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It is possible to lock XP down so that people cannot fiddle with it: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?Fa milyID=d39d0028-7093-495c-80da-2b5b29a54bd8&Displa yLang=en but I guess simply installing Vista achieved the same thing.

http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?LN=en-us&x =8&y=10&p1=3223

Mainstream support stops on 4/14/2009
Extended support goes out the door 4/8/2014

Businesses don't need that choice, because they are allowed to downgrade from Vista to XP as they like. There's a detailed description which OS you can downgrade to which other (older, similar) OS in this PDF , and surprisingly it's only for the business versions. They actually give you a new key to install XP on any box that came with a Vista Pro OEM version if you need one. You can upgrade back to the "original" OS whenever you want. More info.

Maybe MS should release a "critical update" that turns it into Windows ME or 98.

Maybe MS should release a "critical update" that turns it into Windows ME or 98.

Your suggestion is a little bit too late, it seems :)

Windows 98 introduced WDM - Windows Driver Model. It's a stable driver model used by Win98 and up. I'm not sure on Vista though - I seem to recall that they dropped support, but I'm not sure. They may still have support, but don't allow things like secure audio paths if you use any WDM drivers.

Anyway, here's some details on it straight from MS: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/archive/wdmoverview. mspx

The thing is that NTFS expands the MFT when you add files and folders to an NTFS volume, and does not reclaim the space when you delete files. This means that if you have or add a lot of small files, enough to fill up your disk and then delete them, you will end up with less usable space than you started with.

Note that you either need to re-format or use a third party defrag tool to get that space back.

Goddamn, will people stop saying this?!? I've formatted a 200GB hard drive as FAT with the Windows XP installer. There is no 32GB limit.

OK, here is the Real Deal:

• FAT itself can be up to 2 terabytes in size. FAT32: 2TB (theoretically 8 TB) FAT16: 4GB FAT12: 16MB.
• Large FAT partitions can be hugely wasteful of disk space, because FAT has a limited number of possible entries in the file allocation table itself, and therefore must use ever-larger cluster sizes (think extents) for file storage if you wish to have a large partition. Much disk space is lost to the many resulting partially-filled clusters. We used to call it 'slack'.
• The 32 GB limit (which MS admits is arbitrary) was imposed in the GUI partitioning tool in Windows 2000, and has persisted since. This only applies to partitions created with that formatter; W2000 and above will happily use much larger partitions.
• But the gotcha is that if your FAT filesystem is larger than about 124 gigabytes and it breaks, you will not be able to fix it. Scandisk is the repair tool for FAT filesystems, and it simply cannot process a partition larger than 124.5GB.
• If you want to create a >32GB FAT partition from within the Windows GUI, you can use fat32format.exe.

Other references: Limitations of the FAT32 File System, Raymond Chen, NTFS vs FAT.

Goddamn, will people stop saying this?!? I've formatted a 200GB hard drive as FAT with the Windows XP installer. There is no 32GB limit.

OK, here is the Real Deal:

• FAT itself can be up to 2 terabytes in size. FAT32: 2TB (theoretically 8 TB) FAT16: 4GB FAT12: 16MB.
• Large FAT partitions can be hugely wasteful of disk space, because FAT has a limited number of possible entries in the file allocation table itself, and therefore must use ever-larger cluster sizes (think extents) for file storage if you wish to have a large partition. Much disk space is lost to the many resulting partially-filled clusters. We used to call it 'slack'.
• The 32 GB limit (which MS admits is arbitrary) was imposed in the GUI partitioning tool in Windows 2000, and has persisted since. This only applies to partitions created with that formatter; W2000 and above will happily use much larger partitions.
• But the gotcha is that if your FAT filesystem is larger than about 124 gigabytes and it breaks, you will not be able to fix it. Scandisk is the repair tool for FAT filesystems, and it simply cannot process a partition larger than 124.5GB.
• If you want to create a >32GB FAT partition from within the Windows GUI, you can use fat32format.exe.

Other references: Limitations of the FAT32 File System, Raymond Chen, NTFS vs FAT.

Hmm... NTFS versioning and snapshotting seems to work just fine on our Windows 2003 servers. Read up on Volume Shadow Copies.

"(F) Platform Limitation- The licenses granted in sections 2(A) & 2(B) extend only to the software or derivative works that you create that run on a Microsoft Windows operating system product."

"10. License Must Be Technology-Neutral. No provision of the license may be predicated on any individual technology or style of interface."

Why don't they just offer the Microsoft Work At Home http://www.microsoft.com/Education/WorkHome.mspx ; after being told many years ago by the courts MS has now created a "policy" of "allowing" you to have software from work on your home computer :) but this is a special education license ahem..

All this means is that, if people buy Office 2007 and they have problems with it, they can talk to Microsoft

The concept behind Avalanche is very powerful and it is based on network coding and some very neat security algorithms. A few years ago there was a lot of debate about whether the technology was even feasible, but it seems that MS has finally proven that one can get it to work. Avalanche was created by two researchers are Microsoft Research Cambridge (Pablo Rodriguez: http://www.rodriguezrodriguez.com/ and Christos Gkantsidis http://research.microsoft.com/~chrigk). These guys have done a great job. Congrats.

Actually, the problem with Windows 2000 is that it doesn't understand 48bit LBA properly right out of the box, hence your limit is at 128GB (or 137GB if you're a HDD manufacturer). You need to do some registry hacking to get it to work.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/305098

Otherwise, large FAT32 partitions are fine. It's true that Windows 2000/XP will not allow them to be creater larger than 32GB, but they'll happily work with them if you create them with a utility, or Windows 98/ME which will also happily create >32GB partitions.

That is ridiculous and it's definitely not the norm in any of the circles that I run in. Software Update Services is the solution to that problem, and I'd wager that it is probably in place at most companies with over 200 computers. From the client side it appears that the computer is just downloading software and security updates from microsoft as usual, but really they're being downloaded from an internal server. Furthermore, WSUS allows you to approve or deny updates, allowing your tech support or whoever to test them before they bork your cnc machine's software and whatnot.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/wsus/default.as px

MS didn't reinvent Bittorrent. They built something better: Avalanche. It's more efficient and (I know this phrase is weird to use around MS, but...) more secure. Read the research papers (they touch on BT, its advantages and disadvantages). I imagine most of this stuff is on its way into standard BT, if it hasn't been worked in already.

"How do you feel about subsidizing Microsoft's bandwidth costs?"

Frankly I don't give 2 shits as long as they don't patent the hell out of it (and sue existing P2P solutions). But this came out of MS Research, so I doubt that'll happen (one of the only decent groups at MS).

By the way, MS has been messing around with P2P for years. How do you think Xbox Live works? Every time a game is played multiplayer, at least one Xbox/Xbox 360 is hosting. Not a single MS server hosts a game. Question this all you want (why pay $60 a year then?) but the fact of the matter is that from a technological standpoint, it works well.

Since MacOSX is BSD based, I would be willing to bet that similar projects and support can be found (but, I Am Not A Mac Fanboy).

On Windows, you are pretty much stuck using either NTFS or FAT. FAT volumes can not be created in windows larger than 32GB. Although, you could create the partition using 3rd party tools to get beyond that limitation. I have had some success mounting ext3 partitions using Ext2 Installable File System For Windows or Ext2 File System Driver for Windows.

Personally, from my experience, VFAT or NTFS are about your only options.

Try to run something that uses 100% CPU and then try to do anything else while that happens. What a great scheduler...

Works fine here. In basic concept, Windows' scheduler (priority values) isn't so different from the Linux scheduler (nice values). Obviously any system starts to bog when it has a high Load Average (Linux) or CPU Queue Length (Windows).

Also, try to fill up your RAM. Kind of hard, isn't it? Windows doesn't seem to think you have as much RAM as you do and starts to swap far too early to be considered useful. This is why people complain about Firefox using $x amount of RAM; Windows starts to swap way too early and causes slowdowns all around.

This comment shows an almost total lack of understanding of the Windows memory model. See any of the Inside Windows or Windows Internals books by Russinovich and Solomon for definitive reference; for a shorter slam-bang course, have a look at this Understanding Virtual Memory article. Pay close attention to the concept of the backing store. I took a quick look at an XP system with 2GB of RAM: 92% of memory in use. And a Vista system with 1GB RAM: 100% memory in use.

Try to delete a file that's in use (something you can do in any Unix-like system). File in use? Whoops, can't do that.

Agreed; this sucks. You can mitigate somewhat with utilities like MoveFile or Process Explorer, but again, I agree. Tracking down the process that locked your file, or scheduling a reboot for the rename or delete operation, is a little too baroque for my taste!

Also, Windows has jack shit support for more filesystems than their own FAT and NTFS families (both of which get fragmented; modern filesystems prevent that on the fly). Sure, you can get more support via plugins (I believe there are two different ways to make a filesystem plugin for Windows: kernel and shell), but that isn't as reliable as having native support for them.

You've noted that plugins exist. Which is how most new filesystem support for Linux originally evolved - either you had to manually compile it into the kernel (until Linus decided to just do that for you) or run a FUSE FS. MS doesn't build {otherFS} support into any Windows 'distro', but that's the only step missing. If you want {otherFS} support in Windows, you find or write it, then install that to your system. With IFS builtin, this can be just as reliable as native. In fact, NTFS/FAT are loaded via IFS. So if your {otherFS} via IFS is less reliable, that's on the {otherFS} coders, not MS.

"Well, considering that Windows by default doesn't show the file extension for known filetypes, as far as all the noobs can tell, the file they just double-clicked was "Artist - song.mp3", since they wouldn't even see the .exe at the end. Sweet deal eh?

Which is why I've been telling people for years the first thing they should do after installing Windows (immediately after selecting the "Show hidden files and folders" option and unchecking (clearing) the "Hide extensions for known file types" and "Hide protected operating system files" options in Control Panel -> Folder Options, View tab) is to run REGEDIT and do a 'Find' for all occurrences of "NeverShowExt" and delete every single one found. All of them (spare none).

This doesn't really solve anything, though, since people can't reasonably be expected to know a safe file extension from a dangerous one. Just as an example, try to list all the extensions you know that indicate an executable file. Then compare with the list of extensions blocked by Outlook.

How many did you get? Did you have all of the help file formats? How about the shell scripts for DOS, NT and the MKS Korn shell? How about HyperText Applications? How about Microsoft's proprietary obfuscated VBScript and JavaScript files?

Some of the files blocked by Outlook are completely beneign (e.g. you can't execute an .asp file). Do you know which ones? How about the mysterious, unlabeld MAU files? How about Internet Document Set files, do you know they are safe? Do you know what they even do? I can't say I do.

How many of the file extensions associated with Windows Media Player can you name? If someone sent you an .ivf file, would you know it was an Indeo video? Would your mom know? How about Windows Media Player Skins. Are those safe to open? They aren't blocked by Outlook, but they contain "any associated JScript files that... add functionality to the skin". Safe? Not? Beats me.

So, you might say, just don't open files if you don't know what they are. But if people followed advice like that, they would be checking with the sender before opening any files they weren't expecting, anyway.

Obviously the little bit of metadata provided by displaying the file extension is better than none at all, but it's not going to make email attachments all that much safer.

"Well, considering that Windows by default doesn't show the file extension for known filetypes, as far as all the noobs can tell, the file they just double-clicked was "Artist - song.mp3", since they wouldn't even see the .exe at the end. Sweet deal eh?

Which is why I've been telling people for years the first thing they should do after installing Windows (immediately after selecting the "Show hidden files and folders" option and unchecking (clearing) the "Hide extensions for known file types" and "Hide protected operating system files" options in Control Panel -> Folder Options, View tab) is to run REGEDIT and do a 'Find' for all occurrences of "NeverShowExt" and delete every single one found. All of them (spare none).

This doesn't really solve anything, though, since people can't reasonably be expected to know a safe file extension from a dangerous one. Just as an example, try to list all the extensions you know that indicate an executable file. Then compare with the list of extensions blocked by Outlook.

How many did you get? Did you have all of the help file formats? How about the shell scripts for DOS, NT and the MKS Korn shell? How about HyperText Applications? How about Microsoft's proprietary obfuscated VBScript and JavaScript files?

Some of the files blocked by Outlook are completely beneign (e.g. you can't execute an .asp file). Do you know which ones? How about the mysterious, unlabeld MAU files? How about Internet Document Set files, do you know they are safe? Do you know what they even do? I can't say I do.

How many of the file extensions associated with Windows Media Player can you name? If someone sent you an .ivf file, would you know it was an Indeo video? Would your mom know? How about Windows Media Player Skins. Are those safe to open? They aren't blocked by Outlook, but they contain "any associated JScript files that... add functionality to the skin". Safe? Not? Beats me.

So, you might say, just don't open files if you don't know what they are. But if people followed advice like that, they would be checking with the sender before opening any files they weren't expecting, anyway.

Obviously the little bit of metadata provided by displaying the file extension is better than none at all, but it's not going to make email attachments all that much safer.

It's great that microchip and mozilla could work together! But why is one full page of this paper dedicated to telling you about the copyright on the other three pages!?!

Probably this as well...

http://www.microsoft.com/uk/refurbishers/

What about cars running windows "automotive"?
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsautomotive/default .mspx
There seems to be some overlap here...

oh man... "windows automotive". -shudder-

I love how when you go to Microsoft's Open Source Site, the first thing that greets you is a giant FLASH ANIMATION. Well, that's not exactly open-source friendly, now is it!

For 2000 and XP, you want Windows Services for Unix or SFU. The download includes a complete - though basic - POSIX environment, a working GNU build toolchain (and yes, sources for all GPL code), and NFS server and client abilities. You shouldn't need to do anything except run the self-extracting download archive and run setup.exe. The installer will provide options to enable setuid and case-sensitive behaviors in the filesystem used within the subsystem, which should be used as a number of programs need them. The version of Perl included with the installer is obsolete and probably not worth installing; I'll get to that in a sec.

For Server 2003 and Vista, you must first enable the Windows component called the Subsystem for Unix Applications (SUA). This can be done by going to the (Add/Remove) Programs control panel - there's an option on the side for enabling Windows components. In Vista at least, you can also enable NFS and Unix-style printer connectivity here. You will then need to install the Utilities and SDK for the SUA, which is available for Vista/Longhorn and for Server 2003. On Vista there will be an additional install option to enable su-to-root behavior, required for programs like sudo - this option is important because by default, the Administrator account is disabled in Vista and privilege escalation is achieved through UAC. Although UAC can be used to start a Unix shell as root/admin, it cannot be used to change a shell's permissions while it runs. If you install sudo this becomes possible.

In all cases, you will get two Unix shells, the Korn shell and the C shell, in your start menu. Either one will start the subsystem and run a login process that creates the necessary environment variables and such. However, there are a few notable lacks. One of them is that while x11r5 and x11r6 client libraries are installed (with the r6 libraries used by default), there is no X server. Thus far I haven't managed to port x.org to Interix (the name of the subsystem "OS") so I use a win32 X server, specifically xming which runs on everything including Vista. The second major lack is a package manager or any software beyond the most basic requirements. For resolving this issue there are a couple options; the two I have tried are InteropSystems and NetBSD pkgsrc.

Both provide a good number of commonly used programs, and support the Interix platform. However, there are some major differences: InteropSystems primarily distributes binaries, with an eye to very easy package management and rapid usability. It also integrates better with Windows, doing things like adding a Start menu link for the Bash shell if you install their package. There is a fairly good forum for assistance and mostly it's a very easy out-of-box experience. However, their package tree is somewhat limited, and installing older versions of some libraries is trickier than it might be. They suuport all versions of Interix, from 3.5 (XP-era SFU) up to 6.0 (Vista's SUA). NetBSD's pkgsrc, on the other hand, is mostly source-based (although there are some pre-built packages for Interix; roughly as many as InteropSystems has, in fact). It takes longer to compile from source, and the initial download is hefty. However, a much wider selection of packages is available (although there's no guarantee they'll all work; indeed some, such as the X server, are flagged to not even attempt to build in Interix) and the packages are presumably optimized at least somewhat for your system during compilation. It's harder to find the right packages at times, though, and I have yet to get even the source-based boo

For 2000 and XP, you want Windows Services for Unix or SFU. The download includes a complete - though basic - POSIX environment, a working GNU build toolchain (and yes, sources for all GPL code), and NFS server and client abilities. You shouldn't need to do anything except run the self-extracting download archive and run setup.exe. The installer will provide options to enable setuid and case-sensitive behaviors in the filesystem used within the subsystem, which should be used as a number of programs need them. The version of Perl included with the installer is obsolete and probably not worth installing; I'll get to that in a sec.

For Server 2003 and Vista, you must first enable the Windows component called the Subsystem for Unix Applications (SUA). This can be done by going to the (Add/Remove) Programs control panel - there's an option on the side for enabling Windows components. In Vista at least, you can also enable NFS and Unix-style printer connectivity here. You will then need to install the Utilities and SDK for the SUA, which is available for Vista/Longhorn and for Server 2003. On Vista there will be an additional install option to enable su-to-root behavior, required for programs like sudo - this option is important because by default, the Administrator account is disabled in Vista and privilege escalation is achieved through UAC. Although UAC can be used to start a Unix shell as root/admin, it cannot be used to change a shell's permissions while it runs. If you install sudo this becomes possible.

In all cases, you will get two Unix shells, the Korn shell and the C shell, in your start menu. Either one will start the subsystem and run a login process that creates the necessary environment variables and such. However, there are a few notable lacks. One of them is that while x11r5 and x11r6 client libraries are installed (with the r6 libraries used by default), there is no X server. Thus far I haven't managed to port x.org to Interix (the name of the subsystem "OS") so I use a win32 X server, specifically xming which runs on everything including Vista. The second major lack is a package manager or any software beyond the most basic requirements. For resolving this issue there are a couple options; the two I have tried are InteropSystems and NetBSD pkgsrc.

Both provide a good number of commonly used programs, and support the Interix platform. However, there are some major differences: InteropSystems primarily distributes binaries, with an eye to very easy package management and rapid usability. It also integrates better with Windows, doing things like adding a Start menu link for the Bash shell if you install their package. There is a fairly good forum for assistance and mostly it's a very easy out-of-box experience. However, their package tree is somewhat limited, and installing older versions of some libraries is trickier than it might be. They suuport all versions of Interix, from 3.5 (XP-era SFU) up to 6.0 (Vista's SUA). NetBSD's pkgsrc, on the other hand, is mostly source-based (although there are some pre-built packages for Interix; roughly as many as InteropSystems has, in fact). It takes longer to compile from source, and the initial download is hefty. However, a much wider selection of packages is available (although there's no guarantee they'll all work; indeed some, such as the X server, are flagged to not even attempt to build in Interix) and the packages are presumably optimized at least somewhat for your system during compilation. It's harder to find the right packages at times, though, and I have yet to get even the source-based boo

For 2000 and XP, you want Windows Services for Unix or SFU. The download includes a complete - though basic - POSIX environment, a working GNU build toolchain (and yes, sources for all GPL code), and NFS server and client abilities. You shouldn't need to do anything except run the self-extracting download archive and run setup.exe. The installer will provide options to enable setuid and case-sensitive behaviors in the filesystem used within the subsystem, which should be used as a number of programs need them. The version of Perl included with the installer is obsolete and probably not worth installing; I'll get to that in a sec.

For Server 2003 and Vista, you must first enable the Windows component called the Subsystem for Unix Applications (SUA). This can be done by going to the (Add/Remove) Programs control panel - there's an option on the side for enabling Windows components. In Vista at least, you can also enable NFS and Unix-style printer connectivity here. You will then need to install the Utilities and SDK for the SUA, which is available for Vista/Longhorn and for Server 2003. On Vista there will be an additional install option to enable su-to-root behavior, required for programs like sudo - this option is important because by default, the Administrator account is disabled in Vista and privilege escalation is achieved through UAC. Although UAC can be used to start a Unix shell as root/admin, it cannot be used to change a shell's permissions while it runs. If you install sudo this becomes possible.

In all cases, you will get two Unix shells, the Korn shell and the C shell, in your start menu. Either one will start the subsystem and run a login process that creates the necessary environment variables and such. However, there are a few notable lacks. One of them is that while x11r5 and x11r6 client libraries are installed (with the r6 libraries used by default), there is no X server. Thus far I haven't managed to port x.org to Interix (the name of the subsystem "OS") so I use a win32 X server, specifically xming which runs on everything including Vista. The second major lack is a package manager or any software beyond the most basic requirements. For resolving this issue there are a couple options; the two I have tried are InteropSystems and NetBSD pkgsrc.

Both provide a good number of commonly used programs, and support the Interix platform. However, there are some major differences: InteropSystems primarily distributes binaries, with an eye to very easy package management and rapid usability. It also integrates better with Windows, doing things like adding a Start menu link for the Bash shell if you install their package. There is a fairly good forum for assistance and mostly it's a very easy out-of-box experience. However, their package tree is somewhat limited, and installing older versions of some libraries is trickier than it might be. They suuport all versions of Interix, from 3.5 (XP-era SFU) up to 6.0 (Vista's SUA). NetBSD's pkgsrc, on the other hand, is mostly source-based (although there are some pre-built packages for Interix; roughly as many as InteropSystems has, in fact). It takes longer to compile from source, and the initial download is hefty. However, a much wider selection of packages is available (although there's no guarantee they'll all work; indeed some, such as the X server, are flagged to not even attempt to build in Interix) and the packages are presumably optimized at least somewhat for your system during compilation. It's harder to find the right packages at times, though, and I have yet to get even the source-based boo

How to Participate in Shared Source

Welcome to Shared Source

Thank you for your interest in Microsoft's Shared Source Initiative. This guide is designed to assist you through the process of becoming a Shared Source licensee.

Step One: Determine Program

Determine which licensing program fits your needs. A comprehensive list of programs, features, and requirements is available on the Shared Source Licensing Programs overview.

Enterprise Source Licensing Program (ESLP)

Government Security Program (GSP)

Most Valuable Professional Source Licensing Program (MVPSLP)

OEM Source Licensing Program (OEMSLP)

Systems Integrator Source Licensing Program (SISLP)

Availability by Geographic Market

National laws, practices, enforcement policies, and attitudes toward intellectual-property protection are reviewed in determining where Microsoft source code can be made available.

Step Two: Verify Availability and Eligibility

After selecting a licensing program

, review the eligibility requirements and geographic availability for that program. National laws, practices, enforcement policies, and attitudes toward intellectual-property protection are reviewed in determining where Microsoft source code can be made available. See the Availability by Geographic Market page for geographic market eligibility information.

Step Three: Get to the Source

Review and accept the license agreement for your program. Several Shared Source programs feature simple click-to-accept licenses, while others require separate, signed documents. Restrictions for the programs vary, so be sure to review the program descriptions.

How to Participate in Shared Source

Welcome to Shared Source

Thank you for your interest in Microsoft's Shared Source Initiative. This guide is designed to assist you through the process of becoming a Shared Source licensee.

Step One: Determine Program

Determine which licensing program fits your needs. A comprehensive list of programs, features, and requirements is available on the Shared Source Licensing Programs overview.

Enterprise Source Licensing Program (ESLP)

Government Security Program (GSP)

Most Valuable Professional Source Licensing Program (MVPSLP)

OEM Source Licensing Program (OEMSLP)

Systems Integrator Source Licensing Program (SISLP)

Availability by Geographic Market

National laws, practices, enforcement policies, and attitudes toward intellectual-property protection are reviewed in determining where Microsoft source code can be made available.

Step Two: Verify Availability and Eligibility

After selecting a licensing program

, review the eligibility requirements and geographic availability for that program. National laws, practices, enforcement policies, and attitudes toward intellectual-property protection are reviewed in determining where Microsoft source code can be made available. See the Availability by Geographic Market page for geographic market eligibility information.

Step Three: Get to the Source

Review and accept the license agreement for your program. Several Shared Source programs feature simple click-to-accept licenses, while others require separate, signed documents. Restrictions for the programs vary, so be sure to review the program descriptions.

How to Participate in Shared Source

Welcome to Shared Source

Thank you for your interest in Microsoft's Shared Source Initiative. This guide is designed to assist you through the process of becoming a Shared Source licensee.

Step One: Determine Program

Determine which licensing program fits your needs. A comprehensive list of programs, features, and requirements is available on the Shared Source Licensing Programs overview.

Enterprise Source Licensing Program (ESLP)

Government Security Program (GSP)

Most Valuable Professional Source Licensing Program (MVPSLP)

OEM Source Licensing Program (OEMSLP)

Systems Integrator Source Licensing Program (SISLP)

Availability by Geographic Market

National laws, practices, enforcement policies, and attitudes toward intellectual-property protection are reviewed in determining where Microsoft source code can be made available.

Step Two: Verify Availability and Eligibility

After selecting a licensing program

, review the eligibility requirements and geographic availability for that program. National laws, practices, enforcement policies, and attitudes toward intellectual-property protection are reviewed in determining where Microsoft source code can be made available. See the Availability by Geographic Market page for geographic market eligibility information.

Step Three: Get to the Source

Review and accept the license agreement for your program. Several Shared Source programs feature simple click-to-accept licenses, while others require separate, signed documents. Restrictions for the programs vary, so be sure to review the program descriptions.

> Of course, that means that all x86 OSs would need to support GPT, and Windows doesn't.

Actually, Windows server 2003 32 bit and Windows XP x64 both boot using the Bios and they support GPT for data volume, just not for boot ones.

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/GPT_F AQ.mspx

I'm sure you could put some code in the legacy MBR which the Bios could execute and have that code read the boot sector from a GPT partition though - it seems like something you could knock up in a few days. You'd need to make the boot time parts of Windows like OSLOADER support GPT when booting from a Bios too which they presumably don't at the moment. But if it can use GPT once it's running that's most of the problem solved. It would also let you install and use Windows on an Intel Mac on the same drive as MacOS.

In fact I don't really see why they didn't do this. It would mean that you could use GPT with a Bios machine and thus boot off drives bigger than 2TB.

Actually if all you want to do is to support big disks there's an even easier hack. Just define 0xFFFFFFFF in the partition length field in the MBR as "0xFFFFFFFF or more sectors". This is sort of the case with the protective MBR for GPT now - if the disk is bigger than 2TB, the protective partition has a length set to 0xFFFFFFFF. The difference is that in this case there is no GPT partition table containing the info - when the OS boots, it sizes the partition based on what the device returns. That would let you partition freely inside the the 2TB limit and have the last partition extend past it. Which actually covers most of the use cases for huge disks - e.g. one partion bigger than 2TB, or a boot partition smaller 2TB and a data partition bigger. The only one that is not covered is to have more than one partition bigger than 2TB.

Has anyone actually read the licenses in question? They are relatively simple and straightforward.
The biggest worry with many here is in regards to M$ and their use of patents, but in these we have:

"each contributor grants you a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license under its licensed patents"
and
"If you bring a patent claim against any contributor over patents that you claim are infringed by the software, your patent license from such contributor to the software ends automatically."

Now, IANAL, but it looks like you can't sue contributors over patent issues. If they become approved by OSI, and M$ releases some good stuff under them, then all the better, no?

You're referring to the Ms-Rl - which definitely is a crappy one. Read the other two at http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/li censingbasics/sharedsourcelicenses.mspx - they're really quite decent.

NT did include a POSIX system but that bit-rotted from lack of use and was removed I believe.

The POSIX subsystem is no longer included in Windows distributions, but you can still get it as a free download as part of Services for UNIX (SFU). (You'll also see mention of it as the Interix Subsystem and the Subsystem for UNIX-Based Applications (SUA).)

It is continually being maintained, and MS actually seems to have put an increased (albeit still small) push of it fairly recently. There is a fair suite of programs available for it, including GCC, Bash, automake/conf, SSH, etc., and it was supplanted to (supposedly) be POSIX.2 compliant. (When it shipped with Windows, it only supported POSIX.1.)

The big problem with it is that programs running under SUA can't access Windows API calls. This isn't surprising given the architecture of Windows, but it does mean that, for instance, you can't really have a GUI. I'm also not sure how complete the POSIX support actually is.

Basically I suspect it's a combination of they didn't want to put it on the CD and hence slightly encourage end users to install it (the did this with Windows 98 and TweakUI and Raymond Chen said it turned out to be a disaster for their tech support lines) and the CDs of XP being too full for it.

RTFM losers :

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa767914. aspx

Security Alert
Applications handling URL protocols must be robust in the face of malicious data. Because handler applications receive data from untrusted sources, the URL and other parameter values passed to the application may contain malicious data attempting to exploit the handling application. For this reason, handling applications that could initiate unwanted actions based on external data must first confirm those actions with the user.
Note In addition, handling applications should robustly handle URLs that are overly long or contain unexpected (or undesirable) character sequences. For more information, please see Writing Secure Code World Wide Web link.

Windows is an pathetic excuse for a platform. It doesn't even properly implement the minimal syscalls required by the POSIX standard (open, close, read, write, fork, exec).

If they actually cared about getting more open source developers to port their applications to Windows, they'd harmonise their API with the other major operating systems (Linux, OS X, Solaris, *BSD). As it is, this just looks like (yet another) an attempt by Microsoft to paint over the gaping flaws in both their business model and their approach to software development.

Wake me up when that changes. Until then, I really couldn't give a shit about Microsoft's supposed "friendliness" to open source software or their non-free "open" license.

Don't even ask to let you borrow mine, cuz you only get the wow! when it's genuine.

It seems Microsoft's approach on this site, is to twist the terminology and meaning of Open Source to link it to their products.

From the site (microsoft.com/opensource), they've linked to a PDF explaining how SharePoint (first link, 'share' and 'open') is the 'Road To Open' and the Sharepoint Learning Kit (SLK) has been released under Microsoft's own OSI-submitted open source license.

Could the idea be to confuse the average consumers (and buzz-word obsessed manager types) into thinking Microsoft when they hear 'Open Source'?

Either way, it's interesting to see them formally acknowledge their opponents - again!

I've killed some time on this since it's a pretty interesting idea. It turns out there are plenty outside the D and F range. It does seem to like pages with a single Flash object and not much else, so that's bad. It also makes some pretty arbitrary decisions which don't mean squat to many sites. There are some sites that get enough traffic that speed is a factor but not so much that a content delivery network is really necessary, for example.

I skipped the actual link and score on sites that are pretty much just representative of the sites around them. I wanted to include them by name, though, to show where they fall. I've stuck mostly to main index pages, and I've noted where I've gone deeper.

A: Google (99%), Altavista main page (98%), Altavista Babelfish (90%) (including upon doing a translation from English to French), Craigslist (96%), Pricewatch (93%), Slackware Linux, OpenBSD, Led Zeppelin site at Atlantic (100%), supremecommander.com, w3m web browser site (96%)

B: Apache.org (87%), the lighttpd web server (84%), Google Maps, which also got a C once (84% in most cases), Perlmonks (84%), Dragonfly BSD (85%), Butthole Surfers band page (81%), 37 Signals

C: One Laptop Per Child,, ESR's homepage, the Open Source Initiative (78%), Google News (73%), Lucid CMS (74%), Perl.org (75%), lucasfilm.com, Charred Dirt game

D: gnu.org, The Register, A9 (66%), kernel.org, Akamai (64%), kuro5hin.org, freshmeat.net, linuxcd.org, Movable Type (61%), Postnuke, blogster.com, Joel on Software (67%), Fog Creek Software, metallica.com, gaspowered.com, Scorched 3D (68%), id software (64%), ISBN.nu book search

F: MS IIS (49%), microsoft.com, msn.com, linux.com, fsf.org, discovery.com, newegg.com, rackspace.com, the Simtel archive (26%), CNet Download (29%), Adobe (58%), savvis.com, mtv.com, sun.com, pclinuxos.com, freebsd.org, phpnuke.org, use.perl.org, ruby-lang.org, python.org, java.com, Rolling Stones band page (56%), powellsbooks.com, amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, getfirefox.com

My site for my company (96%) gets an A (no, I'm not going to get it slashdotted) which is pretty simple but has a pic and some Javascript on it. Several sites I have done or have helped design with someone else get C or D ratings.

Sure apple has a phone that has no buttons but what about Microsoft Surface?

Wiki ... Offical Site