Really? At least my Vista installation still has it.

Every time, when I hear about these in-door satellite navigation systems, I can't help but wonder, how these even could work. First of all, AFAIK, the GPS signal is so faint that it will not work inside the buildings. Also, the accuracy of the mobile tower / GPS systems might not be enough for this kind of applications.

Genetic manipulation by some evil corporation or government!

That's what the world needs: religious fundamentalists that are also crackpot conspiracy theorists!

... and I had just installed Slackware for the first time. The very first thing, I tried to do, was installing X11. If I remember correctly, I had to make several tries and it took almost a week (every evening after work) to me to get the XFree86 configuration working with my monitor and my Cirrus graphics card. It was very educational start for me. I had to reinstall the Slackware several times during that week and I learned a lot about my computer hardware and also learned to configure both Linux and X11. Eventually I got everything working, even the slirp connection, so I was able to get to the Internet.

So, before even starting to use Linux for anything useful, I spent my time fiddling around and learning stuff.

I still have a special place in my heart for Slackware.

For some reason, both the release version and this beta-version crash with my work XP in application error (0xc0000005). I have reported this issue already with the release version and now I just sent feedback regarding the beta version.

This is so true.

I like travelling abroad on vacation, but...

I try to avoid travelling overseas as much as possible because it really is not that fun as you might expect from the movies and great stories you hear from other people. Usually when I have to travel, it's just hell from start to finish: first of all, usually the trip is only two or three days, so it just is constant travelling and working, not much rest. I have to wake up in ungodly hours to catch my plane, which takes off at six or seven in the morning (and you have to be an hour or two earlier at the airport, depending where you are, and of course the airport is usually in the middle of nowhere). I also hate sitting in a cramped seat in economy class (no business class in my job). And then I have to do a ten-hour day on top of the travelling. So usually it means that my day is about 18-20 hour long before I can get to my hotel (and the hotel is IMHO the best part of the trip, that's the first and only time, when I don't actually have to do anything or go anywhere). And then the next day the same ordeal in reverse. God, it sucks!

Oh, and the best part: I don't get paid for the travelling hours. Only working hours. So, in essence, I'm donating my free time to my employer.

Domestic travel is not much better but I prefer it over travelling abroad any day.

I just can't understand why anyone would want voluntarily to do work-related travelling. It's nothing like the recreational travelling.

Well, as I stated before, maybe there is some technical limitations for this, I don't know, but I assume that it could be possible to Vista to track, if there has been an privilege elevation before the parent process and all subsequent spawns should go through the same UAC procedures as the parent did (i.e. Vista should ask separately admin password from the user for every subsequent spawn). Of course this might infuriate users, if Vista was nagging constantly about the permissions.

I have a faint recollection that in fact Vista can already do that at the command prompt level. If you try to execute cmd.exe with runas as an admin and then try to execute the regedit.exe, the regedit won't have admin rights even though the cmd.exe has. But I probably remember this wrong.

It is actually possible to create an installer that works with normal user privileges and does not install anything under the HKEY_Local_Machine or Program Files. Visual Studio 2008 has an installer wizard, which is able to create these kind of packages. So, it seems that under Vista, Microsoft already thought about these non-root installers.

What annoys me most with the Vista is the fact that is is unable to stop elevating the privileges "correctly" after the main installation process has finished. In other words, for example with the Firefox installer, the installer requires administrator rights, and after the installation process, it will ask if you want to run the Firefox for the first time. I you make the mistake and let the installer execute the Firefox, the FF will be launched as a separate process but under the administrator account. Why? Why the hell Vista allows this? I can't understand. Now the Firefox tries to import settings from the admin account and is you download anything or set any bookmarks, they all are saved under the admin profile. This is something I cannot understand. And most installers that require administrator rights, behave like this.

I would expect that the UAC would kick in, when the Vista notices that a process - regardless of the rights - tries to spawn/fork/execute another process. But no. Maybe there is some kind of technical reason for lack on this protection, and I understand that a big part of the blame is on software manufacturers, who create this bone-headed installers, but still...