Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Released 334
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has finally released the final build of Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. 'There are a few significant additions that are included in SP2: Windows Search 4.0, Bluetooth 2.1 Feature Pack, the ability to record data on to Blu-Ray media natively in Vista, Windows Connect Now (WCN) is now in the Wi-Fi Configuration, and exFAT file system supports UTC timestamps. The service pack contains about 800 hotfixes.' A list of other notable changes is available on TechNet. SP2 isn't included in Automatic Update yet, but it will be 'during the coming months.'"
Windows Search 4.0?! (Score:4, Interesting)
Wireless streaming (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder if they have fixed the throttling bug where if you're streaming media over a wireless link, Vista throttles the connection down so much that it causes buffer underruns and severe clipping. I can't listen to FLACs in VLC unless I set buffering to at least 20 seconds.
Re:Like Digging Through People's Trash (Score:2, Interesting)
Hello. Closed source software. I damn well *expect* there to be thousands, if not more, bugs that are not and will never be fixed in Windows until someone "finds" them and posts about them publically, security related or not. I doubt even the militarised versions of Windows have *everything* they know about fixed - it's easier to just say "don't do this" or not include a certain tool/utility/feature than it is to fix it and document it.
Why on Earth would you ever find this alarming, or unforgivable? It's the whole point of closed-source software, so that you *never* know what's going on with the code and (hopefully) never see it.
I disagree.
You could (should) offer a closed source product and still be honest about all the bugs that exist in it to your paying customers. Granted, I'm not distributing my web applications on a scale that Vista is being distributed on but you know seeing these 700 fixes listed out does alarm me. I mean, that really serious bug? The one that puts your Windows 2008 server at risk? Could still be at large without you ever knowing about it.
From Microsoft's end, how do they handle multiple bug reports when users don't have access to a complete list of known bugs so they know to report it?
And maybe it's obvious why they keep them from you--you'd probably flip to a serving solution without that bug. But, as an advocate for transparency, I would expect Microsoft to at least publicize its bugs--especially if they've been fixed in an update. I'm kind of lead to believe that these 700 (on the dot!) bug fixes are only a subset.
Vista SP2 (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm hoping that SP2 doesn't break the functionality of my HTPC like Windows 7 did. I tried Windows 7 x64 RC on my HTPC for about a week or so, but my sound card (X-Fi Extreme Audio PCI-Express x1 slot) developed some major problems that caused MCE to crash and WMP to crash.
I went back to Vista on it. I'm happy enough with the Media Center in Vista that I doubt I'll use Windows 7 on this box in the future, even though the UI of Windows 7 Media Center seems to be a little less "cluttered". My biggest complaint about Vista is the format of the recordings you make. I cannot seem to easily manipulate the resulting recordings very well at all, and I have to rely on MCEBuddy to convert the recorded shows to a format (H264) I can then use on other systems and OSes. ( I know, I know...DRM can suck my salty balls)
From a usability standpoint though, Windows 7 seems superior to Vista in the installation process, as well as the Desktop UI. I am surprised that they don't just convert the installed Vista base to Windows 7 for the simplicity of support. (well maybe not "surprised". it "is" MS, afterall)
Re:Windows Search 4.0?! (Score:3, Interesting)
I actually love it for work. The amount I search email and documents, it does a great job. You have to remember that it isn't just a plain txt file search, but it indexes doc and your outlook information. Being able to type in my last name and get a list of 68000 items in 1-2 seconds is pretty sweet.
I've tried Google Desktop as well, but just wasn't as much of a fan. I had a harder time getting it to index properly and do what I wanted. WS4 gives you some pretty fine grain control over what and where it indexes.
Re:Windows Search 4.0?! (Score:5, Interesting)
I run Vista. index is enabled by default, but one of the first tweaks i did was switch it off, and Windows Search can be uninstalled/hidden.
The indexer runs as a "background" serivce, which is a new type and is supposed only get CPU cycles when the machine is idle. unfortunately, this only works for the FIRST instance of a background process, and there are many cases where more than one can conflict under Vista, and then indexing begins chewing up resources. I had it kick off in the middle of playing games when the CPU was over 80%.
WS4 will NOT be enabled on my machine. I keep the index service, pre-fetch, and several other services forcibally disabled on my machine. When I'm looking for something, it;s either an e-mail, which google or xobni instantly find for me without M$'s help, or it's a file I've properly store and can find myself in 3-4 clicks, or it;s a media item already indexed by iTunes... I don't search my personal machine for random crap, and anything I've ever needed to find on my own machine was ALREADY indexed by somethiung else.... It's a complete waste of resources, a waste of disk space for the index database, and every time you run a major patch, it fucking re-indexes, which for my 400+GB of stuff, takes as long as defragging.
This is not to mention that is also searches inside files, and stores that data in a database in a predetermined location. I have data in docs on my system I'd just as much prefer NOT be in a non--encrypted central repository... contacts, SSNs, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, all go in that database that is VERY easy for a hacker to lift...
If there's a way to uninstall WS4 after SP2, not just disabling it, I will.
Re:Like Digging Through People's Trash (Score:3, Interesting)
Just FYI, it's not 'shove all the rows at them', it's 'use ajax to request the rows you need and don't waste time re-rendering the other 95% of the page - and no cacheing doesn't always work'... well at least when I do it that's how it works.
It Just Works (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been a longtime XP user. I use Ubuntu and RHEL at work. I use linux and unix. I hated Vista with a passion, thought it was a PIA and had so much config problems. I then bought a new PC (quad core 6GB ram, blah blah) so I figured I'd put Vista on it. First time worked ok. I updated my bios, it blew away my Raid 1. Got irritated and stopped screwing with it. Then SP2 came along in the last few weeks and I reinstalled my OS and installed SP2 over it.
It just works. Works perfectly. So simple to install Vista and simple to install the SP2. 2 reboots and I had everything working. Fixed the RAID issue, fixed the bluetooth issue, fixed some other quirks that drove me batshiz crazy.
I gotta say that I used to hate vista with the passion of a 1000 firey suns. Now I'm like "Well it's not too bad, what's the problem with it again?"
Re:Doesn't make a difference. (Score:5, Interesting)
Numbers of page view per platform on the last 12 month of a little european website:
Page Views
Platform Sum %
(blank) 231,944,487 14
AIX 63,675 0
AmigaOS 1,399 0
BeOS 1,145 0
CP/M 26,258 0
DOS 28,158 0
Dreamcast 319 0
HP-UX 1,405 0
IRIX 2,535 0
Linux 10,782,630 1
Macintosh 22,543,401 1
NetBSD 1,930 0
OS/2 6,449 0
OSF1 1,000 0
OpenVMS 383 0
SCO_SV 38 0
Slurp 61,242,836 4
Solaris 7,625,811 0
SunOS 197,176 0
Unix (unknown) 67,609 0
WebTV 2,111 0
Windows 12,050,352 1
Windows 16-bit 11,607 0
Windows 2000 132,118,040 8
Windows 32-bit 6,226,532 0
Windows 95 723,941 0
Windows 98 32,166,513 2
Windows CE 107,696 0
Windows NT 5,474,837 0
Windows Sever 2003 19,986,701 1
Windows Vista 30,442,927 2
Windows XP 1,012,030,914 62
unknown 39,486,905 2
TOTAL 1,625,367,720 100
Re:Like Digging Through People's Trash (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Finally, I can torrent from windows (Score:4, Interesting)
After running a fire-breathing Celeron 2.5GHz as router/fileserver/torrentbox/freepbx for a few months, I finally bit the bullet and picked up a soekris net5501 [soekris.com] and installed pfsense and freeswitch on it. My firewalling and phones run right at well under 20 watts.
Of course that leaves me without fileserver or torrentbox, but an inexpensive alix [pcengines.ch] or fit pc [fit-pc.com] running freenas will fill that role nicely.
Re:Doesn't make a difference. (Score:2, Interesting)
is this that different from open source? (Score:3, Interesting)
Didn't you see the OpenSSH article go through over a week ago? Disclosing significant security issues that existed in OpenSSH since its existence and weren't even announced until months after they were found and fixed?
Open source also has lots of bugs in it. And many of them aren't fixed until they are posted about in a public forum.
You have an actual point here about open source. It's just Stallman's point restated, but still, it's valid. But you do a really rotten job of stating it and explaining how open source (or free software) is different.
The real value of open source (in terms of bugs) is that if you would like, you can inspect the code and then hopefully find latent bugs. And if you find them, you can fix them. For example, if your business depends very critically on a section of code being secure, you can hire someone to code review it. You can't do this with closed source. You won't necessarily find any existing problems, but at least you have some more control over your destiny.
From what MS and the military say, the militarized versions of Windows don't have different code in them, they just are configured differently to have more security features (which were already available) turned on. So the militarized versions certainly don't have everything they know about fixed. The same is true of open source/free software, many projects have enormous bug databases with lists of open (known about) bugs which are not fixed. Again, the big different with open source is that if one of those bugs is a deal-breaker for you, you can fix it yourself and not wait for the project maintainers to do it.
Re:Finally, I can torrent from windows (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason why it was implemented according to various sources was to limit the damage of all those infected Windows machines spamming networks looking for new vulnerable hosts to infect, and also, slow down the rate at which they would cause bedlam. By enforcing such a limit, the aim was to impede an infected machines ability to propogate the infection; of course, we're primarily talking the nasty to catastrophic Windows worms we've seen in the past from gaping truck-sized security holes in critical system components.
However, if you look at Vista, you'll note that contrary to what some people would like you to believe, the exploitability of the OS has gone down drastically versus XP, in particular, with regards to worms. This is of course due to several reasons: better OS security architecture, defence-in-depth (DEP/ASLR/etc...), properly enforced user permissions, the list goes on. Take the most recent Conficker worm as an example. Vista infections will almost certainly be a lot lower, for one, the exploit path that uses the MS08-067 [microsoft.com] vulnerability that forms its primary exploit vector can not be exploited anonymously on Vista and newer machines. The vulnerable code is still present unless patched, but it requires valid user credentials.
At a guess, I'd say Microsoft came to the conclusion that the TCP limit was no longer necessary on Vista, as the improved security of the OS made the need for such connection limitations redundant. On the other hand, I'll be surprised if they ever remove it on XP, because no matter how much you patch it, it is fundamentally more insecure by its architecture than Vista. And if they don't remove the limitation on XP, I'd argue that's quite telling as to the motivation and reasoning behind removing it on Vista only.
Re:Like Digging Through People's Trash (Score:2, Interesting)
That average is low, according to glassdoor:
http://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/Microsoft-Salaries-E1651.htm [glassdoor.com]
Not including bonuses, benefits, or all the other perks, SDEs here (yes, I'm at MS) earn, on average, about $91,000. However, on a good team, there is one SDET per programmer, earning an average of $84,000 a year (which is only $4k more than the current starting salary). Additionally, there are PMs that manage features, managers of each area, and managers above those that drive cross-team collaboration (moving all the way up). It's not simply "throw 4 million man hours per line of code" - there's a much larger process.
Include on top of that buildings, supplemental costs (janitors, computers, et cetera), and you can see that there is a big cost. Your last sentence sums it up nicely - we have to earn a living, too. Part of that means that, eventually, a product needs to be shipped. With 40M SLOC, there are inevitably bugs. The question as a company full of people with families to support is, when is the product "good enough?"
I think a lot of slashdotters miss that: a product isn't "done" when it's perfect, but when it's "good enough to sell." Some bugs remain in the product by choice - a certain amount of code churn inevitably introduces new bugs - either behavior that is unexpected/changed or regressions in the code. Waiting for perfection leads to a product that's never released, and a bunch of laid off engineers/contingent staff.
Re:You Joke, but... (Score:2, Interesting)
Few cars get better fuel consumption as compared to a modern (last 7 years) automatic transmission. The technology has surpassed your abilities... and often has more gears now... and even has continuous shifting in some models.
Performance is a hard statement to make as well. There are many cars now where the automatic model is better performing than the manual, e.g. mustangs and camaros and their ilk. And, there is a very long list of cars where unless you're truly an amazing driver you're not going to beat the automatic version.
Cost to maintain is probably the best practical argument, but the hydraulic clutch crowd made that one slightly debatable.
All that said, they're still a fuckload more fun to drive.
Re:Like Digging Through People's Trash (Score:2, Interesting)
What about the extra costs that users encounter due to using said closed-source software? They have to work extra to pay these. So it partly comes down to having one group of people dig holes, and another fill them in.