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Agreed. If you're not going to buy Windows again then pirate the fucking thing. Microsoft would actually prefer it that way. Ultimately it's in their favor to have a pirated user vs an outdated user.

For anyone curious you can still download the official premium and professional Win7 ISOs for free from Microsoft's affiliate.

Do you know anything about Windows? OEM vs retail vs VLK is irrelevant -- they're the same. You can change the SKU version (edition & type) by editing two lines in the 'ei.cfg' configuration file. Then the checksums will match. I've done and confirmed this.

The original ISO versions are always the most seeded so "custom slipstreaming" is not an issue.

Furthermore, if you read the website I just linked to you, Microsoft isn't using MD5 -- nobody does anymore -- they're using SHA1.

Digital River also maintains the original mirrors for pre-Ultimate Win7.

If I was buying a new laptop and needed Windows on it then I'd 'obtain' one. It isn't software piracy as I already own the license through buying the hardware with the COA on it, so it's not illegal.

This is interesting; there seems to have been a recent upsurge in the "piracy will get you a virus so you must always buy Genuine(TM) Microsoft(TM) Software" crowd. Yet people are getting screwed over by the vendors and turn to piracy as a way to escape from bundled trojans!

Of course, I think Microsoft actually makes the Windows 7 ISOs available on their website somewhere, can't remember the URL. They just rely on the cd-key+activation to lock you out of installing it without buying a licence, that certificate of authenticity on the box is legit though so it should just plug straight in and work.
(EDIT: Here's a mirror, apparently the official location keeps changing.)

Actually, Microsoft makes the Windows 7 DVD images available for download as part of Technet. Burn it to a DVD (or mount it with VMWare/VirtualBox) and you're good to go. You still need a valid key to activate though.

Is there one for Vista? (My laptop has a licence, may as well use it)

The licence key that came with your PC is still valid, so if you've got a friend with a Win7 DVD, copy it and use the key. Edit / remove ei.cfg to choose the correct version for your CD key and you're golden.

Actually, Microsoft makes the Windows 7 DVD images available for download as part of Technet. Burn it to a DVD (or mount it with VMWare/VirtualBox) and you're good to go. You still need a valid key to activate though.

Also, I have to ask why you're buying a branded machine anyway when you can get more power and a longer lasting machine for less money. I guess you have to with a laptop form factor, but that's really the only reason to not just pick up the parts and put the damned thing together yourself.

Despite the bad rap Sony gets here, I rather like their solution to the problem. The Sony laptop I staged a few months ago shipped with the crapware installed. But the Restore DVD gives you two options - a total restore (Windows + drivers + crapware), or a minimal restore (Windows + drivers) with an option to pick and choose which extra apps to install. I did the minimal restore first thing after getting the laptop, and it yielded a clean fully functional system with all drivers working, and no crapware. Seems not everyone at Sony is evil.

Nope. Here is a Windows 7 screenshot that looks like ass compared to this nice looking KDE4 screenshot. This is all a matter of taste. It's like comparing Blondes to Brunettes. You can find beautiful and hideous examples of both but at the end of the day it's all personal taste.

Apparently, your smartphone can do everything they can do, and of course a whole lot more.

Except cadence.

Unless you're willing to wear it like a tart's derringer.

You can perform a clean install with an upgrade disc: http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/21142

I think it's ridiculous that you have to do such a workaround, none the less it's an option for people replacing drives, etc but are otherwise licensed (like yourself, having a qualifying version of XP for the upgrade).

There's a good deal for students looking for cheap Win7 licences. http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/21142

You can perform a clean install with an upgrade disc: http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/21142

I think it's ridiculous that you have to do such a workaround, none the less it's an option for people replacing drives, etc but are otherwise licensed (like yourself, having a qualifying version of XP for the upgrade).

There's a good deal for students looking for cheap Win7 licences. http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/21142

You just block USB mass storage devices.
http://www.mydigitallife.info/2008/06/26/disable-usb-removable-mass-storage-device-drive-access-in-windows/
The problem is how do get data on or off the system.
If it was me I would consider a network server/workstation that runs Linux or BSD. Copy the data from the flash drives to the server then run anti virus on them.
Doing and not copying the lnk files but just the data files might have prevented the infections.
Thing is that if this slows down Iran's nuclear program without hurting anybody.
BTW why is everybody jumping on it being the US? Israel is more than capable of doing this and they have an even better reason than the US does.
I doubt that you would have any problem finding a team of top notch programmers and engineers in Israel that would be willing to work on something like this.
 

They don't seem to advertise it, but they do. Digitalreiver hosts it for them:

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2009/10/25/windows-7-64-bit-x64-direct-download-links/

You require a license to use it, of course, but that is the software.

I think you misunderstand what "standby time" means. It definitely does not mean the screen is off but the rest of the system is active — you don't save that much power just by switching off the backlight! It appears to be equivalent to Windows Hybrid Sleep, which also supports 1-second resumes. I don't use it myself, because Windows 7 can resume from plain hibernate mode (which uses no power at all) in 5 seconds, and draining the battery, even by such small amounts, is not worth saving 4 seconds.

The comparison that really matters is, of course, how long you can use the thing without recharging. My netbook goes for 6 hours, this one claims 8. Possibly a 25% difference, though that doesn't allow for the usual manufacturer hype.

Incidentally, my netbook is also a Toshiba, and it looks like this ARM netbook uses the same double-sized battery pack.

Or you could just run this IE6 VPC Image and be a lot safer by not having vulnerable IE6 left on the machine. As for TFA I wish him the best, IE6 was an STD on the Internet and the quicker it is dead the better.

For those that have friends/relatives on IE and whom you want to GTFO Ie, here is a trick I've developed working PC repair that has a 90% success rate, at least with my customers. The key is to use the carrot, not him them with a stick. So in that vien I give them Firefox with ABP and...this is the key here...Give them ForecastFox set to their zip in the Menubar position. Once you point out that no longer will they get those screeching ads, but that ForecastFox will actually warn them with a popup if bad weather is approaching? Well then they are sold, no arguing and no hassle. One caveat though, you MUST set Firefox to their home page, which is usually the Yahoo portal. You and I may think it sucks ass but to them it is "the paper" where they read the news, check their mail, check sports scores/horoscopes, before going out to the big web via the Yahoo Search at the top. Which is why I know MSFT is full of shit when they say Bing can't get a "long tail" because if they can't mine enough data with the vast majority of average users using Yahoo's portal, well then they suck.

But just use the above trick to get those irritating friends/relatives off of IE and make theirs (and your) life better in the process. If they are clueless or live a distance so you can't set it up directly you can point them to Ninite to get the install automated (along with Flash, Silverlight, MSFT Security Essentials, IMs, etc) and not have to worry about them falling for a fake Firefox install site. Then you can easily walk them through getting ABP and ForecastFox via email links. The quicker we get the masses off of IE on XP and onto FF (Or Chrome, Safari, or Opera, all available at Ninite) the better off we will ALL be. Because I don't even wanna know how many PCs I've had to fix this month can be traced back to IE drivebys. I swear any PC that crosses my desk that only has IE seems to have 5 times the amount of malware.

Yes, but is that Imperial or Metric Candelabras? ... and how many Candelas is one of these Candelabras? Putting pettiness aside for a minute, where did you find the peak luminance spec of the device anyway? It wasn't in TFA, or in the article that TFA linked to. Google gave me this but I couldn't see anything that Sony has verified or released regarding this.

This easy method of tethering has been around for at least a year for the iPhone 3.0 firmware, with profiles available for many countries.

Ok, so maybe you won't find 311,000 vulnerabilities. I thought that was an obvious exaggeration, but you could have at least clicked the first 2 search results. For example:

Password stored in keyboard buffer - http://www.ivizsecurity.com/security-advisory-iviz-sr-0803.html
Cold Boot Attack - http://www.mydigitallife.info/2008/07/24/bitlocker-filevault-dm-crypt-and-truecrypt-encryption-key-crack-via-dram-cold-boot-attack-with-program-source-code-download/

If you also searched for truecrypt at http://www.nist.gov/ you would have found these four.

http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2008-3899
http://nvd.nist.gov/nvd.cfm?cvename=CVE-2007-1738
http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2007-1589
http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2006-2183

This is from wikipedia, for more information go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truecrypt#Security_concerns

"TrueCrypt is vulnerable to various attacks. To prevent certain types of attack, the TrueCrypt website recommends users follow various security precautions.

Listed below are known security concerns pertaining to TrueCrypt and, where possible, some ways to avoid them

Plausible deniability
Identifying TrueCrypt volumes
Passwords stored in memory
The "Stoned" bootkit
Removal of source"

It's not that I hate TrueCrypt, I don't. I don't like it when people are pushing open source products for security reasons when it's the standards that the product uses which should be pushed. Since your response was to "prove" there are vulnerabilities, I did that. Now it's your turn to start pushing open standards and not a product because it happens to work for you and you like it.

Agreed?

What you're looking for is ImageX. You can get it from the Windows AIK. (It says "Windows 7 AIK", but it will work on XP.)

Recipe for win:

1. Create a Windows PE flash drive. This pretty much gets you a bootable Vista/7 kernel.
2. Copy ImageX.exe from the WAIK onto the flash drive.
3. Boot your computer from the flash drive. Use imagex /capture /compress fast c: z:\file_on_external.wim "description in quotes" to create a .WIM image file.

You can take that WIM image and re-apply it to your computer at a later date. Windows activation and all of your programs will be preserved. You can also mount WIM files like directories using imagex /mount.

However, you will not be able to take an XP install and move it to a system with different hardware. XP's drivers and HAL will throw a fit if you move it to a computer that's too different, although similar-enough hardware will "mostly work."

You can download and run Sysprep from Microsoft before you capture an image. It strips out some of the hardware and user-specific settings and returns the computer to XP's "mini setup" mode, where it will ask you for username/password/CD key/whatever. But even then, XP images are still very hardware bound; more often than not an image won't work until booting from an XP CD and doing a repair install.

In this case, the functionality was already there, and the update that removed Other OS was a required update if you wanted to continue using any Internet features on the device.

This should worry players on PSN then.

Playstation Network relies on the client PS3 to do version checking.

Why is that worrying? Because my PS3, which I have NOT updated (it's at 3.15 so I could play FF XIII and God of War 3), gets on PSN just fine. What I did was set up a DNS and web server at home, made it authoritative for a particular zone (the one Sony uses to check for updates), and serve up a update file that says "no, there are no updates". PS3 powers on, checks the update, sees none, and connects. And yes, I've tested this by downloading videos and stuff off PSN.

It is unknown how old your PS3 version can be before PSN won't work anymore.

Next, if geohot's hack really works, and all you have to do to re-enable OtherOS is to install a PS3 update, it means that modified firmware is possible without modding the machine. Such customizations may include an ISO loader (despite Blu-Ray, most games don't use all 50GB, and terabyte laptop hard disks are on their way, or simple SATA extension cables let you use those 2TB hard disks externally), or other interesting mods, like say wallhacks or aimbots, or allowing a PC to proxy in for PSN unencrypted (PSN communications are encrypted, but if they aren't, imagine gaming with someone who uses their PC to "assist" them).

A mythical "hack" that required lots of luck, specialized hardware has possible revealed bigger cracks in the PS3 ecosystem, not only allowing possible piracy, but also cheaters.

BTW, if you want to do the PSN hack so you can still get online:
If you trust someone on the 'net - set your DNS setting as described on the following page (easy, just requires updating PS3 DNS server setting) - http://www.mydigitallife.info/2010/04/05/how-to-access-psn-bypassing-ps3-firmware-3-21-upgrade-for-otheros/

If you want to do it yourself - this forum thread has BIND and IIS details - http://rvlution.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=123

DIY has a slight advantage - the method is transferable to the PSP as well, so it can offer a way for CFW users to get on PSN (LittleBigPlanet and such).

* Ability to sign in to PlayStation Network and use network features that require signing in to PlayStation Network, such as online features of PS3 games and chat

Actually no. And this is one of the two things I've learned about the PS3 because of this.

1) Apparently modified firmware is loadable by anyone, no special tools needed other than a storage medium.
2) Playstation Network does not perform checks.

That's right, if you've got 3.15, you can either use a proxy hack, use a public no-update server, or set up your own DNS+Web server. Your PS3 will check against your server, see that no update is necessary, and connect to PSN. It's unknown how old your PS3 can be before it can't connect to PSN due to protocol changes. The only thing keeping people honest is the PS3, which if it checks Sony's server, and sees that its version is lower than what the Sony server says is current, it won't connect.

Now, what this has on the potential for cheaters on PSN, I don't know. But until this OtherOS fiasco, I wouldn't have bothered knowing.

How to bypass PSN version check - http://www.mydigitallife.info/2010/04/05/how-to-access-psn-bypassing-ps3-firmware-3-21-upgrade-for-otheros/
How to set up your own bypass - http://rvlution.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=123 (requires DNS and HTTP servers).

Thanks Sony!

It's quite easy to disable the popup, though. Just google for "disable avira popup". You can find a description here. The idea is to disallow the executable avnotify.exe to run.

Two angles only, but maybe if you got cuddly and placed your head on someone else's you might have some luck. There is a diagram of the film here It seems to suggest that with larger screens, the edges of the screen will fade out due to light not reflecting cleanly off the ridges of the film. Maybe this can be fixed by using variable sized ridges, but that would require a special LCD with variable sized pixels, which introduces new problems, and you still only have one viewing spot.

The operation works as follows. Taken from here: "Sumitomo 3M utilized the directionality so that the light from the left LED light source comes to the right eye and the light from the right LED light source comes to the left eye. And the company enabled to view 3D images with the naked eye by synchronizing the lighting of the left LED light source and the display of the image seen by the right eye (and the lighting of the right LED light source and the display of the image seen by the left eye).

Furthermore, it is possible to show 2D images by using the right and left LED light sources at the same time and displaying the same image for both the right and left eyes. Therefore, it is easy to switch between 2D and 3D images.

Protected Mode is the "sandbox" feature present in IE7 and IE8. It uses UAC that's in both Vista and 7 to run in an even more limited fashion, but not in XP. If you've got UAC disabled, you're not running Protected Mode and you're vulnerable. There are other ways which Protected Mode can be disabled.

It's best to check out the blog entry on the MSRC and the Knowledge Base article.

We now return to your regularly scheduled Microsoft bashing and Linux referrals already in progress.

timernuke...

Newzbin is not providing material for download, but instead just providing information. Google does the same thing... Clicking the first link on google from the search 'office 2007 download warez' this website showed up:
http://www.mydigitallife.info/2006/11/13/download-microsoft-office-2007-system-enterprise-edition-final-rtm-full-suite-retail-cd-with-bt-torrent/ They're offering Office 2007 as a torrent file

I must disagree though. I have Dell Lattitude on a P1 processor with 64 MB of RAM and less than a gig of HD space. The good thing is, the laptop is rock hard stable, but I would want to install Linux on it. It runs XP pretty well btw, but OO.o is just a bit slow and I was thinking that an older version of Linux might be the best solution as I don't really need a laptop when I'm away from my desktop, except for maybe opening documents, spreadsheets and stuff.

And yes, I also have an older PDA that can take care of the office apps I need, but sometimes, it's just a matter of breathing new life into old equipment.

Look at free softmaker office: http://www.softmakeroffice.com/ 2006 version runs on a win98 laptop with 32MB RAM alright. or Ashampoo office (rebranding of softmaker), where you can sometimes find the 2008 version for free. http://www.mydigitallife.info/2009/07/11/ashampoo-office-2008-softmaker-office-alternative-3-1-free-activation-serial-key-number/ Spread32 is also a very lightweight spreadsheet program.

Uuuuhhh...never heard of a .reg file? If you have somebody who is afraid of using the reg they really ain't hard to cook up. if you need one here is a nice tutorial on how to modify and delete reg entries with a .reg file. Certainly a lot easier to go "clicky clicky" on a reg file than risk having the user bone something in CLI.

That is one of the nice things about the Windows registry-it really isn't hard to cook up a .reg file in notepad and send it to someone having a problem. Oh and if anybody needs it here is a page of the most common fixes for those little problems that pop up from time to time, and nearly all of them are nice simple .reg files that makes it simple to send to someone having trouble or keep on a flash in a misc tools folder. Despite all the hate out there for the reg is actually pretty simple to backup, fix, and maintain, with little effort.

• Don't enable SSH
• Remove root from the list of accounts you can ssh into (See Howto)
• Disable the root account (passwd -l root) and ssh into a normal account and using sudo and/or sudo su as needed.

Yeah, I know. But I'm only having limited success finding out what changes are in Win7's activation process, and less success finding tools to disable it that also offer some explanation of what they are doing. I'm looking for something as detailed as this, which lays out all the options for XP. No luck so far for Win 7, but it must be out there somewhere. It's a bit tricky to search for with all the XP WGA info and all the non-WGA Windows 7 info that is available. I'm also interested in anyone's direct experience with Win 7's activation -- not merely how much it nags, but whether MS has relaxed the degree of hardware modification that is possible before triggering it. That drove me nuts in XP until I disabled it.

Of course, no one will really know until the final release is out. There is no guarantee the RC has the same scheme.

Yeah, I know. But I'm only having limited success finding out what changes are in Win7's activation process, and less success finding tools to disable it that also offer some explanation of what they are doing. I'm looking for something as detailed as this, which lays out all the options for XP. No luck so far for Win 7, but it must be out there somewhere. It's a bit tricky to search for with all the XP WGA info and all the non-WGA Windows 7 info that is available. I'm also interested in anyone's direct experience with Win 7's activation -- not merely how much it nags, but whether MS has relaxed the degree of hardware modification that is possible before triggering it. That drove me nuts in XP until I disabled it.

Of course, no one will really know until the final release is out. There is no guarantee the RC has the same scheme.

That's one of the things I'd try; especially with Vista, it's generally a good idea to disable it unless it is needed as it "tends to break stuff" (the technical term). See http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/09/09/disable-and-turn-off-ipv6-support-in-vista/ ; note that I generally use "ffffffff" ("eight foxes") for the Registry value, although it appears that only 0xff is necessary from this article.

Windows 7 7600 RTM x64

Not sure if a 32 bit version has been "leaked" yet...

It's not like half of the Internet didn't know the date since January.

So, how well does your iPhone share out that connection to a real computer (you know, what the whole point of this little device is)?

Quite well actually

Yes it's jailbreaking but since you only have to download an app and run it even my mom could do so. Of course, my mom would have no use in doing so, it would be only technically sophisticated people wanting to do this... kind of like the group of people that jailbreak. Huh!

And of course it's rumored (well, beyond rumor but not in place yet) that AT&T will support official tethering with 3.0.

So basically, you just made yourself look like a jackass in front of the entire internet for as long as the web exists. Do you Apple Haters get off on rants with no point or what?

What's even more delightful is the irony of your username in contrast with the mechanism used to do tethering currently, which muffles any possible complaint from you in response.

You dont need an addon to get you tube videos, lol, just some javascript knowledge or use the code on this link. (you can do this with more than just opera, firefox will work find with a bookmark as well).

I just make a user button in opera to grab the videos with that. Lets you do it in both .flv and .mp4 format.

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/11/07/nokia-introduces-haptikos-touch-feedback-technology/

The technology in this article isn't scalable, and the "touch screen" isn't transparent, it just has stuff projected onto it from below. The Nokia solution involves piezo sensor pads under the screen and engineered in a 0.1mm movement in the screen itself.

Not that I will ever purchase a phone that doesn't have actual physical buttons on it for when (not if, WHEN) the touchscreen breaks down. I'm just saying.

Nintendo says Wii is not sold at a loss (or so I hear). PS3 is sold at a loss.

The problem is this: you need something ultra rugged, basically a tank. Servers aren't really designed for that as 99.999% of them are going to nice, clean, air filtered and AC temped server rooms. That said the closet thing i think you are going to find that will meet those specs(tough as hell, wild temp and humidity conditions, as well as low power) are going to be Geode based like this.

Have you thought about going the DIY route? You can pick up an "all in one" mobo like this Nano based one, which since it is the Nano and has built in crypto it would be great for a server and there are plenty of car enthusiast websites that sell ultra rugged PC cases for mounting in off road vehicles. This would give you the ruggedness you require as the off road PC cases are well sealed to keep the dirt out as well as use the case itself as a heatsink which should cut down on the risk of heat death, and by going DIY you get the power you need for a server with the rugged design. Just add a marine or military LCD and you are good to go. Certainly faster than a $1500 Pentium, and by going DIY you can add a SSD and 2GB of RAM which will help with typical server jobs. I would check it out if you ain't made of money, as that will most likely be the cheapest way to go and still meet your requirements. Good Luck.

It's nice to see they're basically using a PS2/3 controller knockoff.

No it's not. It a very bad sign. See, every so often a company comes along and sees how profitable the gaming industry is. They then think to themselves, "well, that's EASY! I should get a piece of the pie!" Then they spare no imagination (literally, none at all) in creating the most generic "game console" known to mankind. Without fail, they always copy the PS2 controller design. (Which isn't even that great to begin with.)

Then when they stroll into the market thinking they're going to pick up a few dozen studio partnerships and get about the business of selling this generic piece of plastic. Except, shock and horror! None of the game studios are taking them seriously! Why oh why?!? Don't they see how awesome and moneyful* this venture will be?!?!

Eventually, the company runs out of money and hangs their heads in shame. Those stupid game studios. It's all their fault.

Cases in Point (Note the controllers):
Indrema
Mattel Hyperscan
Phantom Game Console

If you ever see a game console that uses a rip-off PS2 controller, run the other way. FAST.

* Hey, it's a perfectly cromulent word!

the inability to permenantly remove the toolbar warning that I do not have my security settings on

the solution is here

The problem here is no matter what you do, someone loses.

If you allow unrestricted access to unsigned drivers, you are going to allow substandard drivers to be installed onto the system, which will cause instability and ultimately complete system crashes; these aren't pleasant. The customer will then ultimately blame Microsoft, because, after all, Windows crashed. Slashdot picks up on it, abuses MS for having an unstable OS, despite the fact "x" tiny upstart Taiwan tech company was the cause of the crash with a poorly coded driver that was installed right into the kernel.

If you disallow unsigned drivers, overall driver quality should improve somewhat with the additional checks on drivers (how much and whether it's worthwhile is up for debate). Of course, you create additional overhead for driver devs and additional costs. Slashdot will pick up on it, abuse MS for going after small-time and open-source driver devs who can no longer afford to publish their drivers for x64 as they aren't signed. Microsoft is evil and intentionally destroying driver developers who aren't in the employ of corporations with fat wallets.

I lean towards the enforcement of driver signing, as Windows does have a history of instability, and a very significant portion (I suspect a majority) of that is due to buggy drivers. If Microsoft wants to clean up their image, and create a more stable OS, I'm not going to go berserk against them.

I think the points about unsigned drivers that are made by small entities is valid, but, these drivers are probably only of interest to geeks in the first place. Ideally, I think MS should continue doing what they are doing, but remove the intrusive "Test Mode" desktop watermark. Those who are willing to set this bootflag should know what they are doing.

Then again, there will be an argument that this is a security concern. Malware might intentionally set this bootflag to enable it to load dodgy code into the kernel, and this watermark can clue users in that something is abnormal, especially if it appears out of nowhere. So, it's a convoluted issue.

For those annoyed by the Test Mode watermark: http://forums.mydigitallife.info/showthread.php?t=1808

I'm surprised by the lack of replies to this comment, this needs some clarification.

DRM is the primary reason I never even considered Vista (not the OS's responsibility to police users; I'm not going to spend resources to check if my content is "good"; etc etc). What's the story with W7 and MP3s? Is is immediately going out and trying to "acquire licenses for content", and deleting or invalidating anything it can't find a license for?

I've had high hopes thus far for W7 (oddly enough), but the mere implication that installing W7 might somehow corrupt MP3 files, *on a network share no less*, immediately tells me that Microsoft already missed the boat again.

Does anyone have other info about this?

Hmm I found this. I guess it sounds a little more benign that I was fearing.. but still.. not exactly a great first impression.

I find my Vista laptop with SP2 pre-beta generally a lot more stable. May be worth a shot..?

As soon as she can get that webcam to interface meaningfully with her visual cortex, then I'd say we have a cyborg on our hands.

That's going to be rather difficult. The retina already process the signals.
The signal exiting the eye on the optic nerve are already somewhat multiplexed(*)

Are people really OK with this being called a "cyborg"?!? As I read it, the camera woudln't help her function in any way

Well, although the device wouldn't help her regain stereoscopic vision, the end of the article spoke of converting the video stream into a searchable-database on the phone. Thus "augmenting" her memory.

The ability to finally have a search engine able to answer to the question "Where are my fucking keys ?" grants the idea enough awesomeness points so we can concede the "cyborg" title in recognition.

--

(*) For the medical nerds :
The optic nerve, isn't technically a nerve (a structure transmitting raw data from the periphery to the central nervous system) but is much more like a tractus (link between two region of the central nervous system).
The "nerve" function is done by the middle layer of cells in the retina. The top layer process the input, the same way the spine does for inputs from skin for example.
Retina thus process signal (edge detection and other difference comparision) and the result of this process is what is sent down the optical nerve.

> WGA is not malware, it's totally retarded to even suggest it.

http://politech.wordpress.com/2006/07/27/microsofts-wga-malware-in-sheeps-clothing/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/03/wga_worm/
http://blogs.msdn.com/wga/archive/2007/05/11/malware-posing-as-windows-product-activation.aspx

> And give me one example of a copy of windows from a ms genuine partner that contained real malware

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2008/10/08/new-asus-eee-box-pcs-loaded-with-virus/
http://www.techradar.com/news/computing/pc/asus-ships-new-eee-pcs-with-live-virus-474622

> i can think of 2 - 3 examples of OSS repositories being infected with virus code in the last couple of years, most notably debian.

You had better tell this person then ... who was unable to find any Debian viruses at all.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080926175039AAANYlO

Seriously ... a Debian virus? Are you nuts?

Debian servers have been "hacked" a couple of times ... meaning that someone guessed a password and managed to log on. The servers maintainers watched what they were doing for a few minutes to see if there really was an exploit in use ... but they cut the connection as soon as it became clear that it was a simple case of a guessed password, and the hacker was vainly trying a few well-out-of-date methods to try to elevate privileges. No files were modified.

You really need to try to find out what a computer virus is, and while you are researching it, you might think how immensely improbable it is to be able to put a virus into open source code.

*DISABLE IT*. http://www.mydigitallife.info/2006/12/19/turn-off-or-disable-user-account-control-uac-in-windows-vista/
(Now, does that now make my Vista SP1 more 'Windows 7ish'?)

Other methods here: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=How+to+disable+Vista+UAC

IE8 is pretty much instantaneous when starting up. Browsing/rendering pages is pretty good too.

There's always the option of increasing concurrent HTTP connections if you desire (this applies to IE7, too).

Volume snapshots looks to be closest, but it sure doesn't look even close to the functionality and ease-of-use as the Vista version.
In Vista Business, Enterprise or Ultimate, there is an extra tab under file properties called
"Previous Versions". There's a picture at http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/06/30/vista-previous-versions-shadow-copy-vs-recycle-bin/.
Not sure how it is implemented, but it is contingent on having "free" disk space to allow old copies to be 'kept'.

I'm not sure any of the Linux file systems would easily support this.

Sometimes it's not about what you "can do", but how easily you can do it. I wanted something I could hand to my folks who know nothing about OS's, or file systems, and it would "just work" -- but I certainly wouldn't want to curse them with Vista if avoidable.

It looks real slick, but I don't know how it is implemented in practice. It would not be acceptable to store a full copy of the file every 3 hours -- preferably not even on every change -- but on some 'delta' mechanism going back from the current version, only storing new copies if more than "N%" had changed.

I could see having a 1MB file, with 1 change every 1024 bytes in each of 1024 versions -- and ideally it would
only take 2MB, + book-keeping. Dunno if that is how the Vista version works, but its an ease-of-use issue. I'm still surprised Linux doesn't have a generic 'compress' tag to allow compression on top of any filesystem (at least as much as one can add an encryption layer over most filesystems).

??
L.

Sorry, I misread IE as FF. As it affects both IE and FF you're probably coming up against a limit in Winsock, especially if you've noticed it over the past year and you upgraded to SP2 about a year ago.

This is what a quick search brought up.

If it's not that then I can't think of anything else...

Windows XP SP3 rev. 5503

Actually, there is a checkbox under Tools -> Folder Options -> Remember Each Folders View Settings

If you uncheck that, it pretty much disables the 'directory profiles' you are talking about, if I understood you right. You shouldn't need to 'hack the registry'.