 -- Microsoft Corp. today introduced a beta version of its new MSN® Toolbar Suite, with breakthrough desktop search functionality that helps consumers quickly find virtually any type of document, media file or e-mail message on their Windows® based personal computer.

Now whether it was a "breakthrough" technology is another matter, but they did have desktop search software before Live Search, which changed from "MSN" to "Live" back in 2006.

Microsoft Research actually has an app called InkSeine for tablet PCs that adds a pie menu and some other interesting ideas for tablet PCs. It's available here: http://research.microsoft.com/InkSeine/ Personally I just got a tablet PC but I haven't tried InkSeine yet because I've heard it's still pretty buggy and it's not intended as a product but just a research project.

The advantages (pentium support, better 32 bit support) were outweighed by its stability problems.

Are you insane? Windows 95 may have crashed every week or so on average, and it certainly crashed every 49.7 days if you were ever lucky enough to make it that far, but we're comparing it to Windows 3.1 here! Even if you disregard the bugs in Windows 3.1 code itself, the thing used cooperative multitasking and unprotected memory, so your computer crashed every time the buggiest program you ran had a particularly bad flaw. It would freeze up multiple times a day, under any kind of heavy use.

I think it's clear that if your criterion is "improvement over best previously available version", Windows 95 really was the high point of Microsoft development. Stability doesn't outweigh that conclusion, stability is one of the reasons for it.

An airport story from before 9/11. In 1997, I was going through security and had my key chain confiscated because it had a .44 cartridge on it. I tried to explain that the mounting drilled through where the primer used to be, that the powder was missing, and that the bullet being loose from the casing really showed that the cartridge was unusable, but they wouldn't let me through. I always suspected that one of the guards just thought it was cool and wanted it for himself.

Another theater, though not in the airport. The security theater that I just learned about last night was MS's Information Rights Management. No_Ax_to_Grind was going on and on on ZDNET about how a lack of IRM made OO.o useless for him, and that he could send someone a document and keep that person from forwarding it or even reading it until he gave permission.

I was intrigued, so I looked it up. From the description, it appears to be a system which only works when everyone is using MS Windows (with the Rights Management Services Client Service Pack 1!) and Office 2007. Other respondents who seemed to know about it said that the protection is simply a tag which non-compliant office suites simply ignore.

What a joke.

XP Home does support multi-core processors (dual or quad). It does not support multiple physical processors, but the number of cores in the one physical processor does not matter. XP Pro supports up to two physical processors, regardless of the number of cores in each.

http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/highlights/multicore.mspx

Few people have multiple physical processors on their motherboard.

And in the meantime, clever guys who decided not to spoil their lives with half-baked programming languages are doing things in a much more beautiful way...

And in the meantime, clever guys who decided not to spoil their lives with half-baked programming languages are doing things in a much more beautiful way...

Yes, because Microsoft don't give anything away.

If you notice, the first link is a free virtualisation system.

Yes, because Microsoft don't give anything away.

If you notice, the first link is a free virtualisation system.

Yes, because Microsoft don't give anything away.

If you notice, the first link is a free virtualisation system.

Yes, because Microsoft don't give anything away.

If you notice, the first link is a free virtualisation system.

Yes, because Microsoft don't give anything away.

If you notice, the first link is a free virtualisation system.

Not that I'm disagreeing with what I think is your comment's main point. If it's designed for a version of Xandros that's customized for the Eee PC, then I'm sure that's a better choice than Windows. Also, I'm sure free-as-in-beer Ubuntu (also based on Debian) will work just fine in the future. I'm just saying that XP is not "near the end of support" for most users.

Not that I'm disagreeing with what I think is your comment's main point. If it's designed for a version of Xandros that's customized for the Eee PC, then I'm sure that's a better choice than Windows. Also, I'm sure free-as-in-beer Ubuntu (also based on Debian) will work just fine in the future. I'm just saying that XP is not "near the end of support" for most users.

I have a Microsoft wireless keyboard that worked out of the box with all the extra buttons on a Ubuntu system.

More than some MS-users can expect :)

'The Microsoft wireless keyboard or wireless mouse does not respond as expected', (MS Help and Support)

CC.

Why is it that Linux is mentioned 177000 times in the Microsoft website?

For some reason I found myself browsing through those results and found this little FUD gem (warning: .doc format; here's Google's HTML version) which is a "Customer Case Study" on the City of Indianapolis switching from their "heterogeneous" environment to an all-Windows one.

As part of this case study, the following is given as one reason for their need to upgrade:

For instance, the city has many multiuser applications based on Microsoft Access 97 database software. When employees were given a new PC with a newer version of Microsoft Office, they would open the Access database and upgrade it when prompted. At that point, all the other users, who were still running Access 97, were locked out of the application, because Access 97 did not recognize the newer format. The city IT staff would have to recover the database from tape, remove the newer version of Microsoft Access, and replace Access 97 on the users' PC to prevent the issue from recurring.

Fascinating! They're fully admitting the existence of the Microsoft upgrade treadmill and using as a selling point! (OK, forget the fact that Access is a horrible choice for a multiuser application in the first place, and that the client's IT staff is apparently completely incompetent). Upgrade your servers to Windows Server 2003! You too can be part of a Customer Case Study 5 years from now when we tell you how crappy Windows Server and Exchange 2003 are so you must upgrade to Windows Server 2012!

Scenario A: PC One has the full assortment of hardware components listed in Table 1 above. User swaps the motherboard and CPU chip for an upgraded one, swaps the video adapter, adds a second hard drive for additional storage, doubles the amount of RAM, and swaps the CD ROM drive for a faster one. Result: Reactivation is NOT required. Scenario B: PC Two has the full assortment of hardware components listed in Table 1 except that it has no network adapter. User doubles the amount of RAM, swaps the video card and the SCSI controller. Result: Reactivation is NOT required. Dockable PCs are treated slightly more leniently. In a dockable PC, if a network adapter exists and is not changed, 9 or more of the other above values would have to change before reactivation was required. If no network adapter exists or the existing one is changed, 7 or more changes (including the network adapter) will result in a requirement to reactivate. Scenario C: Dockable PC Three has the full assortment of hardware components listed in Table 1 except that it has no network adapter. User doubles the amount of RAM, swaps to a bigger hard disk drive, and adds a network adapter. Result: Reactivation is NOT required.

Scenario A: PC One has the full assortment of hardware components listed in Table 1 above. User swaps the motherboard and CPU chip for an upgraded one, swaps the video adapter, adds a second hard drive for additional storage, doubles the amount of RAM, and swaps the CD ROM drive for a faster one. Result: Reactivation is NOT required. Scenario B: PC Two has the full assortment of hardware components listed in Table 1 except that it has no network adapter. User doubles the amount of RAM, swaps the video card and the SCSI controller. Result: Reactivation is NOT required. Dockable PCs are treated slightly more leniently. In a dockable PC, if a network adapter exists and is not changed, 9 or more of the other above values would have to change before reactivation was required. If no network adapter exists or the existing one is changed, 7 or more changes (including the network adapter) will result in a requirement to reactivate. Scenario C: Dockable PC Three has the full assortment of hardware components listed in Table 1 except that it has no network adapter. User doubles the amount of RAM, swaps to a bigger hard disk drive, and adds a network adapter. Result: Reactivation is NOT required.

Scenario A: PC One has the full assortment of hardware components listed in Table 1 above. User swaps the motherboard and CPU chip for an upgraded one, swaps the video adapter, adds a second hard drive for additional storage, doubles the amount of RAM, and swaps the CD ROM drive for a faster one. Result: Reactivation is NOT required. Scenario B: PC Two has the full assortment of hardware components listed in Table 1 except that it has no network adapter. User doubles the amount of RAM, swaps the video card and the SCSI controller. Result: Reactivation is NOT required. Dockable PCs are treated slightly more leniently. In a dockable PC, if a network adapter exists and is not changed, 9 or more of the other above values would have to change before reactivation was required. If no network adapter exists or the existing one is changed, 7 or more changes (including the network adapter) will result in a requirement to reactivate. Scenario C: Dockable PC Three has the full assortment of hardware components listed in Table 1 except that it has no network adapter. User doubles the amount of RAM, swaps to a bigger hard disk drive, and adds a network adapter. Result: Reactivation is NOT required.

Scenario A: PC One has the full assortment of hardware components listed in Table 1 above. User swaps the motherboard and CPU chip for an upgraded one, swaps the video adapter, adds a second hard drive for additional storage, doubles the amount of RAM, and swaps the CD ROM drive for a faster one. Result: Reactivation is NOT required. Scenario B: PC Two has the full assortment of hardware components listed in Table 1 except that it has no network adapter. User doubles the amount of RAM, swaps the video card and the SCSI controller. Result: Reactivation is NOT required. Dockable PCs are treated slightly more leniently. In a dockable PC, if a network adapter exists and is not changed, 9 or more of the other above values would have to change before reactivation was required. If no network adapter exists or the existing one is changed, 7 or more changes (including the network adapter) will result in a requirement to reactivate. Scenario C: Dockable PC Three has the full assortment of hardware components listed in Table 1 except that it has no network adapter. User doubles the amount of RAM, swaps to a bigger hard disk drive, and adds a network adapter. Result: Reactivation is NOT required.

Think of DRM for example when you think of applications. The TC architecture was designed for use in distributed systems (actually the paper that laid the groundwork for it is here: http://research.microsoft.com/lampson/41-DigitalDSSA/41-DigitalDSSAAsPub.pdf) The reason why it can work despite not having every application be certified is that if an application modifies your OS, your OS checksum will fail which means that the TPM will prevent your system from booting (if i remember right - been a few months since I reviewed TC related material). To what extent and what extreme these restrictions on applications are to be placed is exactly what makes TC controversial. Actually, its already taken off. Many new laptops today ship with a TPM. Vista has a significant amount of TPM implemented in it, which although if Im not mistaken, can currently be turned off - correct me on this(this wont be allowed eventually). The digital content industry is looking very seriously into TC and so is the security research community. I studied under a professor who was doing a lot of TC related work in his research. It will not completely fail to take off because it already has to some extent and it has many really big corporates really pushing hard for it, but theres still significant work left. TC is another reason for the open source community to hate the closed source community. You basically wont be able to run a self modded kernel unless it is present in the checksum database with the certifying authority.

Scenario A:

PC One has the full assortment of hardware components listed in Table 1 above. User swaps the motherboard and CPU chip for an upgraded one, swaps the video adapter, adds a second hard drive for additional storage, doubles the amount of RAM, and swaps the CD ROM drive for a faster one.

Result: Reactivation is NOT required.

Scenario B:

PC Two has the full assortment of hardware components listed in Table 1 except that it has no network adapter. User doubles the amount of RAM, swaps the video card and the SCSI controller.

Result: Reactivation is NOT required.

Dockable PCs are treated slightly more leniently. In a dockable PC, if a network adapter exists and is not changed, 9 or more of the other above values would have to change before reactivation was required. If no network adapter exists or the existing one is changed, 7 or more changes (including the network adapter) will result in a requirement to reactivate.

Scenario C:

Dockable PC Three has the full assortment of hardware components listed in Table 1 except that it has no network adapter. User doubles the amount of RAM, swaps to a bigger hard disk drive, and adds a network adapter.

Result: Reactivation is NOT required.

Governments, universities (I think Berkeley too) can have access to source code. They went into panic when governments, armies made Linux switch because they know "what is there" so they started some program.

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

You can also have BSD in a closed source, commercial OS/Software. That is why BSD is the choice for companies like Apple or originally Microsoft.

MS is a evil company, not like they can't code a TCP/IP stack. They didn't see TCP/IP and Internet coming though.

In case you missed it, I said:

Back in the Office 2005-2000 days there was the Office quick start, but that's been gone for forever. I guess it extended to XP, but Office 2003 removed it (though it's on the CD somewhere if you want to install and run it manually), which means it's been gone for at least 2 versions.

And all OSA did was to pre-load load the OLE libraries (which many apps used, not just Office) which took the most time to load. Later, they added that "new document" functionality to it as well. Office hasn't needed OSA on any NT based OS because the OLE libraries don't have the long load times that they did under the 16 bit OS's.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/826318

"Office Setup no longer puts a shortcut to the Osa.exe file in the Windows Startup folder as do the earlier versions of Microsoft Office."

As for undocumented calls. You're kind of an idiot. Undocumented calls, even if they exist (which i'm sure they do), can't help with load time, because loading happens before any application code executes. It's done by, you know, the loader. I suppose you're going to say that Windows has special code built into it to detect Office, and use the super special fast loader instead of the stupid slow loader everyone else has to use.

In reality, this is entirely down to DLL rebasing, something OpenOffice has repeatedly not bothered to do. I once rebased OpenOffice by hand to test this, and it dramatically improved load time (it was about as fast as office, not counting the Java load time). Mozilla and Firefox used to have this problem as well, but they finally got wise and started rebasing of their official builds. That's why FF now loads so fast on Windows.

Why are you so vague about this special "vista tool"?

The table pencil is not a wizard. You should undestand what a wizard is.

A test suite wouldn't have helped. Win2k worked just fine with normal kerberos as a client and as a server. The problem was that if you wanted to deal with domain based groups you needed an extension, something that MSFT wasn't intrested in letting people have for free.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/bb265236.aspx

OOXML is already supported in the fullest implmentation available.

It is also extensible to support full specification (which was requested features outside of Microsoft).

So for the ODF before OOXML is not only wrong, but REALLY wrong.

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

Also, ODF will be allowed to be configured as the default format for documents.
SP2 will also include support for PDF and XPS export.

See "Managing data text files like database tables", and also "How To Use RDO and ODBC Text Driver to Open a Delimited Text"

You can use mdac to create an excel sheet and both update and query it. It is running under Vista and you can do this in c# which is free like you don't have to pay for it if you own Vista. It can be done from pretty much an script host too. MS has examples, but it is pretty much just an ADO connection.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q195951/

I feel your pain... Try this, it will disable all pop-up balloons, but I find that the lesser of two evils.
(taken from Microsof Support)

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then press ENTER.
2. Navigate to the following subkey: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
3. Right-click the right pane, create a new DWORD value, and then name it EnableBalloonTips.
4. Double-click this new entry, and then give it a hexadecimal value of 0.
5. Quit Registry Editor. Log off Windows, and then log back on.

These steps disable all Notification Area balloon tips for this user. There is no way to disable balloon tips for specific programs only.

Eh, you could always disable the balloon pop-ups.

I usually use tweakUI to turn off balloon tips to get rid of this. http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx Of course the Intel manager is far more annoying than the windows one.

Anyone smart enough to go get a refund is also smart enough to know about the EULA.

• Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats - "By installing the Compatibility Pack in addition to Microsoft Office 2000, Office XP, or Office 2003, you will be able to open, edit, and save files using the file formats new to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007."
• Office File Converter Pack - "This download provides file converters and image filters for Microsoft Office programs, from Office 97 to Office 2003. These additional converters and filters are for older or seldom used documents or image formats."