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One really interesting thing when it comes to the Wii is that the controllers are talking Bluetooth, which makes them useful for other applications too.

Just take a look at the Wiimote library.

And recently I have interfaced a Wiimote with a windows mobile device, so anyone stating that it can't be done is wrong.

Heres my guess:
Statistically out of every 10 Windows users 7 will be average (mom, dad, grandma, etc) , 1 user will be a moron and will fall for every phishing and malware attack, 1 will be a moderately advanced user and 1 will be a fairly advanced user / developer.

When you're dealing with that kind of audience, your goals are *vastly* different than highly customizable operating systems like Linux. Your criticisms are minor and superficial. Given *ANY* UI decision you can find users that disagree with it. Calling it proof is frankly laughable.

If you're interested in why windows is "bloated" you can read this: http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2008/11/19/disk-space.aspx

As far as RAM is concerned, firefox itself is going to consume/require several hundred megs for an average user visiting youtube and other misc. flash heavy websites. That said, I don't have a clue what the actual RAM usage levels are of Win7 vs Ubuntu 9.10

"He's a step ahead of you. He's tried doing it the right way and gotten no results. So he's going to skip the part where he wastes his time.

If companies want responsible disclosure, they should respond in some way to the disclosure. Maybe companies will actually fix bugs instead of sitting on them, and he can go back to doing it the right way. He also warned the companies he's going to do it, so they have a chance to fix things before then.

Here's a tip for you. In the real world, sometimes you have to force the other party's hand to get them to act responsibly. He's to that point, and fortunately has leverage. By making this choice public, he shames the irresponsible software companies which allow security problems to sit around unfixed.

Hopefully they'll scramble to release some fixes, which they haven't done yet, which is a net improvement over the current situation where millions of people have unpatched vulnerabilities.

In short, I don't see a problem here. I use software, it has security problems, I expect those to be fixed. Whatever it takes to get there, I'm all for it." - by b4dc0d3r (1268512) on Monday January 11, @03:57PM (#30728526)

Agreed, 110%, per my subject-line above... it works (quoting Tony Stark there, on his "arc reactor technology", because what I turned an MS mgr. onto here, Foredecker, results in the same idea (smaller & faster HOSTS files)):

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1467692&cid=30384918

I had to "hound" the guy here, which IS unfortunate, but... he is now looking into it on his end with his people @ Microsoft finally (which is great - my goal? Simply to make Windows VISTA/Server 2008 & yes, Windows 7 THAT MUCH BETTER really).

APK

P.S.=> I had "sort of troll" he here though (albeit with GOOD MOTIVES - to improve MS' latest OS' really) &, for months here actually, until he replied here, & we "debated it", & he "saw the light" of what I was stating is poorer than it ought to be in HSOTS files (which are INVALUABLE for speed online, but moreso for SECURITY online).

So, he finally wrote me personally via email a couple days back & he notified me he is going to find out WHY 0 was removed as a valid blocking address in HOSTS files @ last, with his IP stack team @ MS (he has the pull, he is senior mgt. there apparently which is great imo, & I hope this even helps the guy get a promotion there).

The use of 0, vs. 0.0.0.0 & especially vs. 127.0.0.1 as blocking addresses in HOSTS vs. KNOWN bad adbanners &/or malicious sites + botnet "C&C servers", works & on a VERY SIMPLE PRINCIPLE, the blacklist ("you can't get burned if you can't go into the fire" type thinking).

It matters, for efficiency & performance, & literally "HUGELY" for the speed of its internal parsings, line-by-line, as well as the filesize on disk!

(I.E.-> Using 0 as a blocking address in HOSTS files yields FAR smaller HOSTS files, especially in HOSTS file with many thousands of lines as mine is @ 655,500++ lines or so currently, vs. those that use the 0.0.0.0 (which is the tiniest you can use on VISTA/Server 2008/Windows 7 only), & especially vs. 127.0.0.1, which also incurs a "loopback operation" too).

So, E.G.-> I used the SAME BASIC TECHNIQUE to get to MS' folks on this, because they "blew me off" here on their "Engineering Windows 7" blogs here -> http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/02/25/feedback-and-engineering-windows-7.aspx?CommentPosted=true#commentmessage

Hopefully? Foredecker will do the job & get this fixed with his people @ MS... apk

Not only because of the fact that a person like Mr. Ballmer really, imo @ least, shouldn't be the type of person running a tech company (especially software related ones) like MS. Car sales, yes. Software Engineering based concerns though? Sorry... no.

And, after all? I'm NOT the ONLY ONE SAYING IT either -> http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/06/0052218

(I state that, along with others here & elsewhere, because Mr. Ballmer himself, afaik @ least, doesn't possess the ability to do the job of software engineering himself (whereas his predecessor "King Billy" (I call Mr. Gates that out of RESPECT, not ridicule mind you) actually could do so, thus, he understands what "geeks" want, himself being one (& how can you cater to those you sell to, without having been one yourself so you understand them better from "having walked a mile in their shoes", more-or-less)))

I also have been REPEATEDLY pointing out a problem Microsoft created in the HOSTS file to their mgt. (on their blogs in their "Engineering Windows 7" blog by Mr. S. Sinofsky (top mgr. for Windows 7, iirc) -> http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/02/25/feedback-and-engineering-windows-7.aspx and http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/02/09/recognizing-improvements-in-windows-7-handwriting.aspx?CommentPosted=true#commentmessage & to a user here named Foredecker who has stated he is senior mgt. @ MS - & he hasn't even honored a simple request of mine, even though he conceded I have a strong set of points on that note here -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1467692&threshold=-1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=30384918 ...

End result? Same deal: Blown off totally, on both accounts (as were others).

MS is starting to "slip" & that's coming from myself (a HUGE proponent of what Microsoft really is, a great company that has helped change the way folks think & communicate + do business really).

APK

P.S.=> I've actually considered moving to KUbuntu 9.1.0 lately, because LINUX has some QUITE a ways (especially since I 1st tried in, via Slackware 1.02 circa 1993/1994 iirc) but, I still like Windows 7 (though it does tend to eat RAM like mad, & then spit back errors it's "out of memory" (this I "got into" w/ Dr. Mark Russinovich & others @ the Windows IT Pro forums, even before VISTA released even, & told them their attempt @ UNIX-like memmgt would backfire on them (it did for sure in VISTA, but Windows 7's a WEE BIT better than VISTA was on that account @ least)))...

Still, I do know, FOR SURE, that the HOSTS file issue in Windows exists (VISTA was ok with it, until MS "Patch Tuesday" 12/08/2008, when suddenly after that? A hosts file in Windows can no longer use 0 as a valid blocking address vs. known bad servers, & now, @ best, it can only use 0.0.0.0 (which yes, is smaller, faster & BETTER than the default "loopback adapter" of 127.0.0.1 for that, but... even it is larger & thus slower to load + parse, than 0 is))... I showed them this with INDISPUTABLE evidences to that fact, but in the end? Blown off...

Imo @ least, when a company stops listening to customers with VALID concerns & evidences? They're on the way downwards... see, evidence to that, afaik? Is that only 18% of Windows users have gone the route of Windows 7 (that tell anyone anything? It's not just "economic conditions" & folks outta work (lack of disposable income) causing that, but also that they've still got issues & a bad rep from VISTA, in Windows 7 (such as I have just pointed out))...

Don't get me wrong: I'd LOVE to see MS continue their dominance, I really would, but... well, see the above! apk

Not only because of the fact that a person like Mr. Ballmer really, imo @ least, shouldn't be the type of person running a tech company (especially software related ones) like MS. Car sales, yes. Software Engineering based concerns though? Sorry... no.

And, after all? I'm NOT the ONLY ONE SAYING IT either -> http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/06/0052218

(I state that, along with others here & elsewhere, because Mr. Ballmer himself, afaik @ least, doesn't possess the ability to do the job of software engineering himself (whereas his predecessor "King Billy" (I call Mr. Gates that out of RESPECT, not ridicule mind you) actually could do so, thus, he understands what "geeks" want, himself being one (& how can you cater to those you sell to, without having been one yourself so you understand them better from "having walked a mile in their shoes", more-or-less)))

I also have been REPEATEDLY pointing out a problem Microsoft created in the HOSTS file to their mgt. (on their blogs in their "Engineering Windows 7" blog by Mr. S. Sinofsky (top mgr. for Windows 7, iirc) -> http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/02/25/feedback-and-engineering-windows-7.aspx and http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/02/09/recognizing-improvements-in-windows-7-handwriting.aspx?CommentPosted=true#commentmessage & to a user here named Foredecker who has stated he is senior mgt. @ MS - & he hasn't even honored a simple request of mine, even though he conceded I have a strong set of points on that note here -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1467692&threshold=-1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=30384918 ...

End result? Same deal: Blown off totally, on both accounts (as were others).

MS is starting to "slip" & that's coming from myself (a HUGE proponent of what Microsoft really is, a great company that has helped change the way folks think & communicate + do business really).

APK

P.S.=> I've actually considered moving to KUbuntu 9.1.0 lately, because LINUX has some QUITE a ways (especially since I 1st tried in, via Slackware 1.02 circa 1993/1994 iirc) but, I still like Windows 7 (though it does tend to eat RAM like mad, & then spit back errors it's "out of memory" (this I "got into" w/ Dr. Mark Russinovich & others @ the Windows IT Pro forums, even before VISTA released even, & told them their attempt @ UNIX-like memmgt would backfire on them (it did for sure in VISTA, but Windows 7's a WEE BIT better than VISTA was on that account @ least)))...

Still, I do know, FOR SURE, that the HOSTS file issue in Windows exists (VISTA was ok with it, until MS "Patch Tuesday" 12/08/2008, when suddenly after that? A hosts file in Windows can no longer use 0 as a valid blocking address vs. known bad servers, & now, @ best, it can only use 0.0.0.0 (which yes, is smaller, faster & BETTER than the default "loopback adapter" of 127.0.0.1 for that, but... even it is larger & thus slower to load + parse, than 0 is))... I showed them this with INDISPUTABLE evidences to that fact, but in the end? Blown off...

Imo @ least, when a company stops listening to customers with VALID concerns & evidences? They're on the way downwards... see, evidence to that, afaik? Is that only 18% of Windows users have gone the route of Windows 7 (that tell anyone anything? It's not just "economic conditions" & folks outta work (lack of disposable income) causing that, but also that they've still got issues & a bad rep from VISTA, in Windows 7 (such as I have just pointed out))...

Don't get me wrong: I'd LOVE to see MS continue their dominance, I really would, but... well, see the above! apk

All the MSDN library stuff is free and on-line. See this. Has been for years.

There is nothing like this for Apple, Linux, or any other OS - not even close.

A few things of note:

1) Windows 7 supports multi-touch, including pinch-to-zoom and drag-to-scroll. Naturally, this is fully exposed to third-party applications via normal input APIs.

2) WPF 4 in particular has a rather high-level API for multi-touch.

So all the basic software building blocks are already in place. For the same reason, I wouldn't expect to see WinMo (or anything WinCE-based) there.

We're a small company, developing on Windows using Visual Studio. Since Windows XP, all our developers work in a normal user account; as nearly as possible they use the same environment the most restricted of our users might, so that dumb security-related mistakes get caught fast.

Having said that, they also know the local admin account details for their machine, and are entrusted with installing/uninstalling stuff as necessary.

That differentiation - between the access we allow and what we encourage as day-to-day practice - is an important one. On other OSes you're more likely to be making this differentiation already. If you're using Windows and don't, please consider it. This is a useful resource: http://blogs.msdn.com/aaron_margosis/

WPF still has some really crummy font rendering at small sizes tho. Compare Visual Studio 2008 which uses winforms, to the beta of Visual Studio 2010 which uses WPF. The difference is immediately obvious.

I know about WPF font rendering problems, I'm the one who created the Connect ticket for it. It literally hurts my eyes to look at a WPF 3.x app with dark text on bright background (the other way around it's more or less tolerable, which is exploited by Expression Blend).

Now, though, WPF 4 has a reworked engine that improves things a lot. It didn't make it in VS2010 beta1, but it is present in beta 2 (though there had been a few more tweaks since because of some known problems).

By the way, V2008 doesn't use WinForms. Or rather it does, but only for certain parts (e.g. the TFS bits), and they definitely don't make the majority. Most of it is actually hand-coded native Win32 UI.

he's probably referring to the likes of Dr. Eric Meijer who is a member of the C# language design team. check out his 13-part functional programming fundamentals(in haskell) lecture videos, his discussion with Philip Wadler (co-author of my favorite university text-book), and others.

he's probably referring to the likes of Dr. Eric Meijer who is a member of the C# language design team. check out his 13-part functional programming fundamentals(in haskell) lecture videos, his discussion with Philip Wadler (co-author of my favorite university text-book), and others.

he's probably referring to the likes of Dr. Eric Meijer who is a member of the C# language design team. check out his 13-part functional programming fundamentals(in haskell) lecture videos, his discussion with Philip Wadler (co-author of my favorite university text-book), and others.

Yes. Microsoft employees actually do this pretty frequently. Look, for example, at this post written by a Microsoft employee on an MSDN blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/macmojo/archive/2007/10/29/there-s-a-new-cat-in-town.aspx Oh, but, I guess that doesn't fit in with your "man Microsoft is SOOO EVIIIL" conspiracy theory. Sorry to ruin that for you.

I don't think that really fits what he was trying to say. It looks like the blog post is posted in a reply to how Office 2004 works on Leopard and a few minor comments on how Xcode seems better and so forth. Not really an "active promotion" is it?

Do you believe that it would be unfair of Microsoft to have a rule discouraging any Microsoft employee to actively promote Apple products while being identified as a *Microsoft* employee?

Yes. Microsoft employees actually do this pretty frequently. Look, for example, at this post written by a Microsoft employee on an MSDN blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/macmojo/archive/2007/10/29/there-s-a-new-cat-in-town.aspx

Oh, but, I guess that doesn't fit in with your "man Microsoft is SOOO EVIIIL" conspiracy theory. Sorry to ruin that for you.

Do you believe that the Coca Cola corporation tolerates employees drinking Pepsi Cola drinks on their premises?

Yup. I'm reasonably sure they don't have it in the vending machines, but I highly, highly doubt anybody would even give you a second glance if you, for example, brought a Gatorade to the plant.

Do you believe that Steve Jobs would tolerate even for a minute any Apple employee who took money from Microsoft in order to appear as an Apple employee in a Microsoft sponsored ad claiming the Microsoft Zune was light years better than the ipod?

That's the one point you're right on, for two reasons:
1) Jobs is a complete nazi, much more so than anybody at Coca-cola or Microsoft.
2) That employee is probably, in fact almost certainly, in violation of their employment contract.
3) Anybody who uses idiotic phrases like "light years better" deserves to be fired.

Since you've mentioned that you don't have much experience with the open source movement (which is NOT the same as the Free Software movement) I would urge you to learn more about Stallman and the Free Software Foundation by starting with wikipedia. I think you'll be surprised to discover that Stallman is ... b) usually right.

Selective memory is a beautiful thing.

Windows Server 2008 R2 (aka Windows 7) has been optimized to run more efficiently on modern CPU architectures. Minimizing resource contention and maximizing concurrency reduces overall system latency and increases server performance. In the case of resource locks, several strategies exist including lock elimination, resource partitioning, or even designing faster lock scenarios. One such significant improvement is the removal of the kernel dispatcher lock.

So in short the lock is being removed only now in Windows 7 and it did exist in all older versions up to Vista.

Anyway, trust me - it's very professional, clean code, nice design, and not filled with hacks like the Big Global Lock that used to be in the Linux kernel.

Bad example. Just about every uniprocessor-developed OS had a Big Global Lock until they went multi-cpu - and even then it usually took a few releases before it was really eliminated. I would be hugely surprised to find that the Win9x series didn't have one too. When did the linux kernel deprecate it? Like a decade ago?

Actually, one of the major changes in 7 is the removal of a global lock in the scheduler. Prior to this windows didn't really scale beyond 64 cpus, now I don't know what the limit is, but I've seen pics (on the web) of server 2008 r2 running on 256 cpu machines.

More info here: http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/Going+Deep/Arun-Kishan-Farewell-to-the-Windows-Kernel-Dispatcher-Lock/

http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/04/25/engineering-windows-7-for-graphics-performance.aspx

http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2009/10/22/3288577.aspx

-Foredecker

http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/04/25/engineering-windows-7-for-graphics-performance.aspx

http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2009/10/22/3288577.aspx

-Foredecker

Even JScript (in IE8) is smart enough to internally choose between a data structure optimized for dense or sparse data. See: http://blogs.msdn.com/jscript/archive/2008/03/25/performance-optimization-of-arrays-part-i.aspx

Check out why "10 is the New 6" http://channel9.msdn.com/pdc2008/TL13/

Went to check out the video but it is only available via Silverlight, and I don't have that on my platform. Anyhow, found all the information I needed in the comments. May I suggest that if you make your videos available in Flash as well, you will get a wider audience, since most people use this format.

"Yes I know you can theoretically lock down sections of the registry but that to me seems like a weaker system"

What? Why is finer-grained control a weaker system than broad-brush control? It's the opposite way around. You'd have to have file per registry key to match that.

Also, the inability to completely lock out the file is a feature in that it prevents denial-of-service if the file is opened without sharing read access.

See http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2007/11/26/6523907.aspx . Obviously, some of the things he mentions can be fixed with a different .ini format, but generally the registry helps with a bunch of issues.

OK - if your a developer - or anybody who is - please tell me something...

I just made a big jump from Win XP Pro and MSVC 6 to Windows 7 64 bit and VS2008, and I am trying to get up to speed. I created a very simple benchmarking console app on the old system and compiled a release build under MSVC 6, and then compiled exactly the same code under VS2008 on the new machine. No matter what optimizations I used, or whether I created a 32 bit release build or a 64 bit release build with VS2008, the exe created under the old MSVC ran about 25% faster on my new platform than the new build on my new platform. Question - what is it with VS2008? This is intolerable!

Try it yourself and get back to me.

*DISCLAIMER* I work at Microsoft

the last few years, we've focused on enhancing .NET with our tools. With the next release of Visual Studio, we're focusing again on native code and taking the good things of VC6 and bringing them into Visual C++ 2010.

Check out why "10 is the New 6" http://channel9.msdn.com/pdc2008/TL13/

I'm curious on the perf issue myself so I'll try to get an answer back to you, but in the meantime, would you mind running the same test using Visual Studio 2010 Beta?
http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-gb/try/default.mspx

That tool helped fix two WinXPs for me that would not complete Windows Update. So I'd say it's a common problem, because I don't administer that many PCs. Fuller instructions here.. Even with the tool, you're looking at a minimum 30 minutes of uninstalling, typically, 4 versions of DotNet, and reinstalling them, requiring several reboots. If you don't reinstall them all, who knows what installed software will no longer run.

http://blogs.msdn.com/jasonz/archive/2009/02/20/a-new-look-for-visual-studio-2010.aspx If I'm not mistaken, Visual Studio 2010 will have a WPF UI including the editor.

intellisense it's broken, has always been broken and i think it will always be, i hate having to delete that damn .ncb file once in a while just to fix it

NCB files, and the associated woes of corrupted (and not auto-recovering) symbol index are gone in VS2010. C++ intellisense was rewritten effectively from scratch to make it work properly, and give useful results even for complicated scenarios like Boost.Lambda.

intellisense it's broken, has always been broken and i think it will always be, i hate having to delete that damn .ncb file once in a while just to fix it

NCB files, and the associated woes of corrupted (and not auto-recovering) symbol index are gone in VS2010. C++ intellisense was rewritten effectively from scratch to make it work properly, and give useful results even for complicated scenarios like Boost.Lambda.

Yeah, really. Senior Engineers disagree with company marketing strategy ...

Who said that "graphical programming" is company marketing strategy today? Oh, sorry, it's another kdawson story; you expected any facts here? Let me explain then.

Anyone who deals with .NET tools knows that there had been a recent shift back towards code. For example, WinForms development was too tedious without visual drag&drop form editor, but WPF markup is best hand-coded, just like HTML (VS provides a visual editor, too, but hardly anyone uses it for anything except quick preview). Or what used to be called "typed datasets" - also very designer-centric, but with LINQ2SQL and Entity Framework, again, most people stick to writing code and mappings in XML by hand.

In fact, it's easy to find out that much if you just look up the names mentioned in TFA. For example, who is Don Box? He's working on Microsoft "Oslo" project, next-gen modeling platform which was hyped back on PDC2008, and all Microsoft managers in the division blogged on how it's the next big thing etc. And the main difference of that platform from the existing "DSL" tools in VS2008? Oslo is centered around text-based DSLs, and comes with a Emacs-like editor which can handle them.

In short, developers of the new tools for Microsoft development platform - which are fully backed by marketing - criticize some aspects of the previous generation of tools. Surprise, eh?

But go ahead and ask them what they use to edit C# code that they write, and I bet you'll hear "why, VS of course".

Then there's Jeffrey's comment on .NET. I don't see anything fundamentally wrong with it, and if you RTFA, you'll see that he is an architect for PowerShell - a very high-level scripting/shell language built on top of .NET! To interpret his comment as a criticism of managed, when he is in fact the one "pushing" for it via the tech he works on, is rather disingenuous.

Yeah, really. Senior Engineers disagree with company marketing strategy ...

Who said that "graphical programming" is company marketing strategy today? Oh, sorry, it's another kdawson story; you expected any facts here? Let me explain then.

Anyone who deals with .NET tools knows that there had been a recent shift back towards code. For example, WinForms development was too tedious without visual drag&drop form editor, but WPF markup is best hand-coded, just like HTML (VS provides a visual editor, too, but hardly anyone uses it for anything except quick preview). Or what used to be called "typed datasets" - also very designer-centric, but with LINQ2SQL and Entity Framework, again, most people stick to writing code and mappings in XML by hand.

In fact, it's easy to find out that much if you just look up the names mentioned in TFA. For example, who is Don Box? He's working on Microsoft "Oslo" project, next-gen modeling platform which was hyped back on PDC2008, and all Microsoft managers in the division blogged on how it's the next big thing etc. And the main difference of that platform from the existing "DSL" tools in VS2008? Oslo is centered around text-based DSLs, and comes with a Emacs-like editor which can handle them.

In short, developers of the new tools for Microsoft development platform - which are fully backed by marketing - criticize some aspects of the previous generation of tools. Surprise, eh?

But go ahead and ask them what they use to edit C# code that they write, and I bet you'll hear "why, VS of course".

Then there's Jeffrey's comment on .NET. I don't see anything fundamentally wrong with it, and if you RTFA, you'll see that he is an architect for PowerShell - a very high-level scripting/shell language built on top of .NET! To interpret his comment as a criticism of managed, when he is in fact the one "pushing" for it via the tech he works on, is rather disingenuous.

Indeed. One of my PCs has a broken '.Net framework' which can't be fixed without a complete reinstall of the operating system: even Microsoft's own 'completely obliterate every last trace the bloody thing' uninstaller isn't enough to remove all the traces which prevent it from reinstalling properly.

Did you try Aaron Stebner's .NET cleanup tool? It's not an official MS product but it's written by an MS dev. I had a system with the same problem, and the cleanup tool fixed it.

For what it's worth, the VC++ team is getting rid of the NCB file in VS 2010. Here's a follow up post with some more details on the new architecture behind intellisense: http://blogs.msdn.com/vcblog/archive/2009/05/27/rebuilding-intellisense.aspx

For what it's worth, the VC++ team is getting rid of the NCB file in VS 2010. Here's a follow up post with some more details on the new architecture behind intellisense: http://blogs.msdn.com/vcblog/archive/2009/05/27/rebuilding-intellisense.aspx

Oh, but it's sourced. You can very obviously see where they got the clear Windows design goals from ;)

In recent interviews, the IE team explained that they run many testsets (W3C sets, Acid3, CSS3.info) themselves anyway. They have also contributed a lot of new tests to W3C (e.g. http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2009/01/27/microsoft-submits-thousands-more-css-2-1-tests-to-the-w3c.aspx). They ask for feedback about their tests. The only thing we can do to improve IE is to make sure there's enough test coverage.

COM is a Windows technology, but right before this story was posted I was watching a video from Channel 9 where they said they were looking at options for using Applescript on Mac to provide similar features. More info here:

http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Charles/Joe-Stegman-Silverlight-4-Out-of-Browser-Evolves/

Not in the patent, but MS is happy to give Prof. Tufte credit in their blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/archive/2009/07/17/sparklines-in-excel.aspx

Now, how that helps their patent application in terms of obviously admitting prior art....

Sparklines "are meant to be embedded into what they are describing" quote http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/archive/2009/07/17/sparklines-in-excel.aspx
How can a patent be granted on embedding them in a grid, when Sparklines were designed to be easily embedded into other contexts. A grid being one such context.

Microsoft patented the use of sparklines as a visualization for a single cell in a grid. In the US patent system, that's night and day different. They recognise Edward Tufte on their website for his invention of the sparkline: "For Excel 2010 we've implemented sparklines, "intense, simple, word-sized graphics", as their inventor Edward Tufte describes them in his book Beautiful Evidence."

If they would patent the sparkline they would have no claim because of broadly published prior art, under 35 U.S.C. 301: "Any person at any time may cite to the Office in writing prior art consisting of patents or printed publications which that person believes to have a bearing on the patentability of any claim of a particular patent. If the person explains in writing the pertinency and manner of applying such prior art to at least one claim of the patent, the citation of such prior art and the explanation thereof will become a part of the official file of the patent. At the written request of the person citing the prior art, his or her identity will be excluded from the patent file and kept confidential."

Speaking from an information visualisation perspective Microsoft badly implemented sparklines in excel.

It would certainly help with the epidemic of bogus patents, if those exaggerating or being deceptive on applications (such as claiming to have invented a graphical design while doing so much as acknowledging that someone else invented the design) would lead to some serious justice.

Over on the Microsoft Excel Team Blog they even give Edward Tufte credit as the inventor of these sparklines.

For Excel 2010 we’ve implemented sparklines, “intense, simple, word-sized graphics”, as their inventor Edward Tufte describes them in his book Beautiful Evidence. Sparklines help bring meaning and context to numbers being reported and, unlike a chart, are meant to be embedded into what they are describing:

The vaunted intellisense frequently fails to suggest anything

Do you mean IntelliSense for C++, or for C#/VB?

For C# and VB, IntelliSense really just works. This shouldn't be surprising, as it's a relatively easy and unambiguous language to parse - less so than Java, but enough for an IDE to handle it with no hiccups. I haven't ever seen it provide an incorrect completion information, or not provide it when it should.

For C++, it is known to be quite deficient, but then so is any other C++ IDE I know of. The problem is that C++ is a very complicated language, and preprocessor and templates effectively require writing a Turing-complete interpreter to figure out what type a given symbol resolves to, and what members that type has, at any given moment. This is both complex and computationally expensive. Most C++ IDEs use a simplified approach of parsing where they scan for patterns that "look like" type/function declarations and references. As soon as you get STL or Boost or other template library in, you get a mess.

In VS2010, C++ IDE was rewritten to use a full-fledged C++ parser (EDG frontend, to be specific) to provide code completion. As a result, it can actually give precise and up-to-date completion lists even for extremely messy template metaprogramming code (Boost.Lambda was used in the linked blog post to demonstrate that).

I tried to get the word on open standards from MS itself
http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Charles/IE-9-Standards-and-Interoperability/
but they wanted me to install some "Silverlight" MS thingy and I gave up.

Yes, IE8 does use multiple processes to prevent a crash from taking down the whole browser. In fact, we were the first browser to have this. See http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/03/11/ie8-and-loosely-coupled-ie-lcie.aspx for more info. Thanks, Andy

Note that this problem only existed in the first release of the WPF Firefox extension. It had since been fixed (after the original problem made it to the front pages of /. and the like), and "Uninstall" is active, and works just as it should. See this and this

Hi. Did you know /. supports i and quote html tags (sorry, can't type angle brackets by themselves)

My point about GC leakage is that people can too easily *think* they've released the object and consider it will clean up by itself, but find out later that their app is using 500 Mb RAM and has obviously got an 'error' *somewhere* in the program. GC gives you a false sense of security that a manual memory system doesn't - manual systems leakage is a outright bug more often caused by sloppy programming. Sometimes I think this is a flaw in the GC systems, if you have to manually de-reference an object, or manually call a closure method, its not as OO as I was taught (but I was brought up on RAII idiom)

One thing about GC references and deferred finalisation is not that you want to close your handle or suchlike, its the next application along might want to open that handle and will fail because its technically still in use. Safehandle was introduced because the GC mechanism (in C#) couldn't provide application correctness.

Not directly, anyway. Fair enough. But there are smart people at microsoft working directly on their retail products too.

Not directly, anyway. Fair enough. But there are smart people at microsoft working directly on their retail products too.

Not directly, anyway. Fair enough. But there are smart people at microsoft working directly on their retail products too.

Not directly, anyway. Fair enough. But there are smart people at microsoft working directly on their retail products too.

Raymond Chen wrote a blog posting about this: http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2009/11/05/9917671.aspx

The installers of the coffee machine didn't consider the number of visitors. I don't see what it has to do with software leaking though.

Actually, one of the bad things about Vista was that GDI acceleration was removed when introducing Aero. Vista windows draws into a system memory buffer, which is later copied to video memory, thus removing the possibility for GDI acceleration and increasing the memory footprint.
The only hardware accelleration in Vista was for the 3D effects.

This was fixed a bit in Windows 7, by removing at least one of the system memory buffers and reintroducing hardware accellerated GDI.