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1. 
   Review - Bing Toolbar (formerly MSN Toolbar)

   2.0.0.1180 Beta (Dec 14, 2004)

   I wish it had website history searching (if it does, I haven't found it), but everything else is great. If you are using MSN Spaces, there is a button on the toolbar that hooks directly up with that service. I guess Google has a similar feature with their Blogger, but I especially like Spaces. Search is quick and very welcome.

2. 
   Review - Wasabi

   3.0 Final (Build #488) (Aug 8, 2002)

   ditoa -- I know where you are coming from about the bloat. I agree with you about that. I think if you really examine what Nullsoft has done with their video ability, it is genius. They have extended what WinAMP can do through Wasabi. It was done more or less to test their ability to extend and revamp their interface. I suspect that the video code is not even loaded fully until you load a video. Just enough to change the behavior of the app. I also suspect that performance issues that you may be having come from it's XML parsing, and perhaps overhead that the engine must now go through when building the environment. I don't think that it will ever be as fast as it's static 2.x counterpart, but the flexibility and power of the dynamic 3.x Wasabi engine make up for that performance loss.

3. Comment - Microsoft Rolls Out IE6 ActiveX Change

   3.0 Final (Build #488) (Mar 2, 2006 - 7:16 AM)

   There are a lot of Active X controls that people use daily and don't realize it. Flash is probably the biggest of these. If Microsoft were to remove Active X completely, they might as well get out of the Internet business entirely as a majority of the web would be impacted.

4. Comment - Microsoft Polishes Apple Messenger

   3.0 Final (Build #488) (Jan 13, 2005 - 10:46 PM)

   Seems strange that on the Windows side of things, they have Windows Messenger 5.1 and MSN Messenger 7.0. Windows Messenger provides access to Live Communications Server whereas MSN does not (they are intentionally designed to serve two different purposes (although you can list your MSN Contacts in Windows Messenger along side your other SIP contacts)). I suspect that this is actually more akin to the Windows Messenger than it is the MSN Messenger. Perhaps just an MSN Messenger branding?

5. Comment - MSN Launches Desktop Search Beta

   3.0 Final (Build #488) (Dec 13, 2004 - 11:09 PM)

   Joe Wilcox really should do some more homework before he asks why MSN isn't "fixing the underlying structure". What he is suggesting is a fundamental change to the Shell/Internet Explorer and to Outlook. MSN didn't make those changes because they are like almost any other ISV.
   
   Yes, they work at the same company, but (and especially) thanks to judicial discisions, large parts of Microsoft operate independently of others. This also has the direct benefit of giving MSN much shorter product cycles when compared to Office or Windows.
   
   MSN is a plug-in to Outlook for the same reasons that Lookout was a plug-in. The IE toolbar is a plug-in for the same reasons that Google and Yahoo are plug-ins. Lastly the shell integration is a deskband for the same reasons that Windows Media Player is a deskband.

6. Comment - Virtual PC 7 Set for October Release

   3.0 Final (Build #488) (Jul 30, 2004 - 11:26 PM)

   Let me first just say that throwing money and people at a problem as complex as security won't fix it alone. For years Microsoft lived in a safe, isolated, single-user world, and applications were written with features and usability in mind over security. At the time, threats didn't exist, and the vulnerabilities that a constant internet connection instill today were inconceivable, or at least not fully realized.
   
   There is a massive effort underway to change this, and it involves training, new ways of thinking, and a paradigm shift that goes against what many of the older employees have built their careers upon. More importantly, it takes time. So much of the innovation we want to do now is being stifled by security fixes for old software, which I think there is definitely a real consciousness about getting it right the first time now.
   
   A gigabyte of email is an awful lot of email anyway you look at it. I personally have a 1.01 GB PST as we speak, and I run it on a 1 Gigahertz P3 with 256MB of memory. I'm not trying to justify the experience you are having, but I do want to let you know that I certainly can appreciate where you are coming from if anyone can. I wish we could take this off-line and I could try to answer your specific problems, but BetaNews doesn't offer PMs and the last time I posted my MS email on this board, I started receiving emails from District Courts. :)
   
   If you belong to another forum that uses vBulletin, post your handle for that board, and I'll PM you with my email at that.
   
   I don't think our legal team wants me to/or will allow me to get involved in a debate about any legal maters that have or will face my company. As a compromise, I will tell you my own opinion about a similar situation that a hypothetical company might face, and apply it to Microsoft as if it did involve my current employer. :) In other words, the opinions here are my own, and in no way reflect that of my company or are based upon internally obtained information.
   
   Microsoft didn't force any OEM to bundle software, or not to bundle software with their PC sales. What Microsoft did, and as a firm believer in free market I find no fault in, was they wouldn't offer their OS to those OEMs at lower prices unless those OEMs complied with the terms of their contract. Those terms might specifically call out software that can't be bundled with the system.
   
   The OEM is in a position to either buy the OS at regular prices (something that any mom and pop PC builders were already subjected to), or they could get a further discounted price by entering into this exclusivity contract.
   
   This is NOT anti-competitive, it is business. It wasn't as if Microsoft was saying bundle that software and we won't give you an OS. Microsoft was saying, if you don't bundle that software, we'll give you a discount. If you are the company that made the software that was getting excluded, you had better come to the table and give a compelling reason that the OEM should still bundle your product and forego the discount. When the OEM decides that you aren't worth it, then of course you will blame Microsoft, but really it is the OEM that should be held accountable by the software company. But that's all it is -- just coupons. Why would I by Jiffy when Skippy is giving me $0.30 off? It's business.
   
   I think we are moving the company in the right direction again (still), and our focus is looking to the future, but this time we are going to make sure security is an important aspect of that. If you don't want to use IE any more, that is your call. I think you'll find that the time we spend to fix the critical security holes is time well spent, and we have a pretty solid product. As problems arise, we do everything we can to fix it before it becomes a problem. If you haven't tried the XP SP2 Release Candidates, you should. (http://v5.windowsupdate.microsoft.com/) They rock, and I can't wait until will release it officially.
   
   That actually raises a very curious question, and it is one that we are facing now. Most exploits aren't a result of someone finding something that we don't know about, most of them are a result of comparing the binary before patching and the binary after patching, and figuring out what was broken after the fact. Those exploits then target those users who haven't patched their system. The question then is how do you distribute security fixes without revealing to a potential attacker what the original problem was? Keeping every PC well and up to date is like fighting windmills.
   
   The solution is NNT. Well, not as you are probably thinking though. We need to break away from the legacy code problems that we have today, and .Net and the NetFX of Longhorn are that stepping stone. By using even more system methods, and letting the system handle critical things like memory management, we can mitigate potential threats. A lot of programs fail to allocate memory properly. By adding to SP2 and using NX protection in the hardware, and by compiling applications to have increased protection against buffer overruns, we can further reduce that surface of attack. Lastly, if there is a flaw in some system level component, you only need to fix the flaw in one spot instantly increasing the reliability of every application that uses that API.
   
   Yes, you are right in thinking "wasn't MFC supposed to fix this?" I actually don't know of any project Microsoft makes that uses MFC. It's better than nothing for some developers, but almost all of our apps are currently written in Win32. Interestingly, most of our automation testing is being written in DotNet, and I think (hope) that the company will continue to move into the managed code world. NetFX will be replaced someday too. In the meantime, the benefits of managed code are staggering compared to previous frameworks. The cool thing is that performance is pretty much equal to that of Native code, and in some cases through the smart caching of objects and garbage collection, can even be improved.
   
   I'm not familiar with your exact problem with DirectShow, but I think they were trying to strike a balance between power and ease of use. Beyond building graphs and basic tasks with DS, I haven't worked with it much. When/if I leave Office, I think I'd really like to go work in the eHome division, working on Windows Media Center Edition. I'd like to learn more about DS, but I'd be of little help now. Did you check your semicolons? :)
   
   Your friend's "anti-grass is greener" syndrome is common through the company. You always think the stuff you are working on is the best, and you wonder what the other teams and groups are smoking. The smart people abound at this company and I am honored to be working with them. There are decisions that are made, that I don't always agree with, but they are usually based on different priorities than my own. This leads me to ask the question "Why?" a lot, as your former co-worker did, but those decisions are always made one way or another for a reason. Every decision made is carefully crafted and made with a purpose. Products and interfaces are almost always tied into a usability study of one form or another, but ultimately it comes down to time, money, and resources.
   
   Definitely give me a vBulletin BBS that I can PM you at, or leave me your email rot13'd. I don't think any District Courts are going to be emailing you for support. (Actually, the courts just had some support issues, and although I certainly wasn't the best qualified to handle their request, I found someone who was.)
   
   How long can these posts on BetaNews be?
   
   Statistics compiled from Microsoft Word 2003 :)
   Paragraphs: 16
   Words: 1351
   Characters: 6214
   Characters (w/ spaces): 7602
   
   Statistics do not include the paragraphs, words, or characters used to write out those statistics... or this sentence for that matter. :)

7. Comment - Doom 3 Specs Revealed

   3.0 Final (Build #488) (Jul 29, 2004 - 5:26 AM)

   Perhaps the reason you cite, is why the red LEDs are prefered over the blue ones is correct, but then according to the spec sheet on it, all the manufacturers should be making them with infrared LEDs since that has the highest sensitivity of any wavelength. The white paper portion of the spec sheet tells us that the schematics are "designed" with the red LED in mind, so I think I could reasonably argue that the reason we see more red LED mice, is that it makes it far less work for the manufacturers to implement.
   
   There are manufacturers that sell optical mice with a blue LED already. So my question is, why aren't there already manufacturer's selling them with green LEDs? After all, in the color spectrum, and in the chip sensitivity, green falls between both red and blue.
   
   THAT, I attribute to the cost of green LEDs over red or blue ones.