Channel 9 - Discussions by LarryOsterman

Coffeehouse - Google gets the better of Microsoft

LarryOsterman — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 11:43:59 GMT

Rossj wrote:

ScanIAm wrote:

How long does it need to be reviewed?

It is apparently 6000 pages, so you tell me - does it need 6000 pages, or is this just a tactic to get people to say "I'm NOT reading that"

Last year at this time, while I was working on some network protocol documentation, I wrote a spec that described a small subset (9 verbs) of a protocol I worked on several years ago.

The spec took 120 pages to cover just the 9 verbs.

So yeah, I could easily see a complete set of specs taking 6000 pages, especially if they completely cover all the functionality in Office.

Coffeehouse - Windows Live Photo Gallery rocks!

LarryOsterman — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 09:57:05 GMT

Sven Groot wrote:

Live Photo Gallery doesn't support x64 yet, so I can't check it out.

??

I'm surprised at this assertion - you're saying that the 32bit version doesn't run on x64?

Or does LPG require that drivers be installed to run? If so, that SUCKS.

Just because there isn't a 64bit native version of an app doesn't mean it's not supported on x64.

Coffeehouse - Will Microsoft make a stand?

LarryOsterman — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 18:13:41 GMT

W3bbo wrote:

My money says no, since they bent-over for the restrictions on the Zune.

Anyway, according to some website, the big media people want you to pay to transfer music between devices. So that "My Music" SMB share on your computer? Yeah, that'll be illegal.

Would Microsoft bend over and prevent sharing of DRM'd files (or rather, any media files) over your LAN, the Internet (via IIS), or anything?

Consider the Zune, that puts a 3day/3play limit on any "squirted" music, regardless of its license (and thanks to a technicality they couldn't be sued for breaking Creative Commons or Copyleft).

So who'se to say Windows Vienna or Windows VII won't?

Discuss.

Right now, there's a huge grey area associated with multimedia content.

In the US, the courts have clearly stated that you are allowed to make backups of media you have purchased, that right is unambiguous under current law.

It is NOT clear if you have the ability to transform the content on the media you have purchased - so ripping a CD to MP3 might not be allowable (nobody knows - it's never been adjudicated, and the law is ambiguous).

And if it IS allowable, it's not clear if you have the ability to store that content in a playable form on more than one device (so you MIGHT be able to put the content on your MP3 player).

And if that IS allowable, it's not clear if you have the ability to play that content from more than one place at a given time (IANAL, but I suspect that if you are allowed to rip the content to MP3, you'd be allowed to play it back from a player other than an analog CD player (but I'm not sure)).

If it IS allowable to play back content from more than one place at a time, it's not clear if you can share that content with the members of your family.

It is quite clear that once you have ripped content, you're not allowed to share that content to anyone else - there are plenty of court cases that make that clear (for instance, the original Napster case).

So there's a broad spectrum of rights from the clearly legal to the clearly illegal. Right now where we stand on that spectrum is ambiguous - we literally don't know, and we won't know until the courts (or Congress) step in and define our rights.

IMHO, the content owners would love it to be all the way at the restricted form of the spectrum (you can make a CD backup of the content but nothing else), but I suspect that the consumer backlash would be significant. Again, IMHO the content owners know this and they're only going after the clearly illegal cases.

They're not going to waste their time on the other parts.

But this is ALL my opinion.

Coffeehouse - Vista UAC and Amazon.com -- MSFT staff Please read this!

LarryOsterman — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 16:06:04 GMT

What's really annoying is that Vista refuses to run startup applications that are manifested to require elevation just to avoid this.

Coffeehouse - Windows Audio Capture

LarryOsterman — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 15:23:21 GMT

esoteric wrote:

Sadly, I wasn't able to get this to work under Vista.

I see four methods so far:

1) Set up an analog loopback via line-in. That sucks though, as it means that the signal goes through DA and AD phases.

2) Set up a digital synchronous loopback via SPDIF. I can't do that though, as I lack the SPDIF input jack, and it's also not quite optimal.

3) Search for a loopback virtual input device driver for Vista.

4) Buy a soundcard with internal routing. But buying a soundcard for this purpose is too extreme.

That's all the ideas I've got at the moment. I don't understand why that isn't there from the outset, if that's a correct assumption. It's so incredibly useful to have. The DRM system will surely be able to safeguard protected content.

Maybe one could have an ASIO driver and force the output of the programs into it somehow, and then reroute the output of the driver to disk.

If it is possible, then please, someone enlighten me!

The funny thing is that I first tried to record it, and I didn't understand the volume was so low, until I noticed some strange background noise, and sure enough, it was my stashed-away microphone that had been recording.

Vista has a digital loopback device built into the OS. Simply initialize a render endpoint in loopback mode and you'll be able to open a capture client that receives all the output from that endpoint.

It unfortunately means you'll have to write some code though .

Coffeehouse - Is Vista a failure

LarryOsterman — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 15:35:17 GMT

Maddus Mattus wrote:

No Vista is not a failure. How can any software product be a failure? What are the standards for a failed software product?

The gold standard for failed programs is Microsoft Bob.

Coffeehouse - hello from a new employee

LarryOsterman — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 21:17:15 GMT

complete wrote:

Yes, I am having fun. And I have lots of questions too.

This morning I have two.

#1. How do you turn on the lights during off-hours? The room where me and a lot of other contractors work has its lights on some sort of timer where it goes off on the weekend when my boss asked me to come in and work.

#2. Is there a company library or something like that where I can go and read on the latest Microsoft Technologies and/or get certified?

#1: In my building, just go to the lightswitches in the hall and turn them on. It should work.

#2: Yes it does (at least about reading). You can find its location from the MSW site. Certification's different - I actually think there are posters in the building up right now about certifications. There are in my building.

Coffeehouse - Mac OS X with 100 bugs still safer than Windows

LarryOsterman — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 19:30:58 GMT

AndyC wrote:

Rossj wrote:

Ah the market share argument. By the same token, why would anyone hack Vista? Maybe, and I speculate, its much touted security is a result of low market share? I don't believe that - but surely the argument holds?

Not entirely. The main aim of hacking into a system these days is to allow the running of malicious applications as part of a botnet. There is a lower barrier to entry if your mass-mailer (or whatever) is already running on Windows. Particularly given that a vulnerability in Vista is quite likely to also be present in previous versus of Windows.

I disagree. I agree with your central premise (the goal these days is to get malware on the box), but disagree that Windows provides a lower barrier of entry.

The unpleasant fact is that most malware gets installed by the user. They download the free smileys and get 0wned. Most botnet clients will run just fine as a normal (non admin) user. After all, what do botnet clients do? They mostly send spam, or participate in DDOS attacks or surf the web and you can do that from any OS without requiring root privileges.

Right now, most botnet clients are written to Win32, so Windows clients are the most attractive.

Remember that botnet herders are fundamentally lazy - they don't want to have to work to find targets for his botnet client, they wants to get the largest number of clients with the least work. They can choose to target the OS with 5% market share or the OS with 2% market share, or they can choose the OS with 90% market share.

I know which one I'd go for (if I was inclined that way).

Coffeehouse - hello from a new employee

LarryOsterman — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 05:46:14 GMT

PaoloM wrote:

LarryOsterman wrote:
We just send them to meetings in building 7.

Yeah, but soon that trick won't work anymore

Actually it will. The building that they're constructing there isn't going to be building 7 - apparently enough people complained that they picked another number for it.

Coffeehouse - hello from a new employee

LarryOsterman — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 15:42:04 GMT

phreaks wrote:

LarryOsterman wrote:

I once got called onto the carpet for writing a comment in a public blog about where a particular piece of sculpture was...

The bottom line is: "Post Smart". Don't ever post anything that you think might be a company secret...

Sounds like my College fraternity....

I have to ask, is there a secret MS handshake?
Although, I suppose though that if it is secret, it's existence is probably secret as well, and an official denial of its existence doesn't mean it doesn't exist???

Do new hires get hazed, "Ya that conference room is in the 3rd subterranean bunker under building x, right next to the penguin hatchery, " type of thing?

We just send them to meetings in building 7.

Coffeehouse - hello from a new employee

LarryOsterman — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 05:30:01 GMT

anand.t wrote:

LarryOsterman wrote:

Btw: Just to be clear: I edited the posts because I believe that you accidentally included stuff that's confidential (again, check the community site).

It's AWESOME that you're participating, and I absolutely don't want to discourage you from doing so. But you do need to think about what you say in public.

There have been contractors fired for talking about specific buildings before, and I once got called onto the carpet for writing a comment in a public blog about where a particular piece of sculpture was (the HR person involved didn't quite get the whole "transparency" thing).

The bottom line is: "Post Smart". Don't ever post anything that you think might be a company secret, and don't EVER write something that you wouldn't be proud to see on the front page of the New York Times tomorrow.

Looks like you are trying to frighten him. The OP was himself very careful not to state anything in depth. I dont think telling where one works is something that is very confidential unless you work for CIA (heck even that can be pardoned by bush ). Nytimes would be least intersted in it. I think your HR is an exception. I have seen a lot of microsofties talking everything about their office.

Sure, but there HAVE been people fired for mentioning the building in which they work (especially contingent staff). It sucks, but if you read the contract that you signed, there's a lot that can be considered NDA. Maybe the building thing was over the top, but my censoring his project was absolutely not (unless his project has been publicly disclosed).

You have absolutely no idea the number of times I've written multi-hundred word answers to posts and thrown them away upon reconsideration. Heck, I just deleted a huge chunk from a post I just made a couple of seconds ago because it might be an issue.

That's the essence of "Post Smart".

Coffeehouse - hello from a new employee

LarryOsterman — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 05:08:12 GMT

LarryOsterman wrote:

complete wrote:

m1keh wrote:

Congratulations, seems like a nice place to work at. Hope I can say the same thing at some point in time

So, what do you do at microsoft?

I am working in [Some Building] on [Some Project]. I don't know how much I should say because isn't it true that this forum is accessable from the outside?

Like lots of people, I am here via Volt.

I will pm people now.

complete: a word of warning: this is an external site, NOT internal, so everything on it is non-NDA. In addition, you should look up the community site to see Microsoft's rules for community participation. They're pretty straightforward, but you absolutely want to review them before you start talking in public.

Btw: Just to be clear: I edited the posts because I believe that you accidentally included stuff that's confidential (again, check the community site).

It's AWESOME that you're participating, and I absolutely don't want to discourage you from doing so. But you do need to think about what you say in public.

There have been contractors fired for talking about specific buildings before, and I once got called onto the carpet for writing a comment in a public blog about where a particular piece of sculpture was (the HR person involved didn't quite get the whole "transparency" thing).

The bottom line is: "Post Smart". Don't ever post anything that you think might be a company secret, and don't EVER write something that you wouldn't be proud to see on the front page of the New York Times tomorrow.

Coffeehouse - hello from a new employee

LarryOsterman — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 05:03:44 GMT

complete wrote:

m1keh wrote:

Congratulations, seems like a nice place to work at. Hope I can say the same thing at some point in time

So, what do you do at microsoft?

I am working in [Some Building] on [Some Project]. I don't know how much I should say because isn't it true that this forum is accessable from the outside?

Like lots of people, I am here via Volt.

I will pm people now.

complete: a word of warning: this is an external site, NOT internal, so everything on it is non-NDA. In addition, you should look up the community site to see Microsoft's rules for community participation. They're pretty straightforward, but you absolutely want to review them before you start talking in public.

Coffeehouse - About jamie's locked thread...

LarryOsterman — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 04:28:53 GMT

Minh wrote:

Is that a list of request?

Or is that a list of stuff they're fixing?

PS. I like "(as in FireFox)". haha.

I didn't have the ability to delete it (although I guess I could have edited his post), so I locked it so it'd fall of the front page.

Thanks to Jamie for editing the content (although I didn't know you could do that on a locked post).

Coffeehouse - Vista More Secure then Linux and OSX

LarryOsterman — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 15:37:28 GMT

uriel wrote:

Report: Windows Vista is no more secure then Windows XP

That particular report is rather flawed (they consider that Vista's anti-virus technology is no better than XPs even though neither Vista OR XP has anti-virus technology in the OS).

Absent the headline, Ars article does a pretty good job of ripping the report to shreds.

Coffeehouse - MOV converter for VISTA

LarryOsterman — Wed, 09 May 2007 02:45:34 GMT

Red5 wrote:

Can anyone here recommend a good free tool that converts *.mov files to AVI or WMV that works on VISTA?

I have some digital camera movies from my Nikon S5 that I would like to convert.

One complication: MOV and AVI are container formats - they can have many different formats inside the file. That makes it problematic to figure out how to convert.

One suggestion is to download the WMV9 Encoder SDK - it includes a tool (the Windows Media Encoder) that should convert between just about any source format (assuming you have a codec for the source on your machine) and WMV.

Coffeehouse - S/PDIF audio disabled in Vista?

LarryOsterman — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 22:26:34 GMT

macromice wrote:

Vista does indeed prevent Protected or "Premium" Content (mp3, wma, etc) from being channeled in any manner which would allow the user to create an "un-protected" copy. That is the purpose of the new O/S, to protect DRM at any cost...including customer utility. S/PDIF is considered "unsafe" and is therefore crippled to a great extent in Vista. Additionally, all hardware manufacturers are required to provide ONLY drivers that will inhibit functions such as S/PDIF in the Vista environment. Should Vista find an "unsafe" driver during the mandatory "update" process, the machine will call home and the driver will be disabled.

Likewise, Video considered "Premium" Content will be prevented from routing through devices that Vista does not consider "safe". All new video drivers to support "Vista Ready" cards will have much of their previous functions crippled from the outset or later on via the update process....and if you CHANGE it somehow, again, the machine will call home and simply disable it again. Microsoft is presently tracking ALL customer attempts to "cancel" or otherwise prevent updates (such as the Genuine Advantage Program) from taking place and further actions could be taken later down the road (e.g. criminal investigation).

Be clear on this one point - Microsoft's intent with Vista is to secure Digital Rights Management AT ALL COSTS. Don't like it? Go back to XP where everything still works and stay there as long as possible or switch to Linux. I’m in the process of installing ubuntu even as we speak. I read 1984, I graduated in 1984, and I’m all too familiar with the slippery slope of big corporate/government control over the private lives of citizens…and Vista IS 1984…art brought to life. Big Brother will now tell you what you can and can’t do in the privacy of your own home….even if it’s completely legal music or video creation/modification by a budding Sound Recording or Film major. No wonder the retail sales price of Vista has already fallen by 30% since January.

Ummm.. I've said this before, I'll say it again. Inside the OS, Vista does NOTHING w.r.t. DRM'ed content. It's a platform, and it provides mechanisms for applications to make policy decisions based on the state of the operating system. The Vista media player has support for playback of DRM'ed content, but that's an application running on top of Vista. Now the audio rendering engine normally runs in a protected environment that is used by DRM, but it runs just fine outside the environment (and if you REALLY want to, there's a registry key you can set to disable the protected environment).

The "disable S/PDIF" behavior is UNCHANGED from Windows XP. Nobody seemed to care about this back in XP, but all of a sudden it's a huge conspiracy. I just don't get it.

If you don't like DRM, don't use it. There's nobody forcing you to run it. I have NO DRM'ed content in my house (except for my DVDs, since the number of commercial DVDs without DRM is somewhere around 0).

I don't particularly like DRM, but I totally recognize and support the rights of content owners to add DRM to their content.

Coffeehouse - NET SEND - Console messaging is no longer in Vista...?

LarryOsterman — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 14:47:43 GMT

Bas wrote:

What practical use does NET SEND still have nowadays, anyway?

Net Send was a great idea back in 1983 when the protocol was invented. It worked great on private networks.

It has no business being there on machines connected to the Internet, so it's history.

Coffeehouse - The White House, Exchange Server, and Ray Ozzie

LarryOsterman — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 14:27:07 GMT

dahat wrote:

Minh wrote: to show that the Attorney Generals' firings were just a misunderstanding. But definitely, not policical. Definitely

And so what if they were? Like virtually everyone in the executive branch (ie political), they serve at the pleasure of the president can be removed at any time for any reason (except for perhaps the federally protected classes (ie race, religion, national origin, etc)).

I actually want the Dems to ‘prove’ that the firings were politically motivated... just because it’s not illegal and like it or not... the only thing that Bush-43 did wrong in this case was not be more straightforward from the start.

The white house has a couple of problems. The USAG job is a political appointment, so of course the AGs serve at the pleasure of the president. But there's no precident for the White House firing USAG's in the middle of the term UNLESS it's for cause (there is precident for firing them at the start of the term - in fact every political appointee is required to submit a letter of resignation at the end of a presidents term).

If the white house had simply said "We want new AGs because we don't have enough people with USAG experience" everything would have been fine. The problem is that they said the firings were for "performance" reasons. That means that they were besmirching the reputations of the AGs which is a bad thing, so the AGs fought back.

And now it appears that the AGs might have been fired because they refused to follow the orders of the Republicans in the white house to prosecute Democrats. That's not only a major no-no, it's very possibly a crime.

One of the bedrocks of the American judicial system is that the Justice department is supposed to be apolitical. The ONLY criteria that's supposed to be used in determining which cases to file is whether or not a crime has been committed.

But there is a growing amount of circumstantial evidence that the white house may have decided to use the justice department to gain a political advantage by selectively procecuting bogus charges against democrats. And that's a very big deal.

The missing emails may provide the evidence that turns circumstantial evidence into concrete evidence.

Josh Micah Marshal over at talkingpointsmemo has done a bunch of work covering the story.

Bringing this back on topic: I'd love to see the reference that indicates that the email loss was caused by an Exchange failure.

It seems far more likely that the email was lost because it was deleted by the individuals involved. The fact that official government business was done using an email system controlled by the RNC is far more suspicious to me. The Whitehouse servers undoubtedly have email retention policies enforced because there are laws that mandate that all emails sent by whitehouse officials be archived.

On the other hand, it's entirely possible that the RNC email servers were not set up that way. That means that the 50ish people in the white house who had RNC email accounts might be able to bypass the federal document retention policies by using the RNC servers. And THAT is a felony.

Coffeehouse - Cursor flaw throws doubt on Vista security

LarryOsterman — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 01:26:38 GMT

I can't believe I'm feeding the troll, but...

What SecretSoftware's talking about is very similar to SeLinux and Crispin Cowen's AppArmor. Essentially, for every application and every DLL (shared library) on the system, you describe the set of operations that this application is expected to do.

If the application ever violates those rules, you abort the application immediately.

The problem with this is that it becomes extraordinarily difficult to express with any level of reasonableness the full extent of operations an application can perform. What happens if an app calls into a DLL and the DLL modifies a registry key that the app doesn't know about? What about a DLL that modifies files on behalf of an application?

A large part of the problem can be exposed by considering a simple application like Notepad. It can read and write to just about any file on the system to which you have permissions. So an attacker needs only find a vulnerability in notepad, attach his code to notepad and he's broken your "application firewall".

The place that apparmor works well is for restricted system daemons. For instance, the network filesystem probably doesn't have to access many local files (it might if it implemented a client side cache). Similarly, the audio stack probably doesn't have to access much beyond the audio driver and some registry keys. So you could armor the audio stack and any time the audio stack tries to step out of its sandbox, it's history.

But this is ONLY a defense-in-depth solution.

Most importantly, implementing somethign like this wouldn't have fixed the .ANI file exploit. Windows Mail would be flagged as being able to write to anywhere on the hard disk that the user can access (because it can save mail files to disk).

Coffeehouse - Microsoft Wireless keyboard problems

LarryOsterman — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 05:43:01 GMT

Aussie_jake wrote:

I have just purchased a new keyboard and mouse setup for my computer, it is the Microsoft Desktop Elite Wireless package. I plugged the keyboard PS/2 plug into my computer and am using a USB-PS/2 converter to plug the mouse into the computer also. The drivers for both Intellipoint devices are installed automatically upon starting up.

The problem is that the keyboard doesn't work, i.e. striking the keyboard doesn't result in any letters appearing on the screen. After checking the software drivers, this seems strange because the signal from the keyboard to the receiver is strong and also the battery level is good. To make matters worse the mouse is working perfectly. It's almost like there is an on/off switch on the keyboard which is turned off.

I have tried reinstalling the drivers, moving the receiver, checking the PS/2 connections, pressing the channel connect button on the receiver, keyboard and mouse and there is still nothing. I don't know what else I can do really.

Any advice or ideas would be warmly received.

Cheers,

Jacob.

Try plugging it into a USB port, and see if it works better.

Coffeehouse - Kaspersky: "Vista less secure than XP"

LarryOsterman — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 12:53:43 GMT

AndyC wrote:

SecretSoftware wrote:

why couldn't MS just start from scratch and write the whole OS from scratch?

Remember how successful Netscape Navigator 5 was after they decided to completely rewrite the Navigator 4 code base? Oh wait a moment....

Ding! Ding! Ding! Give the man a ceegar.

In addition, every change made to the OS has to be done for a reason. It would cost millions and millions of dollars to rewrite this old code and while it's not perfect, it's not necessarily bad either, so it's not clear that it would be worth the investment.

And there's a ton of code out there that depends on the behaviors of the old code, and we'd have to retest all of it.

My point was simply that the new code isn't necessarily buggier than the old simply because it's new.

Coffeehouse - Kaspersky: "Vista less secure than XP"

LarryOsterman — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 03:34:29 GMT

the_sombrero_kid wrote:

There is an arguement to be made that vista being a brand new OS with a largly brand new code base has yet to be tested and usually in that situation it will be less secure. they could not possibly consider all the different exploits people used in previous OS when writing from the ground up. it is likely that some of these mistakes will work thier way back in and hackers will find a multitude of hacks for an untested OS, but the fact is microsoft will constantly evolve the OS on demand as with XP making it more and more secure all the time.

On the surface, that argument seems reasonable. But ya know, the new stuff in Vista isn't the stuff that worries me. The stuff that worries me is the OLD stuff that hasn't been rewritten in years.

There's a bunch of code in the OS that quite literally hasn't been touched in years. Much of that code was written back in the late 1980's and early 1990's back when the threat landscape looked very different from today (heck, this is code that was written for an OS that didn't support preemptive multitasking). We've done a lot of work improving the quality of the old code (banned APIs helped a lot, for instance) but there are still potential issues in that code.

The new stuff we've written is orders of magnitude better quality than the old stuff. We've improved our basic engineering practices and as a result, I'm actually more confident in our new code than I am in our old code.

Just because code changed does not inherently mean that it's worse.

I have no idea why Kaspersky said what they did, IMHO it makes no sense at all.

Coffeehouse - MS employees and Vista

LarryOsterman — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 06:38:26 GMT

Duncanma wrote:

kettch wrote:
Live rocks

http://maps.live.com/?v=2&sp=Point.ry6q1x4tp75y

Wow... I had no idea it would actually label the individual buildings...

Those maps are missing about 8 buildings including the ones where the XBox team, the Zune team and some of the games divisions work.

Coffeehouse - mfpmp.exe is annoying the hell out of me

LarryOsterman — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 14:52:21 GMT

ZippyV wrote:

Same behavior here while I was watching a Channel 9 video.

MFPMP runs in the protected environment, but it's not DRM that's making it take so much CPU, it's taking that time to render your content.

I don't know why it takes more time than it did on XP though.