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The MS research videos do not seem to load.

There is actually another recommendation which is to leave 12.5% free to prevent the MFT from becoming fragmented. NTFS reserves 12.5% of volume by default for exclusive use of the MFT. This space, known as the MFT zone, is not used to store data unless the remainder of the volume becomes full.[1]

You don't need a special docking station anymore. All you need are an HDMI cable and whatever Bluetooth peripherals happen to be on hand.

Wrong and double wrong. In the secure environment of big companies the intranet connections ain't wifi. And most tablets don't do 10/100/1000 easily without a device specific dongle.

I would not put it past Microsoft doing some OS tweaks that make other OEMs have trouble with this feature on their devices, much the same as the Winmodem and wifi radio chip strategy back in the day to get rid of any possibility of any Linux distro catching on in a hurry. This is why desktops are still the norm in large banks and many still have early core processors and WinXP Pro because upgrading to Win7 is almost impossible with only 512meg or even 1gig of ram for that matter and upgrading the desktop ram is a tricky option more expensive than a service replacement of the unit.

Laptops are too much of a security risk in some places and the places that do allow them are likely to insist on strong drive encryption. So if they go out of the building they are useless except for the individual who has access. Some companies even require bios passwords to be set and no access to the local hdd files without an INTRANET LAN connection first for in house only devices essentially a bios lan boot block. Except for security stupid places like the government of Canada where a member of the government can take his laptop home and have his girl friend read through it LOL

The most important connection for the laptop is the local secure server over cat5 or 6 and into the com for telephone communications to the board rooms and outside lines which are all monitored and isolated. This is how banking and every company that requires absolute intranet security does it. If there is outside internet connection or wifi to outside internet it does not touch the local ip addresses at all, unless they are undergoing software work and this is only switched on manually from the server and only under very strict supervision with extreme authentication measures.

So Surface Pro tablets running low power chips that do not have a lot of horse power might catch on, but they could become a security nightmare if companies cannot easily enforce heavily locked drive encryption on Surface tablets the way they do with Lenovo, HP and Dell laptops. Either way I do not see them flying off the shelves any time ZUNE as most companies will just keep what they have, especially if they have already paid huge chunks of change for recent Win7 laptops.

Unless the Surface tablets running x86 haswells are much cheaper and will easily integrate into existing windows servers all the way back to server 2003 they will not see traction in the business market for at least 3 years. HP and most other manufactures are counting on Haswell to bring business back to the upgrade tread mill. SO IS MICROSOFT. However this time around if the costs are as high as they were with Windows 7, businesses will find a way to wait longer and the tablet revolution on the desktop will flop Haswell or no Haswell. There will be blood on the boardroom floor next year at Microsoft, especially if they try to end commercial support for XP and do not release a sensible cheap business workstation version of 8 or whatever that will run smoothly less than a gig of ram like XP!

You'd have full PC functionality in a laptop. Buh-Bye both Android and Apple.

Eh? I assume you meant "full PC functionality in a tablet."

But in any case that's absurd. Android and iOS are still primarily smartphone OSes, and "full PC functionality" in a 4-5" touch screen is impossible.

And tablets have ALREADY come out with full Windows 8 - there are a bunch of them. And game has not so far been changed...

If you really want to avoiding revision control...
Fix your Google skills:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/what-is-sync-center

Robocopy ( http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc733145.aspx ) is included in all desktop versions of Windows (so, not RT or Phone). Extensive copying/moving/mirroring options, CLI-only. Great for integrating into scheduled scripts.

I'd still agree with other poster here, and recommend git over Robocopy to the OP. However, Windows does have a robust tool for syncing files between multiple computers built in.

In fact, Robocopy has been available since Windows NT 4.0.

Windows Sync Center http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-vista/sync-center-frequently-asked-questions/ is a functioning offline file sync built into the OS since Vista with other capabilities coming in as early as Windows 95/NT4. Good to know that you just don't care and can't be bothered to add a suggestion, though.

Dad recently purchased a Windows 8 laptop, but the FujiXerox DocuPrint 203A printer doesn't have a Windows 8 driver. Some posts suggest that it is a rebadged Brother HL-2040.

I was using Windows as an example of why closed sourced drivers are bad for hardware longevity. Should my parents throw out a perfectly useable printer simply becausse FujiXerox cannot be bothered to release a new driver?

According to this was the original spec.. MS has since changed it but it is slightly better.. This is what MS says not me.

MS is the one who is the has put out confusing numbers. Like all things MS, they clarified it later.. Even by MS best estimates, it takes about 32GB of space on a Surface Pro. If you use a tool, you can reclaim 8GB more. So Windows 8 on a Surface at best requires 24GB of space after optimizations.

I want a _Surface_Tablet_ because ________.

Examples, leaving iPad's out:
I want _a_Tivo_ because _I_don't_like_my_Cable_DVR_.

I want a _Honda_ because _I_trust_the_brand_based_on_past_experience_.

My point is that the Surface doesn't fit anything for me.

Based on Microsoft's own site http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-us/surface-with-windows-8-pro/
Microsoft believes our answers are :

I want a _Surface_Tablet_ because _I_Need_Office_on_a_tablet_.

I want a _Surface_Table_ because _I_need_a_neat_keyboard_on_a_tablet_.

I want a _Surface_Table_ because _I_need_USB_Port_.

I'm not the target market, but I don't know who is?

Steve Ballmer email to Microsoft employees on Nokia Devices & Services acquisition

As Quoted from: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2010/sep10/09-09statement.aspx: (Archive mirror)

Microsoft Business Division Transition
Sept. 09, 2010
E-mail to Microsoft full-time employees from Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer.

Sept. 9, 2010

I am writing to let you know that Stephen Elop has been offered and has accepted the job as CEO of Nokia and will be leaving Microsoft, effective immediately. Stephen leaves in place a strong business and technical leadership team, including Chris Capossela, Kurt DelBene, Amy Hood and Kirill Tatarinov, all of whom will report to me for the interim.

The MBD business continues to grow and thrive, with 15 percent growth in the last quarter. It has been good to see the great response to Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010, the growth of our Dynamics business and the way we have been successful in extending all our MBD products and services to the cloud. I appreciate the way that Stephen has been a good steward of the brand and business in his time here, and look forward to continuing to work with him in his new role at Nokia.

Please join me in wishing Stephen well.

Steve

I appreciate the way that Stephen has been a good steward of the brand and business in his time here, and look forward to continuing to work with him in his new role at Nokia.

I would mirror that if you want to keep it. Seems likely to go away at any moment.

MS innovates, just slowly. I wish more of these guys ideas got turned into products each year, if they did MS probably wouldn't have the reputation they do of a stoggy business only company.

Buying an additional license is a waste of money. You can legally download official MS isos and use the OEM key with it ( unless you are trying to use a different version of course).

As someone who has written and maintained complex commercial Windows software recently I can say that since Windows Vista the backwards compatibility story with Windows is not nearly as good as it used to be. Pretty much every new version of Windows since then has brought some serious changes in behavior.

With Vista the big breaking change was of course UAC which I'm sure everyone here knows about.

Windows 7 on the surface did not introduce a large amount of breaking changes when compared to Windows Vista. Probably the biggest breaking change was the need to use a new GUID in your application manifest if you didn't want your customers to be annoyed by the "Program Compatibility Assistant."

However, Win7 was the first version where 64 bit OS installations really took off. Depending on the application, making an existing 32 bit Windows application work on a 64 bit OS can be a lot of work. I'm not talking about recompiling to 64 bit here either. There are a fair number of breaking changes with regard to COM objects, esp. if you are mixing .NET and native code anywhere.

Win8 brings us Metro/Modern apps which most Windows developers have been ignoring because of lack of backwards compatibility with Win7 and a strict sandbox that makes it almost impossible to write anything other than silly casual games (Cut the Rope/Angry Birds) or an "app" that does nothing more than access a website which you could access with your web browser anyway ("Facebook app"/"Netflix app".)

For the people who write applications (not "apps") Windows 8 has a couple things that make life difficult as well. One of the big ones is how difficult it is to perform an automated installation of .NET 3.5. For those doing driver development, the addition of connected standby to Win8 has really complicated life as well.

All this adds up ever since Vista we have always had to make changes to our software to support a new OS release, wierdly enough binary compatibility between OS releases on Windows is actually becoming comparable to a typical Linux distribution. With the release cadence of Windows becoming quicker ongoing support and maintenance for commercial Windows software is quickly becoming as expensive as commercial Linux software support.

As someone who has written and maintained complex commercial Windows software recently I can say that since Windows Vista the backwards compatibility story with Windows is not nearly as good as it used to be. Pretty much every new version of Windows since then has brought some serious changes in behavior.

With Vista the big breaking change was of course UAC which I'm sure everyone here knows about.

Windows 7 on the surface did not introduce a large amount of breaking changes when compared to Windows Vista. Probably the biggest breaking change was the need to use a new GUID in your application manifest if you didn't want your customers to be annoyed by the "Program Compatibility Assistant."

However, Win7 was the first version where 64 bit OS installations really took off. Depending on the application, making an existing 32 bit Windows application work on a 64 bit OS can be a lot of work. I'm not talking about recompiling to 64 bit here either. There are a fair number of breaking changes with regard to COM objects, esp. if you are mixing .NET and native code anywhere.

Win8 brings us Metro/Modern apps which most Windows developers have been ignoring because of lack of backwards compatibility with Win7 and a strict sandbox that makes it almost impossible to write anything other than silly casual games (Cut the Rope/Angry Birds) or an "app" that does nothing more than access a website which you could access with your web browser anyway ("Facebook app"/"Netflix app".)

For the people who write applications (not "apps") Windows 8 has a couple things that make life difficult as well. One of the big ones is how difficult it is to perform an automated installation of .NET 3.5. For those doing driver development, the addition of connected standby to Win8 has really complicated life as well.

All this adds up ever since Vista we have always had to make changes to our software to support a new OS release, wierdly enough binary compatibility between OS releases on Windows is actually becoming comparable to a typical Linux distribution. With the release cadence of Windows becoming quicker ongoing support and maintenance for commercial Windows software is quickly becoming as expensive as commercial Linux software support.

When did it become the norm to use some obscure definition without bothering to define it first (or ever in this case)?

Yeah, but all you can do in Paint is draw Hitler mustaches on supermodels and junk.

Haha, yes. Seriously, though MSPaint is ALL we have in corporate environments for troubleshooting and cropping images on the fly.

For MacOS users I don't recall any built-in alternative for general mustache work "and junk" ;). Sure, taking screenshots is automated through key combos for Macs, but the MacOS is missing the true magic of Paint's scribbling, trying to make circles and connect lines and triangles into fake arrows, etc.

The lobby on feature-complete Drawing tools for all OSs is sure deficient. It's an accepted fact of life how unprofessional it looks when a high-paid manager has no choice but to improvise without the correct tools, like maybe visio or photoshoop. Their troubleshooting or "the problem on this image is here" directions are done in Paint, and always look like something out of a 4chan drawing.
* And apparently FINALLY on Windows 8

Mark Russinovich (practically reverse engineered the Windows kernel and wrote books about it even before joining MS)
Scott Guthrie (a techie succeeding in a management position, apparently winning a lot of respect by his employees),
Scott Hanselmann,
Anders Hejlsberg (created C# and still oversees it's development, latest with true async continuation support)
Jeffrey Snower (created the vision driving PowerShell with his Monad Manifesto and actually saw it through, completing with Desired State Configuration in PowerShell 4)
Don Symes (F# fame),
Don Box,
Neal Gafter (previously of Java fame)
Dave Cutler (yes, he apparently still works for MS)

I was really, really sad to see Erik Meier go. That was a colossal loss. But Microsoft is not short of outstanding engineers.

Note that TPM 2.0 is required by Windows 8.1, as shown by Microsoft's certification requirements. The BSI cautions against Windows 8 because apparently Win8 supports TPM 2.0 while Win7 doesn't.

Let's be a little more precise. TPM 2.0 is not required by windows 8.1. It will run just fine without and people are currently doing that with the leaked RTM builds.

In the document at your link Microsoft says that they will require that all new systems that OEMS wants to certify after January 1st 2015 must have TPM2.0 to pass certification and get the sticker. It is a marketing sticker requirement, not a Windows 8.1 system requirement.

Note that TPM 2.0 is required by Windows 8.1, as shown by Microsoft's certification requirements. The BSI cautions against Windows 8 because apparently Win8 supports TPM 2.0 while Win7 doesn't.

As far as I can tell (and I admit not being an expert in the field), TPM 2.0 is always enabled (it's neither opt-in nor opt-out) and under the operating system's control. As such, an OS too old to use a 2.0 TPM effectively (such as Windows 7) isn't much of an issue as one can still assert control over one's system. Likewise, an OS that can be audited (like Linux) is okay since, as long as one can replace the bootloader, one can control what the system does. Apparently the BSI assumes that this is possible.

Windows 8 and later, however, are essentially black boxes that control the system down to the TPM. And they're controlled by a foreign corporation which in turn can be ordered to do unpleasant things by its government. Also note that as of Windows 8.1/January of 2015 TPM 2.0 is mandatory for the Windows hardware certification*, which makes it likely that from 2015 onward most ready-made systems and probably also most new mainboards will come with it. The easiest way to avoid running an untrustable box seems to be to avoid Windows 8+ altogether.

Interestingly, Apple never warmed up to the technology; they added them to Macs in 2006 and reportedly dropped them in 2009, never even having written a driver. Given how they handle iOS one would expect them to be more interested in TPMs. Then again, it wouldn't surprise me if they're just using similar custom hardware.


* Windows 8.1 also requires that all laptops come with a 720p-capable webcam. Insert paranoid comment here.

The only thing holding back DRM being the primary beneficiary of TPM is the lack of adoption and the fact that TPM is entirely voluntary. If every computer had a TPM module regardless of the users preference you could be damn certain that many DRM schemes would be using this.

Microsoft has announced that from January 1, 2015 all computers will have to be equipped with a TPM 2.0 module in order to pass the Windows 8.1 hardware certification. And while not every computer will run Windows, I very much doubt you'll find a computer that can't run Windows so that's the end of TPM-less hardware. Of course Windows 8.1 will run on non-TPM hardware but I figure in a few years Windows 9 will refuse to run on anything but TPM-enabled hardware. That's the end of the PC as an open platform and you can already prepare for the funeral.

Forgot the quotes, sorry about that

Show me where I claimed UEFI has been cracked.

And FYI, Secure Boot is not the same thing as UEFI. If you disagree, take it up with MS.

And lastly, look at the title of TFA I linked. It says, oh "Microsoft ‘Secure Boot’ Cracked".

I'm really not trying to be nit picky, but are you saying that Windows source code is available?

Are you a university student who wants to do a faculty-sponsored research project that uses Windows? Congratulations, the Windows Research Kernel may be available to you:

"The Windows Research Kernel (WRK) packages core Windows XP x64/Server 2003 SP1 (2005 edition) kernel sources with an environment for building and testing of experiments and projects based on modifying the Windows kernel, enabling advanced teaching and research that promote better understanding of the Windows architecture and implementation."

Doesn't mean that it's open source, because as I and others have pointed out, that requires that the receiver of said source be free to modify and redistribute it.

Well, there are other differences as well. I can buy sheet music for tunes that came out *this year*, (not limited to what came out twelve years ago) and I don't need to be a very special person to qualify. And I can buy music for the entire tune, not just the base line.

I'm really not trying to be nit picky, but are you saying that Windows source code is available?

Are you a university student who wants to do a faculty-sponsored research project that uses Windows? Congratulations, the Windows Research Kernel may be available to you:

"The Windows Research Kernel (WRK) packages core Windows XP x64/Server 2003 SP1 (2005 edition) kernel sources with an environment for building and testing of experiments and projects based on modifying the Windows kernel, enabling advanced teaching and research that promote better understanding of the Windows architecture and implementation."

Doesn't mean that it's open source, because as I and others have pointed out, that requires that the receiver of said source be free to modify and redistribute it.

Yep, installed packages are available through the Windows Management Instrumentation - where you'll find rich information about everything related to system management, from system board, network adapters, performance counters, drivers over printers, volumes, disks to installed software, updates, running services etc.

Yes, this model offers much more information that you'll ever get from a Linux system unless you have dip into some serious log file archeology.
The WMI classes are not part of PowerShell, but PowerShell will seamlessly integrate with the WMI/CIM model. Consequently, the WMI classes are not documented as part of PowerShell. However, they are very well documented. To get a little feel for what type of information can be obtained for a Windows system, look at the documentation for WMI. There are also CIM classes which should work cross platform with any system that adheres to DMTFs WBEM protocol and CIM model. Yes, they are available for Unix/Linux as well.

Your example is actually very interesting. You managed to figure out that Win32_Product was *probably* the WMI class you wanted. Great! here is how you will progress from there: run the command and pipe the result through the Get-Member cmdlet to get an overview of the available information (properties, methods).

Get-WmiObject win32_product | Get-Member

From the answer (cannot be shown here due to ./ junk character filter) you can see that Win32_Products has (among other properties) a caption and a version. Hence, you type (or press up-arrow and edits the prev line):

Get-WmiObject win32_product | Format-Table caption,version

And voila you have your installed products with versions, nicely formatted in a table. This workflow is actually very, very common with PowerShell:
1) locate the command,
2) pipe the results through get-member (which has the standard alias gm because it is used so frequently),
3) chose properties,
4) re-run the command but pipe the results to one of the export-, out- or format- cmdlets.

Yes, you can export the list as comma- or tab-separated values instead by piping the results through Export-Csv:
Get-WmiObject win32_product | select caption,version | Export-Csv myproducts.csv

The GPs point was exactly about the discoverability and consistency of PowerShell. There is no overloaded use of -e options. All options has meaningful names, but can be abbreviated as long as there is no ambiguity. Output from cmdlets are self-describing and you can discover both properties and methods.

And PowerShell works with objects. If you inspected the output from the Get-WmiObject win32_product | Get-Member, you would notice that the returned objects each expose an Uninstall method. See if you can figure out what Get-WmiObject win32_product | where name -like "*Java*" | foreach Uninstall will do.

I don't know enough about the internals of map() vs. list comprehension vs. generator expressions but to me the "map", "reduce", and "filter" verbs have a certain quality that just looks better. Perhaps that is solely due to their resemblance to map, filter, and reduce in functional langs e.g., OCaml.

Many modern functional languages also have sequence/list comprehensions - Haskell, for example, or F#.

I don't think you would be able to say the same about swapping map() out with a list comprehension. Yes/no?

Depends on the language. Where sequence comprehensions are designed right, they're nothing but syntactic sugar for filter/map/...; if these are interpreted in context, then you can provide your own which redefined filter/map/... as you see fit, including for parallel computations. Examples include LINQ in C# (which desugars to calls of methods named 'Where' aka filter and 'Select' aka map, that can do anything you want for a given object type), or F# computation expressions.

Can you elaborate on "map, filter, and reduce are almost always better done as a generator expression or list comprehension"? What is "done better"?

In CPython in particular, map/filter will be more verbose and significantly slower - map/filter are just library functions and will pay penalty of a function call for every iteration, while sequence comprehensions are compiled directly into a much more efficient bytecode.

No it is an addition, not a change.

If enough popular applications come to be developed exclusively for the addition, then not supporting the addition means not supporting those applications. The existence of Windows RT encourages professional developers to support only the addition to save costs by developing once and running on both Windows RT and Windows 8, as well as Xbox One if the rumors are correct. I imagine that this will become more common in about a year and a half when Windows 7 leaves mainstream support.

-- I love the undecipherable command-line wizardry. I'm not an idiot, but how-the-fuck would I know what "-e" does on some random command? There is just no way without trawling through man pages using a command-line reader with no mouse support and keyboard shortcuts I don't know. Compare this to a sample PowerShell pipeline "Get-Process -Name 'n*' | sort -Descending PagedMemorySize". You'd have a hard time finding an IT engineer that can't figure out what that does.

Once a year I hit a task that makes me think "this could be probably best done with PowerShell". Last time it was: list installed packages and their versions. So I fire up PowerShell window and ... have no idea how to solve the task. So I start googling and find out that what I want is Get-WmiObject. That can list a lot of things including the installed software. That is decided by the parameter "-Class" which should be followed by a string. The allowed values of that string can be obtained by running "Get-WmiObject -List". There is 1024 of them! And can be probably more depending on your system. Of course the documentation does not list them. The right one in my case was probably "Win32_Product". But I have no idea whether it really lists all that I want or only software from MS or only software installed using .msi, or 32-bit software or software that made the Right Thing(tm) during installation, ...

So perhaps the linux commandline arguments look undecipherable to you. But I'll take them over PowerShell any day.

choose whether or not you believe Microsoft is an evil monopolist NOW

Microsoft is a monopolist now. I assume they will try to utilize this monopoly for business advantage when they can. We, as in users and the justice system, need to monitor them closely to make sure they stay within the law. Assigning labels like "evil" and "good" to companies I leave to mentally retarded children. It's infantile.

where is the real open specification of MS office

I assume you are talking about Office document formats. A good place to start would be http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc313105(v=office.12).aspx. The following WIKI article also has some good information on the current default Microsoft document format which is zipped XML: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML. Microsoft also publishes libraries that allows you full access to the older binary formats, but those are only available on Windows. Remember, the new Office document formats are open ISO standards, and anyone can get the information needed to read and write them. I do not think the spec is particularly good, the ODF format is a lot better, but at least the Microsoft document format is open to all to implement.

What Microsoft does not do is disable, ban or in any other way interfere with applications that reverse engineers the pre Office 2007 document format (no need to reverse engineer the current format since it is an open ISO standard). Most competing applications like Libre Office, Word Perfect and others have the ability to read and write these proprietary binary formats. This is a huge difference between Microsoft and Google. Microsoft allows - and in many areas encourages and helps with - the reverse engineering of their older proprietary formats. Google bans applications that do.

I'd use Invoke-WebRequest - which has a standard alias iwr.

For instance:
(iwr http://apache.slashdot.org/story/13/08/12/2236256/apache-web-server-share-falls-below-50-percent-for-first-time-since-2009).ParsedHtml.getElementById('title-49466063').OuterText

will invoke a web request and get this slashdot page and use the COM API to get the title element (getElementById is exposed as an IDispatch method) and print the title.

Then why do they keep removing all the heinous features everyone complains about?

The people who respond with perpetual hatred seem to be unable to see that Microsoft is currently in a slow and awkward purge of the "Steve Jobs style" authoritarians in their own middle and upper-middle management structure. You see the same trend with the various levels of rage against Win 8 (which I will not buy for a PC). Or maybe I have an advantage in noticing it because I actually read the Win8 developer reports and the debates in the comments.
Anyway, Microsoft is using the old tactic of "ok, we'll try it your way, and when it fails, you fail with it" to destroy the political power of the know-it-all idiots in their ranks. Yes, it will cost them, but not nearly as much over time as having those failures in more decision meetings would cost them. While I won't buy an Xbox of this generation (as I hadn't bought the prior or the original), you can expect slow sales at first (people still enraged from the old announcements) but staying steady longer than usual as the rage slowly fades in the face of reality as the angry mob sees the product in real life.

Before anyone argues about the poor sales figures of 8, yes, the dismal UI isn't fixed yet, maybe in 8.2 but probably not until whatever they'll call 9. The politics are more ruthless with hardware products (even if the conflict is over the patchable software on the hardware) than software. Also, the support cycle for windows versions is still longer than twice the typical OS release cycle, so the idiot-managers involved in that will have some weak excuses until the reports come in that Vista is selling better at the end of its support life than 8 is (sadly, that might take until April 2017 in a worst-case scenario).

I've also read that Microsoft planned adding an optional view pane to every control panel and administrator tool in Server 2012 that would output the PowerShell equivalent command to anything you did in the GUI. That strikes me as a brilliant way to turn your slow click-monkeys into fast shell admins.

Maybe they planned it that way, and the server manager certainly offers to quote the powershell script it will execute when you install features and/or roles on a server. However, it does not seem to have penetrated all features, as of Server 2012, and the control panels for the individual roles (IIS, AD etc) typically do not offer such a feature. So if that's their grand plan, they are not there yet.

You *can* however often "export" the setting that you have chosen using the server manager. This is not export as a powershell script, rather the chosen setup is exported as XML which can be *used* by a PowerShell install script at some later point in time or on some other server to repeat the installation.

With Server 2012R2, PowerShell will be bumped up to version 4. Version 4 includes desired state configuration which extends PowerShell with recipe-like declarative functionality. I suspect that this is going to form the backbone of the integration of Server Manager and PowerShell in the future, i.e. rather than generating an imperative script, the Server Manager GUI can generate a PowerShell recipe (formally also a script, albeit a declarative one) which can be readily executed by PowerShell (v4).

The desired state configuration include ways to describe dependencies, package manager style.

I'd like to see Red Hat or Canonical (Ubuntu) do something similar for Unix, but I don't think even Red Hat has the engineering resources for a project like that.

Like a GUI frontend to puppet or chef?

The problem I had with powershell, which I assume is commonplace, is that I fired it up expecting it to be a backwards-compatible superset of cmd.exe. It isn't, lots of the syntax that works fine in cmd.exe gives errors in Powershell or works but does something different from the cmd.exe equivalent.

Yes, PowerShell is significantly different from cmd. Bash also broke some backwards compatibility with the earliest shells. cmd to PowerShell is a much bigger leap compared to the leap from the first sh to bash. For one, the commands of cmd are (somewhat) unix style in the way they use text/stream stdin and stdout. PowerShell does away with that and streams objects. All PowerShell cmdlets stream objects (COM objects, .NET objects, WMI objects wrapped in PS extended type system). Backwards compatability with older utilities is achieved by regarding old utilities as commands that consume and produce sequences of strings - where string is an object type.

It has arcane syntax and plenty of warts, but an investment in bash will probably still be useful in another twenty years. Will Microsoft be using Powershell in ten years, in a form that's compatible with current syntax?

Who knows? Will you still be using bash if something vastly better comes along? One problem with bash (and an obvious difference between PowerShell and bash) is how bash is still created to run on a single machine. Yes, you can use SSH and other tools to fan out and run on multiple machines, but each script is still understood in the context of a single machine. PowerShell is designed with remoting in mind, and many of the commands - and all of the workflows - support multiple remote machines by default. This is not merely the capability to launch remote commands, it also extends to being able to control remote jobs through local job commands and to how the results are marshalled back with a reference back to the computer, thus the command consolidates results from multiple computers into a single result

Nothing is stored in the registry anymore for IIS?!?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954864

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/820129

http://blogs.iis.net/ksingla/archive/2007/12/30/list-of-registry-keys-affecting-iis7-behavior.aspx

Nothing is stored in the registry anymore for IIS?!?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954864

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/820129

http://blogs.iis.net/ksingla/archive/2007/12/30/list-of-registry-keys-affecting-iis7-behavior.aspx

That is the point all you TPM-ranters seem to be missing: It is 100% optional to use. In most cases I've seen, it is off by default because people just don't give a shit about it.

Trustworthy hardware. The Trusted Platform Module is a hardware security device or chip that s a great tool for the enterprise, but until now has been an optional piece of technology for consumer devices. TPM provides a number of crypto functions, including securely storing keys and performing cryptographic measurements. We re working to require TPM 2.0 on all devices by January 2015, which will help IT departments be confident that the devices their employees bring to work are fully capable of complying with corporate security policies. from: http://m.microsoft.com/News/en-US/LatestNews/Article.mspx?Post=e12a020e-ed07-276c-9ee4-2c25fb513204&Blog=LatestPosts , taken from somewhere above in this page.

TPM - Its never there

It's already in essentially all laptops, it's already in essentially all "business class" desktops, it's already in some "personal class" PC's, and it's MANDATORY in ALL new Windows PC's as of 16 months from now.

Ummmm yeah........ "never".

-

Also not only does Windows 8 not need secure boot, it doesn't even need UEFI...

I swear these paranoid types need to spend a bit of time getting their learn on about new technologies before whining about them....

The amount of knee-jerk that goes on with this shit is pretty amazing.

Quoting fucking MICROSOFT.COM News Center:
"Trustworthy hardware. The Trusted Platform Module is a hardware security device or chip that s a great tool for the enterprise, but until now has been an optional piece of technology for consumer devices. TPM provides a number of crypto functions, including securely storing keys and performing cryptographic measurements. We re working to require TPM 2.0 on all devices by January 2015"

You're seriously going to call me "paranoid" when Microsoft has an official public statement that they plan to make this Trusted Computing shit mandatory starting less than a year and a half from now?

Over a half-billion computers have already been shipped with this shit welded to the motherboard. THAT'S why the Ask Slashdot story is asking how to avoid this shit. A lot of computers already come with this shit on the motherboard, and not all of the sales materials list that it's in there.

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But *no* consumer board I'm aware of ships with the *chip.*

Then you obviously haven't been paying attention. Almost all laptops are now shipping with TPMs, and they are increasingly being shipped in desktops. When I was shopping for a PC last year I spotted TPM listed in several system specification lists from different major PC vendors.

According to the Trusted Computing Group more than a half billion PCs have already shipped with the Trusted Platform Module. Computer Weekly puts it at over 600 million PCs.

And according to "ZDNET "In January 2015, TPM 2.0 will be required on all certified Windows devices".

And according to Microsoft News Center, and I quote:
The Trusted Platform Module is a hardware security device or chip that s a great tool for the enterprise, but until now has been an optional piece of technology for consumer devices. TPM provides a number of crypto functions, including securely storing keys and performing cryptographic measurements. We re working to require TPM 2.0 on all devices by January 2015

So the answer to the question, I think, remains "All of them."

You were trying so say that "all" personal computers were TPM-free, but it turns out that "All of them" is is what they plan to try and force on us starting less than a year and a half from now. And as noted, over a half billion already shipped.

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you cannot fail a Windows Server instance over from one physical Windows Datacenter server to another and then fail it back in under 30 days without violating the license of the Windows Server instance.

If both servers have datacenter licenses, then you can.

Server 2008: http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/C/A/FCAB58A9-CCAD-4E0A-A673-88A5EE74E2CC/Windows_Server_2008_Virtual_Tech-VL_Brief-Jan_09.docx
P10, paragraph 5 above the box
Or Server 2012: http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/7/0/7707E736-4557-4310-9709-87358F7E6D1A/WindowsServer2012VirtualTech_VLBrief.pdf
P8, paragraph 2

... licenses may only be reassigned to new hardware after 90 days. This, however, does not restrict the dynamic movement of virtual OSEs between licensed servers. As long as the servers are licensed and do not simultaneously run more instances than the number for which they are licensed, you are free to use VMotion and System Center Virtual Machine Manager to move virtualized instances between licensed servers at will.

you cannot fail a Windows Server instance over from one physical Windows Datacenter server to another and then fail it back in under 30 days without violating the license of the Windows Server instance.

If both servers have datacenter licenses, then you can.

Server 2008: http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/C/A/FCAB58A9-CCAD-4E0A-A673-88A5EE74E2CC/Windows_Server_2008_Virtual_Tech-VL_Brief-Jan_09.docx
P10, paragraph 5 above the box
Or Server 2012: http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/7/0/7707E736-4557-4310-9709-87358F7E6D1A/WindowsServer2012VirtualTech_VLBrief.pdf
P8, paragraph 2

... licenses may only be reassigned to new hardware after 90 days. This, however, does not restrict the dynamic movement of virtual OSEs between licensed servers. As long as the servers are licensed and do not simultaneously run more instances than the number for which they are licensed, you are free to use VMotion and System Center Virtual Machine Manager to move virtualized instances between licensed servers at will.

Question: When you say "roughly" as functional as an iPad email app, are you considering that the Surface RT still doesn't support POP3? Can you let us know if that has been fixed yet?

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/forum/surfwinrt-surfusing/windows-rt-surface-to-support-pop3/edcf3be5-53cc-4d24-b0d4-c379cd0bed95

By bypassing dns altogether since hosts = 1st thing IP stack references for host-domain/subdomain resolutions by default:

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Microsoft TCP/IP Host Name Resolution Order:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/172218

PERTINENT QUOTE/EXCERPT:

"The client checks to see if the name queried is its own.

The client then searches a local Hosts file, a list of IP address and names stored on the local computer.

A sample hosts file, Hosts.sam, is installed with the TCP/IP protocol showing the proper format.

Domain Name System (DNS) servers are queried.

If the name is still not resolved, NetBIOS name resolution sequence is used as a backup. This order can be changed by configuring the NetBIOS node type of the client."

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* :)

(I don't agree with stuff like Torrents or other piracy online though...)

APK

P.S.=> Creating such a custom hosts file? Easy (per "yours truly"):

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APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ 32/64-bit:

http://start64.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5851:apk-hosts-file-engine-64bit-version&catid=26:64bit-security-software&Itemid=74

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Short synopsis/summary - Custom hosts files give users of them great benefits in added better:

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1.) Speed (blocking adbanners & hardcoding your favorite sites into them - faster than remote DNS lookups)

2.) "Layered-Security/"Defense-in-Depth" (vs. known malicious sites/serves/hosts-domains that serve up malware or are malscript bearing - blocking spam/phish malicious links also, & host-domain names are used more BY FAR vs. IP addresses (like 99%:1% ratios due to fastflux & dynDNS using botnets))

3.) Reliability (vs. Kaminsky bug vulnerable DNS servers, 99% of which are STILL unpatched vs. it & worst of all @ the ISP level + vulnerable as hell vs. FastFlux + Dynamic DNS using botnets (or even DOWNED DNS servers too))

4.) "Anonymity" to an extent (vs. dns request logs + DNSBL's you may not like too - which is the case here since DNS is employed to do the blocking).

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Enjoy!

... apk

I'm not sure you understand what .NET is. There is nothing in Visual Studio every that doesn't need to be compiled. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/Overview_of_the_Common_Language_Infrastructure.svg
In particular if you want to see what parts of the runtime are there: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsphone/develop/jj207212(v=vs.105).aspx

And of course it needs to be packaged for Metro. Win8RT doesn't have the Win32 libraries that desktop mode applications depend on. As for you starting from the ground up, as an end user. Yes this is about developers who can easily port (i.e. very much like what Apple offered in your analogy).

I don't personally have much in the way of legacy apps that I need to run, and maybe I'm normal and that's why MS marketing made the decision that they did. But I've definitely heard people grumble about how corporate un-friendly it is

Windows 8 isn't really about business. Microsoft spent the last decade on corporate. They are focusing now on home / small business. And that market doesn't have much in terms of 15 year old software they need to run. Today's brand new WinRT machines using an emulator are substantially slower than an old WinXP box. It just isn't worth it.

As for ARM eventually being fast enough. Maybe by 2017 or so it would be fast enough to run 2001 applications Windows XP application. OK assume that's true. Then in theory if Microsoft so chooses they can toss an emulator on and run Windows XP in some sort of virtual mode on Windows10RT or whatever. That's an easy enough feature to add. But I don't really see the point. I have a Surface Pro. I have the speed to run desktop applications and they still kinda suck. The point of a touch screen laptop is to be able to use the touchscreen. If I wanted a keyboard / mouse application I'd be running it on a more traditional laptop.

What is the news here, the original Server 2012 is the same price.

And wikipedia, claims R2 adds the following features:
- Automated Tiering: Storage Spaces stores most frequently accessed files on fastest physical media
- Deduplication for VHD: Reduces the storage space for VHD files with largely similar contents by storing the similar contents only once.
- Windows PowerShell v4, which now includes a Desired State Configuration (DSC) feature
- Integrated Office365 support
- UEFI-based virtual machines.
- Upgrades from driver emulators to synthetic hardware drivers to minimize legacy support.
- Faster VM deployment (approximately half the time).

Aren't those features worth something extra? Anybody who still wants the older version can pay less, so what's the big deal here?

My Win 7 Pro folder is about 30 GB, with over half in the Windows component store directory (winxsx). But according to this: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2795190, the size is somewhat overstated. Also, the actual space being used can be reduced - I may give that a try.