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http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?fa milyid=e59c3964-672d-4511-bb3e-2d5e1db91038&displa ylang=en

About as close as you are going to get at the moment. I wish for it too.
Something to think about: build you page in Firefox and get it perfect there, only then should you try to go out of your way to make it work ok in IE (much easier than the other way around).

"Can you name another corporation that has thrived because it convinced people its product was good and it really wasn't?"

Yes

Of course the EU would say that, Europeans are socialists and Linux is communism.

Want the truth? Get the facts where they are totally straight and objective, from honest American corporations.

(Insert tongue in cheek)

Microsoft published a registry fix for this problem here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/914387/en-us They also have a full page devoted to their products here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/timezone/dst2007. mspx. Don't forget your Windows mobile phones. For a good list of these and other vendor's fixes, checkout this article: http://www.edgeblog.net/2007/daylight-saving-time- the-year-2007-problem While registry fixes aren't perfect, they do work. At least Microsoft has been upfront about the problem. It has been much harder to find fixes/patches from Sun, Cisco, Oracle, etc. Complaining that Microsoft did not release a patch for an out-of-support product, is like getting mad at RedHat for not patching version 7. All vendors end support eventually. And, don't even think of asking for a fix from your PBX vendor, your time clock vendor, or your cell phone carrier. They'll just tell you to manually set it. My microwave blinks 12:00, but it least it will still be right twice a day...

Microsoft published a registry fix for this problem here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/914387/en-us They also have a full page devoted to their products here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/timezone/dst2007. mspx. Don't forget your Windows mobile phones. For a good list of these and other vendor's fixes, checkout this article: http://www.edgeblog.net/2007/daylight-saving-time- the-year-2007-problem While registry fixes aren't perfect, they do work. At least Microsoft has been upfront about the problem. It has been much harder to find fixes/patches from Sun, Cisco, Oracle, etc. Complaining that Microsoft did not release a patch for an out-of-support product, is like getting mad at RedHat for not patching version 7. All vendors end support eventually. And, don't even think of asking for a fix from your PBX vendor, your time clock vendor, or your cell phone carrier. They'll just tell you to manually set it. My microwave blinks 12:00, but it least it will still be right twice a day...

Does that include the ability to only run on Vista?

That's probably a safe bet. Windows XP would actually be out of "mainstream support" today (more than 5 years from release) if Vista hadn't been delayed. Microsoft decided a year ago to extend support for XP indefinitely. Now that Vista's out, WinXP is the new Win2k. It seem likely that XP will drop into "extended support" (i.e. security fixes only, and only for XP Pro) sometime during the "18-24 month" timeframe cited for IE8

Right, my mistake, on the 2.5 million being an estimate.

But the graph you listed isn't total sales, it's U.S. sales. Microsoft shipped 1.5 million units (via wikipedia) worldwide by EOY 2005. I wouldn't say that's missing their initial 90 day estimate by more than half (as one would have to count Jan/Feb 2006).

If an operating system does not define a language for a government agency to express amendments to time zone rules so that the people can download and install patches from a web site operated by the government, then the operating system is broken.

WOW! You couldn't be MORE WRONG! I probably hate M$ more than most, and I can tell you right now there is no legit reason to blame M$ for this one. When was the last time the laws regarding DST start/stop were changed? How could M$ or any other software company POSSIBLY have foreseen the need to change this on-the-fly?

And, if you bothered to read the M$ tech article on this you would know that they DO provide a way to update for this unforseen change that came along well after the release of Windows 2000. Yes it is a manual process but at least you can adjust Win2K to follow this recent change in DST start/stop.

No, Win2K is not broken (well, not because of this, heh). How ever I am miffed that M$ is not just releasing a free patch for Win2K users, it wouldn't be THAT difficult for them to do! They simply are trying to find more ways to kill off Win2K so they can get us hold outs to buy WinXP even though we don't want it... They are pissed that so many people still find Win2K and Office2K perfectly fine for their needs and are not willing to fork over hundreds of dollars for new software that they really don't need...

There are also some GPL things that may work. Can't think of them right off hand. If these are *nux desktops/servers, you have plenty of time to write a perl/bash/python to accomplish the task. Some other slashdot user is going to have to give you advice for a windows environment at this stage of the game you are in.

Hi, I'm "some other Slashdot user," and my advice for the Windows environment is the same as for Linux. Well...almost. If you are running Windows XP on the desktop or 2003 on the server (or later) then Microsoft already has released a patch that should have been part of your regular patch cycle. If not, it's time to dig out WSUS (it's free from Microsoft) or whatever patch management system that you are using to manage your 7000 servers. If you truly have 7000 servers and no patch management system in place, then you are not only screwed, but you are stupid as well.

Now, for anything that is Windows 2000 or older, you will have to manually patch the system, and without the benefit of a patch from Microsoft. No problem. Just hit their Technet article about the issue here and read up on what it entails. Basically, you manually patch one machine of each OS type, export the relevant registry keys, and then import them on the rest of the machines of the matching OS type. Or you can script the install. The referenced site even provides the batch files necessary, but if you want to get fancy you could script it with VBS, Perl, or Javascript (assuming that all of the machines to be patched have WSH installed). You could spend a couple days perfecting the technique and then let the patching script run until it is finished. It shouldn't take too long.

And as far as I'm aware, none of the DST patches (or registry fixes) requires a reboot to complete. All it does is change the date that the DST shift occurs.

Considering MS already provides a tool that updates timezones, right back to NT4 all they're doing is not wanting to regression test on out of date systems. So tell me, are Redhat producing updates for 10 year old linux installs?

Microsoft does some incredibly stupid things, for no good reason...

The most major and glaring idiocy in Windows is hard disk controller drivers. For this reason alone, I wouldn't ever suggest using Windows as a server (or on ANY type of system that is remotely important in any way).

If you take the hard drive out of one machine (perhaps after it has become a smoldering pile of metal and circuit boards) and install it in different system, there's an extremely good chance Windows NT3.1/NT3.5/NT4.0/2000/XP/2003/Vista/etc. will BSOD. It will crash and burn before you can even boot into safe mode.

You see, for some reason, Windows has a different, incompatible driver for every different brand of controller. For IDE/SATA-based systems, there are basically 4 (VIA, Intel, etc.). Microsoft's only official solution to this problem is for you to buy exactly the same hardware again.

To their credit, they now have an unofficial and unsupported fix... and it only took them a little more than a decade from the onset... Now that's a speedy response!

The solution is to basically extract all the drivers from a .CAB file on the hard drive, and add a load of registry entries that basically enables all 4 of them.

There are a few surprising things about this. First is how screwed you are if you don't know about this BEFORE your machine turns to mud, as you can't boot-up your system in order to add the necessary registry entries to begin with. Thanks to unofficial options like Bart'sPE and it's remote registry editor, you can spend a couple hours sorting out the mess, locating keys, copying, editing, and finally modifying the reg files so they can be added to the non-running system. EVENTUALLY, if you know enough about what you're doing, you can get it to work, and finally be able to boot-up your system.

The second surprising thing about this is that the problem is extremely serious, fixing it after-the-fact is extremely difficult even now, (it was borderline impossible before BartPE), yet the fix is minor and has no negative effects, and still, in the past decade of NT systems with this problem, Microsoft has NEVER made this behavior the default. The files and information are all already on the hard drive of every Windows system installed, the OS simply just won't consider using them.

For some reason Microsoft WANTS Windows to crash when you change the hard disk controller. ALL other hardware changes will be detected by the system, and proper drivers automatically installed by (recent versions of) Windows.

The number of registry fixes I add to any fresh Windows system to avoid bugs, stupid behaviors, bad defaults, and show-stoppers like this on, is absolutely staggering.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/updat eservices/default.mspx

That, along with proper scripting of "shutdown -r /m \\computername" should get you through it.

Microsoft has always had a supported way of making your own changes to your timezone settings. It comes in a program called tzedit.exe and has existed since windows 95 at least. This requires no downloads from third parties. Here's the instructions (taken from: http://www.dbaplace.com/2007-dst-change/#comments)
Every version of Windows has a "resource kit", though Microsoft only supports Win98+ so you may need to hit old download sites for those ancient versions of Windows. You can download the resource kit from http://www.microsoft.com/windows/reskits/. Download this if you do not have it already.

Once the resource kit is downloaded and installed search your disk drive for tzedit.exe and run it.

Select your timezone from the list and click edit.

You'll have two boxes "Start Day" and "End Day" change these from what they are to what they need to be for the new change.

Click Ok, then Close.

To make the settings take effect restart, or select Date/Time from the control panel, choose a different timezone, save and close then repeat selecting your correct timezone this time.

Sounds about as easy as going here - the official free solutions from Microsoft - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/914387 [microsoft.com]

You don't need the extended hotfix to "fix" W2K. The official free solutions from Microsoft can be found here - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/914387

Even though Microsoft may be within their rights to not support a 6 year old OS, it would be a good idea for them to roll out a patch for an annoyance like the DST change. It would be a sign of good will to past and hopefully future customers, and it just plain looks bad for unofficial sources to be offering patches for Windows. Even if the OS has gone past end of life, the Windows brand is Microsoft's bread and butter. They really can't just sit back and let anyone offer up patches for it. Besides, these aren't blue haired grandmas running Windows 2K. Some of these people/companies might just buy something if you treat them right.

The funny thing is that they have already very nearly provided a patch. They have a freely downloadable tool called TXEDIT that will allow you to manually make the change to your system. Problem solved. If you have multiple computers to update, they provide instructions for exporting the relevant registry keys which can then be imported into the other systems. If you have a lot of PCs to upgrade they have provide scripts that will automatically apply the update to all of the systems within a domain. What more could you want from them?

Full details are here.

You don't need a server to do rolling back ups of your files nightly.

I use synctoy, it's a power toy from MS Sync Toy you could easilly install that on your windows box and set it up to run nightly to back up any new/changed files.
I use it to keep my main desktop box in sync with my laptop quickly as well as keep a back up on an external hard drive.

And we don't complain to Microsoft for not providing us a fix for it.

Microsoft's web guys are on top of things:

Try http://www.microsoft.com/unix/123 again now and you get some boilerplate text with links to migrating to Windows, interopability, etc.

I'd assume that /. sent enough people trying to view microsoft.com/unix that some trigger was raised on the high number of requests for a particular page which didn't exist.

There has been a patch for XP
here is a KB article with patches for XP and 2003 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928388

Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 were already updated through Windows Update. Windows XP SP1, Win2K and previous versions of Windows are no longer supported and must be fixed manually. See http://www.microsoft.com/windows/timezone/dst2007. mspx for details.

Most database vendors (Oracle,IBM) require patches to support the new DST. I haven't found anything on MSSQL yet. Anyone have an idea if it is affected by DST?

This knowledge base article from Microsoft describes how to use the Time Zone Editor utility (which you can download from that page) to adjust time zone settings.

If you need to update several computers, it also describes which registry keys to export. You can then import those registry keys in a logon script or whatever.

It's not like people/companies running Win2k are SOL.

Turn on RIS on on eof your windows servers. Boot from youor network card. Make one image with all the drivers that you need and be done with it. Works like a charm. Takes a little to get it running though. You can even integrate hotfixes and service packs every month if you would like to as well.

You will be happy when it is all running, and all you have to do to "re-image" a machine is to bootfrom the network and login.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windo ws2000serv/deploy/depopt/remoteos.mspx

You can use a valid volume license and use your valid OEM keys . Read this doc from MS.

http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/6/7/067ff 52c-a552-4f6e-852c-03d086b41f68/reimaging.doc

Why not have a go at setting up a RIS server? It's extremely easy to set up and (as long as your client machines have PXE compatible NICs) it cuts install time considerably. Teamed with Active Directory (Group Policy) to publish or assign applications to workstations you'll have done most of the donkey work just by carrying the machine to the desk it's going to live under.

Look into it: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windo ws2000pro/deploy/depopt/ris.mspx

I use a Windows 2000 RIS Server to deploy Windows XP Professional and Windows Server 2003 without issue.

Microsoft recently bought them out, but sysinternals usually has the answer to things like this:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/util ities/Autoruns.mspx

It enumerates pretty much everything set to launch at start up and gives you the option to turn it off.

RPC under HTTPS requires XP SP2 (or SP1 with http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=331320) -- which Crossover currently doesn't support.

True, but it is still an issue. Look at what happened when Red Hat and later Fedora left out all MP3 software after getting the letter from FhG.

Yes, Winamp uses a codec provided by Microsoft, which I believe comes with a license tied to the use of the codec on Microsoft Windows brand operating systems.

Yet still an issue.

But how well would iTunes software run under a workalike operating system? It fails in Wine.

Maybe not copyright law but contract law. The "supplemental EULA" for at least Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player require a valid Windows EULA; see IE Supplemental EULA. The EULA for Office 2003 doesn't appear to have such a restriction, but doesn't it depend on product activation, which has its own EULA and emulator-detection capability?

I didn't say it could. People demand familiarity, and Windows provides familiarity.

As the first high-definition format to reach the U.S. market with support on Windows Vista, HD DVD will offer consumers unrivaled picture and sound quality, extending the entertainment experience far beyond that of today's DVDs. HD DVD will offer new levels of interactivity and the ability to stream HD DVD movies across a home network or enjoy them on portable video devices...

As the first high-definition format to reach the U.S. market with support on Windows Vista, HD DVD will offer consumers unrivaled picture and sound quality, extending the entertainment experience far beyond that of today's DVDs. HD DVD will offer new levels of interactivity and the ability to stream HD DVD movies across a home network or enjoy them on portable video devices...

Installer Detection Technology

Installation programs are applications designed to deploy software, and most write to system directories and registry keys. These protected system locations are typically writeable only by an administrator user, which means that standard users do not have sufficient access to install programs. Windows Vista heuristically detects installation programs and requests administrator credentials or approval from the administrator user in order to run with access privileges. Windows Vista also heuristically detects updater and uninstallation programs. Note that a design goal of UAC is to prevent installations from being executed without the user's knowledge and consent since they write to protected areas of the file system and registry.

Installer Detection only applies to:

1. 32 bit executables

2. Applications without a requestedExecutionLevel

3. Interactive processes running as a Standard User with LUA enabled

Before a 32 bit process is created, the following attributes are checked to determine whether it is an installer:

Filename includes keywords like "install," "setup," "update," etc.

Keywords in the following Versioning Resource fields: Vendor, Company Name, Product Name, File Description, Original Filename, Internal Name, and Export Name.

Keywords in the side-by-side manifest embedded in the executable.

Keywords in specific StringTable entries linked in the executable.

Key attributes in the RC data linked in the executable.

Targeted sequences of bytes within the executable.

...the SQL database implementations simply aren't built with CLOBs and BLOBs in mind.

This is extremely true.

I work on a web application that stores a lot of documents (on of our clients stores +50Gb). The database back end is SQL Server (yeah I know). When it was designed (~8 years ago) we decided to store the documents in the filesystem and store the paths in the database. This was largely for performance reasons, although some other considerations were the size of database backups and general db management. It was anticipated that in the future we would moce the documents into the db when performance improved sufficiently. It hasn't.

According to Inside SQL Server 2000, all data in SQL server is stored on 8K pages in B trees. BLOBs and CLOBs are broken up into 8K chunks. Performance on reading and writing this data is obviously not fantastic, particularly when you have largish files (we have files that are +100Mb, average size of files would be ~2Mb). In addition the tools in SQL server for adding and retrieving BLOBs are a major headache.

SQL Server is not designed for BLOBs. I can't comment on other relational databases, but I suspect that they would suffer similar issues.

i don't get it. i read nothing but bitch, cry, moan and beg from Slashdot readers regarding how shitty MS Windows's security is and now MS is stepping up and put more restriction on Windows and now you want to bitch, cry, moan and beg about how unfriendly Windows is. how about read this article http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/07/01/UAC /default.aspx ,see it's not hard to write app that will play nice with Vista, no? typical execuse from OSS fanboys. Do you want Bill Gates to give you bj so you can stop bitch, cry, moan and beg?

There are rules for what EXEs automatically generate an elevated permissions request. See the documentation:

http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsVista/en/libr ary/00d04415-2b2f-422c-b70e-b18ff918c2811033.mspx? mfr=true

Look for "installer detection".

LUA's can already be found in Windows XP, but nobody uses them because of the onerous restrictions they place on usability.

LUA's can already be found in Windows XP, but nobody uses them because of the onerous restrictions they place on usability.

More appropriate would be to say "or else use a kernel you don't want to." It's just as much of a nightmare being forced to upgrade your kernel as well. Gaming is very sensitive to kernel version (just read the Cedega release notes re: versions 2.6.9 and 2.6.10). Upgrading from 2.6.15 to 2.6.16 caused some Cedega-supported games to stop working.

My major issue with the binary driver is security. Because the driver is a kernel module, remote exploits of the NVIDIA driver will hack the kernel every time. Online gaming brings new life to the idea of remotely exploiting the NVIDIA driver, and not having an auditable driver is a big issue. It took them over 2 years to fix a reported, remotely exploitable issue. It's unacceptable to be forced to use such crap. The only other alternative is to use some other crap which suffers from exactly the same problems. I wish something would shake up the 3D market, but somehow I doubt this project is going to unseat NVIDIA. :(

I'm not an expert but...

  Volume Licensing programs: For organizations that use multiple copies of Microsoft software, Volume Licensing is a flexible and economical way to acquire from five to thousands of licenses for software. Volume Licensing agreements, including Academic Volume Licenses, do not offer the full license for Windows Client operating systems; Volume Licensing covers only Windows Client upgrades. The full operating system license must be acquired as FPP or pre-installed by an OEM or System Builder.

Q. Can I order a PC with no operating system from a manufacturer and then use my Volume License to install Windows on the desktop?
A. No. Volume License agreements--including Academic, Government, and Public Sector--never cover the initial full Windows Client operating system license. Volume License agreements cover only Windows Client upgrade licenses. Windows upgrades are designed to upgrade previously acquired qualifying desktop operating system licenses. See the PUR for more information on qualifying underlying licenses.

pasted from http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/resources/faq.m spx

Even Microsoft documented at least one! Here's a comment in the Win2K source code that got leaked onto the net a few years ago:

private\mvdm\wow32\wcntl32.c: // These undocumented messages are used by Excel 5.0

You can see "documentation" for many of them on the Sysinternals site.

Not that they're likely to do it, but what if one of these had a worm come along exploiting it? The quick and obvious fix would be to simply remove it.

Even Microsoft documented at least one! Here's a comment in the Win2K source code that got leaked onto the net a few years ago:

private\mvdm\wow32\wcntl32.c: // These undocumented messages are used by Excel 5.0

You can see "documentation" for many of them on the Sysinternals site.

Not that they're likely to do it, but what if one of these had a worm come along exploiting it? The quick and obvious fix would be to simply remove it.

my employer did have a blanket corporate license from Microsoft for all MS software may have had something to do with it

I certainly hope it had nothing to do with it, as Microsoft only sells upgrade volume licenses. You an existing retail or OEM install to use them.

Quoth The 'Soft:

Note Volume Licensing agreements cover only Windows client upgrade licenses, not the full Windows client operating system. Customers must have a qualifying underlying operating system license before Volume License software can be installed.

or, here:

Volume Licensing programs: For organizations that use multiple copies of Microsoft software, Volume Licensing is a flexible and economical way to acquire from five to thousands of licenses for software. Volume Licensing agreements, including Academic Volume Licenses, do not offer the full license for Windows Client operating systems; Volume Licensing covers only Windows Client upgrades. The full operating system license must be acquired as FPP or pre-installed by an OEM or System Builder.

my employer did have a blanket corporate license from Microsoft for all MS software may have had something to do with it

I certainly hope it had nothing to do with it, as Microsoft only sells upgrade volume licenses. You an existing retail or OEM install to use them.

Quoth The 'Soft:

Note Volume Licensing agreements cover only Windows client upgrade licenses, not the full Windows client operating system. Customers must have a qualifying underlying operating system license before Volume License software can be installed.

or, here:

Volume Licensing programs: For organizations that use multiple copies of Microsoft software, Volume Licensing is a flexible and economical way to acquire from five to thousands of licenses for software. Volume Licensing agreements, including Academic Volume Licenses, do not offer the full license for Windows Client operating systems; Volume Licensing covers only Windows Client upgrades. The full operating system license must be acquired as FPP or pre-installed by an OEM or System Builder.

• HD will output flawlessly on any output when HDCP is not requested by the content producer
• If HDCP is requested, the content can either be degraded to standard definition or blocked completely
• It will be degraded, not blocked. Content providers are greedy but not stupid

They're not going to not allow HDCP content to play over non-hdcp compliant outputs at full resolution. Instead, they'll downscale to something like 480p for analog and non-protected digital connections (The article here touches on this a bit, saying it's up to the content provider and specifying a limitaion based on total number of pixels in the image.

For anyone who's been following the recent debates about Vista, this is already old news. But now the mainstream seems to be picking up on it.

What the article doesn't mention is that, probably precisely for this reason, there seems to be an agreement between Sony and Microsoft that HDCP protection won't actually be required by Blu-Ray discs until at least 2010, maybe even 2012. Remember, it's the disc that actually needs to require it, the operating system only provides this as an option.

That doesn't make the system anymore pleasing though. I wonder how far Microsoft will actually get with it. Customers do seem to get upset with this, and it wouldn't be the first time Microsoft has had to make "concessions" because of public criticism.

Peter Gutmann's paper on Vista's content protection is really recommended reading, even if it's a bit polemic. And nothing beats Microsoft's own document, written by the same guy that was interviewed for Times Online.

Just use a VM

"If memblock is NULL, the pointer is ignored and free immediately returns."

Applications that use OpenGL or Direct3D are subjected fairly heavily to Amdahl's Law. The problem is that there is a (quite severe) penalty to submitting data to the APIs from different threads, which generally means that all submission to the API is done from a single thread.

If the limiting framerate issue for your title is submission to the API (and for a lot of 3-D graphics applications, it is [warning: PDF]), then you're not going to get any speedup on multi-core systems, and there won't even by a way to improve the latency when typing messages because displaying those messages is what is taking so long.