41 minutes ago, PeterDouglas wrote

@IDWMaster: Don't forget, anything written in WinRT MUST be installed from Microsoft Marketplace. Chew on that candy for a while! You no longer are ALLOWED to give YOUR application to whoever you like WITHOUT PERMISSION from Microsoft.

The bigger question is not about Win APIs, the question is, is your PC YOURS anymore?

Of course, anything else rather than praises and flowers will be bashed here by the 10-15 regulars hanging in here. Don't expect much from them. Their bags are all empty.

I would like to point out that this is not true. Applications may also be distributed within Enterprise businesses through Windows Server, and Microsoft announced other alternative means of distribution as well, but haven't provided any details on them yet.I would also like to point out that I have no problem with this app model as long as "desktop applications" are still supported, and is not considered a "legacy" feature that will be dropped in the next version of Windows.

Bottom line: THE DESKTOP SHOULD NOT be a legacy feature.

4 hours ago, evildictaitor wrote

Or this one, which still crashes my NVidia graphics drivers (part of which run in ring0, and hence Chrome's sandbox it just window dressing).

https://cvs.khronos.org/svn/repos/registry/trunk/public/webgl/sdk/tests/extra/lots-of-polys-example.html

Whoa! That certainly shows a problem with BOTH Google Chrome's and NVidia's implementations!  It's really annoying that a website can cause a computer to freeze like that. Google Chrome should work with NVIdia to fix that bug! However, the vulnerability isn't indicative of a flaw in WebGL or OpenGL itself, but instead indicates a crucial vulnerability in the implementation of the specification. 

3 hours ago, evildictaitor wrote

*snip*

It also needs you to put your identity into the webpage for it to steal it. A ring-zero exploit in WebGL needs no such user-interaction. It can just install a driver and steal all of your keystrokes and files directly to the russian hackers that installed it.

WebGL can easily be disabled from a command line option passed into most WebGL compliant browsers. Also; who says that WebGL HAS to run whenever a page requests it? Couldn't browsers make it so the user is required to OK the use of WebGL before it runs on the system? There's nothing that says that a browser can't do this.

55 minutes ago, magicalclick wrote

@IDWMaster:

The video is Godly for sure. I still cannot see how it is video edited, even though you have stated it is. Maybe you hide the flaws in low resolution youtube videos, because it looks very very real.

Got a better webcam --- A higher resolution version is now posted, see my original post. Video editing these days is pretty simple with Photoshop for texture editing, DirectX for 3D rasterization, OpenCL and OpenCV for image analysis, and DirectShow for video encoding.

5 minutes ago, magicalclick wrote

You can right click on the tile and turn off updates. But, it is done manually, no automatic switch when you are in a public network.

Disabling the tiles still fails to disable the background updates performed by Windows for the mail. I still am seeing TCP connections to Windows Live when tile updates are disabled, which contain personally identifiable information that I would not want to send over a public network, as well as a CLEARTEXT view of all my contact's e-mail addresses!

1 day ago, JoshRoss wrote

Anyone have a copy of CP/M that I could put on my phone?

No. Windows 8 will PRESENTLY not run on Windows Phone, and the video I posted above is just a conceptual demonstration (really fancy special effects supposedly made in Photoshop), made by one of my co-workers who happens to be extremely talented at video editing, and he wanted me to post it to Channel9 to see what reactions it would get.

2 days ago, evildictaitor wrote

So what you're saying is that someone is basing their entire dislike of Windows8 on conjecture and fancy video editing rather than actually trying it?

Windows8 isn't for phones anyway. It's for tablets, desktops and servers.

The video just shows that Windows 8 in its current form does not make sense as a phone OS, particularly due to its horizontal rather than vertical scrolling, and its style of "make everything big tiles" rather than organized lists of applications (folders or some kind of alphabetical auto-sort would be nice, particularly for mobile devices with small screens.

Also; I can see Windows 8 for tablets, but its touch-oriented design appears to be geared towards mobile devices, rather than desktop computers and servers. Since no noticeable improvements were made towards the desktop side of things (the standard Desktop view), and no word on server-side improvements, it seems to be destined for Windows Phones and Tablets.

Also; isn't Apollo supposed to be Windows 8 running on phones? So isn't Microsoft planning on putting this on their phone platform.

NOTE: Before anyone thinks I somehow got Windows 8 to actually run on a real phone, please note that if you look at the video description on YouTube it clearly states that the video is simply a conceptual demonstration (fancy video editing), not an actual demo of Windows 8 running on a phone.

EDIT: Here is a higher-resolution version for those that requested it (view in 720p HD)

1 hour ago, OrigamiCar wrote

It gets better - the Windows Genuine Advantage Diagnostic Tool is telling me that Windows is registered and genuine... WTF is going on?

I don't have any spyware or viruses on my system or dodgy software of any description - just basically Windows, Office, Visual Studio, Adobe CS5 and Battlefield....

Sounds like a virus to me. I've replaced hardware, including motherboards, CPUs, monitors, and GPUs several times, and even changed hard drives once, and I've never had validation problems. I would suggest calling Microsoft's technical support and explaining the problem to them. Please see this link for support options.

53 minutes ago, Bass wrote

Batman is a fictional character. Bill Gates wins by default.

Wish this site had a "like" button. 

9 hours ago, Bass wrote

With the GPL (if this is a library) you can require anyone using the the code to also GPL their work or put it under a license that is compatible with the GPL (eg. BSD 2-clause).

From what IDW said in his 2nd post this seems to be his intention (free license for open source projects, commercial license for closed source projects), probably he mistakenly used "non-commercial use".

IDWMaster,

From what you want I think the GPL is not the best choice, probably the AGPL would fit your business model better. Although TBH the distinction between them can be a legal gray area so if you looking to a lawyer for advice maybe mention this.

Good luck with this, it seems like an interesting idea.

Thanks! The AGPL/a second (proprietary license) seems like the perfect licensing model for my business! Haven't heard back from my lawyer yet, but I will let him know about this licensing option!

17 hours ago, AndyC wrote

Two questions spring to mind:

1) How is this better than just running applications under separateuser accounts?

2) Are you even allowed to specify 'non-commercial usage' on a GPL licensed app? I think not.

1 - Using separate user accounts does not really "virtualize" an application instance. My virtualized web server framework can be used to:

• Redirect file IO operations without the knowledge of the application
• Monitor and diagnose performance issues on a per-VM basis, and allow for prioritization of traffic/disk IO (disk bandwidth) based on the previous history of that application, as well as the number of IO operations the subscriber is paying for (or you can charge them based on how much disk IO operations they use)
• Prevent malicious applications from running a DOS attack against the server by means of resource prioritization (QoS) and attack detection
• Prevent execution of malicious code designed to exploit security vulnerabilities in the operating system itself (code running in the VM cannot directly access the host operating system, or P/Invoke into any native functions; 'unsafe' code such as pointers is also disabled)
• Use VHDs as a tool for application instancing and versioning (to allow multiple instances of the same application to run on a server simultaneously, so the customer's existing sessions with a website are not interrupted during an application upgrade, and new customers can automatically access the newer version of the application; if this setting is enabled by the application vendor in an XML configuration file)

2 - Perhaps not, but any products that ship with my server will be required to distribute their source code. I have contacted my lawyer and am awaiting a reply from him about this. I may need to choose another license.

I will release this under a GPL license for non-commercial use (open-source), and a paid license for commercial use. 

Bottom line: Code in the language you like the best. No one language is 'better' than another (even Visual Basic.NET still has its uses), and HAVE FUN!

To throw an exception or not to throw. That is the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the performance loss and arrows of critics, or to take arms and debug, and by opposing increase network reliability. To perform well, to increase throughput. No more; and by increasing throughput to say we end slow transfer speeds. The bandwidth, perchance to increase efficiency. For in that performance boost, may come the bans of restrictive service providers. When we have shuffled off this overhead of TCP. Must give us less latency -- there's the gamer's respect. That makes calamity of the long download. For who would want high latency? The illegal wiretaping, the proud censors. The pangs of random delays, the laws inability to deal effectively with pirates. The insolence of W3C, and the spurns of goto. That latency merit goto of the unworthy code when he himself casts good practice (http://xkcd.com/292/). To grunt and sweat under a sea of context switches. But that dread of goto. The undiscovered horrors of debugging it. No function returns, puzzles the developer. And makes us rather bear those delays we have, than to goto statements that have unknown consequences. Thus dinosaurs resulting from gotos make cowards of us all. And thus the native code of detail is sicklied o'er with the pale dynamic cast. 

7 minutes ago, AndyC wrote

No, there is no way of escaping the "sandbox" environment. If you're writing the kind of application which requires things which can only be done in the desktop environment, then you ought to be writing a desktop application.

Is it possible for a desktop and a metro application to communicate with each other?

1 day ago,Alexandre​Mutel wrote

Again IDWMaster:

The errors you are posting are quite normal, as I didn't remove lots of API that are compiled for the desktop (but are not used my metro app. For example, the namespace Design that is generating lots of errors and is only used on desktop but can be removed easily). Keep in mind that the SharpDX 2.0 assemblies for Win8/Metro are a preview... SharpDX will probably pass certifications as all the API isusing authorized COM/Win32 API. Though there are couple of things that still need to be clarified about the new 4.5 core assemblies...

The preview version is probably not entirely cleanup up from some CLR/Win32 functions that are not supported by Win8 metro, but that will be easy to replace them.

Using SharpDX, you will be able to use it from desktop as well on Metro, without to change your code.

You should better leverage on the unique features of your wrapper instead of bashing around existing wrappers. We are all on the same boat.

Sorry about that. Didn't realize the errors were to be expected by the API (based on the number of errors, I thought it was "heavily dependent" on these "outdated" APIs), and didn't realize it would be such a simple fix. In the future, I'll file a bug report (politely), instead of bashing on a project.