Comment Feed for Tom Servo

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

Tom Servo — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 17:10:30 GMT

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.

posted by Tom Servo

Re: Peter Biddle - Bitlocker, Security in Windows Vista

Tom Servo — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 11:24:18 GMT

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.

posted by Tom Servo

Re: Lee Bandy on IPv6

Tom Servo — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 13:42:35 GMT

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.

posted by Tom Servo

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

Tom Servo — Fri, 26 May 2006 11:28:44 GMT

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

posted by Tom Servo

Re: How about a SAN for your music collection?

Tom Servo — Sat, 01 Apr 2006 19:38:19 GMT

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

posted by Tom Servo

Re: Virtualization

Tom Servo — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 12:38:52 GMT

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.

posted by Tom Servo

Re: Jenny Lam - Designing Experiences at Microsoft

Tom Servo — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 10:06:46 GMT

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.

posted by Tom Servo

Re: Steve Ball - Learning about Audio in Windows Vista

Tom Servo — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 17:24:55 GMT

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.

posted by Tom Servo

Re: Steve Ball - Learning about Audio in Windows Vista

Tom Servo — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 15:29:50 GMT

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.

posted by Tom Servo

Re: Steve Ball - Learning about Audio in Windows Vista

Tom Servo — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 12:11:47 GMT

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.

posted by Tom Servo

Re: Chris Jones - Beta 1 of Windows Vista revealed

Tom Servo — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 19:34:23 GMT

Hey, Chris Jones, why's the bits not on MS Connect?

posted by Tom Servo

Re: Longhorn (heart) RSS

Tom Servo — Fri, 24 Jun 2005 23:27:09 GMT

Needs more Beta 1 availability!

posted by Tom Servo

Re: Brian Jones - New Office file formats announced

Tom Servo — Sat, 04 Jun 2005 15:05:06 GMT

JoeShak wrote:

The Office Open XML Formats use the same ZIP/XML conventions that Metro uses. So, you can use System.IO.Packaging in the WinFX SDK to open and manipulate the format. In fact, we'll be showing this at our TechEd session next week.

So a CompoundFileContainer generates basically a ZIP file?

--edit: Nevermind, in the Beta1 RC it has been renamed to ZipPackage. Question answered.

posted by Tom Servo

Re: Brian Jones - New Office file formats announced

Tom Servo — Fri, 03 Jun 2005 19:08:28 GMT

JoeShak wrote:

What do you mean by 'preview code?' We will release patches that allow versions back to and including Office 2000 to read and write files in the new format.

People telling so called it preview and referred an URL to Microsoft containing "preview". That's why I said preview.

So, are you releasing these patches on Monday? Or is that just rumors someone spawned?

posted by Tom Servo

Re: Brian Jones - New Office file formats announced

Tom Servo — Fri, 03 Jun 2005 14:53:59 GMT

There's a rumor going around that there'll be preview code of the new file format for Office 2K to 2003. Confirm/Deny?

posted by Tom Servo

Re: Office Communicator

Tom Servo — Tue, 17 May 2005 20:58:37 GMT

Why do corporations get a cool looking IM client, and we have to mess around with this annoying MSN messenger?

posted by Tom Servo

Re: Chris Anderson - Talking shop about Avalon

Tom Servo — Sun, 15 May 2005 00:30:02 GMT

bonk wrote:

This does not seem to be the case. Doing a quicksearch with Reflector, I find (almost) no P/Invoke in it. And not a single ImportDLL user32 ... If you watched the video Chris made the connection with D3D and user32 BELOW milcore.dll so it must happen somewhere there. Somewhere lower level where life is more unmanaged You must not forget doing P/Invoke from managed code has some performance issues.

Well, if it's not PresentationCore, then it must be milcore.dll. Interaction between User32 and Direct3D doesn't make sense to me, but I'm open to being corrected.

bonk wrote:

with DWM and GDI you mean what was called "Avalon Desktop Composition" and "Classic Window Manager" on this slide from a WinHEC2005 presentation? If so, would that mean that the DWM is not used on the tiers "To Go" and "Classic" ? Will the DWM be somhow magically turned off when its in the mode that you described as "GDI" ?

DWM is "Desktop Window Manager", which would be desktop composition. It's basically just another instance of the Universal Compositing Engine (it's used to compose controls into a window, and windows into a desktop). The DWM needs LDDM to operate, for the stability thanks to new features in there, like hardware reset of the graphics card. If you don't have LDDM drivers, it'll fall back to the regular window manager using GDI for drawing. The tier "To Go" won't use DWM, because it doesn't require LDDM. Classic is just the Windows 2000/XP user interface.

bonk wrote:

Wow that's really great news ... So in case there is some old TNT2 (or even older) on the machine most of the rendering is done by GDI and the CPU (and therefore Avalon will run) ?

Well, it'll use the GPU as much as possible. However GDI will not be invoked in rendering the window backbuffer, Avalon will do this on its own in software mode if necessary. GDI will be used to slap the backbuffer onto screen (unless they do indeed invoke D3D at some point, just like games in window-mode, which doesn't make too much sense since it's a simple surface going to screen).

posted by Tom Servo

Re: Chris Anderson - Talking shop about Avalon

Tom Servo — Sat, 14 May 2005 22:00:19 GMT

bonk wrote:

1) We will have to make a differnciatioation between WGF 1.0 (wich is wich is an enhanced version of Direct3D9 Also known as “DX9.L”) and WGF 2.0 wich totally replaces direct3d.

I'd guess that Avalon will use the best one available, so that'll put them on the same line. Why use Direct3D if WGF is there, which does the same job but better.

bonk wrote:

2) Chris mentioned in his video that user32 talks directly to Direct3d. See his blockdiagram, so we can take that as granted .... Also PresentationCore.dll is a pure managed assembly where user32.dll is pure ("legacy") unmanaged ....

Direct3D is a dumb polygon painter, if you want. User32 cares about window placement and user input, it has to communicate that to the component who manages the Window element and does event routing of input, that'd be PresentationCore from what I remember. And there are thing's like PInvoke and all that, that allow a managed component to talk to unmanaged code. I bet if you run a hex editor or ILDasm over PresentationCore, you'll find tons of MIL and User32 references.

bonk wrote:

3) we will also have to make a distinction between the 4 tiers of Aero. The first two ("Classic","To Go") are for older Hardware that do not support the LDDM and the other two ("Aero Express","Aero Glass") run only on Hardware with LDDM.

There are only two modes. DWM or GDI. The difference between Classic, To Go, Aero Express and Aero Glass is the amount of eye candy and acceleration factor.

bonk wrote:

4) I doubt that GDI is now some layer below Direct3D. When you redner soemthing on older XPDDM hardware it wont necessearily go through GDI. I always thought that Avalon will require d3d9 (at least) in any case.

Rendering on XPDDM, GDI has to be involved in some way, because GDI will be the main renderer, if only for the window frames. Remember that Avalon renders into a backbuffer, which needs to be copied to screen. And Avalon needs D3D9 only for full acceleration, but works fine on older hardware with limited acceleration. My machine ran Avalon on a DX8.1 card just fine.

bonk wrote:

5) Direct3D -> DWM -> Direct3D doesn't really make sense to me ...

Direct3D acceleration of the window composition, all into a backbuffer. The DWM takes the backbuffer and uses it as texture for desktop composition. Makes sense.

posted by Tom Servo

Re: Chris Anderson - Talking shop about Avalon

Tom Servo — Sat, 14 May 2005 13:41:16 GMT

As far as I know, WGF is going to be the successor to Direct3D, so Avalon will likely make use of it, so you can put Direct3D and WGF together. Otherwise it should look more like this, from what I remember:

posted by Tom Servo

Re: Singularity: A research OS written in C#

Tom Servo — Sat, 14 May 2005 13:11:41 GMT

I think the ideal way of implementing a managed OS would be to offer core services in native code form, that is a global memory manager and a global CLR and GC, and then try to implement as much in managed code (including drivers). Processes would be represented by appdomains.

posted by Tom Servo

Re: Ben Armstrong - Running Virtual PC and Virtual Machines

Tom Servo — Wed, 13 Apr 2005 13:49:04 GMT

What operating system is running on the desktop on the right?

posted by Tom Servo

Re: Cleartype Team - Talking about new Fonts on Longhorn (Happy Birthday Video #4)

Tom Servo — Wed, 13 Apr 2005 09:42:32 GMT

Are these fonts being put into the first beta of Longhorn, or do they only ship with the full Aero UI, as in beta 2?

posted by Tom Servo

Re: Bob Palmer - Tour of Microsoft Studios

Tom Servo — Sat, 19 Feb 2005 11:40:30 GMT

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posted by Tom Servo

Re: Bob Palmer - Tour of Microsoft Studios

Tom Servo — Fri, 18 Feb 2005 16:38:07 GMT

^^^ And that, kids, is how you start rumors!

posted by Tom Servo

Re: Jeffrey Snover - Monad demonstrated

Tom Servo — Fri, 22 Oct 2004 12:12:43 GMT

Chances are that it might also be called "Windows Command Shell", at least that's what the preview setup file is called currently.

posted by Tom Servo