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guaranteeing me free access at anytime I decide not to continue the subscription?

As an aside, several Office products have free viewers available:

Word
Excel
PowerPoint
A Publisher option

If you use Outlook or Access, you should be prepared to pay the "price" associated with proprietary formats. It's one of those "no duh" given things that people usually accept. If you use Adobe's products, then you deal with their proprietary formats. Companies use these formats for a number of reasons, partially for efficiency and partially for extendability (and of course partially to lock you in to using their software).

Open formats are an interesting idea, but it's not worth griping about if you choose to use software that you know doesn't support them. It's stupid to assume that everyone will support everyone else's formats. If you are so worried about 100% coverage and support, stick to plain text files (and none of that fancy Unicode. I want to read it in Notepad!)

This has nothing to do with "renting" software. Your tirade is about open document standards, and that's off-topic and for another discussion.

guaranteeing me free access at anytime I decide not to continue the subscription?

As an aside, several Office products have free viewers available:

Word
Excel
PowerPoint
A Publisher option

If you use Outlook or Access, you should be prepared to pay the "price" associated with proprietary formats. It's one of those "no duh" given things that people usually accept. If you use Adobe's products, then you deal with their proprietary formats. Companies use these formats for a number of reasons, partially for efficiency and partially for extendability (and of course partially to lock you in to using their software).

Open formats are an interesting idea, but it's not worth griping about if you choose to use software that you know doesn't support them. It's stupid to assume that everyone will support everyone else's formats. If you are so worried about 100% coverage and support, stick to plain text files (and none of that fancy Unicode. I want to read it in Notepad!)

This has nothing to do with "renting" software. Your tirade is about open document standards, and that's off-topic and for another discussion.

guaranteeing me free access at anytime I decide not to continue the subscription?

As an aside, several Office products have free viewers available:

Word
Excel
PowerPoint
A Publisher option

If you use Outlook or Access, you should be prepared to pay the "price" associated with proprietary formats. It's one of those "no duh" given things that people usually accept. If you use Adobe's products, then you deal with their proprietary formats. Companies use these formats for a number of reasons, partially for efficiency and partially for extendability (and of course partially to lock you in to using their software).

Open formats are an interesting idea, but it's not worth griping about if you choose to use software that you know doesn't support them. It's stupid to assume that everyone will support everyone else's formats. If you are so worried about 100% coverage and support, stick to plain text files (and none of that fancy Unicode. I want to read it in Notepad!)

This has nothing to do with "renting" software. Your tirade is about open document standards, and that's off-topic and for another discussion.

guaranteeing me free access at anytime I decide not to continue the subscription?

As an aside, several Office products have free viewers available:

Word
Excel
PowerPoint
A Publisher option

If you use Outlook or Access, you should be prepared to pay the "price" associated with proprietary formats. It's one of those "no duh" given things that people usually accept. If you use Adobe's products, then you deal with their proprietary formats. Companies use these formats for a number of reasons, partially for efficiency and partially for extendability (and of course partially to lock you in to using their software).

Open formats are an interesting idea, but it's not worth griping about if you choose to use software that you know doesn't support them. It's stupid to assume that everyone will support everyone else's formats. If you are so worried about 100% coverage and support, stick to plain text files (and none of that fancy Unicode. I want to read it in Notepad!)

This has nothing to do with "renting" software. Your tirade is about open document standards, and that's off-topic and for another discussion.

Why must we force people of lower income to either pay what is beyond their reach for our tools or by forced to use inferior versions? In the financial situation of most of us, if we choose to pay Microsoft $400 for the usage of their software, we may complain, but it is really not that much relative to our other costs. For those that have lower income, because this is so much beyond what they could ever afford, M$ is rolling out programs like this. But is it being a "responsible global citizen"? http://www.microsoft.com/about/corporatecitizenshi p/citizenship/default.mspx

Why not adjust the prices according to the relative financial burden on the average person in an area? With Microsoft's activation system, they could prevent having their products imported to other countries.

It is unfair and unkind to either force the less blessed on the earth to use stripped-down versions of software, such as Windows XP Starter Edition, or to gouge out their money through plans like this.

(I'm not trying to be a Microsoft-bashing troll.)

OSS is clunky, junky, unpatched, non-integrated smorgasbord of incompatible offerings.

I used to enjoy "the idea" of oss, but over the years, I realized that ideas and ideals is one thing, but if you want a powerful, easy to use, secure systems for average end user, Microsoft is the ONLY way to go and will be for a very long time.

Microsoft is the company that has best resources and well-paid talent. Microsoft is a leader in R&D (don't take my word for it, do your own research, check out ftp://ftp.research.microsoft.com/ for example) so on and so forth. I don't have time to waist convincing amateurs here of anything.

Good luck with that -- migrating from Groupwise to Exchange was fun enough, with lots of tools that make it "seamless" *cough*. Again, $wonderWebAppName completely fails to understand the real issues with new technology adoption in the Real World(tm): data migration.

Has Microsoft started to use managed code within the kernel itself? It's understandable that some portions of the kernel could never be written using managed code, but some of the higher-level components could be. Now, it wouldn't be an easy task by any means, and it would likely result in further performance issues, but the security gains could be significant.

Perhaps even more interestingly, Visual Studio 2003 is not supported on Vista. Microsoft's advice for those of us who still need to develop for .Net 1.1 on Windows, but would also like to upgrade to Vista is

a. Run VS 2003 in a virtualized XP environment. (!?!?!?) or
b. Don't worry...it will *mostly* work - just don't try and 'complex debugging'. (!?!?!?)

Behold: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/bb188244. aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2006/09/26 /772250.aspx

Not only that but VS 2005 - yes, the latest version - requires a Vista compatibility service pack, after which it still complains about incompatibility and needing a FICTIONAL *Vista* update. (Though, it does work if you press 'Continue').

So, is it really any suprise that it doesn't officially support major products from other vendors? *Sigh*

So now that Windows doesn't have support for this and that software

Funnily enough, they've included Visual Studio on the list. Two things to note about this:

• Visual Studio 2005 will only be supported with SP1... which, er, hasn't been released yet
• Visual Studio 2002 and 2003 aren't being supported at all and the MS FAQ for VS on Vista recommends for non-VS 2005 development tools that you install SP1 for Vista... which, er, hasn't been released yet

So, currently no version of VS is supported. It makes me wonder if any other MS products missing from the list or misleadingly added to it?

I'm pretty sure Microsoft already does this.

They do. It's called SharePoint.

It probably costs an arm and a leg, though.

Free, if you have Windows 2003.

I'm pretty sure Microsoft already does this.

They do. It's called SharePoint.

It probably costs an arm and a leg, though.

Free, if you have Windows 2003.

Here it is. Yes, it's old and incomplete and buggy, but it's not totally unavailable.

See Groove or SharePoint.

See Groove or SharePoint.

Even the architectural flaws that allowed the good ol' shatter attack to work in some rare cases is now quashed in Vista, as lower-priv windows cannot pass messages to higher-priv windows.

Now there is an OPTIONAL mechanism to allow 'advertised' apps to be run with elevated privs, but this is off by default, and only works on applications that have been 'advertised' to the machine by the domain or system admins.

There is also an optional mechanism to allow all MSI apps to run with elevated privileges, but this is off by default, and can only be turned on by an admin. And its advertised all over the documentation as 'a bad idea'.

Some references:

Installing a Package with Elevated Privileges for a Non-Admin

Note that this worked substantially the same in XP.

It's used everywhere, by a large number of (competently written) software and software installers.

It's used extensively in XP and Vista (which are all just later generations of NT).

They are well understood by competent sysadmins and programmers on the platform. I find it really sad to hear that this sort of thing is a surprise to anybody, as its just part of the platform that you need to know about to use effectively.

Is it well documented?

Well, this is probably not comprehensive, but a 10-second google search gives me this as the first result. It's from the 2003 server docs, but its the same set of rights in XP and Vista (though Vista may have some new ones).

http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/en/lib rary/ab66826b-3230-4d3f-a8df-2491b10473ec1033.mspx ?mfr=true

For anyone who works professionally in this industry on windows system administration, this is not news, this is well known stuff. Yes, there are plenty of incompetent ('hey, my cousin does windows administration in his spare time from high school') administrators out there, but thats not what we're talking about.

There are wizards that will import office docs and convert VBA modules after they are exported - http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa537176( office.11).aspx#officevstoexcelvbamigration_migrat ingprojectsfromvbatovsto/ but not UserForms in Excel. I'm curious what the process is like with an Access-based VBA app.

So I'll take that part back - but not the part about inertia and disincentives...

Symantec AV often lags behind in protection and definitions. The worst recent example that comes to mind is the spread of hacktool.rootkit (aka about a million things), which was implemented in countless malware releases. Symantec was AFAIK the only mainstream antivirus program that missed detecting it as it was installed. My flavors of choice are:
AVG Free antivirus
LavaSoft Adaware
and Spybot Search and Destroy.

Very little can get by this trifecta. When I suspect that a machine has received an infection that these three can't remove, I research the individual piece of malware on sites like CastleCops or I just Google it by process name.

I also keep archives of RootKitRevealer, peperfix.exe and HijackThis.

As for ad blocking, it's something we're mulling over but it's not natively in IE7. I'm sure there are add-ins you can get for IE that will block ads.

I use EverythingIsn't hosts file to block ads, plus AdBlock in Firefox.

agree with you in the sense that all this hoo hah about Vista's caching is utterly devoid of point.

However, you should bear in mind that Linux and FreeBSD already have (and have had for a long time!) caching performance equal to or greater than that of Vista.

As far as Unix-based OS's are concerned, this has been standard. In fact, I think I'm correct in saying that XP implemented it in some minor fashion when it was released (quite a while back by the way).

Most OSes have lazy and even look ahead type of caching, Vista's is doing things a little bit different, as it looks at user usage patterns, application usage patterns, and even boot and driver usage patterns, etc.

There is a lot more going on in Vista than just 'caching', Superfetch is more about optimal caching with several new ways of handling what and when to cache data. There is also a reason ReadyBoost in Vista works, even though Flash Sticks are slower than a HD for continuous R/W.

In the OSS world, there are things we can learn and use from this, instead of dismissing Vista with the common, oh we have had these features for years, when in fact we haven't.

Even NT 3.1 had both lazy and limited look ahead caching, so yes you are right that XP had implemented different variations of caching even back in 2001; they were new to XP. However some of the caching policies in XP were both ahead of Linux and BSD and some of the caching was behind how things are done in Linux and BSD. File copying with no priority (behind), active prefetch monitoring (ahead), etc.

This article not only explains a bit about why Vista is different, but also contrasts the differences by using Win2k and XP as examples of how common caching was handled in the past. MS was well aware of the 'same priority for all' and how this didn't scale well for the user experience.

Take a look at the guts of what it is doing and why it is different than even what you find in Linux or BSD.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues /2007/03/VistaKernel/

I've always been a bot confused by the ubiquitous amounts of "free memory" that could be put to better use; is it just that task manager doesn't report that memory as being used?

Actually, ignore the above. I didn't realize it was pay-for crapware. Try the sysinternals utilities:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/File AndDisk/pendmoves.mspx

You're giving them too much credit. This is a case of plain old stupidity.

Plus, their apology and recommendations aren't any less stupid. From TFA : Microsoft recommends customers follow our Protect your PC guidance at www.microsoft.com/protect.

Let's have a look at their guidance: Protect your computer in 4 steps :

Step 1. Keep your firewall turned on
A firewall is useless in this situation. The user manually downloaded and executed a piece of software.

Step 2. Keep your operating system up-to-date
See step 1.

Step 3. Use updated antivirus software
That's exactly what the user is trying to do. The message lets the user believe he needs to use this software as a protection against viruses, spyware and whatnot. Plus, it's on a Microsoft.com page. You gotta trust Microsoft.

Step 4. Use updated antispyware technology
See step 3.

Which is free to download by the way.

Except for how Vista's memory sweet spot is FOUR TIMES that of any contemporary desktop OS. Do you really consider that being in the same ballpark?

You are missing the point... Vista's sweet spot is 512mb to 1GB as well.

The difference with Vista, is that as you keep throwing RAM at it, it uses the extra RAM in its 'smart' caching system to take advantage of the 'free' RAM to increase the performance of the computer. So even if Vista and all your running applications only require 500mb or RAM, Vista will keep getting faster with extra RAM that the OS and applications don't need.

So Vista's sweet spot is where it surpasses XP (512MB to 1GB), but you can keep throwing RAM in Vista and Vista will continue to get faster as it will 'intelligently' cache more data from the Hard Drive in anticipation of it being used, hence less disk access because the data is already in the RAM cache.

If you go by the 'concept' that Vista's sweet spot is 4GB because that is as much RAM as you can throw in the computer, then on Vista 64bit, if we throw 128GB in the machine, you could also call that its sweet spot, as Vista would be using all that extra RAM to pre-cache even more of your applications and data. Although there would eventually hit a limit based on the amount of applications and data actually on your Hard Drives.

I posted this link a few times, but in case peeps have missed it, go read about this from the horses mouth and not some bad review.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues /2007/03/VistaKernel/

Take Care,
TheNetAvenger

P.S. can anyone confirm or deny whether previous versions of NT held stuff in RAM? I've always been a bot confused by the ubiquitous amounts of "free memory" that could be put to better use; is it just that task manager doesn't report that memory as being used?


NT has always cached to various degrees, but it evolved over the years.

Rather than bore people or badly try to explain it myself, some of the details of what XP and Win2K did is used as an example of how Vista does it differently in this article:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues /2007/03/VistaKernel/

It also has detailed info on Superfetch and other caching techniques in Vista.

PS Thanks for the patchset info and link, I will have to take a look at it. Just a quick glance it looks like it does some of what Vista is doing by moving user application RAM back for responsiveness. Check out the article above, and you will see what I mean.

I'm also glad to see that concepts like these are not lost in the OSS world, and also hope that other good ideas, whether from MS or not, that Vista is doing different than the norm. won't be overlooked, as some of things could truly benefit the OSS world.

'the Linux world can replace that code with something else that is not infringing'

I think he realises they claims that OSS violates MS Intelluctual Property are void. Else why are they going about reinventing open protocols. According to the Halloween documents one way of deny OSS projects entry into the market is to de-commoditize protocols & applications.

In KERNEL32.DLL, the code for PulseEvent begins like this:
 

PulseEvent proc
PUSH 00
PUSH DWORD PTR [ESP+08]
CALL DWORD PTR [NtPulseEvent]
 

All KERNEL32.DLL does is grab the single parameter off the stack and pass it as a parameter to an NTDLL.DLL function. In NTDLL.DLL, the code for NtPulseEvent looks like this:

 

NtPulseEvent proc
MOV EAX,0000005C
LEA EDX,[ESP+04]
INT 2E
RET 0008
 

Try here. Search for "File System and Registry Virtualization".

If you want more details, consult MSDN or Google.

A google search on 'graphics card aero' will give you plenty of advice - along the lines of a DX 9 capable graphics card.

In addition the Windows Upgrade Advisor possibly tells you. It will also highlight any devices/applications that are not supported.

it is a well known fact that anyone describing operating system performance in terms of "snappiness" has no idea how to measure operating system performance, and is probably a victim of the placebo effect.

It's always been true for Mac fanboys, and it's true for Vista ones too...


I don't know anything about the parent poster you were responding to, but there are a lot of people relate 'snappiness' to application startup and switch times, you know, 'responsiveness'.

Here is a link; he doesn't use the word 'snappiness', but I think he means what the parent post was talking about. Also, even in the SlashDot world, I don't think many people would argue this person doesn't know what they are talking about.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues /2007/03/VistaKernel/

Your understanding of the LDDM (WGL, or whatever the heck you want to call it) is grossly oversimplified and vastly fanboyish.


First off, LDDM was the code name from back in 2005, (Longhorn Device Driver Model); however, since Vista is NOT called Longhorn, the name is now referred to as WDDM (Windows Device Driver Model). Ever hear of Wikipedia or Google? This is easy stuff to look up, even for causal SlashDot readers.

As for my understanding of Vista's driver model and handling of GPU textures I won't repeat myself, and instead will point you to find the answers for yourself because you do seem either angry or confused.

"WDDM enables multiple applications to utilize the GPU simultaneously by implementing the following:

GPU memory manager--arbitrates video memory allocation
GPU scheduler--schedules various GPU applications according to their priority
With these technologies, applications no longer have to cede the GPU when another application requiring its services starts-up. Instead, the GPU is scheduled in a more efficient fashion."

From: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480220. aspx

"WDDM now allows for "virtualized" video memory. Virtualization abstracts video memory so that it is no longer necessary to think about creating a resource in either video or system memory. Just specify what the resource is going to be used for and the system will place the memory in the best place possible. Additionally, virtualization allows for the allocation of more memory than actually exists on the hardware. Memory is then paged into the correct hardware as needed."

From: http://www.microsoft.com/indonesia/msdn/wvddirectx .aspx


I would pull more technical stuff for you, but based on the 'quality' of your response, I grabbed the first non-technical documents on this for you to read and reference.

Next time, do your own homework before attacking someone's post that you have NO CLUE what you are even responding to.

PS - Will the person that modded the parent post 'Insightful', please also take a minute to actually look some of this stuff up before clapping like a silly schoolboy on something they ALSO know nothing about.

Your understanding of the LDDM (WGL, or whatever the heck you want to call it) is grossly oversimplified and vastly fanboyish.


First off, LDDM was the code name from back in 2005, (Longhorn Device Driver Model); however, since Vista is NOT called Longhorn, the name is now referred to as WDDM (Windows Device Driver Model). Ever hear of Wikipedia or Google? This is easy stuff to look up, even for causal SlashDot readers.

As for my understanding of Vista's driver model and handling of GPU textures I won't repeat myself, and instead will point you to find the answers for yourself because you do seem either angry or confused.

"WDDM enables multiple applications to utilize the GPU simultaneously by implementing the following:

GPU memory manager--arbitrates video memory allocation
GPU scheduler--schedules various GPU applications according to their priority
With these technologies, applications no longer have to cede the GPU when another application requiring its services starts-up. Instead, the GPU is scheduled in a more efficient fashion."

From: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480220. aspx

"WDDM now allows for "virtualized" video memory. Virtualization abstracts video memory so that it is no longer necessary to think about creating a resource in either video or system memory. Just specify what the resource is going to be used for and the system will place the memory in the best place possible. Additionally, virtualization allows for the allocation of more memory than actually exists on the hardware. Memory is then paged into the correct hardware as needed."

From: http://www.microsoft.com/indonesia/msdn/wvddirectx .aspx


I would pull more technical stuff for you, but based on the 'quality' of your response, I grabbed the first non-technical documents on this for you to read and reference.

Next time, do your own homework before attacking someone's post that you have NO CLUE what you are even responding to.

PS - Will the person that modded the parent post 'Insightful', please also take a minute to actually look some of this stuff up before clapping like a silly schoolboy on something they ALSO know nothing about.

I'd love to see the CAPP/EAL4 configuration guide for Vista. It should probably list a couple hundred unnecessary processes that will be turned off in order to pass the qualification. I have used the list for WinXP to good effect - turn all the shit off and the desktop runs a lot faster without any loss of any features I need. See this: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?Fa milyId=A7075319-CC3D-4420-A00B-8C9A7068AD54&displa ylang=en Page 275 lists all the redundant processes in WinXP that can be turned off.

Respectfully, I must disagree.

What's important to Microsoft is that you bought a copy of Windows. Ie: that they've made their money.

What MS actually cares about is their revenue stream. You bought Windows, and they want that. But they also want you to buy the next Windows too. Their business model is all about repeat business. That's why they keep giving the users reasons to buy the next Windows. Like...not making DX10 available for XP, but only for Vista.

Running a piece of software on a VM running Windows is not "running it anywhere", it's running it on Windows.

Sort of. But running it in a VM implies a possible different host OS. With that host OS, you might find that you like it more and use the VM just for applications that have no Mac or Linux port. You might not buy the next Windows. You might just use XP as a translation layer to run a couple of old rusty apps and stay in your new OS. Which is what they are worried about. Anything that removes users from their revenue stream is what they are worried about.

Microsoft only really care that they sell you a copy of Windows. How you choose to use that copy is of distant secondary importance.

They do care how you use your copy. See here. Remember - it's their revenue stream they are trying to maintain. They do not look at a user as a single sale. A user is a stream. Buy this. Then buy this. Then buy this.

PAE
PAE on Windows

While I know you were talking specifically to the desktop oriented versions of Windows 32-bit, there is obviously code there somewhere to do it.

Here is where you can get more geeky information about the SenseCam that Bell uses. It senses body heat and changes in light level to take pictures which are considered "interesting".

--Rob

I flat out don't believe you. What couldn't they find in Vista? What's so drastically different from XP? Did they fail to notice the handy (new) search bar? Do they not know how to make shortcuts?

There's always going to be a bit of a learning curve with any new product that is different even in the slightest of ways. Complaining about how it's different is asinine to me...if they just wanted XP because that's what they were used to, then why were they shopping for new computers? Sounds like you weren't much of a help at all.

And as for this nonsense about Vista being a memory hog and performance drain...that is demonstrably false. I have a 3 year old Dell that I've just upgraded with Vista, and if anything, Vista is snappier.

You are right about one thing, though; XP is next to impossible to find:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?j=1&id=cat 16104&type=category
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/5385 14/ref=br_bx_c_2_1/103-9340057-3065405
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/search-ng.gsp?searc h_constraint=3944&search_query=windows+xp&Continue .x=22&Continue.y=7
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/home/howtobuy/d efault.mspx
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?DEPA =0&type=&Description=xp&Submit=ENE&N=0&Ntk=all

MS supports running Linux on Virtual Server 2005 R2...

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/virtu alserver/evaluation/linuxguestsupport/default.mspx ...though I have no idea how well it works.

The guest OS' supported are pretty much the same ones as under VMware VI3.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931836 supercedes 928388. From that article: "In addition to the changes that are listed in the previous table, this update adds registry keys that store historical DST data for certain time zones. These keys are present in Windows Vista and are included to keep parity in the Windows time zone registry structure." My interpretation of this statement is that Vista already had the feature, and this update is adding it to XP. The XP patch adds the dynamic definitions to the registry, which is another reason I think my interpretation might be right. I'll have to spend a little time playing with time settings and see if XP really does honor the dynamic definitions.

And if you read the KB article 928388 properly you will see that only Vista makes any use of the dynamic timezones.

Any Windows OS other than Vista will not correctly determine the tz offset for DST periods in years prior to 2007. This is a real blow for data logging applications that would like to present historical data in the local tz.

Its called http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa686048. aspx"dotfulscate"

Something to be wary of with regards to Vista OEM installations is that there are bugs with the way it renames folders and files on network shares. This results in Vista leaving items such as "New Folder" and "New Text Document". Apparently the OEMs are pointing the finger at Microsoft and Microsoft are pointing the finger back at OEMs. There is more info here: http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx? PostID=522208&SiteID=17&PageID=1

Are there any other 'big picture' problems out there you think would benefit from the grid approach?

I can think of two:

this

...and this.