Why You Don't Need Vista Now

[kevin]

 Dead link removed.


  Looking to program applications for windows ?
  https://playbasic.com

[Cheeslord]

Sooner or later Microsoft will make people buy it so they can have some more money. It doesent really matter if it offers any real advantages, they will just reduce and eventually stop support for XP (bearing in mind they could always accidentally introduce more bugs and loopholes into XP in updates too). Like, for example, not making any further DirectX upgrades for XP.

I will avoid Vista as long as I can (I still have a 98 machine for older games etc.) but when Microsoft says the word, big PC manufacturers will switch to Vista as the default pre-installed OS.

Anyway, you will make the next gen Playbasic work on Vista so i dont have any worries there :)

Mark.

[Ian Price]

I'm certainly in no rush to give Microsoft any of my hard earned money - I'll stick with XP for as long as possible, then a bit longer on top. I too have a 98SE machine that I'm perfectly happy with, laying under a pile of stuff in the spare room.

[kevin]

dead link removed

[Ian Price]

Oooops! :p

[kevin]

   It appears there's going to be some hurdles developing homebrew games for vista.  

     Dead link removed

[Ian Price]

I repeat - Ooops!

[Adaz]

   It appears there's going to be some hurdles developing homebrew games for vista. 
  http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=14952

Frightful, but how will Vista and Game explorer know that my game is actually a game and it has to or has not to be forbidden?

[kevin]

 dunno...

dead links removed

[kevin]

No Hardware Accel for Audio in Vista ?

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/759/759568p1.html?RSSwhen2007-01-29_192700&RSSid=759568

[Adaz]

Delicious.

[Ian Price]

I say again, Oooops! :/

[Ian Price]

Here's another B-I-G Ooops!

Vista has speech recognition hole



Microsoft has admitted that speech recognition features in Vista could be hijacked so that a PC tells itself to delete files or folders.

Vista can respond to vocal commands and concern has been raised about malicious audio on websites or sent via e-mail.

In one scenario outlined by users an MP3 file of voice instructions was used to tell the PC to delete documents.

Microsoft said the exploit was "technically possible" but there was no need to worry.

The firm has pointed out that in order for the flaw to be exploited the speech recognition feature would need to be activated and configured and both microphone and speakers would have to be switched on.

"The exploit scenario would involve the speech recognition feature picking up commands through the microphone such as 'copy', 'delete', 'shutdown', etc. and acting on them," a Microsoft security researcher wrote on the team's official blog.

Some Vista users have already tested the exploit and were able to delete files and empty the trash can so that the documents were not retrievable.

Microsoft has said that even if the machine was primed to accept voice commands it would be unlikely the user would not be in the room to hear the file with malicious instructions being played.

The firm also said that voice commands could not be used for privileged functions such as creating a new user or formatting a drive.

"There are also additional barriers that would make an attack difficult including speaker and microphone placement, microphone feedback, and the clarity of the dictation," wrote the Microsoft researcher.

While speech recognition was a feature of Windows XP, in Vista the use has been widened.

"While we are taking the reports seriously and investigating them accordingly I am confident in saying that there is little if any need to worry about the effects of this issue on your new Windows Vista installation," said the researcher.

[Adaz]

I'll never use Vista, what if a malicious mp3 says: "uninstall playbasic!"  ;D

[empty]

Frightful, but how will Vista and Game explorer know that my game is actually a game and it has to or has not to be forbidden?

It doesn't unless you tell Vista it is a game. There are two steps required to do so.

1) You need a game definition file that among other things contains the rating. By the way it's not limited to ESRB but supports other rating organisation outside the USA too. There's a certain registration process involved that makes sure that the game was actually rated. If this process isn't done the game would qualify as "unrated". Whether or not the kids can play it depends on the settings of the game explorer

2) You need to explicitly add your game to the game explorer. This is a task your installer should do for you actually. The game explorer has some more features that might be more or less convenient for the end user...

While I'm not really a big fan of the whole game explorer idea, the article is a bit on the scaremongering side. And while I'm certainly not a Windows fanboy either, I do well remember that when XP was introduced there were similar "scary" articles. Btw, I had XP installed only to test apps with it for quite a while, but mainly used 2000 until SP1 was released. I think I'll do something similar with Vista.