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http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/sep0 5/09-20ExecChangesPR.mspx

I'm an indeed an MS guy, is it that obvious. :) I'm a developer on Windows Vista.

On .Net, I've only done a bit of it. You may find these msdn articles useful: mem optimization, auto mem manage 1 and auto mem manage 2. One thing that bit me in the ass was the use of Strings. In .Net you have to be careful how you work with them because .Net keeps strings around for re-use. So if you execute aString+="1" ten times (where aString starts as ""), it will allocate and keep around "1", "11", "111", "1111", "11111", "111111", etc... They will eventually be garbage collected, but in a high stress environment this can be real bad real quick. The trick is to use StringBuilder for string management, which will be very efficient with memory use.

As for the spyware issue, I would be legitimately interested in any spyware you find that bypasses user protection. If you are only a member of User, then the following resources will be blocked from modification: C:\windows, c:\program files, c:\documents and settings\(any user other than yourself that doesn't explicitly give you access), and registry entries in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. So in this scenario spyware can litter your user's folders, and whatever other folders are on the drive that aren't ACL'd correctly, but with the correct ACLs you should be able to reboot into any other account and not be affected by the spyware (and cleaning is easy, just nuke the user account, and re-creat it). Spyware can set itself to auto-start for that particular user (since the registry is in HKEY_CURRENT_USER), but it cannot set itself to auto-start for any other user (since that registry is in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE).

I'm very familiar with the internals of the platform, so at least in this case I can vouch for the robustness of the resource protection mechanisms in windows (ok, 2000, XP and SP2 at least). If you are seeing different behavior than what I describe, I would double check the security settings on folders. If someone came around and added 'Everyone Read/Write' to C:\windows, then yeah you could have issues.

I'm an indeed an MS guy, is it that obvious. :) I'm a developer on Windows Vista.

On .Net, I've only done a bit of it. You may find these msdn articles useful: mem optimization, auto mem manage 1 and auto mem manage 2. One thing that bit me in the ass was the use of Strings. In .Net you have to be careful how you work with them because .Net keeps strings around for re-use. So if you execute aString+="1" ten times (where aString starts as ""), it will allocate and keep around "1", "11", "111", "1111", "11111", "111111", etc... They will eventually be garbage collected, but in a high stress environment this can be real bad real quick. The trick is to use StringBuilder for string management, which will be very efficient with memory use.

As for the spyware issue, I would be legitimately interested in any spyware you find that bypasses user protection. If you are only a member of User, then the following resources will be blocked from modification: C:\windows, c:\program files, c:\documents and settings\(any user other than yourself that doesn't explicitly give you access), and registry entries in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. So in this scenario spyware can litter your user's folders, and whatever other folders are on the drive that aren't ACL'd correctly, but with the correct ACLs you should be able to reboot into any other account and not be affected by the spyware (and cleaning is easy, just nuke the user account, and re-creat it). Spyware can set itself to auto-start for that particular user (since the registry is in HKEY_CURRENT_USER), but it cannot set itself to auto-start for any other user (since that registry is in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE).

I'm very familiar with the internals of the platform, so at least in this case I can vouch for the robustness of the resource protection mechanisms in windows (ok, 2000, XP and SP2 at least). If you are seeing different behavior than what I describe, I would double check the security settings on folders. If someone came around and added 'Everyone Read/Write' to C:\windows, then yeah you could have issues.

I'm an indeed an MS guy, is it that obvious. :) I'm a developer on Windows Vista.

On .Net, I've only done a bit of it. You may find these msdn articles useful: mem optimization, auto mem manage 1 and auto mem manage 2. One thing that bit me in the ass was the use of Strings. In .Net you have to be careful how you work with them because .Net keeps strings around for re-use. So if you execute aString+="1" ten times (where aString starts as ""), it will allocate and keep around "1", "11", "111", "1111", "11111", "111111", etc... They will eventually be garbage collected, but in a high stress environment this can be real bad real quick. The trick is to use StringBuilder for string management, which will be very efficient with memory use.

As for the spyware issue, I would be legitimately interested in any spyware you find that bypasses user protection. If you are only a member of User, then the following resources will be blocked from modification: C:\windows, c:\program files, c:\documents and settings\(any user other than yourself that doesn't explicitly give you access), and registry entries in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. So in this scenario spyware can litter your user's folders, and whatever other folders are on the drive that aren't ACL'd correctly, but with the correct ACLs you should be able to reboot into any other account and not be affected by the spyware (and cleaning is easy, just nuke the user account, and re-creat it). Spyware can set itself to auto-start for that particular user (since the registry is in HKEY_CURRENT_USER), but it cannot set itself to auto-start for any other user (since that registry is in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE).

I'm very familiar with the internals of the platform, so at least in this case I can vouch for the robustness of the resource protection mechanisms in windows (ok, 2000, XP and SP2 at least). If you are seeing different behavior than what I describe, I would double check the security settings on folders. If someone came around and added 'Everyone Read/Write' to C:\windows, then yeah you could have issues.

Microsoft do XBox 360, Sony do PS3, XBox 360 hasn't gone for either HD-DVD or Blu-ray. If HD-DVD was so real why didn't they pick it for XBox 360?

Windows 512 megs of RAM; see http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb; en-us;253912 for more information

incorrect that film is a wmv hd only playable on a pc the same as the rest of the films here http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/cont ent_provider/film/dvd.aspx they are still on standard dvd discs but use wmvhd compression instead of mpeg2 hd dvd is a new disc format altogether

refuse to document the APIs that their own apps use, thereby allowing their own applications greater integration with the OS than other developers are capable of doing.

Bullshit
the api is published and freely available, that's right FREE... Because if you have to pay some programmer/company it must suck, the only good apps are FOSS right??

Task Switch XP Pro is also pretty pointless.. my brother uses the Alt-Tab Repacement PowerToy, and it works just fine:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/power toys/xppowertoys.mspx

i find that multiple monitors works well for cleaning up - especially if you cheat. i have 2 monitors for work, 1 for play (primarily outlook & ie). of course, the 2 'work' monitors are filled with a single exceed session (full screen), which has 4 virtual desktops (olvwm). it's a nice setup as i can have 9 monitors worth of information displayed on 3 monitors. i don't need to worry about any virtual desktop emulation for xp - i let olvwm handle it. and the nice part, since exceed is just one app, the taskbar isn't cluttered.

as a side-note, have you checked out the microsoft virtual desktop utility (it's toward the bottom of the page...)? i have found it to work just fine on my home system (only 1 monitor there)

Yet I can't do anything when a company produces software that exposes my online banking details to any script kiddie with time to spare, because I've agreed a license that removes such liability.

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, in no event shall Microsoft or its suppliers be liable for any special, incidental, punitive, indirect, or consequential damages whatsoever (including, but not limited to, damages for loss of profits or confidential or other information, for business interruption, for personal injury, for loss of privacy, for failure ot meet any duty including of good faith or of reasonable care, for negligence ...

If the government tax forms or driving license applications were in a proprietary microsoft format, individual consumers would have no choice but to purchase microsoft applications at whatever price microsoft decided to charge.

Microsoft offers free viewers for all its office documents to users without Microsoft Office. Check it out at http://www.microsoft.com/office/000/viewers.asp. So at least there is no price involved in this case. Government should not dictate technical details, such as file format, it should be decided in the free market.

Microsoft offers free office document viewers for people without Microsoft Office. You can download them at http://www.microsoft.com/office/000/viewers.asp. Check your facts before open your mouth.

MS already has a power toy for multiple desktops.
I've been using it for awhile, it works pretty well.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/power toys/xppowertoys.mspx

"Word Viewer 2003 lets you open Word 2003 documents and documents created with all previous versions of Microsoft Word for Windows® and Microsoft Word for Macintosh." Word Viewer 2003

use Linux on my desktop and I have a PowerBook. Which category does that put me in? The last time I checked, I couldn't run Internet Explorer... but someone please correct me if I'm wrong here.

You are wrong, at least with the powerbook... they make IE for the mac

Actually, with the Video Mixing Renderer (VMR) added with DirectX 9, video rendering can now use the 3D engine to render video. Read up on it: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url= /library/en-us/directshow/htm/vmrvspreviousdirects howrenderers.asp Jason

Or just optimize the drive for quick removal. This disables write caching.

Just check their financials for the home and entertainment division.

http://www.microsoft.com/msft/earnings/FY04/earn_r el_q4_04.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/msft/earnings/FY05/earn_r el_q4_05.mspx

Prior to 2003, Xbox was wrapped up into another "division" that actually quoted a profit for the first 2 years of the system. I was unable to dig in and locate any direct financials for the the groups that would combine to make the H&E division.

FY 2003 (1,191)
FY 2004 (1,215)
FY 2005 (391)

So, in the last 3 years the division as a whole lost $2.8 Billion. Add on one more year at pretty much the same losses as in 2003 and 2004 and you end up at $4.0 Billion for the entire division.

So, how exactly was I wrong again?

Just check their financials for the home and entertainment division.

http://www.microsoft.com/msft/earnings/FY04/earn_r el_q4_04.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/msft/earnings/FY05/earn_r el_q4_05.mspx

Prior to 2003, Xbox was wrapped up into another "division" that actually quoted a profit for the first 2 years of the system. I was unable to dig in and locate any direct financials for the the groups that would combine to make the H&E division.

FY 2003 (1,191)
FY 2004 (1,215)
FY 2005 (391)

So, in the last 3 years the division as a whole lost $2.8 Billion. Add on one more year at pretty much the same losses as in 2003 and 2004 and you end up at $4.0 Billion for the entire division.

So, how exactly was I wrong again?

Have you seen Microsoft Office 12? It's an even more radical departure from the look & feel of previous MS Office suites than OpenOffice. Users will require significant retraining in order to learn MS Office 12; here is the press release with various screenshots:

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2005/s ep05/09-13OfficeUI.mspx

Hmm... would Microsoft RTF count as an open document format, as far as Mass is concerned? The spec is published ( http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q86999/ ) and hundreds of programs can read and write it, including MS Word.

RTF is cool. It ain't XML, and the files get huge if you include bitmap graphics, but aside from that it's cool.

You see, on the Mac, 64MB of VRAM is considered "ideal" for Quartz 2D Extreme, so the Windows Vista requirements are still 4 times higher.

You are making that up. The apple line contains systems with 32 - 128 mb of VRAM. In addition there are no pages on the apple site that state the "ideal" amount of ram, just the minimum @ 16 MB. Source? Also, the requirements are not 4 times higher.

And now you're trying to make an uneducated extrapolation that Vista's effects will even work in 64MB of VRAM, when the very site you quote only mentions 128MB VRAM and 256MB VRAM. Indeed, to quote from the very first paragraph:

LOL. At least I cite sources. You've made baseless unproven claims. See this link: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/display/graph ics-reqs.mspx. Aero will require 32 mb, and Aero Glass will require 64 mb for minimums. Also, 128 is cited as "recommended" for aero glass.

Apple's requirements are a quarter of what is currently known about Vista's requirements in the video processing capabilities you yourself
decided to compare.

Apple's requirements are half of the proposed vista minimums not a quarter.

(And I'm not even going to get into the fact that Vista is still more than a year away, and that what we currently know about it's minimum requirements could very well go up during that time...the fact that you're comparing vaporware to released software that achieves the same ends with less hardware is telling in and of itself).

"Vaporware" - that's why there is a beta out? Last time I checked vaporware applied to a product that has been announced but has no tangible proof of its existance. The minium requirements could change, thanks for restating what I've already said.

What you fail to realize is that at OS X's inital release it's system requirements were significantly higher than XP's. This is why I say that OS X has already "set the bar" if you will, and that for the most part the jump to Vista is not really that drastic in comparison to what Apple has already done. At it's release XP required a video card that will support 800x600 operation and at least 8 mb of video ram if you want to watch DVD's. OS X required double the minimum amount of RAM of XP, the recommended amount was also double of XP as well. It is for these reasons that I use OS X as an example for an OS that has high system requirements.

You see, on the Mac, 64MB of VRAM is considered "ideal" for Quartz 2D Extreme, so the Windows Vista requirements are still 4 times higher.

You are making that up. The apple line contains systems with 32 - 128 mb of VRAM. In addition there are no pages on the apple site that state the "ideal" amount of ram, just the minimum @ 16 MB. Source? Also, the requirements are not 4 times higher.

And now you're trying to make an uneducated extrapolation that Vista's effects will even work in 64MB of VRAM, when the very site you quote only mentions 128MB VRAM and 256MB VRAM. Indeed, to quote from the very first paragraph:

LOL. At least I cite sources. You've made baseless unproven claims. See this link: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/display/graph ics-reqs.mspx. Aero will require 32 mb, and Aero Glass will require 64 mb for minimums. Also, 128 is cited as "recommended" for aero glass.

Apple's requirements are a quarter of what is currently known about Vista's requirements in the video processing capabilities you yourself
decided to compare.

Apple's requirements are half of the proposed vista minimums not a quarter.

(And I'm not even going to get into the fact that Vista is still more than a year away, and that what we currently know about it's minimum requirements could very well go up during that time...the fact that you're comparing vaporware to released software that achieves the same ends with less hardware is telling in and of itself).

"Vaporware" - that's why there is a beta out? Last time I checked vaporware applied to a product that has been announced but has no tangible proof of its existance. The minium requirements could change, thanks for restating what I've already said.

What you fail to realize is that at OS X's inital release it's system requirements were significantly higher than XP's. This is why I say that OS X has already "set the bar" if you will, and that for the most part the jump to Vista is not really that drastic in comparison to what Apple has already done. At it's release XP required a video card that will support 800x600 operation and at least 8 mb of video ram if you want to watch DVD's. OS X required double the minimum amount of RAM of XP, the recommended amount was also double of XP as well. It is for these reasons that I use OS X as an example for an OS that has high system requirements.

The Ajax apps all look extremely impressive, but I do believe inconsistent UI will eventually plateau the adoption.

I'd be more prone to believe you if media players (like WinAmp or iTunes) and instant messaging system wasn't simultaneously deeply inconsistant and popular, if Apple wasn't schizophrenic in its own interface (Everyone uses the white pinstripe look. Well, except for media apps which get brushed metal. Oh, and Safari's now a media app. Kinda). Microsoft itself frequently reinvents the GUI wheel. Windows Media Player rolls its own skin. Microsoft Office has repeatedly rolled their own interface, to the extend of writing their own code to display the title bar just so they can do wacky things like displaying the Microsoft logo in the middle of the title. Like the standard menu and toolbar interface of the last ten years of Micro Office? Welcome to a brand new vision.

The reality is that as long as your interface isn't too wacky, users will suffer it. By and large the Ajax applications aren't inventing entirely new and scary interfaces, they're just putting a variety of superficial skins on top of them. By and large users are coping. They

http://www.techleadership.org/ which Jim is said to be executive director partners with Microsoft and looks like a company meant to lobby MS software in government in the States and abroad.

the great thing about having an uncommon name like Ms Strzalkowski quoted in the article, is that a quick Google search for Strzalkowski and Microsoft reveals a certain Tomek Strzalkowski who appears to be friendly with the Beast. I wonder if they know each other?

Whereas on windows, I havent had to reboot my laptop since, what, yesterday, when the clipboard stopped working. I didnt even know the clipboard could stop working, but no, you can suddenly stop being able to cut and paste. Trust me to be the one to find out.

Yes, that can happen. Actually, it's probably a miracle it works at all - I looked at the Windows clipboard API a while back, and let's just say it's... interesting. (I'm not sure if they really still use a chain and rely on programs to pass on messages, and I probably don't want to know.)

Whereas on windows, I havent had to reboot my laptop since, what, yesterday, when the clipboard stopped working. I didnt even know the clipboard could stop working, but no, you can suddenly stop being able to cut and paste. Trust me to be the one to find out.

Yes, that can happen. Actually, it's probably a miracle it works at all - I looked at the Windows clipboard API a while back, and let's just say it's... interesting. (I'm not sure if they really still use a chain and rely on programs to pass on messages, and I probably don't want to know.)

I'm going to just point you to this webpage and let you come to your own conclusions.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/webservices/

The cynic in me suspects they got a VERY good deal from MS for publicising this move.

I have a good hunch you're right. I think I'll post anonymously and let you know that at one point I've worked for EV1Servers. When they first offered Windows servers, I saw the press release that we were releasing. It was full of quotes about how we love our Windows servers, and how easy it is to install and set up Windows. It included graphs comparing Windows and Linux setup times, and how we can push out Windows servers quicker and how it costs less.

The article was complete bullshit. From what I heard, Microsoft wrote the article and sent it to EV1 to sign off on it so they could publish it. How much do you want to bet that EV1 got a discount for that?

Look at these quotes from the article:

"Mr Horton also found the total cost of ownership included soft costs such as the hard work required to keep Linux up and running"

"The total cost of ownership is actually lower in this case than with Linux because of the hidden costs of the support."

Does anyone have any doubt that this isnt straight out of the mouth of Microsoft's anti-Linux "Get-The-Facts" press department? This is Microsoft's current anti-Linux slogan that they're hammering into everyone's heads.

Check it out:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/facts /topics/tco.mspx

According to this link, Vista will include some protection against rootkits:

Windows Vista Security and Data Protection Improvements

"In addition to these features, Windows Vista can clean many worms, viruses, rootkits and spyware thereby ensuring the integrity of the operating system and the privacy of users' data."

• Xbox 360 Live Arcade Mushroom Toaster Strudel - In theory, Arcade will allow more small-fry developers to create content for livingroom audiences. The greatest barrier to profitable indie development on the console at the moment seems to be that the only viable way to sell console games is through a retailer, (which often requires the clout and money of a big publisher). Remove that barrier, and -- for what it's worth -- smaller studios have a shot. I believe some indie games have already gone this route for Xbox Live Arcade. And MS has already courted one small studio to create content for X360LA.
• Windows 360 - The original Xbox was basically a stripped-down-Windows 2000 box running DirectX 8.1, making Windows desktop->Xbox console ports a relative snap. I've read that the 360 will function along the same lines, with XNA making that process even easier. This is great for small developers, because it means production for consoles will be within our reach.

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/li censing/windows.mspx

It is NOT open source, and shouldn't be confused with that. But it does allow direct readonly access to Windows source code.

So do these folks ;P

Breaking Changes in the Standard C++ Library Since Visual C++ 6.0
If you are upgrading a program that uses Standard C++ Library code that compiled in Visual C++ 6.0, you should be aware of the following issues:

• reverse_iterator Changes
• Some Iterators Are No Longer the Same as Pointers
• MIN/MAX #define Change

Nothing got "broken". But if you were abusing the CRT, you might now have to pay the price. As far as the deprecated functions -- if you #include certain headers (generally, if you directly or indirectly #include "strsafe.h"), you'll find that some APIs will cause compiler warnings or errors. Things like strcat and strcpy, which take no buffer lengths, are quite dangerous. Yes, the programmer can verify things before calling them, but if you screw up once, you have a problem. The replacements all require the buffer length to be specified.

Evolution can do a bit, but it uses Outlook Web Access. According to Microsoft, only Outlook 2003 will work fully with Exchange. Internet Explorer 5.01 and later for Windows get to use OWA Premium (a very small subset of the full functionality of Exchange + Outlook); everyone else (including Evolution) must use OWA basic, which is a small subset of the functionality in OWA Premium (i.e. a small subset of a very small subset of the full Exchange + Outlook features)

Anyone can get hold of an 'express' edition of the whole IDE for free - there's no reason to judge it on the 2003 compiler.

And if they're a serious Windows dev shop they'll probably have an MSDN subscription and already have access to the new version anyway.

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/li censing/windows.mspx

Strider Ghostbuster,, a Microsoft developed technique for detecting all persistant and stealthy rootkits .

Just convince Microsoft to make it available.

There is also SysInternal's Rootkit Revealer, which although not quite as general, is still hard to fool.

They just don't realise that a mere recording from line-out to line-in in any half-decent sound card will sound as good as the original to 99.% of the users. So they should try and prevent that as well.

Uh, they do.

It takes a little bit of effort to get setup initially, but yes it is possible.

Public Folder functionality can be replaced with this:

Open Exchange Outlook Client

Outlook will publish a summary of it's free busy data to the internet as opposed to publishing it to an exchange public folder:

Outlook free / busy information for Outlook 2003

Overall if you do it right, the chances are actually that you will not only end up with a more robust system than what Exchange is. Especially if you buy it soon, you have the ability to go 64bit on your servers before Microsoft do! This means that you can run one server instead of 4 or 4000 (Depending really on the size of the organisation that you look after)

This interface looks like it will join onto anything. If you like it, it might even join onto OpenExchange.

Berny

Well J# isn't supposed to be Java. I have never heard that, only that it is C# with Java-like syntax (which is to say not really that different). Now, I do remember good old J++, which was just a plain Java ripoff. Since J# is supposedly compatible with J++ maybe it is just MS trying to be clever(ly evil).

Back in 97 or so, J++ was actually Java. It wasn't until Visual Studio 6 that it became something else. Hence the lawsuit!

All that said, I worry for JBoss. I don't want to see MS ruin a good product.

Huh? Funny, I thought that this was exactly what Terminal Services and/or Remote Desktop achieved?

For those who are uniformed: Terminal Services

What benefits are there, and what things do we lose? What problems will occur?"

If you're looking mainly at upgrading the compiler, you can download the command-line compilers for free and you can see if it compiles well or not, or if language features you wanted to use are there. These are both the .NET compilers (CSC, VBC, etc.) and the regular compilers (CL, etc.). CL compiles both normal C++ (I've used it on the same code I gave to g++) and Managed (Embraces and) Extensions for C++.

Otherwise you're looking at upgrading the IDE, which is motivated by how much your programmers like or dislike the 6.0 IDE. And if you buy 2005, you're probably going to be upgrading both, so you need to make sure that both will work better (or one better, one as well) as those in 6.0.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url= /library/en-us/script56/html/js56jsoriJScript.asp

I'd also like to add to this that if you read the msdn article "Saying Goodbye to an old friend", Microsoft has submitted the new "safe" methods (called "strsafe functions") to the C/ C++ standards committee to have them included in future versions of C++

"say goodbye":
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url= /library/en-us/dncode/html/secure03102004.asp

more info on strsafe.h (included in the VC.NET 2003 SDKs and up):
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url= /library/en-us/dnsecure/html/strsafe.asp

I'd also like to add to this that if you read the msdn article "Saying Goodbye to an old friend", Microsoft has submitted the new "safe" methods (called "strsafe functions") to the C/ C++ standards committee to have them included in future versions of C++

"say goodbye":
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url= /library/en-us/dncode/html/secure03102004.asp

more info on strsafe.h (included in the VC.NET 2003 SDKs and up):
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url= /library/en-us/dnsecure/html/strsafe.asp

I would recommend the Google approach - cluster cheap computers. Clustering ASP can be easy (depends if you use the Session varaible) - look into Microsoft's Network Load Balancing; which while it load balances HTTP applications, also provides clustering and failover (I think - you'd have to check) without setting up a formal Windows cluster.

As for SQL, you could have two installations of SQL 2000 and use NLB to share among them; so long as you either manually take care of write transactions or use replication. (I'm not sure what the potential for lost information is if one SQL server goes down taking all data on its discs with it.)

You should obivously also read about MS's own clustering support and look into that. It tends to be bigger systems than you're talking about. Certain configurations use shared discs - you will have to research.

The ideal in my book is multiple "share nothing" servers where any can take the load of the whole - protects against disc failure too!

The idea of manually swapping in a spare server suggests you don't need 99.9% uptimes, otherwise you'd be looking into clustering systems to make that swap automatically.

Oh, and one thing I did saved my bacon at work once: Every two hours have your SQL Server backup (dump) the transaction log to another computer entirely accross the network - I use the SQL Server Maintainence plans. If you loose the server entirely, you've still got most of today's data! (Adjust frequency to taste.)

• the bathtub curve of disk failure rates, and
• that a raid reconstruct can take about a day on a lot of RAID sets

It can be hard to explain to a company with whom you have a maintenance contract that a drive needs to be replaced that hasn't actaully failed yet. I know one admin (honest, it isn't me!) who advocates pulling old drives from the raid set and dropping them on the floor a few times and then calling service to "schedule" thes replacements ;-).