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Fuggedaboutit! Never in a million years would Gates have had made peace with such a potentially damaging open source group.

Another thing that potentially could explain this is IE8's "Compatibility View" feature, where in some cases the user-agent string can be modified.

See here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/08/27/introducing-compatibility-view.aspx

I'd be surprised if it was ever modified to read something that couldn't be identified as IE, but perhaps it's modified just enough to monkey with the analytics in this case.

I propose a physical switch to toggle between read/write and read only.

And have social engineers disguise malware as OS updates or dancing bunnies, prompting the home user who doesn't understand risks to flip the switch to see the dancing bunnies.

Your facts are so bizzarely wrong its hilarious.

OneCare has been discontinued. The scanning engine it was based on, along with definition updates, are now available free. If you'd even bothered to read *anything* about the product related to this article, you'd know that.
Windows does ship with a two-way firewall, and it's remarkably powerful and versatile. OneCare was basically a giant patch for those fools still running an 8-year-old OS.
"designed Windows better..." You can't fix stupid. The OS itself is pretty damn secure these days, much more so than (for example) OS X - see the Pwn2Own contests and the competitor's comments for an interesting case study. Actually exploiting Windows pretty much requires third-party software, and even then you have to deal with security features that no other os *except* OpenBSD has fully implemented (DEP, ASLR, etc.). What most malware for Windows (and usually for other platforms too) is, these days, is Trojans. Not a lot your OS can do to protect you from those. See the Dancing Pigs (or Bunnies) Problem. Pop up a warning dialog? Users will click right through it. Make them run as non-Administrators? They'll gain whatever rights the program says it needs (in the case of Trojan-infected installers, you would probably need admin rights anyhow). Antivirus provides only a very small amount of protection against this, but I suppose if you're going to have that kind of person online anyhow they should have that protection. If a company wants to charge more to protect against that stupidity, though, I don't see that as being so evil.

That last one was supposed to link to http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/search.aspx?q=IE8+security+part&p=1. It had quotes in the search term that Chrome didn't escape and that ruined the html :|

What's wrong with that? You already have IE installed. IE8 is much faster and actually secure at all. Leaving anyone on the planet using IE7 would be a sin and killing it with fire is one of the most honorable things Microsoft has ever done.

Sure, but the instant that you hit a web site that hasn't opted in, the protections are worthless.

MSFT's version of this feature works by inspecting the HTML on the page and blocking all scripts that appear to be hostile - it's not a perfect solution but it doesn't require the site to opt-in.

I think a hybrid solution of both MSFTs and FF's solution is likely to be the best option for customers - the FF solution allows for a declarative solution for sites that want to opt-in, the MSFT solution helps protect other sites.

Neither solution is perfect.

Link here for a post about it on the Powershell blog.

There were at least two people who took their own lives directly because of their losses from his theft:

• Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet
• William Foxton

These men are equally as dead as any two other murder victims, and were apparently in no trouble or danger prior to Madoff's criminal activity.

And just in case you want to blame the victims, consider the phrase "danger to society" doesn't necessarily mean "physical danger". Compare what he did to a mugger pointing a gun at you, but not shooting you: you might lose $200 bucks from your wallet, you might have crapped your pants, but you're still alive, and still have a job. Causing the collapse of hundreds of businesses, the unemployment of thousands, the destruction of retirement funds of tens of thousands of people -- I'd say he ranks right up there with any weapon of mass destruction in terms of the damage done to our society. "Danger to society" isn't exclusively the province of the barrel of a gun.

Prison is exactly the right place for him to spend the next 150 years. My only complaint is that he didn't start serving it when he began his fraud, which federal investigators place about 1975. He got to live too many good years outside of the gray bars.

Eric Lawrence has already blogged on the IE Team blog in support of this approach: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2009/06/25/declaring-security.aspx so it is possible that CSP will be adopted more generally.

Seems like they are trying to compete with IE http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/07/02/ie8-security-part-iv-the-xss-filter.aspx But on http://sla.ckers.org/ circumvention has already been found. XSS will always be around, because of dumb coders trying to re-invent the wheel, yet again.

Microsoft don't even bother localising the software the the UK market, it's the exact same software as the US version. http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2009/06/08/9705183.aspx

Parent has it only partially correct, but here's your citation: http://blogs.msdn.com/rick_schaut/archive/2004/02/26/80193.aspx Word 6.0 for Mac was built from the same codebase as the Windows product, looked quite a lot like a Windows product, and used to occasionally throw Windows-style errors. The number of floppy disks required to install it on a Mac was equal to the number of disks for the Windows version plus 7 (?), which was the same number of floppies that Win 3.11 took. Hence why you'll see people claim it was emulated.

I ran into the installation size surprise when I was testing server 2008 - I was pretty surprised when the system partition was about 20gb a few days after install without me installing anything on it.

This is how they fit 20gb onto a 3gb DVD.

So its using hardlinks, but the kicker is I think every installer, and explorer report the size as multiples of the actual file size.

Id love somone to tell me that I'm wrong here, as that seems pretty crazy to me!

You have the right answer for the wrong reasons :).

IE8 has a process per tab (including windows as tabs) up to some number of tabs based on a heuristic that in turn is based on the available memory on the system, and then it has a process growth heuristic up to another heuristically system-memory dependent maximum.

Source: several places, but https://blogs.msdn.com/askie/archive/2009/03/09/opening-a-new-tab-may-launch-a-new-process-with-internet-explorer-8-0.aspx should suffice.

However, even when you don't do this, session cookies are shared across processes, because otherwise doing things like opening a new tab would be broken. Chrome does the same thing, and I'm sure Firefox's project to change their tab model will eventually include this too. You have to explicitly open a new session, or use a command-line option, to make IE not share session cookies across processes.

Source: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2009/05/06/session-cookies-sessionstorage-and-ie8.aspx

You have the right answer for the wrong reasons :).

IE8 has a process per tab (including windows as tabs) up to some number of tabs based on a heuristic that in turn is based on the available memory on the system, and then it has a process growth heuristic up to another heuristically system-memory dependent maximum.

Source: several places, but https://blogs.msdn.com/askie/archive/2009/03/09/opening-a-new-tab-may-launch-a-new-process-with-internet-explorer-8-0.aspx should suffice.

However, even when you don't do this, session cookies are shared across processes, because otherwise doing things like opening a new tab would be broken. Chrome does the same thing, and I'm sure Firefox's project to change their tab model will eventually include this too. You have to explicitly open a new session, or use a command-line option, to make IE not share session cookies across processes.

Source: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2009/05/06/session-cookies-sessionstorage-and-ie8.aspx

I dare you to name a language option offered by Ubuntu that Windows doesn't have. I'd be far more inclined to believe Windows has languages that Ubuntu doesn't.

British English, for one. I really would prefer that my son (he's almost three) be able to use a computer without being annoyed/confused by incorrect spellings. Ubuntu for him, then.

Apparently MS can't see how they'll be able to get British English spellings in Windows.
http://blogs.msdn.com/michkap/archive/2008/07/11/8720420.aspx

Web Standards - IE8: * FF: CR: * - It's a tie. Internet Explorer 8 passes more of the World Wide Web Consortium's CSS 2.1 test cases than any other browser, but Firefox 3 has more support for some evolving standards.

A barefaced, shameless, utterly false lie. For you see, there is no W3C CSS 2.1 test suite. There is a Pre-Alpha CSS 2.1 Test Suite , but upon further investigation it can be seen that the IE team themselves have submitted at least 3221 of the 3708 test cases, or at least that was the case last August 18th.

This is the most interesting lie I noticed. For the record, if all 3221 of those test cases Microsoft submitted to the W3C are legitimate (and, if the W3C has incorporated them into the test suite, I would hope that they are), then it doesn't particularly bother me that Microsoft's contributions make up 87% of the test suite. What it tells me is, Microsoft has been very active at finding CSS bugs in IE (which, to be fair, is rather like shooting fish in a barrel). It just happens that the CSS bugs that Microsoft has fixed recently aren't all the same ones that Mozilla and Apple and Opera have fixed. That's fine. Test suites are one of the ways we can quickly identify bugs that need fixing, and by contributing to the W3C's CSS test suite, Microsoft is actually helping other browser vendors to find their own bugs. This is a Good Thing.

However, this is obviously not a complete test suite, and I'd bet IE doesn't "[pass] more... test cases than any other browser" by a particularly wide margin. Presumably, IE passes all the tests that Microsoft has submitted, which is 87% of them. I'd guess that pre-release versions of other browsers probably pass even more, but Microsoft probably only compared shipping versions (which is fair, but doesn't tell the whole story).

Interesting that they single out Firefox 3 for having "more support for some evolving standards." Are they referring to things that Firefox 3 supports but Chrome doesn't, or are they being disingenuous again?

The story is, quite simply, that it is appallingly easy of companies to shamelessly and flagrantly lie, to produce the most obvious falsehoods, and for absolutely no one whatsoever to bother stating the obvious fact; that they are appalling liars.

It's not even deceptive wording, or qualified phrases we're talking about here. Most companies and organisations just come right out an lie nowadays. Some choice selections from the article. Note that the tick marks in the article next to browsers are replaced by stars here.

Security - IE8: * FF: CR: - Internet Explorer 8 takes the cake with better phishing and malware protection, as well as protection from emerging threats.

A lie.

Privacy - IE8: * FF: CR: - InPrivate Browsing and InPrivate Filtering help Internet Explorer 8 claim privacy victory.

A falsehood.

Web Standards - IE8: * FF: CR: * - It's a tie. Internet Explorer 8 passes more of the World Wide Web Consortium's CSS 2.1 test cases than any other browser, but Firefox 3 has more support for some evolving standards.

A barefaced, shameless, utterly false lie. For you see, there is no W3C CSS 2.1 test suite. There is a Pre-Alpha CSS 2.1 Test Suite, but upon further investigation it can be seen that the IE team themselves have submitted at least 3221 of the 3708 test cases, or at least that was the case last August 18th.

Perhaps some would argue that these are merely exaggerations or omissions, not lies. I beg to differ. Taking these statements as truths would lead one to believe that IE has less exploits, less chance of exposing private data and a higher or equal chance of rendering web pages correctly that either Firefox or Chrome. All three conclusions are false. These are lies.

Some will believe them, but even sadder, more will not accept them as lies.

P.S.
My reply text is being squashed into a 25 character wide column to the right of a mass of grey. It would be great if Slashdot rendered properly these days.
P.P.S.
Perhaps I'll try it in IE8!

FYI Windows 7 disables defragmenting on SSD drives.

The automatic scheduling of defragmentation will exclude partitions on devices that declare themselves as SSDs. Additionally, if the system disk has random read performance characteristics above the threshold of 8 MB/sec, then it too will be excluded. The threshold was determined by internal analysis.

Support and Q&A for Solid-State Drives

"As a content provider (I'm the founder of http://www.livebaseballchat.com/ stuff like this annoys the hell out of me." - by dean.collins (862044)
on Monday June 15, @07:54PM (#28342445

You probably DO try to stall it, but, when your adbanner hosters "F-YOU-OVER" as this article seems to imply? Well, then it's time for ME to do something about it (as have folks like Opera w/ their built-in toolsets for this, & folks like NoScript &/or Adblock for Mozilla FireFox products).

Also? I have to note, your scripts & adbanners cut into MY LINE SPEED, which I pay for out of my pocket - I want ALL OF WHAT I PAY FOR, regardless of what your standpoint is, & that obviously, is YOUR INCOME... so, I block your ads out. IF you see the security guide I authored below (which shows up by the truckload on say, GOOGLE, by querying "HOW TO SECURE Windows 2000"? You'll see I am one of the folks warning others about bogus banners, & did so years before THIS incident & others occurred, because of javascript's F'd up DOM - I knew this WAS coming!)

So, to do so to protect even IE?? Well - You can always use a HOSTS file! Why?? Read on:

The beauty of that is, IS that HOSTS files (custom ones especially for THIS type of lunacy occurring) extend to EVERY web-bound app you have (unlike Adblock/AdBlock Plus, that only work in Mozilla/FireFox products)

So - think programs like Email also, where HTML is used (alongside scripting, the REAL "problem" (with bad adbanners for example, it IS the "delivery mechanism" basically - because it's truly the "root of all evil" here most times, & anyone can verify that statement @ SECUNIA or SECURITYFOCUS.COM for example, from their last 4-5 yrs. of data or more on records of exploits they have)).

HOSTS files provide not only security benefits here, but, also speedup benefits too, as a bonus (by blocking ads you gain speed, but blocking scripting even gets you more (only use it on sites you trust OR cannot do without to stay safe(r) vs. bad scripted pages/bad scripted adbanners)).

HOSTS files, customized ones, work here... & it's a solution that's easily edited/added to, + understood by users, as a bonus - Because as one of my best pals whom I 'turned onto' these has stated, verbatim? "All you need to do, is know how to use notepad.exe, how to read english, & to get a decent one to start with - as well as sources that update the data one needs to blockout bogus sites" (& I list a few below!)

The one I use here is populated with my own lists for HOSTS files since 1997 (30.000 entries long, mostly for adbanner blocking @ first 1997-2001), then later for security 2002 onwards...

I extended it further (to 654,000 unique entries currently & yes, I have to stop the Windows DNS client for that, it's 14mb for Windows NT/2000/XP/Server 2003, & up to 19mb (using 0.0.0.0) OR 26mb (using 127.0.0.1) for Windows VISTA/Server 2008/Windows7) per sources like:

1.) StopBadWare.org
2.) SRI
3.) Dancho Danchev's ZDNet Blog
4.) SpyBot "Search & Destroy" Immunize lists
5.) PLUS/LASTLY, using other reputable known HOSTS files shown @ wikipedia.com, here -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_file [wikipedia.org]

All DAILY updated here, or nearly daily.

(& kept free of repeat entries via a program I wrote to do that, as well as alphabetize the entries, plus change them to a "faster up off disk into memory" internal schema for blocking out bad sites & adbanners, by going from the larger, slower 127.0.0.1 default loopback adapter IP, to either 0.0.0.0 (for VISTA/Server2k8/Windows 7, a mistake on MS' part I mentioned to they here -> http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/02/09/recognizing-improv

"Internet Explorer does. Internet Explorer is so awesome, you don't even need to click on an add to get infected. It's will do all automatically for you, there is this new wonderful M$ caching feature that keep clicking the whole Internet for you. Join the botnet close to your home now, all free today thanks to IE9! Remember, iexplore.exe will be always there for you." - by Krneki (1192201) on Monday June 15, @09:15PM (#28343077)

Versus that? Well - You can always use a HOSTS file! Why?? Read on:

The beauty of that is, IS that HOSTS files (custom ones especially for THIS type of lunacy occurring) extend to EVERY web-bound app you have (unlike Adblock/AdBlock Plus, that only work in Mozilla/FireFox products)

So - think programs like Email also, where HTML is used (alongside scripting, the REAL "problem" (with bad adbanners for example, it IS the "delivery mechanism" basically - because it's truly the "root of all evil" here most times, & anyone can verify that statement @ SECUNIA or SECURITYFOCUS.COM for example, from their last 4-5 yrs. of data or more on records of exploits they have)).

HOSTS files provide not only security benefits here, but, also speedup benefits too, as a bonus (by blocking ads you gain speed, but blocking scripting even gets you more (only use it on sites you trust OR cannot do without to stay safe(r) vs. bad scripted pages/bad scripted adbanners)).

HOSTS files, customized ones, work here... & it's a solution that's easily edited/added to, + understood by users, as a bonus - Because as one of my best pals whom I 'turned onto' these has stated, verbatim? "All you need to do, is know how to use notepad.exe, how to read english, & to get a decent one to start with - as well as sources that update the data one needs to blockout bogus sites" (& I list a few below!)

The one I use here is populated with my own lists for HOSTS files since 1997 (30.000 entries long, mostly for adbanner blocking @ first 1997-2001), then later for security 2002 onwards...

I extended it further (to 654,000 unique entries currently & yes, I have to stop the Windows DNS client for that, it's 14mb for Windows NT/2000/XP/Server 2003, & up to 19mb (using 0.0.0.0) OR 26mb (using 127.0.0.1) for Windows VISTA/Server 2008/Windows7) per sources like:

1.) StopBadWare.org
2.) SRI
3.) Dancho Danchev's ZDNet Blog
4.) SpyBot "Search & Destroy" Immunize lists
5.) PLUS/LASTLY, using other reputable known HOSTS files shown @ wikipedia.com, here -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_file [wikipedia.org]

All DAILY updated here, or nearly daily.

(& kept free of repeat entries via a program I wrote to do that, as well as alphabetize the entries, plus change them to a "faster up off disk into memory" internal schema for blocking out bad sites & adbanners, by going from the larger, slower 127.0.0.1 default loopback adapter IP, to either 0.0.0.0 (for VISTA/Server2k8/Windows 7, a mistake on MS' part I mentioned to they here -> http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/02/09/recognizing-improvements-in-windows-7-handwriting.aspx?CommentPosted=true#commentmessage which they started on 12/09/2008), OR the fastest & most efficient 0 blocking IP address))

HOSTS files are a good layer for this, then you can also "layer on" IE Restricted Zones, Opera filter.ini/urlfilter.ini, & FireFox addons like NoScript + its internal to browser restricted sites lists ontop of them, for the utmost in security protection AND speed (I do other things like use custom cascading style sheets & PAC file filtering as well, but those are another subject)... & guys? LAYERED SECURITY IS "the trend" & recommended pursuit by any 'security-saavy' person out there & yes, it works!

You can always use a HOSTS file! Why?

The beauty of that is, IS that HOSTS files (custom ones especially for THIS type of lunacy occurring) extend to EVERY web-bound app you have (unlike Adblock/AdBlock Plus, that only work in Mozilla/FireFox products)

So - think programs like Email also, where HTML is used (alongside scripting, the REAL "problem" (with bad adbanners for example, it IS the "delivery mechanism" basically - because it's truly the "root of all evil" here most times, & anyone can verify that statement @ SECUNIA or SECURITYFOCUS.COM for example, from their last 4-5 yrs. of data or more on records of exploits they have)).

HOSTS files provide not only security benefits here, but, also speedup benefits too, as a bonus (by blocking ads you gain speed, but blocking scripting even gets you more (only use it on sites you trust OR cannot do without to stay safe(r) vs. bad scripted pages/bad scripted adbanners)).

HOSTS files, customized ones, work here... & it's a solution that's easily edited/added to, + understood by users, as a bonus - Because as one of my best pals whom I 'turned onto' these has stated, verbatim? "All you need to do, is know how to use notepad.exe, how to read english, & to get a decent one to start with - as well as sources that update the data one needs to blockout bogus sites" (& I list a few below!)

The one I use here is populated with my own lists for HOSTS files since 1997 (30.000 entries long, mostly for adbanner blocking @ first 1997-2001), then later for security 2002 onwards...

I extended it further (to 654,000 unique entries currently & yes, I have to stop the Windows DNS client for that, it's 14mb for Windows NT/2000/XP/Server 2003, & up to 19mb (using 0.0.0.0) OR 26mb (using 127.0.0.1) for Windows VISTA/Server 2008/Windows7) per sources like:

1.) StopBadWare.org
2.) SRI
3.) Dancho Danchev's ZDNet Blog
4.) SpyBot "Search & Destroy" Immunize lists
5.) PLUS/LASTLY, using other reputable known HOSTS files shown @ wikipedia.com, here -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_file [wikipedia.org]

All DAILY updated here, or nearly daily.

(& kept free of repeat entries via a program I wrote to do that, as well as alphabetize the entries, plus change them to a "faster up off disk into memory" internal schema for blocking out bad sites & adbanners, by going from the larger, slower 127.0.0.1 default loopback adapter IP, to either 0.0.0.0 (for VISTA/Server2k8/Windows 7, a mistake on MS' part I mentioned to they here -> http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/02/09/recognizing-improvements-in-windows-7-handwriting.aspx?CommentPosted=true#commentmessage which they started on 12/09/2008), OR the fastest & most efficient 0 blocking IP address))

HOSTS files are a good layer for this, then you can also "layer on" IE Restricted Zones, Opera filter.ini/urlfilter.ini, & FireFox addons like NoScript + its internal to browser restricted sites lists ontop of them, for the utmost in security protection AND speed (I do other things like use custom cascading style sheets & PAC file filtering as well, but those are another subject)... & guys? LAYERED SECURITY IS "the trend" & recommended pursuit by any 'security-saavy' person out there & yes, it works!

APK

P.S.=> HOSTS files give you that "Layered security" in addition to my last paragraphs' suggestions above & this guide I authored AS WELL AS MORE SPEED ONLINE...:

----

HOW TO SECURE Windows 2000/XP/Server 2003 & even VISTA, + make it "fun-to-do", via CIS Tool Guidance (& beyond):

http://www.tcmagazine.com/forums/index.php?s=d9ab7ff1c912db0a0

Who's the asshat who invented the "ribbon"?

That would be this guy.

As far as I can tell, the problem here is that the article is not bending the truth to match the usual reality-distorted pro-ODF bias expected by slashdot users and other FSF goons.

Let's start with this statement:

In the ODF article, Alex Brown bends the truth to make it seem like no one is supporting ODF, and that it is a flawed and incomplete standard.

It seems to be like he doesn't fail to bend the truth. It's a flawed and incomplete standard, in some ways it is vague, in others it's simply inconsistent.

Let's take tracked changes for instance, a feature in ODF 1.1 which pretends to be complete. The reality is that the standard is so vague and broken that the most popular implementation, Google Docs, ignores the standard entirely, implementing changes in their proprietary system. Microsoft simply solves the problem by disabling the functionality in order to avoid future breaking.

http://blogs.msdn.com/dmahugh/archive/2009/05/13/tracked-changes.aspx

Let's not talk about ODF 1.2 either, since its only a working draft.

So Microsoft was somehow able to do a perfect by the letter implementation of the ODF 1.1 (the current standard) spec, and yet they haven't got full interoperability with OpenOffice? It sounds an awful lot like Sun took a very liberal interpretation of their vague standard and are now standing by their wonky mess of source code (Ooo) as the standard-- similar to Solaris and POSIX. Thats unacceptable, ODF passed the standards bodies, not OpenOffice.org.

The fact that Microsoft could create one of the only correct implementations of the ODF standard and still break interoperability suggests that the ubiquity of this standard is largely overstated:

http://adjb.net/post/Notes-on-Document-Conformance-and-Portability-4.aspx

There are arguments to be made on the subject of digging through Sun's source code to make this vague standard work, but then ODF violates the FSF's very quote bashing MS-OOXML:

"For any standard it is essential that it is implementable by any third party without necessity of cooperation by another company"

Source: http://fsfe.org/documents/msooxml-questions

So, you can't make interoperable ODF without referencing OpenOffice because it is vague and incomplete... but it's not a complete standard unless you don't have to rely on the assistance of a certain corporation (Sun) to implement it properly?

It sounds to me like ODF is locking functionality to Sun's software the same way DOC locks functionality to Microsoft Office. MS-OOXML may be wordy, but it turns out that you need a lot of words to make a complete office standard. ODF is a paper tiger, end of story. The problem slashdot points out here is simply a lack of reality-distorting pro-ODF bias... this "whisper campaign" might be the seeping shadow of "reality" in the reality of writing a complete and interoperable standard escapes Sun--leaving them with something terse but heavily marketed with a vicious and aggressive activist campaign by angel advertisers who fancy themselves freedom fighters.

Say, does Windows support zero-copy Infiniband links?

Yes, it does.
Click Here

http://www.mellanox.com/pdf/whitepapers/SDPCluster2006.pdf

How about MPI performance?

Yes, it does.
http://www.purempi.net/

How about fire&forget clustered processes?

Yes, it does.
http://blogs.msdn.com/distributedservices/default.aspx

And it is getting significantly improved code completion, and on-the-fly error checking in 2010.

If you read the comments in that post, it looks like C++/CLI isn't supported by the new, improved intellisense.

Honestly, we took to calling it "Intellinonsense" at work, given the number of times it fails to complete; you can rate it by failures per second...

Doesn't sound "abandoned" to me.

On the language front, Visual C++ in 2010 gets a bunch of C++0x features: lambdas, type inference (auto), static_assert , rvalue references (&&), and decltype. This is quite a lot, and lambdas are especially nice since they actually let you use STL algorithms as God intended without writing tons of boilerplate code for function objects.

Then also there's Parallel Patterns Library, which provides STL-like algorithms with automatic parallelization.

Yes, the actual c++ compiler and library support has definitely improved. But there seems to be no corresponding improvement in the IDE's functionality. When Visual Assist X becomes a requirement for working with any kind of productivity, it's a rather sad situation. You've got to spend on VS, and then on VA-X for every developer, when the alternative is eclipse with mingw, giving all those above-mentioned features (aka, parts of the standard) for free, and a real usable IDE along with that!

This one is interesting. I do not know of any C++ IDE or plugin that would provide working C++ refactoring, for very simple reason - it is extremely hard to properly parse C++, taking into account all templates and template specializations, and other context-dependent things. Heck, something like a<b>c can be parsed either as expression (a < b) > c, or as a variable declaration a<b> c, depending on the context - and that context, again, includes template instantiations, which form a Turing-complete language that has to be interpreted correctly to produce matching results. I once wrote a C++ program, for fun, which had in it a piece of code as described above, which was parsed and compiled either as expression or as variable declaration depending on whether char type was signed or unsigned was for a given compiler - so you could play with compiler options and get different results. How can IDE possibly handle this?

You can say that it does it for code completion, but the truth is that a lot of it is guessing and heuristics. And there's the catch - when it guesses wrong, at worst, you get a wrong code completion list, or no list at all. But when you do a refactoring like, say, "rename class", and it fails to correctly determine that the class is referenced at some line of code, and doesn't rename it there, then your program no longer compiles...

That said, VS2010 IDE C++ parser (used for code completion and "Go to definition") is EDG-based, so it should be much more accurate - so hopefully we'll get reliable C++ refactoring eventually. Just not in this release.

Eclipse and the still-in-beta KDevelop 4.x give you at least some basic refactoring support. Eclipse has done so for a few years now...

I agree with that, but there are many good thir

And it is getting significantly improved code completion, and on-the-fly error checking in 2010.

If you read the comments in that post, it looks like C++/CLI isn't supported by the new, improved intellisense.

Honestly, we took to calling it "Intellinonsense" at work, given the number of times it fails to complete; you can rate it by failures per second...

Doesn't sound "abandoned" to me.

On the language front, Visual C++ in 2010 gets a bunch of C++0x features: lambdas, type inference (auto), static_assert , rvalue references (&&), and decltype. This is quite a lot, and lambdas are especially nice since they actually let you use STL algorithms as God intended without writing tons of boilerplate code for function objects.

Then also there's Parallel Patterns Library, which provides STL-like algorithms with automatic parallelization.

Yes, the actual c++ compiler and library support has definitely improved. But there seems to be no corresponding improvement in the IDE's functionality. When Visual Assist X becomes a requirement for working with any kind of productivity, it's a rather sad situation. You've got to spend on VS, and then on VA-X for every developer, when the alternative is eclipse with mingw, giving all those above-mentioned features (aka, parts of the standard) for free, and a real usable IDE along with that!

This one is interesting. I do not know of any C++ IDE or plugin that would provide working C++ refactoring, for very simple reason - it is extremely hard to properly parse C++, taking into account all templates and template specializations, and other context-dependent things. Heck, something like a<b>c can be parsed either as expression (a < b) > c, or as a variable declaration a<b> c, depending on the context - and that context, again, includes template instantiations, which form a Turing-complete language that has to be interpreted correctly to produce matching results. I once wrote a C++ program, for fun, which had in it a piece of code as described above, which was parsed and compiled either as expression or as variable declaration depending on whether char type was signed or unsigned was for a given compiler - so you could play with compiler options and get different results. How can IDE possibly handle this?

You can say that it does it for code completion, but the truth is that a lot of it is guessing and heuristics. And there's the catch - when it guesses wrong, at worst, you get a wrong code completion list, or no list at all. But when you do a refactoring like, say, "rename class", and it fails to correctly determine that the class is referenced at some line of code, and doesn't rename it there, then your program no longer compiles...

That said, VS2010 IDE C++ parser (used for code completion and "Go to definition") is EDG-based, so it should be much more accurate - so hopefully we'll get reliable C++ refactoring eventually. Just not in this release.

Eclipse and the still-in-beta KDevelop 4.x give you at least some basic refactoring support. Eclipse has done so for a few years now...

I agree with that, but there are many good thir

And it is getting significantly improved code completion, and on-the-fly error checking in 2010.

If you read the comments in that post, it looks like C++/CLI isn't supported by the new, improved intellisense.

Honestly, we took to calling it "Intellinonsense" at work, given the number of times it fails to complete; you can rate it by failures per second...

Doesn't sound "abandoned" to me.

On the language front, Visual C++ in 2010 gets a bunch of C++0x features: lambdas, type inference (auto), static_assert , rvalue references (&&), and decltype. This is quite a lot, and lambdas are especially nice since they actually let you use STL algorithms as God intended without writing tons of boilerplate code for function objects.

Then also there's Parallel Patterns Library, which provides STL-like algorithms with automatic parallelization.

Yes, the actual c++ compiler and library support has definitely improved. But there seems to be no corresponding improvement in the IDE's functionality. When Visual Assist X becomes a requirement for working with any kind of productivity, it's a rather sad situation. You've got to spend on VS, and then on VA-X for every developer, when the alternative is eclipse with mingw, giving all those above-mentioned features (aka, parts of the standard) for free, and a real usable IDE along with that!

This one is interesting. I do not know of any C++ IDE or plugin that would provide working C++ refactoring, for very simple reason - it is extremely hard to properly parse C++, taking into account all templates and template specializations, and other context-dependent things. Heck, something like a<b>c can be parsed either as expression (a < b) > c, or as a variable declaration a<b> c, depending on the context - and that context, again, includes template instantiations, which form a Turing-complete language that has to be interpreted correctly to produce matching results. I once wrote a C++ program, for fun, which had in it a piece of code as described above, which was parsed and compiled either as expression or as variable declaration depending on whether char type was signed or unsigned was for a given compiler - so you could play with compiler options and get different results. How can IDE possibly handle this?

You can say that it does it for code completion, but the truth is that a lot of it is guessing and heuristics. And there's the catch - when it guesses wrong, at worst, you get a wrong code completion list, or no list at all. But when you do a refactoring like, say, "rename class", and it fails to correctly determine that the class is referenced at some line of code, and doesn't rename it there, then your program no longer compiles...

That said, VS2010 IDE C++ parser (used for code completion and "Go to definition") is EDG-based, so it should be much more accurate - so hopefully we'll get reliable C++ refactoring eventually. Just not in this release.

Eclipse and the still-in-beta KDevelop 4.x give you at least some basic refactoring support. Eclipse has done so for a few years now...

I agree with that, but there are many good thir

And it is getting significantly improved code completion, and on-the-fly error checking in 2010.

If you read the comments in that post, it looks like C++/CLI isn't supported by the new, improved intellisense.

Honestly, we took to calling it "Intellinonsense" at work, given the number of times it fails to complete; you can rate it by failures per second...

Doesn't sound "abandoned" to me.

On the language front, Visual C++ in 2010 gets a bunch of C++0x features: lambdas, type inference (auto), static_assert , rvalue references (&&), and decltype. This is quite a lot, and lambdas are especially nice since they actually let you use STL algorithms as God intended without writing tons of boilerplate code for function objects.

Then also there's Parallel Patterns Library, which provides STL-like algorithms with automatic parallelization.

Yes, the actual c++ compiler and library support has definitely improved. But there seems to be no corresponding improvement in the IDE's functionality. When Visual Assist X becomes a requirement for working with any kind of productivity, it's a rather sad situation. You've got to spend on VS, and then on VA-X for every developer, when the alternative is eclipse with mingw, giving all those above-mentioned features (aka, parts of the standard) for free, and a real usable IDE along with that!

This one is interesting. I do not know of any C++ IDE or plugin that would provide working C++ refactoring, for very simple reason - it is extremely hard to properly parse C++, taking into account all templates and template specializations, and other context-dependent things. Heck, something like a<b>c can be parsed either as expression (a < b) > c, or as a variable declaration a<b> c, depending on the context - and that context, again, includes template instantiations, which form a Turing-complete language that has to be interpreted correctly to produce matching results. I once wrote a C++ program, for fun, which had in it a piece of code as described above, which was parsed and compiled either as expression or as variable declaration depending on whether char type was signed or unsigned was for a given compiler - so you could play with compiler options and get different results. How can IDE possibly handle this?

You can say that it does it for code completion, but the truth is that a lot of it is guessing and heuristics. And there's the catch - when it guesses wrong, at worst, you get a wrong code completion list, or no list at all. But when you do a refactoring like, say, "rename class", and it fails to correctly determine that the class is referenced at some line of code, and doesn't rename it there, then your program no longer compiles...

That said, VS2010 IDE C++ parser (used for code completion and "Go to definition") is EDG-based, so it should be much more accurate - so hopefully we'll get reliable C++ refactoring eventually. Just not in this release.

Eclipse and the still-in-beta KDevelop 4.x give you at least some basic refactoring support. Eclipse has done so for a few years now...

I agree with that, but there are many good thir

And it is getting significantly improved code completion, and on-the-fly error checking in 2010.

If you read the comments in that post, it looks like C++/CLI isn't supported by the new, improved intellisense.

Honestly, we took to calling it "Intellinonsense" at work, given the number of times it fails to complete; you can rate it by failures per second...

Doesn't sound "abandoned" to me.

On the language front, Visual C++ in 2010 gets a bunch of C++0x features: lambdas, type inference (auto), static_assert , rvalue references (&&), and decltype. This is quite a lot, and lambdas are especially nice since they actually let you use STL algorithms as God intended without writing tons of boilerplate code for function objects.

Then also there's Parallel Patterns Library, which provides STL-like algorithms with automatic parallelization.

Yes, the actual c++ compiler and library support has definitely improved. But there seems to be no corresponding improvement in the IDE's functionality. When Visual Assist X becomes a requirement for working with any kind of productivity, it's a rather sad situation. You've got to spend on VS, and then on VA-X for every developer, when the alternative is eclipse with mingw, giving all those above-mentioned features (aka, parts of the standard) for free, and a real usable IDE along with that!

This one is interesting. I do not know of any C++ IDE or plugin that would provide working C++ refactoring, for very simple reason - it is extremely hard to properly parse C++, taking into account all templates and template specializations, and other context-dependent things. Heck, something like a<b>c can be parsed either as expression (a < b) > c, or as a variable declaration a<b> c, depending on the context - and that context, again, includes template instantiations, which form a Turing-complete language that has to be interpreted correctly to produce matching results. I once wrote a C++ program, for fun, which had in it a piece of code as described above, which was parsed and compiled either as expression or as variable declaration depending on whether char type was signed or unsigned was for a given compiler - so you could play with compiler options and get different results. How can IDE possibly handle this?

You can say that it does it for code completion, but the truth is that a lot of it is guessing and heuristics. And there's the catch - when it guesses wrong, at worst, you get a wrong code completion list, or no list at all. But when you do a refactoring like, say, "rename class", and it fails to correctly determine that the class is referenced at some line of code, and doesn't rename it there, then your program no longer compiles...

That said, VS2010 IDE C++ parser (used for code completion and "Go to definition") is EDG-based, so it should be much more accurate - so hopefully we'll get reliable C++ refactoring eventually. Just not in this release.

Eclipse and the still-in-beta KDevelop 4.x give you at least some basic refactoring support. Eclipse has done so for a few years now...

I agree with that, but there are many good thir

And it is getting significantly improved code completion, and on-the-fly error checking in 2010.

If you read the comments in that post, it looks like C++/CLI isn't supported by the new, improved intellisense.

Honestly, we took to calling it "Intellinonsense" at work, given the number of times it fails to complete; you can rate it by failures per second...

Doesn't sound "abandoned" to me.

On the language front, Visual C++ in 2010 gets a bunch of C++0x features: lambdas, type inference (auto), static_assert , rvalue references (&&), and decltype. This is quite a lot, and lambdas are especially nice since they actually let you use STL algorithms as God intended without writing tons of boilerplate code for function objects.

Then also there's Parallel Patterns Library, which provides STL-like algorithms with automatic parallelization.

Yes, the actual c++ compiler and library support has definitely improved. But there seems to be no corresponding improvement in the IDE's functionality. When Visual Assist X becomes a requirement for working with any kind of productivity, it's a rather sad situation. You've got to spend on VS, and then on VA-X for every developer, when the alternative is eclipse with mingw, giving all those above-mentioned features (aka, parts of the standard) for free, and a real usable IDE along with that!

This one is interesting. I do not know of any C++ IDE or plugin that would provide working C++ refactoring, for very simple reason - it is extremely hard to properly parse C++, taking into account all templates and template specializations, and other context-dependent things. Heck, something like a<b>c can be parsed either as expression (a < b) > c, or as a variable declaration a<b> c, depending on the context - and that context, again, includes template instantiations, which form a Turing-complete language that has to be interpreted correctly to produce matching results. I once wrote a C++ program, for fun, which had in it a piece of code as described above, which was parsed and compiled either as expression or as variable declaration depending on whether char type was signed or unsigned was for a given compiler - so you could play with compiler options and get different results. How can IDE possibly handle this?

You can say that it does it for code completion, but the truth is that a lot of it is guessing and heuristics. And there's the catch - when it guesses wrong, at worst, you get a wrong code completion list, or no list at all. But when you do a refactoring like, say, "rename class", and it fails to correctly determine that the class is referenced at some line of code, and doesn't rename it there, then your program no longer compiles...

That said, VS2010 IDE C++ parser (used for code completion and "Go to definition") is EDG-based, so it should be much more accurate - so hopefully we'll get reliable C++ refactoring eventually. Just not in this release.

Eclipse and the still-in-beta KDevelop 4.x give you at least some basic refactoring support. Eclipse has done so for a few years now...

I agree with that, but there are many good thir

Being included in VS != mainstream. We'll see if it actually gets used by anyone (I'm betting not, but who knows, I could be wrong)

It's already being used by some companies. The fact that you do not know about it doesn't mean that it doesn't happen - and I apologize that I can't be more specific... :)

It just happens to have a fairly specific target niche, which is financial and scientific calculations. It's not something you're supposed to write your shiny WPF UI applications in (even though you can).

By the way, one nice F#-specific feature that I've missed is units of measurement in the type system (the only other language I know that has that is Fortress, and then there's a C++ template library for that in Boost). Again, it's obviously most useful in scientific and engineering computations.

Quite a bit actually. Personally for me, the top 3 features are:

• F# - Finally a functional programming language with a real chance of becoming mainstream. I personally would have liked Haskell though :(
• Parallel Patterns Library - An STL like library for doing parallel computation. For example, instead of the STL for_each you can use the PPL parallel_for_each. Combine this with lambda functions for best results.
• C++0x goodies - These includes lambdas, auto, rvalue references, etc.

Apart from the above it includes a completely new intellisense for C++, using the EDG frontend. All this in addition to the usual .Net stuff.

Quite a bit actually. Personally for me, the top 3 features are:

• F# - Finally a functional programming language with a real chance of becoming mainstream. I personally would have liked Haskell though :(
• Parallel Patterns Library - An STL like library for doing parallel computation. For example, instead of the STL for_each you can use the PPL parallel_for_each. Combine this with lambda functions for best results.
• C++0x goodies - These includes lambdas, auto, rvalue references, etc.

Apart from the above it includes a completely new intellisense for C++, using the EDG frontend. All this in addition to the usual .Net stuff.

Quite a bit actually. Personally for me, the top 3 features are:

• F# - Finally a functional programming language with a real chance of becoming mainstream. I personally would have liked Haskell though :(
• Parallel Patterns Library - An STL like library for doing parallel computation. For example, instead of the STL for_each you can use the PPL parallel_for_each. Combine this with lambda functions for best results.
• C++0x goodies - These includes lambdas, auto, rvalue references, etc.

Apart from the above it includes a completely new intellisense for C++, using the EDG frontend. All this in addition to the usual .Net stuff.

Visual C++ hasn't changed much since VS 2002.

Eh? It's got C++/CLI since then, for starters. It has become much closer to ISO C++ (before 2003 it was a total joke, it didn't even get the scope of the for loop right - and 2003 was only so-so). It's got checked STL containers & iterators in 2005, and C++TR1 in 2008. And it is getting significantly improved code completion, and on-the-fly error checking in 2010. Doesn't sound "abandoned" to me.

On the language front, Visual C++ in 2010 gets a bunch of C++0x features: lambdas, type inference (auto), static_assert , rvalue references (&&), and decltype. This is quite a lot, and lambdas are especially nice since they actually let you use STL algorithms as God intended without writing tons of boilerplate code for function objects.

Then also there's Parallel Patterns Library, which provides STL-like algorithms with automatic parallelization.

And no refactoring

This one is interesting. I do not know of any C++ IDE or plugin that would provide working C++ refactoring, for very simple reason - it is extremely hard to properly parse C++, taking into account all templates and template specializations, and other context-dependent things. Heck, something like a<b>c can be parsed either as expression (a < b) > c, or as a variable declaration a<b> c, depending on the context - and that context, again, includes template instantiations, which form a Turing-complete language that has to be interpreted correctly to produce matching results. I once wrote a C++ program, for fun, which had in it a piece of code as described above, which was parsed and compiled either as expression or as variable declaration depending on whether char type was signed or unsigned was for a given compiler - so you could play with compiler options and get different results. How can IDE possibly handle this?

You can say that it does it for code completion, but the truth is that a lot of it is guessing and heuristics. And there's the catch - when it guesses wrong, at worst, you get a wrong code completion list, or no list at all. But when you do a refactoring like, say, "rename class", and it fails to correctly determine that the class is referenced at some line of code, and doesn't rename it there, then your program no longer compiles...

That said, VS2010 IDE C++ parser (used for code completion and "Go to definition") is EDG-based, so it should be much more accurate - so hopefully we'll get reliable C++ refactoring eventually. Just not in this release.

... decent GUI toolkit. Both MFC and Win32 API are incredibly difficult to code.

I agree with that, but there are many good third-party libraries out there - most notably, Qt.

Visual C++ hasn't changed much since VS 2002.

Eh? It's got C++/CLI since then, for starters. It has become much closer to ISO C++ (before 2003 it was a total joke, it didn't even get the scope of the for loop right - and 2003 was only so-so). It's got checked STL containers & iterators in 2005, and C++TR1 in 2008. And it is getting significantly improved code completion, and on-the-fly error checking in 2010. Doesn't sound "abandoned" to me.

On the language front, Visual C++ in 2010 gets a bunch of C++0x features: lambdas, type inference (auto), static_assert , rvalue references (&&), and decltype. This is quite a lot, and lambdas are especially nice since they actually let you use STL algorithms as God intended without writing tons of boilerplate code for function objects.

Then also there's Parallel Patterns Library, which provides STL-like algorithms with automatic parallelization.

And no refactoring

This one is interesting. I do not know of any C++ IDE or plugin that would provide working C++ refactoring, for very simple reason - it is extremely hard to properly parse C++, taking into account all templates and template specializations, and other context-dependent things. Heck, something like a<b>c can be parsed either as expression (a < b) > c, or as a variable declaration a<b> c, depending on the context - and that context, again, includes template instantiations, which form a Turing-complete language that has to be interpreted correctly to produce matching results. I once wrote a C++ program, for fun, which had in it a piece of code as described above, which was parsed and compiled either as expression or as variable declaration depending on whether char type was signed or unsigned was for a given compiler - so you could play with compiler options and get different results. How can IDE possibly handle this?

You can say that it does it for code completion, but the truth is that a lot of it is guessing and heuristics. And there's the catch - when it guesses wrong, at worst, you get a wrong code completion list, or no list at all. But when you do a refactoring like, say, "rename class", and it fails to correctly determine that the class is referenced at some line of code, and doesn't rename it there, then your program no longer compiles...

That said, VS2010 IDE C++ parser (used for code completion and "Go to definition") is EDG-based, so it should be much more accurate - so hopefully we'll get reliable C++ refactoring eventually. Just not in this release.

... decent GUI toolkit. Both MFC and Win32 API are incredibly difficult to code.

I agree with that, but there are many good third-party libraries out there - most notably, Qt.

Visual C++ hasn't changed much since VS 2002.

Eh? It's got C++/CLI since then, for starters. It has become much closer to ISO C++ (before 2003 it was a total joke, it didn't even get the scope of the for loop right - and 2003 was only so-so). It's got checked STL containers & iterators in 2005, and C++TR1 in 2008. And it is getting significantly improved code completion, and on-the-fly error checking in 2010. Doesn't sound "abandoned" to me.

On the language front, Visual C++ in 2010 gets a bunch of C++0x features: lambdas, type inference (auto), static_assert , rvalue references (&&), and decltype. This is quite a lot, and lambdas are especially nice since they actually let you use STL algorithms as God intended without writing tons of boilerplate code for function objects.

Then also there's Parallel Patterns Library, which provides STL-like algorithms with automatic parallelization.

And no refactoring

This one is interesting. I do not know of any C++ IDE or plugin that would provide working C++ refactoring, for very simple reason - it is extremely hard to properly parse C++, taking into account all templates and template specializations, and other context-dependent things. Heck, something like a<b>c can be parsed either as expression (a < b) > c, or as a variable declaration a<b> c, depending on the context - and that context, again, includes template instantiations, which form a Turing-complete language that has to be interpreted correctly to produce matching results. I once wrote a C++ program, for fun, which had in it a piece of code as described above, which was parsed and compiled either as expression or as variable declaration depending on whether char type was signed or unsigned was for a given compiler - so you could play with compiler options and get different results. How can IDE possibly handle this?

You can say that it does it for code completion, but the truth is that a lot of it is guessing and heuristics. And there's the catch - when it guesses wrong, at worst, you get a wrong code completion list, or no list at all. But when you do a refactoring like, say, "rename class", and it fails to correctly determine that the class is referenced at some line of code, and doesn't rename it there, then your program no longer compiles...

That said, VS2010 IDE C++ parser (used for code completion and "Go to definition") is EDG-based, so it should be much more accurate - so hopefully we'll get reliable C++ refactoring eventually. Just not in this release.

... decent GUI toolkit. Both MFC and Win32 API are incredibly difficult to code.

I agree with that, but there are many good third-party libraries out there - most notably, Qt.

Visual C++ hasn't changed much since VS 2002.

Eh? It's got C++/CLI since then, for starters. It has become much closer to ISO C++ (before 2003 it was a total joke, it didn't even get the scope of the for loop right - and 2003 was only so-so). It's got checked STL containers & iterators in 2005, and C++TR1 in 2008. And it is getting significantly improved code completion, and on-the-fly error checking in 2010. Doesn't sound "abandoned" to me.

On the language front, Visual C++ in 2010 gets a bunch of C++0x features: lambdas, type inference (auto), static_assert , rvalue references (&&), and decltype. This is quite a lot, and lambdas are especially nice since they actually let you use STL algorithms as God intended without writing tons of boilerplate code for function objects.

Then also there's Parallel Patterns Library, which provides STL-like algorithms with automatic parallelization.

And no refactoring

This one is interesting. I do not know of any C++ IDE or plugin that would provide working C++ refactoring, for very simple reason - it is extremely hard to properly parse C++, taking into account all templates and template specializations, and other context-dependent things. Heck, something like a<b>c can be parsed either as expression (a < b) > c, or as a variable declaration a<b> c, depending on the context - and that context, again, includes template instantiations, which form a Turing-complete language that has to be interpreted correctly to produce matching results. I once wrote a C++ program, for fun, which had in it a piece of code as described above, which was parsed and compiled either as expression or as variable declaration depending on whether char type was signed or unsigned was for a given compiler - so you could play with compiler options and get different results. How can IDE possibly handle this?

You can say that it does it for code completion, but the truth is that a lot of it is guessing and heuristics. And there's the catch - when it guesses wrong, at worst, you get a wrong code completion list, or no list at all. But when you do a refactoring like, say, "rename class", and it fails to correctly determine that the class is referenced at some line of code, and doesn't rename it there, then your program no longer compiles...

That said, VS2010 IDE C++ parser (used for code completion and "Go to definition") is EDG-based, so it should be much more accurate - so hopefully we'll get reliable C++ refactoring eventually. Just not in this release.

... decent GUI toolkit. Both MFC and Win32 API are incredibly difficult to code.

I agree with that, but there are many good third-party libraries out there - most notably, Qt.

Visual C++ hasn't changed much since VS 2002.

Eh? It's got C++/CLI since then, for starters. It has become much closer to ISO C++ (before 2003 it was a total joke, it didn't even get the scope of the for loop right - and 2003 was only so-so). It's got checked STL containers & iterators in 2005, and C++TR1 in 2008. And it is getting significantly improved code completion, and on-the-fly error checking in 2010. Doesn't sound "abandoned" to me.

On the language front, Visual C++ in 2010 gets a bunch of C++0x features: lambdas, type inference (auto), static_assert , rvalue references (&&), and decltype. This is quite a lot, and lambdas are especially nice since they actually let you use STL algorithms as God intended without writing tons of boilerplate code for function objects.

Then also there's Parallel Patterns Library, which provides STL-like algorithms with automatic parallelization.

And no refactoring

This one is interesting. I do not know of any C++ IDE or plugin that would provide working C++ refactoring, for very simple reason - it is extremely hard to properly parse C++, taking into account all templates and template specializations, and other context-dependent things. Heck, something like a<b>c can be parsed either as expression (a < b) > c, or as a variable declaration a<b> c, depending on the context - and that context, again, includes template instantiations, which form a Turing-complete language that has to be interpreted correctly to produce matching results. I once wrote a C++ program, for fun, which had in it a piece of code as described above, which was parsed and compiled either as expression or as variable declaration depending on whether char type was signed or unsigned was for a given compiler - so you could play with compiler options and get different results. How can IDE possibly handle this?

You can say that it does it for code completion, but the truth is that a lot of it is guessing and heuristics. And there's the catch - when it guesses wrong, at worst, you get a wrong code completion list, or no list at all. But when you do a refactoring like, say, "rename class", and it fails to correctly determine that the class is referenced at some line of code, and doesn't rename it there, then your program no longer compiles...

That said, VS2010 IDE C++ parser (used for code completion and "Go to definition") is EDG-based, so it should be much more accurate - so hopefully we'll get reliable C++ refactoring eventually. Just not in this release.

... decent GUI toolkit. Both MFC and Win32 API are incredibly difficult to code.

I agree with that, but there are many good third-party libraries out there - most notably, Qt.

You can always use a HOSTS file!

The beauty of that is, that it extends to EVERY web-bound app you have (unlike Adblock/AdBlock Plus, that only work in Mozilla/FireFox products)

So - think programs like Email also, where HTML is used (alongside scripting, the REAL "problem" (with bad adbanners for example, it IS the "delivery mechanism" basically - because it's truly the "root of all evil" here most times, & anyone can verify that statement @ SECUNIA or SECURITYFOCUS.COM for example, from their last 4-5 yrs. of data or more on records of exploits they have)).

HOSTS files provide not only security benefits here, but, also speedup benefits too, as a bonus (by blocking ads you gain speed, but blocking scripting even gets you more (only use it on sites you trust OR cannot do without to stay safe(r) vs. bad scripted pages/bad scripted adbanners)).

HOSTS files, customized ones, work here... & it's a solution that's easily edited/added to, + understood by users, as a bonus - Because as one of my best pals whom I 'turned onto' these has stated, verbatim? "All you need to do, is know how to use notepad.exe, how to read english, & to get a decent one to start with - as well as sources that update the data one needs to blockout bogus sites" (& I list a few below!)

The one I use here is populated with my own lists for HOSTS files since 1997 (30.000 entries long, mostly for adbanner blocking @ first 1997-2001), then later for security 2002 onwards...

I extended it further (to 654,000 unique entries currently & yes, I have to stop the Windows DNS client for that, it's 14mb for Windows NT/2000/XP/Server 2003, & up to 19mb (using 0.0.0.0) OR 26mb (using 127.0.0.1) for Windows VISTA/Server 2008/Windows7) per sources like:

1.) StopBadWare.org
2.) SRI
3.) Dancho Danchev's ZDNet Blog
4.) SpyBot "Search & Destroy" Immunize lists
5.) PLUS/LASTLY, using other reputable known HOSTS files shown @ wikipedia.com, here -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_file

All nearly DAILY updated here.

(& kept free of repeat entries via a program I wrote to do that, as well as alphabetize the entries, plus change them to a "faster up off disk into memory" internal schema for blocking out bad sites & adbanners, by going from the larger, slower 127.0.0.1 default loopback adapter IP, to either 0.0.0.0 (for VISTA/Server2k8/Windows 7, a mistake on MS' part I mentioned to they here -> http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/02/09/recognizing-improvements-in-windows-7-handwriting.aspx?CommentPosted=true#commentmessage [msdn.com] [msdn.com] which they started on 12/09/2008), OR the fastest & most efficient 0 blocking IP address))

HOSTS files are a good layer for this, then you can also "layer on" IE Restricted Zones, Opera filter.ini/urlfilter.ini, & FireFox addons like NoScript + its internal to browser restricted sites lists ontop of them, for the utmost in security protection AND speed (I do other things like use custom cascading style sheets & PAC file filtering as well, but those are another subject)...

APK

P.S.=> Layered security, AND, more speed... usually security things (like AntiVirus' programs for example) add another layer of processing complexity and slow you down... NOT HOSTS Files, & they work with EVERY WEBBOUND PROGRAM YOU HAVE... not just FireFox/Mozilla variants! apk

"We won't do anything illegal... except when we feel like it". There - boiled 99.9% of all privacy policies on the (US part of the) web down to one simple sentence.

TFA, which almost nobody bothered to read, links to an MSDN blog (which even acknowledges and links to the previous Slashdot story), which absolutely nobody bothered to read. Because, if the submitter, or the editor, or anyone had bothered to do so, they'd realize what a total non-issue this is: It's already fixed, which is why it works fine for you, drinkypoo.

This blog states that the plugin was initially installed as a system-wide thing. And, with FF, users can't simply remove system-wide things by themselves. Which, of course, makes sense to anyone who has spent more than ten minutes working on a system with proper basic security. They detail a long-winded workaround.

Right. So. Then there's this:

Update (5/2009): We just release an update to .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 that makes the firefox plug in a per-user component. This makes uninstall a LOT cleaner.. none of the steps below are required once this update is installed.

I'd guess that you simply already have this newer version of the .NET package, which includes a Firefox plugin which is installed in a manner more in-keeping with what folks might normally expect, and accordingly can be uninstalled in a manner that folks might normally expect.

Pigs *can* fly. MS developer said that so it must be true.

At work, we have a codebase that compiles on Sun, Linux, and SGI fine ...

In other news, programming cross-platform applications on Windows isn't easy. No surprise there - as you point out yourself, a lot of traditional UNIX and POSIX stuff is outright missing, is renamed (like sockets), and/or has subtle functionality changes.

One particular thing though:

Debugging is a PITA. No core files. If something crashes, you might get a message box saying an exception occurred, you know, somewhere

Uh, but of course there are ways to create memory dumps. Have you ever seen dbg/windbg? It's what the real programmers use for Windows debugging anyway :)

Here is how to do it with windbg.

Pop-ups at the wrong times. We have an extensive suite of unit test programs that we like to run to make sure that the code is correct. On UNIX, if a test fails, we'll get an assertion failure written to the log file and maybe a core file. On Windows, we get a popup saying there is an error.

You're using an extremely weird unit testing framework if it pops up dialogs for errors by default, and if it cannot be configured to just log all errors. I'm not actually aware of any that does that (in particular, MSTest - the one that comes with VS - doesn't do that).

You're an idiot. Windows 7 RC does support TRIM. Only the drive doesn't. http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspx // Trim support, read comment section for RC specific info

According to one of the Win7 developers blog post, the TRIM is already being used in the Windows 7 RC release.

It's just a matter of getting firmwares that support said TRIM command out in to the existing SSD's now.

Yes, Trim is already in the Win7 RC.

Trim is enabled by default but can be turned off. You can use the "fsutil behavior query|set DisableDeleteNotify" command to query or set Trim.

from the comments section of this:
http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspx

Then ditch your Windows anti-virus. I've been running Windows XP for 2.5 years without it and it's great !

Microsoft decided to have unified service packs for OSes using the same core.

That is to say, for Vista and Server 2008. This also means that, yes, Windows Server 2008 was SP1 at launch.