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Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 32-bit Deployment Tools work with Windows XP, also. Maybe these are better, since they have been recently updated, and work with all Windows releases.

I have not had good luck with using SysInternal's free utility NewSID. However, other utilities from SysInternals are best in class, and NewSID was updated after I tried it.

Also see PsGetSID.

sysprep.exe -bmsd
pause
sysprep.exe -reseal -activated -mini -pnp

I haven't seen too many posts here talking about RIS but that's the only solution I have stuck with over the years and it has its merits and is still my preferred method.

For me Ghosting is not a good solution because of all of the driver issues, the old SID problems from the NT4 days (fool me once...) and the amount of additional work required every time you want to update the image - service packs or applications for example. Also be aware that for Microsoft based products you will want volume licenses so you can reuse the same keys, this requires buying through a reseller and creating an account with Microsoft on the https://eopen.microsoft.com/ web site (I hate passport!).

One solution I am fairly happy with is a bootable CD I created which will install Windows 2000, XP, 98, 2003 Server from an answer file. Obviously only one or two OSes per CD but I can install any of those by typing a name for the machine, pressing enter and waiting an hour for the OS to actually install. Unfortunately this requires a few non Microsoft tools, which is probably why the lack of documentation. I use a Windows 98 bootable disk image (proprietary), the DOS version of sed (to parse the computer name from my DOS script), AEFdisk (to script the formatting of the disk) and CD writing software capable of grabbing a floppy disk image.

I still need to install drivers and software and configure the network. The cd has to have a hard coded key. But for PC repair it sure beats entering everything manually and pressing enter to bypass the installation screens.

RIS is similar but made for companies with at least one Microsoft based server. You create your answer files and install the OS from a dedicated partition on your RIS server, this is a pain of a limitation if you don't plan well in advance before you install your server/s.

There are several other limitations with RIS the show stopper has always been support of the PXE boot protocol, but nowadays most motherboards support PXE boot, you may have to enable it in the BIOS of your machines though. Many newer network chipsets are just not supported by Windows XP or 2003 server and RIS specific drivers can be difficult if not impossible to track down - the Marvel Yukon network drivers spring to mind.

Microsoft provides a bootable floppy disk to boot off of that provides generic drivers for many older network cards, several of my customers mandate specific network cards for each of their workstations.

To install a computer you press F12 for the PXE boot, provide the credentials of a user that has permission to install, breeze through a few configuration screens (depending on your RIS setup) and then the workstation is installed for you.

In my opinion this is where the process of imaging finishes and the beginnings of workstation management begins. I say this despite the software not being installed because you should be installing and managing your software through Active Directory and the use of MSI files.

Some applications come with MSI files for installation such as Microsoft Office and Norton AntiVirus. These applications can be managed by user or computer or groups thereof in Active Directory. This is far more flexible than imaging.

Many applications can also be installed silently via script, this can be problematic if your users don't have local administrative access to their workstations but you can bypass this restriction.

Microsoft has really done a piss poor job of creating automated installation tools for third party products for creating MSI files for use with Active Directory, all of these tools are expensive and don't have demo versions so I've never used one. All of the tools I have seen require that you install your workstation, start some monitoring program, install the software, reboot and then the monitoring program compares the machine before and after and creates an MSI file based on the differences. Microsoft should try employing some of those malware writers

Actually, Windows Services for Unix (STFU, oops, SFU), formerly the interix stuff, has been free for a while. It's a posix layer and includes standard utilities/headers/libraries, ksh, and even gcc.

I can!
Age of Empires! (Yes, the video game).

As far as I'm concerned, they didn't develop it (that's maybe why it was such a good game), but, they did took care of the hype ;)

Here, have a look at the website: http://www.microsoft.com/games/empires/

Anyway, I laugh at people planning to run Windows Vista... Here in Argentina, more than 70% of the PCs wont be able to do it, even if they want to. The other 20%, well, maybe they will run it, but only if they don't have to pay for it, and if their last games run on it.
I wont even assume anything on enterprise costumers, as i can't speak for some high profile ones, but most of them, cant even get the management to upgrade the PCs so they are able to install XP (an illegal XP most of the times that is).

I will give the remaining 10% the benefit of the doubt.

If you are running a Windows domain, you may want to look at RIS (Remote Installation Service). Workstations use PXE to boot over the network and a "image" is placed onto the box. The image is a not quite the same as Ghost in that an actual install (with hardware detection) is performed for each machine, applications are then dumped on top of this. Is quite portable across different machines, not to difficult to get running (no more boot floppys!) and is included with Windows Server.

Good starting point: http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/en/Lib rary/c62e5951-5eb9-42f1-95ae-490e5d7a55511033.mspx /

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/138349/ http://support.microsoft.com/kb/182751/ - Requirements for Windows 98.

For those too lazy to click:

Windows 95:

386DX or higher processor (486 recommended)
4 megabytes (MB) of memory (8 MB recommended)
50-55 MB of free hard disk space
One 3.5-inch high-density floppy disk drive
VGA or higher resolution (256-color SVGA recommended)

Windows 98:
486DX 66 megahertz (MHz) or faster processor (Pentium CPU recommended).
16 megabytes (MB) of memory (24 MB recommended).
165 MB and 355 MB of free hard disk space
One 3.5-inch high-density floppy disk drive.
VGA or higher resolution (16-bit or 24-bit color SVGA recommended).

Use Microsoft's Sysprep tool to make your images hardware-agnostic. If you know all the disparate hardware in your environment, you can pre-cache the drivers on your image template computer, sysprep it, then shut it down and create your image with ghost/trueimage/altiris rdeploy/whatever you've got. You can then deploy the image to any computer.

You'd never see that kind of bad behaviour here! We're always scrupulous in praising Slashdot's esteemed sponsor...

microsoft.com

These aren't two business people finishing a deal! These are comrades, even more THAT'S LOVE! Look at their eyes, how they look at each other, the smiles in their faces, incredible. There's hope for mankind, we're still able to really, really love each other.

Replacing Scotty would - of course - destroy this enormous love...

Oh my..., all these feelings...

This is a (not particularly well documented) setting on the server that was botched up. If you install a printer driver on the server, you'll usually end up installing the printer driver for the windows server OS *only*. When clients want to use the printer, they'll be presented with the same driver. However, you can add printer drivers for additional operating systems; well, windows OSes. the instructions are here. When a different OS client tries to connect, it's presented with its own driver version, if available. Make sure your friendly BOFH gets that link.

One note; I've found that drivers for different windows versions can behave differently, even if it's the same printer driver version (yes, HP, I'm talking to you). Not only will they have ever so slightly different GUIs (confusing your lusers) but they'll be broken in interesting, and more importantly *different* ways.

To avoid too much heterogenity, I've had most luck using as-generic-as-possible postscript drivers (e.g. the adobe postscript drivers for windows 98/NT, and the built-in postscript driver on 000 and up, with a .ppd file that describes the printers specific options).

You can also just send postscript (or PCL) files to a (ps/pcl) printer using copy /b file.bin \\driver\printername or you can even output postscript directly to \\server\printername\filename.bin - the filename is ignored. Certified Postscript Level 3 printers (HP printers "emulate" PS3!) will even directly print off PDF files just copied to them; it's a native format to them. Quite a bit faster than viewing the PDF in acrobat, then printing it, though you lose options like double sided printing, n-up, etc.

Regarding legal reform, the United States is the only country in the world that applies a "first-to-invent" standard for awarding patents. Under a first-to-invent system, the first actual inventor is given priority even though that inventor may file his patent after the filing date of another applicant claiming the same invention. Every other country applies a "first-to-file" standard, meaning that the first person to file a patent application on an invention is given priority. A growing number of U.S. stakeholders -- including the National Association of Manufacturers, the Intellectual Property Owners Association and the American Intellectual Property Law Association -- have recently come out in support of the United States moving towards a first-to-file system. Doing so would not only earn us goodwill internationally, but would also make the U.S. system substantially clearer, simpler and more predictable.

Manzuik said Microsoft has been silently fixing bugs as far back as 2004. He referred to the company's MS04-007 bulletin as a classic example of Microsoft announcing a fix for a single vulnerability when in fact a total of seven flaws were quietly fixed.

"I don't buy the argument that they are aiding attackers. The attackers are already reverse-engineering the patches. They have the time and resources to find out where the flaw lies. The guy that feels the pain is the system administrator who is in the dark and who can't do his own reverse-engineering,"

Well then, uh, maybe they need to change their website?

How come you don't look for help on the other side?

I see your point, and I often search for help on both sides...

What would be, say, Microsoft's reaction if you asked them for help on plugging your Windows box in a mixed network using Samba?

To be fair, that would be like going directly to RedHat or SuSE for help, which I don't. We're talking about the community, so I end up going here and here and here.

Especially in the light of Microsoft's intentional changing (i.e. breaking) the SMB, so that it wouldn't work with Samba.

Do you have something to support this? I'm not being sarcastic... Is it generally accepted that MS broke SMB for this purpose?

Let's face it... more often than not, it's the clash of religions.

Agreed. =)

Whereas when you look to Microsoft for help integrating the two solutions, they're all flowers and roses?

I don't go directly to MS for help. Just like I don't go directly to RedHat or SuSE for help. I go here and here and here.

But, no, in general Windows does not have these problems the same extent as Linux (where every single distribution is configured differently).

Windows Fault Threshold Reached

Now where is my insightful mod? ;)

Seriously, Windows may "just work" (for some definitions of work) for the "avarage user" (I hate that term, I don't believe he exists even once), but when you need something done just like this and your users are ready to eat you alive if you won't make it happen, that is the time when Windows really starts to show it's true colors. And as fun as making a keyboard layout in autohotkey is (free software to the rescue once again) I still don't understand why Microsoft decided that Windows should store keyboard layouts in platfrom specific DLLs or why it takes the more then ten months to bring Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator up to date for x64 with the resources Microsoft has.

In the end autohotkey with it's community support trumped the multi-billion corporation with their corporate support (thank's for pointing me to the blogs I already googled, your tech support is A+++).

Windows Server 2003 Itanium Edition which supports software emulation of 32-bit x86

Just started mucking with Virtual Server 2005 R2 and have been pretty psyched about the results (especially with not having to req development machines which is nigh on impossible in my organization.)

But I don't see this is emulating an x86 machine, rather it seems to just be a Linux virtualization environment. Yes, I did RTFA, and I've looked at the website, but I'm wondering if another slashdotter has ever actually used the tool and can answer this.

The Speech SDK?

Write it yourself. Grab the Microsoft Speech SDK and WINE or some suitable interoperatibility layer and you should be good for Windows and Linux. The Microsoft Speech SDK doesn't require oodles of code to make it work, so you should be able to get a working sample under Windows in about half an hour. It comes with some rudimentry samples as well, and since it's not released under any particularly binding license you can just build your code around it.

'Course you could go the other way with some Open Source speech recognition and cygwin or similiar.

A company that sells an OS for commodity hardware and direct to OEMs couldn't profit from it?

Forget what Dvorak's smoking, I want what this guy's hittin' on.

(tig)

Anyone remember Creature House? Microsoft bought them out a few years back. Just a couple of weeks after they released a beta version of LivingCels, a next gen 2D animation package which was most definitely a Flash killer. Creature House Expression's in the Microsoft stable now, just one of a line of graphics products (http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/en/d efault.mspx). But LivingCels? Is it possible that revolutionary, industry-shaking animation software can really just vanish without trace...?

Well, according to the FAQ's that Microsoft provides on Office 2007:

What's new in the 2007 Microsoft Office system?

The 2007 release presents newly designed menus and toolbars as well as new features that businesses and individual computer users can use to complete tasks more quickly and easily.

Office Word 2007 includes new tools that help you create more professional-looking documents in less time, build documents more easily from frequently used content, and produce professional-looking letters, proposals, datasheets, and other documents fast. Quick formatting capabilities help you rapidly apply a new look and feel to your documents, and the new Live Preview capabilities give you a quick look at any changes you make.

Obviously, it's time to pull out the check book and send more of your money to Redmond.

Quite right; statistics that give squatters' bulk-registered domains equal weight to domains that actually originate and serve content are next to meaningless.

The more urgent challenges, IMO, are (a) near term, putting downward pressure on the site rank of parked domains, and (b) longer-term, relegating these blights on cyberspace to the virtual equivalent of public housing.

I'd bet the former is easily acheivable within a matter of weeks, if a few folks with access to the required mindshare would generate / offer / host / promote some form of a parked domain blacklist* that could be integrated into the DNS clients of users who so desire. A Mozilla extension (okay, IE too) to auto-submit these domains to Google's "Remove this result -> remove all pages from domainparkingsites.com" interface whenever they appear in a users search results would sit nicely on top of that too.

The latter is a tougher nut to crack; as infuriating as cybersquatters are, I still fear any expansion of regulatory power on the 'net more than I'd value a remedy for any current annoyance. Just my $.02.

*Ironic as this is in context, MS's URL Tracer - http://research.microsoft.com/URLTracer/ - is the only real offering I've seen yet in this space. Any suggestions for others?

Are you sure about the 32G limit? Win 2000 limit is 32G and Scandisk will choke at 124.55G but this shouldn't effect the Ubuntu installer.

The Microsoft site and the Wikipedia article both state that 2 terabytes is the limit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat32
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB; en-us;q154997

the proposed .tel TLD would allow individuals and companies to keep all of their contact information in an easily accessible location.

Wow! If only someone had thought of that before!

Spyware using an LSP can circumvent this I'm sure. see this link on coding an LSP http://www.microsoft.com/msj/0599/LayeredService/L ayeredService.aspx

Just look Here for more info:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url= /library/en-us/dns/dns/dnsquery.asp

Also you can defeat a Host file by simply changing the priority of lookups using the registry, more here:

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,15900699~da ys=9999~start=20#15902844

I tried a few on the localhost line. DNSAPI seems to honor them.

For example:

127.0.0.1 localhost www.microsoft.com

PING www.microsoft.com resolves to 127.0.0.1 (and succeeds ;)

and http://www.microsoft.com/ fails (resolvs to 127.0.0.1 then redirs to a search)

Move it to it's own line, and the "trigger" kicks in.

I'm running WXP SP2 (w/ all the latest patches)

>What is there to stop a virus making edits to the dll binary? Changing the strings that presently
>correspond to the IP addresses of MS domains to some random, invalid address?

Yes, there is a mechanism built into Windows which uses digital signatures and a watchdog to prevent accidental (or deliberate) changes to sensitive DLLs. Any binary changes to any file will invalidate the signature on the DLL. This is more effective than tripwire or other such things whereby a checksum is held in another location since the DLL itself is signed using a PK and cannot be re-signed to hide the changes.

Windows File Protection: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=222193

- Oisin

I've always found the /etc/ to be the funniest part of that path.

This is one of the telltale remaints of the BSD-derived TCP/IP stack that NT/XP uses.

Although the stack itself has been heavily modified, using /etc/ as the location for the hosts file still remains, along with other little hints -- ftp.exe is almost identical to the BSD FTP utility. BSD also gets properly credited in the XP copyright notice

Wow, thank you for your wondeful insight. Isn't it great that /. is filled with anonymous cowards such as yourself who are there to lend us their unique knowledge as to how the world works? Just one question, how do you then explain all the publications made by compaies like IBM, Bell Labs, and yes, even the mother of all that is evil, Microsoft? I'm sure you have a great explanation, after all you are obviously in academia and of course all the ignorant and arrogant jackasses of the world (which of course you would be amoung if corporations such as these are indeed publishing research) are all confined to the evil world of corporations. I'm just really eager to hear this magical explanation that will refute all this real world evidence to the contrary of your claim.

...was compliments of Tantek Çelik, standards evangelist, and main designer of the Tasman rendering engine which drove IE for Mac. In digging for his history with the project, I note a few things:

• Daring Fireball's archived recap of the history of IE for Mac leading up to its cancellation,
• A blog entry describing how after Tantek was finished with IE for Mac, Microsoft moved him over to ...WebTV (?!),
• An entry on the IE Blog where it looks like Microsoft is advertising for various open positions, and many people are responding with mixed emotions.

As for TFA... gah. Don't get me started on TFA. It doesn't mention IE for Mac at all (perhaps the Publications Coordinator who wrote TFA never heard of it?) and makes some innocent and half-assed assumptions about Web Standards—mostly their lack of existence.

And the marginalization of other browsers? Her argument basically runs that other browsers don't stand a chance against IE's installed base, while conveniently overlooking the fact that IE itself was once an "other" browser and citing ways that IE got the leg-up on Netscape without ever noting that those other browsers are doing the same things to IE. The argument basically runs "Yes, things changed in the past, but things will remain as they are now because they're the way they are now." Buh?

• Ahem?
• I said, "ahem?" (look at this page in IE, then in Firefox.)
• I said "AHEM," damnit! (note what computer the man in the hammock is using.)

For instance, unless they have some update I don't know about, MS Remote Desktop will not print to a printer working from a TCP/IP port.

Actually, it does, you just have to set a registry key first. See http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb; en-us;q302361 for details.

And for most USB printers, you can use driver redirection, already mentioned above.

We use Terminal Server 2003 and have had no difficulties. Server 2003 made a very nice improvement compared to 2000 since the color depth is now greater -- it's really as good as having a local desktop so long as the connection is fast and reliable.

Local printing from a Terminal connection is handled nicely, and most printers are supported via printer driver redirection... for example you will map the user's HP Photosmart xxxx printer to the Windows Driver for the "HP 950c" printer.

This package makes printer redirection easier: http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/f/2/9f237 742-e057-4e00-a0d5-62de2ebf9fbd/TSPDRW_Package.exe /

My understanding is Citrix reigns supreme WRT USB and availability. You simply cannot sync your USB Palm pilot via Remote Desktop. And clustering for Terminal Services is limited relative to Citrix.

As for other options... you might check out Linux Terminal Server Project. Without know the specific software packages you use Windows might be your only real option at the moment.

-sid

You mean like this?

No. When Joe's 10 year old kid makes a typo.

Look at this shit:
http://research.microsoft.com/Typo-Patrol/screensh ots.htm

Of course, if you goto http://officelive.microsoft.com/ and try to sign up for a web site using something else than IE you get this msg

You are not using a recent version of Internet Explorer and need to download it in order to use Office Live.

Microsoft made the Genuine Advantage check optional at first, but it is now required for windows XP. They'll just be continuing the tradition with Vista which isn't a big surprise. What I wonder is if they'll leave it easily crackable like today's WGA check.

As a side note, I recently had an invalid WGA check on a machine I was working on. I noticed on the page that Microsoft will now sell you a valid key to make your pirated version of Windows legitimate. The problem with this is that buying a valid key for your pirated windows will not guarantee that you didn't install a system with a trojan or rootkit already on it. Since they're only selling license, you'll get no media to do a clean install. Bleh.

Actually, Microsoft doesn't take multiple cores into account for processor licensing, so unless they removed the multiprocessor ACPI support entirely, Home should support both cores. The following language is a bit ambivalent to me:

Microsoft Windows XP Professional and Microsoft Windows XP Home are not affected by this policy as they are licensed per installation and not per processor. Windows XP Professional can support up to two processors regardless of the number of cores on the processor. Microsoft Windows XP Home supports one processor.

My space has been growin at 260,000 people per day. It's hosted on 150 servers down from 250 servers. http://www.microsoft.com/billgates/speeches/2006/0 3-20MIX.asp MySpace has 65 million registered members, and that's growing at 260,000 members every day. In February we had 38 million unique views, and 23 billion page views. In fact, Media Metrics tells us that we're the No. 2-trafficked site on the Internet, passing Google, eBay, and just recently MSN. Sorry about that, Bill. Bill can take comfort in knowing that we've achieved these numbers using SQL Server 2005, and also ASP.NET 2.0. (Applause.) So right around the time that we started MySpace we took a look at some other social networking sites on the Internet, Friendster was blowing up, but it was just a dating site. There were some other sites out there that were geared towards business, classifieds, we wanted to do something different, we wanted something for everybody. Our vision was to become a next-generation portal that empowers people to speak for themselves, and do whatever they want. So we gathered all the cool features that we saw on the Internet, and we brought them together, and integrated them into our social networking platform. Music is one of the best examples of things to become incredibly popular on MySpace. So let's take a look at some of the technical milestones we've hit with Microsoft. We've been around for 2-1/2 years. Since the beginning we've had to make continuous changes to keep up with the growth. MySpace has primarily relied on Microsoft technologies, for both the operating system and for the database and development platform. On our way to 65 million members we started off with a simple backend architecture, but we quickly realized a lot more was needed for us to stay alive. Our first big win was at 9 million members when we converted parts of MySpace over to ASP.net. We immediately saw huge performance gains, specifically on the CPU. With ASP.net our developers are also able to take advantage of the true object oriented programming nature that C# provides. At 17 million members we deployed a large-scale dynamic caching engine in ASP.net. We were able to get 92 percent cache hit rates, which greatly reduced the amount of load on our databases. We were also using a 64-bit version of ASP.net, so we can load up our servers with a huge amount of RAM, which reduced the number of servers we had to put in the data center. SQL Server has been core to MySpace since the beginning. We were early adopters of SQL Server 2005, and in testing we found that there were huge performance benefits in it. We had SQL Server in production before it was officially released, and it relieved a lot of performance bottlenecks in the MySpace architecture.

The Event Viewer has its uses, but IMO it doesn't hold a candle to the various logs automatically generated in Linux in terms of specific and useful information content.

That depends on what you have configured the system to log, and what application developers have choen to log. The security log, for instance, is extremely helpful at diagnosing "access denied" or file sharing failures, because the NT object manager logs all system object access failures (and if requested, all successes) to the Security log. And that is only one example.

You can also use Windows Management Instrumentation scripts to monitor tons of system information or performance.

The Event Viewer has its uses, but IMO it doesn't hold a candle to the various logs automatically generated in Linux in terms of specific and useful information content.

That depends on what you have configured the system to log, and what application developers have choen to log. The security log, for instance, is extremely helpful at diagnosing "access denied" or file sharing failures, because the NT object manager logs all system object access failures (and if requested, all successes) to the Security log. And that is only one example.

You can also use Windows Management Instrumentation scripts to monitor tons of system information or performance.

Here is the distribution right:

Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following: . . . to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending. 17 U.S.C. 106(3).

Here is first sale doctrine:

Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106(3), the owner of a particular copy or phonorecord lawfully made under this title, or any person authorized by such owner, is entitled, without the authority of the copyright owner, to sell or otherwise dispose of the possession of that copy or phonorecord. 17 U.S.C. 109(a).

Note that section 109 uses the word "owner" -- the one who controls title. The law makes a distinction between owning a CD (as plastic), and owning the music or software on that CD (as bits). In order to invoke first sale doctrine, you have to own the copy of the software, or be authorized. Now let's have a look at a typical MSFT EULA:

3. RESERVATION OF RIGHTS AND OWNERSHIP. Microsoft reserves all rights not expressly granted to you in this EULA. The Software is protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws and treaties. Microsoft or its suppliers own the title, copyright, and other intellectual property rights in the Software. The Software is licensed, not sold.
(MSFT retains ownership of the software)

13. SOFTWARE TRANSFER. . . . Transfer to Third Party. The initial user of the Software may make a one-time permanent transfer of this EULA and Software to another end user, provided the initial user retains no copies of the Software. This transfer must include all of the Software (including all component parts, the media and printed materials, any upgrades, this EULA, and, if applicable, the Certificate of Authenticity). The transfer may not be an indirect transfer, such as a consignment. Prior to the transfer, the end user receiving the Software must agree to all the EULA terms.
('the owner authorizes')

There are some who argue that software licenses are effectively sales. I tend to agree, because MSFT no longer controls the software. However, with 'activation' and other 'phone home' software, this may not really be the case. If MSFT exerts control over my PC from Redmond, then they have a legitimate claim that I'm 'just a terminal'.

if it's licensed then one should be allowed to make backups of the disc or receive a replacement disc if the disc gets lost or damaged

Here is the reproduction right:

Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following: . . . to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords. 17 U.S.C. 106(1).

Here is the fair use doctrine, 17 U.S.C. 107:

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the fac

haha, no, seriously.. i'm joking

..*ducks*

I keep hearing mentions of myspace.com, so I went to see what it actually is.

On the main page, there is a link to Learn More, leading to "Step 1: Create your FREE profile". There, my choices seemed to be Next or Sign Up. Since I didn't want to sign up but did want to learn more, I clicked Next to go to page 2.

Here is what I learned on page 2: (in the familiar formatting of the standard MSIE error pages, even though I used a better browser)

The page you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.

Please try the following:

• Make sure that the Web site address displayed in the address bar of your browser is spelled and formatted correctly.
• If you reached this page by clicking a link, contact the Web site administrator to alert them that the link is incorrectly formatted.
• Click the Back button to try another link.

Technical Information (for support personnel)

• Go to Microsoft Product Support Services and perform a title search for the words HTTP and 404.
• Open IIS Help, which is accessible in IIS Manager (inetmgr), and search for topics titled Web Site Setup, Common Administrative Tasks, and About Custom Error Messages.

The question is - Is Microsoft #2 becasue of THIS page or despite it?

Yesterday, my office gets a frantic call from one of our clients, a lawyer. She had a filing deadline and was trying to finish a document she needed for this filing. Word 2002 stopped responding to user input every time she tried to save her document. All of my techs were out in the field, so I had to respond to this one (I'm VP Operations).

True enough, saving a document in Word or trying to open a new one while another document was open would hourglass the cursor. Only Task Mangler could end WINWORD.EXE.

Sysinternals's PROCEXP showed that every time a document was saved, Word would spawn VERCLSID.EXE as a child process, an executable that was "patched" by KB908531, which was pushed through Windows...err, Microsoft Update the day before.

I googled "verclsid". Let me tell you that yesterday, this search string returned no results. This morning, it returned exactly one. Now, it comes up with 67 web hits and 21 Usenet results.

Also, because of this "patch", typing "www.google.com" would return the generic IE "Server Not Found" page. One had to prepend "http://" to the URL. VERCLSID.EXE checks the validity of COM objects, so the damage wasn't confined to Office applications; it affected EXPLORER.EXE and IEXPLORE.EXE.

The workaround was to rename the current version of VERCLSID.EXE and restore the file from the backup created by KB908531 (a System Restore would have sufficed as well). I expect a patch for the patch to be released by Microsoft Real Soon Now. I guess this one was rushed out the door without sufficient testing.

Our company policy for patches is this: updates for servers are tested in-house before being deployed on production machines. For workstations, however, Windows Update is set to automatically update, unless the client's workstations run legacy applications, like the Reflection terminal emulator, or if high-end esoteric applications are present, like DataCAD or Design 20-20. As with servers, they're tested on a non-production system first.

I'd say that 10% of our clients got burned by 908531. Rolling it back wasn't that hard once we identified the problem, but this costs money.

I don't want to single out MSFT; last year an Apple Mac OS X security update broke Samba for me for about a week until I could figure out a workaround. But let's put this in perspective: how many people using Mac OS X (2 to 5% of the workstation market) also use Samba? Contrast this with the percentage of Windows XP/2K users also using Word (must be in the high 80% range), Internet Explorer, and the GUI, all affected by a buggy 908531 patch.

k.

Their "ultimate" package is really a crock of shiat, and really only called "ultimate" because the of "ultimate" income it brings to Best Buy. First of all, recovery disks should come with a new PC no matter what. It should NEVER be an option. I would never buy a computer without recovery disks.

Secondly, their, "system optimizations," are mainly a bunch of useless commercial tools for removing spyware and adware and basic stuff. You can get much better stuff online for either free or cheaper. I will say that a good antivirus application is something you want, though, so that part of the package is worth something.

Instead of giving more money to Best Buy, I would recommend going online once you get your computer and obtaining the following software packages:

• Download all of the critical and important updates from windows update (this is free).
• Norton Antivirus (ok, this one will cost something, but usually only about $20-$30, though if you work for a non-profit or a school, you can probably get a copy through them. Don't waste your money on Norton Internet Security, Norton Personal Firewall, or Norton SystemWorks.).
• Spybot Search & Destroy (this is free, though the guy that invented it does deserve a donation, and will keep your system generally free of spyware & adware).
• Mozilla Firefox (don't use an insecure browser like IE).

Anybody that can't go to these sites and download a few simple software titles themselves, probably shouldn't be using a computer in the first place,...