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Microsoft Adds Risky System-Wide Undelete to Vista
douder writes "Windows Vista will have a new 'previous versions' feature when it ships next year. According to Ars Technica, the
feature is built off of the volume shadow copy technology from Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. Now turned on by default, the service stores the modified versions of a user's documents, even after they are deleted. They also report that you can browse folders from within Explorer to see snapshots of what they contained over time. It can be disabled, but this seems like a privacy concern." From the article: "Some users will find the feature objectionable because it could give the bossman a new way to check up on employees, or perhaps it could be exploited in some nefarious way by some nefarious person. Previous versions of Windows were still susceptible to undelete utilities, of course, but this new functionality makes browsing quite, quite simple. On the other hand, it should be noted that 'Previous Versions' does not store its data in the files themselves. That is, unlike Microsoft Office's 'track changes,' files protected with 'Previous Versions' will not carry their documentary history with them."
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-112322121 7782777472
Thou hast been let in on the joke.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
If you have windows 2003 r2 or sharepoint, you already have this feature. I enabled it on our network and people like it. there is a previous versions tab when right clicking a file in xp and selecting properties and then "previous versions". You tell windows 2003 r2 how much space you want to allocation for previous versions and then how often you want it to index versions of changed documents. It has saved me a lot of trouble restoring from backup when someone saves a change they didnt mean to make.
Contrary to popular belief, Unix is user friendly. It just happens to be particular about who it makes friends with.
You use the Remove Hidden Data add-in to get rid of all that Office stuff. Strongly recommended before submitting a resume...
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
The security risks could be eliminated by encrypted the user's home directory, a la Mac OS X.
It's a fantastic feature. I remember Novell Netware had this and we used it a lot to roll back changes to code. It was better than version control when only one person was working on the project.
I wonder if OS X 10.5 was going to have such a feature and it leaked out. This is actually a quasi-innovative idea from Microsoft. Maybe they stole it from Apple via corporate spying.
Ok, you do realize Windows has had encryption for like 10 years now, right? Or are Mac Zealots just naturally unaware of anything without an Apple logo on it?
You also realize this has been in WinXP and Windows 2003 Server for quite some time, so I doubt they stole the idea from OSX 10.5. (geesh)
As for the Versioning in Vista, the new thing is that it is turned on by default and works on local volumes, where WinXP required the data to be on a Windows 2003 Server.
Also, there aren't security risks, and this article is nothing but FUD. Windows Server has had this ability for 'versioning' files since 2003, and BUSINESSES have already been using it.
It also is a great tool, especially when you accidentally nuke a file, or change and save a file you didn't mean to, etc. Versioning archives are more handy than a 'problem'. (Truly)
If you are an employee, don't be doing crap at work, they own the computers, download your goat porn at home and don't be writing your resume while at work.
Also, as an employee if you are half way bright, you can purge the 'versioned' copies, unless the company doesn't allow you to with group policies. And again, it is their computer, so they can do what they freaking want if you work there.
Shadow copies can be controlled with Group Policy just like everything else in a managed Windows environment.
In addition, Network Appliance have had snapshots in their filesystem since '92. There was no big uproar then about how management could use that to track employees. If an employeer wants to track an employee, there are better ways to do it.
This sounds similar to the file versioning on VMS which I have never heard anyone complain about (other than being wicked annoying). If anything, I would think that people (and by people I mean the techno commoners) would like this feature. I think most people still believe that when you delete a file that it is really gone. Maybe this feature will show people that without wiping the free space on your hard drive things that you thought were gone are still around. I can't see how anyone could think of this as a privacy concern except maybe law enfourcement who end up finding that people are better at permanently deleting files.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
XPs: System Restore
Windows 2003: Volume Shadow Copy / Previous Versions
It's a system service that puts a shim between userspace and your physical disks (like LVM on linux). It can take file-system wide snapshots at configurable intervals. Those different names are just different levels of user-space interaction with the same underlying stuff.
VSS can notify programs that a snapshot is about to be taken. If they are VSS aware they will flush their open files to make sure the snapshot is "consistent". Otherwise the snapshot could be made of files that are corrupt (in the middle of being changed by an application). Most applications by 3rd parties are unfortunately not VSS-aware. Office 2003+ and MS SQL Server 2005 are, however, which is nice.
The snapshot is made at the block level, having no real knowledge of "files" per-se. It records changed blocks between snapshots so you can construct a historical version of a whole disk. It's not like rsync or anything.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Much as I distrust MS, in this case I see nothing to be concerned about. The headline "Microsoft Adds Risky System-Wide Undelete to Vista" is just flamebait. A while ago I used Roxio Goback, which seems to have similar functionality; very useful for recovering from some software that spontaneously corrupted data. Now bought by Symantec, so I can't feel great sympathy for them though MS is stealing their lunch.
Microsoft has taken so much out of Vista basically making it XP with a new interface. So far, it is hardly worth the update. No sense paying Microsoft all that money for a copy of a DRM infested product. If you think spying is bad now it is only going to get worse under Vista.
But all in all, it is a pretty attractive interface. The beta is extremely buggy. Virtually all features have serious problems. Accessing a SATA drive from allegedly support drivers/chipsets can still take you 30 seconds or longer to open a directory you were previously in but move away from and want to move back into. The network 100mb transfer rate is extremely slow. The same machine with XP works flawlessly at a nice speed. Wireless is essentially non-functional on most of my machines. The Aero interface is only working a the highest end 128mb cards when it should easily work on any card with 128mb of video ram. That 128mb requirement is more than some games for a simple interface.
But, aside from all that Vista has been trashed so badly with components being removed that Microsoft has felt that they need to insert features to make it seem so less bare-bones.
Even so, that feature is poorly implemented and weak and will fill people's drives with unwanted overhead and make a storage facility for spyware/adware/malware to hide--just like system restore.
It is essentially a non-feature for an OS lacking any real feature updates.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.