WindowsSecrets.com's latest newsletter also has this information. "The secret is that the setup program in Vista's upgrade version will accept an installed copy of XP, W2K, or an unactivated copy of Vista itself as evidence of a previous installation." (Emphasis theirs!) They also address the ethics issues.
Why is this important? Because a clean Vista install is strongly preferred to an in-place upgrade install (munging your existing XP installation so it's now a Vista installation); but Microsoft does not allow this: "you cannot use an upgrade key to perform a clean installation of Windows Vista". This same Microsoft Knowledge Base article then provides a workaround, the same thing discussed by DailyTech and WindowsSecrets: "Start the installation from a compliant version of Windows, such as Windows Vista, Microsoft Windows XP, or Microsoft Windows 2000. After you have started the installation, you can select Custom at the installation choice screen to perform a clean installation."
I'm glad for this particular huge security hole, but it makes me wonder how many more they are.
Someone was telling me about a study that looked into why prescription drugs cost more in the United States than anywhere else. The answer, according to the study, was that American drug prices are high in large part because of all the advertising done for the drugs.
... in business, programmers aren't focussed on speed and efficiency, they're focussed on what their bosses are breathing down their necks about: getting it out the door.
Which means even less emphasis on security.
Berger sounds like a VM-language bigot (or paid ($30K from MS).Net Runtime shill) who doesn't understand how most software is really made...
Seems to me he's a researcher who's noticed that "most software is really made" by C and C++ programmers in a hurry. He's addressing the needs of developers (and users!) of such software.
Let's not worry whether Service-Oriented Architecture is Service Hierarchies for Information Technology. Bring this down the the level of working developers, and you'll find a pretty old trend.
It's not enough to know C++; you have to know ACE. It's not enough to know Ruby; you have to know Rails. It's not enough to know Java; you have to know Struts and Tapestry and Spring and Hibernate and JDO and POJOs and Tomcat and JBoss (or some other application server) and SOAP and REST and JMS and JNI and JNDI and...
Developers are more productive than ever; but developers are spending less time than ever writing code and more time than ever gluing together third party components. More accurately, developers are spending more time than ever learning third party components, and spending time on their care and feeding. (How much time did you spend last week futzing with Log4j configuration files?)
If there's anything at all left after passing this through a BS filter, I think this is it. (If there is anything left....)
Seriously, that trick (pretty much) never works. I remember one project where six developers in a row said, "This code is unmaintainable, it needs to be rewritten from scratch." Think about it: it was rewritten from scratch five times, and each time, the result was still so bad that the next maintainer gave up on it.
Here are some questions for the IT director's boss: When has this director done something like before? How successful was it the previous time(s)? What mistakes were made in those cases that you can learn from this time around? What mistakes were made in the development of your current system that you can learn from this time around?
(Are you risking your job by going over the IT director's head? News flash: your job is already at risk.)
You guys are about to be squeezed seven ways from Sunday.
The IT director is counting on offshore outsourcing to replace the system; it's probably planned as a one-way trip, and (if successful) likely to go that way even if that's not the plan. (The director's job is as likely to be relocated as yours is.)
The offshore guys are calling the technology shots, for their convenience, not your benefit.
Worst of all, the director has given up on maintaining the software; if someone can't manage maintenance, they probably can't manage a major greenfield development project, either.
You're probably psyched about getting to learn new technology. Well, get psyched about this: odds are, the project will fail, the IT director will be fired, his or her successor may be even worse, and you guys will not be fired, but instead will still be left trying to clean up the mess you currently have.
Fight it; you have nothing to lose but a job that's about to get a lot worse.
People have varying opinions on his work, but in this situation, if you can't answer his [objections] you should not rewrite.
Agreed; but what should you do instead?
A good answer can be found here and particularly here: rewrite it a bit at a time, adding unit tests as you write or rewrite code. Like the "rewrite from scratch" plan, you'll spend a lot of time working on functionality you already have. Unlike that plan, you'll have a system with all the functionality and increasing quality, rather than one system with decreasing quality and another with partial functionality (and probably no better quality, but that's another comment).
Get rid of 90% of the Process that goes between writing the code and getting it checked in.... get rid of the process that has people working at 3AM on Sunday morning NOT to fix bugs, NOT to write features, NOT to make the product more stable, but only to move marbles from one coffee can to another coffee can....
Because that's where all the time is going, and that's why people working on Vista are closing their doors and literally weeping in frustration at their desks.
There's a continuum between "cowboy coders" and process paralysis. Sounds as if Microsoft has moved too far towards one of the extremes.
Could you describe such a "business opportunity" to people if you only had ten seconds with them in an elevator? Probably, especially if the VC in question was playing a mobile phone game at the time.
The article says, "The security firm, Symantec, has given this worm a critical warning and states that this worm could be as as dangerous as the MyDoom virus." Funny, Symantec's description isn't nearly so dire: "Threat containment: Easy; Removal: Moderate."
The change of the "work for hire" definition was snuck in via a technical amendment to The Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act of 1999.
AFAIK, it has not been struck down.
The parent posting is indeed informative; it was all I needed to find this incredibly informative article from August 2000.
It was also enough to turn up this other article from November 2000:
The work-for-hire issue has been a sore point between artists and the recording industry for the past year.
Last year the music labels successfully lobbied to insert into unrelated legislation a clause that prevents copyrights from reverting to their authors. Now, they've agreed with artists to recommend rescinding the change in copyright law.
By adding four words -- "as a sound recording" -- deep within the Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act of 1999, Congress essentially changed the work-for-hire section of the copyright code.
Artists were enraged by what they considered to be back room dealing between the recording industry and Congress. Led by Sheryl Crow and Don Henley, musicians formed a coalition to begin negotiating with the Recording Industry Association of America and the government to repeal the additions.
In October, President Clinton signed into law a bill that removed those four words.
I wish a happy Independence Day to musicians everywhere.
... the wallets of the animators who piece the cartoons together are as thin as the cels they painstakingly paint.
I was surprised to hear anime makers still do this. Disney started scanning inked sketches, then coloring them on computers, maybe a decade ago. The only hand colored cels Disney makes these days are those specifically for sale to collectors and tourists.
This move has a clear downside: it eliminates a whole class of entry-level jobs available to those who want to enter the industry.
Any thoughts on the disadvantages (or advantages) in terms of quality?
Well, if you want to be technical about it, it's not "Broken" C++ ABI, but a "Finally fixed, even though that makes it no longer bug-for-bug compatible with older GCC C++ ABI's"...
Granted.
As I understand it, they've been working towards a more standards compliant C++ implementation, and that's why the binary compatibility gets lost.
I understand they do it reluctantly, and only with good reason. I'm just depressed at how often it's happened.
I am, though, hoping that there was NOT a loss of compatibility between the 3.3.3 that I'm using now and the 3.4 series.
Since none of the 3.3.x change logs have said anything to this effect, and since the gcc guys like to only break compatibility at fairly major release points, I think you're in the same boat I'm in. Care for a bailing bucket?
Broken C++ ABI ... again
on
GCC 3.4.0 Released
·
· Score: 4, Informative
They broke binary compatibility in gcc 3.0, and again in 3.2, and now in 3.4.
What do you think the outlook is for binary compatibility with 3.6?
I still own a laptop for doing laptop-y things.... But when it comes to going away for a couple of days, travelling around and making notes or working on a short story, the Dana is far more portable/usable than the laptop -- and the Treo 600 is just about good enough to use for responding to email. Between them they weigh (and, if lost, cost) half as much as the laptop, not to mention having double or more the battery life.
Waiting until farmer comes out to the henhouse is way, way too late.
What he said. The best time to look for a job, is when you have a job. Start looking. (And spend a small percentage of your time looking on the job boards. The majority of job offers -- maybe the vast majority -- come through personal networks, not electronic ones.)
You underestimate the influence of Ken Karl and the rest of the Microsoft employees that were involved in the publishing of Asheron's Call 1 and 2.
Ken Karl is known for taking the development updates and content additions in the direction that Microsoft wanted to take. If you look at Asheron's Call 2, you will find that a lot (IIRC) of the design choices were not done by Turbine, but rather heavily influenced by Microsoft. Also, when Ken was appointed head of AC1 over at MS, things started to take a different turn in regards to game balance mainly in the realm of awards.
We find it extremely important that our developers are free to code and code only. The project managers will do all the tedious work surround programming, such as documentation, attend meetings, debugging, research...
This is what Brooks, in The Mythical Man Month, called a "chief programmer" team. Coplien talks about a "mercenary analyst" who's similar to one of your project managers.
I've known Alan for years. I don't think I know anyone that so regularly credits other people for important ideas, work, insights and papers - even when people are trying to credit him with said idea.
Sorry; I wasn't at all trying to leave the impression Dr. Kay claims credit for what he's not responsible for. And he's certainly responsible for enough to secure his place in the history of computer software, and to earn the respect of other programmers.
He's just a little... opinionated... about which ideas and work are worth proudly taking credit for, and which are boneheaded.
Slashdot Mirror
WindowsSecrets.com's latest newsletter also has this information. "The secret is that the setup program in Vista's upgrade version will accept an installed copy of XP, W2K, or an unactivated copy of Vista itself as evidence of a previous installation." (Emphasis theirs!) They also address the ethics issues.
Why is this important? Because a clean Vista install is strongly preferred to an in-place upgrade install (munging your existing XP installation so it's now a Vista installation); but Microsoft does not allow this: "you cannot use an upgrade key to perform a clean installation of Windows Vista". This same Microsoft Knowledge Base article then provides a workaround, the same thing discussed by DailyTech and WindowsSecrets: "Start the installation from a compliant version of Windows, such as Windows Vista, Microsoft Windows XP, or Microsoft Windows 2000. After you have started the installation, you can select Custom at the installation choice screen to perform a clean installation."
I'm glad for this particular huge security hole, but it makes me wonder how many more they are.
Someone was telling me about a study that looked into why prescription drugs cost more in the United States than anywhere else. The answer, according to the study, was that American drug prices are high in large part because of all the advertising done for the drugs.
Anyone have more details?
Let's not worry whether Service-Oriented Architecture is Service Hierarchies for Information Technology. Bring this down the the level of working developers, and you'll find a pretty old trend.
...
It's not enough to know C++; you have to know ACE. It's not enough to know Ruby; you have to know Rails. It's not enough to know Java; you have to know Struts and Tapestry and Spring and Hibernate and JDO and POJOs and Tomcat and JBoss (or some other application server) and SOAP and REST and JMS and JNI and JNDI and
Developers are more productive than ever; but developers are spending less time than ever writing code and more time than ever gluing together third party components. More accurately, developers are spending more time than ever learning third party components, and spending time on their care and feeding. (How much time did you spend last week futzing with Log4j configuration files?)
If there's anything at all left after passing this through a BS filter, I think this is it. (If there is anything left....)
(I looked at mine; it was closer to uniform than I'd perceived. There's also a "Skip Count", but it's blank for all my songs.)
Seriously, that trick (pretty much) never works. I remember one project where six developers in a row said, "This code is unmaintainable, it needs to be rewritten from scratch." Think about it: it was rewritten from scratch five times, and each time, the result was still so bad that the next maintainer gave up on it.
Here are some questions for the IT director's boss: When has this director done something like before? How successful was it the previous time(s)? What mistakes were made in those cases that you can learn from this time around? What mistakes were made in the development of your current system that you can learn from this time around?
(Are you risking your job by going over the IT director's head? News flash: your job is already at risk.)
You guys are about to be squeezed seven ways from Sunday.
You're probably psyched about getting to learn new technology. Well, get psyched about this: odds are, the project will fail, the IT director will be fired, his or her successor may be even worse, and you guys will not be fired, but instead will still be left trying to clean up the mess you currently have.
Fight it; you have nothing to lose but a job that's about to get a lot worse.
A good answer can be found here and particularly here: rewrite it a bit at a time, adding unit tests as you write or rewrite code. Like the "rewrite from scratch" plan, you'll spend a lot of time working on functionality you already have. Unlike that plan, you'll have a system with all the functionality and increasing quality, rather than one system with decreasing quality and another with partial functionality (and probably no better quality, but that's another comment).
"That's a nice looking monitor ... what, that's the whole computer? Wow!"
Could you describe such a "business opportunity" to people if you only had ten seconds with them in an elevator? Probably, especially if the VC in question was playing a mobile phone game at the time.
Use the Firesomething extension: "Modifies the product name in the browser titlebar, Help menu, and About dialog titlebar."
The article says, "The security firm, Symantec, has given this worm a critical warning and states that this worm could be as as dangerous as the MyDoom virus." Funny, Symantec's description isn't nearly so dire: "Threat containment: Easy; Removal: Moderate."
It was also enough to turn up this other article from November 2000:I wish a happy Independence Day to musicians everywhere.
The article is saying artists' pay is decreasing at exactly the same time the films are making more money from merchandising.
This move has a clear downside: it eliminates a whole class of entry-level jobs available to those who want to enter the industry.
Any thoughts on the disadvantages (or advantages) in terms of quality?
They broke binary compatibility in gcc 3.0, and again in 3.2, and now in 3.4.
What do you think the outlook is for binary compatibility with 3.6?
Here
I was reviwing resumes just the other day. Stuff that really gets to me:
...": as opposed to "seeking a position where I can read Slashdot all day"?
...": I'm supposed to believe you were responsible?
"Seeking a challenging position doing
"Excelent comunication skiils." (I haven't seen exactly that one, but I've seen close.)
"Xxx is a worldwide leader
Misspellings in experience, e.g., "Microsoft Steal Head" (Steelhead was router software in Windows NT 4.0)
"Excellent debugging / problem solving / communications skills": in your humble opinion?
And my favorite of all: "Contact me for resume."
Fascinating, and potentially very, very cool.
You don't have a New Jersey office, do you?
He's just a little