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Ah, I almost forgot. This document is the Microsoft whitepaper on setting up and using drive encryption for Vista. Skim through it. Notice that it's freaking huge. The setup procedure is involved and low level. This isn't the sort of thing that will automatically be put on by a ignorant user blindly clicking "Next".

Ok... I've been a linux fan for 10 years or so now. Haven't run anything but linux in about 7 years. But c'mon guys this is FUD.

First of all, vista won't have this activated by default. Here's how you can turn it on in Vista Beta:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/libr ary/c61f2a12-8ae6-4957-b031-97b4d762cf31.mspx

And yes it will make any data encrypted in this manner unavailable to another operating system. It does this by using TPM (Trusted Platform Module) in the BIOS and can base the key on the kernel and optionally: just the bios, a user supplied key, or a USB drive supplied key.

This allows for the option of encrypting/decrypting data from the very start of the boot process. And guess what? It's being implemented in linux too!

http://lwn.net/Articles/144681/

BitLocker from windows is just a kernel based drive encryption software that takes advantage of TPMs just like the linux system. If you're concerned about cross platform compatibility then use user space encryption rather than kernel space encryptiong. If you're that concerned about secure keys then don't dual boot! If you love dual booting and don't care about encryption at all, noone is going to beat you up and make you use encryptiong.

You may remove the tinfoil hat.

--David

I appreciate that it's popular to bash MS (I'm just as guilty) but isn't this getting to be a step too far? They're introducing file system functionality for added security and being ripped apart for it by the same people that scream at them for their lack of security focus? I've had a bit of a read into it, and at least on the surface it seems like a good idea.

Bitlocker isn't going to be compulsory, and as such it isn't going to affect dual booting in any way shape or form. It's certainly not the sort of thing your average home user would be setting up anyway (IMHO). Seems like Mr Schneier is a good old fashioned troll.

Some more info on Bitlocker here : http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/libr ary/c61f2a12-8ae6-4957-b031-97b4d762cf31.mspx

4.1 Installation

As part of Windows Vista, BitLocker is installed automatically during OS install with Enterprise and Ultimate editions5. (Note that it is not automatically turned on.)

They implemented it for the sake of being able to claim compliance in case big clients had specified that, but it wasn't a real effort to comply in anything but name, and so it has been abandoned now:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb; en-us;308259

From: http://research.microsoft.com/sn/Farsite/

It does this by distributing multiple encrypted replicas of each file among a set of client machines.

Therein lies the key. There exist many systems that copy entire files (or sets of data) to many machines/nodes. I have been introduced to several references to many other projects that claim similar things with similar language to projects like Farsite.

The Cleversafe system never stores an entire file (or data/file set) in any one place, encrypted or not. Only portions of any file (known as file "slices") are stored anywhere on the Cleversafe dispersed-storage grid. In our (Cleversafe's) opinion, this reduces complexity (by not having to synchronize multiple copies) and increases security and privacy (by never storing all of the data in one place), among other things.

In short, some key differentiating question I typically ask when investigating Cleversafe-competitive systems:

Does the system...

* ...store an entire file/data/content set (encrypted or otherwise) in one place?
* ...make multiple copies of the data?

If either answer is yes, then I tend to view the project as significantly different then the Cleversafe technology. I have found full-replication-based methods in many various forms are quite prevelant in many applications.

-Matt

Red Hat (NASDAQ: RHAT), the world's leading provider of open source to the enterprise, today announced that the U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) saved the federal government more than $15 million in datacenter operating and upgrading costs by migrating to Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

these forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing the company's views as of any date subsequent to the date of the press release.

Source: Red Hat, Inc.

Our prototypical target is a large company or university, meaning an organization with around 10^5 machines, storing around 10^10 files, containing around 10^16 bytes of data. We assume that the machines are interconnected by a high-bandwidth, low-latency, switched network. Also, at least for our initial version, we are assuming no significant geographical differences among machines.

Our prototypical target is a large company or university, meaning an organization with around 10^5 machines, storing around 10^10 files, containing around 10^16 bytes of data. We assume that the machines are interconnected by a high-bandwidth, low-latency, switched network. Also, at least for our initial version, we are assuming no significant geographical differences among machines.

Our prototypical target is a large company or university, meaning an organization with around 10^5 machines, storing around 10^10 files, containing around 10^16 bytes of data. We assume that the machines are interconnected by a high-bandwidth, low-latency, switched network. Also, at least for our initial version, we are assuming no significant geographical differences among machines.

Visual C++ Express is free. The C++ compiler itself (not the IDE) has been free for even longer.

I'm not alone on that, many other have found that Quicktime is the only simple videoplayer software that can bring a beefy gaming rig to its knees trying to play a 30 second low-res clip with no apparent explaination.

In related news Microsoft has fired 60,994 employees leaving 6 people working at the company...

Which are Bill Gate, Steve Ballmer, Jim Allchin, Brian Valentine, Will Poole and Chris Jones

(sources : minimsft, microsoft)

I can't wait for the MS Vista relase ! How impressive it will be !

I believe Microsoft does the same things under the covers in their BitTorrent alternative, plus some consideration for locality.

Article here

ThinkSecret normally doesn't have such inane punditry... We're saying here that a good strategy for a piece of softwares survival is to make it so bad that someone will be compelled to rewrite it?

Works for some companies I could mention.

We wiped the machine with an industrial strength removal program,

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/columns /secmgmt/sm0504.mspx

installed Firefox, locked it down, and asked her to go out to the same website. NOTHING - not one single piece of spyware - got through on Firefox.

You were simply lucky, Firefox currently has an unpatched remote hole as well.

NO, you can't. From Microsoft's own KB article KB905474: "You can use Add or Remove Programs to view Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications, but you cannot use Add or Remove Programs to remove the notifications."

Just use Sysprep to get windows setup to popup on next boot.

It won't do much, and shouldn't remove any currently installed software (this is was OEMs use to make those annoying rescue CDs with preinstalled software). But it will let you enter the OEM key again.

That's a good idea, but it's actually non-trivial to do this well for a variety of reasons. Microsoft has a technical report on how they do it; there are other approaches possible.

Of course it would be nice to be able to place a camera inside the LCD screen so that the image is captured from the same position as where the teleconferencing partner is being displayed. But Apple has done none of the hard technical work to actually make this work well in real life--they have simply patented the concept--a concept obvious to anybody skilled in the art. So, people who actually do the hard and clever work to make this work will now have to contend with Apple's patent.

This particular patent is not likely ever going to be important, since there are already several ways in which video conferencing systems can achieve eye contact. But the patent illustrates the kind of bullshit that the USPTO approves. While not a panacea, if the USPTO required demonstrably working implementations of a patent, patent abuse like this would be cut down.

Microsoft, in contrast, has actually demonstrated a working system for maintaining eye contact during video conferencing that actually has real, novel technology in it.

(Microsoft does real research but their software sucks, while Apple does good design but their research sucks. Go figure.)

How to uninstall Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications
You can use Add or Remove Programs to view Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications, but you cannot use Add or Remove Programs to remove the notifications.

If Microsoft could produce an operating system that eschews Win32/Win16/DOS et al completely and is pure .NET...

You can hide this update at http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/

It will never be installed so you won't have to worry about it at all.

No, just check Microsoft. The hack to fix this is out already. And a what a diabolically clever and sneaky hack it is, too!

...the nag screens. TFA says

"You can uninstall Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications by using Add or Remove Programs in Control Panel."

Did I just violate the DMCA by disclosing this?

Quote

How to uninstall Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications
You can uninstall Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications by using Add or Remove Programs in Control Panel.

Now the obvious followup question is: What happens if I do uninstall this nagware? Am I crippling Windows? Will the Windows Genuine Disadvantage (tm) be reinstalled behind my back at the next automatic update? Will my name, address, phone number, IP address, and credit card information be phoned home to the Microsoft Secret Police?

According to the article:
How to uninstall Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications You can uninstall Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications by using Add or Remove Programs in Control Panel. For more information about Windows Genuine Advantage, visit the following Microsoft Web site: http://www.microsoft.com/genuine
Whether or not they'll leave the ability to remove it in the software is debatable though.

The danm OS doesn't even come with a compiler

Windows 2003 comes with .NET Framework 1.1 installed, and I believe XP SP2 comes with .NET as well. You can also freely download and install both .NET Framework 1.1 and 2.0. And guess what? They both come with C#, VB.NET, and J# compilers. The 2.0 Framework also includes MSBuild, which can compile VS 2005 projects without installing VS 2005. VS 2005 Express was recently made free forever.

So while earlier versions of Windows didn't come with a compiler, that changed with 2003 and Vista, and now you can also download a free IDE.

The danm OS doesn't even come with a compiler

Windows 2003 comes with .NET Framework 1.1 installed, and I believe XP SP2 comes with .NET as well. You can also freely download and install both .NET Framework 1.1 and 2.0. And guess what? They both come with C#, VB.NET, and J# compilers. The 2.0 Framework also includes MSBuild, which can compile VS 2005 projects without installing VS 2005. VS 2005 Express was recently made free forever.

So while earlier versions of Windows didn't come with a compiler, that changed with 2003 and Vista, and now you can also download a free IDE.

I do hope that MS continues to allow you the ability to work with the firewall on an application level. It's much simpler to browse to "program xyz" and tell the firewall to allow whatever ports this program needs. Determining and then defining UPD vs TCP and ranges of ports is just not going to work for most non-technical people.

That does seem possible; see this page for more detals on the Vista firewall (including screenshots). The configuration wizard lets you configure both inbound and outbound exceptions by program, port, from a predefined list, or a custom configuration.

--bdj

and the docs
http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/6/2/56279 e8d-5c68-40fb-8937-589b6a6afa1c/PowerShellDocument ationPack.zip

Oh, the hilarity. Using Linux I was able to sign into Passport where I was not able to on Windows.

Anyhow, here's the x64 link requested.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/info.aspx?na=90 &p=&SrcDisplayLang=en&SrcCategoryId=&SrcFamilyId=4 A2D5ECB-0740-4AD5-98D3-EB236C3F37D9&u=http%3A%2F%2 Fdownload.microsoft.com%2Fdownload%2Fc%2F8%2Fe%2Fc 8e2b52a-d27c-447a-bd3f-73cf764beb26%2FPowerShell_a md64.zip

The startup time is something we're aware of and are working to improve as we reach RTM. Our priorities thus far have been primarily around ensuring that the core functionality is correct and the shell experience is a high quality one. As we move forward, we will be tuning up the performance of the Windows PowerShell.

With that said, this is just initial startup of the shell in which you should get the worst hit prior to the prompt loading. If you close the shell thereafter and load it again, the shell should open promptly. Individual commands execute more quickly as well as passing objects does not require a performance sapping test output and reparse phase which is normally required in most shells.

If you have particular scenarios or issues with PowerShell performance, let us know at http://connect.microsoft.com/ (sign up for PowerShell under Available Programs)

Leonard Chung
Program Manager
Windows PowerShell

Forward slashes are officially supported, and have been so at least since NT 4. There is documentation on this here.
I remember that there's even some document wholly dedicated to this problem somewhere, but I really can't be bothered to find it.

I also like the sentence "In this version of Visual C++, UNIX compatibility information has been removed from the function descriptions."
Thanks for helping, MS!

Yes, cmd.exe is a shell. Definately... Still, I don't think that I can interact with the whole OS just by using cmd.exe. I get along rather well with writing .cmd and .bat file, but sometimes one has to resort to multiple ones for doing the same task one could do with one script file in *nix.
Oh, and as far as I know, I can't interact with the registry by using the shell. (For example: delete a registry key). Regedit does have command line switches, but most stuff seems to go over .REG files. Well, perhaps it can be done, but I don't know how and I didn't find much in the Windows Help files. The registry is 100% part of the OS, so it should be accesible by using the integrated shell (which is cmd.exe).
At least I found out about cacls, which is very useful on Windows XP Home machines (that have "limited users" and some badly-behaving applications)

Try TweakUI on Microsoft's PowerToys for Windows XP page.

Mighty useful tool, if I may say so.

Microsoft have included object-based scripting for a long time (the Wi ndows Scripting Host).

    http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/guid e/sas_wsh_qlcc.mspx?mfr=true

But it's pre-.NET (you can do COM with it for instance).
I don't know if they also provide a .NET-based scripting shell.

Microsoft supports Perl and lots of UNIX stuff. Check out the new SUA built into Windows Server 2003 R2 (well, it is a free download update).

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?Fa milyID=8b4987e6-d960-49a2-bf52-d3fbd654254c&Displa yLang=en

http://www.windowsitpro.com/Windows/Article/Articl eID/48955/48955.html

An interview with Jeffrey Snover where he discusses the Microsoft PowerShell.

Windows PowerShell RC1 (for .NET Framework 2.0 RTM) x86

http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/8/c/e8ccf 14c-8009-43ad-b953-1b18609cf14c/PowerShell_i386.zi p

I always loved the old "Monad" name but I guess they changed it since no one got the joke. According to this page (second answer) the inspiration came from the 17th century philosopher Gottfried Leibniz. Leibniz proposed the concept of a Monad as the fundamental particle of the mental realm much as the atom is the fundamental particle of the physical realm.

Monads are supposedly self contained and closed off from any outside input. This leads to the joke as I understood it. In describing the concept in his Monadology Leibniz says, "Monads have no windows, through which anything could come in or go out," an appropriate quality for a command shell ;)

Or whatever it is renamed!

In Vista, it will ship as a regular component of the Pro and Enterprise versions.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/interopmigration/ unix/sfu/default.mspx

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

Get Bash, OpenSSH, BSD pkg_tools and the GNU toolchain here:
http://www.interopsystems.com/tools/warehouse.htm

Oh, and if you want MS's fast compiler, as opposed to GNU's portable one - then this is free. Add an environment variable, and cc calls this:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/visualC/ default.aspx

Or whatever it is renamed!

In Vista, it will ship as a regular component of the Pro and Enterprise versions.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/interopmigration/ unix/sfu/default.mspx

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

Get Bash, OpenSSH, BSD pkg_tools and the GNU toolchain here:
http://www.interopsystems.com/tools/warehouse.htm

Oh, and if you want MS's fast compiler, as opposed to GNU's portable one - then this is free. Add an environment variable, and cc calls this:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/visualC/ default.aspx

Or whatever it is renamed!

In Vista, it will ship as a regular component of the Pro and Enterprise versions.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/interopmigration/ unix/sfu/default.mspx

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

Get Bash, OpenSSH, BSD pkg_tools and the GNU toolchain here:
http://www.interopsystems.com/tools/warehouse.htm

Oh, and if you want MS's fast compiler, as opposed to GNU's portable one - then this is free. Add an environment variable, and cc calls this:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/visualC/ default.aspx

No, linux is an implementation of Unix, not a reinvention of it. It's POSIX-compliant.

Hehe.. Well.. http://www.microsoft.com/technet/archive/ntwrkstn/ reskit/poscomp.mspx?mfr=true

I encourage you all to come kick the tires and find out what PowerShell really does/does not do. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by its power and simplicity and might even like it. Many of us on the team have a deep background in UNIX and brought that into our work. Even if you don't like what we've done, trying it out will allow you to know enough to throw your rocks accurately. :-)

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?Fa milyId=2B0BBFCD-0797-4083-A817-5E6A054A85C9&displa ylang=en

If you'd like to learn more, you can read our team blog at:
http://blogs.msdn.com/PowerShell

Enjoy!
Jeffrey Snover
PowerShell Architect

if i remember correctly, microsoft's windows services for unix contain pdksh or some kind of a korn shell.

in comparison, i prefered zsh for windows othe bash from cygwin, but if the structure of your userland does not refrect parts of the operating system (/proc, /etc, unix sockets,...) a text shell is limited.

i prefer text shells too and the passing of objects plus indirect api access seems like a huge work around of crippled design to me, but it fits the windows way and could be more useful than a text-centric shell.

$strComputer = "."
 
$colItems = get-wmiobject -class "Win32_UTCTime" -namespace "root\CIMV2" `
-computername $strComputer
 
foreach ($objItem in $colItems) {
      write-host "Day: " $objItem.Day
      write-host "Day Of Week: " $objItem.DayOfWeek
      write-host "Hour: " $objItem.Hour
      write-host "Milliseconds: " $objItem.Milliseconds
      write-host "Minute: " $objItem.Minute
      write-host "Month: " $objItem.Month
      write-host "Quarter: " $objItem.Quarter
      write-host "Second: " $objItem.Second
      write-host "Week In Month: " $objItem.WeekInMonth
      write-host "Year: " $objItem.Year
      write-host
}

You can use the ClearType Tuning wizard to make the ClearType look much better on your display (LCD or CRT) if you don't want to turn it off completely. Using this should rid you of the 'bolding' look which I think just happens because ClearType tends to make text look much thicker, but with tuning this should be easy to take care of. Personally, I find that with it tuned properly text does look much better and is easier to look at for long durations than with ClearType off, but obviously that's a personal preference.