Slashdot Mirror

check out http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/power toys/xppowertoys.mspx the taskswitch powertoy at this link. It gives you a small graphic of the window inside the alt-tab interface, so you can see what your switching to, if for example, you have a handful of firefox windows open, or any other "several of the same" windows. It really changed the way I felt about alt-tab.

Information Cards / Windows CardSpace attempts to fix this problem:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/winfx/reference/infocard /default.aspx

It's the brainchild of Kim Cameron: http://www.identityblog.com/

Unlike Passport, Microsoft does not own your identity when you use Information Cards.

Apple wins because the iPod does a few things very well, looking the best while it does it. Zune, in attempting to be all things to all people, misses the point; there are actually very few people who want anything to do everything.

Exactly. I remember a study that was done about music players a while back, and in terms of functionality (ie, not "style"), it found that basically only three things mattered to people: physical size, capacity, and battery life. Take a look at what Apple is advertising on the iPod Nano page and iPod page. I can't even find a real Microsoft home page for the Zune, the closest thing I can find is this press release, which doesn't even mention either physical size or battery life.

As the guy sayd, he tried VPC, not Virtual Server. According to this, there might be slight difference between the two: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/virtu alserver/techinfo/vsvsvpc.mspx

Vista has a lot of changes under the hood, many of which aren't visible to the user. Yeah, it's not quite all that was promised years ago, but it's still a significant upgrade. One new feature is the User-Mode Device Framework, which will let a lot of drivers run in user mode, and should hopefully make the system more robust since a faulty driver won't be any worse than a faulty application. UAC is a quite pervasive change, that is enforced even down to the kernel level. The graphics changes were by no means minor, and they are the first thing you see, but the graphics system is only one of several areas to receive massive changes.

As for the unsigned drivers, part of my job involves making changes to some drivers used for debugging. I don't bother to sign these, but I'm still able to install them. I just have to tell it I really want to do this a couple of extra times. All the drivers I work on are user-mode drivers though, so maybe Windows is more strict for kernel-mode drivers.

http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/highlights/virt ualization/faq.mspx

Q. If Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition, is used as the host environment, am I granted four virtual licenses? What if VMWare is the host?

A. Licensing does not depend on which virtualization technology is used. With a license for Windows Server 2003 R2, Enterprise Edition, you can run one instance of the software in a physical operating system environment and up to four instances in virtual operating system environments. With VMWare GSX Server, this means you can run one physical instance plus four virtual instances. With VMWare ESX Server, it means you can run four virtual instances because there is no need for a physical instance.

They already updated it on xbox?

That's not the case with Virtual Server so there is no guarantee that Microsoft will continue to support it - and, with the release of Vista on the horizon, they have a lot bigger fish to fry in the short term.

Actually, that wouldn't be the Vista team working on that. They have already said they are putting it into Longhorn.

If they do that, MS will be the leader in virtualization. It will be there, why not use it? Kind of like msn.com as a homepage.

Not to mention that Windows has also had virtual desktops since 2001 (although the implementation is admittedly inferior to Spaces). I assume Mac fanboys choose to ignore that since as you have to download it they regard it as 'not technically part of the OS'; but personally I'd rather have it as a free download than pay $129 for it...

I'm not sure which builds exactly, but I know I tried three times, and failed three times to put Vista (Beta2 and RC1) on VPC and failed three times.

I'm not sure what you were doing wrong, then. I've installed every build since 5368 on MS Virtual Server 2005 R2 (Release, and with the SP Beta) and they all work. What they don't all support are the VM Extensions required to get any kind of decent performance out of it. Vista betas and the RC1 were slow enough as is; without the Extensions, it was pretty much a slideshow. There is a beta VM Extension available from Microsoft Connect which is free for all to download if you want. Those extensions worked for most pre-RC1 builds, but I don't think they've been updated for the actual RC1 yet.

Microsoft's Virtual Server is also available for free:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/virtu alserver/software/default.mspx

Won't run on Ubuntu obviously :P

Wrong URL --> WindowsUpdate

"No I'm not kidding, give me one example of a Linux or Windows running on a 16 way SMP box."

I don't need to. An example was already posted by another before you even posted this question. http://www.sgi.com/products/servers/altix/4000/

Why did you ignore this example?

Here's the Windows 2003 spec. Up to 64-way: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/evaluat ion/sysreqs/default.mspx

Windows NT was SMP from the very beginning.

"It's been talked about how do we identify cpus. You would go with the external interface."

Of course I would. So would any other sane person. The instruction set defines what the processor does.

"If an external instruction set is deconstructed to lower level op codes is the cpu still an x86."

Yes it is, provided it's the CPU doing the deconstruction. Instruction decode is the first step of execution in any processor. Doing so doesn't somehow make the processor "not x86".

"Take a look at the P4 design docs, they talk about micro op codes as do most cpus that try to maintain backward compatability for their instruction set."

Yeah, so? Are you arguing that NetBurst is really a different processor masquerading as x86? It isn't. It was specifically designed to run x86 and nothing else.

Let's look at this another way. If a processor runs x86 code without emulation then it's x86. There are two processors that don't directly run x86 that are worth considering. Transmeta is the first (and they made more than one). Transmeta had emulation software that was loaded to run x86 and could theoretically run other instruction sets or even it's own internal one. Thing is that never happened. The other is Itanium. Itanium ran x86 only partially in hardware and required software emulation assistance. All other x86 processors execute x86 code natively starting with the first instruction coming out of reset. If that isn't x86 then I can't imagine what would satisfy you.

"...you might stop being so rude when you have a perceived cloak of anonimity to protect you."

I have no more a cloak than you do. I'm not posting as an AC and I'm not the only one hurling insults. Let's just say "I've now got my fingers crossed your not some big name CompuSci guy :-)" Smiley indeed.

Dude.

I've had exactly this problem - my copy of Windows is as genuine as you can get (MSDNAA Download) and yet WGA still reports it as being an illegal copy. What's stupid is that Windows Update, the WGADiag tool *and* the Firefox WGA Tool MS provide all identify it as Genuine.

I've used one of the many hacks (Removing execute permission for the Local System account to the WGA files and then deleting them) to remove WGA from my machine and now I only use MBSA for my patching. It's a little long winded, but it's infinitely better than the hassle of being repeatedly told that my copy of windows is illegal when it clearly isn't.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/forp ros/platform/sdk.aspx

Its support will expire on October 10, 2006 according to Automatic Updates service. Also, see this Microsoft Web page. It's soon, but not over yet.

"The "integration into the OS" is that Internet Explorer is tied to Explorer, the Windows Shell."

Which is part of the window manager which according to this image from microsoft.com has been run in kernel mode since NT 4.0 (Article ref). If that weren't the case, then Explorer could not hang the window manager (which it sometimes does).

"The "integration into the OS" is that Internet Explorer is tied to Explorer, the Windows Shell."

Which is part of the window manager which according to this image from microsoft.com has been run in kernel mode since NT 4.0 (Article ref). If that weren't the case, then Explorer could not hang the window manager (which it sometimes does).

I had no idea what VML was, so I did a little digging and found the following links.

W3C's introduction to VML: http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-VML

Microsoft's brief introduction to VML: http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/vml/defa ult.asp

Interestingly, the MS page includes a demo "oval with red background" which doesn't work in my Firefox browser.

This is just another document DRM system. Microsoft has been shipping this in Office since 2003. They call it "Trustworthy Messaging. It includes 128-bit encryption and "content expiration", as Microsoft puts it.

Nothing new here.

When will Intel fix their floating point issue?

Man, interweb3.0 is so old. 7.0 is already in beta!

Maybe Clippy was the first one to join this social network, or a key member of the support team? This could indeed be the new job Microsoft has been talking about! In fact, he might even give advice on how to properly decorate your profile page and introduce you to the new features offered by the service! If this is the case just hope there's a way to turn it off if you don't like it...

Much of the EU's decision-making and litigation policy regarding the Microsoft case has been... suspicious to say the least. I'm no Microsoft fanboi - ALL OPERATING SYSTEMS SUCK - but it really seems like a case of "Let's bash Microsoft no matter what they do." There has been some evidence of collusion between the EU and competitors, documents hidden by the court, and outright bias by the court. Some of the outrageous demands that the EU has placed on M$ are ridiculous to say the least, and have nothing to do with "monopoly".
 
While I'm all for *nix and FOSS projects, a lot of this whole process seems to be driven by the EU's motivation to get some blood-money and dictate ever-changing terms to a corporation rather than the interests of its citizens. The EU is, BTW, not exactly known for their pro-American stances on many things - and would like to see America and American business socialized like their economy.

Microsoft's accusations of EU Court collusion are interesting reading to say the least:
MS Supplementary Response (16 Pages - PDF WARNING)
as covered in EETimes:
Microsoft accuses EU of collusion, bias

I'm holding out for the kills small children and eats them for lunch license.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/home/eula.mspx

This MUST be stopped at once.

We MUST protect children from Dangerous Internet Predators.

Think Of The Children.

Why don't you try it yourself?

http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/ui/demo.ms px

I wouldn't mind seeing a "permitted controls" list, so you could allow say javascript, xmlhttprequest, flash and java, while leaving the rest disabled

Well as you have noted, Javascript and Java already have their own configuration in the IE security settings, so you already can turn them on and off individually.

There is also a facility to allow only certain Active X controls and plug ins. In the Security->Custom Level dialog you can see "Administrator Approved" as an option for some of the Active X settings. If you select this, then you can configure which controls can be used with the IE Admin Kit.

Alternatively, a simple *.reg file can be made to add controls to the list. That is the method that I have used. I was given a registry file to add Flash to the approved list, which I used on a coworker's computer. Something like this (untested, I just found this example with Google).

By the way, I really don't know how the grandparent was moderated as Insightful whilst being so utterly wrong. Disabling Active X has been part of IE's configuration since they first introduced the feature.

Some car computers and GPS navigation systems do limit the commands you can use while the car is in gear, for example Windows Automotive 5.0's AUIT (Automotive User Interface Toolkit), whose "Driver Distraction Control reports to applications when the car is in drive, so they can limit their functionality.

Windows CE for Automotive 3.5s SUI has built-in Driver Distraction Control safeguards designed to protect drivers from distractions that can be caused by a computing device. The system provides a standard interface enabling auto manufacturers to build devices that meet their individual safety requirements. The SUI also provides a speech queuing system that keeps order among a set of applications competing to talk with the user. To prevent applications from "barging in" and confusing or distracting the driver, the queuing system requires speech-based interactions to line up. This allows each application to "speak" to the driver when its turn comes up. The queuing system can be compared to a digital version of Roberts Rules of Order.

I'm sure there's a snarky digital rights management joke in there somewhere...

When you start TomTom Navigator, it makes you agree to the following before proceeding: "IMPORTANT: When using navigation aids, both hardware and this software product, it is your sole responsibility to place, secure, and use these aids in a manner that will not cause accidents, personal injury or property damage, or in any way obstruct your view. You, the user of this product, are solely responsible for observing safe driving practices. Do not operate this product while driving. Park the vehicle first. [I Agree]"

The purpose of GPS navigation systems warning people not to use them while driving is to protect the asses of the company that developed it from lawsuits.

The purpose of safer user interfaces requiring less visual attention is to protect the asses (and other parts) of the people driving and riding in cars, and other people sharing the road with them.

I think it's important to go beyond legal disclaimers, and to design safer user interfaces, because protecting people from physical harm is at least as important than protecting companies from lawsuits. Of course people are going to use GPS navigation systems while driving, so they should be designed not to require your undivided visual attention. That's where touch screen pie menus with audio/voice feedback come in handy.

-Don

Some car computers and GPS navigation systems do limit the commands you can use while the car is in gear, for example Windows Automotive 5.0's AUIT (Automotive User Interface Toolkit), whose "Driver Distraction Control reports to applications when the car is in drive, so they can limit their functionality.

Windows CE for Automotive 3.5s SUI has built-in Driver Distraction Control safeguards designed to protect drivers from distractions that can be caused by a computing device. The system provides a standard interface enabling auto manufacturers to build devices that meet their individual safety requirements. The SUI also provides a speech queuing system that keeps order among a set of applications competing to talk with the user. To prevent applications from "barging in" and confusing or distracting the driver, the queuing system requires speech-based interactions to line up. This allows each application to "speak" to the driver when its turn comes up. The queuing system can be compared to a digital version of Roberts Rules of Order.

I'm sure there's a snarky digital rights management joke in there somewhere...

When you start TomTom Navigator, it makes you agree to the following before proceeding: "IMPORTANT: When using navigation aids, both hardware and this software product, it is your sole responsibility to place, secure, and use these aids in a manner that will not cause accidents, personal injury or property damage, or in any way obstruct your view. You, the user of this product, are solely responsible for observing safe driving practices. Do not operate this product while driving. Park the vehicle first. [I Agree]"

The purpose of GPS navigation systems warning people not to use them while driving is to protect the asses of the company that developed it from lawsuits.

The purpose of safer user interfaces requiring less visual attention is to protect the asses (and other parts) of the people driving and riding in cars, and other people sharing the road with them.

I think it's important to go beyond legal disclaimers, and to design safer user interfaces, because protecting people from physical harm is at least as important than protecting companies from lawsuits. Of course people are going to use GPS navigation systems while driving, so they should be designed not to require your undivided visual attention. That's where touch screen pie menus with audio/voice feedback come in handy.

-Don

I often use keyboard navigation anyway with the Start menu. You can use the first letter of menu items to jump to them.

If you don't have a Windows keyboard, Ctrl+Esc brings up the Start Menu (didn't this use to be a key combo for task switching under Win 3.1?), and Shift+F10 brings up the context menu (is that what you're calling the applicaton menu?). Good look getting the latter working with apps that refuse to follow Windows UI guidelines, like Trillian. Why are some programmers so ignorant?

More keys here.

Have you actually used it? Maybe they can have some of the frequently used options ever present regardless of the ribbon chosen. This may already be somewhat true because certain functionality like Save etc. appear constantly present as small icons on the top left of the window. Quite frankly I have not used it either, but from the demo on the microsoft site it does seem much better and way faster than trying to find things/functionality in the old File/Edit/View way.

Here's a link to the demo..

http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/ui/demo.ms px?showIntro=n

how about http://www.microsoft.com/products/? Sure, you can't instantly install the programs there, but neither can you if you go to www.gentoo-portage.com. Hell, even with some programs (e.g. Maya,) you still can't do "emerge maya" or click "Emerge" with Porthole, and something makes me thing that the same situation exists with Yum and Apt.

Don't get me wrong, I love Linux and use it for my computing whenever I'm not doing things that are currently much easier to do under Windows, or things that can only be done under Windows. Hell, just two days ago I got a BSOD when all I was doing was looking at www.economist.com and ripping some movies. Speaking of BSOD's, I've been getting quite a few of them lately, and I know I don't have any viruses....

There is Windows for Embedded Systems.

Also when I log on the first time to KDE in my SUSE I get a shitload of screens that popup. (Well, two or so)

I'm not really sure why you chose to quote the Windows NT 4 Resource Kit documentation as a basis for your opinion on the Windows' UNIX support. That documentation is going on 10 years old!

How about you look at something a lot more modern, like the "Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications":

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/R2/unix components/

That's what is shipped with Windows Server 2003 R2, and most of the same stuff is included with Vista Enterprise and Ultimate editions. The POSIX support is quite a lot better... and the environment in general is good enough that they're able to support the entire GNU toolchain, Perl, curses, and a lot of other things. It even comes with vi. Yeah... Microsoft vi, wrap your head around that one. :-)

Even Microsoft has come to see this.

Basically, if you just have to export files (instead of registry keys) it is generally easier, simpler and safer for end users to perform maintenance tasks on their computers [...]

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/evaluation/ whyupgrade/performance.mspx before you say "omg it's a MS benchmark it's biased" no. all the numbers were gotten by an independant research test lab.

http://www.microsoft.com/office/editions/prodinfo/ activation.mspx

As it will be with XP to Vista, with Windows 2000 to XP, the bulk of the changes were under the hood.

2k is all the Windows OS you'll ever need on your desktop.

Windows XP will make much better use of your high-end (multiple CPUs/cores, large amounts of RAM and disk space) PC than Windows 2000 will. Vista, even more so. Of course, since so few people really strain the OS or the hardware to any great degree, it's highly likely you'll never notice that.

Nothing like strolling into the office in the morning and finding your computer still at the shutdown screen... and what is it holding it open, pray tell? Not the IDE. Not the source control client. Not the database browser. Nope. Adobe Reader is sitting there smugly asking "are you sure you want me to shut down?" holding up the whole system from logging off. FFS, it's VIEWING TEXT - it can shutdown when I damn well ask it to.

This is fixed in Vista. In XP, applications can request that shutdown be aborted in response to the WM_QUERYENDSESSION message. In Vista, any such requests are ignored. See this for more details.

It's not that making this change was difficult from a technical standpoint; it just breaks app compat. And yes, it's about time app compat was broken for the sake of sane shutdowns.

Check this out. I've had the same problem with other apps on my laptop... I'll come back hours later to find it happily sucking down battery power:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windo ws2000serv/reskit/regentry/34637.mspx?mfr=true

Just make a habit of saving all your open files before you shut down. There're no last-minute cancels with this reg setting.

there are educationnal versions of almost all commercial software! MS Office 2003 EDU is 150$
http://www.microsoft.com/office/editions/prodinfo/ students/default.mspx
Everyone usually knows this! If you're a student at a university, buy at the computer store there.

Ya, considering they have been POSIX compliant since NT was built in 1992...

Useless link posted: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?Fa milyID=896c9688-601b-44f1-81a4-02878ff11778&Displa yLang=en

BTW Vista and Longhorn Server ship with a full BSD *nix subsystem (minus an XServer.)

Uhh... no it hasn't. First of all the link you pasted doesn't even mention POSIX once. Usually when you post a link to corroborate a claim, it's supposed to actually do that.

Do you even know what POSIX means? Obviously not. Try doing some reading on it. This page will help: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POSIX

Even this page tells you that in order for Windows NT to achieve any measure of POSIX compliance you need to activate optional features.

And if you check Microsoft's own web page about this: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/archive/ntwrkstn/ reskit/poscomp.mspx?mfr=true

You can see that Windows has only ever been [optionally] posix compliant with respect to its C api and API language bindings. This is one (perhaps two) sections of more than 12 that are required for full POSIX compliance.

Clearly what the grandparent meant is the suite of posix compliant command line utilities and other useful things that make unix so nice to use. It was also a funny joke, because microsoft would never do this.

As for your claim that vista server will ship with a full BSD subsystem, I would really like to see some evidence to back this up. I've never heard this, and a few searches with google didn't turn anything up. Not only is it an unsubstantiated claim, but it makes no sense. What purpose would it serve, why would they do that?

Basically I call bullshit.

Ya, considering they have been POSIX compliant since NT was built in 1992...

Useless link posted: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?Fa milyID=896c9688-601b-44f1-81a4-02878ff11778&Displa yLang=en

BTW Vista and Longhorn Server ship with a full BSD *nix subsystem (minus an XServer.)

Uhh... no it hasn't. First of all the link you pasted doesn't even mention POSIX once. Usually when you post a link to corroborate a claim, it's supposed to actually do that.

Do you even know what POSIX means? Obviously not. Try doing some reading on it. This page will help: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POSIX

Even this page tells you that in order for Windows NT to achieve any measure of POSIX compliance you need to activate optional features.

And if you check Microsoft's own web page about this: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/archive/ntwrkstn/ reskit/poscomp.mspx?mfr=true

You can see that Windows has only ever been [optionally] posix compliant with respect to its C api and API language bindings. This is one (perhaps two) sections of more than 12 that are required for full POSIX compliance.

Clearly what the grandparent meant is the suite of posix compliant command line utilities and other useful things that make unix so nice to use. It was also a funny joke, because microsoft would never do this.

As for your claim that vista server will ship with a full BSD subsystem, I would really like to see some evidence to back this up. I've never heard this, and a few searches with google didn't turn anything up. Not only is it an unsubstantiated claim, but it makes no sense. What purpose would it serve, why would they do that?

Basically I call bullshit.

Probably a bit too late to ask for POSIX interoperability, eh?

Ya, considering they have been POSIX compliant since NT was built in 1992...

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?Fa milyID=896c9688-601b-44f1-81a4-02878ff11778&Displa yLang=en

BTW Vista and Longhorn Server ship with a full BSD *nix subsystem (minus an XServer.)

Nothing new to see here, move along...

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/pre view.mspx
Go there and scroll to "Download Windows Vista RC1"; select location and press go. You then have to sign in using a Passport/.net/Live/Concrete Halibut account; after that you'll be furnished with code and a link.
(I'd just like to point out that it's been months since I did this; if I'm mistaken/if they've changed the procedure, please, correct me)

I suppose you could if you like asking for already included features

I suppose you could if you like asking for already included features