Gadgetopia

The World As Best As I Remember It : Broken Windows Theory: This essay from a Windows developer (like, a guy who develops Windows, not develops on Windows) is a fairly telling look into the world of the Windows development group. Some excerpts: Vista has suffered a series of high-profile ...

Welcome to See Windows Vista: Let Viper tell you how cool Windows Vista is. And it looks pretty cool. Nice demo.

TIPS: Alternate Uses For The Windows Key: I use Windows + D all the time. Didn't know much about the other combinations. Handy.

Windows XP: The featured article over at Wikipedia today was on Windows XP, and it included this bit explaining what limitations are contained in Windows XP Starter Edition the Windows version for developing countries (launched in India two days ago). [...] display resolution can only be up to 800 ...

Companies brace for Microsoft security update: An interesting look at the apparently huge Windows XP Service Pack 2 due next month and what it means for software companies. The changes will affect thousands of programs that have depended on how Windows handles certain things. The new system bolsters security on ...

Windows AntiSpyware becomes 'Defender': I know that many jokes will ensue, but this is a pretty good product. Microsoft is giving Windows AntiSpyware a makeover. The tool, designed to protect PCs against hidden software, has been renamed "Windows Defender" and is getting a new look as well as capabilities to ...

Download details: Windows AntiSpyware (Beta): This is the result of Microsoft's purchase of Giant. (that was quick...) I had a great experience with this tool today. It found seven spyware apps on my machine. Seven. And I thought I had a really clean machine. Windows AntiSpyware (Beta) is a security ...

Microsoft Windows Vista: Confident: This is quite a claim. A Windows Vista computer starts and shuts down as quickly and reliably as a television, typically within 2 to 3 seconds. Windows Vista processes login scripts and startup programs and services in the background so you can start working right away.

PostgreSQL 8 Released: I noticed this the other day. There's a Windows installer for Postgres with this new release. [Version 8] is the first PostgreSQL release to natively run on Microsoft Windows as a server. So add Postgres to (at least) MySQL and Firebird as enterprise-level open source database servers ...

Raymond Chen of Microsoft's Windows team has written up an interesting article on the history of the Windows PowerToys: During the development of Windows 95, as with the development of any project, the people working on the project write side programs to test the features they are adding or to ...

No Respect for Windows Open Source: An interesting perspective about how much respect you can get making open source stuff for Windows. DotNetNuke is a portal/CMS system that runs on .Net. The guy who wrote it is apparently sick of sitting at the kids' table just because his app is ...

When you re browsing the network in Leopard, this is what the icons for Windows machines look like.

I've never been happier to be wrong. Turns out you can install Movable Type on a commercial hosted Windows account. It just depends on the host. The big hang-up on Windows is the storage mechanism. Most Windows machines with Perl installed do not have the DB_File module which MT needs ...

Whizzkid develops Linux application for Windows: This apparently isn't a new thing, but it's making the rounds of the tech blogs this morning. The significance of the development is that Linux and Windows are able to work in parallel on the same computer or server. To now, the computer world ...

Has Windows Update gone nuts for anyone else? Every day for the last 10 days, I've been told by my Windows XP Home system that I have a new update to install. I have dutifully installed them all. None have required a reboot. My Windows XP Pro machine at work ...

Setting up a SFTP Server on Windows: Joe has me so paranoid about security these days that I shun FTP. We run all our stuff on SFTP, and they're all Linux servers, so this isn't a problem. However, we're bringing a publicly-exposed Windows server online, and I'm a little nervous ...

CNet remarks on a study that pokes a little fun at the numerous MS-funded studies that suggest that Windows has a lower TCO, while Linux silently but surely gives you cancer. The study suggests that Windows also has a lower T0t4l c05t 0f 0wnz0rship, the cost a cracker has to ...

Windows XP Prefetch Clean And Control 1.2.0: The other day, I couldn't delete an application file it was locked. I rebooted but still couldn't delete it, even though I hadn't run the application yet. I wonder if this is why? Windows XP monitors the files that are used when ...

Microsoft to stop developing media software for Macs: No Windows Media Player for Macs? Egads! How will you ever survive? Microsoft will stop developing a version of its Windows Media Player for Apple Computer's Macs, and will instead offer free technology that lets people play Windows Media files using Apple's ...

List of Microsoft Windows components: Here's a great list of "Windows components," everything from the Control Panel to Active Directory to Logical Disk Manager. It's not very deep, and certainly not complete, but a nice view from 50,000 feet.

Is Windows inherently more vulnerable to malware attacks than OS X?: This is an extremely well-written and well-reasoned article explaining exactly why Windows is more vulnerable than OS X to malware. The author is obviously very familiar with the internals of both systems, and he explains very clearly where and ...

LitePC: IEradicator - the Internet Explorer Hitman!: This is perhaps a little extreme. And given the dynamic loading that Windows apps generally do, I wonder if you're going to wipe out some DLL that something else needs at some point? IEradicator is a tiny, script that uses the Windows setup ...

New name flap for Microsoft -- but this time its legal right is clear: Microsoft recently announced they would rename their Anti-Spyware product to "Windows Defender." However, a developer in Australia was already using that name for his software. His software wasn't active (he has stopped developing it a year ...

PC makers, distributors pass on Windows XP N: Microsoft was forced to start selling a version of Windows in Europe that didn't include Windows Media Player. So Microsoft created "Windows XP Home Edition N." But big surprise no one wants it. I mean, why would you? Who would ...

Cracking Windows passwords in seconds: This is comforting. "Swiss researchers released a paper on Tuesday outlining a way to speed the cracking of alphanumeric Windows passwords, reducing the time to break such codes to an average of 13.6 seconds, from 1 minute 41 seconds."

Microsoft's Most Exclusive Franchise: Included in the European Union's report on Microsoft was a memo to Bill Gates from a Microsoft executive. In it, he talks about how hard it is to move away from the Microsoft Windows API once you've started using it to build your software: It is ...

More holes in Windows revealed: Three new "critical" security holes in Windows, even on machines patched with SP2. Keep patchin', folks. Symantec has also warned about a second vulnerability in a Windows component called "LoadImage" that is used to load desktop icons, cursors, or bitmap images. A flaw in the ...

Customizing Right-Click Menu Options in Windows: Well-written tutorial for customizing Windows right-click menu. This document gives step by step instructions for customizing the options that appear on the right-click menu for various file types. I have found this particularly useful for designing and testing web pages.

I paved a Windows machine last night, and reloaded Windows XP Home from scratch. That being the case, I spent a lot of time looking at the default Windows desktop background. You know, the grassy hill picture. The file is called "Bliss." Does anyone know where this hillside is? Do ...

News.com reports that Microsoft is working on a version of Windows for supercomputing environments. God help us. Microsoft is aiming to have its first cluster version of Windows ready in time for a supercomputing conference this fall. Software Architect Marvin Theimer said on Thursday that the company hopes to have ...

How do you completely remove an application from a Windows machine? (Warning: this post will give Mac users a gratuitous chance to gloat.) Windows has a tendency to scatter apps to the four corners of your hard drive when you install (see this). Installing some apps is roughly akin to ...

Microsoft Weighs Automatic Security Updates as a Default: Say what you will about Windows Update, it's always worked beautifully for me. "The company is 'looking very seriously' at requiring future versions of Windows to accept automatic software fixes unless the user specifically refuses to receive them, said Mike Nash, corporate ...

Windows web server more secure than Linux, says unpublished study: I never would have picked this outcome. This is one study I might actually read. In a comparison of Windows Server 2003 and Red Hat Enterprise Server 3, two researches believe that they found Windows Server to be more secure ...

Windows Defender home: This been a long road. Microsoft bought Giant Antispyware, then engaged in some semi-sleazy tactics to get someone to give up the name "Windows Defender." And here it is, finally. Windows Defender (Beta 2) is a free program that helps protect your computer against pop-ups, slow performance, ...

Apple launches Windows version of iTunes service "Apple Computer Inc. launched the long-awaited Windows-compatible version of its iTunes online music service Thursday, promising a wider library of songs and new features to maintain its lead in an increasingly competitive market. 'This isn't some baby version of iTunes. It's the whole ...

WinBeta.Org - TweakUI 2.10 for Windows XP and Server 2003: This little app allows access to every single Windows setting you can think of. Don't like the size of the Alt-Tab box? Don't like the style of the little arrow sub-icon on shortcuts? Want to auto-login your system every time ...

Open New Windows for PDF and other Non-Web Documents: Nielsen dictates an exception to his "open no new browser windows" rule. Seems like a good point to me. When using PC-native file formats such as PDF or spreadsheets, users feel like they're interacting with a PC application. Because users are ...

Anyone an expert on the WinXP file system?: Phillip Greenspun proposes using the Windows file system as a database for organizing pictures, instead of some complicated structure that depends on other software. I'm thinking of writing a tutorial on how to use the Windows XP file system as a photo ...

How-To Tuesday: Disable AutoRun on Windows!: Some good advice here. The "feature" will, by default, automatically look for a file called Autorun.inf on any CD you pop in to your system if it finds it, it will execute whatever programs it is instructed. This is a big security issue, ...

Windows Server 2003 Tutorials, Visual and Step-by-Step: We need more sites like this sometime personally taking the time to lay all this stuff out, step-by-step. Hats off to this guy. Here you will find visual, step-by-step guides that can help you on your Windows Server journey. Everything has been ...

A beginner's guide to customization, skinning and shell replacements: A long article with a look at some fairly stunning Windows skins and desktop mods. You can make your Windows machine look like a tricked-out Linux distro without too much work. Lots of screencaps I must be new at this, because ...

... in only 3 1/2 days. And over a million songs purchased by those Windows users in the same amount of time. See the Apple press release. I wonder how high Bill Gates' blood pressure is by now.

Bulky System Requirements for Windows Vista: According to this bit over at Slashdot, Windows Vista will need a video card that can reverse the rotation of the Earth with its spare cycles. To render the screen in the GPU requires an awful lot of memory to do optimally - 256MB ...

Mark recently reinstalled Windows XP on his laptop. He was kind enough to keep a running diary. My Apple bias not withstanding, I find this rather funny. "34. Update driver. 35. 'This driver is not digitally signed.' OK. 36. 'This driver may cause your computer to become unstable.' OK. 37. ...

The ReactOS project released the first screenshot today of its Windows NT-compatible GUI that runs off of entirely open-source code. ReactOS is an Open Source effort to develop a quality operating system that is compatible with Windows NT applications and drivers. If this project ever creates a system that's even ...

scannow sfc: Here's a handy Windows XP feature I had never heard of until today. From a command prompt, type "sfc /scannow" and Windows will look through all its system files for ones that don't match up with the others (if, for instance, a third party app replaced them with ...

Here's something that oughta tweak the nose of the Linux crowd; a cnet article reports that according to research and consulting gurus at Gartner, the reason so many machines loaded with Linux are being sold today is that when they hit the field the drives are wiped and they're loaded ...

Microsoft delays consumer launch of Windows Vista: When Sony delayed the launch of the PS3 last week, Microsoft jumped all over it. And now... Microsoft Corp. said on Tuesday it plans to delay the consumer launch of its much-anticipated Windows Vista operating system to January 2007 from its earlier target ...

The Windows Update site has been, well, updated. I was doing some maintenance on my parents' machines last night at about 10 p.m. and everything was as it usually is. However, right now at 6:19 a.m. the next morning, the Windows Update site is sporting a new look, asking me ...

Movie critic Roger Ebert recently answered a question from one of his readers regarding the use of Macs by the good guys in movies and Windows use by bad guys. "Since many Windows machines look alike, Apple is one of the few manufacturers that can gain by product placement, which ...

Microsoft: Upgraded Motherboard = New Windows Licence: Microsoft recently sent a memo to all their OEM partners explaining that the core essence of a computer was the motherboard, and if it was upgraded, then the entire machine is considered new, and a new Windows license must be purchased. An upgrade ...

Windows XP Hacks: These O'Reilly "Hacks" books are first-rate. Here's an excerpt from the Windows XP book, and there are some great little tips here. "The book delves into XP topics such as controlling the control panel, changing unchangeable icons, removing uninstallable XP components, stopping pop-up ads, taking a bite ...

Given that Microsoft products appear to be full of security holes, more and more thought is being given to migrating to other platforms. However, this has problems of its own. Macs are expensive, and Linux isn't quite ready as a desktop platform. This leaves a lot of people in limbo ...

Microsoft blunder leaks information about Vista: Microsoft accidentally published a page on its site that leaked details of the upcoming Vista. (This is why you need good content management, people.) Apparently there are going to be six primary versions of Vista. Included in those listed offerings was Windows Starter 2007, ...

WinExposé I didn't think it would take four months for someone to come up with a clone of Apple's Exposé feature for Windows. Should we start a pool to bet on how long it takes before they get their first cease-and-desist letter?

Getting a Windows Refund in California Small Claims Court: This guy bought a machine with Windows XP loaded on it, but he installed Linux instead. Then he went to court to get his $199 back from the manufacturer for the cost of the Windows license bundled with the machine. Here's ...

I got to wondering the other day how the Windows Add/Remove Programs control panel applet works. It turns out that it's not that complicated. The list of programs you can uninstall is stored in the registry under: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE / Software / Microsoft / Windows / CurrentVersion / Uninstall If there's ...

Microsoft to roll out online versions of Windows, Office: This is apparently a very big deal, but I can't figure out why. I went to the site -- there's nothing really available yet. Windows Live will be offered for free and try to make money from the rapidly expanding online ...

I've always wondered, with the porting of open-source apps to Windows, is it possible to build an XP system that's functional for day to day use, but uses entirely free software? Well, I wonder about a lot of things like that, but I'm pretty lazy, so that's where it ends. ...

I've been using Fedora for a week now, and it's really enlightened me as to what apps I use and what I don't. Since I'm having to find replacements for my Windows apps, I've learned that 90% of my app usage can be condensed to (1) Web browser, (2) email ...

Download details: Windows AntiSpyware (Beta): Microsoft has a new version of their AntiSpyware tool out. It has some bug fixes, but more importantly it pushes the expiration date of the free version out to December 31, from June 30. That's six more free months for a tool that ...

Firefox 3 to drop support for older Windows and Mac X 10.2: I think this is wise. There comes a point when you have to move upward and onward. Currently Firefox 3 is scheduled to be officially released in May 2007. When Firefox 3 is finally released it is expected ...

ISO Recorder Power Toy: Here's a great little Windows tool if you burn ISOs to CDs a lot. Install it, and then right-click on any ISO file and select "Copy image to CD..." Pop in a CD, click finish, and the image is burned using the standard XP CD-burning utility.

I'm not sure if this is new or not, but I've never seen it before. I was buying a machine from Dell today, and they're now giving the option to get "standard" reinstallation media for an extra $10. This is really good, because I despise the "Recovery CDs" that come ...

Cranked car windows are going, going...: This is interesting. This year, Honda became the first of the largest automakers to banish the crank window, moving entirely to power windows as standard equipment. "It's not even so much a luxury touch any more. It's an expectation," says Honda's Sage Marie. "That's ...

Aprelium Technologies - Home: Bummed out that Windows XP Home doesn't come with a copy of IIS? Need to develop at home? Well, never fear with this Web server, and this add-in, you're back in business. It's not going to set any speed records, but it's handy for development.

Did you know that Windows Media Player won't let you screen cap? I tried it today with a high-definition AVI playing, I screen-capped the window. However, when I pasted it into Irfanview there was nothing but black where the image was supposed to be. I tried screen-capping the entire ...

I usually steer clear of the 'Linux vs. Windows' articles, since almost everything relevant has been beaten to the point of cliché, and what we're left with is endless flame wars. However, this article by Linux News provides a level of technobabble that would make Geordi from Star Trek proud: ...

Q and A With Brian Eno: Here's a nice little interview with the guy that came up with "The Windows Sound." He explains how it came about, and how it helped him get past some creative blockages from which he'd been suffering. The thing from the agency said, "We want ...

Robert Hensing of Microsoft's Security Incident Response Team has apparently been upgraded to MS Employee 2.0, or fallen victim to whatever it is that's making those MS guys start blogging en masse lately. His first post is a whopper: Why you shouldn't be using passwords of any kind on your ...

eBay item #3626246138 is obviously a joke (isn't it?) but wont the seller have to pay a hefty commission?

Part I: Corporate Desktop Linux - The Hard Truth: This is an excellent article from the retired CTO of World Bank. He wanted to figure out how much you would save on licensing by switching to Linux. The results ain't pretty if you want to stick with the big manufacturers. ...

Microsoft: Legit Windows or no updates: I found this via Techdirt which comes to the same conclusion I have: the more Microsoft does things like this to prevent piracy, the more Microsoft alternatives will thrive. Aiming to crack down on counterfeit software, Microsoft plans later this year to require customers ...

What a great idea; from CNET News: A new policy from China's governing body states that all government ministries must buy only locally produced software at the next upgrade cycle. The State Council's move, aimed at breaking the dominance of Microsoft on desktop computers, will eliminate Microsoft's Windows operating system ...

Is Windows 95 still about 5 years too new for your tastes? Calmira brings new-age flashy eye-candy (like the Start Menu) to your Windows 3.11 installation. Calmira is a complete 16-bit shell that lets you manage files, launch applications and control tasks. It brings Windows 3.1 up to date with ...

Lycoris: Here's a Linux distribution from a company out of Redmond, no less. It seems designed specifically to look like Windows XP as much as possible. "Lycoris is located in Redmond, Washington. The corporation was started in the year 2000 with a vision of making Linux easy enough for anyone ...

And not just to Mac (and Linux) users. Mini seems to think so too. One of the pages on the miniusa.com site will load a Flash animation showing a car trying to parallel park (link). When the driver finds there isn t enough room (and bashes the bumper of the truck ...

Advanced Installer: Here's a great free Windows installer tool. If you need to distribute software, this is a great way to bundle to up and send it. This package contains the complete Advanced Installer application, including the freeware and non-freeware features. The former can be accessed at any time by ...

Liquid Web Project Streamer - r0t0r00t3r: For the record, this hack works exactly as they display here. Anyone can effectively open a Windows shell (explorer.exe) as the SYSTEM account. I don't know the specifics of what this allows you to do, but it sure looks scary. This could probably come ...

GMail Drive shell extension: GMailFS has been around for Linux for a few months, but this is the first Windows port I've seen. Holy Cow, this works well. Double-click installer, very professionally done. I installed it at the office, dragged a few files into the drive, then installed it at ...

Windows Vista Will Be an Important Measure: The next version of Windows has an official name. Microsoft announced Friday that it would replace the code-name Longhorn with the proper name Windows Vista.

Biculturalism: Joel Spolsky Windows programmer extraordinare has written a lengthy review of Eric Raymond's book "The Art of Unix Programming." He expands beyond this, however, to examine the cultural differences between Windows and Unix developers in general. What are the cultural differences between Unix and Windows programmers? There ...

I'm a little frustrated with Microsoft and a couple computer manufacturers tonight. You see, I'm owed an operating system, and these companies are conspiring to prevent me from collecting. I had an NT4 server. It was an old machine, and we replaced it earlier this year with a very fast ...

Microsoft's PHP initiative: This is interesting. Microsoft has recently released the second technical preview release of FastCGI for IIS, a new component for Microsoft's Web server platform. This release is available immediately for download to Windows Vista, IIS including IIS 6.0 in Windows 2003 Server and IIS 5.1 in ...

Slashdot is reporting that Dell has begun selling PCs without an OS pre-loaded. The machines are bare except for BIOS, and they ship with a FreeDOS CD. While seemingly small, this is a huge step away from Microsoft. Microsoft is so paranoid about retail machines not having Windows that they ...

Windows Home Server: I must have totally missed this. It was announced in January. Introducing Windows Home Server, a new way to simplify how you keep and share your family s photos, videos, and music. This smart hub lives in your home and connects all the important people in your life ...

20 Things They Don't Want You to Know: This is just one page in an excellent article from PC World (found via Slashdot) that has links to multiple resources for finding passwords that you've forgotten. Finding license keys for software you currently have installed Revealing saved passwords in IE that ...

Magic Number: 30 Billion: You know those little notifications you get from Windows that your machine has crashed and do you want to send the information to Redmond? Here's an interesting look at what must happen behind the scenes. "According to the Computer Industry Almanac, there were 603 million worldwide ...

Windows Live Local: I've been hearing a lot about Windows Live Local, but never knew quite what it was. Turns out it's a lot like Google Maps, but with the twist of "Bird's Eye View" images, which are at a 45-degree angle, not directly overhead. This link will take you ...

Jeffrey Zeldman Presents: Auto PopUps Dead?: He makes a good point about those sites that insist on controlling every aspect of your browser window: "Since Mozilla 0.9, most modern browsers have given users the ability to turn off self-launching windows. And most of us do just that, thereby eliminating unwanted ...

Gates: In Ten Years, it's a Windows and Linux Game: OS News has a good report on an interview Bill Gates gave at "a conference" (it's not specificed which). The quote of the title seems to indicate that Bill doesn't give Apple a fighting chance. He says some other interesting ...

How Microsoft Lost the API War: This is an incredibly long, but very interesting, article from Joel Spolsky in which he explains why the venerable Windows API is dying. He spends 6,252 fascinating words and a couple of dozen tangents getting to this point at the end: [...] Microsoft's API ...

Architecture astronauts take over: This whole thing is great. Spolsky gets downright medieval further down. And what is this Windows Live Mesh? It s a way to synchronize files. Jeez, we ve had that forever. When did the first sync web sites start coming out? 1999? There were a million versions. xdrive, ...

I thought this was interesting... I just wanted to tell you about a hack I experimented on my PC (I didn't really know what to do with it since I bought a Power Mac). It was surprisingly simple: I installed OSX86 and then Darwine. These are both simple operations. Now ...

Apple introduces dual-boot software Seems Apple wasn't too worried about folks hacking their new Intel Macs to boot windows. They've been working on a solution themselves and it appears to be much more polished than anything a guy who never sees the sun could ever hope to create. Apple today ...

Reg readers sabotage their Windows boxes: Readers of The Register have been a little over-zealous in their quest to defeat the faceless hacker. We now know firsthand why, say, an electric hand mixer needs a warning label advising users to switch it off before licking icing from the beaters. We ...

A Windows user spends a week with a Mac: This is from last year, but it's a good essay about transitioning from Windows to Mac. It seems balanced, and it reinforces my overall feeling: six of one, half dozen of the other. I think Macs are pretty, but I doubt ...

Registry Explorer home page: free software for windows: This tool will allow you to mount your Windows registry as a drive for browsing and editing in Windows Explorer. Via Anil Dash, who astutely notes that this is a "wacky way to f**k your system all up in a hurry."

Apparently, the program conflicts Windows XP Service Pack 2 created still have a lot of companies spooked: AssetMetrix surveyed 136,120 PCs between January 5 and March 10. It found that 37.6 percent of those PCs ran Windows XP. The operating system is more widely adopted among companies with fewer than ...

SlashDot pointed me to one of the most innovative UI ideas I've seen in a long time, and one that solves a real issue. Fold n' Drop is an attempt to better address the issue of how to drag a file to a window that's behind a bunch of other ...

Where was desktop search when we needed it?: This is kind of old news for me, because I've done a fair amount of server-side search engine programming with ASP and the content indexing service. It's a very well-done service, and if you have a big Windows file share, you can ...

So, the president of Iran wrote a letter to the American people today on his blog. I never finished the letter, but the best part is this comment from a reader: Mr President - it will be great if you can tell the person whos maintaining this website not to ...

SourceForge.net: Project Info - Windows Installer XML (WiX) toolset: Apparently Microsoft posted this source over at SourceForge. The Windows Installer XML (WiX) is a toolset that builds Windows installation packages from XML source code. The toolset supports a command line environment that developers may integrate into their build processes to ...

Microsoft, Apple Sign 5-Year Software Pact: Some interesting news out of MacWorld. Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, said in an interview Tuesday that the company won't sell or support Windows itself, but also hasn't done anything to preclude people from loading Windows onto the machines ...

Scott Hanselman's Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tools List: Great collection of utilities. "Roy Osherove suggested that I post a list of the contents of my C:/UTILS folder. Everyone collects utilities, and most folks have a list of a few that they feel are indispensable. Here's mine." Via LockerGnome.

Biculturalism: This is old Spolsky, but it's still good Spolsky -- In this essay from 2003, Spolsky responds to Eric Raymond's just-published (at the time) book, "The Art of Unix Programming". That book is a classic that just drips with old-school Unix disdain for anything else. (Don't confuse that statement ...

I support an older AppleShare IP Server (ASIP) that has been in service for us for years. It does everything we need it to do, is reasonably fast, and is easy as pie to maintain. So if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Right? This particular ASIP machine primarily serves ...

Geeky Microsoft wants a TV makeover: Apple has always been very strong with product placement, and now Microsoft wants the same thing. "Microsoft is promoting its Windows products on popular TV shows like Fox's '24' and HBO's 'The Wire,' airing this fall, as part of the software company's push to ...

Does Your Code Think In Ink? is a contest to develop your best PowerToy for the Windows XP Tablet PC Edition. A Tablet PC is not even required to enter. "The Tablet PC Platform SDK application development can be done on a standard Windows XP desktop. The SDK provides the ...

Microsoft's Longhorn 3D UI: Apparently, the next generation of Windows will move away from standard, 2D, bit-mapped interfaces. Instead, all the windows will be vectored, 3D objects. This article is a look into a seminar on the subject at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference this year. It's all very dry ...

X.Org is set to release a new version of their X11 server tomorrow (X11 is the system that drives the GUI desktop on Linux and other UNIX systems). The notable part of this release will be extensions to the X protocol that will allow more flexibility in the compositing of ...

Leszynski Group - Tablet PC Downloads - inTegrate: Are you a VB developers, frustrated that tools like Denim are only available for Web interfaces? Never fear, inTegrate does the same thing for windowed apps. It plugs into Visual Studio and lets you "draw" controls that it will put on your ...

Here is a fantastic article by Michael Bacarella about how to build secure software. In it, Bacarella expresses his anger at the crappy software some people write and presents a laundry list at how to write better systems. To wit: "The user is pure evil. All data entered into an ...

At least according to benchmarks done by the guys who were able to pull of the trick of getting XP to run on the MacBook Pro. Now ain't that a kick in the pants! Of course, the question of why you'd want to run a second-rate OS like XP on ...

Good article on CNET on how Microsoft is under pressure in the Asian market. Microsoft has always maintained a 'one-price' policy, meaning Windows costs the same no matter where you go, regardless of local currency or economic conditions. This makes Microsoft products very expensive in some nations. Now, with more ...

Desktop Linux Could Be Costly: I believe this. I will probably always run Windows on the desktop, though I make an effort to use non-Microsoft applications. "Using a Linux operating system might save you money on your servers, but most enterprises shouldn't expect to see the same cost saving if ...

Microsoft Ships First Vista Security Patches: I know it's still in beta, but this can't be good for a product that hasn't even been released yet. At least they're working the bugs out of the patching engine. Microsoft Corp. has shipped the first critical security update for Windows Vista, the ...

Open current Windows Explorer folder as Command Window: Here's an extremely handy registry hack. It lets you right-click on a Windows folder and get a command prompt at that folder.

It's a long weekend coming up for us U.S. folks, so we'll need some extra diversion this week. I was thinking of keeping this one in my back pocket to slowly mete out future Friday Diversions, but this way you can divert yourselves if I miss a Friday or two ...

Longhorn goes to pieces: WinFS is out of Longhorn. That's gotta hurt. They've been talking about this as the centerpiece of the release. Advanced search features that Gates has termed the "Holy Grail" of Longhorn, the next major version of Windows, won't be fully in place until 2009, Bob Muglia, ...

Linux vs. Windows: Choice vs. Usability: Yes, yes, yes. The lack of standard operation with Linux GUIs (and perhaps more importantly individual Linux applications) is a huge barrier to desktop acceptance. "The multiple-GUI problem illustrates a basic difference in Windows and Linux. Windows has one general GUI interface ...

I'm writing this entry from my new Red Hat Fedora Core 1 machine. It's very nice. Install was as simple as Windows (simpler, probably), and it's very functional right out of the box. It had network connectivity right away, and I can browse all my Windows shares without a problem. ...

ProcessLibrary.com - The online resource for process information!: Very handy when you're trying to figure out just what your 10-year-old nephew has installed that's making your machine run like a 286. In the recesses of your computer, 20-30 invisible processes run silently in the background. Some hog system resources, turning ...

Under heavy pressure from Linux application server clusters, Microsoft is working on a version of Windows Server 2003 designed to support parallel computing. Microsoft plans to aim Windows Server 2003 HPC edition, at companies in life sciences, engineering, finance, and other industries where highly scalable systems built with relatively low-cost ...

Netcraft reports that about 1.1% of the websites that they track are still served up by NT4, and that there's a major security flaw in NT4 that will go forever unpatched due to its end-of-life status. Hundreds of thousands of web sites that continue to run the Windows NT4 face ...

Developers Developers Developers Developers: This is one area where Microsoft has excelled: getting people to build software for its operating system. I have worked in an IT shop with the subscriptions Joel details below. It's overwhelming to have that much software. "If you're a software company willing to commit to ...

Microsoft to Acquire Groove Networks, Combining Talents to Create Anytime, Anywhere Collaboration Products and Services: This is kind of a no-brainer. Micrsoft owned 25% of Groove, and it was only a matter of time until Groove got built into Windows. Microsoft Corp. announced today that it will acquire Groove Networks ...

Though he claims it's not in direct response to Apple's annexing of his territory, Arlo Rose is set to release a Windows version of Konfabulator shortly. Rose, who once worked at Apple and now heads up a small company called Pixoria, said the new version will be available Monday. "We're ...

Microsoft: A Killer App That Could Kill the Competition: An interesting look at Microsoft's new foray in to the anti-virus business. They're planning to bundle anti-virus software with the new version of Windows, which, analysts say, will decimate all the competition. "It's a great time to be in the antivirus ...

Netcraft has written a short but interesting article that shows that a suprisingly large number of sites are still running on NT4, Satan's own operating system ("all of the problems of Windows, without all the perks"). Microsoft named it a dead horse last summer. There are a number of interesting ...

How to Create and Manipulate NTFS Junction Points: This is awfully handy. It allows you to map a drive, but map it to a local folder, instead of using a drive letter. So as you traverse your directory tree, you could drop into a remote folder that appears it be ...

This is a MacBook Pro doing an imitation of a paperweight. It has been bricked. It stopped responding during some update process, and even the local Mac dealer here cannot get it working again. It is being paved and reloaded as I write this. This is a $3,000 machine. It ...

When it comes to AMP (Apache; MySQL; Perl, Python, or PHP) installers, we at Gadgetopia started with FoxServ. That project kind of died, so a few weeks ago, we touted the benefits of Sokkit. That product, while very good, wasn't free, which was a drag (though, at $24.95, it's still ...

If you haven't upgraded to Firefox 1.5, then you may still be dealing with those horrible dialog boxes when there's an HTTP or DNS error. The new version has nicely formatted standard pages, like the sample above. I always hated those dialogs, because when a domain wasn't found or something, ...

I used the iTunes Music Store for the first time today. I actually didn't want to install it, but Apple is bundling it with QuickTime these days, so you have to get one to get the other. Then my wife, Annie, heard about it, and she wanted to try it. ...

The Australian Bible Society has just released the SMSBible, with all 31,173 verses of the Holy Word translated to phone-speak. Some examples: Genesis 1:1 In da Bginnin God cr8ed da heavens & da earth. Da earth waz barren, wit no 4m of life; it waz unda a roaring ocean cuvred ...

FoxServ Project: I'm surprised we haven't talked about FoxServ here before. FoxServ is an Apache / mySQL / PHP installer package for Windows. Unlike NuShpere or PHPTriad, FoxServ features the latest version of all included pacakges, user defined configuration during installation, PHP as a module, PEAR, and the Zend Optimizer. ...

Wired News: Microsoft Software in Every Car?: Okay, they had me here right up until that last sentence. "We'd like to have one of our operating systems in every car on Earth," said Dick Brass, vice-president of Microsoft's automotive business unit. "It's a lofty goal." Cars with the Microsoft software ...

News: Asian trio in deal to replace Windows: It strikes me that we already have this it's called Linux. "Three North Asian countries are closer to signing a deal to codevelop an open-source operating system to replace Microsoft Windows, according to a Japanese news report." Via LockerGnome.

Notepad popups: Oh, nice. "Because of a design flaw in Internet Explorer, Notepad popup windows can be displayed from an HTML email message or Web page regardless of browser security settings. In addition, Notepad popups can access files on a hard disk, possibilly causing stability problems in a Windows system." ...

Some not too kind things have been said about John C. Dvorak around here, much of it well deserved. But I'm wondering if his assertion that Apple is steering towards Windows is so far off base. I stand by my disagreement with him on why he thinks it's a done ...

Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant: This is so funny it almost has to be fake. Back in 2003, Bill Gates himself tried to download Windows Movie Maker. He got so frustrated, he sent an email to a bunch of people at Microsoft. This is comedy gold. I ...

Brazil Leans Away From Microsoft: First China, then Korea and Boston, now Brazil. "We have some islands in the federal government using open-source, but we want to create a continent," said Amadeu, a former economics professor who gained fame before joining Silva's team by launching a network of free computer ...

Realtime Soft UltraMon: I'm setting up a dual-monitor system for a client (take that, Spolsky). This program adds some really great functionality. UltraMon is a utility for multi-monitor systems, designed to increase productivity and unlock the full potential of multiple monitors. They have a tour with great screencaps. For instance: ...

Microsoft came out and admitted yesterday that portions of the source code for Windows NT and Windows 2000 had been made available on the Internet. They're not sure just yet who is at fault source code is made available to third-party vendors for development purposes, but those developers are ...

Microsoft *nix: Interesting. What if Microsoft shipped "Linux for Windows"? On Friday, Microsoft released a free download of Windows Services for Unix version 3.5, a significant upgrade to the Unix integration product they've been offering for about 5 years. I've used it before, mostly as an NFS client, but there's ...

OS Shootout 2003: Mac OS X vs. Windows XP vs. Linux: Great article comparing these three OSs in a matrix with rows for UI, wireless support, CD burning, etc. Good place to see what the different OSs are better at. I only read halfway down the list, but it looked ...

I rarely eat at McDonalds, but while on vacation last week our kids talked us into it as we drove across western Nebraska. My wife ordered a Big Mac, and unbeknownst to me, they had a Sony Connect promo going on where you get a free music download with every ...

Microsoft tags IE 7 'high priority' update: This strikes me as a really bad idea. Really bad. Microsoft plans to automatically push Internet Explorer 7 to Windows XP users when the browser update is ready later this year. IE 7 will be delivered in the fourth quarter as a "high ...

Apple releases software to let Macs run Windows: Could this be a joke? Apple Computer Inc. on Wednesday rolled out a software patch that enables its Intel-based Macintosh computers to install and run Microsoft Corp.'s Windows XP operating system. Apple said that the new software, called "Boot Camp" is available ...

Internet infection spreads rapidly: "A virus-like infection that was the subject of urgent U.S. government and industry warnings spread rapidly Monday across the Internet, causing computers to mysteriously restart and coordinating an electronic attack against Microsoft Corp." So a virus that exploits a flaw in Windows is coordinating computers to ...

Microsoft Codenames: Here's a list of Microsoft software project codenames. EVeryone knows about "Longhorn," there days. And a lot of people know that Windows XP was called "Whistler." Goign further back, a handful know that Windows 95 was code-named "Chicago." But "Impala"? "Starfighter"? "Airstream"? As anyone who had worked