DEP blocks because of bugs - namely, trying to execute code in stack- or heap-based memory. Fix bugs, no DEP. It's opt-in in 32-bit code by default on XP and Windows Vista; if you're running a server operating system I think the default is opt-out. Go to the System control panel, Advanced tab and click Settings under Performance to add new opt-outs. Programs can be compiled with a /NXCOMPAT option which tells Windows that this program is aware of DEP - these programs cannot be opted out of DEP. 64-bit code is expected to be DEP-compatible as all x64 processors support hardware DEP - 64-bit code cannot opt out. Windows Vista Service Pack 1 added more support for legacy ATL 'thunks' - if detected, it emulates the thunk code rather than close the program.

"Multithreading is just one damn thing after, before, or simultaneous with another." - Andrei Alexandrescu

Murray??? He's now 85 and to be honest, he was a bit incoherent in his last couple of seasons. A bit more incoherent, I mean. This article[^] from BBC Sport says the commentary team for TV is Jonathan Legard (formerly 5 Live F1 commentator) and Martin Brundle. The presenting team will be Jake Humphrey, David Coulthard and Eddie Jordan. Ted Kravitz also comes over from ITV as a pitlane reporter, joined by Lee McKenzie who has worked on A1GP. Like with many live football matches on the BBC, if you don't like the TV commentary, you can hit the red button (on digital TV) and select the radio commentary (David Croft and Anthony Davidson). Murray's video reviews will be on the website, apparently.

"Multithreading is just one damn thing after, before, or simultaneous with another." - Andrei Alexandrescu

Robert Llewellyn's Twitter[^] (He's the one in the robot suit.)

"Multithreading is just one damn thing after, before, or simultaneous with another." - Andrei Alexandrescu

"Windows Server 2008 R2". Windows 7 is less of a major release than the name, Windows Server 2008 R2 less of a minor release. In the former case they want to make it sound like a huge advance, in the latter they don't want to scare corporates who've just started Server 2008 migration plans. The reality is that Windows 7 fixes a few nasty issues with Windows Vista, but fundamentally it's nearly no different. The new taskbar is different - I don't know yet if it will be better. Largely we've now been through the migration pain and Windows 7 will seem better, simply because the hard work was already done with Vista.

"Multithreading is just one damn thing after, before, or simultaneous with another." - Andrei Alexandrescu

UK filming and transmission practice is to film an entire series, then broadcast it week-after-week once the entire series has been shot. US practice is to shoot a few episodes and broadcast them, then shoot some more. I don't know why this is, but it is. It leads to episodes being described as 'all new' to distinguish them from the repeats stuffed in on previous weeks to make up for gaps in filming. Normally if the same series is being broadcast both in the US and UK, the US are given a 'head start' until there are enough episodes filmed so that the UK can start the series, show them week-after-week, and finish on about the same day as the US. Heroes volume 3 actually showed on 12 of 13 consecutive weeks in the US (they skipped 3 November); season 1 had 11 consecutive episodes then broke for Christmas, had another seven, another break of six weeks, then the final five. Volume 4 starts again in the US on 2 February; the BBC says it's returning in February and I think we were about a week behind before (this allows BBC Three to show the 'next' episode straight after the main episode on BBC Two, without getting ahead of the US). There may be another break to absorb, though (although snooker may intervene). Likewise Bones has been on a break since 26 November and starts again with a double bill on Thursday, in the US. Wikipedia says[^] this will be broadcast in the UK on 19 February, so I would assume Sky are trying to absorb another mid-season break. Presumably they broke the series into two runs so they wouldn't end up three months behind at the beginning of the series (pushing everyone to download it!)

"Multithreading is just one damn thing after, before, or simultaneous with another." - Andrei Alexandrescu

In other words, it's reliant on applications telling Windows what files they have open. Probably the only change here is that all the in-box applications have been modified to do this.

"Multithreading is just one damn thing after, before, or simultaneous with another." - Andrei Alexandrescu

Hopefully they will decide that issuing an edition with IE and one without IE is sufficient, they will call the second one 'Windows 7 E' to go with Windows 7 K (no Messenger, to massage Korea's ego) and Windows 7 N (no Media Player, to massage the EU competition commission), and we can all go and buy the former version. I believe sales of all Windows 'N' editions since XP amount to approximately zero. No, in fact I believe they are zero. No-one in the channel ever ordered it, no customer wanted it, but presumably Microsoft have to test patches against it in case anyone somehow did get hold of it. About Windows XP 'N'[^].

"Multithreading is just one damn thing after, before, or simultaneous with another." - Andrei Alexandrescu

Ah. OEM installation, presumably? The OEMs just cannot get an Vista installation right at the moment. (If they didn't install all that crapware, they might have a fighting chance.) I just used Windows Vista Complete PC Backup to transfer my system onto a new hard disk. Straightforward, but you have to extend the partition yourself - the partition it creates is the same size. The only other issue is that, when booting from the Vista DVD, it told me it was going to restore from C: (my external HD, as the new HD was not partitioned yet) to C:. I decided I didn't like the sound of that, opened a command prompt and used DISKPART to create a partition, then rebooted. After that it said it would restore from E: to C: which sounded more friendly.

"Multithreading is just one damn thing after, before, or simultaneous with another." - Andrei Alexandrescu

I am not at all surprised that I've not been nominated this year, I've answered very few questions. I think I just got bored with it, but also at home I've been fighting my Latitude D820's pointing stick which kept going berserk and throwing the pointer into one of the corners. In the end I have carried out a pointing-stick-ectomy. Doesn't work any more, but now the mouse pointer stays where I put it.

"Multithreading is just one damn thing after, before, or simultaneous with another." - Andrei Alexandrescu

How old is the work computer? It may be that it only supports 802.11b and not the newer g or a standards. 802.11b and g use the 2.4GHz radio band, but unless the AP is configured in 'mixed' mode, 802.11b radios (11Mbps) can't use it. If there are 802.11b radios associated, the whole thing slows down to 11Mbps to accommodate them. 802.11a uses the 5GHz radio band; if the AP only supports that, b/g radios won't see it and vice versa. It's possible to configure a combined a/b/g radio to only scan one band or the other, so even if the radio supports both bands it may only see APs broadcasting in one band. If you post the model number of the laptop's WiFi card and the access point or router that acts as the wireless network's base station, it may be possible to help. As for wired ethernet - check that both ends of the cable are connected, try a different cable to rule out damage, ensure that the computer isn't configured for a specific speed or duplex setting. Auto-negotiation of speed and duplex usually works but can go into loops where it's either continually negotiating or the two ends think they've negotiated different options. 100Mbps/half duplex is the safe setting, and typically more than fast enough when communicating with a wireless network or the Internet. In addition, my Dell Latitude D820 defaults to disabling the ethernet port when running on battery power. Perhaps yours is the same? If it's a Dell, check the QuickSet utility, or plug in the AC adapter.

"Multithreading is just one damn thing after, before, or simultaneous with another." - Andrei Alexandrescu

Lucky you. Mine[^] still has no acknowledgement whatever.

"Multithreading is just one damn thing after, before, or simultaneous with another." - Andrei Alexandrescu

www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer[^] always works for me. It may work best in a new IE session - I've had problems before where it doesn't install if Flash has run in that IE process. If you want to download a standalone installer you have to obtain a license[^]. To check the installed version go to http://www.adobe.com/products/flash/about/[^].

"Multithreading is just one damn thing after, before, or simultaneous with another." - Andrei Alexandrescu

Obligatory link: Hanzi Smatter[^].

"Multithreading is just one damn thing after, before, or simultaneous with another." - Andrei Alexandrescu

Yes, this happens when you travel 425 miles down M74/A74(M)/A74/M6/M1, then the M1 dumps you on the North Circular, which is completely inadequate. (You may instead have been using M6/M42/M40 but that dumps you on an equally inadequate A-road.) At one stage there were plans to build four orbital motorways in London, and a number of other 'radial' motorways connecting them. The M25 is part of Ringway 3, part of Ringway 4. This map[^] shows which bit goes where, with the dotted line around Watford showing the route of the section built to connect up the two original plans. Ringway 1 was pretty controversial though as it would have had to demolish or tunnel under a lot of existing buildings. This was done in many other cities, but London kept most of its ancient road network. More about the Ringways[^].

"Multithreading is just one damn thing after, before, or simultaneous with another." - Andrei Alexandrescu

Well, presumably a TORRENT of rain, drop the second R, add an M (Roman 1,000) - but I'm not sure why you drop the R, unless that's indicated by 'run but'.

"Multithreading is just one damn thing after, before, or simultaneous with another." - Andrei Alexandrescu

The position of copyright in law, when it comes to computer software, is that the legal author (the software company) retains all the rights to make copies of the software. Copying the bits from the install disk is making a copy. Loading the software from disk is making a copy. You do not purchase the software. You purchase a license to make copies of the software. The terms under which you are allowed to make copies are set out in the license agreement that you make with the company. I am not a lawyer, but that is my understanding of copyright law when it comes to software. Courts could decide to strike out terms that they consider are unduly harsh, and in some cases the wording is incompatible with the jurisdiction's copyright law ('no reverse engineering' clauses have no effect in the EU, for example), but if they struck down the whole license it would leave you with no rights. So, if the wording of the EULA, or your local copyright law, says you're allowed to make a copy on your home computer, then you are. Otherwise, no.

"Multithreading is just one damn thing after, before, or simultaneous with another." - Andrei Alexandrescu

The original Vista audio driver for my Dell Latitude D820 caused problems with streaming media, stuttering quite a bit. "Seamless playback" of playlists in Windows Media Player, well, wasn't. The answer to many people asking 'how could Microsoft release Vista with <x> not working?' is, 'they didn't'. It worked on their test machines, with their drivers. Most third-party drivers suck. A particular problem is the lag in getting the OEMs to issue OEM-adapted drivers for the hardware in the computer, if the hardware was adapted for the OEM. Right now I'm using a later nVidia driver than Dell have made available, through fiddling with the .inf file. The standard driver was and is molasses-slow in 3D games - it's dated January 2007, and the nVidia drivers of that date are known bad. In particular new computers tend to come with a pile of crapware, half of which breaks Windows, drivers for all the devices they might optionally install (half of which break Windows if the device is missing), and many of the drivers for the devices that are there are out-of-date. I've come to accept that you need to repave any computer that comes with its OS pre-installed, and consider carefully what manufacturer-supplied software you need to install.

"Multithreading is just one damn thing after, before, or simultaneous with another." - Andrei Alexandrescu

If you have any 16-bit Windows or DOS applications (including DPMI), you'll have to run them in a virtual machine running a 32-bit OS. The Virtual 8086 processor mode is not present in 64-bit long mode i.e. when running a 64-bit OS. Some old installers for 32-bit programs were written as 16-bit applications so they could spit out a meaningful error message on 16-bit Windows. 64-bit Windows editions are meant to detect these installer stubs, and run a 32-bit version instead, but only a few stubs are detected (basically some versions of InstallShield and Wise). On the whole, though, I'm finding it fine - I run Windows Vista Business x64 at home on a Dell Latitude D820 with 2GB RAM.

"Multithreading is just one damn thing after, before, or simultaneous with another." - Andrei Alexandrescu

Viruses and other malware do not, in general, take advantage of security holes in the software. They take advantage of the one big security hole in front of the keyboard. Problems would be reduced quite a lot if everyone would actually use the security protections in the software and run Windows XP as a standard user, and operate as a standard user or leave UAC enabled on Windows Vista. It's an incredibly hard problem to reduce access to the user's files and settings to only some programs. In the current security model, on Windows and on other operating systems, access control is done on a per-user basis - if any part of the system can perform a task for the user (say installing a program to run when that user logs in) any other program can do the same.

"Multithreading is just one damn thing after, before, or simultaneous with another." - Andrei Alexandrescu

The link has not just been disproven but was never proven in the first place. The initial study, never successfully replicated, has been re-analyzed and the lab that performed the tests audited. It appears that there was contamination of measles DNA in the lab (measles, being a virus, is only found as RNA in the wild). Ironically because of the continuous negative publicity, there have been a very large number of studies performed, finding no link, making this now one of the safer results in medicine.

"Multithreading is just one damn thing after, before, or simultaneous with another." - Andrei Alexandrescu