Category: Vista
February 28th, 2008
Microsoft's free enterprise search is a must try
At the Heroes Happens {here} event in LA yesterday which saw the launch* of Windows Server 2008, one of the relatively hidden gems of the event in my opinion was Microsoft’s free** Search Server 2008 Express. It’s is a streamline install of Office SharePoint Server 2007 with almost all the enterprise search features that most users would want and is a must download for any Windows Server shop.
Even if you didn’t own Windows Server 2003, 2003 R2, or 2008, it would seem like a great way to build a very cheap enterprise search engine appliance with a minimal Windows Server 2003 or above license and a simple 1U server for less than $2000 which is a LOT less than a $30K starting price Google Search Engine appliance with a 500K document cap. Update 7:28PM - Wiredguy in the talkback pointed out that Google’s Mini search appliance starts at $3K, but that only indexes 50K documents and it doesn’t tie in to Active Directory as seamlessly and lacks Exchange support. If you’re a Windows shop with an IIS server sitting around with low CPU utilization which is quote common, adding Microsoft’s Search Server 2008 Express costs nothing.
So why would you want an enterprise search engine for your company or organization? Windows Vista (and XP users who add Windows Desktop Search or Google Desktop Search) know how useful it is to have relatively instant indexed search results for any document or email in their computer. But those benefits stop at the local computer because you don’t want every user crawling the network data resources redundantly since it would bring the whole network and server infrastructure to a halt.
An enterprise search engine gives you a centralized intranet website where users could go to a URL like search.mycompany.com and find any document in their entire corporate LAN (and to a lesser extent the WAN and some Internet sites due to bandwidth considerations). Google’s online search engine is great but it’s stopped dead in its tracks at the corporate firewall and there’s no way it can search your Exchange or Lotus Notes mail server or your file server documents. The enterprise search engine bridges an essential gap between desktop search and google.com. Documents or emails that would have been glossed over and forgotten about instantly pop up on the enterprise search server.
The search results are security-trimmed and active directory integrated so that the user will only see the documents that they have permissions to access. With an Intranet IIS web server set for seamless Active Directory authentication, the user merely goes to the search portal and they’re logged in automatically. The server can also be tuned to crawl the network at off-peak hours with full or incremental searches.
Microsoft’s Search Server Express comes preloaded with the following search connectors.
- File servers
- Web sites
- SharePoint websites
- Exchange Server public folders
- Lotus Notes
To make Search Server 2008 Express work, you’ll either need a free SQL Server 2005 Express database backend or Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and above. Using the free SQL Express will limit the server to 1 GB and 4 GB database size. Under most document sizes, a 4 GB index should allow you to index more files than the 500K document cap imposed by the $30K edition of the Google Search Engine appliance. Buying a SQL server license will still end up being far cheaper than buying the Google appliance. No matter what your opinion of Microsoft, I think this is one of those things that’s definitely worth a try. Enterprise search is finally affordable and it should become a fixture in any company’s server room or datacenter.
* This was also a 3-month post launch party for Visual Studio 2008 and 6-month pre-launch party for SQL Server 2008.
** People who already own a copy of Windows Server 2003, 2003 R2, or 2008.
February 11th, 2008
Are AVCHD camcorders the next HD lie?
When I wrote “Don’t believe the low bit-rate ‘HD’ lie” with a comparison, I had no idea that these compromises in quality would apply to the latest consumer HD camcorder format called AVCHD as well. When I first read about the AVCHD format with its use of MPEG4-AVC (H.264) video compression at a maximum of 24 mbps versus HDV which uses the older MPEG-2 format at 25 mbps, I was very excited about the new format. My enthusiasm dampened when I read the fine print that actual AVCHD implementation only uses 13 to 17 mbps MPEG4-AVC for compatibility with cheaper storage devices and it completely sunk when I read this excellent in-depth review from camcorderinfo.com. Take a look at the screenshots below and it pains me to see how much detail is lost in the newer HD format.
| Comparison of HDV versus AVCHD Image credit: camcorderinfo.com. Lossless 1:1 crop. |
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| Canon HG10 Bitrate: 13 to 15 Mbps MPEG4-AVC aka H.264 AVCHD camcorder format 1920×1080 60i |
Canon HV20 Bitrate: 24 Mbps MPEG-2 aka H.262 HDV camcorder format 1440×1080 60i (anamorphic) |
The reason this comparison is so significant is that that both cameras have the same 2,960,000 pixel 1/2.7 inch CMOS sensor. The only difference is the video compression, the bitrate, and the storage medium. This flies in the face of conventional wisdom that says that MPEG4-AVC H.264 video compression can use 25% to 50% less bitrate to achieve the same quality level as MPEG-2 compression. I’ve always suspected those numbers were inflated as an excuse to get people to believe that low-bitrate HD is the same as high-bitrate HD if better codecs where used, but even I didn’t think it was this bad.
It’s gotten so bad that I’ve seen whitepapers from vendors that try to push the idea that 4 to 6 mbps using MPEG4-AVC H.264 is equivalent to 18 mbps broadcast MPEG-2 HD video. The problem is that these loose definitions of “equivalent” only compares perceived level of artifacts and not the loss of detail. Now I’m perfectly willing to acknowledge that the above comparison may be partially attributed to a poor implementation of H.264 video compression, but the bitrate has to be a huge deciding factor. The article from camcorderinfo.com also seems to suggest that they haven’t found a single AVCHD camcorder that doesn’t have low detail.
AVCHD is the second consumer HD camcorder format designed for DVD, Hard Drive, or SDHC flash memory recording designed as an alternative to the older HDV format which usually records to miniDV tape. Because DVDs and flash drives are often capacity and write-throughput constrained, AVCHD camcorder makers have typically stuck with 13 to 15 mbps bitrates. While Class 4 SDHC flash cards have write throughput of 32 mbps, cheaper Class 2 SDHC flash cards have a write throughput of 16 mbps and the camcorder makers don’t want to exclude Class 2 SDHC flash cards. Longer recording times on 8 or 16 GB flash cards obviously played in to the decision process.
It would seem logical that camcorder companies like should offer a max quality mode but perhaps they’re gambling on the fact that most consumers will never know the difference. This is really a shame since AVCHD random access storage is a much friendlier consumer format with drag-n-drop simplicity when transferring videos to the PC. You simply put the SDHC in to your card reader on your computer or you hook up a USB 2.0 cable to the camcorder and you merely drag the files to your computer between 30 to 200 mbps.
With HDV, you have to deal with the hassles of something like Windows Vista Movie Maker which forces you to rewind the tape to the beginning and stream the video over in real-time at a fixed 30 mbps. Buying an alternative video editing package will at least let you pick and choose what you want to record, but it doesn’t solve the speed problem. The other problem with miniDV is that it’s very hard to preview what you’ve shot since you have to rewind the tape. Sometimes if you don’t put the tape in the right position, you can accidentally wipe valuable footage. It’s really a shame that AVCHD camcorder makers have botched the implementation because the format has real potential in the consumer market.
Note: JVC seems to at least be avoiding the low-bitrate pitfall with their hard drive based models like the GZ-HD7 which offers a high-bitrate MPEG-2 format. This is essentially an HDV format for hard drive instead of a miniDV tape and the 60 GB hard drive provides approximately 4 hours of recording versus one hour on miniDV tapes. This seems to be a good compromise since you get high-bitrate HDV format with the benefit of random access storage and fast drag-n-drop video transfers. Camcorderinfo.com reviewed the GZ-HD7 here with quality lower than the best HDV camcorders but better quality than AVCHD camcorders. While the recording format was better, the low light performance wasn’t great.
One saving grace that’s less applicable to the consumer space is the HDMI output on newer AVCHD camcorders. For small independent filmmakers, they can hook up a computer with a $250 HDMI capture card with very fast RAID storage capable of 1.5 to 3 gigabits per second and capture raw uncompressed HD video. In this application, the recording format in the camera is irrelevant since the PC records the video uncompressed. But when you’re shooting at this level of quality, you’re probably going to use a much more expensive camcorder than a cheap $1000 consumer variety. The kind of HD video quality you get these days with relatively cheap equipment is unparalleled in the history of the video industry. High quality video equipment is no longer cost prohibitive to independent filmmakers and the only thing that limits quality is imagination and talent.
February 7th, 2008
First experiences with Vista SP1 RTM
[UPDATE 1/12/2008 2:55PM - Looks like my fellow blogger Ed Bott may have pulled through and found the answer in the quotation below. The lesson in this is to always update the motherboard BIOS when upgrading to a new OS. This shouldn't be too much of a surprise since this same rule applies to upgrading memory and CPUs as well.
Ed Bott: 2.07 (BIOS for IBM Thinkpad T60) is ancient, and according to the changelog Vista support was added in 2.09, so your BIOS is not Vista-compatible. The most up-to-date BIOS is 2.20:]
[UPDATE 1/12/2008 2:55PM - It looks like the IBM ThinkPad T60 lockups may have something to do with Vista SP1 after all. It locks up within 30 seconds when I boot the Vista SP1 fresh install DVD or when I boot Windows Vista that was upgraded to SP1 from a different DVD. My IT person loaded Windows XP on the laptop and it runs smoothly. He will load Windows Vista without SP1 and see if it is stable as well. More updates to come. Update 3:15PM - Looks like Vista without SP1 crashes too. This reminds me of the lone desktop machine I had last year that ran fine for a year on XP but was never able to load a fresh install of Vista without it crashing. This could be one of those hardware problems that only manifest itself when being taxed more by something like Windows Vista. Either way, we're trying to get to the bottom of this and this laptop is going back to where we bought it from.]
[Update 3:55PM - Seems like a hardware issue with this specific IBM ThinkPad T60 since Microsoft tells me they have plenty of T60s that are running fine with SP1. I was trying to recover some log files for Microsoft by booting the Windows Vista SP1 fresh-install DVD and it hung there and locked up the mouse too. That would seem to at least rule out DivX and it was a mere coincidence on the exact timing of the lockup. Heck the battery on it is dead too and the screen came with some scratches so it's time this dog of a laptop goes back to the IT department.]
I completed the first two installations of Vista SP1 RTM upgrade last night on to my primary desktop computer and my first Vista laptop meant to be my new work computer. The result is a near death experience with my desktop computer, and then a real death experience with the laptop (caused by hardware and not Vista SP1). I guess I should count myself lucky that it wasn’t my main computer that died since I haven’t migrated to the laptop for work yet. I will try to get some help from Microsoft to see if we can resolve this issue.
Near death with desktop computer:
The desktop computer almost didn’t make the upgrade but finally managed to pull itself out of the gates of hell. The SP1 upgrade on both computers took more than an hour to install along with multiple reboots. When the desktop system finally allowed me to log in, it went in to non-aero mode and it refused to let me flip in to aero. The sound was temporarily messed up but I managed to get it working after I enabled the sound. 5 minutes after I logged in the Windows SP1 upgrade finally told me it was finished which seems strange since you would think the user should be locked out until everything was done. Since I couldn’t get aero running I figured I’d try rebooting but the next reboot just seemed to hang on a black screen with a working mouse pointer for 5 minutes so I tried rebooting again. On that last reboot everything finally came up and I breathed a sigh of relief. [UPDATE 3:55PM - Microsoft says they are working with the driver developers on this to smooth out the install process]
Death of a laptop:
The laptop computer on the other hand went a little smoother on the SP1 upgrade and worked fine for about two hours until I installed the latest DivX codec and the whole machine just locked up after Vista popped up the Windows experience feedback prompt. Now this laptop locks up the entire computer within 15 seconds of logging in and there’s no way I even have time to run system restore to see if I can get it to the state right after I installed SP1. All I see is a locked up Vista screen and the laptop is as useful as a bookend. It is possible that this could be a hardware issue but the laptop was working fine up until this point. [UPDATE 3:55PM - It appears to be most likely a hardware issue with this specific IBM ThinkPad T60 laptop]
I don’t know if Vista SP1 just doesn’t like DivX or if it was just a coincidence and something else is causing this problem. I have the same DivX codec installed on my desktop computer this week but it was installed before last night when I installed Vista SP1. It’s quite possible that installing this version of DivX after SP1 will kill the computer but if this is the true, Microsoft needs to issue a warning and block this codec from installing after SP1 has already installed. If you’re planning on installing SP1 on your computer, DO NOT install DivX codec after you’ve installed SP1 until after I verify what’s going on and update this blog. If you have DivX codec installed already, then it doesn’t seem to be a problem.
Minute long login times for domain connected computers
The other problem I was told that Windows Vista SP1 would fix was the minute long login times for a Vista computer joined to an Active Directory. This turned out to be false at least in my case since it still takes 55 seconds of looking at the “Welcome” message after I type in my password. This doesn’t seem to be a problem coming out of suspend mode if you’re already logged in so it would only affect you if you reboot or log off the computer, but it’s annoying as hell and it really makes me think twice before using Vista in a business environment until these issues are solved.
[UPDATE 4:05PM - Microsoft explained to me that until a laptop at least logs in once on the corporate LAN and cache the domain controllers correctly, it will exhibit a 20 second delay per each domain controller the laptop knows of. That's a neat solution and all, but I know quite a few mobile workers who never go in to the corporate LAN and they need a solution where they can simply VPN in and get all this nonsense sorted out automatically and painlessly without flying in to an office with a permanent LAN or WAN connection to the Domain Controller]
Some improvements after SP1
My desktop computer seems to be a lot healthier now after I installed Vista SP1. The Vista install seemed to have gotten corrupted to the point that IE7 was locking up left and right while I kept getting these error messages from Windows Media Center Store Upgrade Manager shown in the figure below. [UPDATE 4:15AM - Looks like I may have spoken a bit too soon and the talkback tool here still locks up IE7 pretty hard on this computer. I'm not sure if it's related to the talkback or something else on that page that's causing it. All I know is that IE7 has been locking up hard on my Windows XP laptop and Vista machine for the last month or more.]
So far that error message hasn’t popped up yet [UPDATE 3:55PM - The message popped up again and it appears I need to rebuild the database score in Windows Media Center] and IE7 seems to have stabilized now and it’s no longer locking up the CPU to 100% utilization on a single CPU core[UPDATE 3:55PM - I'm working with Microsoft to figure this issue out and will update since it's still locking up in the talkback section]
The Windows networking indicator icon shown in the screenshot below seems to be a lot more responsive in discovering your network location. It completes in a few seconds after you log in rather than sometimes wait up to a minute pre-SP1. The laptop (before it died) also exhibited the same responsive network indicator icon. [UPDATE 3:55PM - Microsoft says quite a bit of work went in to the TCP/IP stack. This seems to be a good thing.]
Windows Movie Maker for Vista still a stinker:
If you’re wondering why I even bother with the DivX codec and Dr. DivX video encoder, it’s because Microsoft’s Windows Media Encoder 9.0 is old and doesn’t support high definition HDV formats yet and Windows Movie Maker for Vista is still garbage. If you attempt to use Windows Movie Maker to encode HDV videos, it will only encode one corner of the video at standard resolution and leave out most of the rest of the video frame. [UPDATE 3:55PM - Microsoft says they can encode HDV footage without problems so the problem may be caused by some codec conflicts. They also say that Microsoft Expression Encoder ($300) will work much better, though that's quite a bit more money than I want to spend since Dr. Divx is free.] The latest version of Dr. DivX (which requires the DivX codec) will handle High Definition .dvr-ms files and let you encode in to the desired video format for DVD set-top box playback or for YouTube optimized format. I’d love to be able to encode in to the 1080p Windows Media Advanced Profile format that Windows Media Encoder 9 promises but the software simply doesn’t work.
Making things worse, I was hoping Windows Movie Maker which only comes with the Premium or Ultimate Edition would actually be a complete application by now but I would be disappointed again. The old Windows Movie Maker in Windows XP was a free download and it allowed you to select the part of the tape you want to record off your DV camcorder but HDV format wasn’t supported at all. The new Windows Movie Maker for Vista does support HDV format but it teases you by asking you if you want to “Import entire videotape or just parts?”. Then it only gives you the option to “Import the entire videotape to my computer” as shown in the screenshot below. If anyone knows of a cheap or free non-bloated HDV capture program for Windows, please tell me in the talkback.
Fortunately DivX codec and Dr. DivX works on my desktop computer since they were installed before SP1 so I will need to get verification of the problems on my new work laptop.
Now at this point it’s still to early to draw any conclusions about Vista SP1 and the problems I faced may be unique to my particular setup or hardware. It certainly doesn’t make a good first impression for me and you need to be careful anytime you install a major upgrade like this. Please check back here for updates and status reports on these problems.
February 6th, 2008
A dozen free & essential apps for Windows
Every time I build a new Windows computer, there are a dozen free and essential applications that I always install for other people. These applications all seem to fill essential functions and they all seem to be well-behaved installers and uninstallers, in other words it won’t crash your computer or drag it down with gunk. Since they’ve served me so well, I thought I’d compile the list here and share them with you. Without spending a dime of your hard earned money on software, you can now make the most of your computer.
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| Image Gallery: I’ve created a gallery of screen shots of these 12 free Windows tools. |  |
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uTorrent - This is the BitTorrent client that is a must have for anyone who wants an effective file sharing application that allows you to download large files. It was developed by a lone old-school programmer Ludvig Strigeus who wrote a BitTorrent client in a few hundred kilobytes (yes, that’s not a typo) which is a real pleasant surprise in this age of bloated Java applications with 100 MB memory footprints. It was bought out by BitTorrent Corporation which raised some concerns among the user base but the client has retained all of its functionality and the new owners have done a good job of maintaining it.
Skype - This is another killer-app for the modern personal computer. If you haven’t already heard of it and installed it, go get it. It’s the first and one of the few VoIP applications on the market that “just works”. Couple it with a good analog microphone or something like the Polycom Communicator and you will be able to send superb wideband audio which is amazing compared to the normal narrow band audio you get on a telephone. If you add Whiteboard Meeting which has a free limited version, you now have a mission critical business collaboration application.
Add a Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000, Quickcam Pro for Notebooks, or Quickcam Orbit AF for as little at $80 for the first two models and you have yourself a very high-quality 640×480 video conferencing solution. Skype’s HQ (High Quality) video conferencing is something you just have to see to believe. The only downside to the HQ mode is that Skype does not support IEEE 1394 camcorders so you have to buy those Logitech webcams if you want the HQ mode. The camcorder supporter would have allowed much longer zoom for use in the living room but unfortunately they don’t have that feature yet. Also note that you need a minimal of 384 kbps uploads to maintain HQ mode.
February 4th, 2008
Windows Server 2008 and Vista SP1 RTM today
Microsoft has reached a major milestone today for its Windows Server and Client products. Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista Service pack 1 have been released to manufacturing today which means they will soon be available to IT customers and consumers. Windows Server 2008 replaces the venerable Windows Server 2003 while Vista SP1 upgrades the somewhat controversial Windows Vista. If this looks like a coincidence that Vista SP1 and Server 2008 launched at the same time, it’s not. These two products share the same kernel and they were finished together and launched together by design.
Windows Server 2008 will have key enhancements in Virtualization both on the OS kernel side and the hosting side, but the hosting side of the equation won’t appear for another six months in the form of Windows Hypervisor. The OS kernel side optimizations come in the form of “enlightened” (AKA paravirtualized) IO optimizations for video, storage, networking, and memory. The Hypervisor will take advantage of these kernel enhancements to reduce the overhead associated with virtualization. Other virtualization vendors will most likely license or negotiate rights to these kernel enhancements in virtualization if they wish to host Windows Server 2008 efficiently. Older server operating systems like Windows 2000 and 2003 server will later be retrofitted with just the I/O optimizations but not the full kernel modifications that optimize Memory and CPU operations.
Windows Server 2008 will also have a stripped down headless operation mode called “Core installation” that increases reliability and security because it reduces the code foot print. This in turn also reduces the need for reboots because components that would normally need to be updated simply won’t be installed in the first place. Server 2008 will also have a fast kernel mode IIS web server as well as enhancements to Routing and Remote Access such as SSTP (Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol). SSTP puts a NAT- and proxy-friendly wrapper around the PPTP and L2TP protocol for trouble free VPN access.
Windows Vista will get some sorely needed enhancements on stability. The size and scope of enhancements and changes to Windows Vista over previous generation Windows XP has resulted in some major growing pains both in OS and driver stability. While many of these issues have already been hammered out, annoying problems like a minute long wait to login a Vista machine in to an Active Directory domain and slow network file copies are now fixed in Vista SP1. Other controversial features like a Windows Vista kill switch have been removed. On the usability front, the aforementioned SSTP feature in Windows Server 2008 can now be leveraged using the new SSTP client in Windows Vista SP1. In the coming weeks, I will be eager to test both of these products.
December 24th, 2007
Vista deactivates me for upgrading motherboard firmware
Updated 8:40AM - After going to “Windows Help and Support” in the start menu, I searched for Activate and the second choice was “Activate this computer”. Using the phone option I called an 800 number and spent 3 minutes waiting and 3 minutes talking to a person. I didn’t have to give him any keys and simply explained what happened. He gave me a 48-letter activation code and I was on my way. That wasn’t too bad but the whole process is rather silly and a waste of my time.
Twas the day before Christmas and all I got from Microsoft and MSI was Vista’s kill switch, a buggy motherboard BIOS, and horrible tech support from MSI. The following is the screenshot of what I saw after I upgraded my problematic motherboard’s (MSI P965 Platinum) BIOS firmware.
After switching to two larger 1 GB memory DIMMs so I can use the four 512 MB DIMMs for other systems, the system became very unstable. The memory tested fine under memtest and worked fine with other systems so I immediately suspected the motherboard and tried to update the BIOS firmware. Vista’s crash analysis later told me that there was a problem with the BIOS and the memory and also recommended an update, but it didn’t warn me that upgrading the BIOS would trigger Vista’s kill switch.
I tried to upgrade the BIOS to version 1.7 but the BIOS update was faulty and both the online Live Update or booting from a CD to DOS bombed with an error message of “Error: Problem erasing flash050000 (31%)”. MSI tech support was absolutely NO help to me and they simply told me to redo the update from DOS (which I already told them I tried) or they told me to go back to the vendor I bought it from. Eventually MSI support told me to download it again and I noticed that version 1.8 was available and I managed to use version 1.8 to upgrade my MSI P965 Platinum board.
Anytime you upgrade a motherboard BIOS you pretty much have to hold your breath because a botched installation will result in a bricked motherboard. But Microsoft seems to be well on its way to bricking my Operating System after I successfully upgraded my BIOS. Now I’m going to have to call Microsoft tech support and see how I’m going to resolve this headache. I’ll update this post with how they respond.
Oh and I hope your Christmas gifts are a lot better than mine. Merry Christmas and happy holidays!
December 4th, 2007
Firefox vs. Internet Explorer: No real security winner
The rhetoric coming from Microsoft and Mozilla has heated up in recent days on who is doing a better job on web browser security. I’d prefer to frame the debate in terms of who is doing worse than the other because both companies have had lots of security issues with their respective browsers. Both companies have vastly improved since the days of Firefox 1.5 versus Internet Explorer 6.0, If each one of these vulnerabilities were a zit on their faces, would they be bragging publicly that they have fewer zits or who pops them quicker?
but each browser leaves much to be desired when you look at the vulnerabilities that have continued to come out.
Microsoft came out and gave a report that showed IE has fewer software flaws than Mozilla Firefox and they want us to believe this is the most important metric. Mozilla hit back saying that time-to-patch is a more important metric. Both of these metrics are important and should be debated publicly so that the user can make informed decisions. However, “time-to-patch” (the time a vulnerability is publicly known until it’s patched) should not be confused with time-vulnerable since that is determined by the length of time a product has been publicly available to the time it becomes patched.
It is true that once a vulnerability is publicly known that this is a more dangerous time since more people know about the vulnerability but we should not assume that the software was “safe” before the vulnerability was known. This is why number of vulnerabilities plays an equally important role in determining the security level of software because it indicates the quality of the auditing done before the software is released to the public. Patching known critical vulnerabilities in a timely manner is important but that should never excuse shoddy code auditing and the converse of that statement is also true. Microsoft patches slower but has better code auditing while Mozilla patches critical vulnerabilities faster but permits more vulnerabilities to get past their auditing process. Clearly each company can learn from the other and each company is failing in overall security.
One other issue that has come up in this spat is Mozilla’s Mike Shaver who says flaw count is misleading since Microsoft hides patches in service packs. That’s a really silly argument since there hasn’t been a Microsoft Windows desktop OS service pack since 2004 with the release of Windows XP SP2 and all the comparisons that have been made are post SP2. All the other talk of silent fixes are light on actual details and it’s awfully hard to make changes to a browser without the public knowing about it and Microsoft would get skinned alive if they made a change to a product without informing their customers about it. No one to my knowledge has given a specific example of how Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 has had any silent or bundled fixes yet so we can’t really factor this in until someone shows an example. Furthermore, the difference in flaw count isn’t some small margin that can easily be explained away by bundled or silent fixes, the gap is almost a 2 to 1 ratio between Firefox 2.0 and IE7.
<Next page - Internet Explorer 7 versus Firefox 2.0 vulnerability comparison>
November 26th, 2007
The $363 19-inch dual-core all-in-one LCD PC
Update 11/29/2007 - See updated AIO computer images
This is the new all-in-one Intel dual-core 2.0 GHz E2180 19″ LCD PC computer I built for the family. The shocker is that I did it for less than $363 in parts (not including keyboard and mouse). The 19″ LCD (1440×900 resolution) was on sale for $140 and the dual-core Intel CPU/Motherboard/graphics was on sale at Fry’s for an eye-popping $88 and I just couldn’t resist the temptation to build a nice all-in-one for the kitchen/dining area. I got a 300 GB hard drive for $50 and 1 GB of RAM for $30 (with an additional $20 rebate) and I used a $50 energy efficient “80 plus” 220 watt 1U power supply. For the chassis I used some scrap wood I had left over and spent 4 hours on a Sunday afternoon building this computer. [See image gallery.]
I haven’t made the top lid or bottom lid for this computer yet but this picture shows the full thickness of the computer bolted on to the back of the 19″ LCD display. The entire computer excluding the 19″ display consumes 40 watts in idle and 65 watts peak (WPrime with 2 threads). The 19″ LCD consumes 22 watts when it’s operating at full resolution regardless of the image being displayed. If the system is overclocked to 2.66 GHz, then the peak wattage goes up to 100 watts which is still well within safety margins. Note that this particular motherboard that came free with the CPU isn’t a stable overclocker so I don’t recommend overclocking on this system with this motherboard. For testing purposes, I loaded Windows Vista Ultimate 64 bit edition and it booted up in less than 35 seconds (10 seconds due to BIOS post).
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With the top and bottom are sealed off (with some holes for venting heat), I wanted to make sure the CPU fan had a fresh supply of cool air so I cut out a hole in the back. I didn’t have one of those circular cutters handy so I had to freehand the hole with a jigsaw so I still need to sand it in to something smoother. I also didn’t want to make the chassis an extra inch thicker to accommodate the retail box fan that came with the CPU. To minimize cable clutter, I used 1 foot long power cords plugged in to a power strip. That strip also comes in handy for plugging in lots of other things.
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Unlike the VESA stand PC I built a few months ago, this computer uses the monitor’s factory stand which allows me the full range in tilt motion. Here in the photo you see that it’s tilted all the way back and it’s in no danger or tipping over.
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For the photo gallery, I used the Microsoft Wireless Entertainment Desktop keyboard and mouse. Not shown is a tiny USB Bluetooth dongle in the back that connects the keyboard and mouse.
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This photo shows the inside of the system with the back, top, bottom covers off. The hard drive is bolted on to the side but I will need to put some rubber washers on to minimize hard drive noise. Wood has a nasty habit of amplifying sound which is great for musical instruments but not so good for computers so I’ll need to spray the inner walls with insulation foam to minimize noise. I’ll probably look in to plastic materials in the future.
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This is the back of the computer with the components exposed. As you can see, the box is not much bigger than the Micro ATX motherboard. The hard drive had to overlap the motherboard a little so that the entire box can be narrower than the 17″ wide 19″ diagonal LCD display. The LCD has a DVI input but the motherboard only had VGA out so a VGA cable was used. Wired Ethernet was used but I have enough room to plug in a PCI wireless LAN adapter using a 90 degrees PCI adapter. [Update 11:55PM - I'm probably going to go for a cheap 802.11g USB adapter since that saves me the trouble of using a PCI angle adapter. The fact that I can mount it on top means it will probably get better radio reception.]
This is the full profile view of my new all-in-one computer. Note that I made a mistake of not turning the bad side of the wood in so you can see some flaws in the wood. It’s not too late for me to unscrew it and turn it around though.
So the bottom line is that while it isn’t pretty from the side or the back, you won’t ever notice it from the front and it doesn’t take any more space than the LCD display would occupy by itself. The price tag is $1000 cheaper than commercial all-in-one computers from Apple, Gateway, and now Dell. Sure you can get a laptop but laptops don’t have 19″ displays and they can’t safely clock to 2.66 GHz like this one. Having a full size keyboard and a real mouse makes this computer as powerful as a desktop yet it’s portable.
[Update 11:59PM] - Instructions for making your own box
If you want to make your own box, you just need to cut 6 pieces of board. The dimensions for front and back plate are 17″ by 8.75″. Side plates are 8.75″ by 2.5″. Top and bottom are 17″ by 3″ (thickness of front and back added 0.5″). The top 2 VESA holes are 2.75″ from the top (not including thickness of top plate). The four VESA mounting holes are centered on the box and measure 100mm apart.
The box needs to be mounted to the LCD before the motherboard is installed. To figure out where to mount the motherboard, place the motherboard and power supply on the wood and mark where the mounting holes will be with a pencil.
My colleague Justin James suggested that I go to the auto supply store and buy some rubber underbody coating (spray or roll on) for spraying on the internal walls to dampen the noise. That should also pad the contact between the hard drive and the side wall so that the hard drive noise isn’t amplified by the wooden box.
[Update 11/27/2007] - A number of people in the talkback want to know about the RF interference characteristics and whether I will paint the box black or not. On the RF interference issue, all motherboards and electronic components are already FCC certified to be within limits of how much RF noise can be leaked and I haven’t had any RF interference issues running my over-the-air HDTV tuner in my home or radio close by to this computer. As for painting the box black, yes that is what I intend to do so that it will blend in with the LCD.
Update 11/29/2007 - See updated AIO computer images
October 24th, 2007
Sun launches Intel Workstation on X38 platform
Following last month’s launch of dual-socket and quad-socket Intel-based servers, Sun Microsystems launched its first Intel based workstations in two decades. The Sun Ultra 24 Workstation is based on the latest Intel X38 chipset (which replaced Intel’s 975 chipset).
Equipped with Intel quad-core processors, up to 8 GBs of ECC (Error Correcting Code) DDR2-667 memory, and NVIDIA’s Quadro FX graphics cards, the Ultra 24 is targeted at the CAD (Computer Aided Design) market. When I asked Sun what this meant for Sun’s SPARC based workstations, Sun replied that they will continue to sell SPARC as long as there are customers buying them and they still have customers buying SPARC today.
Sun sent me the following standard configurations:
- B21-TAZ1-AA-512DT $995.00
*Sun Ultra 24 Workstation ROHS-6; 1 * Intel Core2 Duo E4400 2.0Ghz, 512MB Memory, 1 *250GB SATA HDD, NVIDIA NVS290, 1 * DVD-ROM, 1 * 10/100/1000 BaseT Ethernet port, 2 * 1394 Firewire, Audio, 6 * USB2.0 ports, 2 * full-length PCI slots, 4 * PCI-Express slots, Solaris license. Solaris 10 and Sun Development tools pre-installed. - B21-TNZ1-AA-1GDU $1,445.00
Sun Ultra 24 Workstation ROHS-6; 1 * Intel Core2 Quad Q6600 2.4Ghz, 1GB Memory, 1 *250GB SATA HDD, NVS290 Graphics, 1 * DVD-ROM, 1 * 10/100/1000 BaseT Ethernet port, 2 * 1394 Firewire, Audio, 6 * USB2.0 ports, 2 * full-length PCI slots, 4 * PCI-Express slots, Solaris license. Solaris 10 and Sun Development tools pre-installed. - B21-TGZ1-AC-1GDU $1,835.00
Sun Ultra 24 Workstation ROHS-6; 1 * Intel Core2 Duo E6850 3.0Ghz, 1GB Memory, 1 *250GB SATA HDD, NVIDIA FX 1700, 1 * DVD-Dual, 1 * 10/100/1000 BaseT Ethernet port, 2 * 1394 Firewire, Audio, 6 * USB2.0 ports, 2 * full-length PCI slots, 4 * PCI-Express slots, Solaris license. Solaris 10 and Sun Development tools pre-installed. - B21-TSZ1-AA-2GDU $2,335.00
Sun Ultra 24 Workstation ROHS-6; 1 * Intel Core2 Quad Extreme QX6850 3.0Ghz, 2GB Memory, 1 *250GB SATA HDD, NVS290 Graphics, 1 * DVD-Dual, 1
* 10/100/1000 BaseT Ethernet port, 2 * 1394 Firewire, Audio, 6 * USB2.0 ports, 2 * full-length PCI slots, 4 * PCI-Express slots, Solaris license. Solaris 10 and Sun Development tools pre-installed.
Despite the fact that each system is shipped with a Solaris license, Sun also supports a wide range of operating systems such as Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, and Red Hat Linux.
The Ultra 24 comes with a hot-swap SATA or SAS 4-drive cage that is accessible when the side panel is removed. Since this is based on the Intel X38 chipset, it is fair to assume that it is using Intel’s ICH9R RAID storage controller which is the same one used in the other 3-series motherboards like the G33 and P35. If you want to use SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) which is typically used in servers, you will need to use an add-on PCI-Express storage controller.
At this point in time, only Intel’s 65nm dual- and quad-core desktop processors are available but I wouldn’t be surprised to see some Penryn-based desktop processors being added to the Ultra 24 product line as early as November when Intel launches their 45nm Penryn-based products. With the Intel 45nm launch coming in a month, I would highly recommend holding off until you can order 45nm CPUs with 50% more cache and SSE4.1 instruction set. I’m sure Sun and Intel would prefer that you buy now but I’m sure even they understand that there will inevitably be some Osborn effect in effect here with the 45nm launch so close.
While I haven’t reviewed this workstation first hand yet, I have to admit the prices look decent for a brand-name workstation and the hardware specifications look good. With Sun’s recent moves in to the Intel Server/Workstation business and selling Microsoft Operating Systems, Sun seems to have shed some of its SPARC and Solaris only religion and I think this can only bring good things to the company. IBM certainly has no love for Microsoft or Intel but it doesn’t stop IBM from being huge partners of Microsoft and Intel while making a bundle of money at it.
October 22nd, 2007
Build the $340 NAS for half the price but double the speed
The thing that has always bothered me with the NAS (Network Attached Storage) market for consumers is that it’s very high margin yet the products deliver very poorly on performance. While that might be great for the product manufacturers bottom line, it isn’t so great when you’re the consumer. Typical NAS devices that allow you to insert 4 to 6 drives cost anywhere between $500 to $1000 yet they only deliver between 15 to 30 megabyte/sec of performance when they imply gigabit (125 megabyte/sec) performance to the consumer in their advertising.
While I think most consumers don’t mind paying a small premium for something that is pre-assembled and easy to use out of the box, I don’t think they’re happy about paying a 100% premium while getting less than half the performance. I’ve come up with an alternative solution for half the price and more than double the network performance and you can have this solution so long as you’re willing to do a little PC building and you follow my parts list. If you’re not sure how to build a PC but you’re willing to learn, you can follow this step-by-step picture guide.
For $340 you will be able to build a NAS server running a free Linux server operating system from any of the major distributions like Ubuntu, SUSE, Red Hat, etc.
| Part | Price |
| G33 motherboard with ICH9R RAID controller | 141 |
| Intel 2140 1.6 GHz Core 2 Duo | 75 |
| 1 GB DDR2-667 RAM | 30 |
| 300W 80% efficiency silent PSU | 43 |
| Cooler Master Elite 330 ATX ($45 pickup at Fry’s minus $20 rebate) | 51 |
| Total (shipping included but not taxes) | 340 |
With a slight upgrade to $442 you can get it with a 5-drive hot-swap SATA backplane cage which I reviewed here. Note that the SATA hot-swap cage requires some small modifications to the chassis since there is a small metal lip between each 5.25″ drive module.
| AMS 5-drive SATA hot-swap backplane (model DS-3151SSBK) | 102 |
| Total w/hot-swap cage (w/shipping) | 442 |
I do like the feature set and relative ease of use of Windows Home Server (for people not familiar with Linux), but I have been disappointed with the steep system builder price of $185 when the hardware is barely double the cost of the software. I’m sure the OEMs like HP are getting a much better price for Windows Home Server but that doesn’t really help the home system builders who buy one at a time.
| Windows Home Server | 185 |
| Total w/WHS and hot-swap cage (w/shipping) | 660 |
You could run Vista Premium which is around $110 OEM price and that will give you basic network file hosting capability along with the media center capability so this is a great option for people who want Windows. Linux plus MythTV will also let you do the network file sharing and TV recordings and that’s free if you can deal with Linux.
| Windows Vista Premium | 117 |
| Total w/Vista Premium and hot-swap cage (w/shipping) | 559 |
Double duty as a Media Center PC
Note that you’ll need to borrow a CD or DVD ROM drive to install the OS or you can just throw in a cheap DVD burner for $30. Having the optical drive might be useful since you can also stick in a TV tuner card and have this system perform double-duty as a NAS and Media Center PC which doubles your utility without spending a lot more money or using a lot more power. It makes little sense to buy a totally different system for the Media Center PC and waste the extra 60 watts of power to run a separate box. The nice thing about this arrangement is that you already have all the storage at your disposal for your video recordings and there isn’t a better place to put all your videos. The other great thing about having a system like this is that you can host additional virtual servers using free hypervisor software from Microsoft and VMware.
System power and performance specifications
This system without the hard drives will consume roughly 42 watts during idle and each hard drive you add will add roughly 9 watts to the idle power consumption. Peak power consumption in the system will be around 75 watts without the hard drives and each hard drive peaks at around 13 watts during busy read/write cycles. The peak power consumption fully loaded with 6 typical 7200 RPM hard drives is 153 watts during peak CPU and storage operation. During system power-up, each drive consumes up to 30 watts so it’s possible to see 200 watts of power consumption for a few seconds when the hard drives go from 0 to 7200 RPM so the 300 watt power supply (smallest ATX model you can buy) is overkill.
Note that Western Digital now sells hard drives with half the idle/peak power consumption and the 750 and 1000 GB drives are between $220 and $300. Compared to 500 GB drives you can buy for $110, the larger capacities are a bit expensive per GB.
Performance-wise you can expect to see about 70 megabytes/sec over a gigabit LAN which is twice as fast as the $1000 commercial NAS devices you can buy over the shelf. With the new ICH9R RAID controller you can actually expect to see close to 300 megabytes/sec of disk sub-system performance but you’ll be limited by the speed of the gigabit network when you factor in overhead to around 70 MB/sec. If you don’t have a gigabit switch, they’re as cheap as $36 with jumbo frame capability. For more on how to effectively configure and use all this capacity, you can read Best storage strategies for the multimedia PC.
October 4th, 2007
Are thin clients the solution to all your security woes?
Our UNIX/Linux blogger Paul Murphy posted an interesting link to an article entitled: Information Security: 7 Data Leaks you can’t Ignore written by Matt Roedell. Unfortunately, I think Paul missed the point of it by attributing the issue to “Wintel infrastructure” and claiming the solution is to go thin client with Sun Rays. Security unfortunately isn’t so simple that it can be fix it with any single product and most of the risk vectors have nothing to do with whether you use Windows or Intel products. The cure-all solution in the security industry is one of the most ubiquitous forms of snake oil and there simply is no such thing. Let’s take a look at these vectors for data leakage.
Data leakage via removable media:
Under #1 and #2, Roedell listed USB mass storage devices and Optical drives. I’m going to lump these two things together and add floppy drives to the list. Roedell put a $0 price tag on Optical Drives because those can be disabled via Microsoft’s Active Directory Group Policy but he put a $50K price tag on 300 licenses. I’m going to set that to $0 because USB mass storage devices can also be disabled via group policy by importing this ADM file. Floppy drives can also be disabled via Group Policy not to mention the fact that we don’t have to put floppy drives and optical drives in to the computers in the first place.
Stolen laptops:
Laptop security is a huge pain point, but it’s something you’re going to have to deal with when you have mobile workers. It would certainly be a lot easier on IT if there were no laptops, but companies are not going back to the dumb terminal and mainframe days. Until there is fast, inexpensive, reliable, and universal wireless connectivity, data will have to be stored on the laptop for offline access. As long as data sits on the laptop, I don’t care what operating system you use you’re going to have to use reliable encryption software with reliable key management technology. Government regulators will not care if you tell them you lost a MacBook or Linux-based laptop with sensitive data on it.
EFS folder-level encryption comes free with Windows XP but that only works if you don’t give the user admin rights (a good idea if you can get management to sign off on it) and encrypt all the user folders with an automated policy. Vista Enterprise Edition and Ultimate Edition comes with Bitlocker and EFS. There are companies that sell add-on products both with software only or software/hardware solutions. There are even hard drives from companies like Seagate that have encryption technology built in to the firmware. Whether that’s $200 per station or less, that is the cost of running laptops and it isn’t IT’s job to tell the business what they need and what they don’t need. The business tells IT what they need to do their job and it’s IT’s job to solve the problem.
Stolen data from backup media:
I don’t care what OS you use or computing model you use, you will have data one way or another and it will have to be backed up and stored off site for safe keeping. Thin clients or Sun Ray clients won’t change any of this. Encrypting the tape media doesn’t cost “$800 per server” if you’re doing the encryption transparently on the backup server.
Leakage via Internet Web Access:
I don’t care what OS or computing model you use if you allow web access. Unless you block all Internet access, you’re going to have to deal with information leakage over the web. There are no full proof solutions for this and the most you can do is due diligence by implementing the proper check points and user policies. Scan everything only covers unencrypted traffic or traffic you can decrypt and policies are only good if people follow them. We can take it a step further with rights management software such as Active Directory Rights Management Services which blocks users from performing actions that might compromise data. User policies and software can help keep users from making honest mistakes but a determined leaker will find a way to leak data even if they have to use the analog hole and take photographs of the monitor. The human aspect of security is the hardest challenge of all.
Layer 2 access switch port security:
This is one of those aspects of security that most companies and organizations fail to implement even though many already have all the hardware and software in place. They should look at my comprehensive guide on locking down Layer 2 security.
Security vulnerabilities:
Again as with everything else, it doesn’t matter what OS or computing model you use, you’re going to have to deal with security vulnerabilities. This affects every hardware and software vendor on the planet. Most people only hear about Microsoft vulnerabilities but they’re currently one of the better companies in the computer industry when it comes to auditing their own code. Their vulnerabilities affect the most number of people because they’re used by the most number of people but the statistical occurrence of software flaws is relatively low.
Are thin clients the solution?
There certainly is some merit in the security implications of thin clients; but there’s also a lot of merit in handing people electric type writers or VT100 terminal emulators from a security and maintenance point of view. Now I am saying that a modern Sun Ray or thin client device to a type writer or text based computer terminal, just that people do associate thin clients in general with fewer features and a “demotion”. I’ve met a lot of people who think that thin clients are just wonderful until you want to take away their computer and give them a thin client. Thin clients are generally associated with data entry tasks and not office productivity. It’s not that you can’t do those tasks with modern thin clients, it’s just that it doesn’t work the way people have grown accustom to and the flexibility afforded to them by the modern personal computer. Until businesses clamor for the days of the main frame and thin clients, it won’t happen any time soon.
September 28th, 2007
More facts and less hysteria on Vista, please!
In the latest round of hysteria to be written about Windows Vista, Don Reisinger regurgitates the usual hysteria about Windows Vista mixed in with a pinch of facts here and there. Don spouts off the usual nonsense about sales, UAC, and even DRM. Despite the fact that bashing Vista is quite the popular sport these days, I’m going to see if I can set him straight with an honest and factual assessment of Windows Vista.
Are Vista sales really poor?
Everyone knows that Windows Vista retail box sales are poor, but does that matter when Microsoft relies overwhelmingly on sales to OEM PC makers? If you focus only on the retail box sales, you’re missing the real picture because Vista has sold more than 60 million licenses and ~78% of those sales are Vista Premium edition. Don complains about Windows Vista Ultimate edition and I actually agree with him that it’s overpriced and under delivers but Microsoft doesn’t need to “save itself” if Vista Ultimate fails, more like an “oh well”.
Does it matter if a few people revert to XP?
Even if a whopping 20% of computer buyers downgrade and revert to Windows XP for whatever reason, that still leaves 80% who stay with Windows Vista. That means hardware makers and ISVs (Independent Software Vendors) have to deal with Windows Vista now or later whether they like it or not if they want to stay in business. The fact that 60 million copies were sold in the first 6 months since launch pretty much confirms Vista will become the dominant OS by default.
How about Vista drivers?
There are no questions about it, a fair number of Vista drivers during the first 2 months stunk badly. Vista implements a brand new driver model which offers a little more separation between the driver and the kernel so that a bad driver is less likely to crash the entire system. The price for this is that there is a brand new learning curve and it took a few months for the hardware companies to get it right. For the most part, everything is working well but there are still some older devices that don’t have drivers and will never get drivers for Windows Vista and much of that is because the hardware vendors want you to buy new hardware.
Is it fair to expect a hardware company to write drivers for a 3+ year old device? Probably not. Is it fair to expect users to buy new hardware because they can’t get Vista drivers for a one year old device? Definitely no! Reputable hardware companies that want to keep customer loyalty will go back as far as they can to create drivers for older hardware. Was it Microsoft’s fault that the drivers didn’t work well at first? Technically no but that isn’t going to matter to consumers and they’ll take their anger out on Microsoft and the hardware maker. Fortunately, the driver situation has stabilized but it’s always good to check for drivers before you upgrade a computer to Vista and before you buy a piece of hardware.
How about application compatibility in Windows Vista?
There’s no question about it, applications will break in Vista and it’s probably the #1 reason some people are reverting back to Windows XP. This is primarily due to the fact that many applications never followed Windows development guidelines set since 2000. One of the worst offenders is Intuit which refused to properly write QuickBooks right up to the 2006 version. Intuit never followed Windows development guidelines that have existed since Windows 2000 and XP for Windows logo certification and they - like many other software makers - used Vista as an opportunity to sell a new version of QuickBooks 2007. If you bought QuickBooks 2006 or earlier, you were out of luck and it wouldn’t run on your new computer and you had to buy QuickBooks 2007.
Microsoft asked developers for 7 years to clean up their act but drew the line in the sand with Windows Vista which comes with UAC (User Access Control) on by default. That finally forced vendors like Intuit to properly code their application and not violate security best practices. If UAC does nothing else and even if people turn it off, it has had the desired effect of cleaning up the Windows development community.
Vista and Internet Explorer 7 also breaks a lot of applications in the name of drawing a line in the sand for security. Microsoft will get criticized for not getting rid of things like Active X but they’ll also get criticized for breaking dangerous coding techniques and the vast majority of Active X controls have been disabled in Windows Vista by default. There are still plenty of web applications that don’t work inside Windows Vista and Internet Explorer 7 and vendors like Kodak will try to drag their feet but they will have to deal with it sooner or later unless they want to alienate the 60 million (since summer) and growing Vista user base. My colleague David Berlind questions why Microsoft needs to break so many legacy applications and the answer is security. It’s a known fact that until something is hard broken, no one will change anything. Is this going to be painful? Certainly. But it has to be done if we want a more secure computing environment.
September 26th, 2007
Europe's new 'monopoly' tariff on Microsoft bypasses WTO
The European Commission has just levied a new $689,900,000 “fine” (read: tariff) on American software company Microsoft under the pretense of anti-trust which conveniently bypasses WTO agreements. The Brussels based think tank Globalization Institute has published a paper (PDF) where it recommends a ban on OS (Operating System) bundling for all PCs sold in Europe. At the end of the paper it writes:
Policy recommendation
This paper’s recommendation is that the European Commission should require all desktop and laptop computers sold within the EU to be sold without operating systems.
Scott M. Fulton, III wrote an excellent news piece here where he covers the key issues and points of views and our own bloggers John Carroll and David Berlind weighed in on the issue. Alex Williams of the Adam Smith Institute says “This neo-protectionist economic agenda is forming a policy cloak for the anti-Americanism of many European Commissioners, and it is European citizens who stand to suffer from it.” and I agree with him.
The Globalization Institute says their recommendation will produce more “choice” but I can’t possibly see how this would produce more choice when 90% of the population wants an Operating System (not necessarily Windows) bundled with their computer and they have no desire to install their own OS or pay someone to do it. I can even agree on a matter of principle that computer makers should be forced to sell no-OS computers as an easy option for consumers or businesses though the savings won’t be as big as some people think since hardware makers don’t pay full OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) pricing or anything close to it. But to tell European Consumers and they can’t buy a computer with a heavily discounted pre-configured Operating Systems is asinine in my opinion and it is the absolute antithesis of choice.
When a PC maker bundles Windows Vista Home and sells the entire computer to the consumer at $350, does anyone think they pay $100 single-quantity OEM cost let alone the $199 retail price? There’s absolutely no way and I would venture to guess that the true cost of Windows Vista Home is in the vicinity of $60 because Microsoft sells at a significant quantity discount. The computer comes with the OS and hardware qualified drivers integrated in to the system and everything works out of the box which is what 90% of the population wants. Dell (and other PC makers) have started offering users the option of getting Linux bundled with the PCs because of MARKET demand but now some Bureaucrats in Brussels wants to tell Dell and others that this is now going to be against the law?
The last time the EC (European Commission) in their infinite wisdom decided to ban the bundling of software forced Microsoft to ship a version of Windows without Windows Media Player installed. To the EC’s consternation, no one bought that crippled version of Windows and they kept buying Windows. Now some of these same people want to consider crippling PC companies and force them to sell worthless hunks of metal to people with no operating system installed and people will have to figure out how to install their own OS and device drivers or pay someone else to install it for them not to mention the additional cost of buying single-unit OEM OS.
The European Commission is frustrated that despite all their meddling these last few years, Microsoft has doubled their market share in the “Workgroup Server” market from 40% to 80% thought this is another one of those arbitrary definitions like the Apple iTunes monopoly definition. When you factor in all those unregistered or roll-your-own copies of Linux running in the market place, you can hardly declare Microsoft a monopoly in the server space. Within that narrowly defined market segment, perhaps the EC should consider the fact that people prefer paying $600 perpetual licenses for Windows Server plus a very occasional $250/incident support fee (typically 4 times a year for all Microsoft issues for my old company) over a $1300/year/server support contract for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Those tens of thousands of copies of Linux being run by Google and millions more by other companies don’t count in the eyes of the EC when they need to define Microsoft a monopoly.
The EU Competition Competitor Neelie Kroes said that the EU now expects a “significant drop” in Microsoft’s overwhelming market share. In fact Kroes even hinted that perhaps somewhere around 50% but not exactly is the correct market share. Kroes’ spokesman Jonathan Todd clarified that:
“Once illegal abuse has been removed and competitors are free to compete on the merits, the logical consequence of that would be to expect Microsoft’s market share to fall,”
So I can translate this (via the contrapositive rule of logic) that if the market share doesn’t fall, then that “logically” must means that free competition doesn’t yet exist and illegal abuse must still be rampant. That leaves absolutely no other possible explanation for Microsoft’s dominant market share so what’s next if crippling PC makers doesn’t work? Will the EC then order ISVs (Independent Software Vendors) to port all of their applications to Linux with equivalent performance, functionality, stability, and validation if they wish to continue doing business in Europe? Where does the madness end?
I have no doubt some people are jubilant about the fact that someone is sticking it to Microsoft, but do they honestly believe that an EC that tastes the fruit of their fines (tariffs) will stop with just Microsoft? They’ve already declared Apple’s iTunes a monopoly so what is to keep them from imposing a new WTO-bypassing tariff on Apple? What happens when the EC declares Cisco a monopoly in routers because their market share is too big and not because they’ve actually broken any anti-trust laws? Will the EC come up with all sorts of creative remedies to force Cisco to drop their market share to ~50%? What happens when the EC declares Oracle a monopoly in their respective market? Should Intel’s market share be knocked down to ~50% too?
The American people and their politicians need to wake up to the fact that the EC is imposing tariffs under the guise of anti-trust merely on the basis of market share. Europeans need to realize that their politicians are doing no favors for them with these draconian rules and that they will end up paying higher prices and greater hassles. Trade is a two-way street and there will have to be repercussions and the side that has the trade surplus bleeds the most.
Loading ...September 1st, 2007
Gutmann Vista DRM paper uses shoddy Web Forums as source
Computer scientist Peter Gutmann made a name for himself when he published his paper “A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection” and got worldwide attention for outlining some serious concerns about Windows Vista DRM mechanisms. But Peter Gutmann admittedly doesn’t use Windows Vista and he’s publicly asked for others to confirm his theories and based many of his key assertions on web forum postings as his source.
Note: As of April 2007 on Gutmann’s website, Gutmann stated: “Can others confirm this? I don’t run Vista yet, but if this is true then it would seem to disconfirm Microsoft’s claims that the content protection doesn’t interfere with playback and is only active when premium content is present”. Peter Gutmann has recently removed this embarrassing admission from his paper hosted on his website after Ed Bott pointed out that Gutmann admitted to never having run Vista and thus couldn’t have done any experiments. An older version of the PDF can be found here which still contains that admission.
Gutmann makes the following key assertions based on forum postings:
- Vista’s Media Foundation Protected Pipeline (mfpmp.exe) takes excessive CPU resources, anywhere from 10% to 50% CPU utilization.
- AudioDG (Windows Audio Device Graph Isolation) and mfpmp.exe takes massive amounts of memory.
- Vista’s content protection applies to and limits non-premium (non-DRM) content.
The fact is that Peter Gutmann didn’t do the research himself and relied on web forums alone says a lot about the quality of his research. But it gets much worse, those forum postings don’t seem to represent anything close to reality and my tests below verify this.
Based on the research and experimentation that I have done, Karel Donk’s forum posting (cited by Gutmann) that mfpmp.exe (Media Foundation Protected Pipeline) consumes “10-50%” is off by a factor of 20. Chris Martin’s screenshot (also cited by Gutmann) which shows AudioDG using up 347.23 MBs is off by a factor of 30 times if we are talking about playing audio on a modern PC. Furthermore, the resources consumed by mfpmp.exe shown in task manager actually accounts for the combined CPU utilization of mfpmp.exe and Windows Media Player and should not be solely attributed to the Media Foundation Protected Pipeline.
Test results for Windows Vista mfpmp.exe and AudioDG:
Typical CPU utilization of mfpmp.exe shown in the Process Explorer graph below hovers between 0.77% to 2.31% on an Intel E6400 CPU while playing back a DRM protected WMA file. As you can see below, the memory foot print and CPU utilization of mfpmp.exe is trivial and not even close to Gutmann’s anecdotal evidence of 10% to 50% and 154.4 MB memory consumption. Even the playback of an NTSC resolution WMV (Windows Media Video) file only resulted in ~11 MBs of memory consumption for the mfpmp.exe process.
As you can see below, AudioDG.exe consumes approximately 10.61 MB on my task manager compared with Chris Martin’s screenshot of 347.23 MB (KB to MB conversion with division by 1024). How Martin got the AudioDG process to use that much memory is beyond me and that single process would exceed the 256 MB minimum memory requirement in Windows Vista. Maybe it’s an aberration but it can’t possibly be common behavior or the millions of Vista users would be screaming.
[Update 9/3/07 - Microsoft's Larry Osterman explained in an email to me that AudioDG allows third party IHVs (Independent Hardware Makers) to add audio processing effects. Some earlier versions of third party effects did cause excessive memory and CPU usage but to his knowledge all these problems were fixed. The way user would check this if they suspect issues is to disable the sound effects in the sounds control panel and see if that fixes the problem. If the problem goes away then it indicates a problem with the audio effects.]
How mfpmp.exe got wrongly blamed for excessive CPU consumption:
While trying to get to the bottom of this, I noticed something strange. A colleague of mine noticed that playing WMV (Windows Media Video) files in WMP11 (Windows Media Player 11) will trigger the mfpmp.exe process while my WMV files will not. This sparked my curiosity and after testing on a larger range of WMV files, I made the following discovery.
- All the movies that I recorded directly to WMV format from an earlier version of Windows Movie Maker DO NOT invoke mfpmp.exe when played in WMP11.
- All the movies that I encoded using Windows Media Encoder DO invoke mfpmp.exe when played in WMP11 but NOT when played in WMP Classic (Windows Media Player Classic). So it would appear that some kind of format difference or “flag” is set when you use Windows Media Encoder.
- HOWEVER, the total CPU load from WMP11 + mfpmp.exe is roughly 9% for me and 0% of that was attributed to WMP11 while 9% was attributed to mfpmp.exe so it looks like all the CPU utilization is counted against mfpmp.exe. If I play a file that doesn’t invoke mfpmp.exe, WMP11 will indicate 9% utilization by itself. If I use WMP Classic which doesn’t invoke mfpmp.exe under any circumstance, it also uses 9%. The point is that with or without mfpmp.exe, decoding my WMV video file will always consume 9% on my Intel E6400 dual core processor.
If I use Process Explorer, it correctly shows the mfpmp.exe process chaining off of the WMP11 parent process and it gives you the same consolidated CPU utilization of 9%. Vista’s task manager is deceptive when it makes the two processes look independent and it’s easy to understand how someone can wrongly attribute excessive loads to mfpmp.exe when it was really accounting for the video compression decoding.
[Update 9/3/07 - Microsoft's Larry Osterman confirmed for me that there are two rendering pipelines in Vista. One is the Media Foundation and the other is DirectShow. Media Foundation sometimes sends the processing to mfpmp.exe which explains why WMP11 shows zero CPU utilization and mfpmp.exe shows all the CPU consumption. Media Foundation supports the newer implementation of DRM in Vista or non-DRM content.]
It really goes to show why the researcher must understand what he or she measuring and not just what the measurements are. The fact that Gutmann did no measuring at all and relied on comments from web forums as his “research” to make his bold assertions about Vista DRM mechanisms is comical. I don’t know if I should laugh or cry that so many news organizations and big name researchers like Bruce Schneier cited Gutmann’s paper as a credible source. One sits in amazement watching Gutmann, Schneier, Korel Donk (dubious mfpmp.exe data above), and Charlie Demerjian all cite each other in a game of blind leading the blind and circular referencing.
Does Vista really block non-commercial premium content?
Gutmann cites Karel Donk’s webpage on comment-1255 that mfpmp.exe also runs for DIVX or XVID files and says that this is “implying that it’s always active even if no premium content is present”. The bookmarked link to comment number 1255 doesn’t work but searching for “DIVX” takes you down to Karel Donk’s comment reproduced below.
Karel Donk Says:
January 17th, 2007 at 3:39 pm
Akira, for me the “Media Foundation Protected Pipeline EXE” starts for almost all avi files, which use DivX or Xvid. I don’t know about downloads going slower, so far I haven’t had issues with that. I don’t use steam however.
So this explains why Peter Gutmann told Usenix Boston 2007 that Vista Content Protection blocks non-commercial premium content (reported by Jon Brodkin PCWorld). But Karel Donk’s claim is that mfpmp.exe is started with “almost all avi files, which use DivX or Xvid” can’t be replicated. My tests show that WMP11 (Windows Media Player 11) only spawns the mfpmp.exe child process when it plays MP3 or WMA (Windows Media Audio) files. My results completely contradict Donk’s forum posting and WMP11 will not spawn mfpmp.exe while playing XVID, DIVX, or even DVD VOB files. Furthermore, Windows Media Player Classic or any non-WMP11 player will not launch the mfpmp.exe process at all.
If Peter Gutmann has such a big problem with mfpmp.exe and he doesn’t want it consuming any CPU, the simplest solution is to NOT use Windows Media Player 11 in Windows Vista. All anyone needs to do is install the Swiss Army Knife of media playback pack called K-Lite Mega Pack (download) which includes Windows Media Player Classic. I consider K-Lite one of the essential add-ons for any Windows user so it’s something you’ll want anyways. If you hate DRM, you have a choice of not using it in Windows Vista because no one is forcing you to use WMP11 to play your content. The only reason you need WMP11 is if you choose to purchase DRM content and Windows Vista simply gives you the choice of using DRM or not. No extra resources have to be consumed and no content is blocked.
So based on dubious web forum “research”, Gutmann concluded that Vista Content Protection is like a virus that consumes unnecessarily high CPU and memory resources. Believing that Vista supposedly consumes an extra 10 to 50 percent CPU utilization, Gutmann flew halfway around the world to Usenix Boston 2007 and told the audience that Vista content protection draws so much power that it causes global warming.
Last month I debunked Gutmann’s claims that encryption for HDCP causes a significant rise in power consumption and now I’ve debunked Gutmann’s assertions that the Media Foundation Protected Pipeline consumes excessive CPU and blocks users from premium content. At this point in time Peter Gutmann needs to explain himself and backup his wild assertions with actual research data or withdraw his paper.
August 30th, 2007
Peter Gutmann turns to smear tactics with help from PCWorld NZ
Update 9/1/2007 - Gutmann paper cites shoddy web forum postings as source
Peter Gutmann - the man who admittedly never used Vista and author of the widely cited and widely discredited paper “A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection” - has taken his fight in to the gutter. Now that this issue has gotten some attention and many more people are challenging Peter Gutmann to back up his claims, he’s feeling the heat. But instead of answering to the fact that he has done zero research on his paper on Vista Content Protection, Gutmann has turned up his attacks on me by misrepresenting my position and linking to a smear piece that makes false accusations about me. Gutmann has done everything these last two weeks to attack me except defend his paper.
Who cares about the slides?
The biggest misrepresentation Peter Gutmann continues to make is fixation on the “slides” he presented at Usenix Boston earlier this month. The problem is that I never asked for his slides; he offered to send them to me and post them on his website on 8/11/2007 but he’s done neither as of 8/30/2007. It’s been a very convenient red herring since he can continue to say no one can criticize him until they’ve seen the slides and obviously no one can see the slides until he decides to release them.
When I challenged Gutmann’s claims with my data along with data from AnandTech, I was primarily challenging Gutmann’s paper on Windows Vista Content Protection which has been out (with constant changes) since December 2006. I also challenged statements he made at the Boston Usenix which were reported by Jon Brodkin of PCWorld and Gutmann didn’t deny making those statements, only that he was “selectively quoted”. Since Gutmann claims I made things up about his Usenix presentation which I quoted directly from Jon Brodkin’s story, does Gutmann want to now claim Brodkin’s either mistaken in his reporting or that he’s a liar?
I don’t know what context could possibly justify statements from Gutmann’s Usenix talk that Vista’s content protection features cause “full steam” CPU consumption which demands more power consumption and therefore global warming. I’ve posted experimental data showing that there is in fact no measurable power consumption difference between 5% and 15% CPU utilization on an Intel E6600 processor. I then cited AnandTech’s benchmarks on 1080p VC-1 video playback which shows a $100 CPU and a $100 video card ($49 ATI HD2400 XT works too) consuming a mere 7% CPU during 1080p playback. It isn’t just me calling Gutmann out and it isn’t just Ed Bott pointing out Gutmann’s errors, Ken Fisher of ArsTechnica also had a nice write-up where he picked Gutmann apart.
Since Gutmann has been making these claims since last year and I never asked for his Usenix slides - which Gutmann seems to have no intention of releasing anyways - it’s silly to claim this is about the slides. But it’s still interesting to see what Gutmann has to say about his slides when he writes:
“For those who are waiting for the slides I’ll post them when things calm down a bit, there just isn’t any point in putting them up while things are stuck at the level of name-calling.”
I don’t get this at all. Why wait when many others in the press want to see this now? What is the point of waiting till “things calm down”? Sounds like Gutmann doesn’t want the world to see what he said in the slides and he would rather have people forget that he ever made those ludicrous claims in Usenix Boston. The problem for Gutmann is that his claims have been widely reported and he’s had his crackpot theory of a paper on Vista Content Protection for 8 months now which is easily refutable point by point.
ComputerWorld and PCWorld New Zealand joins Gutmann’s smear campaign:
What’s even more disturbing is some of media behavior from Gutmann’s homeland. ComputerWorld NZ and PCWorld NZ (New Zealand) of Fairfax Business Media which is an independent division of IDG ran one-sided stories where they interviewed Gutmann about the “fire” he’s been receiving from Ed Bott and George Ou.
Rob O’Neill (ComputerWorld NZ) wrote this story on Tuesday where he basically repeats Gutmann’s claims and even goes as far as to report that I have been asking other people for copies of the Gutmann Usenix slides based on Gutmann’s hearsay. O’Neill also repeats Gutmann’s preposterous and widely refuted claim that Vista DRM even blocks non-commercial content. O’Neill wrote:
“This is not commercial HD content being blocked, this is users’ own content,” Gutmann says. “The more premium content you have, the more output is disabled.”
At the same time, Chris Keall of sister company PCWorld NZ got in to the mix with this blog. So I reached out on Tuesday night to Keall and O’Neill hoping that they would at least try and get my side of the story if they’re going to be reporting on me. To my shock, neither O’Neill or Keall contact me but they respond with a public slap to my face with the blog titled “Yahoo!xtra: who cares? | The war on George gets, low-down, dirty …” that links to the same smear piece that makes false accusations about me which was the same smear tactic that Gutmann used.
Keall went a step further than Peter Gutmann and even re-posted the hacked up photo of my face while claiming to be “neutral”. When I sent posted a complaint about his behavior, Keall immediately tried to cover it up by erasing all references to me and the photo. Keall did reference his colleague O’Neill as the source of the smear piece but it isn’t clear if Keall acted independently. Covering up obviously wasn’t a very bright thing to do since Google News already cached his original title and smear photo he used which I show below.
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Yahoo!xtra: who cares? | The war on George gets, low-down, dirty … |
As you can see in Keall’s current blog posting if you follow the Google News link, all references and images of me have been completely erased. I’ve sent a complaint to IDG’s senior editors in the US (since I don’t have the New Zealand editor contacts) for this juvenile and unprofessional behavior asking them to forward it to the NZ division.
I also posted a note on Keall’s blog which got deleted but I soon got an email response from Chris Keall after I posted another note on his blog saying that I’ve emailed IDG editors. Keall refused to talk about the smear and cover-up and made no apologies on his blog or in private. In all my years as a blogger I’ve never had someone from a major news site engage in such underhanded tactics. No professional journalist or news site should ever cover up a mistake without acknowledging the error and making an apology publicly. It’s even worse that this was a deliberate underhanded smear.
August 30th, 2007
Does a disagreement on Mac fonts warrant libel and a death note?
Last week, some blogger in San Francisco has written a hit piece on me complete with a hacked up photo of my face calling me a Microsoft shill despite the fact that I’ve recently praised Apple’s iMac form factor, praised the iPhone, and even called Microsoft Office a zero-day liability. He accused me of rigging a test in my Vista versus Mac font comparison blog which is easily disputed with hard evidence. Now I’ve got some crazy zealot who read that hit piece emailing me to go die.
Look folks, OS X does a lot of things better than Windows (such as Mac Expose versus the useless Flip3D feature in Vista). But most people do care about readability first and foremost especially in their web browser and they believe that Vista font rendering - while it takes liberties with Typography - is more pragmatic and proven to be more readable. It’s just silly to represent someone as a shill for simply saying that Vista ClearType is more readable and is a better solution for web browsing.
Since I didn’t want to bother giving this person any link love if I called him out in public, I simply sent him an email pointing out the issues point out that:
- I did not “stack the deck” against the Mac font rendering by disabling sub-pixel rendering. I have at least 2 Macs in the SF CNET office building that have 24″ Dell LCDs running an obvious LCD resolution of 1920×1200 16:10 aspect ratio (connected by DVI). Mac OS X default automatic mode had sub-pixel rendering off which is optimized for CRT. This is despite the fact that I can’t think of any CRTs that use this aspect ratio or resolution. So the default automatic setting failed, it was not an attempt to cripple and sabotage the Mac.
- As soon as people complained about this, a second set of samples that were LCD-optimized were added to the blog within 10 hours of the original posting to be as fair as possible. The results were still not as readable as the Vista fonts and most experts agree this was because of Apple’s design decision to be faithful to the purity of typography rather than deal with the limitations of the pixel grid. I never represented this as incompetence or ignorance on Apple’s part; just that it was a design decision geared for Desktop Publishing and not web browsing. This design decision in my opinion was the wrong decision since we’re talking about a web browser where readability should take priority over the purity of typography.
The blogger simply refused to acknowledge the errors and claimed that he was merely pointing out that I was “a shill”. After a few more exchanges, I didn’t bother trying to reason with him and just forgot about it. The problem now is that so-called researchers like Peter Gutmann with the help of Chris Keall (PCWorld New Zealand) started linking to the smear piece to attack me on a personal level which left me no choice but to write this blog.
Blogging is a new and wonderful communication medium on the Internet and I would hope that people won’t take it to the gutter level or wish death upon people. It’s only an Operating System and some people really need to get a grip. I’m here to stimulate debate and people can disagree with me and criticize me in their blogs or in my talkback without censorship so long as it’s not vulgar or excessively personal in nature. But at the end of the day we need to remember that we’re there are just human beings and there are more important things in life and let’s ease up on personal stuff.
My colleague Steven Warren (contributor for TechRepublic) use to set my priorities straight by saying: What are you doing worried about what someone says on the net when you should go and hug your kids! Well Steven, you’re absolutely right and I always remember what you say at times like these. At the end of the day I don’t care what OS or web browser or font you use and I have plenty of friends who use Macs and Linux machines (I use Linux myself). So at least for this blog posting, I’m not going to mix it up with anyone in the talkback no matter what anyone says to me.
August 29th, 2007
Delayed & buggy integrated graphics drivers dog Intel and AMD
More than a year after the launch of the Intel G965 integrated-graphics chipset and closing in on the launch of the G35 replacement chipset, Intel has finally released production non-BETA Vertex Shader enabled drivers that support half-way decent medium-resolution gaming. These new drivers are only for Windows XP but Vista drivers won’t launch until the end of this month which should be any day now, but should it really take 7 months after Vista launches for a product that’s more than a year old? Intel argues that this is essentially a $3 GPU on top of the cost of the motherboard and looking at the prices of G965 motherboards versus non-graphics P965 motherboards I’d say $3 is about right. However, low cost shouldn’t ever justify more than a year delay on 3D acceleration optimized drivers.
It isn’t all bad news for Intel 965 drivers as the video playback was almost flawless on the HQV benchmark. But as good as G965 DVD playback and HQV scores are, there are still screw ups on some DVDs with interlacing (especially anime or hand-drawn cartoon content for some reason) and I’ve been sending Intel screenshots. When I tried to get official comments for this blog last week, Intel’s initial response to me was that they’re flawless on HQV and that my experience is isolated and not a driver problem. I didn’t care much for that response and I explained that this is a problem for an entire class of videos and they need to treat it as a driver issue because I can supply plenty of screenshots on my blog to prove my point from a wide variety of titles.
Intel eased on their position to “we’re still looking at it” so I’m going hang on to this issue like a pitbull until they fix it. I don’t care if HQV says they aced the test, they failed my real world tests on some real world DVDs. I will note that the current beta drivers have improved and the interlacing problem is less frequent than the production drivers so it’s clear they can fix the problem; they just need to fix it ALL the time.
Note: It’s not just Intel, the industry as a whole can’t seem to get the de-interlacing problem fixed and this has been a problem since the late 90s on certain DVDs. NVIDIA doesn’t get a free ride either and they’ve been giving me plenty of interlacing problems on their lower-end video cards. There’s so much computational power in today’s computers that I can afford to have my CPU utilization go from 6% to 12% if they’ll just get the darn image quality right even if they have to run a line-doubler algorithm.
Another problem for Intel’s video playback is captured HDV (1920×1080 1080i) content that I captured from my consumer-grade Sony HDR-HC1 camcorder. While it’s significantly better than an NVIDIA 6600 discrete graphics card in HDV playback, it’s still jerky sometimes. Intel says they can’t replicate the problem yet so I’ll have to put on my QA engineer’s hat and give them an actual sample from my camcorder. As HDV camcorders become prolific, this will become a bigger issue for consumers if they want to import their videos in to their media centers. Since the CPU isn’t even close to being maxed out, I don’t understand why it’s so hard to deliver some smooth HDV video playback.
On a related note, the BIOS update utility utterly failed to upgrade the Intel DG965WH motherboard. I tested both the Windows utility and the Linux-based boot ISO with a burned CD and both failed. The Windows utility rebooted the computer but gave an error message when it tried to update the BIOS so I tried the ISO method. Unfortunately, the version of Linux Intel used doesn’t support SATA based optical drives so I had to replace the drive with a PATA optical drive. Once I booted up and ran the upgrade utility, same error message as before. I’ve asked Intel for a fix but no luck there.
Intel needs to get their vertex shader drivers for Vista done as soon as possible and they need to address some of the remaining interlacing issues with standard DVD and stuttering issues with HD content. Once the new G35 integrated graphics chipset comes out, the DX9 drivers should be complete with full Vertex Shader support but the wait for the DX10 (DirectX 10) drivers begins and we may have to wait several months after the launch of the product. Intel would not comment on when DX10 drivers would be available, so the waiting game will soon start all over again.
August 28th, 2007
Vista MMCSS gigabit throttling a victim of hard-coding, jumbo frames to the rescue!
For the last couple of days I’ve been working behind the scenes with fellow blogger Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, Ed Bott, and Microsoft to get to the bottom of the Vista gigabit throttling effect. This throttling effect occurs when someone launches Windows Media Player and tries to copy files at gigabit speeds. Ed had already deduced the problem to the MMCSS (Multimedia Class Scheduler Service) which is a mechanism designed to protect audio and video from jerking due to CPU starvation if processor intensive tasks like Gigabit network traffic or anti-virus kicks in.
Microsoft responded last Friday that this throttling effect was in-fact “by design” prompting Adrian to post this blog but the response from the ZDNet readers and Slashdot community was not kind to Microsoft. This issue has already fanned the flames of Vista DRM conspiracy theories like the ones peddled by Peter Gutmann. Then the initial Microsoft response further fueled those conspiracy theories and that the inclusion of DRM made it necessary to implement the performance throttling in the first place. The responses in the forums to this “design” were unusually brutal even for Microsoft.
UPDATE 8/29/2007 - My assessment of Microsoft’s initial response is based on my perception that it was inadequate but I may have misrepresented their initial response. Microsoft did say in their initial response that they were thinking about how they were going to address the problem. Their exact words were “Of course, we are already thinking about how we can address this problem, but we are not at a point where we can discuss when that will be available or what form it will take.” I personally thought anything short of explicitly calling it a bug and promising a fix was inadequate and still do, but I should have noted that they were looking at a solution.
Microsoft Fellow Mark Russinovich yesterday morning came out with a detailed technical explanation of the throttling effect and gave candid explanation that this was in fact a bug. Russinovich explained how the hard-coding of network performance rate-limiters was short-sighted and that it didn’t make any allowances for the fact that CPUs are now much faster and have multiple cores. In Russinovich’s own words, “the networking team is actively working with the MMCSS team on a fix that allows for not so dramatically penalizing network traffic, while still delivering a glitch-resistant experience”.
Note: This is the kind of honest response that Vista customers or potential customers want to hear and it wouldn’t have been greeted in the forums with jokes that Vista is “broken by design”. People are fairly forgiving if a Company just owns up to the problem and promises to fix the problem and this is a lesson that every Company should learn. The problem really affected a minority of people a minority of the time but consumers want a product that works all the time in all situations no matter how unlikely they’re going to be affected. Just a simple and honest acknowledgement of the problem and a promise to fix it in a reasonable amount of time goes a long way.
Russinovich explained that network performance was hard-coded to cap at 10,000 packets per second if any MMCSS-enabled application came on (apparently even if no audio or video is being played) and demanded CPU priority. The hard-coded rate limit essentially limits network performance to around 15 MB/sec (megabytes per second) because 1500 bytes per packet times 10,000 packets equals 15 million bytes per second. 15 MB/sec works out to be 120 mbps (megabits per second) and most 10/100 networks top out around 90 mbps while most broadband connections are capped to 1.5 mbps. Even most so-called gigabit NAS (Network Attached Storage) devices have a performance cap of around 120 mbps so very few people will even notice the MMCSS induced throttling in the first place.
August 17th, 2007
Vista puts Mac OS X font rendering to shame
[Update 8/24/2007 - Some people are still going around accusing me of stacking the deck and fabricating evidence against Apple by disabling sub-pixel rendering on Mac OS X. It turns out that there is a problem with the default "automatic" font setting which is suppose to detect if the display is an LCD or CRT. The original Mac OS X sample I got from my colleague at the CNET/ZDNet office in San Francisco was a PowerPC Mac running Mac OS X 10.4 with a nice 24" Dell LCD attached to it. The automatic setting on the Mac failed to detect the display was an LCD and it turned off sub-pixel rendering.
At first I thought this was because my colleague was running in portrait mode and the Mac was smart enough to turn off sub-pixel rendering for portrait mode but that was not the case. A Mac right next to it was running the same kind of Mac with a 24" Dell LCD in normal landscape mode and its automatic setting failed to detect the presence of an LCD display and automatically disabled sub-pixel rendering. That is a problem with the Mac default automatic setting and not an attempt to sabotage the Mac. But even with the improved setting on the Mac, it still produced a more blurry font.
As I explained below, this is because Apple chose a different design philosophy which prioritizes the purity of typography with the size and spacing of the fonts more than it acknowledges the limitations of the pixel grid and all modern displays. While that may be the right design decision if we're talking about pre-press and typesetting applications or for a future display technology capable of 200+ DPI resolution, it's the wrong approach for desktop and browser font rendering. Jeff Atwood explained this best when he says: "Apple is asking us to sacrifice the present at the altar of the future"]
One of the first things I noticed when I switched to Windows Vista earlier this year was how much of an improvement in font readability Vista has over earlier versions of Windows for the screen fonts. Windows XP had an older version of “Clear type” that I was never satisfied with so I always ended up using zero font smoothing technology. The fonts in XP were either too thin or too thick and it just didn’t work right with Clear type.
But I got an even bigger shock when I looked at a Mac this week. I was at a colleague’s desk and noticed how messed up his fonts were on his shiny Mac so I asked him to capture a screen shot of his Safari web browser pointed at the bnet.com website and send the image to me. Once I got the image I went ahead and captured a portion of the screen with black text on white background and created a 300% zoom of the image. Then I created a comparison chart of the fonts side by side along with the magnified version below.
Comparison of font rendering technology
| Mac OS X 10.4 | Windows Vista | Windows XP |
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Clearly, Mac OS X was the blurriest and faintest of the three major operating systems and it’s the least readable by far and even pales in comparison to Windows XP. Windows Vista using sub-pixel rendering (which works best in landscape display mode) clearly has the best font rendering technology.
Update 1:30AM - Reader “tombalablomba” submitted a screenshot of Ubuntu and Firefox in the talkback section so I’ve added the following comparison for it. Thanks!
| Mac OS X 10.4 | Windows Vista | Ubuntu/Firefox |
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I would probably rate Ubuntu and Firefox same or slightly better than Windows XP but below Vista. The font looks clean but it’s too thin and the “e” doesn’t look as true to the typography like Vista and Mac. Mac OS X 10.4 is true to the typography but it’s way too faded out and it doesn’t use sub-pixel rendering sticking only with grey scale edges. Vista seems to strike the right balance of typography and readability. [Update 2:40AM - the sample submitted for Ubuntu may have been tweaked to be thinner to the user's liking and it's using a different font than Vista or Mac OS X.
While font technology isn't what's typically considered a killer application or killer feature, it is by far one of the most important usability features in an operating system. We simply cannot place a price tag on eye strain and someone who works all day long in front of a computer like me greatly appreciates the font rendering technology in Windows Vista. Mac OS X might have the fancier animated UI but I can't imagine myself looking at those fonts. Even if you gave me a brand new MacBook Pro - which I happen to think is a very nice though expensive notebook - the first thing I'll do is install Boot camp and Windows Vista.
[Update 2:40AM - Some insist that this is simply a difference in design philosophy from Apple where typography and being faithful to font size is king. They argue that is Apple is geared for its desktop publishing roots. I can’t accept that for the following reasons.
- What percentage of Mac users sit around all day doing nothing but pre-press work?
- Even if a Mac user works in the desktop publishing industry, do they need that while surfing the web or looking at desktop screen fonts? What In the world do you need to pre-press a web browser for?
- I can understand prioritizing the font size and typography for something like PageMaker or QuarkXPress, but do it there and leave the desktop and browser fonts alone.
- There’s nothing to prevent a Windows computer application from doing its own pre-press rendering.
I don't care if someone is using a 30" LCD with 2560x1600 resolution; you're not going to remove the need for sub-pixel rendering and sub-pixel shifting to account for the pixel grid. You must respect the grid if you want to respect the user's eyes.
Managing a desktop operating system and web browsing is NOT a Desktop Publishing pre-press application and therefore trying to prioritize the font typography and size above ALL else is simply the wrong solution for the problem at hand.]
Update 12:20PM - Reader “saddino” submitted a screenshot of Mac OS X with sub pixel rendering turned on.
| Saddino submitted | Windows Vista | Mac OS X 10.4 |
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It looks like it’s been tweaked quite a bit and the word “Insight” has been made too thick to the point that the dot in the “i” is only one pixel away from the letter “n” in bnet. While it’s certainly better looking than the screenshot I got from my colleague who uses a 24″ LCD with default Mac settings, it’s still not as clear as the Vista rendering. But why should a Mac user have to turn this on when Apple only sells LCDs? Soundn’t things “just work” on a Mac?
The improved settings still doesn’t look good because it’s too thick and the word “Insight” looks very exaggerated. Look at the horizontal line in the letter “e” and it clearly looks blurry. Clearly the Mac font rendering technology has been designed for a display technology that does not yet exist. So even with sub-pixel rendering, the Mac fonts still don’t cut it.
Loading ... Loading ...August 13th, 2007
Claim that Vista DRM causes full CPU load and global warming debunked!
Update 9/1/2007 - Gutmann paper cites shoddy web forum postings as source
Update 8/30/2007 - Peter Gutmann turns to smear tactics with help from PCWorld NZ
Update 8/16/2007 - Gutmann retreats and refuses to provide slides or any data to support his theories
Peter Gutmann - A security researcher at the University of Auckland New Zealand - has become one of the most cited “experts” on the evils of Vista DRM despite the fact that he never touched the Operating System at the time he wrote “A cost analysis of Vista content protection” (which he has since modified several times). He’s cited by a number of folks like security researcher Bruce Schneier and has appeared on Steve Gibson’s podcast raising concerns about Windows Vista DRM. There’s just one little problem: Gutmann’s theories are unsubstantiated and they’re all wrong.
Basically the whole controversy is about the fact that Windows Vista includes HDCP (High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection) DRM capability and the fact that HDCP includes an ICT (Image Constraint Token) flag that has the potential to slash the resolution of HD DVD or Blu-ray in half if your device isn’t HDCP compliant. The reason I emphasize the word “potential” is because all of the movie studios have put a moratorium on turning on the ICT flag because HDCP market penetration is still low and there’s no way they can implement ICT without generating a massive user backlash and killing any chance of HD DVD or Blu-ray adoption. I heavily criticized the ICT flag back in March of 2006 and I am on record as saying that DRM for popular music and video will die from lack of ROI, but this fear mongering on Windows Vista’s inclusion of HDCP DRM is much ado about nothing. Much of it is based on hatred for Microsoft and Peter Gutmann theories are being cited as the “proof” they need.
Vista’s inclusion of HDCP capability simply makes it the only Operating System that allows its users to legally play HD DVD and Blu-ray titles in addition to the fact that they can play wide-open non-DRM music and video files. It’s absolutely no different from the $299 HD DVD set-top box which also includes HDCP capability. I can rip MP3s, rip DVDs, and even strip Windows Media DRM from DRM content on Windows Vista which is all contrary to all the fear mongering about Windows Vista DRM. I debunked Gutmann’s scare mongering (Microsoft also responded here) back in February based on actual testing and facts but it seems Gutmann discredited theories just won’t die. Not only has Gutmann not tested any of his theories or provided any data, he’s now going around telling the world that Vista will cause your CPU to run at full steam which raises power consumption and causes global warming. Technology news sites like PCWorld (which got slashdotted) and the Inquirer ran with the story and took Gutmann’s claims as gospel.
Quote from PCWorld: Separately, all the extra encryption required to meet Vista’s content protection standards means some computer components can never enter power-saving mode, he said. Thus, when you play a movie your CPU keeps running at full steam, he said. The extra power demands make it hard to reduce electricity usage.
I emailed Gutmann and challenged him to provide data to backup his postulation and Gutmann replied:
The story is based on the slides from my talk at Usenix, with in some cases slightly selective quoting to pull out the more eye-catching claims. Once I get back I’ll put the slides up on my home page and then anyone can check the details.
So Gutmann does not deny making these outlandish unsubstantiated claims and he has so far provided zero data. On the other hand, I have do have plenty of hard scientific data to refute Gutmann’s claims. AnandTech ran a series of HD DVD and Blu-ray tests with hard CPU utilization numbers. On a low-end Intel E4300 Core 2 Duo CPU, CPU utilization ran as low as 7% for 1080p VC-1 encoded movie when VC-1 video compression decoding was offloaded to the ~$100 ATI 2600XT graphics adapter.
Gutmann postulated that the encryption required by Vista DRM means that it will drive CPU utilization “full steam” and he cites the fact that AES takes about 20 CPU clocks to encrypt each byte. Gutmann not only failed to test any of his theories with real-world experiments, but he didn’t even bother to come up with a good postulation by doing the basic math on what 20 CPU clocks per byte means on a modern CPU. A typical 1080p HD stream is 28 mbps which is 3.5 megabytes per second which means it takes 70 million CPU clocks per second to do AES encryption on an HD stream. Since there are 1800 million CPU clocks available per second on a low-end E4300 1.8GHz dual-core CPU per core, 70 million CPU clocks constitutes 3.9% CPU utilization on one of the two CPU cores. Just doing a basic sanity check on the math before one even does any experiments will show how laughable Gutmann’s postulation is. Real world testing shows that a 3.5 MB/sec HD video stream works out to be around 4% CPU utilization.
[Update 8/14/2007 - Reader "thetruth_z" says I have "limited engineering skills" saying that Gutmann is talking about encrypting the decompressed HD video which would mean 373 MB/sec (or nearly 3 gigabits per second) of payload that needs to be encrypted and decrypted. Well "truth", you might actually believe this theory of doing AES on unencrypted HD video as Gutmann may have implied, but your theory is laughable if you just do the math. Even a Core 2 Duo 2.93 GHz CPU is limited to 133 MB/sec on ScienceMark AES simulation, so it would be impossible for a high-end CPU to do 373 MB/sec. That means you would have to offload the encryption to the graphics card but we know that it's impossible to implement 3 gigabit/sec crypto offload in a $3 embedded GPU built in to a $70 motherboard. It isn't even possible on a $49 video card yet we know that a $49 ATI XT2400PRO coupled with a $100 CPU can play back full 1080p VC-1 Blu-ray video at 7% CPU utilization based on actual testing. So your theory would demand an impossible hardware feat for anything less than dedicated $500 crypto off-loader and flies in the face of common sense.
As for Gutmann's theory that this additional work load will jack up power consumption and cause global warming, it's clear Gutmann's theory on power consumption is no better than his theory on CPU utilization. In my work I do a lot of coverage of CPU performance and power consumption and I know that there isn't a linear relationship between workload and power consumption. Taking CPU clock and voltage throttling in to account, I postulated that the increase in power consumption due to a few percent extra CPU utilization will be hardly measurable.
To prove this theory, I fired up my test machine based on an Intel E6600 CPU and G965 embedded graphics and played a video in Windows Media Player classic. I noted that the total CPU utilization of around 7% (3% of that due to Task Manager) and that Intel SpeedStep caused the 2.4 GHz CPU to throttle down to its minimal clock speed of 1.6 GHz with the minimal voltage (verified by CPU-Z) and I measured 84W on the entire system. I then fired up a DVD movie at the same time with Vista's Windows Media Player and caused the CPU utilization to jump to ~15% but noticed that the CPU was still throttled to the minimum and my system power consumption stayed fixed at 84W. This proved that even an extra 8% CPU utilization makes absolutely no difference in power consumption so an extra 4% due to encryption workload means nothing.
If that isn't enough, Gutmann theorized that Windows Vista DRM and HDCP raises the cost of hardware for everyone and that even $1000 SLI dual video cards have a hard time dealing with the cost of implementing HDCP DRM. Again I ask: Where is the research? I did my research and found that a $69 AMD 690G-based integrated graphics motherboard with HDMI output has HDCP capability. That's less money than the cost of most motherboards without integrated graphics and less that the cost of some dedicated graphics cards yet it has HDCP capability. I checked with Intel and their G965, G33, upcoming G35 based motherboards that cost between $90 to $140 with integrated graphics all have HDCP capability. There are $49 video cards that implement HDCP. There are $230 22" LCD displays that implement HDCP.
Peter Gutmann if you're reading this, have you even bothered to do any research before you make your claims? As for the media that keeps citing Peter Gutmann, have you guys checked the validity of Gutmann's claims? I have thoroughly debunked Peter Gutmann's claims and it's time we put this nonsense to sleep.
[Update 8/14/2007 - Ken Fisher did a pretty good write-up here and debunked some of Gutmann's other crazy claims. Fisher noted that Gutmann had claimed (based on anecdotal evidence of what he's heard other people claim) that some people can't even properly play non-commercial HD content correctly on their PCs. Fisher noted that he has never had these problems with his HD camcorders when recording HD video to Vista. I can attest that I don't have problems with my HD camcorder and Vista either and I have never seen any proof of HDCP ICT issues with non commercial content. Peter Gutmann is beginning to look like an absolute joke with his pathetic "research" and he is reflecting very poorly on the University of Auckland New Zealand. I cannot believe that such a proud University can allow such preposterous claims from one of their staff without some sort of sanity check.]
[Update 8/14/2007 2:45PM - Ed Bott did some more debunking of Peter Gutmann here. Peter Gutmann has posted a slam at the top of his "research" paper that I didn't wait for his slides. I find it funny that he has time to write a paragraph slamming me but he doesn't have time to post the slides and he doesn't have time to post any data to support his theories. So far he's only asked others to provide data since he hasn't touched Vista yet.]
George Ou is Technical Director of ZDNet. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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