I find that I can no longer accomplish an Administrative log in to Windows XP Service Pack 2 unless I already happen to have an account on the machine.

Until SP1 one could always hit Ctrl + Alt + Delete on the Fast Login screen to get the normal login prompt, where you could log in as Administrator. This no longer works.

I believe this is incorrect. I also believe that Microsoft finally went and did the right thing in this particular regard. The point is, it now looks and feels completely, like a perfect layman end-user kind of Operating System. Unfortunately, I am not one and it’s things like this that make me want to shift out of the OS.

Read my Trustworthy Computing post to know what I’m talking about.

This post was updated on 30-Sep-2004 at 2:11pm

This is a hilarious movie!

Cary Elwes plays a convincingly funny Robin Hood, that too with a “propah” British accent and slapstick comedy follows him around the entire length of the movie. His song sequences are very reminiscent of Jim Carrey’s style of comedy. Mel Brooks plays a Rabbi who practices in circumcisions  of all things and that too in his own production.

The entry of Patrick Stewart (one of my favorite characters / Star Trek captains) in the ending scenes was a smash.

Very much recommended.

Time and again I have seen blogs that have been begun with great enthusiasm (and great prose) but abruptly been stopped with a complete lack of any entries whatsoever. Why does this happen? I am softly but surely, being led to believe that this happens because the particular blogger tends to “give up” on the blog.

Why? One might ask. The answer is audience. The whole point of creating something like dhigu.com was because it was my soapbox, on which I could stand and talk about whatever topic I chose and the whole wwweb was my audience. The problem with that is sooner or later you realize that nobody may be actually listening to you while you spout forth from your makeshift soapbox (however goodlooking (thanks Dude) it  may be).

Since then I have changed my voice on this soapbox (I no longer write keeping an audience in mind) and even gone to the extent of making a blog entry claiming that I was no longer doing this for an audience; but instead for myself. I like to write on my blog because it lets me write clearly whatever I wanted to without any sort of restrictions whatsover.

So, what’s next? My only plea to you, my dear constant reader, is to please comment a bit more often. It keeps this particular author happy enough to keep blogging. And when you don’t, I start blogging about weird things that are selfish Braindumps so deep from my head that you wouldn’t understand them any way.

I use Opera all the time. But any time I need to depend on what I’m seeing? IE wins.

Why?

• IE is Dependable: What you’re seeing is truly what the rest of the world will see it as.
• IE doesn’t cheat: Most fast browsers apply their own caching logic; disregarding the timestamps sent by the server
• IE’s renderer is the best: IE will try to render your page as well (beautifully?) as possible. Some browsers (Opera again) will download and display the pages’ stylesheet after it has rendered the basic page. So everything moves around during rendering.

I typically use two browsers, simultaneously, IE and Opera.

IE to check rendering.

Opera to do something fast. Or for the features.

God save the world when Maxthon gets its act together.

Posted while listening to Philip Glass - Koyaanisqatsi

Microsoft has it right with at least one thing. You can trust their software to do what it’s supposed to(except Outlook, but that’s another story). I’m talking about the base operating system here. Take for example both the Windows 2003 Server and Windows XP SP 2 operating system platforms..

Both OSes are locked down as factory defaults with most features not even installed by default.

Why is this a good thing?

Take for example an average joe user who just bought a computer a year back. He would take his computer home install his regular software (Like Office, Instant Messenger of his choice, Download Manager, Anti-Virus, etc.). His computing experience would be perfect for the next few days. And then his computer would be attacked by an RPC exploit hack that would render his computer compromised and ready for attack by other, more meaner viruses.

Point is, all he had to do to stop this kind of attack is to turn on a check box in his network settings dialog that “Protects his computer and network by limiting or preventing access to this computer from the Internet”. Now most people won’t even go to the particular dialog page (Advanced) where this checkbox is present. Even if they land up staring at the checkbox, trying to decipher it’s meaning, they will in all probability not figure out that this will turn on their firewall (which is a good thing) and since it’s off by default (which is most definitely a bad idea) they leave it be. And thus open up their PCs for attack.

I, as a Windows user was pleasantly surprised when I beta tested the SP2 of Windows XP and saw all these features done correctly. Even when you start off a base Windows 2003 server system, it has nothing on it. Every service on it must be manually installed and configured to suit the requirements. Now while this is an additional chore for the system administrators, c’mon guys it is your job after all, isn’t it? And the regular issues of Trojan horses and network port access will occur less frequently because of these extra measures; which will result in less work, overall for the same system administrators who installed the operating system.

Why the gripe?

There is the particular friend of mine who’s come to my office and gone home with a fresh system and always forgotten to install an antivirus or enable their firewall or some other security screwup and resulted in complete system compromise leaving her with no choice but a redo from scratch. Several times. Accompanied with data loss. And every time it hurts her as much (if not more) as my sys admin.

So. Kudos to Microsoft for their Trustworthy Computing initiative. You at least have one person who’ll always say it’s a good idea.

Further reading on the TWC initiative is available in an MS Word Document file, here.

Posted while listening to Rob Dougan - Furious Angel