Topic: Microsoft (Page 2)
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π JScript
JScript is Microsoft's dialect of the ECMAScript standard that is used in Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
JScript is implemented as an Active Scripting engine. This means that it can be "plugged in" to OLE Automation applications that support Active Scripting, such as Internet Explorer, Active Server Pages, and Windows Script Host. It also means such applications can use multiple Active Scripting languages, e.g., JScript, VBScript or PerlScript.
JScript was first supported in the Internet Explorer 3.0 browser released in August 1996. Its most recent version is JScript 9.0, included in Internet Explorer 9.
JScript 10.0 is a separate dialect, also known as JScript .NET, which adds several new features from the abandoned fourth edition of the ECMAScript standard. It must be compiled for .NET Framework version 2 or version 4, but static type annotations are optional.
Discussed on
- "JScript" | 2021-08-29 | 15 Upvotes 18 Comments
π 2024 CrowdStrike incident: The largest IT outage in history
On 19 July 2024, a faulty update to security software produced by CrowdStrike, an American cybersecurity company, caused innumerable computers and virtual machines running Microsoft Windows to crash. Businesses and governments around the globe were affected by what one expert called the "largest IT outage in history".
Among the industries that were disrupted were airlines, airports, banks, hotels, hospitals, stock markets, and broadcasting; governmental services such as emergency numbers and websites were also affected. The error was discovered and a fix was made on the same day, but the outage continued to delay airline flights, cause problems in processing electronic payments, and disrupt emergency services.
Discussed on
- "2024 CrowdStrike incident: The largest IT outage in history" | 2024-07-19 | 24 Upvotes 4 Comments
π WinFS
WinFS (short for Windows Future Storage) was the code name for a canceled data storage and management system project based on relational databases, developed by Microsoft and first demonstrated in 2003 as an advanced storage subsystem for the Microsoft Windows operating system, designed for persistence and management of structured, semi-structured and unstructured data.
WinFS includes a relational database for storage of information, and allows any type of information to be stored in it, provided there is a well defined schema for the type. Individual data items could then be related together by relationships, which are either inferred by the system based on certain attributes or explicitly stated by the user. As the data has a well defined schema, any application can reuse the data; and using the relationships, related data can be effectively organized as well as retrieved. Because the system knows the structure and intent of the information, it can be used to make complex queries that enable advanced searching through the data and aggregating various data items by exploiting the relationships between them.
While WinFS and its shared type schema make it possible for an application to recognize the different data types, the application still has to be coded to render the different data types. Consequently, it would not allow development of a single application that can view or edit all data types; rather, what WinFS enables applications to do is understand the structure of all data and extract the information that they can use further. When WinFS was introduced at the 2003 Professional Developers Conference, Microsoft also released a video presentation, named IWish, showing mockup interfaces that showed how applications would expose interfaces that take advantage of a unified type system. The concepts shown in the video ranged from applications using the relationships of items to dynamically offer filtering options to applications grouping multiple related data types and rendering them in a unified presentation.
WinFS was billed as one of the pillars of the "Longhorn" wave of technologies, and would ship as part of the next version of Windows. It was subsequently decided that WinFS would ship after the release of Windows Vista, but those plans were shelved in June 2006, with some of its component technologies being integrated into ADO.NET and Microsoft SQL Server.
Discussed on
- "WinFS" | 2022-02-18 | 23 Upvotes 2 Comments
π Windows Key
The Windows logo key (also known as Windows, win, start, logo, flag, OS, or super key) is a keyboard key which was originally introduced on Microsoft's Natural Keyboard in 1994. This key became a standard key on PC keyboards. In Windows, pressing the key brings up the start menu. Ctrl+Esc performs the same function, in case the keyboard lacks this key.
Discussed on
- "Windows Key" | 2023-11-18 | 17 Upvotes 6 Comments
π Universal Disk Format
Universal Disk Format (UDF) is a profile of the specification known as ISO/IEC 13346 and ECMA-167 and is an open vendor-neutral file system for computer data storage for a broad range of media. In practice, it has been most widely used for DVDs and newer optical disc formats, supplanting ISO 9660. Due to its design, it is very well suited to incremental updates on both recordable and (re)writable optical media. UDF is developed and maintained by the Optical Storage Technology Association (OSTA).
Normally, authoring software will master a UDF file system in a batch process and write it to optical media in a single pass. But when packet writing to rewritable media, such as CD-RW, UDF allows files to be created, deleted and changed on-disc just as a general-purpose filesystem would on removable media like floppy disks and flash drives. This is also possible on write-once media, such as CD-R, but in that case the space occupied by the deleted files cannot be reclaimed (and instead becomes inaccessible).
Multi-session mastering is also possible in UDF, though some implementations may be unable to read disks with multiple sessions.
Discussed on
- "Universal Disk Format" | 2013-01-20 | 10 Upvotes 10 Comments
π All editions of Encarta are being discontinued (read about it on Wikipedia)
Microsoft Encarta was a digital multimedia encyclopedia published by Microsoft Corporation from 1993 to 2009. Originally sold on CD-ROM or DVD, it was also later available on the World Wide Web via an annual subscription β although later many articles could also be viewed free online with advertisements. By 2008, the complete English version, Encarta Premium, consisted of more than 62,000 articles, numerous photos and illustrations, music clips, videos, interactive content, timelines, maps, atlases and homework tools.
Microsoft published similar encyclopedias under the Encarta trademark in various languages, including German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese and Japanese. Localized versions contained contents licensed from national sources and more or less content than the full English version. For example, the Dutch version had content from the Dutch Winkler Prins encyclopedia.
In March 2009, Microsoft announced it was discontinuing both the Encarta disc and online versions. The MSN Encarta site was closed on October 31, 2009, in all countries except Japan, where it was closed on December 31, 2009. Microsoft continued to operate the Encarta online dictionary until 2011.
Discussed on
- "All editions of Encarta are being discontinued (read about it on Wikipedia)" | 2009-03-30 | 15 Upvotes 3 Comments
π "Where do you want to go today?"
βWhere do you want to go today?β was the title of Microsoftβs second global image advertising campaign. The broadcast, print and outdoor advertising campaign was launched in November 1994 through the advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy. The campaign had Microsoft spending $100 million through July 1995, of which $25 million would be spent during the holiday shopping season ending in December 1994.
Tony Kaye directed a series of television ads filmed in Hong Kong, Prague and New York City that showed a broad range of people using their PCs. The television ads were first broadcast in Australia on November 13, the following day in both the United States and Canada, with Britain, France and Germany seeing the spots in subsequent days. An eight-page print ad described the personal computer as βan open opportunity for everybodyβ that β[facilitates] the flow of information so that good ideasβwherever they come fromβcan be sharedβ, and was placed in mass-market magazines including National Geographic, Newsweek, People, Rolling Stone and Sports Illustrated.
The New York Times described the campaign as taking βa winsome, humanistic approach to demystifying technologyβ. However, the Times reported in August 1995 that the response to Microsoftβs campaign in the advertising trade press had been βlukewarmβ and quoted Brad Johnson of Advertising Age as stating that βMicrosoft is on version 1.0 in advertising. Microsoft is not standing still. It will improve its advertising.β Microsoftβs Steve Ballmer, then the firmβs executive vice president, acknowledged that the response to the campaign had been βchillyβ.
In June 1999, Microsoft announced that it would be ending its nearly five-year-long relationship with Wieden+Kennedy, shifting $100 million (~$166Β million in 2022) in billings to McCann Erickson Worldwide Advertising in a split that was described by The New York Times as mutual. Dan Wieden, president and chief creative officer of the advertising agency, characterized the relationship with Microsoft as βintenseβ and said that it had βrun its courseβ.
Discussed on
- ""Where do you want to go today?"" | 2024-01-11 | 15 Upvotes 3 Comments
π ReFS
Resilient File System (ReFS), codenamed "Protogon", is a Microsoft proprietary file system introduced with Windows Server 2012 with the intent of becoming the "next generation" file system after NTFS.
ReFS was designed to overcome problems that had become significant over the years since NTFS was conceived, which are related to how data storage requirements had changed. The key design advantages of ReFS include automatic integrity checking and data scrubbing, removal of the need for running chkdsk, protection against data degradation, built-in handling of hard disk drive failure and redundancy, integration of RAID functionality, a switch to copy/allocate on write for data and metadata updates, handling of very long paths and filenames, and storage virtualization and pooling, including almost arbitrarily sized logical volumes (unrelated to the physical sizes of the used drives).
These requirements arose from two major changes in storage systems and usageΒ β the size of storage in use (large or massive arrays of multi-terabyte drives now being fairly common), and the need for continual reliability. As a result, the file system needs to be self-repairing (to prevent disk checking from being impractically slow or disruptive), along with abstraction or virtualization between physical disks and logical volumes.
ReFS was initially added to Windows Server 2012 only, with the aim of gradual migration to consumer systems in future versions; this was achieved as of Windows 8.1. The initial versions removed some NTFS features, such as disk quotas, alternate data streams, and extended attributes. Some of these were re-implemented in later versions of ReFS.
In early versions (2012β2013), ReFS was similar to or slightly faster than NTFS in most tests, but far slower when full integrity checking was enabled, a result attributed to the relative newness of ReFS. Pre-release concerns were also voiced by one blogger over Storage Spaces, the storage system designed to underpin ReFS, which reportedly could fail in a manner that prevented ReFS from recovering automatically.
The ability to create ReFS volumes was removed in Windows 10's 2017 Fall Creators Update for all editions except Enterprise and Pro for Workstations.
The cluster size of a ReFS volume is either 4 KiB or 64 KiB.