Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Released

Like Digging Through People's Trash by eldavojohn · 2009-05-27 01:02 · Score: 4, Insightful

I like some of these fixes on this spreadsheet:

The Fc.exe command does not work correctly in Windows Vista or in Windows Server 2008 when the command compares files that differ at every 128th byte of a character string
The Fc.exe command does not work correctly in Windows Vista or in Windows Server 2008 when the two files that you are comparing have the TAB or SPACE character around the 128th byte in a character string

I can almost imagine the developer sitting at his desk getting an e-mail from their issue management system that there's a problem with Fc.exe (file compare) ... only to have him realize that his for loop that iterates over the buffer that reads the files should have the while conditions of <= 128 and not simply < 128!

This is forgivable, I code some pretty stupid errors sometimes.

What isn't forgivable is that one of the columns on this bug spreadsheet is "Publicly Available" which implies to me that there is a list I'm not seeing of fixed bugs which would be annoying and probably even non-fixed bugs they purposefully suppress from public knowledge which is alarming!

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My work here is dung.

Re:Like Digging Through People's Trash by ledow · 2009-05-27 01:20 · Score: 5, Insightful

"What isn't forgivable is that one of the columns on this bug spreadsheet is "Publicly Available" which implies to me that there is a list I'm not seeing of fixed bugs which would be annoying and probably even non-fixed bugs they purposefully suppress from public knowledge which is alarming!"
Hello. Closed source software. I damn well *expect* there to be thousands, if not more, bugs that are not and will never be fixed in Windows until someone "finds" them and posts about them publically, security related or not. I doubt even the militarised versions of Windows have *everything* they know about fixed - it's easier to just say "don't do this" or not include a certain tool/utility/feature than it is to fix it and document it.
Why on Earth would you ever find this alarming, or unforgivable? It's the whole point of closed-source software, so that you *never* know what's going on with the code and (hopefully) never see it.
Re:Like Digging Through People's Trash by D-Cypell · 2009-05-27 01:25 · Score: 5, Funny

Much to my amusement, a colleague of mine once suggested that the conversion from polytheism to monotheism was the result of an off-by-one error :)
Re:Like Digging Through People's Trash by eldavojohn · 2009-05-27 01:28 · Score: 2, Interesting

Hello. Closed source software. I damn well *expect* there to be thousands, if not more, bugs that are not and will never be fixed in Windows until someone "finds" them and posts about them publically, security related or not. I doubt even the militarised versions of Windows have *everything* they know about fixed - it's easier to just say "don't do this" or not include a certain tool/utility/feature than it is to fix it and document it.
Why on Earth would you ever find this alarming, or unforgivable? It's the whole point of closed-source software, so that you *never* know what's going on with the code and (hopefully) never see it.
I disagree.

You could (should) offer a closed source product and still be honest about all the bugs that exist in it to your paying customers. Granted, I'm not distributing my web applications on a scale that Vista is being distributed on but you know seeing these 700 fixes listed out does alarm me. I mean, that really serious bug? The one that puts your Windows 2008 server at risk? Could still be at large without you ever knowing about it.

From Microsoft's end, how do they handle multiple bug reports when users don't have access to a complete list of known bugs so they know to report it?

And maybe it's obvious why they keep them from you--you'd probably flip to a serving solution without that bug. But, as an advocate for transparency, I would expect Microsoft to at least publicize its bugs--especially if they've been fixed in an update. I'm kind of lead to believe that these 700 (on the dot!) bug fixes are only a subset.

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My work here is dung.
Re:Like Digging Through People's Trash by caffeinemessiah · 2009-05-27 01:48 · Score: 5, Insightful

Expect a whole bunch more to be added to that great spreadsheet in the sky. Then again, I find it pretty funny that DRM, which is quite likely to introduce bug and crippling functionality, is packaged as an "experience update". From TFA (bold mine):

Operating system experience updates
* SP2 improves Windows Media Center (WMC) in the area of content protection for TV.

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An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
Re:Like Digging Through People's Trash by Unoriginal_Nickname · 2009-05-27 01:48 · Score: 4, Insightful

It's the whole point of closed-source software, so that you *never* know what's going on with the code and (hopefully) never see it.
The industry rule of thumb for a software developer is about 10 lines of code per hour, on average, over the lifetime of the project. According to Microsoft, Windows XP has about 40 million SLOC.
Without business staff, PMs and SDETs, that's 4 million man-hours. That's 1923 full time man-years. Assuming Microsoft pays their SDEs $80,000 on average, those 40 million lines of code cost them $153,840,000.
Why can't the point of closed-source be to put food on the table? If all software is free, what are software developers going to do for a living? Buy an air nailer and become a roofer?
Re:Like Digging Through People's Trash by foniksonik · 2009-05-27 02:02 · Score: 2, Interesting

Just FYI, it's not 'shove all the rows at them', it's 'use ajax to request the rows you need and don't waste time re-rendering the other 95% of the page - and no cacheing doesn't always work'... well at least when I do it that's how it works.

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A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Re:Like Digging Through People's Trash by readthemall · 2009-05-27 02:12 · Score: 2, Funny

Everybody who plays (free)Civilization knows that switching to monotheism from polytheism is a good thing.
Re:Like Digging Through People's Trash by damien_kane · 2009-05-27 02:53 · Score: 5, Insightful

So Atheism is the result of a divide by zero error? The result as done by hand makes sense: DNE, "Does Not Exist"
No, athiests are just like monotheists; they just believe in one less god.
Re:Like Digging Through People's Trash by citylivin · 2009-05-27 04:06 · Score: 3, Informative

"Why can't the point of closed-source be to put food on the table? If all software is free, what are software developers going to do for a living? Buy an air nailer and become a roofer?"
You do realize that most software developers work for companies designing custom solutions right? Most software developers do not work on for profit apps, but rather build apps, or tools, to enhance a companies business processes and generate money or sales. The point here is that the software is not, by itself, earning most companies revenue. Even if you are buying commercial software, more often than not you are paying for updates and support. If all software was open source, then everyone could use the tools however they see fit. Some would require support, and some would not. The major positive side effect though is that some, a very small percentage to be sure, but some users would themselves be developers and be able to contribute code as well. Then everyone has a better tool in the end.
Secondly, I have given 20-40 dollars to some open source projects that have saved me hundreds of hours of time (filezilla and vnc come to mind). Sure that may not put food on the table for more than a few days, but i would submit that you are missing the point of open source software if you are focusing on "but how do i get mine!" instead of "how do i build better tools". Thats what software development, imho as an end user (arent we all?), should be about.

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As a potential lottery winner, I totally support tax cuts for the wealthy
Re:Like Digging Through People's Trash by ArcCoyote · 2009-05-27 04:06 · Score: 4, Informative

Look before you FUD. I know WMC-fu, have contributed to DVRMSToolbox, and follow WMC stuff pretty closely.
The content protection thing actually IS an improvement. It's not more DRM, it's less, or rather, it fixes what's there. While it doesn't remove DRM completely, it does fix where WMC would copy protect when CGMS-A flags (Macrovision analog output protection, like for cable PPV) are accidentally encoded into DTV signals. That buggy behavior, on the part of Microsoft and the broadcasters, was why American Gladiators got flagged as protected months ago. There was a big stink about it, although I can't really understand why anyone would care about "pituitary retards banging their F#@$ing skulls together and congratulating YOU on living in the land of freedom!"
I believe legacy code for the broadcast flag was also removed, so ATSC/ClearQAM can't possibly be set as protected now.
Unrelated, but a DRM relaxation is coming for CableCARD, in that non-premium digital cable will no longer be protected. HOWEVER:
- This is a Windows 7 thing, and requires a firmware update to the tuner, an installed copy of Duke Nukem Forever, and who knows what else?
- It's totally up to the cableco to decide what is and isn't "premium", so chances are stuff like Discovery HD/SciFi HD/ESPN HD will stay locked down. Only the stuff that is already on ClearQAM will be opened up.
Not that CableCARD was ever worthwhile. For what you can and can't do with it, you might as well rent a DVR from the cableco if you really need that much TV.
Re:Like Digging Through People's Trash by Anonymous Coward · 2009-05-27 04:30 · Score: 2, Interesting

That average is low, according to glassdoor:
http://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/Microsoft-Salaries-E1651.htm
Not including bonuses, benefits, or all the other perks, SDEs here (yes, I'm at MS) earn, on average, about $91,000. However, on a good team, there is one SDET per programmer, earning an average of $84,000 a year (which is only $4k more than the current starting salary). Additionally, there are PMs that manage features, managers of each area, and managers above those that drive cross-team collaboration (moving all the way up). It's not simply "throw 4 million man hours per line of code" - there's a much larger process.
Include on top of that buildings, supplemental costs (janitors, computers, et cetera), and you can see that there is a big cost. Your last sentence sums it up nicely - we have to earn a living, too. Part of that means that, eventually, a product needs to be shipped. With 40M SLOC, there are inevitably bugs. The question as a company full of people with families to support is, when is the product "good enough?"
I think a lot of slashdotters miss that: a product isn't "done" when it's perfect, but when it's "good enough to sell." Some bugs remain in the product by choice - a certain amount of code churn inevitably introduces new bugs - either behavior that is unexpected/changed or regressions in the code. Waiting for perfection leads to a product that's never released, and a bunch of laid off engineers/contingent staff.
Re:Like Digging Through People's Trash by noidentity · 2009-05-27 06:12 · Score: 2, Interesting

Why can't the point of closed-source be to put food on the table? If all software is free, what are software developers going to do for a living? Buy an air nailer and become a roofer?

What about the extra costs that users encounter due to using said closed-source software? They have to work extra to pay these. So it partly comes down to having one group of people dig holes, and another fill them in.
Re:Like Digging Through People's Trash by Amazing+Quantum+Man · 2009-05-27 16:27 · Score: 2, Funny

I don't know... use something like.... a TV set?

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Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.

The best service pack for Vista by Dystopian+Rebel · 2009-05-27 01:03 · Score: 4, Funny

is Windows 7 RC1.

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Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.

So close to SP3? by hansamurai · 2009-05-27 01:04 · Score: 4, Funny

Isn't that coming out in October?

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Reviewing just the first hour of video games.

Finally, I can torrent from windows by Nefron · 2009-05-27 01:09 · Score: 5, Informative

SP2 removes the limit of 10 half open outbound TCP connections. By default, SP2 has no limit on the number of half open outbound TCP connections.

I can't believe MS finally (almost) admitted they made a mistake. It may have taken almost as long, in technological terms, as it took the Catholic Church to admit it's mistakes with Galileo, but at least it's a step in the right direction.

Re:Finally, I can torrent from windows by Rik+Sweeney · 2009-05-27 01:53 · Score: 3, Funny

as it took the Catholic Church to admit it's mistakes with Galileo
Obviously someone watched Angels and Demons last night...

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Summation 2
Re:Finally, I can torrent from windows by clarkn0va · 2009-05-27 03:49 · Score: 3, Interesting

After running a fire-breathing Celeron 2.5GHz as router/fileserver/torrentbox/freepbx for a few months, I finally bit the bullet and picked up a soekris net5501 and installed pfsense and freeswitch on it. My firewalling and phones run right at well under 20 watts.
Of course that leaves me without fileserver or torrentbox, but an inexpensive alix or fit pc running freenas will fill that role nicely.

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I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
Re:Finally, I can torrent from windows by Ralish · 2009-05-27 04:01 · Score: 4, Interesting

I'm not sure it was a mistake, at least not in Microsoft's view, once you consider the reason why it was implemented and the (probable) reason why they've removed the limitation.

The reason why it was implemented according to various sources was to limit the damage of all those infected Windows machines spamming networks looking for new vulnerable hosts to infect, and also, slow down the rate at which they would cause bedlam. By enforcing such a limit, the aim was to impede an infected machines ability to propogate the infection; of course, we're primarily talking the nasty to catastrophic Windows worms we've seen in the past from gaping truck-sized security holes in critical system components.

However, if you look at Vista, you'll note that contrary to what some people would like you to believe, the exploitability of the OS has gone down drastically versus XP, in particular, with regards to worms. This is of course due to several reasons: better OS security architecture, defence-in-depth (DEP/ASLR/etc...), properly enforced user permissions, the list goes on. Take the most recent Conficker worm as an example. Vista infections will almost certainly be a lot lower, for one, the exploit path that uses the MS08-067 vulnerability that forms its primary exploit vector can not be exploited anonymously on Vista and newer machines. The vulnerable code is still present unless patched, but it requires valid user credentials.

At a guess, I'd say Microsoft came to the conclusion that the TCP limit was no longer necessary on Vista, as the improved security of the OS made the need for such connection limitations redundant. On the other hand, I'll be surprised if they ever remove it on XP, because no matter how much you patch it, it is fundamentally more insecure by its architecture than Vista. And if they don't remove the limitation on XP, I'd argue that's quite telling as to the motivation and reasoning behind removing it on Vista only.

Windows Search 4.0?! by TheRealMindChild · 2009-05-27 01:10 · Score: 3, Interesting

Windows Search 4.0?! I HATE that POS. I've made a very deliberate attempt to NOT download this off of windows update, and now if I want to be up to date with my system, I HAVE to install it? Assholes.

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"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson

Re:Windows Search 4.0?! by GF678 · 2009-05-27 01:17 · Score: 4, Informative

The thing is, you don't actually notice any real difference in how the indexing works with WS4, it's all back-end. It's suppose to be more efficient that the search/indexing code that came with Vista. I know it can be annoying when installed in XP, but since its predecessor was already integrated into Vista it should be an improvement.
If you still hate it, disable the Indexing service.
Re:Windows Search 4.0?! by drinkypoo · 2009-05-27 01:24 · Score: 3, Informative
The thing is, you don't actually notice any real difference in how the indexing works with WS4, it's all back-end.
I can't speak to what it's like on Vista, but on XP two things are true:
1. Indexing beats your system up, and the indexer is NOT good about letting you have it back.
2. Search can find files with a filesystem search, OR it can find indexed files, but NOT both at once. So if you have a directory which is not yet indexed, you MUST leave your computer idle for a time if you want to be able to search it.
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"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:Windows Search 4.0?! by Necroman · 2009-05-27 01:49 · Score: 2, Interesting

I actually love it for work. The amount I search email and documents, it does a great job. You have to remember that it isn't just a plain txt file search, but it indexes doc and your outlook information. Being able to type in my last name and get a list of 68000 items in 1-2 seconds is pretty sweet.
I've tried Google Desktop as well, but just wasn't as much of a fan. I had a harder time getting it to index properly and do what I wanted. WS4 gives you some pretty fine grain control over what and where it indexes.

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Its not what it is, its something else.
Re:Windows Search 4.0?! by Sandbags · 2009-05-27 01:51 · Score: 4, Interesting

I run Vista. index is enabled by default, but one of the first tweaks i did was switch it off, and Windows Search can be uninstalled/hidden.
The indexer runs as a "background" serivce, which is a new type and is supposed only get CPU cycles when the machine is idle. unfortunately, this only works for the FIRST instance of a background process, and there are many cases where more than one can conflict under Vista, and then indexing begins chewing up resources. I had it kick off in the middle of playing games when the CPU was over 80%.
WS4 will NOT be enabled on my machine. I keep the index service, pre-fetch, and several other services forcibally disabled on my machine. When I'm looking for something, it;s either an e-mail, which google or xobni instantly find for me without M$'s help, or it's a file I've properly store and can find myself in 3-4 clicks, or it;s a media item already indexed by iTunes... I don't search my personal machine for random crap, and anything I've ever needed to find on my own machine was ALREADY indexed by somethiung else.... It's a complete waste of resources, a waste of disk space for the index database, and every time you run a major patch, it fucking re-indexes, which for my 400+GB of stuff, takes as long as defragging.
This is not to mention that is also searches inside files, and stores that data in a database in a predetermined location. I have data in docs on my system I'd just as much prefer NOT be in a non--encrypted central repository... contacts, SSNs, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, all go in that database that is VERY easy for a hacker to lift...
If there's a way to uninstall WS4 after SP2, not just disabling it, I will.

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There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
Re:Windows Search 4.0?! by Colonel+Korn · 2009-05-27 02:14 · Score: 4, Informative

I can't speak to what it's like on Vista, but on XP two things are true:
Indexing beats your system up, and the indexer is NOT good about letting you have it back.
I have Vista SP1 installed for playing games the hard drive was thrashing so much it was actually causing stutter in my fps games sometimes until I turned the indexer and the superfetch services off (I actually had to turn off superfetch twice as it ignored me the first time). I don't seem to remember ever having to deal with that sort of issue on XP, so my guess is vista is probably worse for this sort of thing. It would be nice if SP2 alleviated this, but I'm not holding my breath. Incidentally, I find it sort of funny and sort of annoying that there are so many Vista defenders out there, when my own experience is that, yeah it runs well enough, but only after turn off all the crap like this and the graphical effects, and even then it's a little slow for a brand new OS on a brand new computer. On the other hand, with any fresh linux install I also go around removing a lot of the default desktop packages that I don't want, only it seems a lot easier and more transparent in linux, but maybe I'm just used to the linux way and not the windows way.
The funny thing is that Vista is slow on a fresh install, but the hard drive thrashing stops after you've used it for a day and it's populated superfetch and the index. It's fine to turn it off if you don't want to do indexed searches and don't want instant load on a few programs at the expense of a day of slowness, but it's also fine to leave them on, because they absolutely stop slowing anything down after that time.

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"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)

Wireless streaming by Saba · 2009-05-27 01:11 · Score: 3, Interesting

I wonder if they have fixed the throttling bug where if you're streaming media over a wireless link, Vista throttles the connection down so much that it causes buffer underruns and severe clipping. I can't listen to FLACs in VLC unless I set buffering to at least 20 seconds.

Re:Wireless streaming by Blakey+Rat · 2009-05-27 04:10 · Score: 2, Insightful

What makes you think that's a bug in the OS, and not just typical wifi packet loss issues? Streaming multimedia is *not* one of the things that wifi is good for-- if you're really having troubles with this, I'd recommend running cable.
Or at the very least trying it with a different OS to determine whether it's Vista or your wifi link at fault. Of course that would involve critical thinking instead of just knee-jerking every single computer problem to be Microsoft's fault...

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Comment of the year

Re:Doesn't make a difference. by Kohenkatz · 2009-05-27 01:14 · Score: 5, Informative

No one's using Vista anyway.

What are you talking about?? Plenty of people are using Vista. My Website's stats show (For the month of May until today): Windows XP 57.5 % Windows Vista 22.5 %

SP2 in A.U. by l3v1 · 2009-05-27 01:17 · Score: 3, Informative

SP2 isn't included in Automatic Update yet

Well, maybe it isn't, but my Vista Home Premium at work "complained" this morning it had a new update, which was SP2, I let it download and play with it, now it's installed and it seems to work ok up to now.

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I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.

Re:SP2 in A.U. by Sandbags · 2009-05-27 01:54 · Score: 3, Informative

It's being "phased" out. Your machine was one of the lucky 1% that got the update now. My home machine did not have it automatically, but doing a "check for updates now" populated it. I'm waiting a few days to install it however until 1)I get around to making another image backup and 2) other people try it and fail first...

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There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.

Re:UTC Timestamp? by Thornburg · 2009-05-27 01:19 · Score: 4, Informative

UTC is a time format, and specifies GMT.

With UTC timestamps, two files written simultaneously in Germany and Canada would have the same timestamp. In Windows, without UTC timestamps, they would have two completely different timestamps, because they would (most likely) use local time.

If you want a more informed source, try Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinated_Universal_Time

Re:UTC Timestamp? by VGPowerlord · 2009-05-27 01:22 · Score: 2, Informative

Er... except that UTC timestamp only specifies the timezone, not how it's actually stored.

It's up to libc to know how it's stored and convert it to unixtime as appropriate.

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GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011

Not in automatic updates, really? by Greymist · 2009-05-27 01:22 · Score: 2, Informative

So uhh, what was the 300MB+ item in Windows Updates this morning that I installed? I'm sure it said service pack 2.

Re:UTC Timestamp? by Minwee · 2009-05-27 01:32 · Score: 2, Informative

Can someone please elaborate what this UTC timestamp thing is? With some googling I can just assume it means UNIX timestamp. Can we please not invent new names for everything?

"New names"? The entire world has been using UTC as an international standard for timekeeping since before you were born and were calling it UT or GMT for a hundred years before that. Can we please try to learn about something instead of just whinging about it?

Re:Secure... lol by Anonymous Coward · 2009-05-27 01:47 · Score: 4, Funny

I disagree.

Just installed Vista SP2. Let me tell you it is the most secure and stab

[NO CARRIER]

Vista SP2 by mandark1967 · 2009-05-27 01:49 · Score: 4, Interesting

I'm hoping that SP2 doesn't break the functionality of my HTPC like Windows 7 did. I tried Windows 7 x64 RC on my HTPC for about a week or so, but my sound card (X-Fi Extreme Audio PCI-Express x1 slot) developed some major problems that caused MCE to crash and WMP to crash.

I went back to Vista on it. I'm happy enough with the Media Center in Vista that I doubt I'll use Windows 7 on this box in the future, even though the UI of Windows 7 Media Center seems to be a little less "cluttered". My biggest complaint about Vista is the format of the recordings you make. I cannot seem to easily manipulate the resulting recordings very well at all, and I have to rely on MCEBuddy to convert the recorded shows to a format (H264) I can then use on other systems and OSes. ( I know, I know...DRM can suck my salty balls)

From a usability standpoint though, Windows 7 seems superior to Vista in the installation process, as well as the Desktop UI. I am surprised that they don't just convert the installed Vista base to Windows 7 for the simplicity of support. (well maybe not "surprised". it "is" MS, afterall)

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Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain

Re:Doesn't make a difference. by Saint+Fnordius · 2009-05-27 01:56 · Score: 3, Funny

No one's using Vista anyway.

No, but many are forced to tolerate it.

Re:Doesn't make a difference. by DigitalPasture · 2009-05-27 02:11 · Score: 4, Insightful

Do you believe everything you read or hear on the net and TV? I've been using Vista 64bit for about two years now. It's the best (released) OS I've seen out of MS so far. Very stable since SP1 was released. Initially, yes there were problems. Most of the issues I encountered were due to Nvidia drivers however, not problems caused by MS. I seem to remember having similar issues when XP was released many moons ago. I still maintain that the only real problem with Vista is the media and users that are too afraid to learn modern tech.

sp2 on auto updates by GooDieZ · 2009-05-27 02:12 · Score: 2, Informative

i just booted vista on my dual boot laptop, and instantly i got prompted to install sp2 from auto-update...

dont care about vista, or any windows, i just never bothered to remove it completley... sigh... damn vendors with preinstalled win$shit

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Things in a rear mirror might be behind you

Re:Doesn't make a difference. by flyingfsck · 2009-05-27 02:12 · Score: 4, Funny

You should not check your own web site so often... ;)

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Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!

Re:Secure... lol by Anonymous Coward · 2009-05-27 02:19 · Score: 5, Funny

That tells you how good SP2 is. Even when his computer DOES go down, the PC manages to save his message, append "[NO CARRIER]" to it, and post it as anonymous. Let's see Linux do that!

Indexing Service by RulerOf · 2009-05-27 02:31 · Score: 2, Informative

The Indexing Service and Windows Search are not the same thing. I never used Windows Search under XP because I had gone out of my way to learn how to configure the Indexing Service (which is a huge pain in the ass) so that Start > Search would give me indexed results. I never experienced the Indexing Service pwning my machine as you say, though, and I indexed 3+ TB worth of stuff with it.

You have to do heavy configuration in Vista with Windows Search to have it search outside your profile, but once you do, the searches are much faster than XP was, compared to Indexing Service or WDS based searches.

Also, on XP, if you did configure the built-in Indexer to index your stuff, Start > Search would give you results from both in and out of the index, from what I recall. It might be folder-based as to whether or not something not in the index that was supposed to be was included (but was newly created for example, and hadn't been indexed yet), but I can't really remember anymore... been using Vista for too long now :P

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Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.

Re:Secure... lol by Ethanol-fueled · 2009-05-27 02:32 · Score: 5, Funny

Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Released

Will everybody please stop calling it Vista SP2? It's called Windows 7 for fuck's sake!

Hello. Open source software, too. by Animaether · 2009-05-27 02:39 · Score: 3, Insightful

"I damn well *expect* there to be thousands, if not more, bugs that are not and will never be fixed in Windows until someone "finds" them and posts about them publically, security related or not"

Hell, I expect there to be thousands, if not more, bugs that are not and will never be fixed in open source software, until somebody -other than those actually responsible for the code- submit a patch.
I'm looking at you, silly little Thunderbird bug #92165 from 2001/Jul/24.

It Just Works by bigdady92 · 2009-05-27 02:39 · Score: 5, Interesting

TLDR: I hated Vista. Loved XP. Use Linux. Installed 64bit Vista. Vista Crashed and burned. Reinstalled with SP2. It just Works.

I've been a longtime XP user. I use Ubuntu and RHEL at work. I use linux and unix. I hated Vista with a passion, thought it was a PIA and had so much config problems. I then bought a new PC (quad core 6GB ram, blah blah) so I figured I'd put Vista on it. First time worked ok. I updated my bios, it blew away my Raid 1. Got irritated and stopped screwing with it. Then SP2 came along in the last few weeks and I reinstalled my OS and installed SP2 over it.

It just works. Works perfectly. So simple to install Vista and simple to install the SP2. 2 reboots and I had everything working. Fixed the RAID issue, fixed the bluetooth issue, fixed some other quirks that drove me batshiz crazy.

I gotta say that I used to hate vista with the passion of a 1000 firey suns. Now I'm like "Well it's not too bad, what's the problem with it again?"

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Wheel of Time: Book by Book and Sumview (summary review) Bigdady92 style: http://bigdady92.blogspot.com/

Re:It Just Works by citylivin · 2009-05-27 06:49 · Score: 3, Insightful

Thats the exact same shit people said about XP. Its unbelievable how much people forget. Win2k was the best OS ever when XP dropped. Everyone _EVERYONE_ swore up and down that they would never install XP and its "cartoon" interface. 7 years later and I'm the only one still running win2k. I just upgraded my home PC to XP last year.
My point is that its always the same. People will eventually have to upgrade to vista for one reason or another. This does not mean that the initial problems are solved necessarily, or that the old version of windows is inferior. Your comment of "what was the problem with it again?" illustrates this perfectly.

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Re:Doesn't make a difference. by Chatterton · 2009-05-27 02:43 · Score: 4, Interesting

I beg to differ with your numbers: Numbers of page view per platform on the last 12 month of a little european website: Page Views Platform Sum % (blank) 231,944,487 14 AIX 63,675 0 AmigaOS 1,399 0 BeOS 1,145 0 CP/M 26,258 0 DOS 28,158 0 Dreamcast 319 0 HP-UX 1,405 0 IRIX 2,535 0 Linux 10,782,630 1 Macintosh 22,543,401 1 NetBSD 1,930 0 OS/2 6,449 0 OSF1 1,000 0 OpenVMS 383 0 SCO_SV 38 0 Slurp 61,242,836 4 Solaris 7,625,811 0 SunOS 197,176 0 Unix (unknown) 67,609 0 WebTV 2,111 0 Windows 12,050,352 1 Windows 16-bit 11,607 0 Windows 2000 132,118,040 8 Windows 32-bit 6,226,532 0 Windows 95 723,941 0 Windows 98 32,166,513 2 Windows CE 107,696 0 Windows NT 5,474,837 0 Windows Sever 2003 19,986,701 1 Windows Vista 30,442,927 2 Windows XP 1,012,030,914 62 unknown 39,486,905 2 TOTAL 1,625,367,720 100

Re:UTC Timestamp? by jonbryce · 2009-05-27 02:43 · Score: 2, Informative

It's not quite the same as GMT. There can be a few seconds difference between the two. GMT is based on the position of the sun at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. UTC uses an atomic clock to count the seconds and has leap seconds added to the end of the year from time to time to bring it back into alignment with GMT.

Re:Enterprise Vista Deployments by swb · 2009-05-27 02:45 · Score: 2, Funny

You just tipped your hand. "Government agency".

Wait just a minute there... by Phu5ion · 2009-05-27 02:46 · Score: 2, Funny

I thought Windows 7 was being released later this year?

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Re:Doesn't make a difference. by kno3 · 2009-05-27 02:50 · Score: 5, Insightful

This guy will be modded down, unfortunately. I totally agree, I have been using Vista 64bit for over a year now, it has crashed on me twice in that time. My XP machine is far less stable. Also, because of its 64bit capabilities and its far better use of multiple cores (I have a quad core), I have found a performance increase over XP. Its performance has also remained, even though I have added a large amount of apps to it, it does not seem to suffer from slowing down to a slow grind after a few months of use, like XP does. There are some stupid, irritating features to it, like the UAC, driver signing, aero theme...etc. Luckily all of these features can be turned off. The only 2 problems I have with it is the integration of DRM, and the lack of EAX support (although this is being solved by drivers).

Re:Doesn't make a difference. by L4t3r4lu5 · 2009-05-27 02:54 · Score: 2, Informative

My Windows 7 RC installation is reported as IE 7 on Windows XP SP2, because half of the video streaming sites I use (legitimate, obviously) break with "AMAGAD UR OS IZ NOT ZUPPRORTREAD." messages, which are absolute rubbish as I am able to watch them in Firefox on Windows 7 as long as I alter the user agent string.

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Re:Doesn't make a difference. by TheLink · 2009-05-27 02:57 · Score: 2, Insightful

You might not have had problems, but so far a lot of people have had problems.

Maybe it's the initial stuff that was crap. But you know what, that makes it an even better reason to stay with what works. Stuff that has more of the bugs fixed.

I was using Win2K after WinXP SP2 came out. And Win2K was quite stable. The few blue screens in years was due to hardware going bad, or a bad NIC driver.

I'm now using WinXP SP3 on the desktop and ubuntu for my server. And both have been stable. I wouldn't use WinXP "the original release".

I tried vista on a test box at work and I got it to blue screen quite quickly - just logged in and out a few times, dunno what happened. I seem to have a knack of crashing or hanging stuff. When the first imacs came out (the colourful ones), I went to an apple shop and checked a demo unit out, and for some reason it hung on me. I don't think I did anything really unusual. Just clicked about using stuff. I also crashed a demo unit Atari ST. I've crashed someone's Forth webserver on my first test...

I think I'll skip Vista. Maybe Win7 or something else would be stable enough for me :).

Don't get me wrong I'm grateful for the guinea pigs and early adopters. It's just not a good idea for everyone to be an early adopter and go Vista.

Personally, I've seen Vista and Win7, and it sure looks like MS has gone nuts. They've changed a lot of "tech" UI stuff for no apparent good reason.

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Re:Doesn't make a difference. by DigitalPasture · 2009-05-27 02:59 · Score: 2, Insightful

LOL, they branded me as a troll already for talking about the way things are. Thankfully, some people out there have real experience with it. You are correct, UAC is horrible... I disable it on all my machines save for the laptop I cart around. If you haven't checked it out yet (I just start using it 3 days ago), take a look at the Media Center component. With a few plugins and a TV card, I've built the best HTPC I've ever seen. Didn't expect MS to build something like that and not have it on the fore-front. The only lingering issue I have at this point (now that SP2 fixed Bluetooth) is that Peer Guardian still seems off in 64bit. I guess I'll be sticking with VMware a bit longer to emulate XP.

Re:Doesn't make a difference. by diskofish · 2009-05-27 03:10 · Score: 2, Insightful

Vista isn't that bad on a powerful enough computer. I bought a new laptop with Vista 64 reinstalled. I tried XP on this computer (bad luck with Vista in the past), but some drivers weren't even available so the overall stability of the machine suffered. I don't really have any major complaints, and I think the built in search is pretty great for mp3s. It's two years later now, and most computers are finally powerful enough to run Vista.

Re:Secure... lol by djfake · 2009-05-27 03:12 · Score: 2, Funny

Everyone knows it's Windows 6, KB948465.

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Re:Doesn't make a difference. by Starayo · 2009-05-27 03:22 · Score: 4, Informative

I totally agree, I have been using Vista 64bit for over a year now, it has crashed on me twice in that time. My XP machine is far less stable.

Now, I'm not going to argue about Vista's stability, it's the speed and general bloat I have problems with, but seriously, what the fuck are all you people doing to your XP installations?!

I barely maintain my system at all, much to my disdain, but I haven't had it freeze/crash/BSOD/whatever in the past 3 years (well, a few times, but they don't count because it was faulty hardware, not software) and I torture the hell out of this computer!

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Vista in the enterprise by mu51c10rd · 2009-05-27 03:25 · Score: 3, Informative

I am sure Vista is fine with the latest software, and for personal use. However, have you tried deploying Vista in an enterprise environment (or use older software for that matter)? Here is a small list of issues that have caused us to stop looking at Vista for a rollout:

1. Group Policy management (the move to admx files has caused numerous backwards compatibility issues)
2. The ever-growing winsxs folder. There is no way to shrink or compress it.
3. Try creating images with default software for imaging workstations due to #2.
4. In-house applications need to be recoded.
5. Minimum requirements for Vista would require a major purchase of machines to be able to run it.
6. Activation process fails ~1/3 of the time, even when trying to use an in-house key server.
7. Random core dumps on Dell Latitude laptop line (have had 8 of them do this), even with the latest drivers and firmware.

Re:Vista in the enterprise by Achromatic1978 · 2009-05-27 05:11 · Score: 4, Informative

4. In-house applications need to be recoded.
So your programmers wrote shitty code that failed to follow standards. Other people can write software which runs on Windows 95 through Windows 7 - the fact that your programmers didn't/couldn't is hardly a failing of Vista.

6. Activation process fails ~1/3 of the time, even when trying to use an in-house key server.
One third of the time? I've watched Vista computers take memory, graphics cards, CPU upgrades and activate and reactivate without issue. If activation was failing 33% of the time on any kind of scale, there would be outrage (of the real kind, not the angry-geek-at-Slashdot kind). "Using your in-house key server" points a bit differently, too. My guess? You're doing something the wrong way. Very much the wrong way.
Re:Vista in the enterprise by VGPowerlord · 2009-05-27 08:32 · Score: 2, Insightful

I'm wondering why you have a problem with the winsxs folder in Vista, but not in XP.
Windows Side by Side support was introduced in Windows XP. It's for loading multiple versions of DLLs. Installing various versions of .NET or Visual Studio tends to bloat this directory up regardless of which OS version you're using.
If you have Visual Studio 2008 installed, you'll even have versions of DLLs for different architectures than you're currently running: x86, x64, and Itanium stuff are all installed as I recall.

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Re:Vista in the enterprise by Johnno74 · 2009-05-27 10:16 · Score: 3, Informative

I can't believe I'm sticking up for vista, but.....
2. winsxs folder. This is actually a folder full of hard links. Its isn't _really_ 10gb. some info here
4. I've had maybe half a dozen compatibility issues with vista since I started using it over two years ago. In my current job there is a crapload of dodgy activeX web apps and VB6 apps, none have a problem. The ODBC drivers we use for connections to an informix database works _fine_ in vista, and the dates on those binaries is 1996. Infact, they work better in vista than in XP or anything else. Certain types of connections with these drivers never worked at all in applications deployed with ClickOnce on XP.... but in vista they work fine.
7. I got vista preinstalled 2+ years ago on a Dell Latitude D820. At that stage I had a lot of bluescreens etc caused by the USB stack, video drivers etc etc but since SP1 came out it has been rock solid. I use suspend/resume and I only ever reboot my machine if there is an update I want to install. I guess it probably gets rebooted on average every 6 weeks or so. I don't think I've had a bluescreen in at least 12 months.
You may well be right on your other points, I don't know. Vista still has issues and feels very bloated compared to 7, but IMHO it is a shame it has struggled to throw off the bad reputation it gained when it launched.

Re:Doesn't make a difference. by Starayo · 2009-05-27 03:34 · Score: 3, Insightful

And therein lies the problem. I shouldn't need a great computer to run the operating system.

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Ezekiel 23:20

Re:Doesn't make a difference. by fishthegeek · 2009-05-27 03:36 · Score: 3, Funny

SCO_SV 38 0

Sco_SV has 38 users? Why haven't we seen a SCO doubles market share article?

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Re:Doesn't make a difference. by DigitalPasture · 2009-05-27 03:49 · Score: 2, Interesting

It's like any other OS (including XP). I have to spend a fair amount of time removing stock components and disabling services to get it to where I'm happy. If run stock, I can understand how you'd take a pretty big performance hit.

is this that different from open source? by YesIAmAScript · 2009-05-27 03:55 · Score: 2, Interesting

Didn't you see the OpenSSH article go through over a week ago? Disclosing significant security issues that existed in OpenSSH since its existence and weren't even announced until months after they were found and fixed?

Open source also has lots of bugs in it. And many of them aren't fixed until they are posted about in a public forum.

You have an actual point here about open source. It's just Stallman's point restated, but still, it's valid. But you do a really rotten job of stating it and explaining how open source (or free software) is different.

The real value of open source (in terms of bugs) is that if you would like, you can inspect the code and then hopefully find latent bugs. And if you find them, you can fix them. For example, if your business depends very critically on a section of code being secure, you can hire someone to code review it. You can't do this with closed source. You won't necessarily find any existing problems, but at least you have some more control over your destiny.

From what MS and the military say, the militarized versions of Windows don't have different code in them, they just are configured differently to have more security features (which were already available) turned on. So the militarized versions certainly don't have everything they know about fixed. The same is true of open source/free software, many projects have enormous bug databases with lists of open (known about) bugs which are not fixed. Again, the big different with open source is that if one of those bugs is a deal-breaker for you, you can fix it yourself and not wait for the project maintainers to do it.

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Re:is this that different from open source? by cdrguru · 2009-05-27 08:40 · Score: 2, Insightful

This "value" is non-existant to 99% of the "users" in the world and I seriously wish it would stop being touted as some advantage to open source.
Fact is, for anything "open source" to escape the dungen of nerddom, it has to be being used by a lot of people that do not read code, are not programmers and have no hope of ever looking at the source. And, more importantly, no desire to ever do so. They want something that "just works". Period.
Paying someone to look at the source for you isn't really a viable option. If they are familar with the project then maybe they can be useful to both the project and to someone paying them to look at it. However, give someone not familiar with the project anything larger than the source for cat and they are likely to spend a lot of time learning about it. And someone is going to be paying for that time. Or do you think someone should just spend hundreds of hours of their time learning something like gawk or Apache for the fun of it? I suppose they should in the open source universe where nobody has to pay rent or grocery bills.
Software today has grown quite a bit past the point where you can pull some contractor off the street, sit them down at an unfamiliar code base and have them be productive. Some commercial software development has this as a goal, a future objective. Yet to be achieved. I've never seen an open source project that has even attempted the level of self-documentation required for that. Heck, I see lots of K&R style C code without any function prototypes and I would put function prototypes at the beginning of a long list of requirements for self-documenting code. And all of this ignores the real user need.
What users need is for stuff to work. They put in a CD and install Ubuntu and it works. Period. If they need something else, they can install it in a few minutes without digging around for prerequisite libraries. We're not there yet with Linux, but it is closer than it was. Windows is pretty much there in terms of overall usability and OSX has been there for a while.
Bugs? Of course there are known but not disclosed bugs. Often these are things that were discovered by developers that stand zero chance of ever being encountered by a user. Politically, you aren't going to get these disclosed because (a) they aren't important to users and (b) it feeds the idea that there are endless bugs in software. Of course there are endless bugs when you have a code base of millions of lines of code. But nobody wants to advertise it, especially those bugs that have an extremely low chance (or zero chance) of being encoutered.

Re:Doesn't make a difference. by Inda · 2009-05-27 03:56 · Score: 4, Insightful

You, and others, say UAC is horrible. Is that because it is your PC/Laptop and you are the only user?

I think UAC is great. I get home from work and my daughter says "What's your password because I need to install XYZ" and I smile. I can let her do as she pleases on my laptop and not worry about her install the latest Malware, Crapware (iTunes), etc.

The only time I've grumbled is when Firefox auto-updates while she's using it and it can't finish its upgrade without my password. (great engrish Inda)

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Re:You Joke, but... by c0p0n · 2009-05-27 04:01 · Score: 4, Insightful

Actually there are many good reasons to drive a manual car. Total control on performance, fuel consumption, and generally not being a lazy geezer.

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Re:Doesn't make a difference. by lewiscr · 2009-05-27 04:46 · Score: 2, Insightful

Everybody said the same thing about XP when it came out.

Re:Doesn't make a difference. by mR.bRiGhTsId3 · 2009-05-27 04:52 · Score: 3, Insightful

I concur that UAC is great. Furthermore, I was able to find the group policy setting that forces you to authenticate instead of merely confirm every action.
As for Firefox auto-updates, that is firefox's fault. I've had goofiness when I hit cancel on the privilidge escalation dialog, but IMHO Firefox should be able to just continue working nomrally if it doesn't update.

Re:Doesn't make a difference. by mR.bRiGhTsId3 · 2009-05-27 04:59 · Score: 3, Insightful

Because some of us need 32-bit emulation. WoW64 or whatever it is called works flawlessly out of the box. I assume you were making a snide comment about how some FLOSS operating system/userland is superior. Lets see you run 10 year old 32-bit applications out of box with no tinkering on your fabulous 64-bit system.

Re:You Joke, but... by Anonymous Coward · 2009-05-27 05:00 · Score: 2, Interesting

Few cars get better fuel consumption as compared to a modern (last 7 years) automatic transmission. The technology has surpassed your abilities... and often has more gears now... and even has continuous shifting in some models.

Performance is a hard statement to make as well. There are many cars now where the automatic model is better performing than the manual, e.g. mustangs and camaros and their ilk. And, there is a very long list of cars where unless you're truly an amazing driver you're not going to beat the automatic version.

Cost to maintain is probably the best practical argument, but the hydraulic clutch crowd made that one slightly debatable.

All that said, they're still a fuckload more fun to drive.

Re:Doesn't make a difference. by Hal_Porter · 2009-05-27 06:04 · Score: 2, Insightful

I just wish more programs would be written in 64 bit code, I run 75% of my applications as x86.

I make sure all my Windows stuff builds as 64bit and I test on Vista64, but really for most applications there's no point.

If you need >4GB of address space it would be useful, but most applications can be written not to. Databases are apparently an exception. Still it's a bad idea to assume that you can memory map a huge file into memory, and that's the killer app for 64 bits.

In terms of performance most benchmarks put 64 and 32 bit neck and neck - ±a few percent%. Sure you have more registers, but all x86 chips use caching and register renaming to make that less significant than you'd think. 32 bit code thunks on 64 bit Windows, but the thunking mechanism is very lightweight. I've never checked but I imagine that integers are movzx'd from the stack to a register and pointers are movsx'd. You apparantly need far jump to switch from 32 to 64 bit too. But my guess is that all this stuff was agreed by Microsoft and AMD so that it ends up being efficient.

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Re:Doesn't make a difference. by CarpetShark · 2009-05-27 06:05 · Score: 3, Informative

half of the video streaming sites I use (legitimate, obviously) break with "AMAGAD UR OS IZ NOT ZUPPRORTREAD." messages

Which, of course, are all thanks to Microsoft's monopoly, which you're supporting by still using Windows. Not trying to cause trouble, but there's no point complaining about a problem if you're still part of the problem.

Re:Doesn't make a difference. by blacksmith_tb · 2009-05-27 06:17 · Score: 2, Informative

Yahoo's spider/bot. Presumably Googlebot was higher, but was manually removed.

Re:FYI, Windows Server 2008 SP2 too by VGPowerlord · 2009-05-27 08:15 · Score: 2, Informative

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.

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Re:Doesn't make a difference. by 644bd346996 · 2009-05-27 09:02 · Score: 2, Informative

How seriously are you actually using Vista x64? I was forced to upgrade from XP because I actually needed a 64-bit OS. (I do scientific computation, but some of my apps are windows-only, like SolidWorks.) When stressed like that, Vista has proven to be slower and less stable for the things that could actually be done within the confines of 32-bit XP. I used to be able to run simulations for at least a week without crashes. On vista, I'm lucky if my computer is still on in the morning when I let things run overnight. And to top it off, it's power management on my laptop is worse than most linux distros (although this is more of a driver situation than a windows problem).

I've no doubt that Vista x64 can be better as a casual desktop system due to the increased headroom of a 64-bit platform, the re-written drivers, and better security, but I've yet to figure out how to tune it for heavy-duty work.

Re:Doesn't make a difference. by Cramer · 2009-05-27 09:05 · Score: 3, Insightful

That's not UAC. What you are talking about is the (simple) difference between a user and an administrator. Microsoft has never understood that difference. Which leads us to the BS that is UAC... even with admin rights you still have to confirm every damned thing you do. It's a horrible stupid kludge. If you don't what people doing "admin" things, don't make them an admin. (it's a tough concept in the windows world.)

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