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That was patched for yesterday,11/08/2005, in Windows 2000/XP/2003:

Filename - WindowsServer2003-KB896424-x86-ENU.exe

MS05-053 - Vulnerabilities in Graphics Rendering Engine Could Allow Code Execution (896424)

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin /ms05-nov.mspx

* :)

APK

P.S.=> On this one, the "Anti-Microsoft" crew here @ slashdot are just (once again) a day late & a dollar short is all I can say here... I just can't give the "antimicrosoft" penguins this opportunity to spread yet MORE "F.U.D." b.s. around... apk

Best wishes
Ralf Herbrich, Microsoft Research Cambridge (UK)

• The first problem you point out is that Bayesian estimates (in general) asymptotically converge to the maximum likelihood estimates and, hence, in the TrueSkill sytem the sigma's would eventually go to zero and not allow for adaptation in the change of the player's "true" skill. This is true for stationary models but not for models with dynamics (think of a Kalman filter, for example). In fact, in the TrueSkill system we have a dynamics factor in our model equation that says that the skill of every gamer can slightly go up or down (zero mean, small variance) between two consecutive games. If you want to see this at work, please go to http://www.research.microsoft.com/mlp/trueskill/Ra nkCalculator.aspx and put every gamer's Sigma at 0.5; then press Recalculate Skill Level Distribution and you will see that the Sigma's after the game are slighly bigger (they should be 0.504). We have worked out the asymptotic value of the uncertainity, sigma, theoretically and compared our solution to empirical findings on 3 million games; our asymptotic limit was close up to 3 digits of precision. This limit is reasonably large to allow constant adaptation for skill changes.
• The second problem you point out is that of a conjugate prior. Unfortunately, there is no conjugate prior for the probit likelihood in any representation. The approximation method we are using is called "Expectation Propagation" (see http://research.microsoft.com/~minka/papers/ep/roa dmap.html) or belief propagation in factor graphs. This IS an "incredibly nice" algorithm, to say it in your words :)
• The third problem you point out is that the whole correlation structure would be gigantic and you are absolutely right when considering that there are millions of people on Xbox Live so this matrix would be couple of million rows times couple of million columns. However, we only save the diagonal of the matrix, that is, the uncertainity in the skill of every gamer. Please note, though, that we do build up the whole correlation structure (temporarily) for all gamers within a game (to make the approximation of the update step as exact as possible).

Best wishes,
Ralf Herbrich & Thore Graepel, Microsoft Research Cambridge (UK)

• The first problem you point out is that Bayesian estimates (in general) asymptotically converge to the maximum likelihood estimates and, hence, in the TrueSkill sytem the sigma's would eventually go to zero and not allow for adaptation in the change of the player's "true" skill. This is true for stationary models but not for models with dynamics (think of a Kalman filter, for example). In fact, in the TrueSkill system we have a dynamics factor in our model equation that says that the skill of every gamer can slightly go up or down (zero mean, small variance) between two consecutive games. If you want to see this at work, please go to http://www.research.microsoft.com/mlp/trueskill/Ra nkCalculator.aspx and put every gamer's Sigma at 0.5; then press Recalculate Skill Level Distribution and you will see that the Sigma's after the game are slighly bigger (they should be 0.504). We have worked out the asymptotic value of the uncertainity, sigma, theoretically and compared our solution to empirical findings on 3 million games; our asymptotic limit was close up to 3 digits of precision. This limit is reasonably large to allow constant adaptation for skill changes.
• The second problem you point out is that of a conjugate prior. Unfortunately, there is no conjugate prior for the probit likelihood in any representation. The approximation method we are using is called "Expectation Propagation" (see http://research.microsoft.com/~minka/papers/ep/roa dmap.html) or belief propagation in factor graphs. This IS an "incredibly nice" algorithm, to say it in your words :)
• The third problem you point out is that the whole correlation structure would be gigantic and you are absolutely right when considering that there are millions of people on Xbox Live so this matrix would be couple of million rows times couple of million columns. However, we only save the diagonal of the matrix, that is, the uncertainity in the skill of every gamer. Please note, though, that we do build up the whole correlation structure (temporarily) for all gamers within a game (to make the approximation of the update step as exact as possible).

Best wishes,
Ralf Herbrich & Thore Graepel, Microsoft Research Cambridge (UK)

This doesn't exist?

http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/s oftware/default.mspx

Have you actually read the HCT test spec?

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/whql/resources/specs .mspx

E.g for one of a real time virus checkers that layer over filesystem, they test things obscure filesystem features like defragmentation support, and oplocks and reparse points. Plus there is a 14 day stress test. And they update the test to catch common bugs. Of course a decent company will do this sort of thing, but in practice most companies will release undertested code if they are under pressure.

So the HQL certification means that you run these tests. Then you fix the test failures and submit the log and binary to Microsoft and they sign the binary.

It's not perfect - as the Raymond Chen post says, but it's a lot better than nothing. But the cool thing is it doesn't really need to be perfect, if the drivers are visibly unstable, people will stop buying the hardware and the company will go bust. Both NVidia and ATI hardware is rock solid with the latest drivers, so who cares if they cheat a bit with 3dmark and HQL.

OSX is awesome. So far it seems to have less bugs, it's easy to set up its firewall, and you can use other programs that will do spreadsheets, documents, and email such as...

Open Office - http://www.openoffice.org/index.html
Office2004 - http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/office2004/o ffice2004.aspx?pid=office2004

Ironic.

Non-Affected Software:
Microsoft Windows 98, Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition (SE), and Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (ME)

- MS05-053 security bulletin

The usual MS obfuscation for "because we don't support 9x anymore, by definition there are no critical updates for 9x" is to state that 9x is "Not Critically Affected", with a URL to a page that defines "critically affected" in such a way as to exclude 9x.

"Not Affected", as claimed in MS05-053, is a stronger claim. That's not to say there aren't similar bugs in image-handling in 9x; only that the hole in this notice probably doesn't affect 9x.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsvista/security/ Well they did, but forcing software vendors to complie with it is a bit much. Microsoft is really good to developers and help them with as much information as they can give... THey know that they heavily depend on software packages for Windows to continue its success. If you look around you will find information you need, you can start here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsvista/about/

should find and plug security holes and exploits in IE and in all the services that you are running out of the box that they can.

http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,2180,177 6290,00.asp They are doing this, but as you can tell from looking at the security issues of other browsers (non of which even match the amount of users IE has) security in browsers is a hard one to beat. Because there is money to be made in Spyware/Adware, people will always find ways to 'sneak' in.

I predict even after MS forces people to run as non-admins, fix/improve security in IE, include an outgoing/ingoing firewall, and include an Anti-Virus and Spyware clients, people will still find way to get spyware/adware into the computer.

This isnt a rant against you (Just didnt like the two quotes I added to my reply), but to a lot of people who complain about MS security. If anyone doesnt think MS is trying to make computing more secure I'd like to know how they can do more.

People dont seem to understand the difference between MS and other server/desktop OSes

http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsvista/security/ Well they did, but forcing software vendors to complie with it is a bit much. Microsoft is really good to developers and help them with as much information as they can give... THey know that they heavily depend on software packages for Windows to continue its success. If you look around you will find information you need, you can start here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsvista/about/

should find and plug security holes and exploits in IE and in all the services that you are running out of the box that they can.

http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,2180,177 6290,00.asp They are doing this, but as you can tell from looking at the security issues of other browsers (non of which even match the amount of users IE has) security in browsers is a hard one to beat. Because there is money to be made in Spyware/Adware, people will always find ways to 'sneak' in.

I predict even after MS forces people to run as non-admins, fix/improve security in IE, include an outgoing/ingoing firewall, and include an Anti-Virus and Spyware clients, people will still find way to get spyware/adware into the computer.

This isnt a rant against you (Just didnt like the two quotes I added to my reply), but to a lot of people who complain about MS security. If anyone doesnt think MS is trying to make computing more secure I'd like to know how they can do more.

People dont seem to understand the difference between MS and other server/desktop OSes

When you say a stable API will improve linux, would this be the same type of improvement that I could make to your face with a bat?

Binary drivers taint free software and nobody who understands the GPL wants them.

Also Age of Empires III won't run on anything below XP, but there's no reason I can think of for such a restriction, esp. against Windows 2000, except to push towards the newer platforms.

I believe they've started doing just this. There was a /. story a couple days ago talking about Singularity (http://research.microsoft.com/os/singularity/) as a new scratch-built OS in development. Interestingly enough, Tuomas Aura is working on it. I only know (of) him in the steganography domain, but this should be interesting to see Singularity unfold with time. N

That tool shoudn't have "bug"'d you anyway. A new version of the "Malicious Software Removal Tool" you speak of is installed and run by Windows Update periodically (monthly?) to simply check once for Blaster and other viruses (not necessarily spyware, and vice versa, I'm sure). That just runs once, and silently, after it's downloaded and installed; it shouldn't bug you.

The article refers to Microsoft Windows AntiSpyware, a different tool (and not among the "Windows Update"s). It usually shows an icon in the taskbar and (when that is clicked or tabbed to+ENTER pressed on) a window from which you can scan the PC, update said AntiSpyware, etc.

The "anti spyware crap of theirs" you mention is not the subject of TFA.

If that's what they want, then here is a site which might interest them.

In fact, here it says:
What to Expect

Registration will take a few minutes of your time. We have deliberately kept the registration form as simple as we can.

The registration process may include an e-mail to you to confirm your e-mail address, prior to taking you to a Web page containing your registration key.

With your registration key, you will be able to unlock your Express Edition for unlimited, ongoing use.

FYI, you do know that even in Microsoft's own documentation recommends using C# instead of SQL. The aim is not to lock you in but to help you with some tasks that were often obnoxious in SQL 2000. For example, if you need a job to run and email something out dynamically, you could use C# w/ SQL 2005's own mail services to help you instead of having to write a windows service or something that might be overkill for a small task. Behold:

Even without CLR support, it is important to recognize that database applications should use the declarative query language as much as possible. This portion of the language is able to leverage the power of the query processor, which is best able to optimize and perform bulk operations. Database applications should only resort to procedural programming to express logic that cannot be expressed within the query language.

Straight from the beast

How is the parent modded to interesting?

As I see it MS has warmed up to open source more in the last 6 months than slashdotters have.

I think you've been drinking too much M$ marketing koolaid. M$ has $40,000,000,000+ per year of catching up to do, money taken largely because of dubious business practices past and present. Their DRM efforts alone make your comment incorrect.

reich

I hereby invoke Godwin's law

Please stop trying to represent slashdot contributers in particular and OSS supporters in general as being monolithic. It's an outright lie. M$ marketdroids love to do this but the truth is M$ as a company is far more monolithic than the OSS community and the borg icon /. uses is entirely appropriate.

It's also incorrect to state /. doesn't have a diversity of opinion and anybody who claims otherwise is either a liar or a marketing zealot. Amongst many other things closed source software is often recommended by contributers. If you want a truly monolothic opinion head over to www.microsoft.com. Microsoft's pathetic idea of diversity of opinion is a site like Paul Thurrott.

Like it or not, /. is an open source news site and will push open source viewpoints. If you want corporate propaganda please head for one of the numerous corporate propaganda websites out there. I for one want some balance from those marketing parasites. Their attempts to manipulate /. readers are just one more example of their parasitic behaviour; I get enough of their dreck forced down my throat in other media.

---

The majority of modern marketing is nothing more than an arms race to get mind share. Everybody loses except the parasitic marketing "industry".

Last I knew IE was crossplatform.

From the best MS technote EVAR:

"Identified security issues in Internet Explorer could allow an attacker to compromise a Windows-based system... This affects all computers with Internet Explorer installed (even if you don't run Internet Explorer as your Web browser)."

And since MS included IE by default, enabled it by default, and made it almost impossible to uninstall, all you MS defenders are invited to take a long walk off a short pier. BTW, that update is less than 2 years old, so it's not like I'm really digging in the crates to find that one or making "OMG teh BSOD!" Win98 jokes.

http://www.microsoft.com/sql/downloads/trial-softw are.mspx read the darn thing there is no time limit at all

So does Microsoft. It's called SQL Server 2005 Express Edition and the SQL 2000 version was called MSDE. I'm not arguing that vendor lockin sucks, but I'm just mentioning that there is a "free" (as in beer) lite version of SQL 2005 Server.

I wish I was more of an SQL geek Scott,

But I can see where you're coming from, having been forced to use either oracle 7->10g and sql6->2000|mySQL in various work related programming the past decade [current 10g+ruby/rails]. Oracle was the first time I witnessed it's true power, grown man weepingly fast.

I would have expected SQL server 2000 to do (since oracle was doing this at least as of 1996)...but it disappointed.

Recent benchmarks of sqlserver2k5 from a biased source:

TPC-C and TPC-H Benchmark Results for SQL Server (nov 7)
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/prodinfo/compare/tpcc .mspx

"SQL Server Now in the 1 Million Transactions-per-Minute Club--Fastest on Windows
SQL Server has scaled past the barrier of 1 million transactions per minute, type "C" (tpmC)--the first to do so on Windows. Not only is SQL Server the fastest database on Windows, it is also the fastest database on Intel Itanium processors in a nonclustered environment.

In passing the 1 million tpmC barrier, SQL Server set many records:

1. Highest TPC-C result ever recorded on Windows.
2. Highest TPC-C result ever recorded on Intel's Itanium processors (scale-up).
3. Best price/performance on Windows in the top-10 TPC-C by performance.

Beats Oracle 10g on HP Superdome
On similar hardware--an enterprise class server with 64 Intel Itanium 2 processors--SQL Server 2005 has 7 percent better performance and 37 percent lower cost than Oracle 10g"

So hey... good job all in Redmond who had to work you asses off for the past couple years tweaking the hell of this it to make it the fastest.

PS: we all wish you would open source it, btw

Nothing is wrong with their developers. You just seem to be having some difficulty understanding TSQL's SELECT statment definition. TOP is what you are looking for, champ.

Imagine saying that to your manager, who then says, "Great. Let's get RedHat." Somewhere along the line, you have to make a tiny modification to support some odd piece of hardware, and suddenly your support contract is worth less than the paper it isn't printed on.

On the other hand, with closed source Windows, Outlook, SQL server and Office, these 'odd pieces of software' changes are done via Service Packs and patches. Suddenly, my Outlook which has been working smoothly, breaks down. And whatcan I do about it? Patch it?

I'm getting problems while patching..
"Size: 1.9 MB

A vulnerability exists in Outlook Express that could allow an attacker to cause Outlook Express to fail. You can help protect your computer by installing this update. After you install this update you may need to restart your computer.

More information for this update can be found at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=19527"

This patch doesn't install properly. So what do I do now? Call MS for support? They say "First apply the patch".

What is he going to think of your Open Source when something essential breaks that you can't fix and Red Hat /won't/ fix?

Strangely, this happens very often with Windows and is extremely rare or unheard of in the Open Source world.

What TFA is saying (while being overly general) is that when you move outside of the box to an unsupported configuration, you lose support -- and if you want support, you'll pay through the nose for it.

What the article doesn't say, is that M$ has the exact same stance. You run 3rd party software with Microsoft Exchange, you lose support from Microsoft on not only Exchange, but probally your install of Windows 2003 Advance Server. Go read your EULAs from top-to-bottom, and you'll see what I mean. For any Microsoft product.

God I hate people slinging FUD around.

Read this MS forums post. There are no loopholes here. Download it within a year from now, and you get to use it forever, for free, with no restrictions. Commercial apps are fine. Competing products are fine. Everything is fine, just MS isn't liable. (Typical disclaimer, nothing to speak of.)

On a related note, consider that VS does not, has never had, and probably will never have any kind of anti-piracy measures. The top edition (Team System, I think?) is worth a good $1000-$1500 cash. What other software products retailing at those prices don't carry major copy protection? Not many. I don't know that I'd go so far as to claim that VS is meant to be stolen, but hell, it wouldn't be a hard case to make.

declare @name null
select * from foo where ( @name is null or foo.name = @name )

Here's hoping it went through more testing than VS2005 did...

Did you actually use VC2005, or did you just read a crappy blog entry and assume it fact >.<

Here's the scoop: I've used the VC2005 betas for about two months now. They work fine. No, seriously. Never once did I have a crash. Never once did it corrupt my hard drive. And never once did it kill a penguin. Guys, seerisnah.

Granted, it takes a teensy bit longer to boot than EMACS, but it has a lot of nice features. Like the oft-maligned "intellisense" - it's nice having the function/method/class prototypes at your fingertips as you fill in a function. Or the new, secure versions of strcpy(), memcpy(), and others. It can compile code for a wide variety of applications, such as:

• Standard console programs (duh)
• Windows programs(duh)
• • EFI stuff:
  • EFI applications
  • EFI boot service drivers
  • EFI ROMs
  • EFI Runtimes
• Posix
• Windows CE programs

It also supports a wide variety of CPUs:

• The x86 (duh)
• AM33
• ARM
• EBC
• IA64
• M32R
• MIPS
• MIPS16
• MPISFPU
• MIPSFPU16
• MIPSR41XX
• SH3
• SH3DSP
• SH4
• SH5
• THUMB
• AMD64

Fairly impressive, all considering. Although I don't write multi-threaded apps, it does have some nice debugging tools for creating them, a nice GUI for those too lazy to write their own resource scripts, and a nifty-as-all-hell IDE. Contrary to popular opinion, it's stable as all hell, has more features than a nerd's Swiss Army Knife and creates fast code. Quite frankly, for those who actually program, it's a dream - and Microsoft released a beta that any of you could have download from http://msdn.microsoft.com/ (The free and fully-functional Beta is closed now. What, you don't regularly check Microsoft Developer's Network here? :-D)

So... All the VC2005 bashing seems to come from a blind hatred of Microsoft (remember, Bill Gates created his empire coding from his garage, like any proper geek would) and a blind belief in anything that will bash Microsoft. If you actually use VC2005, it's wonderful.

But wait, you can! You can download the "Express Edition" free (as in beer) from here. I don't know how much the "Express Edition" differs from the full product, but if you guys are going to whine about something, at least use it first

Here's hoping it went through more testing than VS2005 did...

Did you actually use VC2005, or did you just read a crappy blog entry and assume it fact >.<

Here's the scoop: I've used the VC2005 betas for about two months now. They work fine. No, seriously. Never once did I have a crash. Never once did it corrupt my hard drive. And never once did it kill a penguin. Guys, seerisnah.

Granted, it takes a teensy bit longer to boot than EMACS, but it has a lot of nice features. Like the oft-maligned "intellisense" - it's nice having the function/method/class prototypes at your fingertips as you fill in a function. Or the new, secure versions of strcpy(), memcpy(), and others. It can compile code for a wide variety of applications, such as:

• Standard console programs (duh)
• Windows programs(duh)
• • EFI stuff:
  • EFI applications
  • EFI boot service drivers
  • EFI ROMs
  • EFI Runtimes
• Posix
• Windows CE programs

It also supports a wide variety of CPUs:

• The x86 (duh)
• AM33
• ARM
• EBC
• IA64
• M32R
• MIPS
• MIPS16
• MPISFPU
• MIPSFPU16
• MIPSR41XX
• SH3
• SH3DSP
• SH4
• SH5
• THUMB
• AMD64

Fairly impressive, all considering. Although I don't write multi-threaded apps, it does have some nice debugging tools for creating them, a nice GUI for those too lazy to write their own resource scripts, and a nifty-as-all-hell IDE. Contrary to popular opinion, it's stable as all hell, has more features than a nerd's Swiss Army Knife and creates fast code. Quite frankly, for those who actually program, it's a dream - and Microsoft released a beta that any of you could have download from http://msdn.microsoft.com/ (The free and fully-functional Beta is closed now. What, you don't regularly check Microsoft Developer's Network here? :-D)

So... All the VC2005 bashing seems to come from a blind hatred of Microsoft (remember, Bill Gates created his empire coding from his garage, like any proper geek would) and a blind belief in anything that will bash Microsoft. If you actually use VC2005, it's wonderful.

But wait, you can! You can download the "Express Edition" free (as in beer) from here. I don't know how much the "Express Edition" differs from the full product, but if you guys are going to whine about something, at least use it first

It's a huge day for MS today - it's not only SQL Server 2005 but also Visual Studio 2005 and BizTalk 2006. They are releasing it as a full development platform, not just a SQL server. And it's just the beginning of products that MS is going to release within next year or so: new xbox, office, windows, just name it. Not to mention upcoming 'live' services. So it will be an interesting year.

VS.NET Express is only free for one year.

/me stops download

Please read the FAQ.

Yes, if by "free" you mean "free to use for one year":

You said "free for one year" -- what does that mean, exactly? Will you be charging for this later?

We originally announced pricing of Visual Studio Express at US$49. We are now offering Visual Studio Express for free, as a limited-in-time promotional offer, until November 6, 2006.

Do customers who acquire the Visual Studio Express products during the free promotional pricing period have to pay after the first year if they want to continue to use them?

If you acquire Visual Studio Express products within the one-year promotional period, you will enjoy the rights granted in the applicable license at no cost for the term of that license.

That "for the term of that license" sounds like a loophole to me. Anyone seen the licenses that these "free" versions come with? Do they have a time period written into them?

From the FAQ http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/support/ faq/default.aspx#pricing

10. How much will these products cost?

We are announcing a pricing promotion for Visual Studio Express - for the first year after the products launch on November 7th, 2005, customers will be able to visit MSDN to download their copy of Visual Studio Express for free!**

Our customers are very excited about the release of these products, so this limited-time download is our gift to the hobbyist, student, and novice community - we're excited to see the amazing applications they'll build!

Note that SQL Server 2005 Express Edition is also a free download. The free pricing for SQL Server Express is not limited to the same one-year promotional period as Visual Studio Express.

[**We plan to launch the non-English versions of the Express products sometime within 2-3 months after the English version launches on November 7th. The same pricing promotion will apply to these products, and will remain in effect for one full year after their respective availabilities.]

When did they change that?

Better get the full setup ISOs now:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/support/ install/

From the FAQ http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/support/ faq/default.aspx#pricing

10. How much will these products cost?

We are announcing a pricing promotion for Visual Studio Express - for the first year after the products launch on November 7th, 2005, customers will be able to visit MSDN to download their copy of Visual Studio Express for free!**

Our customers are very excited about the release of these products, so this limited-time download is our gift to the hobbyist, student, and novice community - we're excited to see the amazing applications they'll build!

Note that SQL Server 2005 Express Edition is also a free download. The free pricing for SQL Server Express is not limited to the same one-year promotional period as Visual Studio Express.

[**We plan to launch the non-English versions of the Express products sometime within 2-3 months after the English version launches on November 7th. The same pricing promotion will apply to these products, and will remain in effect for one full year after their respective availabilities.]

When did they change that?

Better get the full setup ISOs now:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/support/ install/

well, it appears you can still get on the waitlist for TechNet.

http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/EventDetail.aspx ?culture=en-US&EventID=1032282556

It seems they are offering free downloads for one year.

It appears that MS has done some interesting feature shuffling in their various free editions.

http://www.microsoft.com/sql/prodinfo/features/com pare-features.mspx

Has anyone out their tested out what is available in SQL express as far as job scheduling , DTS (now ETL) and replication?
Does anyone want to flame me for unashamedly using MS SQL?

As best as I can tell from their spec sheet, the following features of MSDE 2000 are not available in SQL Express:
* No job scheduler in SQL express. SQLAgent worked fine in MSDE 2000.
* Replication: MSDE for SQL could public and subscribe (as far as I understand), while SQL Express 2005 can only subscribe.
* They've changed the name of DTS to "Enterprise ETL Platform" or SSIS or something. While I haven't tested it out yet, it appears that DTS functionality is limited to basic import and export. For the really useful stuff (DTS to web services, for example) you need the pro edition.

Added:
* A user interface. MSDE 2000 basically had none. If you didn't have visual studio, or a developer's license to MSSQL, or some 3rd party administration and query tool, you basically had to use osql (command line).
* You get 4GB instead of 2GB.

Now, I have access to a few large corporate MS SQL servers, so this shouldn't really be a problem. However, large corporate servers have complex change-control processes.

Consequently, I rely on the desktop editions for all my ad-hoc stuff, development, and stuff that hasn't quite made it to production. I also run a database for a non-profit on MSDE, and was hoping to keep the replication features while moving up to SQL Express.

This release has been in testing for quite some time. Though I admit to not using it for massively complex queries, I havn't gotten any grief from it.

Here is a snip from the last email I got on it:
Our goal was to have 30 customers deployed on SQL Server 2005 by the time we launched. Today, we have more than 50 customers deployed on SQL Server 2005, including Barnes & Noble, Mediterranean Shipping Company, Xerox, and others in the process of migrating or upgrading their systems. These customers range in size from very small organizations, under five employees, to large enterprises running multi-terabyte mission critical systems. This demonstrates the value companies, large and small, can achieve using SQL Server 2005. We encourage you to read about some of the interesting things these companies are doing today with SQL Server 2005 at www.microsoft.com/casestudies.

http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=166 851&cid=13914395

Clearly, this (as well as news of Oracle's "free/lite" version of 10g), are good news... that Open Source projects like MySQL, PHP....

MS HAS ALWAYS OFFERED A FREE DATABASE ENGINE, its no secret. SQl Server 2005 Express is just the new version of this product which has been available for years. Because of its easy transition to Sql Server its used a lot as a started Database for companies trying to sell in the SBM market. A lot of software application make use of MSDE (which is what the engine was called before Express edition)

For more information here http://www.microsoft.com/sql/msde/default.mspx

Now as for the Express editions being free... They are not (someone let me know if I am wrong here). They cost like 40 bucks or so, I had the beta installed on my system, once beta was over it prompted me to register/pay for it within 30 days..etc the usual MS registration.

One of the most exciting features in SQL Server 2005 for me is the new Report Builder. SQL Server 2005 includes a new ClickOnce WinForms app called Report Builder that allows end-users to design their own reports from a business-user friendly data model. It is very similar to Business Object's WebIntelligence for those of you familiar with that product, but with an apparently more affordable licensing arrangement.

Essentially, the data architect takes the OLTP or data warehouse and abstracts it via metadata into Business entities with which end users are familiar. In Business Objects, this semantic layer is called a Business Universe and in SQLServer Reporting Services it's called the Data Model. Because this semantic layer understands how the data should be put together, it writes the underlying SQL necessary to give the user the answer they want. In principle and demos, it is very slick. We'll soon see how the two stack up in reality at my place of business, as we're setting up both this week to play with.

However, it seems as if the ISO images may not need such a product key, as this item from that link states:

If you need to install and use an Express Edition on a computer that is not connected to the Internet, you will need to create an installation CD using the CD ISO (IMG) files that are available on the Express site. The installation CD you create will then allow you to install an Express Edition on a computer that is not connected to the Internet, and that Express Edition will not require a registration key for continued usage.

You can download 'web installers' I believe, but ISO images are here

You can download 'web installers' I believe, but ISO images are here

I just checked, and it's not included in 2000 by default (I think it was made after release or something). It's available with the Resource Kit, apparently.

Show Related Links

The Show Related Links functionality in Internet Explorer is provided by Alexa. If you would like to find Web pages similar to the Web page you are currently viewing, click the Tools menu, and then click Show Related Links. When you do so, the Web address of the page you are viewing is sent to an Alexa server which returns a list of potentially similar links in the Search Companion area. This information is not sent to Microsoft. If you do not wish to send the address of the Web page you are currently viewing to Alexa, do not click Show Related Links.

• Gnome in Korea, too cool for words.
• KDE in Korea.
• Microsoft in Korea

The quesion is, can a single company do as much as an entire country can on it's own? I doubt it and so does Microsoft. Why else would they buy off their competition? They should have all confidence they will prevail without such tricks. The trend outlined above indicates they have no such confidence and can't really keep up.

The screenshots above speak for themselves, even if your browser does not support the characters a default install of Mepis does. The Microsoft programs are unmodified English language programs. Free software has Korean character support and translations that Koreans are giving themselves. It's difficult to see how M$ can maintain dominance without doing more than writing korean language how-to's.

"For closer feature equivalence," you should subtract value from the iMac for not having PCI/graphics slots, only one memory slot, no DVI port, no serial ata ports, non-replaceable optical drive, and non-replaceablemonitor. Of course, these features add value only if the user wanted them in the first place. Also, add value to the iMac for being an all-in-one and including developer tools only if the buyer wanted those features in the first place. See how pointless this is?

Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 is $115 at NewEgg (non-sale price about $120). XP Home is $92. Apple doesn't give it's buyers a choice in OSs.

Now, I'm a developer, and Apple ships their full RAD development environment with every Mac sold.

Which is worthless to the vast majority of iMac buyers. The developmer tools that Apple includes with every Mac is like a "Works" version of professional tools like MS Visual Studio and Final Cut Pro. PC developers that want these tools know they can get equivalent development tools for free that even use the same GNU compiler.

we haven't even started talking about the iLife equivalents...

Microsoft Works Suite is $70 at NewEgg. It's $46 at Vio Software. MS Works Suite is Works plus MS Word, Money, Digital Image, Encarta, and Streets & Trips. DVD creation software is included with the DVD burner.

A key enabler of AJAX is XMLHttpRequest (Apple Dev Connection , JJ Garrett's previously mentioned article). MS was an early implementor of this feature, in MSIE 5.0 back in 2000 (see this MSDN article). It seems that the capability lay in wait for years. Only recently has this synergistic combination of technologies truely come into focus. It's looking like AJAX and broadband could threaten the MS hegemony - we no longer need a local install of MS-Office, at 600+ Mb and $250+. A web server-based implementation may work just as well, a lot cheaper, a little slower, and without the problems inherent with installing software on Windows. note to intolerant moderators: I'm not bashing MS - Windows (the OS) works fine for me, I just wish I could say the same for the software I install and use under Windows. Would I be surprised if MS choose to cripple, subvert, or remove XMLHttpRequest? No. But I do expect them to FUD the landscape, and introduce a proprietary .NET "alternative".