Late reply I know, but i just noticed you're running an Sb-live. I am guessing your issues are due to the switch to OpenAL in Vista? Directsound3d hardware access no longer available?
In that case, you'll likely find that new OpenAL games will run fine. However, older games will run without Directsound3d support and maybe fall back to another driver (forget the names off the top of my head, but NWN2 does this for example) that sounds pretty crap (clicks, etc).
Creative have a (software) proejct called "Alchemy" (in beta) which can translate directsound3d into openAL by replacing some DLL files in the game, but unfortunately it only currently works with SB X-fi cards.
I just upgraded to a Sundblater X-fi for this reason, and it works great. Apparently creative are intending to release Alchemy for other cards in the future, but it's still in beta. No idea if hte SB-live will be supported though, they're getting quite old now... it's probably not in their interests.
However, if you're a gamer, i'd suggest upgrading to the X-fi in any case - the specs are pretty amazing and it can do a lot more in terms of audio effects processing, which newer games will no doubt start using soon... and i'm not sure if its a placebo, but NWN2 seems to run faster with the x-fi under vista than it did with my audigy 2 under XP:)
No, it's not designed to crash deliberately. That would be retarded.
It is designed so that *if* the code goes awry in an unforseen way it is "shut down" (relatively cleanly) with an exception error. The shutdown with exception is what people are calling a "crash", but it's not the same as a proper crash, where your application decided to start executing random bits of memory due to a buffer overflow.
There is a difference - and this is why the guy is calling it a feature - he's the author of the library which detects the code problem and shuts down before doing anything seriously bad.
Unfortunately, people are just calling the behaviour a "crash" and equating it to a typical buffer overflow, which isn't exactly fair. Yes, it has revealed a code problem that needs to be fixed. No one disagrees on that point. However the "feature" is that if the safeint library was not in use, the 'crash' (better description would be "unintended or unexpected shut down") would be a lot worse, and likely exploitable.
Of course all crashes are bad - I don't think any one disagrees with that.
However, from a read of the guy's blog, this guy seems to be the author of a "safeint" type of library that is in use by the office 2k7 code, that throws an exception and (and word decides to "die" when it is thrown) instead of possibly leading to a buffer overrun and exploitable security hole.
So, in that respect, it is indeed a "feature".
Of course, the code that crashed needs to be fixed. But presuming that you've got perfect programmers and that your code is 100% correct in all situations when you're dealing with a project the size of office is a pretty big ask. Having this "safety net" in place to default to 'crashing' in a non-exploitable way if the code goes off the rails is a good thing.
From what I gather, it's a similar *concept* to idea using stackguard or what have you in the open-source world. I haven't looked into the technical details at all so it probably works in a completely different way and provides a different level of proection - but the basic premise (assume that your code will break, and put safeguards in place to ensure it breaks in a "safe" manner) is the same.
3) UAC is NOT palatable to power-users. Those damn stupid pop-ups every time you do anything at all are the most annoying thing I've ever seen. Its so annoying that I turned off UAC to be rid of it. I'm sure most people will turn off UAC as the first thing they do.
Whilst i don't particularly enjoy it popping up, it's not a lot different to having to type sudo whatever and my password. Easier, in fact. It's not quite as bad as people are making out in my opinion.
4) there's nothing truly revolutionary about vistas gui.
On the surface, no there's not. However the whole rendering engine has been re-written to take advantage of your 3d card. There's a hell of a lot of stuff vista can do in hardware now that will be useful for apps.
5) Using 700MB IS important as most PCs (especially laptops) still have 1GB of RAM or less. On a 512MB PC that means you're ALREADY paging to disk even before you do anything, which directly translates into really slow application performance.
Vista is not targeted at those PCs. If you have one of those, don't install vista. Simple. THis is no different to any previous version of windows - take the system requirements, and x4 and you end up with the "nicely usable" point. For XP this was 1gig, for 2k it was 512mb-1gig, for 98 it was 256mb and for 95 it was 16mb (all at time of release - obviously more recent apps from years after the o/s release will push that a bit).
Regarding your case in point: I'm (still) screaming "Vista IS shit" and my system has a core2 6800 extreme CPU, 2 watercooled 8800GTX GPU's in SLI, 2GB of 1111Mhz DDR2 and 2 150GB raptors in Raid 0. Hardly a budget PC.
What is your reasoning, other than it costing money? Sure, it's a little hungry, but in terms of application compatibility for gaming, commercial apps, business apps, etc - it's better than linux. XP and 2K are both dead-ends - give it 18 months and you'll start running into vista only apps.
Drivers? They will come. 2k had driver issues for 6 months after release, too. As did 95 with several models of ide/scsi controller not having 32 bit drivers, etc.
Yes, they did rush vista to market. Yes, i'm aware how long vista is overdue, and how a number of the technologies that were dropped were actually promised back in the mid 90s.
If you'd been paying attention, you'd know that they did a massive re-write, and implemented a number of new half-assed features to replace the stuff they stripped out.
Vista was "rushed" out the door in the end simply because microsoft had to get a product out after all these years. The fact that it was so many years in development doesn't mean it wasn't rushed - as in incomplete.
You seem to be under the impression that Windows 2000 was the first OS in its release train. It was actually just the latest version in the NT train, which goes back to 1989. It only had driver issues because all the vendors had to learn how to write drivers all over again.
I am aware of this, however the driver model between NT and 2k is vastly different compared to the changes between 2k and XP. You can run the exact same drivers on 2k and xp for the most part - that is not the case between NT and 2k. Your second statement actually backs up the point i was trying to make.
That was intentional - if you read further you'll find he bought home ultimate retail so he could test the re-activation by making use of the licensing provision for you to transfer your vista license to a new machine...
Actually, I did have 2k reboot spontaneously without a prompt back when it was new and the drivers for my nvidia card were in beta (particularly with 2k).
Funnily enough, i *have not* had the same problem with vista. However i was *expecting* it due to my previous upgrade experience.
Run a brand new O/S in the first 6 months, and you need to be prepared for this shit.
Did microsoft rush vista to market? Yes. Is this any different to the situation they had with Windows 95, 98, 2k or XP? No... XP was just a lot more stable because the driver model is exactly the same as 2k, and 2k had all the issues sorted already...
So what you're saying is it was "flawlessly" for values of "flawlessly" meaning user intervention required to fix the non-accelerated 3d.
ie, not "flawlessly out of the box" at all.
*chop*
note: i'm not trying to be a linux basher/vista evangelist (check my post history/journal if you feel i'm a shill), but fair is fair... Linux needs mucking around with just like any other o/s...
Before it can modify the boot sector, it has to run.
This exploit doesn't run unless you manually boot from it first.
As another poster said, the significance of this is not so much about virus propogation, but more about enabling the user to manually intervene and circumvent the requirement for code signing (and thereby, in turn perhaps circumvent the DRM security in vista).
Which the virus is probably going to be unable to write to, unless it exploits the o/s to gain such access. This exploit does not provide such access, it requires booting the os from a special boot loader.
Well, no shit. If you boost from a custom boot sector before the o/s is even resident in memory, of course it can do anything...
How is it that E16 gives gnu/linux users transparency and snappy response time on a 233 MHz PII but XP has a hard time on the same equipment.
Well, for a start, how about the fact that it doesn't run Win32?
What kind of super computer would it take to run Vista's DRM and email at the same time you want to crunch numbers
Running vista, with full aero interface, etc - my computer's CPU sits on less than 5% use when i'm just moving windows around. Less than Windows XP. Why? Because the video card is doing the work, not my CPU.
Isn't this no different to a car company running ads with their top of the range model, then advertising "from $xxxx", which is about half the price of that model?
"Vista capable" means "will run vista". These machines run a version of vista.
If you're too fucking stupid to realise that your shitbox $500 pc won't run the most advanced software on the market, do the world a favour and don't breed... don't go trying to blame others for your own stupidity. Then again, finding a method of blaming others for your own stupidity seems to be a cornerstone of the US legal system...
Agreed. And this is why i generally use FreeBSD instead these days. It's "cleaner", close enough technically that it makes little to no difference in actual use, and no cultist bullshit...
The sort of thing mentioned in the article makes me embarassed to be downloading linux (to check out the new virtualisation stuff in fedora 6) as i type this.
Why the hell would a bunch of randoms call a company because they made a business decision to use a platform supported by their database vendor, thereby cutting the level of finger-pointing (app vendor vs db vendor) down to zero?
Why? Because they're a bunch of fuckwits, that's why. All that sort of blind "evangelism" does is make teh linux community look like a bunch of raving loonies with no idea when it comes to actually getting things done in the real world. I'm quite sure no one at the company in question *cares* about the technical merits of redhat vs oracle's distro. It's a question of having ONE source for support, and not playing telephone tag with a couple of vendors who keep handballing the problem to each other.
In the real world, being able to deal with ONE vendor for support on your mission critical database is a godsend...
Granted, however my experience is that the larger the organisation, the less efficient and sloth-like it is.
I've worked for 4 companies of various sizes, and been able to get more done in a 2 person organisation than I can in a 2500 employee company simply because in the 2500 employee company, everything needs to go to committee chaired by idiots who have no idea with regards to the problem in question, no one wants to take responsibility, and no one has the balls to make a decision.
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Wireless works by default on my box with Ubuntu. XP+vista both require a driver download.
In that case, you'll likely find that new OpenAL games will run fine. However, older games will run without Directsound3d support and maybe fall back to another driver (forget the names off the top of my head, but NWN2 does this for example) that sounds pretty crap (clicks, etc).
Creative have a (software) proejct called "Alchemy" (in beta) which can translate directsound3d into openAL by replacing some DLL files in the game, but unfortunately it only currently works with SB X-fi cards.
I just upgraded to a Sundblater X-fi for this reason, and it works great. Apparently creative are intending to release Alchemy for other cards in the future, but it's still in beta. No idea if hte SB-live will be supported though, they're getting quite old now... it's probably not in their interests.
However, if you're a gamer, i'd suggest upgrading to the X-fi in any case - the specs are pretty amazing and it can do a lot more in terms of audio effects processing, which newer games will no doubt start using soon... and i'm not sure if its a placebo, but NWN2 seems to run faster with the x-fi under vista than it did with my audigy 2 under XP :)
No, it's not designed to crash deliberately. That would be retarded.
It is designed so that *if* the code goes awry in an unforseen way it is "shut down" (relatively cleanly) with an exception error. The shutdown with exception is what people are calling a "crash", but it's not the same as a proper crash, where your application decided to start executing random bits of memory due to a buffer overflow.
There is a difference - and this is why the guy is calling it a feature - he's the author of the library which detects the code problem and shuts down before doing anything seriously bad.
Unfortunately, people are just calling the behaviour a "crash" and equating it to a typical buffer overflow, which isn't exactly fair. Yes, it has revealed a code problem that needs to be fixed. No one disagrees on that point. However the "feature" is that if the safeint library was not in use, the 'crash' (better description would be "unintended or unexpected shut down") would be a lot worse, and likely exploitable.
However, from a read of the guy's blog, this guy seems to be the author of a "safeint" type of library that is in use by the office 2k7 code, that throws an exception and (and word decides to "die" when it is thrown) instead of possibly leading to a buffer overrun and exploitable security hole.
So, in that respect, it is indeed a "feature".
Of course, the code that crashed needs to be fixed. But presuming that you've got perfect programmers and that your code is 100% correct in all situations when you're dealing with a project the size of office is a pretty big ask. Having this "safety net" in place to default to 'crashing' in a non-exploitable way if the code goes off the rails is a good thing.
From what I gather, it's a similar *concept* to idea using stackguard or what have you in the open-source world. I haven't looked into the technical details at all so it probably works in a completely different way and provides a different level of proection - but the basic premise (assume that your code will break, and put safeguards in place to ensure it breaks in a "safe" manner) is the same.
till i get the new box to replace it.
The trick is getting there in the first place :)
Vista is not targeted at those PCs. If you have one of those, don't install vista. Simple. THis is no different to any previous version of windows - take the system requirements, and x4 and you end up with the "nicely usable" point. For XP this was 1gig, for 2k it was 512mb-1gig, for 98 it was 256mb and for 95 it was 16mb (all at time of release - obviously more recent apps from years after the o/s release will push that a bit).
What is your reasoning, other than it costing money? Sure, it's a little hungry, but in terms of application compatibility for gaming, commercial apps, business apps, etc - it's better than linux. XP and 2K are both dead-ends - give it 18 months and you'll start running into vista only apps.Drivers? They will come. 2k had driver issues for 6 months after release, too. As did 95 with several models of ide/scsi controller not having 32 bit drivers, etc.
there was much bitching about broken apps, no one wanting to switch, etc.
linux was and is an o/s that has no "forced upgrade" situation.
every linux now runs glibc...
same thing will happen with vista no doubt.
If you'd been paying attention, you'd know that they did a massive re-write, and implemented a number of new half-assed features to replace the stuff they stripped out.
Vista was "rushed" out the door in the end simply because microsoft had to get a product out after all these years. The fact that it was so many years in development doesn't mean it wasn't rushed - as in incomplete.
I am aware of this, however the driver model between NT and 2k is vastly different compared to the changes between 2k and XP. You can run the exact same drivers on 2k and xp for the most part - that is not the case between NT and 2k. Your second statement actually backs up the point i was trying to make.
Win2k3 server adminpak has a work-around which makes it usable...
That was intentional - if you read further you'll find he bought home ultimate retail so he could test the re-activation by making use of the licensing provision for you to transfer your vista license to a new machine...
Funnily enough, i *have not* had the same problem with vista. However i was *expecting* it due to my previous upgrade experience.
Run a brand new O/S in the first 6 months, and you need to be prepared for this shit.
Did microsoft rush vista to market? Yes. Is this any different to the situation they had with Windows 95, 98, 2k or XP? No... XP was just a lot more stable because the driver model is exactly the same as 2k, and 2k had all the issues sorted already...
2 guys I work with are using Vista as their primary admin workstations at the moment and haven't reported any problems?
ie, not "flawlessly out of the box" at all.
*chop*
note: i'm not trying to be a linux basher/vista evangelist (check my post history/journal if you feel i'm a shill), but fair is fair... Linux needs mucking around with just like any other o/s...
I've had no stability issues with my audigy - but in the vista software/driver there were several things missing that used to be in XP...
This exploit doesn't run unless you manually boot from it first.
As another poster said, the significance of this is not so much about virus propogation, but more about enabling the user to manually intervene and circumvent the requirement for code signing (and thereby, in turn perhaps circumvent the DRM security in vista).
Well, no shit. If you boost from a custom boot sector before the o/s is even resident in memory, of course it can do anything...
Heh. Perhaps i should qualify the preceding statement with "most advanced commercial x86 win32 software platform" on the market :D
We're not talking exotic, hard to get hardware here...
People buying hardware without accelerated 3d cards, expecting accelerated 3d drawing in their user interface are deluded....
Well, for a start, how about the fact that it doesn't run Win32?
Running vista, with full aero interface, etc - my computer's CPU sits on less than 5% use when i'm just moving windows around. Less than Windows XP. Why? Because the video card is doing the work, not my CPU.
My PC is 18 months old.
"Vista capable" means "will run vista". These machines run a version of vista.
If you're too fucking stupid to realise that your shitbox $500 pc won't run the most advanced software on the market, do the world a favour and don't breed... don't go trying to blame others for your own stupidity. Then again, finding a method of blaming others for your own stupidity seems to be a cornerstone of the US legal system...
(cranky this morning)
The sort of thing mentioned in the article makes me embarassed to be downloading linux (to check out the new virtualisation stuff in fedora 6) as i type this.
Why? Because they're a bunch of fuckwits, that's why. All that sort of blind "evangelism" does is make teh linux community look like a bunch of raving loonies with no idea when it comes to actually getting things done in the real world. I'm quite sure no one at the company in question *cares* about the technical merits of redhat vs oracle's distro. It's a question of having ONE source for support, and not playing telephone tag with a couple of vendors who keep handballing the problem to each other.
In the real world, being able to deal with ONE vendor for support on your mission critical database is a godsend...
I've worked for 4 companies of various sizes, and been able to get more done in a 2 person organisation than I can in a 2500 employee company simply because in the 2500 employee company, everything needs to go to committee chaired by idiots who have no idea with regards to the problem in question, no one wants to take responsibility, and no one has the balls to make a decision.