Haven't you learned anything from Mythbusters? Since when do we not test things just because we don't need to know the answer?
Get Jamie and Adam on it and the build crew will clean up the mess!
6 networks? That's nothing. When I lived about 1.5 miles from the edge of the MS campus in Redmond in an apartment complex there were over 15 networks registering at any time. I'm not sure what the problem is though - even when I added mine, everything worked fine:).
Actually, I can attest to the fact that they hustle for resources every day. Or at least hustle. You see I'm on the Visual C++ team and yesterday this guy (the one with the spikey hair from the picture) was walking down our hall telling people to go to popfly. And guess what? It's actually really cool. Basically they have these "building block" wrappers around "web 2.0" sites like flickr etc that have their own apis. I don't know, but last time I checked, Flickr was not an MS site so I don't really see how this is entrenching the MS brand - wouldn't they have picked Live Spaces or something like that? Then you can graphically hook up the inputs and outputs of the sites without writing code.
Also, I'm going to have to take issue with the Silverlight comment - it's actually really cool to, at least from a developer's perspective. I don't know about in terms of a Flash replacement, but I love the XAML/WPF programming paradigm and putting that into a 1 minute installable runtime that runs in the browser is pretty hot. Don't knock it 'til you try it - that's all I'm sayin'. (See, I'm hip and irreverent too!)
"Some Comcast customers have encountered glitches when using the cable set-top boxes running the Microsoft software, such as a lack of responsiveness. However, Kipp said there haven't been any out-of-the-ordinary problems, and he said nothing along those lines played into the decision to make the switch.
"Graczyk said some problems were caused by the firmware on the cable devices, which Microsoft doesn't provide. He noted that Communications Technology named Comcast's Washington region overall the "System of the Year" last year. The trade publication cited factors including the Microsoft TV technology."
If I remember correctly, some of the issues were also the result of the set top boxes being out of spec for the requirements of the software. MS TV is just the software, not the device.
Ok, I wouldn't normally respond, but I own a Prius and I do rock climbing, biking, hiking camping. I also live very close to work, fill up my tank once a month (11 galons), and use alternative means of transportation with frequency. Heck, I'm moving next month to an apartment where I can walk to groceries, movies etc and bus to work. I regularly drive on dirt and gravel and can easily fit my extra large bicycle (I'm 6'3") in the back of the Prius without even taking the wheels off (hatchback + the back seats folded down). I'm trying to imagine the length of kayak oars and can't imagine they wouldn't fit with the back seats down.
I guess I can see your point about requiring an SUV if you regularly travel severely rutted and rained out roads or have to do some fording (the last time I've had to do that was in the Missouri Breaks in Montana and would never want to try that in a Prius). However, size wise unless you're packing 4 people, you can easily fit climbing and backpacking gear inside. If you are bringing 4, or need to bring the kayak and canoe and bicycles, just buy a roofrack.
I don't really have an issue with your driving an SUV (although if "downtown" is the downtown of a city that sounds incredibly impractical), nor do I think you should feel obligated or be forced to obtain a fuel efficient vehicle. I also admire your efforts to maintain a low impact by living close to work.
However, I think you're kidding yourself if you pretend that your life requires you not have a hybrid. Even if you really do require more space than the Prius offers, you're setting up a straw man by attacking the Prius in terms of space and aesthetics considering there are manyhybridoptions. While the SUVs have a lower mpg than a compact like the Prius, they do increase fuel efficiency while maintaining a large size. There are also many "car sized" options aside from the Prius including the Civic, the Camry and many more coming down the pipes. Basically, you just end up paying the price premium for the hybrid tech (which I've heard estimated at about $3k for a new car) which, as gas prices approach (and will probably surpass) $4 a gallon, is going to start seeming like a wiser and wiser investment.
The point is, regardless of your driving habits (how much you drive), if you get a vehicle with higher fuel efficiency, you will be reducing your impact by the same % as you increase fuel efficiency. This is true whether you drive 1 mile a month or 1,000. If you drive a Hummer (10-15 mgp effective), you are automatically increasing your impact several times over what it would be if you drove a Prius (45 mpg effective).
If everyone in America did not change their driving habits and switched to Prii, the amount of gas we use would decrease dramatically. If everyone in America changed their driving habits to match yours, they could still decrease their fuel usage by the same percentage as before by switching to Prii.
Also, we're mostly just pissed at you for blocking in our Prii by parking in the compact spot a**hole:P.
A banned API means that no MS code is allowed to call that API. An example, as noted, is strcpy which if you don't properly check string lengths before hand (and even then, in multi-threaded code if the length of the from parameter is increased in between your check and your call to strcpy) you have the potential for a buffer overflow. So, no MS code will use that function. However, lots of existing code calls strcpy and standards committees tend to get ansi (get it?) if you go around "deprecating" or removing pieces of their standards. Imagine the anti-competitive hate mail and lawsuits MS would get into if they removed strcpy and broke every C/C++ app out there that uses it (a lot I'm guessing, especially if it's old enough to have ignored the whole buffer overrun security thing, or if it's newer and implements its own checking to make sure the call is safe - single threaded, checks lengths).
I think this is sort of "duh" statement. You could say the same about any feature of Vista - it could have been backported to XP. Same with any given feature of the current version OSX and the previous version. But the whole concept of commercial OSes as a logical entity is flawed. In general, they are just a bunch of new features and (one of which is usually an improved kernel) bundled together as a single unit for sale.
So in that sense, you're correct that in non-single company scenarios such as open source, each little piece can be produced separately and released or monetized individually and there's some appeal in that. However, getting nickeled and dimed for each new piece doesn't seem super appealing to me (granted in the FOSS world, you're not getting nickled and dimed, but if there's a piece missing, you need to invest and create that piece yourself - not something I'm interested in doing. I'd rather just fork over another $50 the next time I buy a computer and have someone else do that for me).
Fine, maybe not your mom, but there certainly is a class of people who have increasing amounts of media - family photos, music collections, home videos stored across their various machines (their laptop, the old family computer, work etc) who would see the benefit of having this all in one place that they could get at from anywhere.
People like this want the equivalent of a digital wallet where they can show off pictures of the kids at work or at parents. It's that kind of person, along with the consumer electronics geek (the kind who buys media center extenders) who seems to be the target market.
Fine: OOB experience.
The purpose of WHS is not to be a personal web/email/etc server. It's to be a plug and play device on your home network which will take care of automated backups shared media storage and streaming, hot swappable storage that maps to a redundant shared storage pool along with free minimal-setup web access to this stuff remotely. Basically, this is for your mom, the user who "doesn't know what they're doing," not the uber geek who wants an ssh tunnel to their home proxy server so work doesn't know they've been chatting online all day and shopping for golf clubs. It's also meant as a platform for "always on" services such as home automation etc that wouldn't otherwise be reliable in the hands of a novice user who doesn't understand that it won't work when it's turned off.
It actually looks pretty cool, if for no other reason than the fact that the storage is easily expandible with the system on. Because of the redundant hot-swappable storage, you can just pull out your smallest drive and pop in a bigger one when you run out of space - while the machine is on.
The best part of the Diablo duping bug was when they released a patch to fix it and got so many complaints they had to release a second patch to put it back in. I probably spent as time duping gold and arranging bag space in that game as I did actually playing it:).
Uhm, I think you're confused. Windows NT based OSes at least (and I assume Win9x as well) keep track of time in # of seconds since Midnight January 1st, 1970 UTC just like like any C-based OS would. Check msdn if you don't believe me: GetSystemTime
The issue is only relevant for applications which need to do things in local time such as Outlook appointments or financial transactions where the user interacts in local time.
In any case, the title is extremely misleading. Any product still in support has a free patch. Only out of support products have pay fixes, as per their license agreements.
Disclosure: I work at Microsoft although I am in no way affiliated with the Zune team
I think it's worth noting that it was the black Zune that reached #8 on Amazon's sales charts. The combined sales of black, brown and white Zunes would likely have peaked higher.
Of course, the combined sales of all iPods would have surpassed that again, but the only difference between the Zunes is color so I'm not sure it makes sense to rank them separately (maybe the iPods are separated as well).
I actually picked up a brown Zune earlier this week and really like it. One thing the pictures don't do justice for is the translucent colored casing which gives the edges a strange glowy highlight - green for brown, blue for black. The black actually looks pretty and the brown hip. White is for your mother -eh.
As a music player, I can say it's really second to none except for the large size which I can see as a problem for those with tight jeans. The subscription aspect really knocks it out of the ballpark compared to an iPod for those of us who like to pay for our music. Incidentally the subscription also makes the sharing feature worthwhile - if someone shares a song I like I don't have to give it up in 3 plays, I can just sync the Zune and get a permanent copy from the online store. Granted, Redmond is probably one of the only places you're likely to have an opportunity to use the sharing feature, but hey, that's where I am.
As a video player, having the giant screen is great, except for the fact that there's nothing to play on it since there's no video store and no legal way to rip DVDs (thanks DMCA!). Hopefully that will be remedied soon in an update.
Microsoft PM #1: So, anyone got any ideas how do we get slashdot users to install IE7?
Microsoft PM #2: Especially when they're so eager to prove that something's wrong with it
Microsoft PM #1: That gives me an idea...
Seriously, how many of you installed IE7 just to repro this report?
Actually, speaking as a dev in test, while I have no knowledge of this specific fix, I imagine the turnaround and testing required for something like DRM is much lower because of the risk involved and the newness of the product. The reasons are two: a) the DRM system is low risk to patch - you probably aren't going to break anyone because not a lot depends on it compared to, say, the CRT libraries; b) since DRM is a new "product", there probably aren't as many existant tests to run as say, the CRT libraries which have been around in one form or another for 30 years and have so many configuration options that it takes days or weeks to run all the tests: http://blogs.msdn.com/vcblog/archive/2006/08/24/71 8976.aspx
Slashdot Mirror
Haven't you learned anything from Mythbusters? Since when do we not test things just because we don't need to know the answer? Get Jamie and Adam on it and the build crew will clean up the mess!
6 networks? That's nothing. When I lived about 1.5 miles from the edge of the MS campus in Redmond in an apartment complex there were over 15 networks registering at any time. I'm not sure what the problem is though - even when I added mine, everything worked fine :).
Actually, I can attest to the fact that they hustle for resources every day. Or at least hustle. You see I'm on the Visual C++ team and yesterday this guy (the one with the spikey hair from the picture) was walking down our hall telling people to go to popfly. And guess what? It's actually really cool. Basically they have these "building block" wrappers around "web 2.0" sites like flickr etc that have their own apis. I don't know, but last time I checked, Flickr was not an MS site so I don't really see how this is entrenching the MS brand - wouldn't they have picked Live Spaces or something like that? Then you can graphically hook up the inputs and outputs of the sites without writing code.
Also, I'm going to have to take issue with the Silverlight comment - it's actually really cool to, at least from a developer's perspective. I don't know about in terms of a Flash replacement, but I love the XAML/WPF programming paradigm and putting that into a 1 minute installable runtime that runs in the browser is pretty hot. Don't knock it 'til you try it - that's all I'm sayin'. (See, I'm hip and irreverent too!)
FTA:
"Some Comcast customers have encountered glitches when using the cable set-top boxes running the Microsoft software, such as a lack of responsiveness. However, Kipp said there haven't been any out-of-the-ordinary problems, and he said nothing along those lines played into the decision to make the switch.
"Graczyk said some problems were caused by the firmware on the cable devices, which Microsoft doesn't provide. He noted that Communications Technology named Comcast's Washington region overall the "System of the Year" last year. The trade publication cited factors including the Microsoft TV technology."
If I remember correctly, some of the issues were also the result of the set top boxes being out of spec for the requirements of the software. MS TV is just the software, not the device.
Ok, I wouldn't normally respond, but I own a Prius and I do rock climbing, biking, hiking camping. I also live very close to work, fill up my tank once a month (11 galons), and use alternative means of transportation with frequency. Heck, I'm moving next month to an apartment where I can walk to groceries, movies etc and bus to work. I regularly drive on dirt and gravel and can easily fit my extra large bicycle (I'm 6'3") in the back of the Prius without even taking the wheels off (hatchback + the back seats folded down). I'm trying to imagine the length of kayak oars and can't imagine they wouldn't fit with the back seats down.
I guess I can see your point about requiring an SUV if you regularly travel severely rutted and rained out roads or have to do some fording (the last time I've had to do that was in the Missouri Breaks in Montana and would never want to try that in a Prius). However, size wise unless you're packing 4 people, you can easily fit climbing and backpacking gear inside. If you are bringing 4, or need to bring the kayak and canoe and bicycles, just buy a roofrack.
I don't really have an issue with your driving an SUV (although if "downtown" is the downtown of a city that sounds incredibly impractical), nor do I think you should feel obligated or be forced to obtain a fuel efficient vehicle. I also admire your efforts to maintain a low impact by living close to work.
However, I think you're kidding yourself if you pretend that your life requires you not have a hybrid. Even if you really do require more space than the Prius offers, you're setting up a straw man by attacking the Prius in terms of space and aesthetics considering there are many hybrid options. While the SUVs have a lower mpg than a compact like the Prius, they do increase fuel efficiency while maintaining a large size. There are also many "car sized" options aside from the Prius including the Civic, the Camry and many more coming down the pipes. Basically, you just end up paying the price premium for the hybrid tech (which I've heard estimated at about $3k for a new car) which, as gas prices approach (and will probably surpass) $4 a gallon, is going to start seeming like a wiser and wiser investment.
The point is, regardless of your driving habits (how much you drive), if you get a vehicle with higher fuel efficiency, you will be reducing your impact by the same % as you increase fuel efficiency. This is true whether you drive 1 mile a month or 1,000. If you drive a Hummer (10-15 mgp effective), you are automatically increasing your impact several times over what it would be if you drove a Prius (45 mpg effective).
If everyone in America did not change their driving habits and switched to Prii, the amount of gas we use would decrease dramatically. If everyone in America changed their driving habits to match yours, they could still decrease their fuel usage by the same percentage as before by switching to Prii.
Also, we're mostly just pissed at you for blocking in our Prii by parking in the compact spot a**hole :P.
A banned API means that no MS code is allowed to call that API. An example, as noted, is strcpy which if you don't properly check string lengths before hand (and even then, in multi-threaded code if the length of the from parameter is increased in between your check and your call to strcpy) you have the potential for a buffer overflow. So, no MS code will use that function. However, lots of existing code calls strcpy and standards committees tend to get ansi (get it?) if you go around "deprecating" or removing pieces of their standards. Imagine the anti-competitive hate mail and lawsuits MS would get into if they removed strcpy and broke every C/C++ app out there that uses it (a lot I'm guessing, especially if it's old enough to have ignored the whole buffer overrun security thing, or if it's newer and implements its own checking to make sure the call is safe - single threaded, checks lengths).
Du-uh, didn't anyone ever tell you that when exposed to water, christals from Krypton take on the properties of the elements surrounding them?
I think this is sort of "duh" statement. You could say the same about any feature of Vista - it could have been backported to XP. Same with any given feature of the current version OSX and the previous version. But the whole concept of commercial OSes as a logical entity is flawed. In general, they are just a bunch of new features and (one of which is usually an improved kernel) bundled together as a single unit for sale. So in that sense, you're correct that in non-single company scenarios such as open source, each little piece can be produced separately and released or monetized individually and there's some appeal in that. However, getting nickeled and dimed for each new piece doesn't seem super appealing to me (granted in the FOSS world, you're not getting nickled and dimed, but if there's a piece missing, you need to invest and create that piece yourself - not something I'm interested in doing. I'd rather just fork over another $50 the next time I buy a computer and have someone else do that for me).
I imagine if you're Michael Dell, you can't anyone having less. You have to set an example after all!
Fine, maybe not your mom, but there certainly is a class of people who have increasing amounts of media - family photos, music collections, home videos stored across their various machines (their laptop, the old family computer, work etc) who would see the benefit of having this all in one place that they could get at from anywhere.
People like this want the equivalent of a digital wallet where they can show off pictures of the kids at work or at parents. It's that kind of person, along with the consumer electronics geek (the kind who buys media center extenders) who seems to be the target market.
Fine: OOB experience. The purpose of WHS is not to be a personal web/email/etc server. It's to be a plug and play device on your home network which will take care of automated backups shared media storage and streaming, hot swappable storage that maps to a redundant shared storage pool along with free minimal-setup web access to this stuff remotely. Basically, this is for your mom, the user who "doesn't know what they're doing," not the uber geek who wants an ssh tunnel to their home proxy server so work doesn't know they've been chatting online all day and shopping for golf clubs. It's also meant as a platform for "always on" services such as home automation etc that wouldn't otherwise be reliable in the hands of a novice user who doesn't understand that it won't work when it's turned off. It actually looks pretty cool, if for no other reason than the fact that the storage is easily expandible with the system on. Because of the redundant hot-swappable storage, you can just pull out your smallest drive and pop in a bigger one when you run out of space - while the machine is on.
The best part of the Diablo duping bug was when they released a patch to fix it and got so many complaints they had to release a second patch to put it back in. I probably spent as time duping gold and arranging bag space in that game as I did actually playing it :).
Uhm, I think you're confused. Windows NT based OSes at least (and I assume Win9x as well) keep track of time in # of seconds since Midnight January 1st, 1970 UTC just like like any C-based OS would. Check msdn if you don't believe me: GetSystemTime
The issue is only relevant for applications which need to do things in local time such as Outlook appointments or financial transactions where the user interacts in local time.
In any case, the title is extremely misleading. Any product still in support has a free patch. Only out of support products have pay fixes, as per their license agreements.
Disclosure: I work at Microsoft although I am in no way affiliated with the Zune team I think it's worth noting that it was the black Zune that reached #8 on Amazon's sales charts. The combined sales of black, brown and white Zunes would likely have peaked higher. Of course, the combined sales of all iPods would have surpassed that again, but the only difference between the Zunes is color so I'm not sure it makes sense to rank them separately (maybe the iPods are separated as well). I actually picked up a brown Zune earlier this week and really like it. One thing the pictures don't do justice for is the translucent colored casing which gives the edges a strange glowy highlight - green for brown, blue for black. The black actually looks pretty and the brown hip. White is for your mother -eh. As a music player, I can say it's really second to none except for the large size which I can see as a problem for those with tight jeans. The subscription aspect really knocks it out of the ballpark compared to an iPod for those of us who like to pay for our music. Incidentally the subscription also makes the sharing feature worthwhile - if someone shares a song I like I don't have to give it up in 3 plays, I can just sync the Zune and get a permanent copy from the online store. Granted, Redmond is probably one of the only places you're likely to have an opportunity to use the sharing feature, but hey, that's where I am. As a video player, having the giant screen is great, except for the fact that there's nothing to play on it since there's no video store and no legal way to rip DVDs (thanks DMCA!). Hopefully that will be remedied soon in an update.
Microsoft PM #1: So, anyone got any ideas how do we get slashdot users to install IE7? Microsoft PM #2: Especially when they're so eager to prove that something's wrong with it Microsoft PM #1: That gives me an idea... Seriously, how many of you installed IE7 just to repro this report?
Actually, speaking as a dev in test, while I have no knowledge of this specific fix, I imagine the turnaround and testing required for something like DRM is much lower because of the risk involved and the newness of the product. The reasons are two: a) the DRM system is low risk to patch - you probably aren't going to break anyone because not a lot depends on it compared to, say, the CRT libraries; b) since DRM is a new "product", there probably aren't as many existant tests to run as say, the CRT libraries which have been around in one form or another for 30 years and have so many configuration options that it takes days or weeks to run all the tests: http://blogs.msdn.com/vcblog/archive/2006/08/24/71 8976.aspx