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So if the OEM version is $100, but there is $89 of bundledware (that is only available on Windows), who is going to give up forking out $11 to buy an OS that they "know" and instead try that thing they've been all FUD'ed about...And trust me, if unbundling becomes forced, there will be a FUDfest like no other in history...remember the "not compatible with DOS" astroturfing wars in the 80's? But this time it will be about piracy, patent-violating, known-provider...hey haven't we heard some of this before?

If it costs $x for an OEM version of a Windows OS, I can make an informed decision as to whether I want to get it or not.

But this is the genius that is the current state of MS OEM: the end user can't actually see the price of the OEM version because it is subsidized by other vendors (trialware, bundledware).

So if the OEM version is $100, but there is $89 of bundledware (that is only available on Windows), who is going to give up forking out $11 to buy an OS that they "know" and instead try that thing they've been all FUD'ed about...And trust me, if unbundling becomes forced, there will be a FUDfest like no other in history...remember the "not compatible with DOS" astroturfing wars in the 80's? But this time it will be about piracy, patent-violating, known-provider...hey haven't we heard some of this before?

It works on any Windows since Win2k.

You can also use fsutil utility to do the same thing: http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/fsutil_behavior.mspx?mfr=true

What is ReadyDrive:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/features/details/performance.mspx

I'm summarizing what I learned from the German c't computer magazine, which has tested the various new technologies like ReadyDrive and others in Vista and also tested Flashdrives and Flash memory in general. Read the current issue of this magazine for in-depth analysis.

1) Pure Flash disks have only ONE advantage over harddisks: they are less sensitive to mechanical stress. In real-life scenarios, they don't safe power, and they are most definitely not faster than 2.5 inch drives. They ARE faster than 1.8 inch ones often used in ultra-mobile PCs, so there they indeed provide a benefit. For everyone else: especially write performance sucks compared to modern 2.5 inch disks, and read performance is at most en par. True, they don't need to position any heads so random access should save time - but according to the real-world tests made by c't that benefit isn't noticeable.

2) c't testers were very suspicious about how long Flash memory could survive as HD replacement where writing happens all the time, and yes, Flash cells have a limited lifetime, one cannot write too often. That's the theory. In practice c't testers were unable to make even the cheapest Flash USB stick show any sign of memory loss even after something like 16 million write cycles, when they gave up further testing because that's many many years of real-work usage. (pg. 104 of c't 21/2007)

3) Intel TurboMemory or MS Vista SuperFetch, ReadyBoost or ReadyDrive were shown to provide no measurable benefit AT ALL.

Suspicion of Hitachi and others seems to be that the current implementation in Vista isn't quite finished and SP1 should provide an update, and second the amount of Flash memory is waaaaaay too small.

Original article (German): http://www.heise.de/ct/07/21/100/

Actually, you have: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms940846.aspx (it's the first thing I do on a new installation of Windows)

this?

http://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx

* When you register for certain Microsoft services, we will ask you to provide personal information.
* The information we collect may be combined with information obtained from other Microsoft services and other companies.
* We use cookies and other technologies to keep track of your interactions with our sites and services to offer a "personalized experience".

So they don't check my mail, but they check everything else that I do.

(Eg Outlook 2007 sends an 'AUTH' command to POP3 servers as the first thing it does - for no obvious reason, other than someone at MS obviously thought it was a good idea???? (See Technet forums)

"When you register for certain Microsoft services, we will ask you to provide personal information. The information we collect may be combined with information obtained from other Microsoft services and other companies. We use cookies and other technologies to keep track of your interactions with our sites and services to offer a personalised experience" http://privacy.microsoft.com/en-gb/default.aspx

Most people don't spend $87 on Outlook but some $250 on Office 2007 Standard. Many will also get it (almost) free by BitTorrent, KaZaA, some neighbourhood geek or their workplace. In that case "it" will probably be the Enterprise or Professional Edition, not Standard.

Count me in with the people who don't use AV bloatware on Windows and get along just fine. This is the guidance I give to friends who are competent enough to understand it:

1. Don't run day to day as an administrator
2. Use the firewall in your router
3. Take regular backups
4. Keep Windows and Office automatically updated
5. Don't click the attachments, duh!
6. Be cautious about what you access on the net and use a quarantine account if necessary

Those are in rough order of importance except maybe #5.

Never had a virus; I occasionally give myself the once-over with Trend Micro's web-based scanner and Sysinternals' RootkitRevealer and all is well.

I'm guessing it refers to this set of changes they made in Server 2003 SP2 and Vista to PMTU Discovery. Basically, enabling it by default, and using minimum MSS as a fallback.

As per the other replies, this has absolutely nothing to do with DDoS scenarios, or routing paths at all for that matter. You're thinking of "null routing".

Noone would have clicked such a link.

Well, according to this article: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/columns/cableguy/cg0704.mspx ,
PMTU black hole router detection seems to have been included in Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003.

So I guess it was a feature of the BSD TCP/IP stack they put in there?

As an aside, the same article describes the alternaltive way to change the IP MTU: Edit the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Network\{4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} registry key.
You just gotta love those keynames.

Now we have it! The first article Google brings up is a Microsoft paper about how "the government can tell exactly how every voter votes in every election" (p.3.) And they even openly admit it themselves!

Link to MS KB page for XP SP3

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=832671

Yes it does.

As said, it requires "special knowledge". Often you need to go into the registry editor and adapt security settings for certain registry keys ("Edit"-"Permissions..."). The same for filesystems: games that write savegames in their own directoy will need write access for limited users. You can do this with cacls on a XP Home system, XP Pro has the appropriate tabs in the properties of the file/directory.

There are some other caveats, like the "User"/"All Users" separation in the Start menu that you have to adapt in some cases. In the end it's all a matter of experience.

I learnt this over the years, and every new game will be trial and error all over again. It's login to admin mode, change keys, login to user, try game, rinse repeat lather.... It's hard, but not impossible. Some games require patches: for example The Sims 2 doesn't work without Admin rights out of the box, but bring it to a certain patch level and it will work. This was one of the most asked features for the game, IIRC.

That is one thing that I always hated about windows, once you "upgrade" there is no turning back.

The knowledge base article on uninstalling IE7 is awfully lengthy, and the instructions wasn't mentioned in the article summary above until the very end. So I'll summarize it here for convenience:

1. Go to Add/Remove Programs
2. Select 'Show Updates'
3. Select 'Internet Explorer 7'
4. Select 'Uninstall'.

Then, as the KB article states, 'After you uninstall Internet Explorer 7, double-click the Internet Explorer icon to verify that Internet Explorer 6 is restored.'

Just to throw salt in the wound of my smugness, one last quote from the KB article: 'This article is intended for a beginning to intermediate computer user.'

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/updatemanagement/bb259685.aspx

"Internet Explorer 7 will not install automatically - the Automatic Updates delivery process will include a welcome screen that offers users choices of Install, Don't Install, and Ask Me Later prior to installation."

Not in a real OS (read: non-Windows OS). In real OSes, you can allocate pages and indicate that they may never be swapped out of volatile memory for exactly that reason.

Your bias is showing, AC. Allocating un-swappable memory is very easy in Windows as well, just not in a high-level language like, say PHP. If you want to use C or C++, it's simple. Try at least peeking at MSDN before your knee jerks and you say "Windows can't do that".

Just because they own the IP and made the first few games, does not mean that they have to make all the games in perpituity.

Sure, but the MTV link is speculating about what would happen if they gave up the IP, which was reasonable speculation but isn't what happened. It seemed odd to bring it up *after* the details of the Bungie deal came out.

This image will not pass Windows Genuine Verification. If you need to install an application that requires it, download it on a genuine PC, and then copy it to the VPC.

Microsoft offers an XP SP2 + IE7 Virtual PC image for testing. It has a date expiration, so you do need to download new ones every few months.

Get the facts.

Yes they do.

Ignoring the flame-bait and complete ignorance... The *reference* implementation for .Net which is remarkably similar to the production version is here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=8C09FD61-3F26-4555-AE17-3121B4F51D4D&displaylang=en

It contains the C/C++ source for the CLR, CSC and C# source for the Framework that compiles on FreeBSD, Windows and OS X. There are PPC/ARM/x86/x86-64 ports in the code.

It can and will be run anywhere. .Net is pretty damn open. Remove your heads from your asses.

details are a bit sketchy. According to the actual microsoft partner website it seems that the license is not for vista or anything, just for XP. Which is completely pointless since you can download updates without validating your system anyway, not to mention shady depending on more "hidden updates" that break features. Just get the list of updates that haven't been done and download. Voila.

In addition another of sketchy aspect is the questionable nature whether this will be used as a marketing tool for MSFT, aka "we sold xyz more copies of windows, even though we nobody really bought anything". They claim "40 million is lost in piracy" from their own bullshiat study which was debunked about a million times .

Why does it also talk about financing for the actual copies of XP that companies will receive won't be free, as they original stated? I suspect they will go after people who inquire but don't follow through.

See http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS04-028.mspx.

The JPEG handler is not "supposed" to run code; but, absolutely any program that receives data, processes it, and is expected to come to some kind of outcome with it can potentially be exploited if the programmers didn't have the foresight to check for buffer overruns and other exploitable conditions.

The best way to handle these is to sandbox applications--that is, limiting what they can do on the system. You can go really extreme and absolutely lock down what programs can do what, but there's a tradeoff between security and useability.

Right, and in other news:

Microsoft Supports Open Standards http://www.microsoft.com/uk/openxml/default.mspx
Steve Jobs Hates DRM http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2007/02/23/itunes/index_np.html

Absolutely right. Singularity and F#. Can't wait to get my hands on those.

Absolutely right. Singularity and F#. Can't wait to get my hands on those.

I quite honestly expect that quite soon once TVs, monitors and all home entertainment sets run propertly controlled and firmly DRMed operating systems, they will disable all turning off/switching channels/lowering the sound functionality as soon as a special "now a commercial is on" signal is sent. Circumventing this or selling TVs without this functionality will be illegal of course.

Also a camera will be installed in every home to ensure no one puts a blanket over the TV or shirks their patriotic daily 4 hour of TV watching duty. Yes, this means you, citizen Winston Smith. <-- Only slightly tongue in cheek.

"Vote for the gorillas. 25 grand and fame that id probably just piss away anyway is not worth a specie.".

Just so long as he didn't mention the 800 lb gorilla. Being a linux advocate and all.

Microsoft's new research operating system "singularity" http://research.microsoft.com/os/singularity/ runs every process in its own virtual machine.

No it doesn't, at least not in the way we're talking about here. Processes are run under a modified .NET runtime, so they don't have direct access to hardware, but we're talking about virtualized hardware that looks like the real computer here, which a substantially different affair.

No, they come with a license key.

I'm not looking to buy (Pay another MS tax) another copy of XP. I was looking for the ability to transfer the one I already have minus the cruft. As it stands, XP dies with the machine it rode in on. I have no reason to buy another license key for XP.

if you lose your keycode. You still paid for the license and are legally entitled to it.)

Not according to the BSA and the WGA education sites. Windows is not genuine without the sticker attached to the case of the computer on which it is installed on. Lost sticker, lost keycode, lost receipt.. all are items which the BSA will use to consider an installation pirated.

Directly from the Microsoft website regarding counterfeit copies...

Certificate of Authenticity (COA) is a label that helps you identify genuine Microsoft software. A COA is not a software license - it is a visual identifier that assists in determining whether or not the Microsoft software you are running is genuine. However, without it, you will not have a legal license to run Microsoft software. A COA should never be purchased by itself without the software it authenticates.

In short, no sticker = counterfeit copy.
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/howtotell/content.aspx?displaylang=en&pg=coa

By contrast, the company that 'gets it' about everything else doesn't seem to see any worth in trying to make their platform more game developer friendly...It's always been an afterthought, and that's strange if you think about it. Here's a company that's winning sales by making the use of their platform more fun/enjoyable than their competitors, yet somehow, they always ignore games? It's almost like they think that magically game devs will target their platform/solve the problems for them, which I suppose is possible if they get enough market share, but seriously-- how many more Macs would sell if gaming on a Mac was really something you could do? It boggles the mind.

Microsoft's new research operating system "singularity" http://research.microsoft.com/os/singularity/ runs every process in its own virtual machine. This way, if an attacker breaks your email client, it's MUCH more of a pain in the ass to get to the word documents.

Yep... SOL, unless you go to

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads.aspx?pid=download&location=/mac/download/Office2004/ConverterBeta.xml&secid=4&ssid=34&flgnosysreq=True

KB article covering this problem.

I think you might have possibly missed an error code that it would return if the buffer wasn't long enough. Of course, you may already have handled that case, but you don't mention it in your description above.

(Sorry, I don't like sharepoint at all!)
Or build your own app on top of a Microsoft SQL Server 2005 with Full Text Search
Technet Article

No need for tags... let the document itself be the tags...

The free-as-in-beer express ed. (with advanced blahblah..) however is limited to 2Gb. So you will at the least need a Standard ed. though.

Not true. There is a plugin for Office 2003 to use the new formats, as well as a viewer. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925180

The reason that Law #1's written the way that it is is because it's written with the assumption that the attacker knows more than you do.

To be more specific, the bad guy knows about the as of yet undiscovered security hole that renders all of your OS level sandboxing moot. That's why when the bad guy gets to run code on your computer, it's not your computer any more.

And there have absolutely been such flaws in Windows (the windows manifest file vulnerability for example), OSX (the .DMG file vulnerability for example) and Linux (the ELF file core dump issue for example), so this isn't just wild speculation (I found all 3 of those by simply typing in "<os> elevation of privilege" to my favorite search engine).

> There's actually a Powerpoint on Bungie's HDR lighting method floating around the internets somewhere,

You mean this?

Gamefest Unplugged (Europe) 2007: HDR The Bungie Way (35 Meg)

--
  Thx for Render2Texture on the Wii, Nintendo! NOT.

thats an Office 2003 doc XML (not quite the same thing). You'd have had to unzip the docx first if it was actually one, and then would have a crap ton of files and stuff... which I beleive is similar-ish to the "competition".

Two other links I should have put in the original post.

Innovate on Vista site
http://innovateonwindowsvista.com/
(I actually hate this site, and I think its hidden behind a partners login, but it does have some useful content buried in the graphics-heavy crap.)

Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.0 (for Vista)
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsvista/aa905102.aspx

Now the app compat toolkit will have a bunch of stuff you might not care about, but its also got some useful stuff in there.