Slashdot Mirror

fYou said, "All hotfix installers released since XP-SP2 have had an /integrate switch to do just that."

I tried that with two installers I just downloaded, and both had the /integrate switch.

A previous comment said to download the critical updates from here: Microsoft Updates Catalog, using Internet Explorer. Be sure to hunt for "Windows XP SP2". If you choose the logical "Windows XP Professional SP2", you will be offered only a ton of junk.

The system puts the files deep in separate folders. It is necessary to use an application like XXCopy or the File Finder in PowerDesk 4 from Ontrack to move the .EXE files to one folder. XXCopy and the File Finder in PowerDesk 4 are programs you need anyway. I've had problems with later free versions of PowerDesk, so I stay with the free PowerDesk 4.

There was no way to put the command line switches into a Slashdot comment, so I made a web page: Windows Update Installation Command Line Switches.

I haven't done the integration yet, but it looks promising.

I see now how to get critical updates. Skip "Windows XP Professional SP2" in the menu, and go to "Windows XP SP2".

The system puts the files deep in separate folders. It is necessary to use an application like XXCopy or the File Finder in PowerDesk 4 from Ontrack to extract the exe files to one folder.

XXCopy and the File Finder in PowerDesk 4 are programs you need anyway.

I've had problems with later free versions of PowerDesk, so I stay with the free PowerDesk 4.

Did a search on Google for google jabber, found this

Sweet !

This is a specious argument. It assumes that bad code can somehow be slipped into open source code while proprietary code could never ever have such bugs.

There have been software packages that have had backdoors in them for a decade and these were not found until someone open sourced the code.

CERT(R) Advisory CA-2001-01 Interbase Server Contains Compiled-in Back Door Account

Even Microsoft code has been found to have back doors in it:

Netscape Engineers are Weenies

Yes, there will be mistakes made. Security is a process, not a state. The biggest mistake would be for a company to assume that software is secure just because it is open source. No, just being open source doesn't sprinkle magic pixie dust on your product, but it does let you get the sources from the vendor, have another firm or your own in house programmers audit the code to ensure that it is back door free and relatively clean and then you build the code yourself.

Before writing opensource software I recommend all programmers read the following:

Secure Programming for Linux and Unix HOWTO

This document covers everything the article covered and a lot more.

As a last note. Open source software is to computer programming as the scientific method is to science. It is a peer review process that slowly results in better and better software over time. Closed source software is like alchemy of the old days. In just 20 years the open source programmers have build entire platforms that can challenge anything that the proprietary programmers can develop. Where will we be in another 20 years? in 100 years? in 1000 years?

Clippy is still an amazing marketing feat. You might not like it, but it was a selling point to upgrade. And nowpeople are paying again for the new version without Clippy, because it . Isn't that just a brilliant marketing strategy?

Compare that to the attempts of RedHat: first they lure people into buying the SCO enabled enterprise version, and now people want to buy the next version without SCO code. And no one is cheering.

And now China... The government has been pushing the development of a homegrown software industry and a national standard for open-source Linux software to counter the spread of Microsoft in the last few years.

This is not a bad idea, and if others took the same route, MS could feel it down the road. Considering the problems associated with MS nowadays (even though it has actually been rampant for some time), with worms, and all sorts of security issues, how long will it be before some huge class action lawsuit based on MS negligently releasing shoddy products. Think about it... It's the kind of stuff that makes the NSA want to place backdoors on software, excuse being they're trying to secure products where vendors are failing.

I say, good for China on making that move, hopefully others will take cues from China, and send MS a message. No more shoddy work!!! Just imagine what will hapen if some investigation pointed to an MS product being at fault for the power failure. Oh boy would that be some crazy stuff to deal with for MS.

Wasn't windows NT 5.0 the initial release of windows XP?

No, NT 5.0 was renamed Windows 2000; I think the final release of XP was 5.1.

I'm pretty sure 2000 was still in the 4.xx range of windows NT, although service packs way well upgrade it to 5.0 or 5.1 NT status.

It seems unlikely that a service pack would change the major version number; I don't have a service-packless 2000 to test on, but W2K SP1 definitely identifies itself as "5.00.2195" (the 2195 is, I think, the build number). From everything I've heard, W2K was always 5.0; in fact, it appears that beta 2 was, in fact, 5.0, from before they made it "Windows 2000".

Go here instead.

Bundeswehr verbannt Microsoft-Programme (in German)

An English version can be found at The Register.

The Bundeswehr has since denied the report, according to winplanet.com.

Give the first story, then the denial, I think the most you can say about Andrew is that he should have researched that story a bit more carefully. Certainly you can't say he's a nutjob.

>The briefcase was Microsofts attempt to conquer to archiving market as well. A competitor for zip-files if I remember correctly.

Briefcase is a file synchronization tool - useful in theory, but a little thorny in practice. Microsoft even includes it in XP, though it lost its prominent placement on the desktop. Details here.

However they didn't seem to bother to force it on users like evrything else. Kinda unusual for Microsoft, I must say!

According to a guy from our support department, users reliably screwed up when they used this feature. And even Microsoft admits that it wasn't very well documented.

There are some other reasons why software sucks, tho. Check out this article... talks about how where people go wrong when they try to make software "easy."

Part of the problem lies in the complexity of mapping the software paradigms to the implementation. It's all those exceptions to the rule that give coders a headache, and it isn't any better for the users.

So far software engineering itself is full of guesswork, too. Most software houses don't use SE, and using SE doesn't necessarily always help. I think this is because SE is simply still in its infancy.