Tom Servo

• Mark Russinovich: On Working at Microsoft, Windows Server 2008 Kernel, MinWin vs ServerCore, HyperV,

  Dec 16, 2007 at 9:10 AM

  Since everyone's still harping about MinWin, here's an interesting question: Do we ever get a native text mode "server core"? As in no graphics mode, no window manager, no nothing, just that to keep the server core stuff running.
  

• Peter Biddle - Bitlocker, Security in Windows Vista

  Jul 17, 2006 at 4:24 AM

  Shark_M wrote:

  With one time pads even if you have all the resources in the world you cannot break it. Because its statistically not possible and mathematically not possible.

  
  The thing with OTPs is, to be actually as secure as advertised:
  
  - They need to be as long as the data to be encrypted.
  - They need to be used once only (hence one-time).
  
  So you're looking at storing a virtually infinite encryption key.
  

• Lee Bandy on IPv6

  Jun 04, 2006 at 6:42 AM

  Kerberos Mansour wrote:

  Am I the only one here who feels intimidated by the security implications of this thing?

  I'm not so concerned with firewalling as much as I am with the trojians and backdoors that can exploit this tech...

  Anyways time will tell!

  Trojans and backdoors can be made work even behind a NAT. They usually run a mini IRC client that logs them onto an IRC network to be controlled. If not that, it'll use a different way to be made available.  Hell, there were even trojans with their own TCP/IP stack to circumvent some firewalls. NATs give a false sense of security.

  An rather simple avantage of IPv6 is that the host part of the address is 64bit large. And because the host address is either the MAC or a random number, this makes simple scanning for vulnerable hosts virtually impossible.
  
  An exploiting virus a la Blaster could still try to reach other machines by using neighbor discovery, which would however just limit it to your local prefix, and maybe the destination cache, which will allow it to identify external hosts, but still not give it the means of mass infection. The destination cache would be in most cases however mainly hardened and/or invulnerable internet servers and a couple of addresses of active IM sessions. All in all, it would slow down such viruses a lot.
  
  Generally, I think we'd be better off with an IPv6 network. Also, it'd speed up routing because the tables would be way smaller. IPsec in it isn't a cheap hack either.
  

• Iain McDonald and Andrew Mason show off the new Windows Server OS

  May 26, 2006 at 4:28 AM

  Yeah well, it still boots the GUI, so it's not really command line, which would be text mode.
  

• How about a SAN for your music collection?

  Apr 01, 2006 at 11:38 AM

  About time that Windows is going to support being an iSCSI target.
  

• Virtualization

  Feb 17, 2006 at 4:38 AM

  AndyC wrote:

  Imagine you're running Exchange and a web server on the same machine. If a patch comes out for Exchange that requires a reboot, you have to take down the web server unnecessarily.
  
  With virtual servers, you can keep separate applications in separate VMs, thus improving availability. Plus you know with absolute certainty that the Exchange patch won't break the web server since they are running on separate (albeit virtual) machines.
  
  Virtualization is very, very cool indeed!

  
  This could be achieved with proper layering and adding the ability to reboot a layer and all other layers above it. I'd guess.
  
  For instance, it's still baffling me why Windows still can't perform a "hot" reboot by shutting down everything above the kernel, have the kernel cleanout everything and restart all drivers. Instead of going through the BIOS boot and all that.
  

• Jenny Lam - Designing Experiences at Microsoft

  Feb 09, 2006 at 2:06 AM

  Will there be options to customize the colors inside the Explorer? Means that teal-blue mess. It took already considerable whining in the beta newsgroups to get customizable glass frames, but the Explorer insides aren't really appealing, however is there no way to change that except hacking the binaries.
  
  Before Luna, people could change the colors of all applications centrally, but anything beyond the classic mode gets overridden by the static theme colors. That's not cool at all. People want to customize their operating system, and that without jumping through hoops as soon you're done setting the wallpaper.
  
  Thanks.

• Steve Ball - Learning about Audio in Windows Vista

  Sep 16, 2005 at 10:24 AM

  Hmmm. I'm running the PDC build, it probably either went into the demo builds for the PDC itself, or it's yet another problem with the Creative drivers. Somehow I'm suspecting latter.

• Steve Ball - Learning about Audio in Windows Vista

  Sep 16, 2005 at 8:29 AM

  Since the audio guys are monitoring the thread right now, I was wondering if KS runs in usermode, too, now. Just asking because I'm trying to figure out why DSound based playback glitches like hell under stress while KS based playback does just fine.

• Steve Ball - Learning about Audio in Windows Vista

  Sep 16, 2005 at 5:11 AM

  staceyw wrote:

  Very cool.  But kinda glanced over the API stuff.  I see a need to raise the bar for audio for the .Net developer.  Say I want to create a ~simple DJ app that has at least two mp3/wma streams.  So I need to be able to manage and mix the two streams, have cue points, some kinda event callbacks to update the audio graph with fine detail.  Simple way to enum and select ouput devices and input devices, etc. So simple Load() and Play() on a Media player control does not really cut it anymore.  Is the API going to be "at least" this rich for us for .Net?  Thanks much.

  
  Wouldn't you want to use Managed DSound in this case, anyway?
  
  --edit: Not to rain on anyone's parade, but why was that WAVE stuff required for audio? I've yet to see an audio application glitch, outside scenarios like a hardware driver or failure temporarily locking up my system. If an audio application was shitty playback code, no system side code will fix it.
  

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