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August 2007 - Posts

Threat Modeling again. Drawing the diagram.

In my last post , I listed off some of the elements that make up a threat model. Now that we have a common vocabulary that can be used to describe the names and types of the elements, let's see what we can do with it. For this series, I'm going to use Read More...
Posted Friday, August 31, 2007 9:31 AM by LarryOsterman | 16 Comments

Threat Modeling, once again

About 2.5 years ago, I wrote a series of articles about how we threat model at Microsoft, about 18 months ago, I made a couple of updates to it, including a post about why we threat model at Micrososoft , and a review of how the process has changed over Read More...
Posted Thursday, August 30, 2007 8:55 AM by LarryOsterman | 23 Comments

Windows Vista Sound causes Network Throughput slowdowns.

AKA: How I spent last week :). On Tuesday Morning last week, I got an email from "reader@slashdot.org": You've probably already seen this article, but just in case I'd love to hear your response. http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/21/1441240 Read More...
Posted Tuesday, August 28, 2007 8:42 AM by LarryOsterman | 62 Comments

Larry vs. Crap

I've actually had way more fun than I realized writing this series - I honestly didn't think I had this much content on this subject. As I'm finishing up the series, I want to talk about how I personally feel about applets. As I've mentioned before, I Read More...
Posted Monday, August 27, 2007 9:42 AM by LarryOsterman | 19 Comments

Applet Best Practices

The first and most important thing that a person considering writing applet needs to do is to stop and consider if they really do need to write that applet. The answer may very well be "yes", but far more often, the real answer is "no". Once you've decided Read More...
Posted Thursday, August 23, 2007 5:56 PM by LarryOsterman | 8 Comments

Applet Mitigations - Services.

As a senior developer at Microsoft, you often find yourself participating on a number of v-teams. One of the v-teams I'm on is responsible for approving new services added to Windows. As I've mentioned before, I'm a nutcase about stuff running on my machines, Read More...
Posted Wednesday, August 22, 2007 5:27 PM by LarryOsterman | 22 Comments

Applet Mitigations - Notification Area Handlers

First off (as always), reconsider your need for a notification area handler. Seriously consider if it's appropriate for your application to have a notification area handler. Do you really believe that it provides sufficient functionality to justify taking Read More...
Posted Tuesday, August 21, 2007 1:32 PM by LarryOsterman | 21 Comments

Applet Mitigations - Updaters

So how do you make an updater be less horrible. First off, as I suggested for all applets, consider not having one at all. For instance, Collectorz.Com 's applications each check for updates periodically when they are started. That way you bury your update Read More...
Posted Monday, August 20, 2007 6:48 PM by LarryOsterman | 24 Comments

Applet Mitigations

As I've mentioned , applets can be a plague on your system. The annoying thing is that it's possible to write applets that aren't so horrible. And most of the mitigations are really just common sense ideas - there's nothing spectacularly complicated in Read More...
Posted Thursday, August 16, 2007 10:13 AM by LarryOsterman | 25 Comments

So why are applets so bad, anyway?

There's a simple answer to that question. As I mentioned in the first post in this series, "It's my machine dagnabbit". The simple answer is that applets consume resources that can be better used by by the customer. At an absolute minimum, each applet Read More...
Posted Wednesday, August 15, 2007 2:28 PM by LarryOsterman | 29 Comments

Why do people write applets?

Since I spend so much time railing about applets, I also tend to look at applets to see what they do (after all, the first step in knowing how to defeat the enemy is to understand the enemy). In general, applets seem to fall into several rough categories: Read More...
Posted Tuesday, August 14, 2007 11:03 AM by LarryOsterman | 39 Comments

It's my computer, dagnabbit, not yours!

I've been wanting to write this one for a while, but continually got sidetracked, but there's no time like the present... Many others (I'm too lazy to chase down references) have commented on the phenomenon known as " bloatware " (also known as "craplets" Read More...
Posted Monday, August 13, 2007 4:46 PM by LarryOsterman | 31 Comments

Hey, my custom shutdown sound got cut off (or didn't play). What's up?

Chris Pirillo had an interesting blog post the other day with the rather uninformative title of " Windows Vista Sound Problems ". He has a reader who built a shutdown sound that is almost 2 minutes long, and that reader is upset that the system isn't Read More...
Posted Thursday, August 02, 2007 4:08 PM by LarryOsterman | 20 Comments

Where does the time go? Daniel's play premiers on Friday!

A while ago, I'd mentioned that Daniel was cast as Orin Scridlow in SCT's summer season production of " Little Shop of Horrors ". Friday August 3rd is his opening night! He'll be performing at 7PM on August 3rd, 1PM on August 4th, 7PM on the 8th, and Read More...
Posted Wednesday, August 01, 2007 8:53 AM by LarryOsterman | 0 Comments
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