Seems that sooner or later I'll have to switch to Windows Vista...
I've just discovered the new CNG API (Cryptography API: Next Generation)... and apart from new features, I've digged a bit into the new cryptographic algorithms it brings.
Visual Studio Orcas will bring 12 new classes,9 being variations of existing algorithms, and three new ones.
- AES: This one is "half-new". Rijndael already existed in the CAPI, but the AES (same Wiki link) base class includes constraints to ensure a fully AES compatibility (for example, doesn't allow to change block size).
- Elliptic Curve DSA (ECDSA): ECDSA is an implementation of the Digital Signature Standard using elliptic curves, used for signing and verifying signatures.
- Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman (EC Diffie-Hellman): EC Diffie-Hellman is an implementation of Diffie-Hellman using elliptic curves, used for exchanging private keys.
Wow, seems the gaming dev. community is quite active. There's lots of interesting things:
- A german group
is making an XNA port of ScummVM! This means that if they succeed all
Creator's Club subscribers could play their LucasArts marvelous graphic
adventures (I love Monkey Island!)
- John Carmack gave an interview on GameInformer (you can read a brief at ars Technica).
It's interesting that he's admited he was wrong about multi-processor
and gaming (he likes a single powerful CPU but now has seen the power
of having multiple "lesser" CPUs), that he thinks XBox 360 SDK is the
best he's ever seen, and that he doesn't wants to rush to upgrade
his developments to DirectX 10 right now.
- And related to Vista, at Gamasutra
we have an interesting opinion of the CEO of Wildtangent about how
Vista's Limited User Accounts difficults the game's installation.
About
the Wiltangent CEO's article, its funny because I remember an old
plugin of Winamp of a female dancer that had a Wildtangent "windows
addon" that almost all Adware scanners classify as "Ad-Ware". Also what
he sais is that he doesnt like additional security measures, which from
my point of view are good.
I've read something about Vista's new
gaming related changes and features, and I don't think they're any
bad... Limiting user and savegame data to specific folders, or require
having less privileges helps developing better products, wherever they
are games or windows apps...
In case you're interested, there's some info aboud LUA, Game Explorer and other things, in this presentation from Microsoft GDC 2006.
Yeah, with a small (and of course free) Live Marketplace Update, I can play my iPod music from my Xbox 360!
I might like or dislike other Microsoft products, but each day I like more and more the new XBox... It's awesome :)
The music keeps playing
while gaming (and mutes itself whenever it needs to, such as in game
videos). Now I can ride my cars and race with some trance beats ;)
And yes, it's a bit geek but I've got the XBox in english, and both devices customized with desert and urban camouflage vinyls.
Note: My desire was to publish this few weeks ago (when Visual
Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 came out), but I forgot it with all this
xmas madness. Anyway, here it is.
When Windows XP came out, I tried it as soon as I could. My experience
from Win2000 was a disaster, so I made a backup of my W2k, and tried XP
for a few weeks. I ended restoring the backup because of lot of
compatibility issues.
Vista came out recently, and I thought "maybe this time will be
different". So I made a data backup (not a complete system backup, just
data, photos and such) and tried Vista Ultimate.
And now, I'm going back to Windows XP SP2. Why? It's not that Vista is
bad. For a user it's great and will give very few problems. But for
more advanced users, like me, that use some specific software, It's not
the time to switch yet.
Vista itself is very robust and does it's job very well. The problem is
that the "breaking changes" (and subtle changes) transform a relaxed
walk into a mountain climbing...
My VS2005 works with some problems, IIS 7.0 works with problems, SQL
2005 doesn't works (Express version does work, I mean the commercial
Version). Visual C# Express Ed. doesn't works, so XNA doesn't
too. My favourite Antivirus (Kaspersky) doesn't works yet (I had to
switch to NOD32 by force)...
Most software works (by elevating it's privileges and running it in
"Windows XP SP2" Emulation mode), more or less without flaws, but I
like to play with my toys (.NET, VS, XNA...) and if I can't play with
them properly, I'll change to wherever I can actually use them.
Pros
- Searching... I wasn't a good friend of Index Search and Windows searching features, but after
trying Vista's ones I must admit they're VERY good and handy ones
- Searching again, this time in Control Panel... This one really helped me out to find all the
new or reorganized Vista config. features.
- Image Viewer. Windows XP's Image Viewer sucks a bit, but this one really made me forget my
(old) ACDSEE 5.0. I just missed a "convert to" feature (between BMP, GIF and JPG files at least)
- Vista Gadgets. A nice addition. Probably the thing I'll miss more... They are both fun and
useful.
- Media Center included. It was cool when I first turned on my X360 with the just installed Vista
laptop on, and both communicated to each other and I only had to "pair the devices" with a code the
XBox gave me.
Cons
- Some speed issues: Even after setting display to "Windows Classic", other things like listing
the start menu items or moving/copying/deleting files are noticeable slower than in Windows XP.
- Sometimes a folder doesn't remember my personalized view of it and reverts to Details view
(I prefer List view)
- Memory consumption. Even with classic view, eats more memory. Comparing with my desktop gaming PC,
which has XP, Kernel Memory eats twice, cached memory 4 times more, and overall while the desktop has
749MB out of 1024MB free, laptop has 32MB out of 1280MB.
- Network Connection Manager. Very cool, good looking... but I can't change my adapter properties
if I'm not connected. I used to change between home and work IPs, gateways, DNS and such. Now I
can only do it before unplugging LAN cable or after plugging home's LAN cable. And it could store
different network settings (assigning a name looks cool but if it does nothing else is a bit stupid.
Not sure where belongs
- New security system: Now Windows is quite more secure, I admit it, but it's very very very
annoying to have to elevate privileges to almost every software excepting two or three.
This will be surely issued when new versions of everything appear, but until then I got tired and
modified the machine policy to automaticly elevate privileges without asking confirmation.
Mayble some of my cons are from my lack of "Vista knowledge", but my point of view here is from
someone who sees the operating system just as a door to the rest of software,
not as a "enjoyable experience" fancy and beautiful but time consuming (both mine and CPU ;).
Update: Seems that Vs 2005 SP1 is out. But XNA is still unsupported under Vista (can't remember
where did I read it, but it was from someone of the XNA dev. team).
Also, after reinstalling XP, I've noticed some speed increase while doing mundane things like file copy, internet surfing,
using multiple apps at once...