I noticed a change from the final beta of bootcamp to the production version of bootcamp shipping in Leopard. It appears that windows partitioning is done differently.
In the final bootcamp beta, you could delete and recreate the windows partition during the windows installation and still have a bootable installation of windows. Not so in the new (Leopard) version of bootcamp. If you delete the partition created by bootcamp and re-create the partition using the windows installer, your new install of windows will not boot. This usually results in a "hal.dll" error.
I ran into this problem with an unattended installation of Windows XP - my answer file was configured to delete the existing windows partition and recreate / reformat the partition .
I opened a ticket with Apple support, but I haven't gotten any explanations other than a confirmation of what I observed.
Taken from NJ Transit's web site: History & Structure
Created by the Public Transportation Act of 1979, NJ TRANSIT was established to "acquire, operate and contract for transportation service in the public interest."
In 1980, NJ TRANSIT purchased Transport of New Jersey, the State's largest private bus company at that time. Between 1981-85, the services of several other bus companies were incorporated into NJ TRANSIT Bus Operations, Inc. On January 1, 1983, a second subsidiary, NJ TRANSIT Rail Operations, Inc. was launched to assume operations of commuter rail in the State after Congress ordered Consolidated Rail Corporation (Conrail) to cease its passenger operations. A third subsidiary, NJ TRANSIT Mercer, Inc., was established in 1984 when the agency assumed operation of bus service in the Trenton/Mercer County area. In 1992, following a full reorganization, all three subsidiaries were unified and operations were significantly streamlined.
As stakeholders in NJ TRANSIT, State residents are represented by a seven member Board of Directors, appointed by the Governor. Four members are from the general public and three are State officials. The agency is structured to encourage broad public participation in the formation of transit policy for the State. NJ TRANSIT's board meets monthly at NJ TRANSIT headquarters in Newark. The Governor can override board actions by vetoing the board meeting's minutes.
NJ TRANSIT Corporation's Board selects an Executive Director to administer the entire agency. The Executive Director serves as President of all three subsidiaries (NJ TRANSIT Bus Operations, NJ TRANSIT Rail Operations, Inc. and NJ TRANSIT Mercer, Inc.). In addition, NJ TRANSIT employs a Chief Operating Officer to coordinate operations.
Two transit advisory committees provide the agency with additional input from the public. The North Jersey Transit Advisory Committee and the South Jersey Transit Advisory Committee are each comprised of fourteen unsalaried members. Members of the North Jersey Transit Advisory Committee serve four-year terms. Members of the South Jersey Transit Advisory Committee serve three-year terms.
It is a government mandated corporation. NJ transit is clearly not a federal institution, and it services three states (NY, NJ, and PA), so what state Government agency pays NJ transit employees?
It's a private corporation - one mandated by law - the worst type of corporation you can have. Corporations typically have to respond to market conditions - as a corporation mandated by law, they are immune to market forces.
Here's some more info:
Company Info for njtransit.com:
New Jersey Transit 1 Penn Plaza E Newark, NJ 07105 US
can't seem to make money on the current economies of rail travel. Even at the lowest estimates ($5 million a track mile) I doubt either of these rail systems could make this technology profitable.
Public transportation all over the world requires government funding. Here in the US we seem to think that private companies and capitalism are the answer for everything. Unfortunately for us, this system usually enriches a select few people, provides goods and services that are mediocre at best, and cost quite a bit of money for the users of those goods and services.
The Northeast is particularly bad. Years ago, my wife was commuting to North Jersey - for the cost of her monthly train pass, (nj transit and path) and her monthly parking pass - she could have bought a nice BMW. (Instead she drove a VW Jetta to the train station).
If these companies can't make the current economics work with that kind of revenue, maglev has no hope of ever becoming a reality.
"They wouldn't be licensing Windows desktop if they didn't have the intent to deploy Vista"
Actually, yes "they" would.
If you are buying machines for any reason, why wouldn't you buy the Vista licensing and use your downgrade rights to run XP? The volume licenses cost the same - why limit your choices?
Microsoft really needs to start listening to their customers.
Removing the "everyone" permission at the root of a disk formatted with the NTFS file system would have prevented that "hack" from working. My guess is this shortcut would only work on a machine formatted with a FAT32 file system.
Contrary to popular belief, windows can be made secure, but it does require some work and reduction in functionality.....as do most other operating systems.
Microsoft has traditionally bought software companies that could augment its software portfolio. Buying a company that has a product that you lack is not new to the software industry or any other.
This time it is different. Microsoft is not buying "software ideas". Microsoft, like most software companies, is slowly realizing that software will become a commodity in the next 20 years. Operating systems, applications....etc will all be, more or less, equal to end users and businesses.
What microsoft is doing by buying "open-source" companies is buying a business model. Microsoft hasn't yet figured out that you can make money while giving something away for free. That model is completely foreign to Microsoft. They are going to buy companies that have established customers and use them as their springboard into the software "services" business.
The music industry is also going to this model (slowly) - give away the music to sell tickets and t-shirts. Microsoft's managers are not stupid - they know the days of selling shrink-wrapped boxed software are ending.
Buying volume license copies and then having to activate each copy, or run a key management server is a pain in the ass. My company still has not upgraded to Vista and does not plan to, unless the draconian activation policies are reversed.
We are, however, buying tons of Macs and only running windows where necessary. Web-based apps and terminal server are dramatically reducing the need for a windows desktop machine in the business world.
Microsoft has everything to lose and little to gain - making products harder to buy, deploy, and use is not a wise strategy.
Most industries (finance, law, medicine, accounting...etc) would laugh at the idea of IT systems that have no audit trail. In the worst case scenario, the business could be held liable for damages (sometimes criminally) if certain controls and audit functions are not in place.
The fact that these machines were ordered, designed, and implemented without these controls shows incompetence (or corruption) at every level of the process - from voting administration, to the manufacture, sale, and installation of the equipment.
Those who allowed this to happen, should be the subject of investigation by the Department of Justice. Unfortunately, we may have to wait for another administration to do the right thing.
802.11 networks were never designed for large area deployments. Wi-Fi was designed to be used in short range applications - a nice convenience that augments the functionality of a wired LAN.
I've done a few medium-size wireless deployments and the core problem with 802.11 is that you need to drag a wire to each access-point....and in a city, you need a lot of access-points. Management of these huge networks is a solvable problem (Meru and Cisco have done a pretty good job with that).
Sure there are mesh-network technologies like Ricochet (remember them?), and WiMax is around the corner - these technologies are actually designed to cover very large areas to minimize the amount of access-points and cable runs. These technologies might be more promising.
In the end, municipalities need to fork over the cash, and implement the correct technology to make this succeed. Without cash and good decisions, these wi-fi projects are doomed.
These would be nice to roll out to corporate users, but these requirements are a necessity.
Full exchange support - imap is not enough.
EVDO this implies a verizon version of the iPhone exists. Companies have big cell phone contracts, typically with one cell phone company. Starting a new corporate account with a different service provider for one phone is not an easy sell.
User replaceable battery - one big DUH. When your average CxO decides to talk on his phone all weekend, it is a nice thing for him/her to carry an extra battery.
I think I also remember that only one side of the cable should be grounded. Something about inducing voltages between components that could be at different potentials.
While I was a consultant years ago during college, a co-worker had an old 486 machine and had Winamp playing a file off of a 3.5" floppy disc and it worked perfectly.
Sure, video (especially HD content) has much higher bandwidth demands, but local video playback has NEVER been a problem on any machine I've owned in the last 10 years. I remember IBM thinkpads with PII 266 processors that could easily play DVDs.
The only explanation for Vista's media playback design decision must be to compensate for the huge processing overhead that Vista creates. Poor fundamental design decisions necessitated hacks like this prioritization scheme.
I'm assuming most of the slashdot crowd is involved in IT somehow - supporting it, implementing it, or managing it. How many people in IT would actually make a platform decision based on a marketing web site?
I've been in IT for 15 years, and my answer to that question is NO ONE! I've sat on IT steering committee meetings for a bunch of companies and platform choices were NEVER made based on marketing web sites. Platform choices (99% of the time) are driven by application vendors.
Microsoft has a bigger problem. They don't really know how or why their customers buy products. Microsoft could quit marketing every product they make tomorrow and it would not affect their sales at all.
It seems that Microsoft's management can't find their butts with both hands these days.
are designed for this type of system. If your application is secure enough to live on the internet, then it is secure enough to be used on an intranet with thin clients.
Most thin clients out of the box boot with a low-privilege account. You can even set up some to "reimage" their flash memory on each boot (or boot disklessly from a central image server). Think someone compromised a system? Lockdown passwords on your master image and reboot all the terminals. No changes should be able to be made to the system without elevating to root or administrator.
Seriously - carving up your network and firewalling everything two ways to sunday is great, but this problem could have been simply solved with a little bit of thought ahead of implementation.
A government regulator at a former job once told me that "You can outsource the work, but not the responsibility". Those are wise words that the managers of that hospital should heed.
Companies seem to think that if they hire someone else to do the work, they are not responsible for the quality of that work.
Take Mattel - they have Chinese companies building their products, but not inspecting their work. Thanks to their lack of vendor controls, kids are choking on parts, and getting lead poisoning.
Companies need to realize that in-house IT is the only way to ensure that your internal standards are met. Outsourcing has its place, but strict quality control / vendor management policies need to be in place to ensure the work is of good quality.
Does the IETF even realize the scope of this project? Ignore everything else and just look at every ISP in the world....all of them....the big ones and the mom-and-pop shops.
Now every single one of them must have routing gear (and all the associated monitoring equipment) capable of IPv6, and the ability to manage the massive address space. I know ISPs right now that can barely handle their IPv4 infrastructure that has been in place for a decade. Now you are asking them, in the space of a few years to throw out their existing infrastructure and move completely to IPv6? That's rich.....
If the ISPs don't convert (or can't quickly convert) then no one else will.
These idiots are targeting 18-35 year olds - are they (theater owners) really that stupid?
Hey idiots - those are the only people paying to get into your theater! I haven't seen a movie in a theater (or bought an $8.00 box of popcorn) in over 10 years thanks to my home theater system.
Anyway - good riddance. Every theater in America could go out of business tomorrow and I wouldn't miss them.
No one is complaining about higher prices passed on to consumers from corporate America thanks to these regulations.
People are still buying huge homes, Hummers, $3.00/gallon gas, plasma TVs and cell phones. The number of new BMWs on the road is absolutely astonishing.
As much as corporate America complained about these regs, they did not seem to have much of an impact. I suspect that these regs could be put into place in Government with existing employees and with little overall tax increase.
The bottom line is the regulators don't want the same rules to apply to them. Hypocrisy at its finest.
Sarbanes-Oxley defines many internal controls for publicly traded companies. Many of these controls directly apply to IT departments and their disaster recovery/business continuity plans.
The Gramm Leach Bliley Act defines how financial firms handle and use non-public information. It may be time to expand that to ALL organizations that store and use non-public information.
It is time to insist that Government agencies also implement the types of controls mandated by SARBOX and GLBA. If those controls are so important, why doesn't our Government implement the same exact policies?
We need legislation that protects ALL non-public information regardless of who stores it or why it is used.
Windows XP professional will continute to be supported through 2012 or so. I recently bought licenses for a bunch of new machines - Vista licenses, but I used my "downgrade rights" to actually deploy Windows XP pro. I'm sure i'm not the only IT manager doing this. This type of purchasing and deployment may actually inflate sales of Vista.
The reasons were quite simple. Vista has no real benefits to justify the headaches of mandatory activation, V2 profile incompatibility, and absolutely awful network file copy performance.
I'm sure the file copy bug will be resolved in time, but the first two probably won't be.
Slashdot Mirror
I noticed a change from the final beta of bootcamp to the production version of bootcamp shipping in Leopard. It appears that windows partitioning is done differently.
In the final bootcamp beta, you could delete and recreate the windows partition during the windows installation and still have a bootable installation of windows. Not so in the new (Leopard) version of bootcamp. If you delete the partition created by bootcamp and re-create the partition using the windows installer, your new install of windows will not boot. This usually results in a "hal.dll" error.
I ran into this problem with an unattended installation of Windows XP - my answer file was configured to delete the existing windows partition and recreate / reformat the partition .
I opened a ticket with Apple support, but I haven't gotten any explanations other than a confirmation of what I observed.
-ted
Taken from NJ Transit's web site:
History & Structure
Created by the Public Transportation Act of 1979, NJ TRANSIT was established to "acquire, operate and contract for transportation service in the public interest."
In 1980, NJ TRANSIT purchased Transport of New Jersey, the State's largest private bus company at that time. Between 1981-85, the services of several other bus companies were incorporated into NJ TRANSIT Bus Operations, Inc. On January 1, 1983, a second subsidiary, NJ TRANSIT Rail Operations, Inc. was launched to assume operations of commuter rail in the State after Congress ordered Consolidated Rail Corporation (Conrail) to cease its passenger operations. A third subsidiary, NJ TRANSIT Mercer, Inc., was established in 1984 when the agency assumed operation of bus service in the Trenton/Mercer County area. In 1992, following a full reorganization, all three subsidiaries were unified and operations were significantly streamlined.
As stakeholders in NJ TRANSIT, State residents are represented by a seven member Board of Directors, appointed by the Governor. Four members are from the general public and three are State officials. The agency is structured to encourage broad public participation in the formation of transit policy for the State. NJ TRANSIT's board meets monthly at NJ TRANSIT headquarters in Newark. The Governor can override board actions by vetoing the board meeting's minutes.
NJ TRANSIT Corporation's Board selects an Executive Director to administer the entire agency. The Executive Director serves as President of all three subsidiaries (NJ TRANSIT Bus Operations, NJ TRANSIT Rail Operations, Inc. and NJ TRANSIT Mercer, Inc.). In addition, NJ TRANSIT employs a Chief Operating Officer to coordinate operations.
Two transit advisory committees provide the agency with additional input from the public. The North Jersey Transit Advisory Committee and the South Jersey Transit Advisory Committee are each comprised of fourteen unsalaried members. Members of the North Jersey Transit Advisory Committee serve four-year terms. Members of the South Jersey Transit Advisory Committee serve three-year terms.
It is a government mandated corporation. NJ transit is clearly not a federal institution, and it services three states (NY, NJ, and PA), so what state Government agency pays NJ transit employees?
It's a private corporation - one mandated by law - the worst type of corporation you can have. Corporations typically have to respond to market conditions - as a corporation mandated by law, they are immune to market forces.
Here's some more info:
Company Info for njtransit.com:
New Jersey Transit
1 Penn Plaza E
Newark, NJ
07105
US
Phone: +1 973 491 8152
Fax: +1 973 491 7511
mslack [at] njtransit.com
Employees: 100 - 250
Ownership: Private
Revenue: $1 - 10M
Ticker: (No Data)
can't seem to make money on the current economies of rail travel. Even at the lowest estimates ($5 million a track mile) I doubt either of these rail systems could make this technology profitable.
Public transportation all over the world requires government funding. Here in the US we seem to think that private companies and capitalism are the answer for everything. Unfortunately for us, this system usually enriches a select few people, provides goods and services that are mediocre at best, and cost quite a bit of money for the users of those goods and services.
The Northeast is particularly bad. Years ago, my wife was commuting to North Jersey - for the cost of her monthly train pass, (nj transit and path) and her monthly parking pass - she could have bought a nice BMW. (Instead she drove a VW Jetta to the train station).
If these companies can't make the current economics work with that kind of revenue, maglev has no hope of ever becoming a reality.
-ted
And this quote from the article proves it:
"They wouldn't be licensing Windows desktop if they didn't have the intent to deploy Vista"
Actually, yes "they" would.
If you are buying machines for any reason, why wouldn't you buy the Vista licensing and use your downgrade rights to run XP? The volume licenses cost the same - why limit your choices?
Microsoft really needs to start listening to their customers.
-ted
Removing the "everyone" permission at the root of a disk formatted with the NTFS file system would have prevented that "hack" from working. My guess is this shortcut would only work on a machine formatted with a FAT32 file system.
Contrary to popular belief, windows can be made secure, but it does require some work and reduction in functionality.....as do most other operating systems.
-ted
Microsoft has traditionally bought software companies that could augment its software portfolio. Buying a company that has a product that you lack is not new to the software industry or any other.
This time it is different. Microsoft is not buying "software ideas". Microsoft, like most software companies, is slowly realizing that software will become a commodity in the next 20 years. Operating systems, applications....etc will all be, more or less, equal to end users and businesses.
What microsoft is doing by buying "open-source" companies is buying a business model. Microsoft hasn't yet figured out that you can make money while giving something away for free. That model is completely foreign to Microsoft. They are going to buy companies that have established customers and use them as their springboard into the software "services" business.
The music industry is also going to this model (slowly) - give away the music to sell tickets and t-shirts. Microsoft's managers are not stupid - they know the days of selling shrink-wrapped boxed software are ending.
-ted
Buying volume license copies and then having to activate each copy, or run a key management server is a pain in the ass. My company still has not upgraded to Vista and does not plan to, unless the draconian activation policies are reversed.
We are, however, buying tons of Macs and only running windows where necessary. Web-based apps and terminal server are dramatically reducing the need for a windows desktop machine in the business world.
Microsoft has everything to lose and little to gain - making products harder to buy, deploy, and use is not a wise strategy.
-ted
Most industries (finance, law, medicine, accounting...etc) would laugh at the idea of IT systems that have no audit trail. In the worst case scenario, the business could be held liable for damages (sometimes criminally) if certain controls and audit functions are not in place.
The fact that these machines were ordered, designed, and implemented without these controls shows incompetence (or corruption) at every level of the process - from voting administration, to the manufacture, sale, and installation of the equipment.
Those who allowed this to happen, should be the subject of investigation by the Department of Justice. Unfortunately, we may have to wait for another administration to do the right thing.
-ted
802.11 networks were never designed for large area deployments. Wi-Fi was designed to be used in short range applications - a nice convenience that augments the functionality of a wired LAN.
I've done a few medium-size wireless deployments and the core problem with 802.11 is that you need to drag a wire to each access-point....and in a city, you need a lot of access-points. Management of these huge networks is a solvable problem (Meru and Cisco have done a pretty good job with that).
Sure there are mesh-network technologies like Ricochet (remember them?), and WiMax is around the corner - these technologies are actually designed to cover very large areas to minimize the amount of access-points and cable runs. These technologies might be more promising.
In the end, municipalities need to fork over the cash, and implement the correct technology to make this succeed. Without cash and good decisions, these wi-fi projects are doomed.
-ted
These would be nice to roll out to corporate users, but these requirements are a necessity.
Full exchange support - imap is not enough.
EVDO this implies a verizon version of the iPhone exists. Companies have big cell phone contracts, typically with one cell phone company. Starting a new corporate account with a different service provider for one phone is not an easy sell.
User replaceable battery - one big DUH. When your average CxO decides to talk on his phone all weekend, it is a nice thing for him/her to carry an extra battery.
-ted
I can tell you that I spend more time online BECAUSE I am getting less sex.....not the other way around.
-ted
You are correct sir.
I think I also remember that only one side of the cable should be grounded. Something about inducing voltages between components that could be at different potentials.
Or, better yet - run fiber.....no RF there.
-ted
Using STP cable eliminates the possibility of reading stray RF signals if you are that paranoid.
-ted
While I was a consultant years ago during college, a co-worker had an old 486 machine and had Winamp playing a file off of a 3.5" floppy disc and it worked perfectly.
Sure, video (especially HD content) has much higher bandwidth demands, but local video playback has NEVER been a problem on any machine I've owned in the last 10 years. I remember IBM thinkpads with PII 266 processors that could easily play DVDs.
The only explanation for Vista's media playback design decision must be to compensate for the huge processing overhead that Vista creates. Poor fundamental design decisions necessitated hacks like this prioritization scheme.
-ted
I'm assuming most of the slashdot crowd is involved in IT somehow - supporting it, implementing it, or managing it. How many people in IT would actually make a platform decision based on a marketing web site?
I've been in IT for 15 years, and my answer to that question is NO ONE! I've sat on IT steering committee meetings for a bunch of companies and platform choices were NEVER made based on marketing web sites. Platform choices (99% of the time) are driven by application vendors.
Microsoft has a bigger problem. They don't really know how or why their customers buy products. Microsoft could quit marketing every product they make tomorrow and it would not affect their sales at all.
It seems that Microsoft's management can't find their butts with both hands these days.
-ted
are designed for this type of system. If your application is secure enough to live on the internet, then it is secure enough to be used on an intranet with thin clients.
Most thin clients out of the box boot with a low-privilege account. You can even set up some to "reimage" their flash memory on each boot (or boot disklessly from a central image server). Think someone compromised a system? Lockdown passwords on your master image and reboot all the terminals. No changes should be able to be made to the system without elevating to root or administrator.
Seriously - carving up your network and firewalling everything two ways to sunday is great, but this problem could have been simply solved with a little bit of thought ahead of implementation.
-ted
A government regulator at a former job once told me that "You can outsource the work, but not the responsibility". Those are wise words that the managers of that hospital should heed.
Companies seem to think that if they hire someone else to do the work, they are not responsible for the quality of that work.
Take Mattel - they have Chinese companies building their products, but not inspecting their work. Thanks to their lack of vendor controls, kids are choking on parts, and getting lead poisoning.
Companies need to realize that in-house IT is the only way to ensure that your internal standards are met. Outsourcing has its place, but strict quality control / vendor management policies need to be in place to ensure the work is of good quality.
-ted
Does the IETF even realize the scope of this project? Ignore everything else and just look at every ISP in the world....all of them....the big ones and the mom-and-pop shops.
Now every single one of them must have routing gear (and all the associated monitoring equipment) capable of IPv6, and the ability to manage the massive address space. I know ISPs right now that can barely handle their IPv4 infrastructure that has been in place for a decade. Now you are asking them, in the space of a few years to throw out their existing infrastructure and move completely to IPv6? That's rich.....
If the ISPs don't convert (or can't quickly convert) then no one else will.
-ted
These idiots are targeting 18-35 year olds - are they (theater owners) really that stupid?
Hey idiots - those are the only people paying to get into your theater! I haven't seen a movie in a theater (or bought an $8.00 box of popcorn) in over 10 years thanks to my home theater system.
Anyway - good riddance. Every theater in America could go out of business tomorrow and I wouldn't miss them.
-ted
I use this:
http://www.troubleticketexpress.com/
It isn't a huge, feature-rich, bit of software, but it is small and reliable and has just enough functionality to be useful.
-ted
No one is complaining about higher prices passed on to consumers from corporate America thanks to these regulations.
People are still buying huge homes, Hummers, $3.00/gallon gas, plasma TVs and cell phones. The number of new BMWs on the road is absolutely astonishing.
As much as corporate America complained about these regs, they did not seem to have much of an impact. I suspect that these regs could be put into place in Government with existing employees and with little overall tax increase.
The bottom line is the regulators don't want the same rules to apply to them. Hypocrisy at its finest.
-ted
Sarbanes-Oxley defines many internal controls for publicly traded companies. Many of these controls directly apply to IT departments and their disaster recovery/business continuity plans.
The Gramm Leach Bliley Act defines how financial firms handle and use non-public information. It may be time to expand that to ALL organizations that store and use non-public information.
It is time to insist that Government agencies also implement the types of controls mandated by SARBOX and GLBA. If those controls are so important, why doesn't our Government implement the same exact policies?
We need legislation that protects ALL non-public information regardless of who stores it or why it is used.
-ted
...AT&T protection money for your packets.
-ted
Ask the designers of BMW's iDrive. Every iteration of iDrive seems to have more buttons than the last. Any idea why?
Because they work better than menus (or soft-buttons).
There is a reason my washer and dryer do not have a command line interface (or a touchscreen menu-driven interface).
I love the QWERTY keyboard (made of real buttons) on my Treo and until the iPhone gets one, the iPhone will remain iUseless to me.
-ted
And will continue to do so for a long time.
Windows XP professional will continute to be supported through 2012 or so. I recently bought licenses for a bunch of new machines - Vista licenses, but I used my "downgrade rights" to actually deploy Windows XP pro. I'm sure i'm not the only IT manager doing this. This type of purchasing and deployment may actually inflate sales of Vista.
The reasons were quite simple. Vista has no real benefits to justify the headaches of mandatory activation, V2 profile incompatibility, and absolutely awful network file copy performance.
I'm sure the file copy bug will be resolved in time, but the first two probably won't be.
-ted