Brandon Paddock

Brandon Paddock

Joined Member # 96931
0 Posts 0 Replies 67 Reputation
Reply to Should Stardock fix Microsoft's UAC? in WinCustomize News WinCustomize Forums

I turned off UAC. I really don't see much of a point in it. Is there really malicious software out there that wants to change my font size or screen resolution? What is UAC protecting me from on my personal home computer? If I have anti-virus (for whatever that's worth with Vista) and anti-spyware utilities and practice safe browsing and email habits, why do I need UAC interrupting me at all? That's not what UAC is for. Anti-Virus and anti-malware apps

92 Replies 45,093 Views
Reply to Should Stardock fix Microsoft's UAC? in WinCustomize News WinCustomize Forums

Remembering applications would open up a hole in UAC - as malicious code could launch applications on the "allow list" and manipulate them to cause privilege escalation. Having an "Elevate everything for the next 5 minutes" option is far worse, since malicious code just needs to wait until you switch to that mode and then it can go to town.

92 Replies 45,093 Views
Reply to WindowBlinds 5 Beta 1B released in WinCustomize News WinCustomize Forums

I had to uninstall on my home machine because WB completely broke Visual Studio, and wouldn't let me switch back to XP or Royale themes (could only do Classic, and it would go back to WB on reboot/relog). GPU is a 7800 GTX with Nvidia's beta 80.xx drivers from yesterday. Adding VS 2003 to the Exceptions list and saying "Ignore and do not skin" didn't help.

153 Replies 71,024 Views
Reply to WindowBlinds 5 Beta: Next Tuesday in WinCustomize News WinCustomize Forums

No. Microsoft requires graphics cards which support Pixel Shader 2.0, a 3D grahpics function introduced in DirectX 9.0 and only present on certain graphics cards. There is no indication that they will change that requirement for the final release, as their system is based on using pixel shaders to render the borders. From what I

155 Replies 66,727 Views
Reply to Did Yahoo know about Microsoft gadgets? in Avalon WinCustomize Forums

From what I read, Yahoo probably guess this action considering that MS was trying to get Konfabulator. What would make you think that? I'd heard rumors before the Yahoo acquisition that Konfab was looking around to be purchased... not that anyone in particular was convincing them to sell.

18 Replies 14,862 Views
Reply to 10 Features Longhorn needs in Windows Vista WinCustomize Forums

"Windows still sucks at multitasking. Even when running on an SMP box, if the OS is "busy" doing something, you still can't quickly do something else. I eventually gave up on SMP since on Windows it's only good for CPU bound tasks and doesn't really affect multitasking efficiency very much (on MacOS X and OS/2, for instance, SM

64 Replies 131,027 Views
Reply to Microsoft targets Wine in WinCustomize News WinCustomize Forums

Dude... didn't they prove that the Opera incident was a PR stunt by the company's founder? I don't remember the exact numbers... but it went something like this: -Opera 6.1 works fine with MSN.com -Opera 6.2 changes something intentionally that breaks MSN.com -Opera founder cries out that Microsoft/MSN is discriminating against his page. Pretty shady if you ask me.

37 Replies 18,956 Views
Reply to Microsoft targets Wine in WinCustomize News WinCustomize Forums

It is just sad that MS is so scared of losing Market Share and Product Revenues, that they purposefully go and break an application that allows them to sell more copies of thier Office Application. It isn't enough that they sell an Office Suite, they want to force the End Users to purchase a MS OpSYS, to boot. I mean some shops a

37 Replies 18,956 Views
Reply to Microsoft targets Wine in WinCustomize News WinCustomize Forums

And how about posting the actual source: http://winehq.com/hypermail/wine-devel/2005/02/0441.html It sounds like yes, Microsoft is checking for the registry key, but not failing because of it. The validation works fine when wine is emulating Windows XP. When it's emulating Windows 2000, the validation program gives no error and returns a key - however it doesn't work. The Wine developers are attributing this to a bug in wine's emul

37 Replies 18,956 Views
Reply to Microsoft targets Wine in WinCustomize News WinCustomize Forums

Man some of you people have thick skulls... THEY ARE NOT BLOCKING WINE. THEY ARE BLOCKING ANYTHING PRE-XP. WINE GETS VALIDATED IF IT IS IN XP MODE. THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH OFFICE. MICROSOFT DOES NOT, AND HAS SAID THEY WILL NOT, REQUIRE WINDOWS VERIFICATION FOR OFFICE PRODUCTS. /steps down from soapbox Get it yet?

37 Replies 18,956 Views
Reply to Microsoft targets Wine in WinCustomize News WinCustomize Forums

#14 - That's not true. It specifically checks for Windows XP. If WINE is in "XP mode" the check passes. The fact that they are checking for WINE indicates that they're counting the number of users, not trying to block them from WGA. The problem is that Wine isn't very stable in "XP mode" at this point. #5 - The article linked to didn't provide the whole story. ZERO Office downloads even offer WGA right now. Microsoft has said they h

37 Replies 18,956 Views
Reply to Microsoft targets Wine in WinCustomize News WinCustomize Forums

Umm... what a bogus article. The WGA ActiveX control only works for validating Windows XP. They said Wine, when in "Windows XP" mode, gets validated just fine. They're complaining that it doesn't work when in Win98 mode? Beyond that, Microsoft is well within their rights to ensure that Windows support files are only available to people that, you know, purchased Windows.

37 Replies 18,956 Views
Reply to ExtremeTech reviews WindowBlinds 4.5 in WinCustomize News WinCustomize Forums

Funny, while reading this I found a new bug in WB 4.5. If WB 4.5 is skinning any browser that uses the IE engine (tested on both Maxthon and Avant), and you use the Find window (Ctrl-F) to search for text, then close the Find window... the browser locks up. Avant recovers after a while, but Maxthon seems to die completely most of the time. Adding an exception that disables just the titlebar skinning seems to resolve the issue.

7 Replies 6,335 Views
Reply to Announcing Multiplicity in WinCustomize News WinCustomize Forums

I used ShareKMC in the past for this purpose, but recently started using Desktop Rover - which, while not free, also supports control of a PocketPC. So I can move my mouse/keyboard from my main desktop to my laptop on the left and my PocketPC on the right when they're here.

64 Replies 37,707 Views
Reply to New Year's resolution for Firefox: Grow in WinCustomize News WinCustomize Forums

"Wrong. IE had (and still has) its own non-standard code support. It never supported Netscape's non-standard code." Well, Raymond Chen (along with some of the IE devs) would disagree with you: http://weblogs.asp.net/oldnewthing/archive/2004/12/21/328759.aspx

39 Replies 23,962 Views
Reply to New Year's resolution for Firefox: Grow in WinCustomize News WinCustomize Forums

To further your analogy... What if 90% of the country was connected via roads that worked fine with current vehicles. Then some group comes along and defines a new "standard" for roads that's different than those 90%. Soon, someone builds a car around this new "standard" and claims that it's better. But when someone buys this new car, they find that driving on most roads is a very unpleasant experience. Whose fault is that? Accord

39 Replies 23,962 Views
Reply to New Year's resolution for Firefox: Grow in WinCustomize News WinCustomize Forums

Any non-standard code support in IE was designed for the explicit purpose of providing compatability with sites written for Netscape Navigator back during the first round of browser wars. Microsoft, as usual, won the market by offering a better, cheaper product that offered perfect compatability with its competitors - and focused on making the USER happy. Since then, the web has evolved around IE. IE does implement many W3C standards, and ca

39 Replies 23,962 Views