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You can download SP2 from Microsoft and burn it to a disc for easy install without connecting to the net. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?Fa milyID=049c9dbe-3b8e-4f30-8245-9e368d3cdb5a&displa ylang=en/

MSN's online maps copied Google Maps? That's news to me! IIRC, Terraserver came into existence not long after Google was incorporated... long before their maps.

There is a place on the Windows Update Site where you can download the specific patches and then your could run them separately (Look for some link that they have for Admins). When entire sites or companies's computers have to be updated, they don't waste bandwidth be making every computer talk to windowsupdate.microsoft.com. They download it centrally and then install.

You could download the patches and then copy them to your machine using a Jump Drive or some External HDD.

Also remember to install the MS Anti Spyware Tool (http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/ software/default.mspx). Some other tools:

Free (complementary) Anti Spyware downloads:
http://www.download.com/Ad-Aware-SE-Personal-Editi on/3000-8022_4-10045910.html?part=dl-ad-aware&subj =dl&tag=top5
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/mirrors/index.h tml

Clean-up Tools:
HijackThis
LSPFIX

Not updated in nine months? That's the same as never updated.

Windows XP SP2 came out in August 2004, IIRC. Not to say that that's perfect - but it does fix some problems, right?

For updates since then, you might check the Microsoft Security Bulletin Search; I got that from a smithii page on slipstreaming, which also includes a file to download those files, up through November, anyway. That requires Cygwin, although you could just pull the URLs out of that & fetch them all. Either way, you could download them to another computer, then burn them to a CD, then run them on your laptop before you reconnect to the net.

If your computer sits behind a NAT based consumer router at home (all consumer routers are nat based) you only have to worry about getting a virus through e-mail, for the most part. You are safe enough to install windows updates right away.

If you connect your Cable/DSL modem directly into the computer then you are at risk without a firewall and the most recent service packs. All of the big exploits occure on machines without SP1 and there are a few for machines without SP2.

If you download Service Pack 2 standalone on a seperate machine before hooking up to your broadband. Then install that on your windows machine.

Once that's done enable a firewall. Turning on the Windows Firewall is good enough for right now if you don't have something else.

From this point, install the rest of the windows updates and update your antivirus definitions. You're basically safe with Service Pack2 and a firewall, but I wouldn't run a windows box without the most recent updates and AV.

Microsoft Live Transit.

This was all predicted in The Road Ahead.

It's like Nostradamus.

As far as the Windows registry settings?

Start right here @ "the horses mouth" for Windows NT-based Os':

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb; EN-US;q120642

(That's a starting point for BOTH Tcp & NetBT & that tends to be "NT/2000 centric" but, most of it applies to Windows XP/Server 2003 as well!)

Here are more, & the very ones I used to define & understand the .reg files entries on that site:

Microsoft Windows Server 2003 TCP/IP Implementation Details MAIN PAGE:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windo wsserver2003/technologies/networking/tcpip03.mspx

Microsoft Windows Server 2003 TCP/IP Implementation Details Parameters:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windo wsserver2003/technologies/networking/tcpip03.mspx# ECAA

SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS FOR NETWORK ATTACKS:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/archive/security/ prodtech/windows/iis/dosrv.mspx

TCP Transport Entries (all esoteric/unusual settings found here):

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q102973/

TCP/IP Exploits and Countermeasures for Windows 2000 Server:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/guidance /secmod150.mspx

Network Hardening and Security - Packet filtering Udp/Tcp - PortsAllowed + EnableSecurityFilters:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/guidance /legsgch3.mspx

Prevent Session Hijacking

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues /2005/01/sessionhijacking/default.aspx

ADDITIONAL REGISTRY SETTINGS - FOR AFD SETTINGS (ESPECIALLY):

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/guidance /secmod57.mspx

FOR TUNING PARAMETERS FOR SPEED FOR CABLEMODEM/DSL vs. 57.6k/33.6k/28.8k/14.4k DIALUP MODEMS:

http://www.speedguide.net/

* ENJOY! Those will define the settings altered/hardened & also explain EACH in detail as needed for your reference.

APK

P.S.=> What's in my initial URL is years of research since the NT 4.x-2000 days, & still works/applies to XP/Server 2003, & has had any added info. possible for them as well as the older NT-based OS' also... apk

As far as the Windows registry settings?

Start right here @ "the horses mouth" for Windows NT-based Os':

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb; EN-US;q120642

(That's a starting point for BOTH Tcp & NetBT & that tends to be "NT/2000 centric" but, most of it applies to Windows XP/Server 2003 as well!)

Here are more, & the very ones I used to define & understand the .reg files entries on that site:

Microsoft Windows Server 2003 TCP/IP Implementation Details MAIN PAGE:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windo wsserver2003/technologies/networking/tcpip03.mspx

Microsoft Windows Server 2003 TCP/IP Implementation Details Parameters:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windo wsserver2003/technologies/networking/tcpip03.mspx# ECAA

SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS FOR NETWORK ATTACKS:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/archive/security/ prodtech/windows/iis/dosrv.mspx

TCP Transport Entries (all esoteric/unusual settings found here):

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q102973/

TCP/IP Exploits and Countermeasures for Windows 2000 Server:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/guidance /secmod150.mspx

Network Hardening and Security - Packet filtering Udp/Tcp - PortsAllowed + EnableSecurityFilters:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/guidance /legsgch3.mspx

Prevent Session Hijacking

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues /2005/01/sessionhijacking/default.aspx

ADDITIONAL REGISTRY SETTINGS - FOR AFD SETTINGS (ESPECIALLY):

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/guidance /secmod57.mspx

FOR TUNING PARAMETERS FOR SPEED FOR CABLEMODEM/DSL vs. 57.6k/33.6k/28.8k/14.4k DIALUP MODEMS:

http://www.speedguide.net/

* ENJOY! Those will define the settings altered/hardened & also explain EACH in detail as needed for your reference.

APK

P.S.=> What's in my initial URL is years of research since the NT 4.x-2000 days, & still works/applies to XP/Server 2003, & has had any added info. possible for them as well as the older NT-based OS' also... apk

As far as the Windows registry settings?

Start right here @ "the horses mouth" for Windows NT-based Os':

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb; EN-US;q120642

(That's a starting point for BOTH Tcp & NetBT & that tends to be "NT/2000 centric" but, most of it applies to Windows XP/Server 2003 as well!)

Here are more, & the very ones I used to define & understand the .reg files entries on that site:

Microsoft Windows Server 2003 TCP/IP Implementation Details MAIN PAGE:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windo wsserver2003/technologies/networking/tcpip03.mspx

Microsoft Windows Server 2003 TCP/IP Implementation Details Parameters:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windo wsserver2003/technologies/networking/tcpip03.mspx# ECAA

SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS FOR NETWORK ATTACKS:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/archive/security/ prodtech/windows/iis/dosrv.mspx

TCP Transport Entries (all esoteric/unusual settings found here):

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q102973/

TCP/IP Exploits and Countermeasures for Windows 2000 Server:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/guidance /secmod150.mspx

Network Hardening and Security - Packet filtering Udp/Tcp - PortsAllowed + EnableSecurityFilters:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/guidance /legsgch3.mspx

Prevent Session Hijacking

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues /2005/01/sessionhijacking/default.aspx

ADDITIONAL REGISTRY SETTINGS - FOR AFD SETTINGS (ESPECIALLY):

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/guidance /secmod57.mspx

FOR TUNING PARAMETERS FOR SPEED FOR CABLEMODEM/DSL vs. 57.6k/33.6k/28.8k/14.4k DIALUP MODEMS:

http://www.speedguide.net/

* ENJOY! Those will define the settings altered/hardened & also explain EACH in detail as needed for your reference.

APK

P.S.=> What's in my initial URL is years of research since the NT 4.x-2000 days, & still works/applies to XP/Server 2003, & has had any added info. possible for them as well as the older NT-based OS' also... apk

As far as the Windows registry settings?

Start right here @ "the horses mouth" for Windows NT-based Os':

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb; EN-US;q120642

(That's a starting point for BOTH Tcp & NetBT & that tends to be "NT/2000 centric" but, most of it applies to Windows XP/Server 2003 as well!)

Here are more, & the very ones I used to define & understand the .reg files entries on that site:

Microsoft Windows Server 2003 TCP/IP Implementation Details MAIN PAGE:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windo wsserver2003/technologies/networking/tcpip03.mspx

Microsoft Windows Server 2003 TCP/IP Implementation Details Parameters:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windo wsserver2003/technologies/networking/tcpip03.mspx# ECAA

SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS FOR NETWORK ATTACKS:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/archive/security/ prodtech/windows/iis/dosrv.mspx

TCP Transport Entries (all esoteric/unusual settings found here):

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q102973/

TCP/IP Exploits and Countermeasures for Windows 2000 Server:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/guidance /secmod150.mspx

Network Hardening and Security - Packet filtering Udp/Tcp - PortsAllowed + EnableSecurityFilters:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/guidance /legsgch3.mspx

Prevent Session Hijacking

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues /2005/01/sessionhijacking/default.aspx

ADDITIONAL REGISTRY SETTINGS - FOR AFD SETTINGS (ESPECIALLY):

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/guidance /secmod57.mspx

FOR TUNING PARAMETERS FOR SPEED FOR CABLEMODEM/DSL vs. 57.6k/33.6k/28.8k/14.4k DIALUP MODEMS:

http://www.speedguide.net/

* ENJOY! Those will define the settings altered/hardened & also explain EACH in detail as needed for your reference.

APK

P.S.=> What's in my initial URL is years of research since the NT 4.x-2000 days, & still works/applies to XP/Server 2003, & has had any added info. possible for them as well as the older NT-based OS' also... apk

As far as the Windows registry settings?

Start right here @ "the horses mouth" for Windows NT-based Os':

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb; EN-US;q120642

(That's a starting point for BOTH Tcp & NetBT & that tends to be "NT/2000 centric" but, most of it applies to Windows XP/Server 2003 as well!)

Here are more, & the very ones I used to define & understand the .reg files entries on that site:

Microsoft Windows Server 2003 TCP/IP Implementation Details MAIN PAGE:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windo wsserver2003/technologies/networking/tcpip03.mspx

Microsoft Windows Server 2003 TCP/IP Implementation Details Parameters:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windo wsserver2003/technologies/networking/tcpip03.mspx# ECAA

SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS FOR NETWORK ATTACKS:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/archive/security/ prodtech/windows/iis/dosrv.mspx

TCP Transport Entries (all esoteric/unusual settings found here):

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q102973/

TCP/IP Exploits and Countermeasures for Windows 2000 Server:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/guidance /secmod150.mspx

Network Hardening and Security - Packet filtering Udp/Tcp - PortsAllowed + EnableSecurityFilters:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/guidance /legsgch3.mspx

Prevent Session Hijacking

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues /2005/01/sessionhijacking/default.aspx

ADDITIONAL REGISTRY SETTINGS - FOR AFD SETTINGS (ESPECIALLY):

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/guidance /secmod57.mspx

FOR TUNING PARAMETERS FOR SPEED FOR CABLEMODEM/DSL vs. 57.6k/33.6k/28.8k/14.4k DIALUP MODEMS:

http://www.speedguide.net/

* ENJOY! Those will define the settings altered/hardened & also explain EACH in detail as needed for your reference.

APK

P.S.=> What's in my initial URL is years of research since the NT 4.x-2000 days, & still works/applies to XP/Server 2003, & has had any added info. possible for them as well as the older NT-based OS' also... apk

As far as the Windows registry settings?

Start right here @ "the horses mouth" for Windows NT-based Os':

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb; EN-US;q120642

(That's a starting point for BOTH Tcp & NetBT & that tends to be "NT/2000 centric" but, most of it applies to Windows XP/Server 2003 as well!)

Here are more, & the very ones I used to define & understand the .reg files entries on that site:

Microsoft Windows Server 2003 TCP/IP Implementation Details MAIN PAGE:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windo wsserver2003/technologies/networking/tcpip03.mspx

Microsoft Windows Server 2003 TCP/IP Implementation Details Parameters:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windo wsserver2003/technologies/networking/tcpip03.mspx# ECAA

SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS FOR NETWORK ATTACKS:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/archive/security/ prodtech/windows/iis/dosrv.mspx

TCP Transport Entries (all esoteric/unusual settings found here):

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q102973/

TCP/IP Exploits and Countermeasures for Windows 2000 Server:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/guidance /secmod150.mspx

Network Hardening and Security - Packet filtering Udp/Tcp - PortsAllowed + EnableSecurityFilters:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/guidance /legsgch3.mspx

Prevent Session Hijacking

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues /2005/01/sessionhijacking/default.aspx

ADDITIONAL REGISTRY SETTINGS - FOR AFD SETTINGS (ESPECIALLY):

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/guidance /secmod57.mspx

FOR TUNING PARAMETERS FOR SPEED FOR CABLEMODEM/DSL vs. 57.6k/33.6k/28.8k/14.4k DIALUP MODEMS:

http://www.speedguide.net/

* ENJOY! Those will define the settings altered/hardened & also explain EACH in detail as needed for your reference.

APK

P.S.=> What's in my initial URL is years of research since the NT 4.x-2000 days, & still works/applies to XP/Server 2003, & has had any added info. possible for them as well as the older NT-based OS' also... apk

As far as the Windows registry settings?

Start right here @ "the horses mouth" for Windows NT-based Os':

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb; EN-US;q120642

(That's a starting point for BOTH Tcp & NetBT & that tends to be "NT/2000 centric" but, most of it applies to Windows XP/Server 2003 as well!)

Here are more, & the very ones I used to define & understand the .reg files entries on that site:

Microsoft Windows Server 2003 TCP/IP Implementation Details MAIN PAGE:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windo wsserver2003/technologies/networking/tcpip03.mspx

Microsoft Windows Server 2003 TCP/IP Implementation Details Parameters:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windo wsserver2003/technologies/networking/tcpip03.mspx# ECAA

SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS FOR NETWORK ATTACKS:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/archive/security/ prodtech/windows/iis/dosrv.mspx

TCP Transport Entries (all esoteric/unusual settings found here):

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q102973/

TCP/IP Exploits and Countermeasures for Windows 2000 Server:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/guidance /secmod150.mspx

Network Hardening and Security - Packet filtering Udp/Tcp - PortsAllowed + EnableSecurityFilters:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/guidance /legsgch3.mspx

Prevent Session Hijacking

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues /2005/01/sessionhijacking/default.aspx

ADDITIONAL REGISTRY SETTINGS - FOR AFD SETTINGS (ESPECIALLY):

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/guidance /secmod57.mspx

FOR TUNING PARAMETERS FOR SPEED FOR CABLEMODEM/DSL vs. 57.6k/33.6k/28.8k/14.4k DIALUP MODEMS:

http://www.speedguide.net/

* ENJOY! Those will define the settings altered/hardened & also explain EACH in detail as needed for your reference.

APK

P.S.=> What's in my initial URL is years of research since the NT 4.x-2000 days, & still works/applies to XP/Server 2003, & has had any added info. possible for them as well as the older NT-based OS' also... apk

As far as the Windows registry settings?

Start right here @ "the horses mouth" for Windows NT-based Os':

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb; EN-US;q120642

(That's a starting point for BOTH Tcp & NetBT & that tends to be "NT/2000 centric" but, most of it applies to Windows XP/Server 2003 as well!)

Here are more, & the very ones I used to define & understand the .reg files entries on that site:

Microsoft Windows Server 2003 TCP/IP Implementation Details MAIN PAGE:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windo wsserver2003/technologies/networking/tcpip03.mspx

Microsoft Windows Server 2003 TCP/IP Implementation Details Parameters:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windo wsserver2003/technologies/networking/tcpip03.mspx# ECAA

SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS FOR NETWORK ATTACKS:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/archive/security/ prodtech/windows/iis/dosrv.mspx

TCP Transport Entries (all esoteric/unusual settings found here):

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q102973/

TCP/IP Exploits and Countermeasures for Windows 2000 Server:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/guidance /secmod150.mspx

Network Hardening and Security - Packet filtering Udp/Tcp - PortsAllowed + EnableSecurityFilters:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/guidance /legsgch3.mspx

Prevent Session Hijacking

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues /2005/01/sessionhijacking/default.aspx

ADDITIONAL REGISTRY SETTINGS - FOR AFD SETTINGS (ESPECIALLY):

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/guidance /secmod57.mspx

FOR TUNING PARAMETERS FOR SPEED FOR CABLEMODEM/DSL vs. 57.6k/33.6k/28.8k/14.4k DIALUP MODEMS:

http://www.speedguide.net/

* ENJOY! Those will define the settings altered/hardened & also explain EACH in detail as needed for your reference.

APK

P.S.=> What's in my initial URL is years of research since the NT 4.x-2000 days, & still works/applies to XP/Server 2003, & has had any added info. possible for them as well as the older NT-based OS' also... apk

As far as the Windows registry settings?

Start right here @ "the horses mouth" for Windows NT-based Os':

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb; EN-US;q120642

(That's a starting point for BOTH Tcp & NetBT & that tends to be "NT/2000 centric" but, most of it applies to Windows XP/Server 2003 as well!)

Here are more, & the very ones I used to define & understand the .reg files entries on that site:

Microsoft Windows Server 2003 TCP/IP Implementation Details MAIN PAGE:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windo wsserver2003/technologies/networking/tcpip03.mspx

Microsoft Windows Server 2003 TCP/IP Implementation Details Parameters:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windo wsserver2003/technologies/networking/tcpip03.mspx# ECAA

SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS FOR NETWORK ATTACKS:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/archive/security/ prodtech/windows/iis/dosrv.mspx

TCP Transport Entries (all esoteric/unusual settings found here):

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q102973/

TCP/IP Exploits and Countermeasures for Windows 2000 Server:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/guidance /secmod150.mspx

Network Hardening and Security - Packet filtering Udp/Tcp - PortsAllowed + EnableSecurityFilters:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/guidance /legsgch3.mspx

Prevent Session Hijacking

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues /2005/01/sessionhijacking/default.aspx

ADDITIONAL REGISTRY SETTINGS - FOR AFD SETTINGS (ESPECIALLY):

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/guidance /secmod57.mspx

FOR TUNING PARAMETERS FOR SPEED FOR CABLEMODEM/DSL vs. 57.6k/33.6k/28.8k/14.4k DIALUP MODEMS:

http://www.speedguide.net/

* ENJOY! Those will define the settings altered/hardened & also explain EACH in detail as needed for your reference.

APK

P.S.=> What's in my initial URL is years of research since the NT 4.x-2000 days, & still works/applies to XP/Server 2003, & has had any added info. possible for them as well as the older NT-based OS' also... apk

When you purchase a PC, you should have the option of installing freeware that might help you in the incessant barrage of spam, viruses, spyware, adware, bots and phishing emails. It might also help to have a short tutorial on how your PC becomes infected/compromised/used to propogate malicious code. Maybe then Windows would be a better and safer O/S?


For those who need some free help:
http://free.grisoft.com/doc/2/lng/us/tpl/v5 (AVG anti virus)
http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/company/prod ucts/znalm/freeDownload.jsp (Zone Alarm firewall)
http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/ (Ad-Aware adware/spyware detection)
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/ (SpyBot S&D adware/spyware detection)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?Fa milyID=321cd7a2-6a57-4c57-a8bd-dbf62eda9671&displa ylang=en (MS Anti-Spyware adware/spyware detection)

The un-adoption of mod_gzip and whatever IIS *should* use is also prevalent.
Ticking the box used to crash IIS but these days it actually works, not that you'd notice :

Response Headers - http://www.microsoft.com/

Date: Thu, 08 Dec 2005 10:30:40 GMT
Content-Length: 23186
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Cache-Control: private
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
P3P: CP="ALL IND DSP COR ADM CONo CUR CUSo IVAo IVDo PSA PSD TAI TELo OUR SAMo CNT COM INT NAV ONL PHY PRE PUR UNI"
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
X-AspNet-Version: 2.0.50727

200 OK

Response Headers - http://slashdot.org/

Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Date: Thu, 08 Dec 2005 10:40:11 GMT
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
Cache-Control: no-cache
Server: Apache/1.3.33 (Unix) mod_gzip/1.3.26.1a mod_perl/1.29
SLASH_LOG_DATA: mainpage
X-Powered-By: Slash 2.005000090
X-Fry: Where's Captain Bender? Off catastrophizing some other planet?
Pragma: no-cache
Vary: User-Agent,Accept-Encoding
Content-Encoding: gzip

200 OK

Won't have to work hard to back up that claim.

AJAX is a baby step on the march back to rich clients.

Web apps are great because of their ease of deployment. There is no "upgrade cycle" for users. They just refresh the page and they get the latest and greatest.

Rich client apps are great because of the ability to have a rich UI and far more control over the presentation of your application. Speed is almost always better. You can just do more.

AJAX is an attempt to merge the two. Sometimes it works very well, sometimes not. But it's just a stop-gap solution that tries to use existing web technology to mimic the experience users know and love from rich client apps.

The real solution to this problem is to allow for rich client apps to have the ease of deployment of web apps. There are a few possibilities in this area.

One solution is Microsoft click-once deployment paradigm in .NET 2.0, although it has its limitations as well. (Windows-only being a big one.) It looks as though Windows Vista is going to try and blur the line between Windows and the Web as much as possible, making rich client applications created with WPF (Avalon) fully hostable inside the web browser. (With code access security restrictions, of course.)

Of course, this has the same problems as most .NET solutions at this point... it's Windows only. One of the great thing about web apps is that they run pretty much anywhere. I suspect that many companies will say that 90% market coverage is good enough for the benefit of web-deployed rich client apps.

Does anybody know of similar projects coming down the pipe that will offer this to more than Windows clients? Something other than people implementing WPF and the .NET Framework on other platforms? I know about WPF/E (Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere), which is a subset of WPF that Microsoft is trying to make cross-platform, but what about non-Microsoft solutions?

Windows NT/2000/XP already have this (sorta). You can set execute privileges on files, just like in UNIX.

However, a default Windows XP install will be set up to inherit all permissions from the root of the drive, and will have the Users group set to Read, Execute, and Traverse Directories. So everything you download is by default executable, and no program I know of ever bothers to unset that. (Actually, the latest version of IE will store some metadata with executable files downloaded through it that marks the file as being "untrusted," but I think that only Windows Explorer (basically, IE itself) actually respects that metadata.)

The other thing you need to understand is that, like UNIX, you can essentially exec (on Windows, ShellExecute ) any file on the system. Unlike UNIX, though, the kernel won't actually try and interpret the file. Instead the Windows API (I think) will look up the file type and send the file off to the approriate handler. So when you call ShellExecute, you're essentially acting like the user clicked on the file in Windows Explorer. To most programs like AIM, there's no difference between executing another program and opening a file in its viewer. As far as I know, there's really no way of asking Windows "are you going to just look at that, or actually run that?"

The basic point here is that while Windows XP (and NTFS) do support an Executable flag, by default it's always on. Plus the "launch file" API will also run programs, and there's really no way to be certain that a file you're launching won't essentially be an executable.

The stupid government decision makers want to be careful how they phrase the judgement here. If I were Microsoft, purely out of spite for such stupid 'punishments' I'd be looking at a way to get away with doing the following:

5 levels deep in the control panel have a "alternate applications list" menu item. This then opens a page with the following:

Download rubbish software made by people who have relations with goats here!!!
http://www.microsoft.com/thecompetition/real/realp layer-v0.5alpha_download
http://www.microsoft.com/thecompetition/yahoo/yaho omessenger-v0.1beta_download
etc....

Well it does what it says - lets them download competing products from the opposition, and if MS did this they'd have my support. Punish an alleged abuse of the open market by further distorting the open market by forcing a company to actively promote their competitiors. Morons.

The stupid government decision makers want to be careful how they phrase the judgement here. If I were Microsoft, purely out of spite for such stupid 'punishments' I'd be looking at a way to get away with doing the following:

5 levels deep in the control panel have a "alternate applications list" menu item. This then opens a page with the following:

Download rubbish software made by people who have relations with goats here!!!
http://www.microsoft.com/thecompetition/real/realp layer-v0.5alpha_download
http://www.microsoft.com/thecompetition/yahoo/yaho omessenger-v0.1beta_download
etc....

Well it does what it says - lets them download competing products from the opposition, and if MS did this they'd have my support. Punish an alleged abuse of the open market by further distorting the open market by forcing a company to actively promote their competitiors. Morons.

As a security researcher, I can say without hesitation: of course the threat is credible. The vulnerabilities are here, each day a dozen of them are discovered in major applications [1]. And competent security researchers exist around the world (e.g. 75% of windows vulnerabilities are discovered by external independant researchers [2]).

Now the only reason why cyber terrorism is not more frequent and more harmful (it is almost inexistent but it *does* exist) is the relatively few number of black hats (bad guys) compared to the huge number of white hats out there, and probably also the lack of motivation of the potential attackers.

[1] Look at this graph.
[2] Look at the credits in MS security bulletins.

If Microsoft later becomes aware of any such necessary patent claims, Microsoft also agrees to offer a royalty-free patent license on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms and conditions to any such patent claims for the purpose of publishing and consuming the extensions set out in the specification.[1]

Although royalty can mean "payment to the holder of a patent or copyright or resource for the right to use their property"[2], which would prevent Microsoft from charging for patent licenses applicable to their RSS Extensions, it more commonly means "a share of the profit or product reserved by the grantor"[3] or "compensation that is paid to the owner of an asset based on income earned by the asset's user"[4], which essentially limits Microsoft to a flat-fee license. Royalty free doesn't mean that they necissarily will charge for licenses but it seems to mean that they could.

Although they say the terms will be "reasonable and non-discriminatory", I don't know what that means. I would hope it means that they don't discriminate against Free software, commercial software, competitors, people without money to pay for a license, etc. but it's very vague--perhaps there's a legal meaning or it's just there to sound nice.

I think the patent trap idea is a bit out there--I don't think it's going to happen--but it doesn't seem that Microsoft is guaranteeing that it won't happen.

Sources

[1]http://msdn.microsoft.com/xml/rss/sse/
Copyright © 2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

[2] WordNet ® 2.0
Copyright © 2003 Princeton University

[3] The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

[4] Wall Street Words: An A to Z Guide to Investment Terms for Today's Investor by David L. Scott.
Copyright © 2003 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.

As to software implementations, Microsoft is not aware of any patent claims it owns or controls that would be necessarily infringed by a software implementation that conforms to the specification's extensions. If Microsoft later becomes aware of any such necessary patent claims, Microsoft also agrees to offer a royalty-free patent license on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms and conditions to any such patent claims for the purpose of publishing and consuming the extensions set out in the specification. ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/xml/rss/sse/ )

What?

http://msdn.microsoft.com/xml/rss/sse/ reads pretty much like an IETF RFC. MS have done some thinking and given their ideas to the public internet. Good for them.

But if you work for a company like mine, where the data is the company's life-blood I can completely understand why they'd want to keep your USB and other storage devices (like iPods) out of their space.

Employees don't need to be treated like criminals, but they shouldn't have more access than they need. For instance USB storage devices should be disallowed as a matter of security policy (not as a lame "leave what you tell us about at the door", but as an actual OS enforced system policy). I care about this from a user and customer perspective, where random employees of banks, insurance companies, and other businesses have access to an enormous amount of my data: I've worked at a large bank and a large insurance company, and the controls aren't anything like most people imagine.

Ever heard of embedded windows? Thought so.

it is still not an x86 processor, and it DOES NOT run the binary win32 codecs

No it doesn't. But it does run Windows Media Player 9 for Mac.

The first and only time it was tried and, it worked... better. The true story can be found here: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/interopmigration/ case/hotmail/default.mspx

I started with ANSI C about 15 years ago, moved to Foxpro for Database work, and eventually discovered VB6 and VB.Net. Going from ANSI C to any visual language is enough to make your head spin, and then from any to another is even more confusing -- they're all somewhat different. Don't go from VB6 to VB.Net and think of it in the same way... it really is a different animal. It's a lot more of a challenge to get some things done in .Net but once you get past the beginner-level stuff you find out there are some things that are just easier. Data access, configuration, authentication, refactoring, layout... a pain in 2003, but in 2005 those are a breeze. MS really did a better job with 2005 than with 2003. The Team Suite is killer -- unit testing, load testing, Visio, etc all integrated. You can get a 180-day fully functional trial at http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/products/trial/
In classic MS fashion, it takes about 4GB on disk (make sure you install the MSDN Library) and 300MB RAM at runtime, so be ready for that.

From my own experience with the whole VFP/VS6 to .Net world -- don't just dig in right at the beginning, relying on online resources -- you'll get incomplete information, make too many assumptions and confuse yourself. Get books (I recommend starting with the MCSD training kit). Read them over again; learning the basic concepts of .Net-specific structure from a book will take you about 20 hours, and save you a month of frustration. I don't see the value in $15k of boot camps when a $100 book set will get me the same info. And I see $100 as well spent when it makes my job easier, gets me the better projects, and therefore advances my career.

Congratulations on posting a comment, not suprisingly modded up, that was totally and completely devoid of any accurate or true facts (apart from MS did purchase Hotmail 'round about '97). You've managed to repeat every lie surrounding the Hotmail purchase and subsequent (successful) migration to a Windows 2000 server environment (all clearly documented, but you'd rather not both with the truth) and even manage to throw in some unsupported random Linux BS too. Hearsay? I'd say! The original builders of the application created a two-tier architecture built around various UNIX systems. During June and July of 2000, the Hotmail site was converted from FreeBSD running Apache Web services to Windows 2000 Server running Microsoft Internet Information Services 5.0. The first and only time it was tried and, it worked... better. The true story can be found here: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/interopmigration/ case/hotmail/default.mspx

There certainly should be some kind of alert when CPU temperature begins to reach a high point before the system freezes. The brick has status lights (Green for on and ok, orange for standby, red for "fault"). It really wouldn't have been hard to put a flashing LED or a buzzer in that triggered before there was real trouble.

According to one of Microsoft's tech note "The power supply may have overheated. The power supply should again work after it cools. Adequate cooling may take several hours. Make sure that the power supply has sufficient ventilation during the cooling period." Several hours?!

No, no, no... they can saturate a 10MB/s connection easily. What they had problems with was database connections over a long distance (a problem with TCP, not windows)... which they rectified (using a concept called CTCP), check this paper out: http://research.microsoft.com/research/pubs/view.a spx?type=Technical%20Report&id=940

-everphilski-

Read this to see what they're doing.

I agree that no modern OS runs a 30 year old stack... but most modern OS's today still have major issues with high latency connections even when those pipes have plenty of bandwidth. There is nothing we can do about a 100ms latency when the connection is 5000 miles long, but there is a lot we can do to improve the TCP protocol to optimize for those long distance/high bandwidth connections that are becoming more and more common.

Never used it but there is a tool.

PST Import Tool for Entourage 2004 for Mac
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?Fa milyID=9b95cfe2-ea2b-4088-af2c-2fd497e2a6f8&displa ylang=en

Watch the video. That wasn't the problem.

The problem was connecting two datacenters that were physically seperated by a long distance but connected with a high bandwidth pipe... the TCP protocol has problems with this because of latency issues.

Read this to see how they solved it.

Sorry, that chimney article was the wrong link. I really need to read things more carefully before hitting post.

Read this instead.

Read this. It should clear things up for you.

Got any links? I suspect that has more to do with kernel mode listeners (which at the time Tux had and IIS 5.0 didn't) than the TCP stack, and since IIS 6.0 has a kernel mode HTTP listener, it's probably not an issue anymore.

Regardless, that has little to do with the problem Microsoft encountered in connecting two datacenters that where phsyiscally seperated by a long distance but connected with a high bandwidth pipe. See this research paper.

Ya, sorry about that. I posted the wrong link. This is the correct one.

Everybody go to http://www.microsoft.com/ and /. them now!

If the new tcp stack retains compatability with the old one, then how are the innovations in the way it interacts with the network? For it to be compatible it has to "interact" with the network like any other stack, so it can't gain any leverage in that level, can it? Or are you saying that the new stack is only advantegeous if the machines are all vistas? Just curious how that works out.

No, the most benefit certainly comes when both ends are using CTCP (Compound TCP... the Vista TCP stack), but some benefit is still seen when only one end is using the new stack. This is possible because of some of the built in flexibilty of the TCP design. Just because the standard implementation sends packets and waits for confirmation in a certain way (or, more specifically, for a certain amount of time) doesn't mean that a new implementation has to as long as it follows the same basic rules when doing that sending.

Read the research paper for a complete description.

If the new tcp stack retains compatability with the old one, then how are the innovations in the way it interacts with the network? For it to be compatible it has to "interact" with the network like any other stack, so it can't gain any leverage in that level, can it? Or are you saying that the new stack is only advantegeous if the machines are all vistas? Just curious how that works out.

No, the most benefit certainly comes when both ends are using CTCP (Compound TCP... the Vista TCP stack), but some benefit is still seen when only one end is using the new stack. This is possible because of some of the built in flexibilty of the TCP design. Just because the standard implementation sends packets and waits for confirmation in a certain way (or, more specifically, for a certain amount of time) doesn't mean that a new implementation has to as long as it follows the same basic rules when doing that sending.

Read the research paper for a complete description.

Opps... I posted the wrong link. Somebody later on in the comments posted the correct link to the document that describes the new Microsoft TCP stack called Compound TCP (CTCP).

Slightly off topic, but the new Windows TCP stack will be implementing their new Compound TCP stack, aka, CTCP. More information can be read here:

http://research.microsoft.com/research/pubs/view.a spx?type=Technical%20Report&id=940

That is absolutely not what Microsoft has done. You honestly thing the reason they were only getting 10 Mb/s between their datacenters was due to memory copying? And when I said "implementation" I wasn't talking about the internal code, I was talking about the way it interacts across the wire.

Microsoft has completely revamped the way that TCP handles packet transmission.

Nice try with the ignorant MS bashing though.

/me waits for the transcript

And yea, I saw the cans, but the bit-rate of that video is so low, I have no clue what they were. Maybe that red one on the left is a coke or dr. pepper?

OH DEAR GOD, EVERYONE CAN SEE WHAT I'M DOING!!!!!111 WONT SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!?!1111ONEONE

I'm posting this under the first post, to let people know the flagrant abuse Microsoft are giving their customers.

It's not like Microsoft let you change the settings, or anything..

I mean, geez, why didn't make an obvious heading of "Privacy and Friends", perhaps under a sensible "Family Settings/XBox Live Controls" main header, so that parents can control what other people can tell about their kids?

Damn Microsoft.

you can only connect to a sql 2005 mdf file for a database. (No connecting via odbc or ole)