My question: what does Steve Ballmer think when he sees this store? He claims to hate everything Apple, but here’s Microsoft blatantly copying everything about the Apple store.

It’s got to piss him off to know he’s following rather than leading. Of course, he kind of strikes me of a Cheney type, so maybe he thinks that it’s a completely unique look, or that if there are any similarities then it’s clear that Apple must have copied Microsoft’s store idea.

I mean, damn. It’s just egregious how much they’re trying to be like the cool kids.

<a href="http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-GB&#038;playlist=videoByUuids:uuids:a517b260-bb6b-48b9-87ac-8e2743a28ec5&#038;showPlaylist=true&#038;from=shared" target="_new" title="Future Vision Montage">Video: Future Vision Montage</a>

To be clear, it’s less than vaporware. It’s more like a CG animation of what vaporware would look like, as described by a character in an overly ambitious scifi novel (that doesn’t exist).

But still. Pretty damn cool. ::

Yeah, that Notepad. It has a feature that few know about, and I’m not talking about word wrap. You can actually use it as a log file.

By typing “.LOG” on the first line of a Notepad file and then saving the file, you automatically add a current date and time stamp every time you re-open the file.

And it even works in the Notepad version on Windows Server 2008.

Image from Windows Server 2008

I’ve known about this for years, but it’s always fun when I re-remember it.

Links

[ How to Use Notepad to Create a Log File | microsoft.com ]

A lingering feeling that I’ve had for roughly the last year was solidified for me last week at Blackhat/DEFCON. Making fun of Microsoft’s security program is now passe. In fact, it’s so far gone that the opposite is now en vogue. And for good reason.

I’ve been doing a lot of work on risk assessment, threat modeling, and application security in the last few months, and in all my research travels I’ve been hitting the same thing over and over.

The only company even attempting to do $foo_security_thing correctly on a mass scale is Microsoft…

I keep hearing this. Over and over. Everywhere. This isn’t to say that nobody else is doing security well, but I would say that among the big companies that are security-aware they’re probably still significantly behind Microsoft.

A significant case in point can be found in Internet Explorer 8‘s new XSS filter. According to Rsnake, who should need no introduction with my readers, the filter is pretty damn good. This may seem like a small thing to many, but when combined with everything else, e.g. hardcore coding standards, inviting security researchers to tear up their apps, etc., a clear picture is being drawn.

So the idea is this: blindly making fun of Microsoft’s security now betrays a lack of current security knowledge rather than l33tness. Interesting times we live in.:

Links

[ IE 8's XSS Filter | microsoft.com ]

Windows evangelists are having a tough year.

[ Windows 95 and 98 Architect Converts to Mac | cultofmac.com ]