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Microsoft is bring out Monad Shell (MSH). I've tried the beta (thanks to MSDN) and i have to admit it's something (especially after years of command.com and cmd.exe). You can read more about it here. MSH is compatible with all versions of Microsoft Windows that support .NET Framework v2.0.

How can Dice.com, Monster.com, and CareerBuilder.com survive in a destroyed industry ?

Millions and millions of high-tech workers aren't feeling so destroyed these days- including ME. :-)

http://msdn.microsoft.com/ --- way cool software development info. free - as in beer (whatever that means ;-)

Why did Microsoft...?

Dude, you can't be that dumb: Revenue Growth Nearly $3 Billion in Fiscal 2005.

That's Billion and that's growth.

Vendors hated this process. First, the vendors didn't control the test process - the National Security Agency's Central Security Service did. NSA's policy back then was that you got two tries to pass validation. On the first try, the vendor was told of problems found, and given a chance to fix them. The second try was strictly pass/fail, and might include tests that the vendor had never seen. So it was quite possible, and common, for products to flunk and be cut out of procurements.

The Common Criteria process, on the other, hand, is conducted by third party labs paid by the vendor. So they're very "responsive" to the vendor.

The "Common Criteria" are comparable to the class C Orange Book standards. They're very weak. There was heavy lobbying by the computer industry to water down the Orange Book standards, and that lobbying was successful.

The evaluation report for Windows XP is online. It's worth reading, even though it's long.

1. Submitter's friend is a woman; submitter may or may not be a woman.
2. For god's sake, woman does not earn you any points.
3. Nor does acting spastically.
4. Let's clarify older vs newer. The Design of Everyday Things? Emotional Design?
5. Microsoft HI Guidelines
6. Apple HI Guidelines
7. Troll? Maybe to some. I think you just need a makeover.

So perhaps some of you have read Bill Gates' Business at the Speed of Thought . No, not the Necromonicron, I'm not referring to anything written by Satan (just one of his understudies). I have read this book and a very interesting concept that I gathered from it was that a business could be measured by the speed at which information passes through it. This makes sense as the easier it is for employees to gather information or to pass information increases the amount of brainstorming and learning that occurs at your company.

I then speculated that this could also be applied to nations. A country's greatness may be able to be measured by the ease at which its citizens gather information. And if you look at today's countries, this might be true.

Perhaps this initiative to deliver cheap laptops to students of poorer nations will help boost their economy and the rate at which information travels from person to person. After all, isn't internet access the fastest and cheapest form of communicating?

Just something to think about. I wonder if anyone else feels the same way--I know this is a very altruistic view. On top of that, I realize I've just mentioned Bill Gates in a somewhat positive manner. *sprays himself with flame retardent foam and begins to pray*

Really! Office Open XML! ("MOOX") I wonder how Microsoft came up with that name? :-)

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/nov0 5/11-21EcmaPR.mspx

"Additional standards give you more choice over a period of time," Alan Yates, general manager, business strategy with Microsoft's information worker group, said Wednesday. "Governments should be open to both [Open XML and OpenDocument] and whatever else is rolling down the street. Choosing both is really wise."

Translation: We at Microsoft were really disappointed when we heard the State of Massachusetts was not 'agile' and were not going to 'realize their full potential' by going to the Open Document Format. We thought it over, and found that when you can't beat 'em join 'em. Just look at us trying to catch up with google. If we can create our own version of the same thing, it might just keep us in the game.

Another article from MS on their Open XML: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/nov0 5/11-21EcmaPR.mspx

NTFS has a "last access time" attibute on each file and directory. It has limitations, is configurable, and isn't perfect, but this document outlines a number of issues about it. That, however, would not be the only way to determine if a file was accessed. Third party software could be involved such as a file system filter driver that logs activity, MRU lists could record access to the files, the CD burning software could generate a log of activity, temporary files could have been generated by opening the files which were stamped when the file was opened. There are a seemingly unlimited number of indirect ways to determine what a user has done during a certain period of time.

The titantic that is software arm of IBM is sinking.

Hmm...I'm not quite sure how you'd decide that. According to IBM's latest 10-Q report, in the quarter ending 30 Sept. 2005, their software division had revenues of a little over 3.8 billion US dollars, and costs of 483 million US dollars. By contrast, their hardware division had revenues of 5.12 billion dollars, but costs of 3.2 billion dollars. IOW, they're showing a gross quarterly profit of about 3.3 billion dollars from software, and only about 1.9 billion from hardware. Looked at on a percentage basis, software looks even better for them: it constitutes almost 18% of their revenues, but only about 3% of their costs.

Their highest revenue division is services -- but even with the largest revenues, this still has slightly lower profits than their software (about 300 million less per quarter than software).

As far as sinking goes: their revenue from software is up about 200 million dollars per quarter from a year ago, while their costs are up only about 20 million dollars a quarter. IOW, their total sales are growing, and they're getting better profit margins too!

Just for comparison, Microsoft's latest 10-Q [warning: Word format, of course] shows they have about 9.6 billion in quarterly revenues (total) and costs of about 6.3 billion, for a gross profit of a bit under 2.6 billion. IOW, IBM's software division produces more profit than Microsoft!

In fairness, that comparison probably isn't entirely accurate: in Microsoft's case, it's taking essentially all expenses into account, including things like R&D (1.5 billion dollars a quarter!) which probably aren't accounted for on a divisional basis at IBM (though I didn't dig through things enough to be sure about that).

Actually, it's because of his camel-toe mouse. ( http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/mouseandkeyboard /philippestarck.mspx )

This is the Virgin spaceport, after all.

Fair enough. I've never actually had to use it, but I had read about it and understood it. According to a few quick sites I googled up, font embedding is reported to be supported fairly well. Here is an article on MSDN, another article about implementing it in Netscape 4.01 and IE. My understanding is that Firefox has further extended support for embedding fonts and you shouldn't have to use the work around mentioned in that last link anymore. I think the support is there, just not alot of people have realized its potential, very similar to XMLHttpRequest which was laying around for years before people started to notice that some really cool things can be done with it.
Regards,
Steve

Microsoft even solved this one years ago: WEFT.

Here's a link to MS Typography section...

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/default.mspx

One of the best explanations of how employee motivation occurs is the Harvard Business Journal's "One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees?" Unfortunately, it doesn't specifically say how to motivate IT workers, but it gives you a plan on how to determine what changes will create long term motivation instead of making them look for the next bonus or perk.

http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/b02/ en/common/item_detail.jhtml?id=388X

I would also recommend "Rapid Development" by Steve McConnell. It covers a lot of topics, but it recommends a lot of books and articles, which is how I found out about the HBR article above.

http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/books/770.asp

the anti-aliasing make the overall impression of the font too blurry

Try this; it worked well -- much better than I'd hoped -- for me:
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/cleartype/tune r/Step1.aspx

"and (I assume) Microsoft."

Not only do you assume correctly, Microsoft is going to allow their widgets to work both online (live.com - gadgets, and start.com - startlets, more (microsoftgadgets.com gadgets here) but on the user's desktop as well once Vista is released. Perhaps these gadgets will even share the same code and can live on both the desktop and live.com simultaneously.

Since this seems to happen to the OP faily often I'd suggest installing the recovery console to the hard drive so that you don't have to fumble around looking for the windows cd every time it happens.

Check out http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb; en-us;307654 for more details

-Gerard

You said it.. you have no fucking idea because you don't know shit. You can develop .NET for free you fucking idiot, you can download the framework and compiler for free. Microsoft even gives you a free Visual Studio lite version, you you want an IDE (http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/default .aspx). Stop with your FUD.

Huh?

"WinNT/F4IRootkit is a kernel-mode rootkit used for copy protection on certain Sony BMG audio CDs. There are several versions of this rootkit. The rootkit hides certain Windows system resources, including files, processes, and registry settings. The rootkit can be used by attackers to hide malicious content on the computer." -Microsoft

http://www.microsoft.com/security/malwareremove/fa milies.mspx

http://www.microsoft.com/security/encyclopedia/det ails.aspx?name=WinNT%2FF4IRootkit

"WinNT/F4IRootkit is a kernel-mode rootkit used for copy protection on certain Sony BMG audio CDs. There are several versions of this rootkit. The rootkit hides certain Windows system resources, including files, processes, and registry settings. The rootkit can be used by attackers to hide malicious content on the computer." -Microsoft

http://www.microsoft.com/security/malwareremove/fa milies.mspx

http://www.microsoft.com/security/encyclopedia/det ails.aspx?name=WinNT%2FF4IRootkit

> Actually Jython runs very nicely on JVM.

Ummm... no, it doesn't.

It's far slower than the CPython implementation. The .NET version of Python, also written by the developer of Jython, can be _faster_ than CPython. He found it so inspirational that he went to go work for Microsoft on the CLR.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdntv/episode.aspx?xml= episodes/en/20051110PythonJH/manifest.xml

I thought the iPod would play unrestricted MP3s? What is stopping anyone from buying an MP3 from Rhapsody, MP3.com, AllofMP3.com or anywhere else from putting them on their iPod? How is this holding back the *music* industry?

I can see how it is holding back the portable music player industry, since they can't access iTunes, but they are direct competitors to Apple in the hardware arena. Apple made it easier to get to their service with their software, but that is the name of the game.

[For the unenlightened, the rules DO change if you are a convicted monopolist.]

  -Charles

Can someone explain to me how .NET is so fundamentally different from Java that it could escape Java's fate?

Well, I'm not sure what Java's fate is, but while .NET isn't fundamentally different than Java, it has several big differences.

As far as the CLR vs the Java runtime goes, Java byte code is fairly specific to java. It's possible to create non-Java languages that target the byte code, but it's not particularly practical. The CLR, on the other hand, was designed from the start with the idea of multiple language support.

It may not seem like a big deal to some, but being able to write more or less equally capable code in VB.NET, C#, J#, C++, Python, or a long list of other languages really does increase adoption.

The CLR affords far better platform specific integration than Java. JNI is complicated and horrible. COM Interop and API invocation in .NET is fairly easy and straight forward. This is important for adoption considering the huge amount of legacy code that often needs to be interop'd with.

The security framework built into .NET (Code Access Security) is arguably more refined and capable than the model built into Java. This doesn't really affect the current generation of applications, but for the v2.0 generation it will be very important due to ClickOnce deployment.

The CLR has support better support for a variety of programming constucts, such as generics, than Java does... or, in some cases did but the latest and greatest java releases have done a pretty good job and matching .NET's language feature set.

While both .NET and Java are free, the application servers they run on are not. For ASP.NET, IIS is the application server. For Java/J2EE, it could be Web Sphere or a variety of others. In pretty much every case a Windows license will be a lot cheaper than the license for the J2EE app server... especially Web Sphere.

As far as language comparison goes, it's not really all that useful since the CLR supports pretty much everything you could think of, including a nearly 1 to 1 copy of Java. (J#). But if we must, here is a great, although some what dated, comparison of Java and C#.

Isn't .NET (C# really) just a Java rip-off?

Not really. It's an evolutionary step. They certainly looked at Java, but they looked at everything. Managed runtimes were not invented by Sun. They've been around for 30 years. Microsoft creating .NET is a step toward Windows having a 100% managed API... something that's good for everybody. 10 years from now it will be rare to see an unmanaged application on Windows, aside from some niche areas. Java could never have done that because Sun wasn't in the position Microsoft is in.

Isn't .NET (C# really) just a Java rip-off?

In a word, no. Although you could argue that C# was/is a Java rip-off, .NET is not just C#.

Rather than repeat a bunch of info, I would offer that you check out: http://www.microsoft.com/net/basics.mspx and other Microsoft pages for more accurate information about the .NET platform.

you could copy/paste the text to file

"The text could not be copied, because it is restricted by its author." Try to do a screen dump and you'll get a big black rectangle where the e-mail message is. See also Protected Video Path.

forward the email to your own non-magically-deleting email account.

Except you wouldn't be able to duplicate the boss's digital signature on the e-mail, giving the boss plausible deniability of authorship.

Microsoft will never do anything that goes against their cash cow, Windows.

Microsoft's other cash cow is Office, right?

> Atleast Sony only puts root kits on their customers computers, which can cause
> them to be infested with spyware and who-knows-what-else.

Do not confuse Sony Computer Entertainment with Sony BMG Music Entertainment (which, by the way, is only 50% owned by Sony).

This will be even more ludicrous than blaming Microsoft Research for the latest IE exploit.

opera user

Anyone notice anything strange with this pic...
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/images/ homepage/62785_left.jpg

But if Microsoft doesn't like an auction, it's gone, apparently.

Who is the bigger sucker?

The people who bid on an exploit to make Excel crash? Or those who believed that this was a critical security flaw? Or Ebay for posting it in the first place?

If you really want to know how to make Excel crash, pick your poison - here is a free link:
http://search.microsoft.com/search/results.aspx?st =b&na=88&View=en-us&qu=excel+crash

Not that it's worth much, but I lived in Japan through the release of the PS2, original Xbox, and GC. I'm no marketing expert, but even I can see Microsoft setting itself up to repeat the orginal Xbox's failure.

The Name:

Did Nintendo release the NES as the cryptic "famicom" to the US market? No, and for good reason. The Dreamcast, Gamecube, and Playstation have much more English-friendly names which were obviously intended for the world market. While the exbox has the simple repetitive gruntability to appeal to beer-slamming frat boys in the US, it certainly doesn't have the elegance or foreign mystique that the Japanese expect of even domestic products. After the total failure of the first XBox in Japan, they should have taken the chance to drop the name rebuild their image.

Promotion:

The Christmas release was a bad idea. I think that the 360 has been lost in the storm of new promotions going around. While there is a lot of disposable consumer money this time of year, Microsoft will have to be a lot more aggressive both on TV and at the electronics stores. I was through three major electronics stores in Sapporo on Friday. I didn't venture inside the games sections, but I still should have seen something, if even a few posters, for the 360. If it was there, it was completely lost in the storm of Christmas promotions. Yes, they pulled of their big "official release", but their penetration in the rest of the country seemed dismally poor.

The bland TV ads are poorly styled. Japanese TVs are often left running as background noise during mealtimes and evenings, getting very little concentrated attention. That's why Japanese game commericals have the very distinctive "audio logo" at the beginning (e.g. Nintendo's coin sound) to make the target audience actually look at the screen. Most of the 360 ads simply fade into generic american rock music, with no voiceover to make it clear what the ad is for. The complete dependence on a video message is simply not done in Japan.

The commericals also don't show gameplay that looks any different from current generation Japanese console games, so what exactly are they trying to sell?

• Ninety Nine Nights easily looks like another entry in the Shin Sangoku Musou series from the commerical footage.
• Project Gotham appears to be just another Turismo wannabe.
• Final Fantasy XI is, well, Final Fantasy XI. It certainly has brand name power, but it doesn't scream "new content" in the Japanese market, where most every RPG is a copy of Final Fantasy in some way or another. There are several other major RPGs with TV spots right now, and they go right for the target audience's money by detailing game systems and features. Microsoft gives us images of running Chocobos. If you didn't already own the PS2 version (which you do) you wouldn't even know it's an online game.
• Perfect Dark Zero looks like they might be FINALLY getting some ads done right - solid drama shots, use of an audio logo, no rolling stones. Strangely, I've only seen it on air once, despite it being their best commercial by far.

And where is online play in Microsoft's ad spots? This was supposed to be THE major selling point of both 'boxes, but remains invisible to the average Japanese consumer. Last week, Nintendo quietly rolled out cute ads featuring immediately recognizable Mario characters playing Mariokart against each other from around the globe. How did the DS, which had internetability added on completely post-release, beat the Xbox to the punch here?

They also should have made use a mascot character, bought some Japanese pop idols or variety TV star

Not that it's worth much, but I lived in Japan through the release of the PS2, original Xbox, and GC. I'm no marketing expert, but even I can see Microsoft setting itself up to repeat the orginal Xbox's failure.

The Name:

Did Nintendo release the NES as the cryptic "famicom" to the US market? No, and for good reason. The Dreamcast, Gamecube, and Playstation have much more English-friendly names which were obviously intended for the world market. While the exbox has the simple repetitive gruntability to appeal to beer-slamming frat boys in the US, it certainly doesn't have the elegance or foreign mystique that the Japanese expect of even domestic products. After the total failure of the first XBox in Japan, they should have taken the chance to drop the name rebuild their image.

Promotion:

The Christmas release was a bad idea. I think that the 360 has been lost in the storm of new promotions going around. While there is a lot of disposable consumer money this time of year, Microsoft will have to be a lot more aggressive both on TV and at the electronics stores. I was through three major electronics stores in Sapporo on Friday. I didn't venture inside the games sections, but I still should have seen something, if even a few posters, for the 360. If it was there, it was completely lost in the storm of Christmas promotions. Yes, they pulled of their big "official release", but their penetration in the rest of the country seemed dismally poor.

The bland TV ads are poorly styled. Japanese TVs are often left running as background noise during mealtimes and evenings, getting very little concentrated attention. That's why Japanese game commericals have the very distinctive "audio logo" at the beginning (e.g. Nintendo's coin sound) to make the target audience actually look at the screen. Most of the 360 ads simply fade into generic american rock music, with no voiceover to make it clear what the ad is for. The complete dependence on a video message is simply not done in Japan.

The commericals also don't show gameplay that looks any different from current generation Japanese console games, so what exactly are they trying to sell?

• Ninety Nine Nights easily looks like another entry in the Shin Sangoku Musou series from the commerical footage.
• Project Gotham appears to be just another Turismo wannabe.
• Final Fantasy XI is, well, Final Fantasy XI. It certainly has brand name power, but it doesn't scream "new content" in the Japanese market, where most every RPG is a copy of Final Fantasy in some way or another. There are several other major RPGs with TV spots right now, and they go right for the target audience's money by detailing game systems and features. Microsoft gives us images of running Chocobos. If you didn't already own the PS2 version (which you do) you wouldn't even know it's an online game.
• Perfect Dark Zero looks like they might be FINALLY getting some ads done right - solid drama shots, use of an audio logo, no rolling stones. Strangely, I've only seen it on air once, despite it being their best commercial by far.

And where is online play in Microsoft's ad spots? This was supposed to be THE major selling point of both 'boxes, but remains invisible to the average Japanese consumer. Last week, Nintendo quietly rolled out cute ads featuring immediately recognizable Mario characters playing Mariokart against each other from around the globe. How did the DS, which had internetability added on completely post-release, beat the Xbox to the punch here?

They also should have made use a mascot character, bought some Japanese pop idols or variety TV star

Not that it's worth much, but I lived in Japan through the release of the PS2, original Xbox, and GC. I'm no marketing expert, but even I can see Microsoft setting itself up to repeat the orginal Xbox's failure.

The Name:

Did Nintendo release the NES as the cryptic "famicom" to the US market? No, and for good reason. The Dreamcast, Gamecube, and Playstation have much more English-friendly names which were obviously intended for the world market. While the exbox has the simple repetitive gruntability to appeal to beer-slamming frat boys in the US, it certainly doesn't have the elegance or foreign mystique that the Japanese expect of even domestic products. After the total failure of the first XBox in Japan, they should have taken the chance to drop the name rebuild their image.

Promotion:

The Christmas release was a bad idea. I think that the 360 has been lost in the storm of new promotions going around. While there is a lot of disposable consumer money this time of year, Microsoft will have to be a lot more aggressive both on TV and at the electronics stores. I was through three major electronics stores in Sapporo on Friday. I didn't venture inside the games sections, but I still should have seen something, if even a few posters, for the 360. If it was there, it was completely lost in the storm of Christmas promotions. Yes, they pulled of their big "official release", but their penetration in the rest of the country seemed dismally poor.

The bland TV ads are poorly styled. Japanese TVs are often left running as background noise during mealtimes and evenings, getting very little concentrated attention. That's why Japanese game commericals have the very distinctive "audio logo" at the beginning (e.g. Nintendo's coin sound) to make the target audience actually look at the screen. Most of the 360 ads simply fade into generic american rock music, with no voiceover to make it clear what the ad is for. The complete dependence on a video message is simply not done in Japan.

The commericals also don't show gameplay that looks any different from current generation Japanese console games, so what exactly are they trying to sell?

• Ninety Nine Nights easily looks like another entry in the Shin Sangoku Musou series from the commerical footage.
• Project Gotham appears to be just another Turismo wannabe.
• Final Fantasy XI is, well, Final Fantasy XI. It certainly has brand name power, but it doesn't scream "new content" in the Japanese market, where most every RPG is a copy of Final Fantasy in some way or another. There are several other major RPGs with TV spots right now, and they go right for the target audience's money by detailing game systems and features. Microsoft gives us images of running Chocobos. If you didn't already own the PS2 version (which you do) you wouldn't even know it's an online game.
• Perfect Dark Zero looks like they might be FINALLY getting some ads done right - solid drama shots, use of an audio logo, no rolling stones. Strangely, I've only seen it on air once, despite it being their best commercial by far.

And where is online play in Microsoft's ad spots? This was supposed to be THE major selling point of both 'boxes, but remains invisible to the average Japanese consumer. Last week, Nintendo quietly rolled out cute ads featuring immediately recognizable Mario characters playing Mariokart against each other from around the globe. How did the DS, which had internetability added on completely post-release, beat the Xbox to the punch here?

They also should have made use a mascot character, bought some Japanese pop idols or variety TV star

Not that it's worth much, but I lived in Japan through the release of the PS2, original Xbox, and GC. I'm no marketing expert, but even I can see Microsoft setting itself up to repeat the orginal Xbox's failure.

The Name:

Did Nintendo release the NES as the cryptic "famicom" to the US market? No, and for good reason. The Dreamcast, Gamecube, and Playstation have much more English-friendly names which were obviously intended for the world market. While the exbox has the simple repetitive gruntability to appeal to beer-slamming frat boys in the US, it certainly doesn't have the elegance or foreign mystique that the Japanese expect of even domestic products. After the total failure of the first XBox in Japan, they should have taken the chance to drop the name rebuild their image.

Promotion:

The Christmas release was a bad idea. I think that the 360 has been lost in the storm of new promotions going around. While there is a lot of disposable consumer money this time of year, Microsoft will have to be a lot more aggressive both on TV and at the electronics stores. I was through three major electronics stores in Sapporo on Friday. I didn't venture inside the games sections, but I still should have seen something, if even a few posters, for the 360. If it was there, it was completely lost in the storm of Christmas promotions. Yes, they pulled of their big "official release", but their penetration in the rest of the country seemed dismally poor.

The bland TV ads are poorly styled. Japanese TVs are often left running as background noise during mealtimes and evenings, getting very little concentrated attention. That's why Japanese game commericals have the very distinctive "audio logo" at the beginning (e.g. Nintendo's coin sound) to make the target audience actually look at the screen. Most of the 360 ads simply fade into generic american rock music, with no voiceover to make it clear what the ad is for. The complete dependence on a video message is simply not done in Japan.

The commericals also don't show gameplay that looks any different from current generation Japanese console games, so what exactly are they trying to sell?

• Ninety Nine Nights easily looks like another entry in the Shin Sangoku Musou series from the commerical footage.
• Project Gotham appears to be just another Turismo wannabe.
• Final Fantasy XI is, well, Final Fantasy XI. It certainly has brand name power, but it doesn't scream "new content" in the Japanese market, where most every RPG is a copy of Final Fantasy in some way or another. There are several other major RPGs with TV spots right now, and they go right for the target audience's money by detailing game systems and features. Microsoft gives us images of running Chocobos. If you didn't already own the PS2 version (which you do) you wouldn't even know it's an online game.
• Perfect Dark Zero looks like they might be FINALLY getting some ads done right - solid drama shots, use of an audio logo, no rolling stones. Strangely, I've only seen it on air once, despite it being their best commercial by far.

And where is online play in Microsoft's ad spots? This was supposed to be THE major selling point of both 'boxes, but remains invisible to the average Japanese consumer. Last week, Nintendo quietly rolled out cute ads featuring immediately recognizable Mario characters playing Mariokart against each other from around the globe. How did the DS, which had internetability added on completely post-release, beat the Xbox to the punch here?

They also should have made use a mascot character, bought some Japanese pop idols or variety TV star

And that they are a Microsoft showcase shouldn't have to do anything with it either.

I'm the Program Manager who owns Accessibility for Visual Studio. I recognize that we need to improve the quality of our documentation on making accessible Windows apps (I just had a conversation with my counterpart on Windows Forms about this yesterday, in fact). Please let me know which specific pieces of information you would like to see better documented. Feel free to log a bug on this at the MSDN Product Feedback Center (http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/productfeedback) or send me an email at abreth at microsoft dot com. thanks!

PressPass

Superhero-The Developer's Song

http://www.microsoft.com/

An entire multi-national corporation brought down by Microsoft's TrackChanges feature...

where i work, we enforce use of the Remove Hidden Data Tool to prevent this happening

we once got some documents from DOJ that were supposed to go up on our website that had obvious edditing changes in them

As just one example of projects coming from research to product: Reliable Multicast Implemented in Windows & Cisco Routers

I'm not sure what you consider to be a "key" component. For example, the shell? Lots of research goes into UI interfaces, but research is generally aimed at specific topics and not a huge set of features and area that a product would cover. So the shell would be what came out of a bunch of research projects.

Leonard

Microsoft .NET Framework Version 2.0 Redistributable Package (x86) 23 MB, 2-4 minutes to download, assumming a broadband connection.

if you're developing consumer Windows application with .NET v2.0...well, mod yourself down.

Microsoft licenses TTS technology from Lernout & Hauspie. (Now Nuance, like you said.) Microsoft has their own Speech Recognition engine. However, that engine can be replaced by third parties via the SAPI. Microsoft had an 8% share in the company at one point, though I don't know how much of it they currently hold.

> In fact, I'd seriously doubt that it's even feasible to create a self-distributing worm on
> the internet at this point, unless Microsoft is dumb enough to build remote-execution
> capability into their application software again.

You must be kidding. There are definitely still self-propagating worms. For instance, Zotob wreaked havoc in August of this year.

http://www.microsoft.com/security/incident/zotob.m spx

1. If you're already running WindowsXP with service pack 2, and you haven't turned off the firewall (it's on by default), then as long as the very first thing you do with your computer when you connect it to the internet is to download your windows updates, you're fine. (You can check which version of windows you have by going to the Start menu, then clicking "Run...", then typing in winver. A dialog should pop up, and the line that starts with "Version 5.1..." should say "Service Pack 2" at the end. If it doesn't, then you don't have service pack 2.)

2. If you have windows xp, but don't have service pack 2, you can download service pack 2 on another computer, burn it to a cd, copy it to your laptop and install it. Then see step #1. :-) (Since it's a pain to track down, I tracked it down - you can download the service pack 2 update as a single file here - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?Fa milyID=049c9dbe-3b8e-4f30-8245-9e368d3cdb5a&displa ylang=en )

3. If you have a non-XP version of windows, you should be behind some sort of firewall. If you have broadband access at home, and connect through a router, that should be fine. Otherwise, perhaps you could start your computer in "Safe mode with networking" (I believe you hit F8 while your computer is booting up, then it will prompt you to choose how you want to start your computer). This might avoid starting up most of those vulnerable services that get attached, so you might be safe. I haven't tried this though, so I have no idea if this would actually work.

Good luck!

1. If you're already running WindowsXP with service pack 2, and you haven't turned off the firewall (it's on by default), then as long as the very first thing you do with your computer when you connect it to the internet is to download your windows updates, you're fine. (You can check which version of windows you have by going to the Start menu, then clicking "Run...", then typing in winver. A dialog should pop up, and the line that starts with "Version 5.1..." should say "Service Pack 2" at the end. If it doesn't, then you don't have service pack 2.) 2. If you have windows xp, but don't have service pack 2, you can download service pack 2 on another computer, burn it to a cd, copy it to your laptop and install it. Then see step #1. :-) (Since it's a pain to track down, I tracked it down - you can download the service pack 2 update as a single file here - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?Fa milyID=049c9dbe-3b8e-4f30-8245-9e368d3cdb5a&displa ylang=en ) 3. If you have a non-XP version of windows, you should be behind some sort of firewall. If you have broadband access at home, and connect through a router, that should be fine. Otherwise, perhaps you could start your computer in "Safe mode with networking" (I believe you hit F8 while your computer is booting up, then it will prompt you to choose how you want to start your computer). This might avoid starting up most of those vulnerable services that get attached, so you might be safe. I haven't tried this though, so I have no idea if this would actually work. Good luck!

"It's not just that they havn't updated. They also use a non-standard box model..."

IE5 did use a non-standard box model. IE6 fixed that for html pages using a valid doctype to indicate that the html and css should be considered valid and not tag soup.