CharlotteTheHarlot

You have this one? I am almost positive that one has WPA2. Check your firmware against the downloads available Linksys site. Also, note that their are several 3rd party firmware that can replace it. The point being, if you have client devices capable of strong security, you really should get a router to allow that scenario. Fortunately in your case I believe getting a new router is a simple matter of firmware update. If you happen to have an unusual hardware model without upgrade possibilities, you can always just get another router. Anyway, that is off this topic I guess, but always a good rule of thumb: never setup a network using security for the lowest common denominator if it can be avoided.

Survey: 32 percent of IT workers want Windows inside their next tablet ( NeoWin 2013-02-06 ) Now that is a real 'glass half full' type of NeoWinian! Or is that 'glass 1/3 full' ! The title would more accurately be: Survey: 68 percent of IT workers do NOT want Windows inside their next tablet. Gotta love their optimism though ... Bartender, I'll have what he's drinking. Rumor: next Xbox to block used games with one-time activation codes ( TechSpot 2013-02-06 ) Just a rumor, but perfectly believable these days. If true it is really a sad commentary on Microsoft in my opinion. Call it suicide. Don't like the Surface design? Skin it at a Microsoft Store ( NeoWin 2013-02-06 ) This is what Microsoft means by skinning Windows! Change the outside of the computer, but don't you dare change what is on the screen ... Kaspersky antivirus update cut off Windows XP Internet access; fix now in place ( NeoWin 2013-02-06 ) Not related to Windows 8 but a story like this is certain honeypot to attract foolish MetroTards to spew mindless venom about Windows XP. Examples ... Hopefully this gets a few people off of XP. I think Kaspersky shouldn't have updated the fix for windows XP, so could force people to finally get onto Windows 7. Cutting off Windows XP from the internet is the best security update ever. Friggin children.

HP rumored to be considering company "break up" ( TechSpot 2013-02-06 ) From the department of bad karma. Not feeling sad about this one. Recall last year their Microsoft butt kissing ( HP won't support Windows 8 to 7 downgrade on consumer PCs ). And don't get me started on their bloated printer drivers and ink scam. Dell Owner Admits Rapid Rise of Tablets Surprised Him ( Tom's Hardware 2013-02-06 ) It seems that all of these companies are lumbering giants with almost no ability to understand the trends. Let's see, LCD and the flat panel explosion, iPod and the MP3 player explosion. iPhone and the smartphone explosion, iPad and the tablet explosion. These are all inter-related and one leads to another. Even more interestingly, you can just as easily replace "Dell" with "Microsoft" and all the facts still remain the same. With Dell now getting into bed with Microsoft it seems they are a match made in heaven. Apple Launches 128 GB iPad, Priced at $799 & $929 ( Tom's Hardware 2013-02-06 ) Apple handing more marketshare to Samsung, Google and Amazon, and perhaps doing a favor for Microsoft to save the Surface Pro. It is strange how both Microsoft and Apple are choosing to handle a flooded market in a bad economy. Let's go after the boutique high-end! They could have murdered the Surface Pro if they wanted to. Then again, perhaps we are now seeing the effects of the Samsung Tax ( payback for the California court fine ) on their supply lines. Karma again. Apple's iTunes hits new milestone with 25 billion songs sold ( TechSpot 2013-02-06 ) This is a pretty amazing statistic to me, and the music industry must be besides themselves for not thinking of this first and instead just attacking random grandmothers downloading from Napster. Things like this are also the main source of the Microsoft Apple-envy resulting in their current madness with their reckless destruction of Windows in a useless attempt to catch up. Leaked video seems to reveal high res touchscreen Google Chromebook ( NeoWin 2013-02-06 ) The video is very good and shows Google is serious about pulling in ex-Windows users now. Hmmm. Microsoft intentionally destroys Windows and Google builds a replacement operating system. What might happen next.

Just starting to read them all now and I am already getting the distinct impression that the biggest enemy for Surface Pro was NOT Samsung tablets or Apple iPads, but Surface RT. If this thing cannot immediately blow the ReTard model out of the water then it is already dead. Microsoft Surface with Windows 8 Pro Review ( Thurrott 2013-02-05 ) Subtitle: This is the Surface device that Microsoft should have gone to market with originally. His take is all over the place, and this is but one of a few promised installments ( yay ) as he will milk this for all its worth. Apparently he feels that they much better display resolution ( closer to Apple standards ) is a BAD thing, even suggesting they revert to the lower resolution used on Surface RT. He drifts off topic with some wackiness ... I find this funny because of the Microsoft-like need to blame the actual PC assemblers for the problems. I'm certainly no fan of OEM crapware, I don't know anyone who is. But we have to understand why it is there. The garbage is added because the OEMs almost definitely get some cash for the exposure, like product placement on TV and in movies ( ummm, maybe if we call it advertising, like that which is embedded into the Non-Free Paid-For Windows 8 he will get the connection ). Now the reason for this is because they have always operated with low profit margins on the computers they build and sell, somewhere between $50 and $100 per unit if I recall correctly. We cannot say with certainty, but that number probably matches Microsoft's payola cut also which is why this becomes laughable when MicroZealots like Thurrott criticize the OEMs for trying to squeeze a few more pennies out of the very computers they not only build and sell, but assume all the responsibility for warranty returns not just for hardware flaws but even Windows problems. And don't get me started on the lack of Windows discs which lead to customers going nuts downloading torrents just to workaround Microsoft's reprehensible customer treatment. Yes he actually said that! Paul "The Desktop Must Die" Thurrott is of course nothing of the sort. But what's the point of trying to explain it. Interestingly, he has already followed this review with another installment ... Microsoft Addresses Surface Pro Concerns ( Thurrott 2013-02-06 ) Subtitle: They're listening, people. And you're going to like the answers. What, already? Not a good sign if you ask me. Meanwhile over in NeoWonderland the reviewer demonstrates how to expose oneself as a MicroZombie ... It is almost as if Paul Thurrott had ghost-written it! See Post #866 where he earned the gold in the Fanboy Olympics with this amazing effort ... remarkable similarities.

Typo? WPA2 with AES cipher is current best practice. The last thing you want tis anything to do with those three letters: WEP.

You're obviously talking about encryption in the air, and the answer must be YES because WPA2 would be effectively useless otherwise. I'm pretty sure that all protocols are encrypted so that simply sniffing and reassembling the packets is only the easy part. After that you would need to decrypt and I believe WPA2 is very secure, while the others like WEP are not. But to be absolutely sure just google around for something like "WPA2 passphrase packets" and you should find the answer in glorious detail. BUT ... The weak link is not what travels through the air. The weak link in the currently secure WPA2 chain is the on the PC itself, because even on Windows 7 the passphrase is of course stored for automatic login ( i.e., so you don't need to type in the passphrase every time you use a Wi-Fi network ). This stored passphrase can easily be pulled out of the computer with any number of utilities ( I'd rather not name any ). So as has always been the case, if someone has physical access to a laptop, that person can be considered to have full access to all passphrases to all Wi-Fi networks currently stored. It is okay to ponder the over-the-air security, but it is meaningless if someone has a few minutes alone with your laptop or other device when your back is turned. EDIT: had to change that suggested search term from "WPA2 packet passphrase" to "WPA2 passphrase packets" because as fate would have it, the former case successfully won the Google game resulting in a single hit, and that hit was this very page. Seriously!

Microsoft's Windows business lead on Windows 8 sales: "It's a solid start" [update] ( NeoWin 2013-02-04 ) Oh please, "It's a solid start". What she is really saying is that the long monopolized OEM distribution channel is working exactly as expected. What's the news here really? Wake me up when the OEM manufacturers grow a spine and refuse to be used like a $20 hooker. It really is a shame that this was allowed to continue unabated. Sure they distribute 60 million licenses into the captive OEM and corporate channels. It has been this way since forever. Tami Reller isn't really saying anything here at all. I'm starting to think it should be illegal for any operating system to be pre-installed. As radical as that sounds, and believe me I never thought this way for decades, we are now completely used to this institutionalized corruption of Windows lock-in via the status quo and any thoughts to the contrary are actually considered strange. Microsoft: People are quickly learning to use Windows 8 ( NeoWin 2013-02-04 ) Another lesson in 'how to mis-interpret telemetry. The real story is the blatant collection of all manner of user data and what they allegedly deduce from it. Ironically Microsoft and their Zealots are on a Jihad attacking Google for exactly the same thing. If it wasn't for all the other problematic Windows 8 issues ( GUI, Start Menu, Aero, etc ), user privacy and spyware telemetry would be right in the forefront. Pretty clever really. Mangle the user interface to keep everyone busy elsewhere while they make further inroads into monitoring the users' every single action. Microsoft: No new Windows RT devices on sale this spring ( NeoWin 2013-02-04 ) Bad news for Paul 'Windows RT is the Future' Thurrott. But seriously, who would intentionally manufacture and sell these dogs since they clearly represent one thing - Microsoft lock-in. Microsoft’s PC Partners Continue to Seek Windows Alternatives ( Thurrott 2013-02-04 ) Oh Paul. Really. This one is especially embarrassing ... Say what? He is practically accusing the hardware OEMs of being disloyal. Loyal to whom? He clearly expects loyalty to Microsoft and not the customers. Anyway, the way I remember things is that the hardware OEMs were usually taking $50 to $100 profit on all the computers they sold over the past three decades, whether they were a $2,000 sale or $1,000 or $500. In other words, after assembling the entire computer and assuming all the risks and dealing with warranties and returns and all the bad karma, they squeezed out a tiny profit roughly equal to Microsoft's cut from the operating system. What an incredible scam Gates enjoyed there. The worst part is that Windows problems almost always got directed right back at the computer manufacturer and not Redmond itself. It is almost laughable the predicament that these companies find themselves in. I am no fan of Chrome or Android, but even Stevie Wonder should be able to see where this is going. Microsoft is going to get crushed in the long run because the OEMs will ultimately tire of being the whipping boy for Microsoft and their clever offloading of all responsibility for their mistakes and bugs to others. And talk about Karma. Recall when Microsoft undercut Netscape with a completely free and included MSIE browser in Windows to torpedo their perceived enemy. This in itself was certainly not a criminal act ( I likened it to an auto company including a radio in a new car ) but it did lead to severe government scrutiny. What goes around, comes around I guess. Now here we are, approaching a point with a free desktop/laptop operating system called Chrome, a free mobile operating system called Android, and a free browser ( also ) called Chrome, all from a completely new player using Microsoft's longstanding tactics right back against them. That's what I call Karma. Please don't get me wrong. I am not on Team Google. Never was. The same as everyone else, over the years I have been re-sorting and re-ordering my personal preference of the three main players: Apple, Google and Microsoft, and it is truly unsettling to me personally that there is no clear moral or ethical winner. If I was forced at gunpoint to decide, the only thing I could say with certainty is that Microsoft would not be my first choice any longer. And this is completely due to their utterly cynical and selfish motives behind Windows 8 and Metro.

RetroUI for Windows 8 gets updated; new menu and 'SuperSize' Start screen ( NeoWin 2013-02-04 ) An update to one of the more interesting Start Menu restorers. Worth a read and definitely watch their video. Ignore the NeoWhiners who can't stomach any customization that affects their Romper Room Tiles interface.

That's quite a purge, larger than anything I ever saw. Looks like at least 6,000 accounts and 8,000 posts! One thing though, that Online At Once Record shouldn't be related to it, right?

He's back. Paul "The Desktop Must Die" Thurrott returns with his next attempt at rationalizing Microsoft destroying Windows, in ... Second Guessing Microsoft’s Surface Strategy ( Thurrott 2013-02-03 ) ... which at face value imparts the impression that he is once again suggesting improvements. Indeed, the subtitle actually says: "If only Surface with Windows 8 Pro had launched first....", and he writes a few paragraphs using an alternate timeline which he believes would have changed the reception of Surface and Windows 8 itself. Clearly he is coming to terms with the painful fact that he called it all wrong. But there is something he still hasn't wrapped his mind around. He proves this by reverting to form, cheerleading for the death of "Windows" once again ... First we need to completely understand his position, which is easy because he has spoken of it on quite a few occasions. "Windows" must die, Microsoft will replace it with an "ecosystem" of apps written in RT, which are little more than canned webpages. The previous paradigm of the x86 universe had it completely wrong. Private software developers who directly marketed their wares directly to the public without going through Microsoft approval and without giving them a cut were scabs and an abomination. Windows software that accessed the nearly limitless capabilities of the hardware through an infinite selection of authoring tools, programming languages and rich APIs were incorrect and unfair because they bypassed the equalized playing field of a platform limited to web-like HTML+CSS. Paul Thurrott envisions returning to the equivalent of the early days with only BASIC, which was so limited it immediately led to DOS and Windows tools using C and higher level development environments as well as major additions to hardware capabilities with ever-growing CPU features, video modes added to display adapters, an exponentially advancing platform that allows a programmer the ability to create almost anything they could dream of. But they were all wrong. An alternate route should have been taken in 1980, an alternate platform should have been used. Something a little more RISCy like maybe staying on 8080, or 8008 or 4004, or maybe just jumping to Motorola 68xxx or earlier, or any of a number of RISC chips. Oh wait, don't we still have RISC chips these days? Of course we do. ARM has been around forever, so has Alpha and MIPS and SPARC and PPC. And guess what? Microsoft has already been targeting most of them all along, with Windows. So what is it that Paul is really demanding? Why this apparent love for alternate platforms? He sounds like an Apple fanboy in some ways, "hey, x86 sucks, you need Power PC" ( just replace "Power PC" with any fanboy platform of choice ). In reality, what he is demanding is that Microsoft do exactly what I first suspected. Convert the vast, wild and untamed x86 universe into Microsoft's private farm for sowing and harvesting at will. That x86 universe is a huge target of opportunity that they simply cannot resist. The Plan? They want to first train these billions of x86 users into accepting Metro and Windows 8 by forcing it down their throats through the OEM back-channel and via a billion dollar propaganda campaign. Presumably they will flock like mindless zombies into the store demanding even more Metro and Windows 8 on their cellphones and tablets and maybe TV sets later. Quite the cynical and evil plan in my opinion. This x86 universe is not Microsoft's private pickings, most of these people didn't voluntarily walk in and demand Windows. It is pretty much criminal in the monopolist sense since it would be the equivalent of John Rockefeller getting millions of customers using his oil, gasoline and kerosene for many years and then suddenly switching to natural gas and demanding they buy new cars, furnaces and lights to accommodate it. It's not a perfect analogy for several reasons, most importantly the scale is off, way off. Rockefeller never came close to having billions of victims, he settled for mere millions. Ironically though, his monopoly did in fact exactly match Microsoft's 90+% monopoly of all available customers. Microsoft is presently several orders of magnitude greater in monopolized victims than Standard Oil or any of the railroad and banking barons of the past. Ironically, the small downward trend of Microsoft's monopoly in recent years is exactly what has them panicked in the first place. They see a few points lost to competitors and immediately make moves to lurch deeper into the monopolist mentality. That lurch leads to this plan to get those billions of x86 Windows users onto the locked-down Metro reservation where Microsoft is the gatekeeper to everything and takes a Soprano cut on apps whether they write them or not. It really is a pathetic but expected evolution of the iOS universe with iTunes and the Apple store, completely born out of one of the Seven Deadly Sins: jealousy. ( Wikipedia lists them as Lust Gluttony Greed Sloth Wrath Envy Pride, so Microsoft clearly has several of them covered ). Consider something else: this notion that "Windows" must and will be replaced by Metro. "Windows" as it stands is a platform, software written for "Windows" runs on "Windows" ( except in the many cases where Microsoft has deliberately employed planned obsolescence causing programs not to run without using a different version of Windows ). The replacement that Microsoft and Thurrott and Bott endorse is essentially webpages. This is sadly ironic since the web was scoffed at by Microsoft at first, nearly everyone else got there ahead of them, and they needed to play dirty to catch up. When other attempts at web-style platform-independent canned apps came along ( Java ) they fought it like mad, playing dirty again. All kinds of spin-off platform subsets and frameworks with lock-ins have popped up and even .NET falls into this arena. The question is, why would anyone go along with the late-comer Microsoft, in what they say this time? Especially when we know there are no technological advantages to Metro and Microsoft-Store lock-in. Quite the opposite. It is a neutered version of the vast array of possibilities available to today's creative programmer. The best you can ever accomplish is a fancy webpage that looks exactly like what would be expected if you handed an elementary school class the assignment to write a homepage for a fictitious coffee company. The entire reason behind this naked power-grab is cynical. The lock-in is all about control, and nothing more. It is about Microsoft becoming the firmware on your computer, standing between you and the hardware, demanding payment at every possible step. A time will come when they will meter the email and all web-access as well as their store. Instead of an ISP, they dream of becoming the CSP, computer service provider. The ultimate toll-booth collector. The biggest tell in his writings is when Thurrott uses phrases like: "... a hardline approach to ongoing industry trends". This pretty much underlines the root cause of Paul Thurrott's, Ed Bott's, and Microsoft's misunderstanding. What we see is rapid deployment ( and inevitable saturation ) of various small form factors of computer size. Essentially every possible size smaller than the desktop box with its 17" to 24" screen will become available and be sold in short order. What they see, or actually, what they believe they see is that the desktop is being replaced by this trend. Nothing could be further from the truth. Sure, some will be completely replaced by people that never needed a workstation in the first place. Others will merely supplement their setup with various convenient form factors to match their needs. Still others will avoid portable devices altogether. The trend of small devices will no more replace large devices than cars will replace trucks. Imagine if in the late 1970's when there was an invasion of small death-trap form factor automobiles the car companies were to close down the lines producing sedans, limos, pickups, box trucks, school buses, and tractor trailers, from following an incorrectly perceived trend. What they actually did was scale down to match demand, not shutdown which is exactly what Thurrott thinking leads to. The analogy can be better shaped by imagining that the car companies not only shutdown the previous successful lines and produced only Datsun B210 and Vega sized crapmobiles, but they also modified and marketed them for long haul shipping and school buses. Think square pegs and round holes. We don't throw out all the old tools we have when we get a new set of box-end wrenches or screwdrivers. In the real world we use the right tool for the job. And we keep the old ones too. Now if Microsoft is fed up with the workstation operating system business, and being completely overwhelmed with Apple-envy decided to narrowly focus on dumb-terminals for MetroTards, well, that would be another thing entirely. But I don't hear this from Microsoft, or their propaganda task force of Thurrott, Bott and numerous MicroZealots. If this is what they decide, they owe it to billions of people to come clean and state it outright, not drop a surprise atomic bomb on the world later. And not do it sneakily by attempting to convert and absorb this wide audience into their Orwellian Animal MetroFarm. This is where the moral, ethical, and legal issues collide. They have a unique monopoly position, and they have great power, but they also have a greater responsibility. They chose to supply the operating system that enables a billion computers to operate. The next step they take must be moral, ethical, and legal. Manipulating and drafting these users into their "ecosystem" for their self-serving purposes is none of those things. This is precisely where the MicroZealots cross the line because they fully believe it is moral, ethical, and legal for Microsoft to do this and more. This is why there is such a great divide and such controversy and argument. On the one hand we are criticizing them for abusing their near complete monopoly, on the other hand the MicroZealots are cheer-leading and demanding even more. What should happen? In a perfect world Microsoft would have been broken up long ago ( and I was among those that didn't think so ) with the operating system division sent a million miles away from everyone else. They produce something allegedly for the benefit of all developers, not just Microsoft software, so having them under the same roof was asking for trouble. It is kind of like Standard Oil getting in bed with the railroads creating a monopoly that controlled everything. It is probably too late now considering some of the people we have seen pass through the ranks of the operating system division like Sinofsky, so they may be too corrupted anyway. An amicable solution would let them go on pursuing their Metro Madness and their quest to copy Apple but having them release the x86 Windows source code and all related patents to the public. Not a perfect scenario considering how disorganized GPL can be but better than what we will have if things continue as they are. That would be a hugely beneficial move to the billion plus users out there, and obviously it would be moral, ethical, and legal. However, even though it would clearly neutralize and blunt any accusation of abusing their monopoly, I have little faith that Microsoft is ethical or moral enough to even consider such a step. Then again, if you consider the solutions actually applied in the past to Rockefeller and others there is some possibility of the Feds stepping in and forcing them to do it anyway. As I am fond of saying lately, one can still dream. EDIT: typos

Okay, I found and added some statistics from the Wayback Machine. NOTE: It does NOT appear to have been reset at previous year changes. MSFN Board Statistics ---------- 2010-12-25 ---------- Wayback Machine URL Total Posts ............. 851,982 Total Members ............ 69,970 Newest Member ........... rawais1995 Online At Once Record .... 11,048 ... 30 November 2010 - 05:45 PM ---------- 2011-01-01 ---------- Wayback Machine URL Total Posts ............. 852,615 Total Members ............ 70,406 Newest Member ........... poople Online At Once Record .... 11,048 ... 30 November 2010 - 05:45 PM ---------- 2011-12-24 ---------- Wayback Machine URL Total Posts ............. 886,682 Total Members ............ 81,080 Newest Member ........... ViekExege Online At Once Record .... 23,998 ... 15 April 2011 - 03:31 AM ---------- 2012-01-02 ---------- Wayback Machine URL Total Posts ............. 887,366 Total Members ............ 81,653 Newest Member ........... clausco2 Online At Once Record .... 23,998 ... 15 April 2011 - 03:31 AM ---------- 2012-09-20 ---------- Wayback Machine URL Total Posts ............. 912,976 Total Members ............ 96,924 Newest Member ........... vijay1857 Online At Once Record .... 23,998 ... 15 April 2011 - 03:31 AM ---------- 2012-12-21 ---------- Total Posts ............. 924,257 Total Members ........... 103,099 Newest Member ........... galeksandr Online At Once Record .... 23,998 ... 15 April 2011 - 04:31 AM ---------- 2012-12-24 ---------- Total Posts ............. 924,705 Total Members ........... 103,362 Newest Member ........... insutsbix Online At Once Record .... 23,998 ... 15 April 2011 - 04:31 AM ---------- 2013-01-15 ---------- Wayback Machine URL Total Posts ............. 916,235 Total Members ............ 97,317 Newest Member ........... rio2k11 Online At Once Record ..... 9,333 ... 09 January 2013 - 10:58 PM ---------- 2013-02-03 ---------- Total Posts ............. 918,397 Total Members ............ 98,117 Newest Member ........... bart Online At Once Record .... 10,218 ... 22 January 2013 - 03:22 PM PS: also turned up this old logo! Hope it embeds ... Rats, the board software won't display the Wayback Machine compund URL. But the link above will open fine in a browser tab. EDIT: typos and stuff

Formfiller ... forgot to mention this earlier, but NeoWin loves to change URLs on the images a few days after publishing a story. Note the blank box. They may even be blocking outside links to the photos and possibly preventing sites like this one access. Whatever, it's their loss. You can however copy them to a 3rd party host ( sever-to-server ) with sites like imgur, which is pretty darn good. So is PhotoBucket but I read something about it not being available here on this forum to all members, or something like that.

I see a difference in the Board Statistics that are seen on the bottom of the page loaded from this URL ... http://www.msfn.org/board/ I just happened to have a couple of saved versions of that page from December and somehow the board has lost some numbers! MSFN Board Statistics ---------- 2012-12-21 ---------- Total Posts ............. 924,257 Total Members ........... 103,099 Newest Member ........... galeksandr Online At Once Record ... 23,998 ... 15 April 2011 - 04:31 AM ---------- 2012-12-24 ---------- Total Posts ............. 924,705 Total Members ........... 103,362 Newest Member ........... insutsbix Online At Once Record ... 23,998 ... 15 April 2011 - 04:31 AM ---------- 2013-02-03 ---------- Total Posts ............. 918,397 Total Members ............ 98,117 Newest Member ........... bart Online At Once Record ... 10,218 ... 22 January 2013 - 03:22 PM Perhaps the software upgrade purged some records? Or maybe the New Year is involved and the stats reset each year? Strange! EDIT: found another earlier copy of the page

It appears good...(note: x64 box sitting next to me "disassembled") You're right, those are binaries. While experimenting I received a bunch of ASCII PHP and HTML in place of binaries from the server. Here is what I successfully downloaded from the Sun website with results shown from NirSoft HashMyFiles ... -------- FILENAME -------------- SIZE -------------------- MD5 ---------------------------------- SHA1 ------------------------ CRC32 ---- jre-6u39-windows-i586.exe ... 17,021,360 ... 94352006bf3c732c989e070a6c438967 ... d3700efc154a0acc5944f60f8652178487bc9894 ... 79d71166 jre-6u39-windows-x64.exe .... 17,281,456 ... 0328d48b4a6d63a0ac10df0d4f38ccda ... 85264d267e97f77b942ec6215bdaabf0422ee3ce ... 72cc5f73 jre-7u13-windows-i586.exe ... 31,512,992 ... fd6a76916408345e57b28c6afa5b9cfc ... 72ad271c6c7e7d1893a9661aad2854a75e87cd5f ... f915bac9 jre-7u13-windows-x64.exe .... 32,997,280 ... 96dd162939e0c84cdbaadbc0deeca996 ... 0acc9b9d6a7f4ebd255c0cc720a6f452797c487f ... 0e2f6735 Note: I haven't run them yet ( 32-bit or 64-bit ), so I am assuming I have valid files. It looks like the file sizes match yours. Maybe you should see what HashMyFiles has to say. P.S. oh crap, I just noticed that NirSoft HashMyFiles page says Win2k and above, yet he has both Unicode and Non-Unicode versions on that page for download. I don't remember if I ever tried the Non-Unicode version on Win9x before, has anyone?

Have a Surface RT? You can trade it in towards the purchase of a Surface Pro ( NeoWin 2013-02-03 ) Hmmm, gotta say, I didn't see this coming. Actually a great deal for those that got suckered into buying a non-x86 toy tablet. Could this mean that their latest move into ARM is being aborted like many other Microsoft projects? Probably not. They have written OS's for non-x86 platforms, including ARM for decades now. If I had to guess it would be that they want out of the hardware side of ARM only, but will continue to make "Windows" for it. That is, if they can find any OEMs willing to make the hardware and so far there are only two if I recall. Maybe this has something to do with the Dell deal that will be finalized in a few days? Microsoft uses headlines to read the future ( NeoWin 2013-02-03 ) Another taste of AI ( Artificial Intelligence ). I wish they would first perfect all the current attempts before teasing us with new ones ( voice input still very rough, language translators laughable, computer voice output from text is simply horrific and robotic ). So this thing will make predictions after scanning historical headlines huh? You think they will scan the headlines of the past two years concerning Windows? How about headlines about Ballmer? How about the Wall Street headlines about Microsoft? In the interest of the survival of Windows and Microsoft itself, I offer ... some Bing headlines they could examine ... some Google headlines they could examine ... now get to work and learn something! Microsoft Surface Pro now on display in some retail stores ( NeoWin 2013-02-03 ) They have a picture up there at NeoWin showing what I believe is the pen attached to the side of this tablet, instead of stored internally. Is this possible? They could not make the thing a half-inch wider to accommodate an internal hole so that the pen could pop-in and pop-out? Googling around I found this site (which frankly does a better job than Microsoft with explanations and photos ) and they have this picture ... ... and I'd say it definitely looks magnetically attached! For real? A high-priced Apple-style boutique gadget and they overlook something like this? ~sigh~ It's still amateur hour at Microsoft. EDIT: typos, fixed busted image link. Arrgh, busted again, just click the page link

Look at the alleged EXE file, it will be a PHP script or an HTML page. Got more than a few of those while experimenting!

Problem Solved: ( while using 32-bit Windows ) the latest JRE 6 and 7 offline 32-bit ( -i586 ) installers can be downloaded with no problem. But trying to grab the 64-bit ( -x64 ) cannot and no amount of clicking around the Sun links in Opera or Firefox would work because of their stupid browser sniffing. Here is how I got them. First, note that these two 32-bit offline installers can be downloaded just fine ... jre-6u39-windows-i586.exe jre-7u13-windows-i586.exe From memory I knew that you can just replace the -i586 with -x64, resulting in the filenames we are looking for ... jre-6u39-windows-x64.exe jre-7u13-windows-x64.exe However, simply altering the download URLs used for the first two above cannot work due to their complex ( and ridiculous ) URL scheme with sessionid and more. Furthermore, dropping these filenames into the Oracle/Sun webpage search field of course also does not work ( seriously Oracle? *** ) But drop them into Google as is and it returns a perfectly valid webpage with the file listed. Here are the pages ... jre-6u39-windows-x64.exe ... webpage jre-7u13-windows-x64.exe ... webpage So if you are running 32-bit Windows and just want the offline installers for 64-bit JRE you can click those links and select the file ... for now. *** ... Dear Oracle, how ironic is it that the King Kong of databases fails to locate a simple string submitted into your search box? How come Google can index your site better than you can? EDIT: typos

Is there an offsite board or place that status is noted? I did look at the MSFN Twitter account but there were no new entries for a couple of weeks. Just wondering. Some sites keep a thread running at other places like Yahoo or whatever. I suppose Twitter is a better fit though for something like this.

This is what happens in Opera as well. But if you look at the main XP Forum page, the little green icon shows up ( it means new poll hit ) rather than the little blue icon ( means new replies ). vinifera, next time it happens, first hit the main XP Forum page and see if it is blue or green. I suspect it will be green. It is clearly by design. I'm actually amazed at the precise metrics that the board software returns and that the browsers manage to correctly track and interpret.

Just checked Firefox too, same as Opera. After hitting all the 64-bit links it bounces back to 32-bit download. What's funny is that right there on the main page is Linux 32 and 64, Solaris 32 and 64. They browser sniff for Windows naturally and this system here is 32-bit. Anyone saved the direct download links? They are unfortunately compund URLs with session strings so they might not work though. Looking for both JRE 6 and 7 64-bit offline installers.

eBay Auctions for "Windows 8 Pro Upgrade" ... 2013-02-02 Recall that the price just went from $39.99 to $199.99. Anyone could buy a number of these licenses and resell them later, presumably for some serious profit, right? I mean, if there ever was such a thing as a "sure thing" this would be it, right? Let's take a look. ... 27cf6ae5c1 ... $39.88 ( 3 sold ) 3cce653548 ... $39.00 ( 20 sold ) Using Windows 8 Pro Upgrade" Digital finds 7 completed but 0 active ... 35c35b8cf6 ... $17.01 ( 9 bids ) 460bb21309 ... $15.59 ( buy it now ) 460baa72e0 ... $14.99 ( 0 bids ) 1e7601c830 ... $43.00 ( 8 bids ) 27ce9faf33 ... $14.99 ( 1 bid ) 35c32bedfb ... $40.00 ( 1 bid ) 1e76141fbc ... $37.99 ( 1 bid ) Frankly I'm not sure what to make of this at all. I am completely surprised. This is my surprised face. You would think that Paul Thurrott and Ed Bott and a few hundred NeoWinians would be crawling all over each other to snap up these deals. Let's look at two possible tech industry investment opportunities with eerily similar buy-ins ... Facebook IPO ( May 18, 2012 ) ... $38.00 ... currently $ 29.73 Microsoft Windows 8 Pro IPO .... $39.99 ... currently $199.99 In the former case you actually had to take a risk because you had no idea what the stock would be selling for weeks and months later. In the latter case investors knew everything in order to make a profit. Everything! I think I will need to see some Thurrott or NeoWhiner explanations in order to properly understand this. EDIT: typo

Microsoft releases free My Server app for Windows 8 ( NeoWin 2013-02-01 ) There are no words. Absolutely none ... at ... all. Click on the spoiler to see for yourself ... Windows 8 close behind Windows XP in latest Steam hardware survey ( NeoWin 2013-02-02 ) And they show a graphic that breaks down the operating system used by Steam clients. I'm not sure this really means what they want it to mean. First of all this is only gamers, and only gamers specifically using Steam. I don't know about anyone else, but while there are some good games and some hardcore gamers on Steam ( and I do read Maximum PC and PC Gamer and others ), it is sill a small subset of all gaming, and more importantly it has a lot of fluff available, almost as much as the Microsoft Store, or Flash and Java game websites. Steam has all types of gamers, the result should be skewed toward the average user in the same way a poll of system administrators would expect to be skewed away from the average user. Steam has many average users because it is by design a simple drop-in solution for those that don't tweak and drive themselves mad eeking every framerate out of their games. To summarize, it is not that Steam shows gamer adoption of the crappy new Windows 8 , it actually shows adoption by the average gamer - the normal people, just as expected. Secondly, one could make the argument that people using Windows 8 are using Steam to get away from it and it's Playskool Metro and the pathetic Microsoft Store with apps consisting of canned webpages. One might also argue that Steam users on Windows 8 are there for the under-the-hood improvements such as miniscule speedups in rebooting and some other areas, things that nobody complained about in the first place. So, in this instance, citing Steam user adoption of the crappy new Windows would seem to be going against their point. They want the under-the-hood improvements without having to look at the ReTard interface. Once they are in Steam, they are doing exactly that. Finally, even these numbers are suspect since it is a voluntary poll. Voluntary! See: Steam Hardware & Software Survey: January 2013: "Steam conducts a monthly survey to collect data about what kinds of computer hardware and software our customers are using. Participation in the survey is optional, and anonymous. The information gathered is incredibly helpful to us as we make decisions about what kinds of technology investments to make and products to offer." People that are most computer savvy and concerned with security and anonymity do not respond to these things in the same way they do not allow telemetry data back to Microsoft ( talking to you Sinofsky, Julie, Jensen, etc ). I'm not saying this data is bogus, but it should come close to mirroring the Microsoft data that led to the MetroTard decision-making rationalizing removal of the Start Menu. What would be interesting is just how fast the Windows Store or Start Screen would be removed for lack of interest if there was an automatic response to this kind of telemetry.

Thanks for the link. Has anyone using 32-bit Windows been able to download the 64-bit offline installers? They are using browser sniffing and even the "manual" download for JRE 6 or 7 64-bit installs are blocked. Arrrggh!

We had some discussion about this in ... Installing New Windows XP Updates ( see Post #9 and #12 ). It is a subject, real security vs. perceived security that deserves a lot more notice IMHO, judging by the hyperbole I see in the threads from MetroTards accusing Windows XP and Win9x users of irresponsibly destroying the security of the world because they receive no real updates or mainline "support" by clinging to an "obsolete" operating system. As if Microsoft "supports" anybody in the first place ( they do not, the worldwide Tech community supports Microsoft and props it up, it would collapse without the millions of Techies working for peanuts fixing countless Windows and other problems ). As mentioned in those posts, I am not careless and do not evangelize to others to do it in this "manual" fashion. But there is more than one way to skin a cat besides letting Microsoft and 3rd parties take over your system. My own personal reasoning just is a product of longtime dis-satisfaction with the status quo, the lack of logic and efficiency and common sense over the years from Microsoft and others that offer help, usually for a price. It sure looks a lot like a Sopranos protection racket or outright extortion sometimes. Windows Update? Over the years I've watched countless theoretical exploits ( buffer overflows, etc ) get fixed and the same files getting patched over and over ( MSHTML.DLL, etc ) and came to the conclusion that there is a large industry simply trying to convince us they are busy protecting us by doing "something" which amounts to the placebo effect much of the time. There are problems no doubt, but most cannot be solved under the hood because the user himself is the weak link, and phishing through social engineering checkmates everything else, regardless of how many times you change the locks on the doors. Windows Updating has in most cases become busy "make-work", an end in of itself. Sure, read all the scary description excerpts of the "critical" updates ( "this will patch a vulnerability that may allow ..." ) and the user is convinced Microsoft is busy "supporting" their system, keeping it safe and reliable. In my opinion an ever-changing system code-base does not fit that literal definition. Add to that the collateral breakage that often occurs from patching this giant Windows Rube Goldberg machine and I lose interest in this plan. You can literally reinstall an original RTM disc and go on your merry way in most cases, save for some key improvements here and there like LBA large HDD ( WinXP Sp1 ) and these kinds of updates. But not the ceaseless patching and re-patching of the same files and ActiveX registry keys and certificates from a cottage industry of "researchers" that seem to exist only to keep WU busy. I might take them seriously if every patch and update that was released got rolled up into a master-patcher application, totally version independent ( including old OS versions! ), and was always available for download from a static URL for anybody. It should run and locate all deviations from the "norm" and offer options to repair them. If they were serious about security and if it actually mattered, this would have been done long ago. One single file to download periodically and execute. Not hundreds of patches with prerequisites and reboots and failures. Realtime AV? I always felt that the realtime antivirus medicine was worse than the disease since I can just pop the HDD out, stick it into another computer, run on-demand scanning and manually fix anything broken. The realtime AV also can actually prevent repairs even after it allowed the very malware into the system in the first place. In practice, most of them are "busy" applications with some utilizing up to 10 tasks and services all the time. They enjoy using Microsoft's patented planned obsolescence with constantly changing engines and upgrades and the commercial ones then threaten to not protect you if you don't pay. I always despised the fact that the AV industry never agreed on a common shared detection definition database. Crowd sourcing has proved itself far superior to incremental selective knowledge stores, and this is a topic that cries out for it. Let them keep their proprietary engine, runtime and GUI designs but not the core database. The divergence in detection signature data with no way for any user to determine which AV company has a better dataset is a bridge too far IMHO. And then we have the intolerable realtime attack by the white-hat AV software on the user when they click on a folder in Explorer or insert removable media, grabbing huge CPU and disk I/O scanning every file where you just browsed or on an inserted flashdrive, and then proceeds to delete or quarantine without so much as a prompt. That was the last straw for me after having carefully crafted flashdrives full of utilities raped and pillaged by the friendly AV company. Ironically, much of the time it is simply UPX or similar packed files that are removed ( Nirsoft, you gotta drop UPX! ). None of the AV packages have expert mode, only a few have a gaming mode, and fewer still have an easy way to terminate realtime scanning. None of these features are easily available ( single click ) from the tray icon. So just like Windows 8 the AV software evolved solely for the common denominator, the careless, inept, rookie user that needs protection from himself, and even then it still does not work because these types of users will gleefully click on a message that offers to double their computer speed for free. So I took this particular computer I inherited and set about calling Microsoft's and the security industry's and the paranoid fanboy's bluffs. It gets murdered by me in day-to-day testing of unmentionable programs and applications and visiting websites that Google and Bing warn about and sometimes don't even list. It remains stable, mostly frozen in time a little after SP3 when the owner, a good friend passed away ( I keep this running as a personal tribute ). Looking at Nirsoft WinUpdatesList I see that a few recent ones got executed, not from Windows Update ( which has been disabled for years ), but from some program installers ( Visual Studio, Corel, Adobe, etc ) that carry along Windows patches. Also I will run ad hoc updates as needed for things like C runtime libraries. The reason for stability IMHO is that I am not granting Microsoft carte blanche permission to go on a file changing rampage through Windows Update every morning at 3am. To tell the truth, things might be still be fine even if I did run WU, because I would stay right on top of it noting any changes to manually rollback from should they cause problems. But the main point is that being a slave to WU and Microsoft itself is just silly. You can get away with a complete reinstall to RTM or SP1 of any operating system and as long as you are careful, you'll walk away just fine. Having said that, I do not do this for clients. They get the full approved treatment, realtime antivirus ( MSE ) and MBAM for on-demand. This covers my butt when they click on Nigerian email links to collect their princely inheritance and MSIE dutifully downloads trojans while MSE lets it happen. If they come back loaded with malware, I pop out the drive and fix it so they can take it home and do it all over again. EDIT: typo

Ditto. Rather than drive new computer sales, the Windows 8 price increase will probably drive eBay auctions. So far there are a few. Some show retail in box and some mention digital, but I see no clear way to filter them at the moment. One is listed as $31.99 with no bids and 2 days left. Hmmm, is it possible that buying it low at $39 before the increase to $199 still isn't a sure bet. Man, that would be telling if it can't even sell at eBay above the sale price. The other problem is the huge mess of SKU choices. Even reading through Thurrott's detailed explanation is still clear as mud to me, I can imagine what it's like for the non-Techie and n00b. P.S. Anyone notice the crazy changes to Google images? Where are all the choices for alternate sizes?