Software Reviews

I have said this before and I am going to say it again. Windows Vista gives the user an unprecedented level of control, compared to older versions of the Windows platform. This despite minor setbacks from Patch Guard, Kernel Mode Code Signing and the User Account Control. And “Turn Windows features on or off” is just such an example. I managed to come across this functionality when my Windows Vista Business operating system installed by default without the games that ship with the operating system.

Initially I blamed the operating system and the limitations associated with a modest Windows Experience Score. Since my graphic card is mediocre to say the least, but just enough to run Windows Aero, and on this machine I do not need more, I thought that there was a connection between the lack of horsepower and Vista settings which did not allow me access to the default games of the operating system. Nothing could be further from the truth, after all the games also ship with Windows Vista Home Basic, and this version of the operating system is created to run on low end system configurations.

In my efforts to trouble shoot the problem, I came across “Turn Windows features on or off.” You can access a screenshot at the bottom of this article, and the utility via Control Panel, Uninstall or Change a Program, and in the left hand side menu, “Turn Windows features on or off.” You will get an UAC prompt and that’s about it.

“In earlier versions of Windows, to turn a feature off you had to uninstall it completely from your computer. In this version of Windows, the features remain stored on your hard disk, so you can turn them back on if you want to. Turning off a feature does not uninstall the feature, and it does not reduce the amount of hard disk space used by Windows features,” reads a short description from Microsoft.

Via the dialog box you will be permitted access to the Windows Vista features that you can switch on or off to your liking. From the ActiveX Installer Service, to the Games, to the Indexing Service, Internet Information Service, Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0, Microsoft Message Queue Server, Print Services, Remote Differential Compression, Removable Storage Management, RIP Listener, Simple TCPIP Services, SNP Feature, Tablet PC Optional Components, Telnet Client, Telnet Server, TFTP Client, Windows DFS Replications Service, Windows Fax and Scan, Windows Meeting Place and Windows Process Activation Service.

Yesterday, it was rumored that Google might close the German version of Gmail because the local government wants to vote some laws that don’t comply with Google’s policies. Today, the mail solution gets another feature available straight from its interface that allows the users to configure and manage even reminders. Clicking on the link published near the Settings menu redirects the consumers to Google Calendar, allowing you to manage the reminders with ease.

“Wouldn’t it be great to be able to keep track of all the events in your life, coordinate schedules with friends and family, and find new things to do - all with one online calendar? We thought so, too. We’ve added a bunch of new features to Google Calendar,” the website says.

Basically, the new implementation between Google Calendar and Gmail sends notifications about the upcoming events straight into the email account, informing the users about the schedule.

Gmail is quite a popular email solution because since it was released, it suffered several updates that made it one of the best services on the Internet. For example, it first caught attention when it offered 1GB of storage size, a capacity that was never offered by a different solution. Also, it was then upgraded to 2GB, offering now no less than 2.8GB (and counting) of storage size.
At this time, Gmail is promoted as the most efficient email solution when it comes to spam messages because it owns several filters able to block unauthorized mail.

In addition, Gmail offers Gtalk, the possibility to communicate with your friends connected to the Google Talk network straight from the web-based interface. This interoperability seems to be a source of inspiration for the Sunnyvale rival as Yahoo Mail is now offering Yahoo Messenger to all the registered members of the service.

The advantage of the ZoneAlarm firewall over the built-in Vista firewall is that ZoneAlarm will only allow those programs you specifically ok to access the Internet.

Note: this version of ZoneAlarm ONLY works with Vista. You can download the Windows XP and 2000 version here The advantage of the ZoneAlarm firewall over the built-in Vista firewall is that ZoneAlarm will only allow those programs you specifically ok to access the Internet.

Microsoft’s Vista firewall does allow this kind of outbound filtering, but the feature disabled by default. Not only that, it’s hidden and buried - you can’t even get to it through the normal Windows Firewall interface.

ZoneAlarm’s free firewall, by contrast, will display a pop-up if a new program attempts to access the Internet. That program will be blocked until you allow it.

I installed ZoneAlarm’s app on my Vista laptop, and it went smoothly for the most part. After double-clicking the 18MB download, I was prompted to shut down the Cisco VPN service. But after a couple of reboots - I had to reboot twice before my wireless connection re-activated - I was able to establish a VPN connection without any trouble.

Check Point, ZoneAlarm’s maker, says it is the first vendor to use Vista’s Windows Filtering Platform API, but from the end-user’s perspective I didn’t see anything different in the interface compared to the XP version I’ve tried before.

That interface includes plenty of pop-ups that you may or may not want, and that may or may not help. Outbound connection alerts can help to block malware that gets past your antivirus software and tries to send your stolen data to an Internet repository, for example, but you need to be know how to tell whether an alert is for a valid program or malware.

I’ve seen alerts before where I just couldn’t tell, myself. And if you block the wrong thing some programs may not work correctly.

As the flood of data across the internet continues to increase, there are those that say sometime soon it is going to collapse under its own weight. But that is what they said last year.

Back in the early 90s, those of us that were online were just sending text e-mails of a few bytes each, traffic across the main US data lines was estimated at a few terabytes a month, steadily doubling every year.

But the mid 90s saw the arrival of picture-rich websites, and the invention of the MP3. Suddenly each net user wanted megabytes of pictures and music, and the monthly traffic figure exploded.

For the next few years we saw more steady growth with traffic again roughly doubling every year.

But since 2003, we have seen another change in the way we use the net. The YouTube generation want to stream video, and download gigabytes of data in one go.

“In one day YouTube sends data equivalent to 75 billion e-mails, so it’s clearly very different,” said Phil Smith, head of technology and corporate marketing at Cisco Systems.

“The network is growing up, is starting to get more capacity than it ever had, but it is a challenge.

“Video is real-time, it needs to not have mistakes or errors. E-mail can be a little slow. You wouldn’t notice if it was 11 seconds rather than ten, but you would notice that on a video.”

Spending our inheritance

Perhaps unsurprisingly, every year someone says the internet is going to collapse under the weight of the traffic.

Looking at the figures, that seems a reasonable prediction.

“Back in the days of the dotcom boom in the late 90s, billions of dollars were invested around the world in laying cables,” said net expert Bill Thompson.

“Then there was the crash of 2000 and since then we’ve been spending that inheritance, using that capacity, growing services to fill the space that was left over by all those companies that went out of business.”

Router reliability

Much more high-speed optic fibre has been laid than we currently need, and scientists are confident that each strand can be pushed to carry almost limitless amounts of data in the form of light.

But long before a backbone wire itself gets overloaded, the strain may begin to show on the devices at either end - the routers.

“If we take a backbone link across the Atlantic, there’s billions of bits of data arriving every second and it’s all got to go to different destinations,” explained Mr Thompson.

“The router sits at the end of that very high speed link and decides where each small piece of data has to go. That’s not a difficult computational task, but it has to make millions of decisions a second.”

The manufacturer of most of the world’s routers is Cisco. When I pushed them on the subject of router overload, they were understandably confident.

“Routers have come a long way since they started,” said Mr Smith. “The routers we’re talking about now can handle 92 terabits per second.

“We have enough capacity to do that and drive a billion phone calls from those same people who are playing a video game at the same time they’re having a text chat.”

Congestion

Even if the routers can continue to take what the fibre delivers, there is another problem - the internet is not all fibre.

A lot of the end connections, the ones that go to our individual home computers, are made of decades-old copper.

“The real issue that people are going to face, and are already noticing at home, is that ISPs are starting to cut back on the bandwidth that is available to people in their homes,” said Mr Thompson. “They call it bandwidth shaping.”

“They do this because they have a limited capacity to deliver to 100 or 200 homes, and if everybody’s using the internet at the same time then the whole thing starts to get congested. Before that happens they cut back on the heavy users.”

Obstacles

But digital meltdown is not the only threat facing the net. There are other, more sudden, real world hazards which the net has to protect against.

Anything from terror attacks to, would you believe it shark bites, can and have taken out major links and routers.

“There’s a perception that the internet is very resilient,” said Paul Wood, senior analyst of security firm MessageLabs. “The way it was designed means that if any particular part of it is disrupted then the traffic will find another route.

“It only takes an earthquake, as we saw at the end of last year, to take out a significant segment of internet infrastructure. Then the traffic finds another route, but it goes over a very slow route, which then becomes saturated and can’t handle the bandwidth. Then you lose the traffic and that part of the world goes dark for a while.”

For decades the internet has kept pace with our demands on it. And demand continues to grow.

And the service providers will continue to insist that the net will survive, and the doomsayers will continue to insist that it is just about to collapse.

Maven Networks will use Microsoft’s alternative to Flash in its Internet TV hosting service.

Maven Networks, which provides hosting services for Internet TV, will announce Wednesday plans to add Microsoft’s new Silverlight technology as a video delivery vehicle.

The company is collaborating with Microsoft on this endeavor. Through Silverlight, Maven’s customer base of professional media companies will be able to leverage familiar Windows Media technology as well as workflow automation, publishing, and player creation capabilities of the Maven Internet TV platform.

A rival to Adobe’s Flash technology, Silverlight currently is in a beta release stage. It provides for cross-platform, broadband video experiences, Maven said.

Maven’s plans call for supporting Silverlight when it is available later this summer, said Todd Boes, vice president of product management. Templates will be launched in the Maven Internet TV platform to support Silverlight, he said.

“That means that [users] can leverage their existing investments in the Windows Media format while at the same time providing new and engaging user experiences,” Boes said. Maven customers like Sony use the company’s service to build direct-to-consumer video channels, he said.

Flash is supported on Maven, but using it requires re-coding of Windows Media video to Flash, said Boes. With Silverlight, this video can remain in the Windows Media format, he said.

A Microsoft official cited benefits for content creators.

“Our collaboration with Maven will help provide compelling and innovative Silverlight-based solutions for content creators looking to differentiate and maximize their online media offerings,” said Microsoft’s Sean Alexander, director of Silverlight Media, in a statement released by Maven. “Silverlight ushers in a new level of online experiences with improved video streaming capabilities that can scale up to HD and incorporate rich interactivity, all with a lower total cost to operate.”

Paul Krill is editor at large at InfoWorld.

Microsoft Chairman and Co-Founder Bill Gates will be on the Harvard campus today, June 7, 2007, to get the one missing piece of his success portfolio, a degree. Gates is scheduled to speak at the Universities 356th Commencement, after which he will be awarded an honorary degree. Throughout the 32 years that have passed since his enrollment in 1973, Gates has returned to Harvard numerous times, but this time it will be different. Gates would have graduated from the American university in 1977, but he gave it up in order to pursue his vision with software programming and Microsoft.

Bill Gates is currently the world’s wealthiest man. 51 years old, Gates’ fortune is estimated to be in excess of $56.0 billion. In this context, Microsoft’s Co-Founder is the leading man out of no less than 946 international billionaires. He owns it all to technology and he is also getting ready to leave the business as of next year. During his time at Harvard, Gates authored a version of the programming language BASIC for the MITS Altair, the first computer.

This is in fact the catalyst that led Gates to give up attending University. Bill Gates and Paul Allen created their version of BASIC without ever having seen an Altair computer. Despite this little detail, the two sold the program to Altair. However, Harvard had a different perspective over Gates’ first step into an industry that he would end up revolutionizing. He was accused of running a business from the Harvard dorm room. Gates quit the University following the incident.

Gates departed from Harvard in his junior year and dedicated himself to an international success story fueled by the constant need for evolved software programs to keep the pace with the hardware development. But as of July 2008, Microsoft announced that Gates will transition out of his day-to-day role with the company in order to dedicate himself to his philanthropic work via the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.