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Microsoft did think of that: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/11/21/495507 .aspx
Did you not look into it?

"# re: Better Website Identification and Extended Validation Certificates in IE7 and Other Browsers
Monday, November 21, 2005 8:26 PM by zz
what's user xp for people who are color blind?

# re: Better Website Identification and Extended Validation Certificates in IE7 and Other Browsers
Monday, November 21, 2005 8:33 PM by ieblog
Each state is accompanied by both text and appropriate icons. The state can be read without a need to see the color.

- Al Billings [MSFT] (who is mildly colorblind) "

Sorry, I forgot to mention that it does block access to a "red" site with an "are you sure you want to visit this?" warning. The initial design of the phishing filter is described on IEBlog. Some details have probably changed since then, but that's the basic way it works in the final version.

They already dropped their transaction-based filesystem in order to get Vista out the door

This has been covered before, but PNG transparency is considered "Ancillary Chunks" in the PNG spec that clearly describes it as an optional feature. While I generally agree that IE should have supported this for a long time because it is useful, you cannot classify it as a bug, since it wasn't broken, they just chose not to implement that feature. Once it became clear that many people wanted that feature, support was added through existing "AlphaImageLoader" techniques that you can find easily by searching. I do not know the reason they waited until IE7 to natively support it without CSS/Scripting hacks, but it probably related to breaking other stuff and not having the time to effectively QA the impact, especially knowing that a workaround existed. This is pretty common behavior for any software development company.

From w3c PNG spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/REC-PNG-20031110/#11Anci llary-chunks

11.3 Ancillary chunks
11.3.1 General
The ancillary chunks defined in this International Standard are listed in the order in 4.7.2: Chunk types. This is not the order in which they appear in a PNG datastream. Ancillary chunks may be ignored by a decoder. For each ancillary chunk, the actions described are under the assumption that the decoder is not ignoring the chunk.
11.3.2 Transparency information ... decscription of transparency ancillary chunks ...

Note the "Ancillary chunks may be ignored by a decoder".

You can read the blog entry for the guy who added the PNG support in IE7 and it pretty much sums up that it wasn't added for a long time due to the breadth of the changes required to support it that might break other stuff. Again, seems like pretty reasonable behavior here, no grand conspiracy to ignore customers.

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/04/26/412263 .aspx

-David

No, it's real. He's parroting Microsoft's selling of the feature. It's called Windows ReadyBoost (they helpfully don't offer an anchor to link directly to it, it's there, scroll down). Another poster offered a FAQ about ReadyBoost on an MSDN blog, where the blogger assures his readers that Microsoft has worked out the issues involved with limited writes and removing the drive.

To quote the linked Microsoft advertising page:

Windows Vista introduces a new concept in adding memory to a system. Windows ReadyBoost lets users use a removable flash memory device, such as a USB thumb drive, to improve system performance without opening the box.

They really are selling it as "add a USB drive to improve your system's memory."

It will give a performance boost if you don't have alot of physical memory, and even it you do a a few gigs of memory you might benifit from it because vista likes to grab all the memory it can.
for a good overview of this feature read this old FAQ

Windows timekeeping requires you to run the hardware clock in local time.

Why this is done.

(Note that internally, Windows uses UTC).

http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=14 &TagID=83

Plenty of information there, the Dave Probert videos cover the history pretty well if I remember right, including giving the real background of the use of NT instead of "NT stands for Nice Titties" theories and so on.

This is a common instinct for a software developer -- toss up a dialog of some sort and let the user sort it out.

That doesn't work.

Raymond Chen has a lot more to say on the matter, but the basic idea is this. Most users do not give a damn what the dialog box says. It is in the way of something they are trying to do. They will simply attempt to get rid of the dialog as quickly as possible. Then when something does go wrong, they will call up support, and "your operating system isn't supported" is most likely to simply piss off the customer at this point.

MS has figured this out the painful way, by spending billions of UI R&D money, and by making the mistakes and being clobbered by the results. Learn from them.

I had no doubt that there would be flaws found in Vista. No non-trivial software is bug free.

But Vista has a lot of features that makes the inevitable bugs much, much harder to take advantage of.

The single most common attack vector in Windows is IE. Virtually all the malware installed on machines today was likely installed by a drive-by-download caused by one of the many, many holes in IE.

But users running Vista have Protected Mode, which effectively isolates IE and prevents it from doing damage. It's possible that protected mode has a flaw, but judging by how it works I find that unlikely.

In addition, the fact that Vista users aren't running as admin makes flaws that affect the interactive user much, much less dangerous. The ability to take over the entire machine, or even run arbitrary code effectively as the interactive user, are almost non-existent.

I suspect that this is either fraudulent, or it doesn't have the ability to root the box.

Nothing too sensational here. SQL Server Express does not work because it assumes that the user has admin privileges on the machine, there is already a fix for this, the problem is expressed here http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlexpress/archive/2006/10/1 1/getting-things-working-on-vista-aka-dealing-with -user-account-control.aspx Sumary:
In short, SQL Express assumes you're an administrator on the computer in order to give you permissions to do things. As part of the default installation, we create Logins for the Builtin\Administrator user and the Builtin\Administrators group and assign both of these Logins to the SysAdmin Fixed Server Role. This way, everyone on the computer who is part of the Administrators group, is automatically a SysAdmin. This does not work in Vista.

First of all, the title of the post (and the article's title) are misleading. "SQL Server" (suggesting its full fledged version) was NEVER compatible with Vista, or XP for that matter. It's meant for servers, not desktops.

Second, Vista is NOT RELEASED YET. Despite that, early adopters can download SQL Server Express SP1, which runs fine on Vista, although it is not technically "supported" by Microsoft. In fact, almost all of the issues are easily worked around by running the setup as admin, and SQL Server Management Studio as admin.

For those people who have additional problems, there is plenty of good documentation on how to get it running, or they can install the beta of SP2, which should be RTM by the time Vista hits the shelves in the end of Jan anyway.

So despite the author's obvious attempts at a sensational title that would get him lots of hits (and, evidentially, posted on Slashdot), his content is almost pure FUD... and pure gold for Slashdot.

Sorry about the late reply.

So you're basing your comparison on whether the XML 'looks good' in unformatted text documents? Surely the ease of implementation or translation is more important than perceived readability? This in itself is highly subjective. Of the examples I've seen, I certainly wouldn't describe it as 'unreadable crap', and can't understand your objection. Maybe you should trying writing some XSL or similar and report back on your experiences, then we might get somewhere - for now it's conjecture.

IE dominated the landscape for many years and it didn't seem to have a huge effect on the progress of the internet. Arguably the creation of HTML created the most impact. Proprietory technologies such as flash have also made a huge impact.

With regards to CSS, its entire structure may well be wrong, but we wouldn't know, due to the politics and requirements of the parties involved. Would it be faster and more efficient if some parts were specified in a different way? Would it be more powerful as XML? etc. These questions are not likely to be answered. What we have now is an ever bulging CSS spec that's trying to accomodate everyone and moving beyond its original purpose.

I agree that XML is not that magic bullet. But it's better for this task than anything else we have.

There are many things that OfficeXML can do that OpenDocument cannot do. See 'Advantages of Office Open XML formats over OpenDocument' in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_OpenDoc ument_and_Microsoft_Office_Open_XML_formats/

Its obvious that MS wants this to happen. (since it promotes IE7)

they even linked to the customized versions in their IE blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2006/12/13/google -and-web-de-release-customized-ie7.aspx

Shut up, shut up, shut up!

How is this news? The IE has been around for years and years. I remember using it to customize IE 5.5. It may have been around even earlier than that. And as to Microsoft somehow being upset, please look past the knee-jerk reaction and notice that the IE Blog, from Microsoft, actually praises the Google release, and links to their download page. This is what people are SUPPOSED to do with the IEAK. The article is really trying to make a big deal about something that's not...

Doesn't seem like they really want to take them to court.

From TFA:

ieblog

Isn't this the same as Linux virtual address randomization that works without BIOS?

Yes, but the NX bit enforcement is part of a larger security push. It just happens that most articles confuse ASLR with NX (or are fuzzy on the details of each) when talking about them both. Part of the confusion is the fact in order for ASLR to be effective, then the NX bit should be enforced. AFAICT, ASLR doesn't actually require NX at all and it's a mistake these "technical journalists" are making.

Basically, Vista adds a bunch of walls to increase security. the NX bit and ASLR are just two separate instances of those walls.

The big news is that even though some OEMs have previously disabled the NX bit in the BIOS (due to software compatibility issues), they've said they'll enable it by default in the future.

I think the parent hit it on the head. However, I would like to add to it. So do comments below like MacOS X running on limited hardware

Microsoft has the market cornered. It is their business practices that most people don't like. For example. Embedding IE into the OS so that it cannot be removed (Windows 98 and newer,) as well of the slow adoption of new ideas. How long was IE 6.0 out before we got an update. And the update is basically Firefox with ActiveX.

Office is just cluttered. Too many things most people don't use. They even made menus hide parts that don't get used so people can find what they do use faster. The problem is, then people don't learn about the other features, or when you're looking for a feature you know about it takes longer to find. A simple setting in options for "Basic", "Intermediate", and "Advanced" layout would allow people that want basic use (my Mother) to find what they want quickly, but I change a setting and get the Advanced user interface when I use her PC, then I can put it back just the way she's used to.

Now for the pros' and cons of Windows (and this will summarize most other products as well.)

Pros

• Standardized for driver and software development
• Relatively easy to use
• Large market share so changing jobs/companies is usually easier because you're familiar with it

Cons

• Usually more worried about release dates then stability.
• Browser (and ActiveX) integration into the OS makes it vulnerable to spyware/viruses/malware
• Security issues are way too common
• Cost is way too high for the product
• Lack of features most users want

All said, it's the monopolizing that most people don't like about Microsoft. They're greedy bastards that raise hype about half finished products and can't deliver (WinFS anyone?) Like the filesystem of the future.

Except that isn't what SuperFetch does. SuperFetch is a policy extension to the memory manager. All the script is doing is adding files to the filesystem cache. It is usally best to know something about which you speak. Go here and watch the video. http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=2424 29

This isn't how SuperFetch works. What you are describing is prefetching, which has been is a number of OS platforms for a long long time. If you want to know more about SuperFetch go here: http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=2424 29

Personally, I like playing around with a somewhat cheaper robotics kit (more like $80) made by microbric. It's a little kit with a circuit board and components you screw together and can then program from your pc to automously driver around. There was even a recent post on the coding4fun site about controlling it via IR from your computer:

http://blogs.msdn.com/coding4fun/archive/2006/12/0 1/1192168.aspx

Newsflash: in XP it was called Prefetch. It did most of what SuperFetch does, although I assume SuperFetch does it better.

Here, I googled it for you: Channel 9 post complete with illustrations.

Newsflash: in XP it was called Prefetch. It did most of what SuperFetch does, although I assume SuperFetch does it better.

Here, I googled it for you: Channel 9 post complete with illustrations.

Windows 2000 is presently in extended support until 2010.

"We will of course continue to keep our Windows 2000 SP4 customers secure with security updates through the life of Windows 2000 (through 2010)."

ah yes, the old wheelmouse issue... they send 4 bytes instead of 3 to the PC, which can be one real issue for poor old Windows if you swap mice, or add a wheelmouse to a laptop. Raymond Chen had a good post about it on his blog a fair while back.

You can use Visual Studio Express 2005, which is free (as in beer). In fact, according to this page:

http://blogs.msdn.com/xna/archive/2006/10/10/XNA-G ame-Studio-Express_2C00_-C_2300_-and-Visual-C_2300 _-2005-Express-Edition.aspx

the only version of Visual Studio you can use at the moment is the free one.

I attended the XNA Open House this evening. The first demo consisted of downloading a model from TurboSquid, adding it to a XNA Game project, writing about 15 lines of code ... and boom -- there was a rendered ship that was lit, spining and was controlable by the 360 controller. Ridiculously easy.

The entry barrier has been lowered significant. I forsee alot people taking advantage of this platform.

Here is some interesting code, using C# and the pixel shader which draws fractals 60 times a second using the XBox GPU. Initially I was skeptical about coding games with managed code (like C#), but it looks like we will see some games written in .Net. The drawing underneath still gets done natively, but you will be insulated to some extent.

Interestingly, Mono is planning to bring XNA to other platforms. Hopefully we will see PS3 running XNA sometime soon (quite possible, since PS3 already runs Mono).

This video on Channel9 shows off running a game on the Xbox. Pretty cool stuff.
http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=2612 54

Specifically, the news showed up here and here. The latter blog refers to the former, and both are written by actual Microsoft developers. Note the August posting date.

I think this sucks.
Note that this was reported months ago, August 7, 2006, to be exact.
Microsoft kills VirtualPC, VB for Mac

Here's the arstechnica.com forum discussion about it (started on August 7, 2006), with lots of pissed off users:
MS Killing VB in Next Version of Office for Mac

Here are two blogs (Aug 8 and 9) by MacBU devs Erik Schwiebert and Rick Schaut, trying to explain this decision.
Erik Schwiebert - Saying goodbye to Visual Basic
Rick Schaut - Virtual PC and Visual Basic

That whole mess has been superseded by the covenant not to sue (a long time ago now!). So no, the sky is not falling...

See: http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2006/08/ 04/688932.aspx

Naturally, a restatement of MathML is not included in the Open Document specification.

But here's the point: by reusing MathML, instead of reinventing the wheel, Open Document also allows existing implementations of that standard to be reused.

The size of Microsoft's spec is a real problem. A Word developer estimates more than 4 years for a team of 5 (within Microsoft) to implement just the Word portion in Word for Mac. Apparently, that's too much work, so they're just going to "port" the Windows version.

Is a standard with only one, proprietary implementation much use to anyone?

Well ... I wouldn't count it out yet. Singularity is only 3-ish years old. In fact, from what I understand they only recently reached the stage of having an interactive command line. IANA Computer Scientist, but I'm sure it's got a long way to go before even its base concepts are suitable for mainstream use. Hell, there's not even any clue as to whether development of Singularity into a mainstream OS would even be feasible.

Not to mention there would be an absolutely massive paradigm shift involved in moving from Win32/64 to a platform like Singularity...

Microsoft Robotics Studio includes a new technology called Coordination and Concurrency Runtime to help make highly concurrent programming easier. You can download the current preview of Robotics Studio at http://microsoft.com/robotics. There is also information on the CCR at http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=1435 82.

Check out the December 3, 2006 entry at the XNA blog, entitled "XNA Game Studio Express and the DEMMX Awards".

Turns out that Microsoft's XNA won two categories at last week's DEMMX Awards:
Best of Show: Innovator of the Year
Microsoft XNA Game Studio Express (Microsoft Corporation)

Game Innovation of the Year
Microsoft XNA Game Studio Express (Microsoft Corporation)

Check out the December 3, 2006 entry at the XNA blog, entitled "XNA Game Studio Express and the DEMMX Awards".

Turns out that Microsoft's XNA won two categories at last week's DEMMX Awards:
Best of Show: Innovator of the Year
Microsoft XNA Game Studio Express (Microsoft Corporation)

Game Innovation of the Year
Microsoft XNA Game Studio Express (Microsoft Corporation)

WPF/E

You are right and it would be nice if that happened too. There's a really nice discussion about this issue from September this year over at Brian Jones' blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2006/09/ 21/interoperability-of-the-office-open-xml-formats .aspx Both the comments and his posting mostly seem to be objective. The excuses given do seem somewhat apologetic so my weigh-in follows:

My opinion from the functional viewpoint--I want to interact with people using older versions of office by using my Linux or OSX based desktop--is that this is a moot point (oh no, the binary format is undocumented). I believe this primarily because there is already a native freely downloadable add-on for Office 2000 and later that will let the user save to the new 2007 formats. I've tested it; it works great! Too bad it's not available for the mac edition of office :(

What about people using even older version? Well, first, that's like running a Linux sendmail server in the year 2006 where sendmail is at version 8.8 and the kernel is 2.2.x ;) Doom on them and their public irresponsibility... If one uses MS office, then one obviously should have accepted the fact that one will happily pay money for software and will need to pay again and again every so often to upgrade. Otherwise they should be using OO.o in the first place :) Besides, OO.o will import most basic documents and spreadsheets just fine and from there save to ODF. Most businesses (the ones who actually use most of the advanced functionality) keep their software up to date which really makes this a non-issue. BTW, Apple is one of the companies on the Open XML board so I expect that future versions of writer will support docx, etc...

OpenXML, on the other hand, is Microsoft's proprietary format that it wants to be registered as an open standard

Do you actually know what you're talking about?
OpenXML is not Microsoft's standard anymore - it's ECMA's, and it's been developed with the help of Apple, Barclays Capital, BP, The British Library, Essilor, Intel, The Library of Congress, Microsoft, NextPage, Novell, Statoil, and Toshiba (according to ECMA themselves).

however it won't be truly as it has patent encumbrances. Besides, Microsoft likely sees OpenXML as another way to extort the computer industry for more licensing fees.
Yes, you really don't know what you're talking about. Period.

Legit question. Check out this link: http://blogs.msdn.com/bharry/archive/2006/11/21/no vember-devdiv-dogfood-statistics.aspx It actually gives in-depth states on the use of Team System in Visual Studio and .NET.

More likely, at installation they randomly rebase all the system DLLs so that your machine has a custom selection of default base addresses. You wouldn't get a random location each time a DLL is loaded but an attack would require information only available by running code on your machine

The DLLs are rebased at reboot. (Probably actually the first time they are loaded. DLLs specify in a section of the PE header if they should be randomized or not.)

Here's the information according the one of the developers.

http://blogs.msdn.com/kamvedbrat/archive/2006/12/0 2/dpi-scaling-in-windows-vista.aspx

VSS was used internally at microsoft by some groups for a while, but it's been replaced by their version of Perforce, which is in turn slowly being replaced by microsoft's own TFS which scales quite well to large projects/teams. check out dogfood stats here

Though with Windows 2000 in extended support phase since June of this year, there are probably a number of larger corporations that skipped Windows XP and plan to go from 2000 to Vista.

I assume by older code you mean the code that no one (and I do mean no one including the M$ programmers) knows what it does. It is just code left from the early days of NT.
http://blogs.msdn.com/philipsu/

Until ActiveX is limited to a VM, it should be totally disabled.

Your problems should be solved in Vista: IE7 Security in Brief. From the blog post:

In IE7, we built a containment wall around IE by running it in Protected Mode. In this mode, IE can browse the web but cannot install software (good or bad) or change settings on the user's computer without explicit user consent. Because the foundation work to make this possible is in Windows Vista, this feature is not available on the XP version of IE7.

As someone else said, there's Win-R, but you can also replace the "Run" item on the Start menu, for whatever reason.

http://blogs.msdn.com/tims/archive/2006/09/18/wind ows-vista-secret-3-bringing-back-start-run.aspx

Well, that was true in the early days, but MS recruited some pretty illustrious names prior to shipping version 7.0 - this was considered very much a rewrite. See Euan Garden's blog for the detail.