Software Trenches

"Your Password Must Be at Least 18770 Characters..."

And you thought that security in Windows 2000 was inadequate.

Here is the real error message displayed by Microsoft Windows 2000:

Your Password Must Be at Least 18770 Characters and Cannot Repeat Any of Your Previous 30689 Passwords.

From http://support.microsoft.com/kb/276304.

Thanks to bravomail for the link.

Why You Should Not Buy Windows Vista

Bruce Schneier explains why you must not "upgrade" (emphasis mine):

Windows Vista includes an array of "features" that you don't want. These features will make your computer less reliable and less secure. They'll make your computer less stable and run slower. They will cause technical support problems. They may even require you to upgrade some of your peripheral hardware and existing software. And these features won't do anything useful. In fact, they're working against you. They're digital rights management (DRM) features built into Vista at the behest of the entertainment industry.

And you don't get to refuse them.

The details are pretty geeky, but basically Microsoft has reworked a lot of the core operating system to add copy protection technology for new media formats like HD DVD and Blu-ray disks. Certain high-quality output paths -- audio and video -- are reserved for protected peripheral devices. Sometimes output quality is artificially degraded; sometimes output is prevented entirely. And Vista continuously spends CPU time monitoring itself, trying to figure out if you're doing something that it thinks you shouldn't. If it does, it limits functionality and in extreme cases restarts just the video subsystem. We still don't know the exact details of all this, and how far-reaching it is, but it doesn't look good.

...

In the meantime, the only advice I can offer you is to not upgrade to Vista.

...

I agree. This is the best time to Get A Mac.

Did The "Wow" Start Yet?

It seems that I was missing all the fun surrounding the launch of Windows Vista.

Thank you, Seth Godin for pointing to this picture from Times:

Seth writes:

I absolutely adore this photo from the Times. Not one smile in the bunch, never mind ebullience, mania or even pleasant anticipation.
Just because a marketer says something is amazing, exciting or just plain wow doesn't mean it is.

Well, it is so easy to compare these six respectable gentlemen to the one who does not wear a suit.