2. I find it amazing that Windows 2000 has a faster startup and shutdown time than anything. Am I alone here?
You are absolutely incorrect. Leaving non-MSFT operating systems out of the equation, I use clean copies of NT 4, Windows 2k and Windows XP for testing *all the time*. Both NT4 AND Windows XP boot much faster than Windows 2k. Which is not surprising, because Microsoft did a TON of well publicised research and tuning for WinXP's boot time. And for NT4, it was simply a lot more lightweight than Win2k. Based on what I've seen in the public beta, Windows Vista, when complete, will likely boot faster than XP.
Of course, any system will boot slow if you have the wrong software installed or if its misconfigured.
Ignore what MSNBC thought what Microsoft said, they have no clue. In a typical fashion, news reporters were clowning around without bothering with the facts.
Here's the real explanation of what went wrong from an MSDN blog:
As I posted yesterday, I got a chance to check out the machine that Shanen used for the Financial Analysts Meeting demo. I confirmed that it was just what I suspected: An audio gain issue.
If you watch the video clip on MSN Video you can see in the speech user interface that the microphone "volume" is very high. It pushes up into the red frequently while Shanen is speaking to the computer. That's caused by the fact that the audio sub-system wasn't respecting the audio gain settings we've asked it to use.
This is a known bug in current builds, and has already been fixed by the audio team in their private builds in preparation for RTM.
The summary for the article is misleading. IE7 is not simply installed automatically like any other critical update. Instead, the user is prompted explicitly with a clear, colorful, simple prompt which explains what IE 7 is and gives the user an option to install the update. The article has a screenshot.
I've been seeing those annoying ING commercials for years now. They claim "high interest", but with most banks these days that just means 0.3% instead of 0.2% annually.
You're the first person I've ever seen advocating those accounts - what kind of interest do you actually see? How much work is it to put money in or pull it out when you choose to?
The interest on the standard savings account at ING is quite high -- currently 4.35%. It's gone up steadly from 3% APY when I signed up in April 2005. Its simple to put money in or pull money out. The savings account is "linked" to your checking account (at your favorite bank - ING doesn't offer checking) which allows you to deposit or withdrawl easily. They also offer a 12 month 5.25% CD. Both the CD and the savings account are FDIC insured.
Microsoft app X+1 is now available. App Y *will not export* to app X+1 because the executable has been moved and it can't talk to the new version anyway.
Okay, so stick with Microsoft app X. Dedicate a machine to it; hardware is cheap and Virtual Machines are cheaper. But you say...
App X is no longer available in the company and we cannot buy licenses for a variety of reasons (mostly due to integration and the fact that version X and X+1 running together cause major problems).
It is extremely improbable that you have no options here. Microsoft offers downgrade rights to all volume licensed software. Contact your Microsoft reseller for more information.
If you are not a volume license customer, you should become one. Otherwise, you're either buying your software retail, which carries higher prices and you don't get volume license benefits (like downgrading, and other surprising licensing flexibility), or you're buying OEM versions, which again doesn't carry the volume license advantages.
If you are using OEM licensed software, you should also consider that the OEM license agreements are quite restrictive (they can't be transferred from machine to machine, COA requirements). Further consider that "paying for" software does not give you the right to use it anyway you see fit, you must follow the license agreement or you have no legal right to use the software.
You may want to try the freeware version of CutePdf for creating PDFs. It installs as a printer driver and works great from Word, Quicken/Quickbooks, etc.
I'm not trying to troll; take it as asshattary from the current system.
Anyway, let's count:
Pirated ROM download (violation)
Massive distribution of copyrighted sound and graphics from said ROM (violation (!))
Massive distribution of way longer than fair-use length copyrighted audio from the NBA (violation that's actually enforced...the NBA may hunt this guy down!)
The thousands (millions?) of people and companies who downloaded the video knowingly or unknowingly that it contained copyrighted material (unknowingly in my case, although because the MPAA or RIAA isn't involved - I think -, it's not likely that this will be pursued.)
As Dvorak posits this irrelevant, ludicrous, and inane question, another question comes to mind: How much harm does Dvorak inflict on society? Is he just a small nuisance? Or does he seriously and permanently damage the intellect of otherwise productive, intelligent humans who happen to read his articles?
IBM is a consulting company - they provide hardware and software to support other company's infrastructure. The idea that they will convert their clients and potential clients to GNU/Linux is a kind of ridiculous in a market dominated by Windows.
Which means that they'll lose market share to consulting companies who didn't make it a corporate policy to be ignorant of new market-dominating technology.
IBM has made a lot of contributions to Linux, but they certainly have not positioned it to credibly compete head-to-head with Windows. Of course, IBM got out of the end-to-end software engineering business, so they're not in the position to do that.
It is worth noting that (according to the article) that this misguided policy may be only regional; which is a good thing for IBM -- limit the damage.
I work in the industry and guess what.. One creative genius does not matter. I would say between 1-2% of the people who choose to work in the programming/graphic design industry are true creative geniuses. Not a lot of people, but plenty for a company who has 100's or 1000's of employees (or even just 5 or 10 employees, but has had a few years to filter though them).
However, having a person like Steve Jobs (or Bill Gates), that have the risk taking prowess, the ingenuity (and knowledge of the business) not to make mistakes too often, and to know how to recover from the ones they make, is key, and VERY rare. There is a reason these people are million/billionaires.
Yes, you will get a completely innovation from one creative genius vs. the other, but with competent leadership it always means one thing: they will build wealth by building a product that fits a need.
I once had a cup that won't break To make it, engineering it did take I made it to be cool, But now I feel like a fool Because I dropped my cup in a lake!
Piping hot coffee Sealed in a ceramic mug, Indestructible
You can easily measure how much power your computer draws with a multimeter from the hardware store - last time I was there I saw them for about $10. Put the meter on the AC amps scale, make sure the wires are plugged into the amp reading ports, and then wire it in series with your computer.
Yieks, that's about as bright as sticking a fork in the electric socket for most people. For crying out loud, buy something like this and don't kill yourself, thank you.
...British Government is working with Microsoft in order to gain backdoor access to hard drives encrypted by the forthcoming Windows Vista file system
Windows XP (and 2003) already has this capability (paranoid theories aside) for corporate administrators.
First, it helps to know how EFS (windows encryption) works. It's easy to use, just use Explorer, browse to the files you want to encrypt, right click and click the encrypt button. The filenames turn green in explorer to let you know they're encrypted, but you can continue to use them. However, if you use a boot disk to attempt to access the files, attempt to access them with a user (even an administrator) or attempt to access them using a low level NTFS reading utility, etc, you will find that the file is competently encrypted.
In an encrypted system, there is always a key, which is used to decrypt the "plaintext" -- the stuff you want secret. Windows transparently generates a key for each user, which consists of a large random number. The key, in turn, is encrypted with the user's password. When the user logs in, Windows decrypts the key to transparently decrypt files. On a side note, Windows XP (and 2003) will give you a nasty warning if you reset a user's password using administrative tools to let you know that the user will lose access to any encrypted files.
In a domain (Windows networked) environment, Windows lets you specify a designated user (or users), a "recovery agent", that can decrypt a particular group of users' files. This is extremely important, because if someone parts the company and they encrypted their files (due to corporate policy or maliciousness), by default, it's impossible to access those files without their password. As explained above, even if you reset the user's password, you can access their account, but the encrypted files are irretrievably lost! However, when you designate user that can decrypt other users' files, Windows makes two encrypted copies of the per-user decryption key - one encrypted with the user's key, the other encrypted with the corporate-backdoor key, which allows them to recover the files.
If a backdoor were to be created for a government, it would work very similarly to the corporate environment: when you encrypt files, the user-key used to encrypted them will be in turn encrypted with your password -- which is probably ("bunny", "password" or "god") and will be encrypted with the government password (which will likely consist of hundreds (or thousands) of random bits). Note that the government password will not need to be present to create the government key -- they can distribute a public hash thats sufficient to encrypt but not decrypt.
See PKI and EFS.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for the clarification; I should have seen that.
You are absolutely incorrect. Leaving non-MSFT operating systems out of the equation, I use clean copies of NT 4, Windows 2k and Windows XP for testing *all the time*. Both NT4 AND Windows XP boot much faster than Windows 2k. Which is not surprising, because Microsoft did a TON of well publicised research and tuning for WinXP's boot time. And for NT4, it was simply a lot more lightweight than Win2k. Based on what I've seen in the public beta, Windows Vista, when complete, will likely boot faster than XP.
Of course, any system will boot slow if you have the wrong software installed or if its misconfigured.
Here's the real explanation of what went wrong from an MSDN blog:
source
The summary for the article is misleading. IE7 is not simply installed automatically like any other critical update. Instead, the user is prompted explicitly with a clear, colorful, simple prompt which explains what IE 7 is and gives the user an option to install the update. The article has a screenshot.
The interest on the standard savings account at ING is quite high -- currently 4.35%. It's gone up steadly from 3% APY when I signed up in April 2005. Its simple to put money in or pull money out. The savings account is "linked" to your checking account (at your favorite bank - ING doesn't offer checking) which allows you to deposit or withdrawl easily. They also offer a 12 month 5.25% CD. Both the CD and the savings account are FDIC insured.
ING Direct (non-affil)
Okay, so stick with Microsoft app X. Dedicate a machine to it; hardware is cheap and Virtual Machines are cheaper. But you say...
It is extremely improbable that you have no options here. Microsoft offers downgrade rights to all volume licensed software. Contact your Microsoft reseller for more information.
If you are not a volume license customer, you should become one. Otherwise, you're either buying your software retail, which carries higher prices and you don't get volume license benefits (like downgrading, and other surprising licensing flexibility), or you're buying OEM versions, which again doesn't carry the volume license advantages.
If you are using OEM licensed software, you should also consider that the OEM license agreements are quite restrictive (they can't be transferred from machine to machine, COA requirements). Further consider that "paying for" software does not give you the right to use it anyway you see fit, you must follow the license agreement or you have no legal right to use the software.
You may want to try the freeware version of CutePdf for creating PDFs. It installs as a printer driver and works great from Word, Quicken/Quickbooks, etc.
What is the NBA doing with MLB audio?
Oops. I don't do sports :(
Anyway, let's count:
As Dvorak posits this irrelevant, ludicrous, and inane question, another question comes to mind: How much harm does Dvorak inflict on society? Is he just a small nuisance? Or does he seriously and permanently damage the intellect of otherwise productive, intelligent humans who happen to read his articles?
Vg jbexf terng! V uvtuyl erpbzzraq vg gb rirelbar. Vg znxrf zl qngn *irel* frpher.
(hint to the clueless: ROT13)
IBM is a consulting company - they provide hardware and software to support other company's infrastructure. The idea that they will convert their clients and potential clients to GNU/Linux is a kind of ridiculous in a market dominated by Windows.
Which means that they'll lose market share to consulting companies who didn't make it a corporate policy to be ignorant of new market-dominating technology.
IBM has made a lot of contributions to Linux, but they certainly have not positioned it to credibly compete head-to-head with Windows. Of course, IBM got out of the end-to-end software engineering business, so they're not in the position to do that.
It is worth noting that (according to the article) that this misguided policy may be only regional; which is a good thing for IBM -- limit the damage.
I work in the industry and guess what.. One creative genius does not matter. I would say between 1-2% of the people who choose to work in the programming/graphic design industry are true creative geniuses. Not a lot of people, but plenty for a company who has 100's or 1000's of employees (or even just 5 or 10 employees, but has had a few years to filter though them).
However, having a person like Steve Jobs (or Bill Gates), that have the risk taking prowess, the ingenuity (and knowledge of the business) not to make mistakes too often, and to know how to recover from the ones they make, is key, and VERY rare. There is a reason these people are million/billionaires.
Yes, you will get a completely innovation from one creative genius vs. the other, but with competent leadership it always means one thing: they will build wealth by building a product that fits a need.
I once had a cup that won't break
To make it, engineering it did take
I made it to be cool,
But now I feel like a fool
Because I dropped my cup in a lake!
Piping hot coffee
Sealed in a ceramic mug,
Indestructible
Yieks, that's about as bright as sticking a fork in the electric socket for most people. For crying out loud, buy something like this and don't kill yourself, thank you.
Windows XP (and 2003) already has this capability (paranoid theories aside) for corporate administrators.
First, it helps to know how EFS (windows encryption) works. It's easy to use, just use Explorer, browse to the files you want to encrypt, right click and click the encrypt button. The filenames turn green in explorer to let you know they're encrypted, but you can continue to use them. However, if you use a boot disk to attempt to access the files, attempt to access them with a user (even an administrator) or attempt to access them using a low level NTFS reading utility, etc, you will find that the file is competently encrypted.
In an encrypted system, there is always a key, which is used to decrypt the "plaintext" -- the stuff you want secret. Windows transparently generates a key for each user, which consists of a large random number. The key, in turn, is encrypted with the user's password. When the user logs in, Windows decrypts the key to transparently decrypt files. On a side note, Windows XP (and 2003) will give you a nasty warning if you reset a user's password using administrative tools to let you know that the user will lose access to any encrypted files.
In a domain (Windows networked) environment, Windows lets you specify a designated user (or users), a "recovery agent", that can decrypt a particular group of users' files. This is extremely important, because if someone parts the company and they encrypted their files (due to corporate policy or maliciousness), by default, it's impossible to access those files without their password. As explained above, even if you reset the user's password, you can access their account, but the encrypted files are irretrievably lost! However, when you designate user that can decrypt other users' files, Windows makes two encrypted copies of the per-user decryption key - one encrypted with the user's key, the other encrypted with the corporate-backdoor key, which allows them to recover the files.
If a backdoor were to be created for a government, it would work very similarly to the corporate environment: when you encrypt files, the user-key used to encrypted them will be in turn encrypted with your password -- which is probably ("bunny", "password" or "god") and will be encrypted with the government password (which will likely consist of hundreds (or thousands) of random bits). Note that the government password will not need to be present to create the government key -- they can distribute a public hash thats sufficient to encrypt but not decrypt. See PKI and EFS.