It would appear that Microsoft haven’t learnt from its previous experiences. Working as a consumer IT technician during the release of Windows XP, we found it trivial to load up an XP Upgrade pack onto any system. This was possible as the upgrades to XP were merely full editions with a number of checking systems in place. Buy an upgrade, bypass the checks and install your new version of windows at half the cost.

Vista has been released for about two weeks now and guess what? Its happened again.
The Register reports on Marc Liron of www.instantvista.com and his technique to apply the same strategy to Windows Vista.

From the article.

“In short, all you need to do is delay entering your product key and delay validating your copy of Vista online until the setup is complete. For some reason, Microsoft has decided to allow users to install first and deal with the paperwork later. Simple in theory, although the details of exactly how to do this are a bit lengthy, and we strongly recommend following Liron’s step-by-step instructions linked above. But, in a nutshell, all you are doing is avoiding the traps that MS has set up to cancel the upgrade installation if an authorised version of Windows isn’t already present. If you dodge those traps, you can install a Vista upgrade on any machine, and later enter your product key and validate your copy normally.”

More Information:

The Register - How to install a Vista upgrade on any PC
Marc Liron Article, Step by step guide.

Slashdot is running a story today sourced from Live Science on the patent application of an Iris Scanning technology that could see large scale deployment in the future for advertising and tracking purposes. For anyone who has seen The Minority Report, this will be a familiar scenario.

From the patent application:

“…a system for obtaining iris biometric information includes an array of cameras defining an image capture volume for capturing an image of an iris; and an image processor, coupled to the array of cameras, for determining at least one suitable iris image for processing from the images generated for the image capture volume … A subject within the capture volume is repeatedly imaged to produce a plurality of images of the subject. The plurality of images are processed to extract at least one clear image of the subject’s iris.”

The usual, and agreeable, Slashdot sceptism can be found on the articles comments page

Today saw the launch of the much anticipated Windows Vista Operating System. And along with Microsoft’s latest edition of Windows, came the release of several of the new Sony Vaio notebooks, complete with Windows Vista Home Premium pre-installed.

So we took it upon ourselves to compare the start-up procedure of, what we will dub Windows VHP, to that of the Windows XP MCE found on Sony’s previous range of notebooks.

The notebook used was the VGNC2S/W. A brand new release sporting a 1.66Ghz Core 2 Duo T5500 processor with 1Gb of DDR2 RAM.

The first screen that presented itself was not dissimilar to the BSOD(Blue Screen Of Death) found on current XP installs, only this time on a black background, notifying us that System Preparation was in effect.

A couple of check boxes and text inputs, and two[2] reboots later. The system was geared up and ready to go. The whole process took about 16 minutes 10 secs; far exceeding the pre-installed start-up time of the older Windows XP MCE operating system (running on the same spec, yet older, VGNC1S/W). We also found that button response was laggy during the set-up procedure.

Perhaps the most noticeable “feature” of the set-up procedure was the boredom. Microsoft have relieved nearly all interactivity between the set-up and the user, consequently resulting in a dull waiting game at the expense of end users. From a technical viewpoint, this could be an advantage of sorts. No longer will computer technicians have to pay frequent visits to an ailing machine in order to proceed with the re-installation of a Windows OS. However, the long waits and constant, idle appearing, black screens will more than likely result in an increase in customer support queries as naive members of the public go about their new computers.

A, post set-up, shutdown / start-up took 0.32 seconds and 2 minutes 57 seconds respectively. At nearly 3 minutes, this again exceeded the previous XP set-ups.

Once fully loaded a number of changes suddenly become apparent. The interface looks more polished, more stylised and a feature bar presents itself down the right hand side. For Linux users, this simply comes across as Microsoft’s take on the GKRellm application, only geared more towards media. Features include RSS feeds, a slideshow of you photos, system performance and a large clock face. The standard clock is still present in the System Tray, bottom right.

The Start Menu itself has also changed. The addition of a search facility implemented directly into the menu base allows users to locate things fairly quickly. Clicking on the All Programs tab no longer presents a separate list to the right but loads the list within the menu itself, using what looks much like an iFrame. We also found that the highlight colours through the Start-up Menu where difficult to see, consequently you couldn’t quite see what you were accessing. Another bugbear was our inability to find the “RUN..” prompt, its new position being: Start - All Programs - Accessories - Run..

Upon your first start-up, you are presented with the Windows Vista Control Panel. If you thought that XP made a mockery of the control panel with its grouping of actions, then Windows VHP is certainly taking the piss. Again grouped by function; Power, System, Devices and so on, the new control panel offers access to configuration elements by including them as single line sub links. Stacked under the parent icon, these small pieces of text are sure to raise concern with older or impaired users, as targeting the mouse can become a chore. Along the top of the control panel is a “Bread Crumbs” style navigation, so you know where you are and where you came from.

To anyone but a keyboard cowboy, the familiar Menu Bar will appear to have been abandoned. However, by pressing the ALT key, the menu will magically appear as if from nowhere. Unfortunately there is nothing to inform you of this.

Further, by initiating the wireless switch, Windows VHP on the test machine actually sought and installed the hardware for the card. On a pre-installed machine, this is nothing but ludicrous.

One of the boasted features of Windows Vista is its new “Aero” interface. This appears to be nothing but a new set of colours, transparent window frames and a bucket of redundant widgets. Hovering the mouse over programs in the taskbar reveals a small thumbnail of said application, likewise the Alt-Tab quick window replacement tool displays a preview of the application. This is further achievable via a third method. Vista Flip 3D. What once was considered a fully interactive 3D interface now becomes nothing more than a 3D Alt-Tab. It looks nice, and would be preferable of Alt-Tab in many instances.

Vista Alt-Tab

Flip 3D

However, unlike Alt-Tab, you have to wait for the Flip 3D animations to subside before firing up the desired window making the whole affair slow and tedious for developers and power users alike.

There are, however, some nice features. The new and improved Image Viewer offers the user a choice of actions across the top of the window, ranging from burning images, editing and emailing, although the lack of “Send To..” was a gripe.

Vista Image Viewer

And the new implementation of Windows Explorer displays folder content in a more 3D manner, showing the contents spilling from its containing icon. Again this is merely aesthetics, and quite possibly the bain of any 14 year old surfing their image collection as their parents walk by.

Windows Vista Explorer

Whilst using Windows Vista, you cant help but feel that Microsoft has borrowed something from other operating systems and just added gloss. The Control Panel is reminiscent of that of Linux and the YAST2 panel, the explode/implode of windows reflecting Mac OSX influences and the “Save As..” dialogue suggestive of early Workbench interfaces (Amiga). It would appear that Internet Explorer 7 was a taster of what was to come with the release of Windows Vista. It’s unintuitive, difficult to navigate and uses redundant features. If you aren’t fond of IE7, you won’t get on too well with Vista. Putting the difficulty in navigation aside, it is fairly nice to use and the experience no doubt builds as a result of continual use.

All in all, to the average user, Windows VHP is nothing but a glossy, confusing mess. It looks sexy, there’s no question about that, but it lacks any form of intuition and finds numerous, more time consuming methods of achieving the same goals.

From Slashdot:

“Security researcher Alex Ionescu claims to have successfully bypassed the much discussed DRM protection in Windows Vista, called ‘Protected Media Path’ (PMP), which is designed to seriously degrade the playback quality of any video and audio running on systems with hardware components not explicitly approved by Microsoft. The bypass of the DRM protection was in turn performed by breaking the Driver Signing / PatchGuard protection in the new operating system. Alex is now quite nervous about what an army of lawyers backed by draconian copyright laws could do to him if he released the details, but he claims to be currently looking into the details of safely releasing his details about this at the moment though.”

I came across a very interesting story on Slashdot yesterday. Having studied Advanced-Level Psychology, I am well versed in the Milgram experiment (Wikipedia); An experiment performed in 1963 by psychologist Stanley Milgram. Much TV coverage has been given to Milgram clones over the past number of years, yet the original experiment remains the subject of some debate.

Milgram placed subjects in a room with another person in an authority role. The subject was then given instructions to question a third person (confederate), located in a second room. Upon receiving an incorrect response, the subject was to shock the confederate in increasing doses. The confederate, at no point, actually received a shock, but was instructed to act as if they had.

The aim of the experiment was to “measure the willingness of a participant to obey an authority who instructs the participant to do something that may conflict with the participant’s personal conscience.”

The following was pulled from Slashdot, and describes the same experiment being performed against a computer character; with surprising results;

Considered unethical to ever perform again with humans, researcher Mel Slater recreated the Milgram experiment in a immersive virtual environment. Subjects (some of whom could see and hear the computerized woman, others who were only able to read text messages from her) were told that they were interacting with a computer character and told to give increasingly powerful electric shocks when wrong answers were given or the ‘woman’ took too long to respond. The computer program would correspondingly complain and beg as the ’shocks’ were ramped up, falling apparently unconscious before the last shock. The skin conductance and electrocardiograms of the subjects were monitored. Even though the subjects knew they were only ’shocking’ a computer program, their bodies reacted with increased stress responses. Several of the ones who could see and hear the woman stopped before reaching the ‘lethal’ voltage, and about half considered stopping the study. The full results of the experimental report can be read online at PLoS One. Already, some (like William Dutton of the Oxford Internet Institute) are asking whether even this sanitized experiment is ethical.

Recently, users of GRISoft’s AVG Free Anti Virus software have been subjected to software popups informing them that, come 15 January 2007, their AVG Free protection will expire and they will be required to pay for the fully supported version of the popular anti virus system.

Fortunately, some confusion has arisen. GRISoft have stated that they will continue to offer the Free variant of the AVG software, and that the popup, whilst badly written, only serves to inform users of the upgrade from version 7.1 to version 7.5. The newer versions offer increased performance and compatibility with the upcoming Vista operating system.

You can download the latest version of AVG Free here.

zbuffered at Slashdot writes,

“Today, Mozilla made public bug #360493, which exposes Firefox’s Password Manager on many public sites. The flaw derives from Firefox’s willingness to supply the username and password stored on one page on a domain to another page on a domain. For example, username/password input tags on a Myspace user’s site will be unhelpfully propagated with the visitor’s Myspace.com credentials. It was first discovered in the wild by Netcraft on Oct. 27. As this proof-of-concept illustrates, because the username/password fields need not be visible on the page, your password can be stolen in an almost completely transparent fashion. Stopgap solutions include avoiding using Password Manager and the Master Password Timeout Firefox extension, which will at least cause a prompt before the fields are filled. However, in the original case detailed in the bug report, the phish mimicked the login.myspace.com site almost perfectly, causing many users to believe they needed to log in. A description of this new type of attack, dubbed the Reverse Cross-Site Request (RCSR) vulnerability, is available from the bug’s original author.”

More Information: Bugzilla Bug 360493

Back in September, we reported on the news that Intel had created an 80 Core processor. Something that they took great pleasure in showing off at this years IDF Conference. Well now the Japanese have gone one better with the all new Grape DR chip, running with no less than 512 Cores - providing 512billion floating point calculations per second.

The Grape DR is actually a co-processor, designed to run on a PCI Extended (PCI-X) board, and provides additional processing for the main systems processor. Each Core engineered to handle a single mathematical instruction.

The chip measures a substantial 17×17mm, holding 300m transistors and is said to consume up to 60watts of power.

Designers of the Grape DR, the University of Tokyo, have been working on the 512 core processor for the last 2 years. By 2008 they aim to have a chip capable of two(2) quadrillion floating-point operations per second. (2Pflops).

More information: The University of Tokyo - The Grape DR Project [en]

The much anticipated version 2.0 of Mozilla’s popular web browser will be available for download tomorrow.

Firefox 2.0 sports an inline spell-checker, anti-phishing technology and improved tabbed browsing - a feature Microsoft have been eager to adopt. Firefox’s share of the browser market has grown to 9.8 percent of the U.S. market this month, from 2.9 percent in October 2004 and statistics indicate an ever increasing move to Firefox by Windows users. 2600uk.com itself showing 83.8% Windows users with 64% of total users preferring Firefox.

Firefox 2.0 will be available as a 5meg download from www.getfirefox.com

A comprehensive review of the new features found in Firefox 2.0 can be found here

Ever the bearer of proprietry software, Microsoft have inadvertantly managed to steal an hour of everyones time.

A bug in Microsofts Exchange Server is set to turn the clocks back a week earlier than anticipated meaning loyal users of Outlook, and the such, will find need to log a call with the much beloved Mulder and Scully as an hour of their day is molested by the Seattle enitities.

The issue occurs as Microsofts Exchange Server handles the yearly change from BST to GMT. However, under the impression that every October is to only have 4 sundays, the program will reset the clocks a week early, as this year, along with 2010, 2011 and 2016, October has 5 sundays.

Microsoft have issued a patch for pre-service pack 2 releases here.