Channel 9 - Discussions by bjd223

Coffeehouse - "Microsoft Out of Favor With Young, Hip Developers"

bjd223 — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 22:32:44 GMT

At PSU all compsci / ist students are taught structured programming in C++ first, and then move to object oriented programming under Java and C#. Not sure if anything has changed lately but it worked out pretty well when I did it.

Coffeehouse - Windows Experience Index of 5.9?

bjd223 — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 01:12:54 GMT

mastermine said:

SharePoint Guy said:

*snip*

Processor: 7.5

Memory: 7.6

Graphics: 7.3

Gaming Graphics: 7.3

Primary Hard Disk: 5.9

I need to get an ssd

SSD is the way to go. I have 2 x OCZ Vertex in raid 0 and I get a 7.6 on Win 7 RTM.

Coffeehouse - Vista's Security Rendered Completely Useless By New Exploit

bjd223 — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 19:30:44 GMT

You're right Microsoft -- a huge corporation with 70,000 employees, billions of dollars, and 90%+ market share will just give up when and if this elaborate security breach is released.

Or they will just do their best to fix it as quickly as possible, and if needed lean on other vendors to do the same.

What I think is funny, is that most of what is allowing this is not even Microsoft code. Now that you mention it Microsoft should fix this by going completely closed based, like Apple. Sweet our unlimited software choices went down to like -4 titles. But they sure are secure titles.

Or they could go the Linux route, open source style, and go the completely different direction, and give away millions in profits for its share holders, I'm pretty sure that motion will get denied.

Many other operating systems do not even have many of these technologies to bypass, which is awesome. If you would get off your high horse for 5 minutes to realize that other people do in fact exist, and some of them may prefer something that is not Linux. And not because they haven’t heard about it, but because they are smart enough to realize that *nix is not for everyone. Wait it’s my choice if I want to pay for something that I think will suit my needs better than something that is free?

Sure Grandma, just open the Console and use the sudo command to edit the ini file. Yeah it will work, wait...what’s a sudo? Ohh Grandma cmon!

Coffeehouse - Installed Vista SP1

bjd223 — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 05:41:37 GMT

Things I have noticed with SP1.

SP1 has greatly reduced the time it takes to calculate file copies. It has also increased file copy speeds, local machine file copies, and copies across a Local Area Network. ex - Copies from my desktop to laptop would usually go about 1.5 MB/S via wireless G. After both machines updated to SP1 the same files go about 2.4 MB/S. I have not compared wired speeds.

Things seems a tad snappier with SP1 installed on my x64 and x32 systems (Desktop and Laptop).

SP1 also seems to keep your custom folder views intact (so far). My pre SP1 systems would occasionally reset folder views back to default.

The 2K8 Kernel is a good thing. I'd imagine it is more reliable than a desktop varient.

SP1 seems to report memory values differently than RTM. ex - In my computer, it used to report 4096 MB Ram, now it says 4.0 GB RAM.

I have never received a BSOD in Vista (when I wasn't overclocking). So I can't speak about reliability as it applies to the release canidate. But I can say that none of the applications I was using, have stopped working.

My only complaint is x64's ability to cope with unsigned device drivers. With a new hotfix, and SP1 I'd imagine, you can not use the DDISBALE BCDEDIT trick to stop driver signing requirements.
However, last time I checked, the setting to disable driver signing in gpedit is still there, but no longer works

User Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> System -> Driver Installation

"Code Signing For Device Drivers". It no longer works, and the last part of the description is incorrect. There is no "Driver Signing" button in the hardware tab anymore.

Please either make this setting work, or remove it, I don't like be tempted with settings I can't change.

-Brian

Coffeehouse - Is Vista a modern ME?

bjd223 — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 00:40:39 GMT

I can say that Vista is not another ME. Windows ME was complete junk.

VISTA has its problems, however, people are missing some of the greatest changes in VISTA. And they would be security based changes. Especially when it comes to buffer overflow/under run (The number one best way to crash an app and escalate privileges). Viruses love to rewrite memory locations with whatever they want, and Vista does a great job of stopping this too. Spyware is still a problem for VISTA, but out of the box it is much, much more resilient to problems.

I am a certified PC technician from A+, MS, and Cisco. And I work on between 50-100 PCs myself every week. I also have a full time job as a PHP/SQL programmer.

I can say that VISTA as far as features goes does not offer to many things over XP. However, it seems that what people complain about most are compatibility, and performance. I try to explain to my customers that VISTA was created to run on new machines, and machines that will be created within the next couple of years.

Whether you like it or not, when XP was released it ran like hell on older machines. EVERYONE was complaining about how much resources it consumed, especially memory.

As far as compatibility goes, MS has done a great job of releasing drivers for Vista. They added hundreds of thousands of more devices to Vista's driver database since it was released in January.
As an example, I have installed VISTA from the OE Retail disc on several newish computers (computers built after Jan 01). And 9/10 times you don't have to install ANY drivers. The first time I saw this I almost fell over.

AC97 audio is known to cause some problems when audio switches frequencies. This is a very common problem with Nvidia video cards + AC97 audio cards. Newer drivers have helped a lot. To say that they ruined the audio system is untrue. It works completely different than the XP audio subsystem, and in my opinion after some stability improvements in MANUs drivers, it will be awesome.

I have only seen a handful of VISTA BSODs (Which everyone I saw were Black, not Blue). And they were either hardware (Memory) or crazy customers doing god-awful wrong things to their computers. Like forcing XP incompatible software onto their new computers, after I told them 5 times to go to the web and download the latest versions.

Above it was stated that Readyboost was too slow to affect system performance. That is completely wrong, as you are comparing it to the wrong speeds. It is meant to offset random IO's on the hard disk drive (not system memory), which as you may (or apparently may not) know, Flash Memory is up to 10x faster than any hard disk drive when it comes to random IO. This is due mostly to seek times.

Some other great features include BitLocker, which is awesome for laptops. Do you really want some weirdo looking at your personal photos, or better yet finding an accidently stored Credit Card number in IE.

Dreamscene is cool, but I wouldn't bet the farm on it.

Speedbooster, one of the best features that no body can see working. The preloading algo learns user habits quite well.

Some of the little things that I like; When you rename a file it doesn't highlight the file extension anymore. The search box located in the Start menu. File sharing and Network connection Wizards could not be easier to use.

If you have a fast computer I recommend VISTA. If your machine is a few years old, stick with XP.

Whether you like it or not VISTA is selling at nearly the same pace as Windows XP. Windows ME was not even close to this.

-Brian