Why don’t we hear more about how poor security is handled by businesses? Well for one reason if you bother saying anything about it you get fired:

http://ha.ckers.org/blog/20080522/tjx-whistle-blower/

Granted this time the “whistle blower” may have deserved the canning for how he went about disclosing but this is a good case in point of why we don’t hear about security lapses or outright security stupidity. This also goes to show PCI compliance is a joke and as long as the Industry doing the "policing" is the same Industry that makes a profit from the use of it's product there is not going to be any real change and certainly no disabling of credit card processing.

So it appears TJX wasn't satisfied with losing an estimated 94 million credit card numbers or PCI "Compliance" is a joke: "Most Breaches Are Not Disclosed, Gartner Says".

Microsoft's Virtual Hard Drive system, VHD, appears to be headed for Windows 7 as a native part of the new OS. This more or less tells us Virtual Server or more likely it's successor, Hyper-V, will come down to the Desktop:

Understand this is not just telling Windows that a VHD file is a Virtual Machine but rather natively supporting the VHD format as a BOOTABLE device for that PC! This could literally mean you could carry your entire PC in your pocket and all you would need is a host Windows 7 PC to be able to boot it. Think Windows PE, a small ram driven OS which you can then load your VHD into. Add that to Live Mesh and you can quickly see the entire Software Plus Services trend Microsoft is trying to go down.

This was posted to Microsoft Job Listings which appears to have been taken down at this point, did it say to much?

Do you want to join the team that is bringing virtualization into the mainstream? In Windows 7, our team will be responsible for creating, mounting, performing I/O on, and dismounting VHDs (virtual hard disks) natively. Imagine being able to mount a VHD on any Windows machine, do some offline servicing and then boot from that same VHD. Or perhaps, taking an existing VHD you currently use within Virtual Server and boost performance by booting natively from it.

Do you want to have the opportunity to work on a great Core OS team at the heart of Windows? If you have big ideas and want to implement them, if you love writing code, if you love delving into operating system internals, if you want to work on high visibility projects with direct consumer and customer impact and still work in a very technical environment, then you will feel right at home in this team.

Virtualization technology has been a great success with Virtual Server and Hyper-V. With native OS support on the horizon it will become an even greater hit. Our team is making this a reality in Windows 7. Consider the simplicity of backup using a VHD, or the portability of a virtual disk backed by a single file. These are a few reasons why this technology is poised to be one of the greatest features in Windows 7–come help us achieve this goal.

They have brought back the Wheel as well which looks pretty much like what Live Mesh is trying to do, see a trend? A somewhat questionable "Leaked Memo" clearly details that Microsoft is looking at melding the Desktop and "The Cloud". I say questionable because of the source and some possible conflicts of interest with such a "leaked memo". Mary Jo Foley recently released a book, Microsoft 2.0, and thus the website the memo was posted to. She has a vested interest in pointing to anything which she discusses in her book and although the memo appears to be legit enough on it's surface one should wonder how she got access to this, why risk burning contact at Microsoft as they certainly would not be happy seeing this get out and her using it and is she using so called leaked information to promote her own book, blogs, etc.

If they are this far along then Windows 7 is not going to take to 2010 to release.

Again we see hints that Windows 7 is closer than most think, maybe a Beta in just a few months. In a recent speech by Bill Gates in Japan we see the following:

"So it is a...there will be constant change. I see Windows, a major new version of Windows every two to three years", Bill Gates, May 7, 2008

Of course Gates could be talking up thin air and just saying what people wanted to hear but if you look over the entire article at Betanews it seems to point to things I've already discussed here before. Key in his speech I think is where he specifically talks about the product being at a level that it is clearly functional:

"We're hard at work, I would say, on the next version, which we call Windows 7," he said. "I'm very excited about the work being done there. The ability to be lower power, take less memory, be more efficient, and have lots more connections up to the mobile phone, so those scenarios connect up well to make it a great platform for the best gaming that can be done, to connect up to the thing being done out on the Internet, so that, for example, if you have two personal computers, that your files automatically are synchronized between them, and so you don't have a lot of work to move that data back and forth. Obviously we'd all love it if people had more PCs per average, and so making that simple is important."

Source: BetaNews

Yea, yea another freakin "syncing" tool. How many times is Microsoft going to re-write FolderShare, Groove and who knows how many other third party tools which do the same thing?

How about Microsoft finding some focus on one product line and dump the resources into it instead of constantly trying to re-write products they bought or “borrowed” from elsewhere, including a bunch of useless junk, exploding the code from 2MB to 2GB and dropping performance to the point you need a Quad Core CPU just to boot.

So let's look at Mesh. We have Folder syncing across multiple devices (PC's), hmm, I think FolderShare does that, yeap, oh wait there is Ozzie's Groove as well doesn't it do Folder syncing, yeap, hmmm, where's the "WOW"? Ah but it also allows for RDP without configuring a firewall and secures it behind HTTPS and some networking tricks they won't talk about, ok I think LogMeIn did that how long ago along with how many other products, again where is the "WOW".

Instead of "WOW" on how innovative Microsoft is in coming up with this product I went "WOW!!!" when my network nearly crashed because of the packet flooding Mesh did. My son was on one of those kid sites watching Flash Movies and all of a sudden I hear him yelling 'the puter is broke'. Yeap sure enough the flash movies are now coming in like they were on dialup, close mesh on my desktop and "WOW" up come the flash movies again. Now just what the heck is Mesh doing to crash a $150 router and 5MB down speed? I've yet to sniff the network but I don't see any reason to since I clearly found the source of the problem, Microsoft.

WOW, NOT!

I'm not sure you can even start to call this bad boy a notebook:

The HP HDX Dragon comes with Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate (64-bit) and is powered by an Intel Core 2 Extreme Processor X9000 (2.80GHz, 6MB L2 Cache, 800MHz FSB). Other features include 20.1" diagonal WUXGA High-Definition HP Ultra Brightview Widescreen (1920x1200) 1080p, 4GB DDR2 System Memory (2 Dimm), 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800M GTS, HP Imprint Finish (Dragon) + Fingerprint Reader + Webcam + Microphone, Intel PRO/Wireless 4965AGN Network Connection and Bluetooth, 500GB 5400RPM SATA Dual Hard Drive (250GB x 2), Blu-Ray ROM with SuperMulti DVD+/-R/RW Double Layer, Integrated HP HDTV Hybrid TV Tuner and 4 Altec Lansing speakers with HP Triple Bass Reflex subwoofer, and 9 Cell Lithium Ion Battery.

I mean really, holy cow this is a beast. I'm willing to beat you can actually run Vista on this thing ;).

Looking for a desktop replacement with gaming abilities this has got to be a option as it is nearly twice the machine I use as a desktop and yes I do game although I will admit I am not the biggest gamer by far but I do like to blow a few things up every now and then.

For the full line up check out HP and if your really lucky maybe you might just win one.

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I was comfortable enough with the pack to install it anywhere I had verified the Beta didn’t break things however that has changed! What bugs me is the fact it appears they did more than tweak the install between Beta and RTM as my own testing shows it is breaking drivers and resetting RDP to Windows Defaults plus reports of it causing data corruption were not there during the Beta. I was going to do an entire site to SP3 this week that I had tested the Beta on a few machines but that’s out!

It appears now though the major problem with SP3 is also in Vista SP1 and as such MS has pulled SP1 for Vista as an automatic update as well per ComputerWorld. The problem is with data corruption in RMS or more specifically the way both SP’s changed how SQL data is handled. If this is true I don’t see how it could be limited to RSM but would hit anything using SQL:

“The Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System (RMS) Development team has identified problems when Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) is installed. Windows Vista (SP1) was released on 3/18/08 and may cause data loss and corruption in Microsoft Dynamics RMS databases.

Overview

Windows Vista SP1 includes a change to the way Microsoft SQL Server® handles database records that include information from more than one table. For example, a supplier record in Microsoft Dynamics RMS includes information from both the Supplier and Item tables.

http://www.microsoft.com/Businesssolutions/Community/NewsGroups/dgbrowser/en-us/default.mspx?dg=microsoft.public.pos&tid=4ec80029-9e39-43fa-8f4c-39f77fdb9963&cat=&lang=en&cr=US&sloc=en-us&m=1&p=1

So how long have we been waiting for SP3 and now they find it corrupts data? This would also seem to point to SP3 being far more than a roll-up plus NAP which many have said is the case.

Ok so XP is XP right? I mean that if you have XP on one machine then XP on another is the same XP, right? Well it appears there are some differences and here's a whopper which makes ZERO sense.

If your running XP Home or Pro and Internet Explorer open IE and browse to www.nbc.com. Hey that was easy it worked like a champ huh. Now go grab a XP Tablet Edition and Internet Explorer and try www.nbc.com, it failed didn't it! Appears there is a known bug that Microsoft blames on the content located at NBC.com which the Tablet Edition can't handle. Now that is what bugs the heck out of me because Tablet XP is suppose to be the same as XP Pro with the Tablet additional files for the tablet input and such.

For a quick work around you can browse to www.nbci.com which is the same site but is missing whatever screws up the Tablet edition.