This does not appear to be a service pack, and the target builds listed for the hotfix are only IE 5.5 SP2 and 6, so you'll need to head here to get yer SP and then install the hotfix (get directly to it from here).
It seems unlikely that the SP2 for 5.5 includes this as of right now, although it will eventually (I know sometimes I'll download an SP and take a few days to actually install it). Check your versions before you plunge your box into browser hell =)
Regardless of whether or not this is a good idea (I have my doubts about most things the W3C does these days, but still), their decision to go mailing list is IMO crappy. ML's are nice for people who don't have much to say, but for real, down-to-earth continuous and semi-real time discussion and feedback nothing beats newsgroups. I'm not suggesting they set up a new Usenet hierarchy (or even use an existing one), but I'd think that if they can host a ML they can sure as heck put up an NNTP server and do their thing there. They have to moderate anyway, so there's no difference.
Not to go OT here, but who really thinks the different OSS mailing lists are a better medium than a good ol' newsgroup?
For the record, I wasn't suggesting that the banks were victims of the big bad corrupt mexican government - not at all. They were all in cahoots at one time or another. You seem to know about all this. Remember the director of Banca Cremi that had to hide in Spain or get busted for financial fraud?
As for the independence of the monetary boards from the government, yes, that's beggining to look better every day. Under president Zedillo the Finance minister was given a lot more leeway than in all previous administrations (at least that I remember), and I see this trend being continued and expanded under Fox.
Here's hoping that Mexico can one day be a lot more than a banana republic with make believe banks =)
... has been a mess since it was nationalized in 1982. Basically, one day all the investments companies like Bank Of America and Citi had in Mexico back then was for all practical purposes stolen, and the country paid the price for the next 15 years - no investment institutions would do business there no matter how good the odds were.
Things have gotten better over the last few years, where now they're at the point of allowing foreign companies to acquire what was once the "pride" of the mexican financial system, Banamex (mentioned in the article). The problem is that Banamex was supremely in bed with the ruling party, and thus it can still do whatever the heck it pleases. Having said that, US law should hopefully shoot them down in this sad case.
FWIW, the mexican 'fed' is technically not the Banco De Mexico, but the board of governors headed by the Minister of Finance and the governor of the bank itself. For many years this 'bank' was really just a money production factory, back in the golden days of the banana republic mindset when the government printed more money if it suddenly ran out for some reason. 40% inflation baby!
Given the abundance of galaxy-sized egos at Microsoft (especially when you start approaching the top), are you at all worried that your ability to deal with these people will be hampered due to plain and simple personality clashes (never mind the natural reticence to even talk to you)? Or are you expecting that your mandate (if and when it comes) will be enough?
But whatever you do, DO NOT USE WHAT I SAY AS LEGAL ADVICE. If you have a legal problem, get a lawyer.
Sorry, I will now sue you. For no better reason than your post. You've damaged me. Or my data. Or my computer. Or my hamster. Or something.
I'm sure you have at least a couple of hundred bucks in bank account(s), which you'll be more than happy to settle with instead of going to court and fighting it out. Life sux, doesn't it.
Just what we need: a geek/h^xx0r with legal skills. I'm sure this is what Darwin was mumbling about before he died.
To those posters that have been complaining about MT's laconic answers, consider that the man's first language is obviously not English. He's an Italian living in Brazil, fer sakes.
Plus, I'd rather have concise "yes" and "no" than "well, let me start by talking about my childhood..." or "I did not have sex with that woman" deals that we see all too often in these interviews.
if i were a passenger, i would love to play wolfenstein while on a roadtrip.
No doubt you would.
Hey is that... hmmm...
on
Dashboard Linux
·
· Score: 1, Redundant
I can't tell a lot from the screenshots other than a default Win desktop with some Winamp shortcuts. I was wondering if this is that "Mobile Windows" thing from Microsoft that is supposed to be specific for automobiles? OTOH this looks more like a standard small-footprint PC than anything else.
If so then it's probably nothing new - just clever wiring and some GPS software.
I have to say though, the keyboard seems mighty stupid. And games??? I mean, maybe in a traffic jam but I can't see the point.
Devices like these need to be voice controlled, if anything. Actually, someone needs to come up with an input device that can be mounted in the steering wheel and functions as both a mouse and basic keyboard, maybe even support for gestures and so on.
Oh, and definitely put the display in a HUD or something. More people have died from looking down to change the radio station than hit by trains at intersections =)
Repeat after me: slashdot is not one person. Slashdot is not one person. They don't have to all agree and be logically consistant.
You seem to have this whole double personality thing pat down. Kudos unlimited to you. Damn, and here I was thinking this site was entirely something else. Wow.
If you want to point out logical problems in posters' philosophies, you need to do so by linking to a post where they say one thing and linking to a post where they say the oposite. And this is best done in reply to one of their messages, not as a parent post to a story.
How's this Mr. Rationalization? Does that work for you?
If you don't understand this, you are stupid, or you are a troll
Let me put this as delicately as possible - Fuck You.
). I always complain about sysadmins who don't install the latest security patches, regardless of OS. If it appears I complain about IIS sysadmins more than Unix sysadmins, it's only because I get that opportunity more often...
No, I'm not trolling. And no, you obviously did not get the point I was trying to make. And I wasn't thinking about you specifically, so calm down or you're going to pop a coronary. Or something.
I had made a "hard" association of vbs with notepad to avoid viruses (via winfile, so registry entries would not over write my association). The installer broke (or re-enabled it, if you prefer) that association.
Grrrrrr.
That's because it reinstalled the Windows Scripting Host.
Open the registry entry for all script files (WSF, VBS, JS and so on) and set the default action (on the root of the registry tree for the file type) to EDIT instead of OPEN. All you ever get when a script worm hits are tons of instances of Notepad. This is not affected by updates to the WSH, which only looks to see if the file associations are correct, not which one of the shell commands is the default.
If you think about it, this is the cheapest possible anti virus agent designed specifically for script worms =)
Color me silly here and all, but most of the time the teeming masses are not criticizing Microsoft for releasing a buggy web server they're banging on the IIS SysAdmins for not patching their systems. And here we have 30% of all scanned SSH servers wide open due to a dumb bug that has been documented for ages and ages?
C'mon guys. Either clean up your act or stop being the first ones to throw the stone.
We're not talking about a centralized personal information system. We're talking about a authentication mechanism.
Not when you listen to the party line at Microsoft, no. They're selling it as an all-encompassing "digital wallet", whatever the heck that means. The fact that you can opt not to include your children's vaccination history and a list of all your dogs since 3rd grade makes no difference. It's what they want it to be that matters. Ditto for the Liberty Alliance.
But what is clear is there is obviously a need for a centralized authentication mechanism. People are frustrated and tired of trying to manage 50 different username/password combo's just to register for services.
I don't think that's clear at all. The normal internet user visits no more than 10 websites consistently - why do they need to manage 50 accounts? Again, it's a solution for a problem that does not exist.
I think if you'd actually bother to take the time to understand what either of these offer you would go "Hey cool, yeah I can see a need for that!" I know that's my general feeling.
I'm amazed that you think it's cool - most rational, intelligent people think it's just a way to excercise more control over our online habits. But don't let that stop you from flaming me, though.
I just don't get all this. We do not need a centralized personal information system. That much is apparent. Not from Microsoft and not from anybody else.
These companies are doing all this stuff just for the sake of *doing* it, to spite and fight Microsoft. Nothing more.
While I'm not blind to the fact that whoever controls all this information will have a measure of power, it remains to be seen if people actually buy into the whole thing. Microsoft may claim 88 gazillion-trillion Passport subscribers, but how many of those are really one-time half-filled and fake entries used to get a temporary spamming Hotmail account? How many people are actually dumb enough to store their credit card information in a Passport (or whatever)? With all the negetive press e-commerce site hack-ins have received in the past few years I'd be surprised this constitutes any significant percentage of Passport users, even among clueless computer users.
The whole industry is overestimating this supposedly "next killer thing" for the Internet. But, predictively enough, the lemmings have all decided to jump over the cliff together. Well then, let them be squashed together.
I know about those as well, but GeoShell is probably the best implementation I've seen.
We're already cluttered with replacement shells ! The problem with that under win32 is the undocumented APIs, not the coding skills.
Oh, I beg to differ. You're just parroting the common wisdom around here. There's undocumented stuff, sure. But it's all at the kernel level (see www.sysinternals.com). The shell is perfectly documented. Visit MSDN one of these days and take a look for yourself. No, the real problems are I see are:
Most of the shell stuff is COM-based. Ergo, you need to understand COM to implement services (such as folder extensions and so on) that applications expect. That implies C++, not C
The whole shell implementation is completely screwed up in Win9x. Windows 2000 was the first real, robust version of the shell that wasn't "piled on" after an IE install. That complicates compatibility with other versions of the OS, to say the least.
Trust me, I know what I'm talking about. I've written several shell extensions and they're a pain to get right.
If someone creates a good shell for Win32 that gives Explorer a run for its money then things are going to get interesting. Maybe that's the way to go, instead of trying to sell Mom & Pop on a whole new OS from scratch.
As an experienced (~10 year) developer who has spent most of his time in the Win32 world and a little bit in the *nix court, this is good news for me.
A lot of people think Windows is inflexible because it does not have a layered windowing system ala X, but this is not an issue if someone wants to write a shell for the OS to replace Explorer (see http://www.geoshellx.com for a very basic implementation). It's not easy, but it's not forbidden or blocked by the OS architecture in any way. If someone wants to bring this type of good stuff to Windows, I think everyone will be more than happy.
Let's create a fun and exciting parallel universe based on your theory:
- Apple is now be the dominant hardware and software company. We all run Taligent/Pink 2004 on our desktops, on which the default color scheme is either Hot Fruity Pink or Wobbly Aqua.
- Everybody is lugging around foofy, colorful, ovoid laptops that whisper sweet nothings in our ears when opened and closed.
- The only case color you can't buy in a "computer" these days is beige.
- "Send him to the trashcan" is a very popular slang term among women.
- Motorola is the biggest chipmaker in the world. Would you believe they're almost up to 300MHz now? Wow!
- The only networking protocol is called "AppleTalk". It's kinda kewl, though.
- The only database system available is made by Claris, and it's not relational. Maybe in a few years.
- Microsoft is a little-known company still selling a character-based OS known as "MS-DOS", which we are all running (of course) because we're hardcore h^xx0rz (of course) and we don't want any Apple crap.
- Very few people can afford a "computer", since entry-level models are worth $5,000 before taxes. "Computers" are social status symbols.
- Bill Gates is worth, oh, a couple of million.
- Steve Jobs is the richest man in the world.
- The US Justice Department is curently prosecuting Apple for their monopolistic practices. But Steve Jobs has now promised to donate some of his very expensive equipment and software to all the schools in the nation, so they're letting him go (thus we come full circle).
- Slashdot is full of stories about the dreaded "Macinto$h". Wozniak looks kinda weird as a borg, but hey.
There's the OS for you, typical piece of untested fucked up crap.
Oh, wait. This is Linux we're talking about. Hmmm. OK, I know:
Go Linus! Go Alan! Go kernel Gods! We're sure this is a very minor thing that will be fixed in no time! It doesn't matter!! We can take anything!! We love you!!!
I hope you don't expect us to just simply take your word for it, right? You need to either provide some proof or fess up and admit you've been astronomically had.
If you provide proof (which I think is not an unfair request) then I will eat my criticism with celery and become a troll for all eternity.
And please don't give us the "well, he would be in danger if I told you where he was" deal, especially considering that his "opressors" are all but destroyed by now.
I hope you excercise some open source journalism on this one.
Slashdot Mirror
Ooops, thanks for catching that.
This does not appear to be a service pack, and the target builds listed for the hotfix are only IE 5.5 SP2 and 6, so you'll need to head here to get yer SP and then install the hotfix (get directly to it from here).
It seems unlikely that the SP2 for 5.5 includes this as of right now, although it will eventually (I know sometimes I'll download an SP and take a few days to actually install it). Check your versions before you plunge your box into browser hell =)
Regardless of whether or not this is a good idea (I have my doubts about most things the W3C does these days, but still), their decision to go mailing list is IMO crappy. ML's are nice for people who don't have much to say, but for real, down-to-earth continuous and semi-real time discussion and feedback nothing beats newsgroups. I'm not suggesting they set up a new Usenet hierarchy (or even use an existing one), but I'd think that if they can host a ML they can sure as heck put up an NNTP server and do their thing there. They have to moderate anyway, so there's no difference.
Not to go OT here, but who really thinks the different OSS mailing lists are a better medium than a good ol' newsgroup?
This morning's $0.02
For the record, I wasn't suggesting that the banks were victims of the big bad corrupt mexican government - not at all. They were all in cahoots at one time or another. You seem to know about all this. Remember the director of Banca Cremi that had to hide in Spain or get busted for financial fraud?
As for the independence of the monetary boards from the government, yes, that's beggining to look better every day. Under president Zedillo the Finance minister was given a lot more leeway than in all previous administrations (at least that I remember), and I see this trend being continued and expanded under Fox.
Here's hoping that Mexico can one day be a lot more than a banana republic with make believe banks =)
... has been a mess since it was nationalized in 1982. Basically, one day all the investments companies like Bank Of America and Citi had in Mexico back then was for all practical purposes stolen, and the country paid the price for the next 15 years - no investment institutions would do business there no matter how good the odds were.
Things have gotten better over the last few years, where now they're at the point of allowing foreign companies to acquire what was once the "pride" of the mexican financial system, Banamex (mentioned in the article). The problem is that Banamex was supremely in bed with the ruling party, and thus it can still do whatever the heck it pleases. Having said that, US law should hopefully shoot them down in this sad case.
FWIW, the mexican 'fed' is technically not the Banco De Mexico, but the board of governors headed by the Minister of Finance and the governor of the bank itself. For many years this 'bank' was really just a money production factory, back in the golden days of the banana republic mindset when the government printed more money if it suddenly ran out for some reason. 40% inflation baby!
Given the abundance of galaxy-sized egos at Microsoft (especially when you start approaching the top), are you at all worried that your ability to deal with these people will be hampered due to plain and simple personality clashes (never mind the natural reticence to even talk to you)? Or are you expecting that your mandate (if and when it comes) will be enough?
Sorry, I will now sue you. For no better reason than your post. You've damaged me. Or my data. Or my computer. Or my hamster. Or something.
I'm sure you have at least a couple of hundred bucks in bank account(s), which you'll be more than happy to settle with instead of going to court and fighting it out. Life sux, doesn't it.
Just what we need: a geek/h^xx0r with legal skills. I'm sure this is what Darwin was mumbling about before he died.
Maybe it was taken a couple of kernels ago. You know what they say about Internet time =)
To those posters that have been complaining about MT's laconic answers, consider that the man's first language is obviously not English. He's an Italian living in Brazil, fer sakes.
Plus, I'd rather have concise "yes" and "no" than "well, let me start by talking about my childhood..." or "I did not have sex with that woman" deals that we see all too often in these interviews.
if i were a passenger, i would love to play wolfenstein while on a roadtrip.
No doubt you would.
I can't tell a lot from the screenshots other than a default Win desktop with some Winamp shortcuts. I was wondering if this is that "Mobile Windows" thing from Microsoft that is supposed to be specific for automobiles? OTOH this looks more like a standard small-footprint PC than anything else.
If so then it's probably nothing new - just clever wiring and some GPS software.
I have to say though, the keyboard seems mighty stupid. And games??? I mean, maybe in a traffic jam but I can't see the point.
Devices like these need to be voice controlled, if anything. Actually, someone needs to come up with an input device that can be mounted in the steering wheel and functions as both a mouse and basic keyboard, maybe even support for gestures and so on.
Oh, and definitely put the display in a HUD or something. More people have died from looking down to change the radio station than hit by trains at intersections =)
OMG, no. The Stilgar character looked like an overweight wheezer that could barely move. The Stilgar in the movie was far more believable.
You seem to have this whole double personality thing pat down. Kudos unlimited to you. Damn, and here I was thinking this site was entirely something else. Wow.
If you want to point out logical problems in posters' philosophies, you need to do so by linking to a post where they say one thing and linking to a post where they say the oposite. And this is best done in reply to one of their messages, not as a parent post to a story.
How's this Mr. Rationalization? Does that work for you?
If you don't understand this, you are stupid, or you are a troll
Let me put this as delicately as possible - Fuck You.
You're kidding, yes? Did you read the article at all?
). I always complain about sysadmins who don't install the latest security patches, regardless of OS. If it appears I complain about IIS sysadmins more than Unix sysadmins, it's only because I get that opportunity more often...
No, I'm not trolling. And no, you obviously did not get the point I was trying to make. And I wasn't thinking about you specifically, so calm down or you're going to pop a coronary. Or something.
I had made a "hard" association of vbs with notepad to avoid viruses (via winfile, so registry entries would not over write my association). The installer broke (or re-enabled it, if you prefer) that association. Grrrrrr.
That's because it reinstalled the Windows Scripting Host.
Open the registry entry for all script files (WSF, VBS, JS and so on) and set the default action (on the root of the registry tree for the file type) to EDIT instead of OPEN. All you ever get when a script worm hits are tons of instances of Notepad. This is not affected by updates to the WSH, which only looks to see if the file associations are correct, not which one of the shell commands is the default.
If you think about it, this is the cheapest possible anti virus agent designed specifically for script worms =)
Color me silly here and all, but most of the time the teeming masses are not criticizing Microsoft for releasing a buggy web server they're banging on the IIS SysAdmins for not patching their systems. And here we have 30% of all scanned SSH servers wide open due to a dumb bug that has been documented for ages and ages?
C'mon guys. Either clean up your act or stop being the first ones to throw the stone.
Not when you listen to the party line at Microsoft, no. They're selling it as an all-encompassing "digital wallet", whatever the heck that means. The fact that you can opt not to include your children's vaccination history and a list of all your dogs since 3rd grade makes no difference. It's what they want it to be that matters. Ditto for the Liberty Alliance.
But what is clear is there is obviously a need for a centralized authentication mechanism. People are frustrated and tired of trying to manage 50 different username/password combo's just to register for services.
I don't think that's clear at all. The normal internet user visits no more than 10 websites consistently - why do they need to manage 50 accounts? Again, it's a solution for a problem that does not exist.
I think if you'd actually bother to take the time to understand what either of these offer you would go "Hey cool, yeah I can see a need for that!" I know that's my general feeling.
I'm amazed that you think it's cool - most rational, intelligent people think it's just a way to excercise more control over our online habits. But don't let that stop you from flaming me, though.
I just don't get all this. We do not need a centralized personal information system. That much is apparent. Not from Microsoft and not from anybody else.
These companies are doing all this stuff just for the sake of *doing* it, to spite and fight Microsoft. Nothing more.
While I'm not blind to the fact that whoever controls all this information will have a measure of power, it remains to be seen if people actually buy into the whole thing. Microsoft may claim 88 gazillion-trillion Passport subscribers, but how many of those are really one-time half-filled and fake entries used to get a temporary spamming Hotmail account? How many people are actually dumb enough to store their credit card information in a Passport (or whatever)? With all the negetive press e-commerce site hack-ins have received in the past few years I'd be surprised this constitutes any significant percentage of Passport users, even among clueless computer users.
The whole industry is overestimating this supposedly "next killer thing" for the Internet. But, predictively enough, the lemmings have all decided to jump over the cliff together. Well then, let them be squashed together.
We're already cluttered with replacement shells ! The problem with that under win32 is the undocumented APIs, not the coding skills.
Oh, I beg to differ. You're just parroting the common wisdom around here. There's undocumented stuff, sure. But it's all at the kernel level (see www.sysinternals.com). The shell is perfectly documented. Visit MSDN one of these days and take a look for yourself. No, the real problems are I see are:
- Most of the shell stuff is COM-based. Ergo, you need to understand COM to implement services (such as folder extensions and so on) that applications expect. That implies C++, not C
- The whole shell implementation is completely screwed up in Win9x. Windows 2000 was the first real, robust version of the shell that wasn't "piled on" after an IE install. That complicates compatibility with other versions of the OS, to say the least.
Trust me, I know what I'm talking about. I've written several shell extensions and they're a pain to get right.If someone creates a good shell for Win32 that gives Explorer a run for its money then things are going to get interesting. Maybe that's the way to go, instead of trying to sell Mom & Pop on a whole new OS from scratch.
Really. Well perhaps you should talk to these misguided souls and tell them how wrong you think they are.
OTOH, you might also see this as the first step in Open Source domination of the Windows Desktop. Or something.
OTOH, you can also just keep your unintelligent opinions to yourself (and why am I replying to an AC anyway...)
Try to be a bit less of the zealot and think before you post.
As an experienced (~10 year) developer who has spent most of his time in the Win32 world and a little bit in the *nix court, this is good news for me.
A lot of people think Windows is inflexible because it does not have a layered windowing system ala X, but this is not an issue if someone wants to write a shell for the OS to replace Explorer (see http://www.geoshellx.com for a very basic implementation). It's not easy, but it's not forbidden or blocked by the OS architecture in any way. If someone wants to bring this type of good stuff to Windows, I think everyone will be more than happy.
Let's create a fun and exciting parallel universe based on your theory:
- Apple is now be the dominant hardware and software company. We all run Taligent/Pink 2004 on our desktops, on which the default color scheme is either Hot Fruity Pink or Wobbly Aqua.
- Everybody is lugging around foofy, colorful, ovoid laptops that whisper sweet nothings in our ears when opened and closed.
- The only case color you can't buy in a "computer" these days is beige.
- "Send him to the trashcan" is a very popular slang term among women.
- Motorola is the biggest chipmaker in the world. Would you believe they're almost up to 300MHz now? Wow!
- The only networking protocol is called "AppleTalk". It's kinda kewl, though.
- The only database system available is made by Claris, and it's not relational. Maybe in a few years.
- Microsoft is a little-known company still selling a character-based OS known as "MS-DOS", which we are all running (of course) because we're hardcore h^xx0rz (of course) and we don't want any Apple crap.
- Very few people can afford a "computer", since entry-level models are worth $5,000 before taxes. "Computers" are social status symbols.
- Bill Gates is worth, oh, a couple of million.
- Steve Jobs is the richest man in the world.
- The US Justice Department is curently prosecuting Apple for their monopolistic practices. But Steve Jobs has now promised to donate some of his very expensive equipment and software to all the schools in the nation, so they're letting him go (thus we come full circle).
- Slashdot is full of stories about the dreaded "Macinto$h". Wozniak looks kinda weird as a borg, but hey.
... now try to dream less and think more.
There's the OS for you, typical piece of untested fucked up crap.
Oh, wait. This is Linux we're talking about. Hmmm. OK, I know:
Go Linus! Go Alan! Go kernel Gods! We're sure this is a very minor thing that will be fixed in no time! It doesn't matter!! We can take anything!! We love you!!!
Micro$soft sucks! Linux roolz!!!1!!!
OK, now moderate up, si vouz plez.
John,
I hope you don't expect us to just simply take your word for it, right? You need to either provide some proof or fess up and admit you've been astronomically had.
If you provide proof (which I think is not an unfair request) then I will eat my criticism with celery and become a troll for all eternity.
And please don't give us the "well, he would be in danger if I told you where he was" deal, especially considering that his "opressors" are all but destroyed by now.
I hope you excercise some open source journalism on this one.