Update: This problem has been fixed in PuTTY 0.62.

Back at the beginning of last month, PuTTY 0.61 was released after four years (!) of development. Since upgrading to this new release, I've noticed the occasional "Access Denied" message when connecting to certain Linux systems at work. The odd thing about this message is that it appears between the user ID prompt and the password prompt; in essence, before I even get the chance to log in! Example output looks something like this:

login as: root
Access denied
root@myserver's password:

Making things stranger, I can enter the correct password and log in to the system with no problems. As I found out from a commenter on another blog, it turns out this message is due to a new feature in PuTTY 0.61. To prevent this message from appearing, do the following:

1. Drill down into the Connection » SSH » Auth » GSSAPI section of your session's configuration
2. Uncheck the Attempt GSSAPI authentication (SSH-2 only) option

The phantom access denied message should then go away.

On Friday afternoon, I finally upgraded my home system to Windows 7. Windows XP was feeling dated, and my old system had slowed to a crawl for unexplained reasons. I also figured it was time to upgrade to a 64-bit OS, so that's the version of 7 that I installed. Here are a few brief thoughts I've had on this new operating system:

New Task Bar

Interestingly enough, the steepest learning curve I've had with Windows 7 has been with the new task bar. I'm quite used to XP's task bar, complete with the quick launch toolbar. The new task bar in Windows 7 rolls these two toolbars into one; essentially combining currently running applications with 'pinned' applications. Also, by default, only program icons are displayed; none of the window titles are shown as a part of each process' button. This new scheme is a little confusing at first, but I'm becoming accustomed to it.

Updated Start Menu

Microsoft finally got smart with the new start menu. No longer does it stretch to the top of the screen when you have a million applications installed. Instead, the "All Programs" menu simply transforms into a scrollable pane, showing the items available. This is a terrific UI change that should have been done at least 10 years ago.

Improved Speed

In the midst of going to Windows 7, I also made several hardware improvements. I upped my memory from 2 GB to 4 GB (I may go to 8 GB if 4 doesn't suffice), I am using a new brand of hard drive (Western Digital, instead of Seagate), and I added a new CPU heat sink. Since I updated a few hardware components, I'm not sure what really made the difference, but most of my applications now start noticeably faster than before. For example, iTunes starts nearly instantly, which blows the previous 15 to 20 second startup time out of the water. Games also start way faster, which is a plus. I love getting performance boosts like this; hopefully they will hold up over time.

Miscellaneous

There are other minor things that I find interesting about the Windows 7 experience:

• Installation was amazingly fast, and I was only asked one or two questions.
• Drivers thankfully haven't been an issue (so far).
• The built-in zip file support has apparently been vastly improved; it's orders of magnitude faster than XP. I'm not sure I'm going to install WinZip seeing as the built-in support is so good.
• The new virtualized volume control is epic; why wasn't it like this all along?

So far, I'm pleasantly surprised with Windows 7. Some of the new UI takes getting used to, but this looks like a positive step forward; both for Microsoft and for my home setup.

Last night, while surfing around for some medical information, one of the sites I stumbled upon through Google's search results tried to install a Trojan on my computer! This was surprising, seeing as I was using Firefox 3.6 with AdBlock turned on. Thankfully, Microsoft Security Essentials saved the day, alerting me to the fact that a nefarious application was trying to install itself. The tool caught the incursion, alerted me, and successfully removed it from my system. I then did a full scan and it found no other problems.

I've read that drive-by attacks like this are becoming more common, but until now I hadn't ever been affected. Several of my plug-ins were outdated, so I updated them, though I'm not certain any of them were involved in this attack (Java never loaded, and there was no embedded media on the site).

That being said, make sure to surf with protection; there's some nasty stuff out there.

For a long, long time now, I've run the Symantec anti-virus program (corporate edition) on my home desktop computer. I got the original binary from college and I've kept it ever since, undoubtedly breaking the license agreement in the process. Over the Thanksgiving holiday, however, I ditched the bloated, slow Symantec mess for the newer, freely available Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE). Having read good things about the product, I figured I'd give it a try.

So far, so good. Boot times are noticeably faster, which is a big plus in my book. With Symantec, my boot times had become horrible; it would literally take 2 or 3 minutes for the machine to become usable. Now, it's ready in about a minute or a minute and a half (still too long, in my opinion; maybe Windows 7 will fix that). MSE is also quite easy to use. The interface is intuitive, and updating happens auto-magically, with no need to schedule updates. Performing a quick scan took a little while, but seemed to run faster than Symantec did. To top it all off, the MSE memory footprint is much smaller, though it's still one of the larger memory using apps on my system.

What do you guys use for anti-virus solutions? I'm pleased that Microsoft is offering a quality solution to this problem. And the price couldn't be better.

Today is the big day for Windows 7: release day! I'm thinking about picking up a copy of the new OS at some point in the near future for my gaming machine at home, though I'll probably wait until the price drops. Is anyone here going to upgrade?

I saw in the news recently that Windows 7 has eclipsed Harry Potter for the number of pre-orders on Amazon UK. That's saying something, seeing as Harry Potter is wildly popular over in Great Britain. I'm looking forward to giving this new OS a shot. It's definitely time for something new (XP is feeling increasingly old and clunky).

At work, we are being forced to Lotus Notes 8 by the end of the year. I recently rebuilt my laptop, and performed this upgrade at the same time. Since doing this, I've learned a few things that I thought I would share, seeing as Lotus Notes documentation on the web is very poor.

Tip 1: What to Copy During Upgrade

Apparently, copying your data file from one Notes installation to another isn't a good idea (more specifically, when changing Notes versions). However, there are a few things worth migrating so you don't lose all of your previous data. Here's a short list of things I found worth copying:

• bookmark.nsf
• desktop6.ndk
• {USERNAME}.ID (where USERNAME is your user ID)
• names.nsf
• user.dic
• archive/*.nsf
• mail1/*.nsf

There are other files worth copying, so I hear, but these were the only ones I cared about.

Tip 2: Removing the MS Office Toolbar

One of the more annoying features of Lotus Notes 8 is a new "Office Add-in" that will appear in all of your Microsoft Office applications. It's a small toolbar containing three icons and, if you turn it off, it will reappear. You cannot uninstall this feature, but happily, you can disable it. Here's how:

1. Open a command prompt.
2. Change to the \notes\framework\brokerbridge directory.
3. Issue the following command: regsvr32 /u officeaddin.dll

This will deregister the plugin DLL, preventing the toolbar from showing up in your Office applications.

The Register recently had an an interesting article on GFS2: the replacement for the Google File System. It offers insight on the problems Google is facing with the aging GFS. In today's world of video streaming, GMail account checking, and more, the GFS model doesn't hold up as it once did. According to the article, the new Caffeine search engine that Google is rolling out supposedly uses this new back end, resulting in faster search results. It should be interesting to see what other benefits come our way as Google tinkers with their engine.

I've recently been thinking about upgrading the operating system on my desktop computer at home. More specifically, I've been tossing around the idea of upgrading to the 64-bit variant of Windows 7. Windows XP has been a decent operating system, but it's definitely feeling its age. Seeing as Windows 7 is being targeted for release on October 22, which is now less than 3 months away, I figured now is a good time to think about how I would upgrade.

Moving to a 64-bit OS would allow me to expand the amount of installed memory in my system. At a minimum, I would go to 4 GB installed, especially since Microsoft recommends at least 2 GB for the 64-bit flavor. To be safe, I think I might also buy some new hard drives and install the OS on those (keeping my current setup intact).

At $199 (for the full Home Premium version; $119 for an upgrade, which I have yet to read about), it seems quite an investment. Has anyone else thought about upgrading to Windows 7? Or is anyone currently running a 64-bit OS? If so, what are your thoughts?

It seems like every web browser these days is spending an enormous amount of time and development effort on JavaScript performance. Whether it's the new TraceMonkey engine in Firefox 3.5, the V8 engine in Google Chrome, or the upcoming SquirrelFish engine in WebKit browsers, everyone claims (to some degree) superiority in this arms race. All of this raises two questions in my mind.

1. How important is JavaScript performance? Are JavaScript applications really that slow? I'll admit that the new Firefox 3.5 browser feels snappier on sites like GMail and Netflix, but said sites never felt that slow before. Why are developers spending so much time optimizing something that not everyone uses? Admittedly, JavaScript usage is going up (especially with the Web 2.0 craze), but how much latency does JavaScript computing really account for in today's world? I'm much more concerned about data transfer; that's the bottleneck I see. Broadband speeds here in the United States are ridiculously slow, compared to other parts of the world. Shouldn't we all focus on ways to improve that? Yes, I know software developers have little control over that kind of infrastructure, but perhaps there are better protocols out there to get data to the end user in a more efficient manner.

2. Won't improved JavaScript performance lead to poorer JavaScript programming? As computers have gotten faster over the past two decades, and as memory sizes have increased, applications have become more bloated and (arguably) slower than before. I'm convinced that if programmers had retained the "every byte matters" mentality from the 1970s, 80s, and early 90s, applications would be leaner and meaner than they are today (especially in the realm of operating systems). Can't the same thing be said for JavaScript programming? As JavaScript engines get faster, serious performance considerations during an application's design phase might become less and less frequent. I'm of the opinion that high performance hardware can lead to sloppy programming. "Well, the application is good enough" is what the pointy-haired bosses of the world would say. Shouldn't the application be the best it can be? Can't one argue that "good enough" isn't necessarily good enough?

I'll be interested to see where this arms race takes us. What do you think?

Recently, I've been doing a lot of thinking about backup strategies for my data. I'm bad about not backing things up on a regular basis, and I'm hoping to change that. There are a number of routes one can take, and I've been looking at several.

The easiest solution is to backup data onto removable media (CD, DVD, or an external hard drive). This method is cheapest, but it also has some serious drawbacks. CDs and DVDs have relatively small data footprints, which means you have to use many discs to backup sizable data stores. Writable discs also don't last forever. The most serious flaw with this strategy, however, is that the backups are not off site. If someone breaks in and steals my computer, they are almost certain to also take the external hard drive sitting next to it. The same can be said for a fire; if the machine burns, so does the hard drive.

A number of online services are available for doing data backup. Carbonite and Mozy are two of the bigger ones I've heard about. These services give you off site backups, but they too have drawbacks. Often, these services have software that runs all the time on your machine, incrementally backing up as you go (which may be something you don't want). In some cases, you also have limited control over exactly what gets backed up. The services cost money, and you're giving your data to a third party. And, with lousy broadband in the US, initial upload times for large data can be painfully slow.

What does everyone here do to backup their data? Can anyone recommend a service or strategy that works well for them?

I never thought I'd get around to saying this (especially so early in its lifetime), but Windows 7 is really starting to appeal to me. Over the past few days, both Gizmodo and Lifehacker have been showcasing some of the cool new features. Several have caught my eye:

The New Taskbar

The new taskbar inside of Windows 7 looks great. Gone is the separation between the quick-launch menu and the standard list of task buttons. Instead, the two have been merged into one entity; very clever! However, I wonder what it's like with a large number of icons. I'm a huge quick-launch user and couldn't live without it. For instance, here on my laptop, I've got 28 icons at my disposal, with another 7 squirreled away in a sub-menu. The screenshots at the Gizmodo story only show the large icons in use. At those sizes, my taskbar would clearly take up a lot of screen real estate. Hopefully, the icon sizes are either settable via a preference or scale down on the fly.

20 New Themes

Windows 7 ships with a total of 20 themes, all of which look fantastic. This will be a welcome change from the 3 ugly themes in XP.

Problem Steps Recorder

Being able to create a web-based slideshow of a problem recreation scenario is awesome. My only fear is that, if it's like any other web-based stuff Microsoft has done, the resulting HTML is bloated, ugly, inaccessible, and devoid of validation.

Improved File in Use Messages

Knowing exactly why a file is in use is totally rad. Why hasn't anyone thought of this before?

Improved performance looks like it will be making its way to Windows 7, another great reason to look forward to the new OS. The sound virtualization introduced in Vista is a great feature, and one I wish existed in XP.

With all of these great new features, there are still a few things I'm apprehensive about. The graphical intensity of it all still seems ridiculous, especially the 'Aero Peek' feature, which feels like a cheap gimmick. I'm not a fan of the ribbon interfaces, simply because it's an entirely new paradigm (I can work with menus just fine, thanks). And what of the new user security model introduced in Vista? Are the problems solved?

If Microsoft continues to head in their current direction, I'll seriously consider upgrading once the OS is released. That's a far cry from my opinions in the early Vista days.

There's an incredibly insightful comic (hat tip to Dustin) on the new Google Chrome web browser. It explains a number of the design decisions that the Chrome team has made, and the ramifications behind them. There are some very interesting ideas in this new web browser:

• Instead of taking the pure multi-threaded route, Google has instead opted for a multi-process route. According to their explanation, this requires a larger up-front memory quota, but reduces memory fragmentation over time (the cause of the much misunderstood 'memory leak' in Firefox).
• The user interface is quite clever, with tabs appearing above all of the other browser chrome. This groups the controls more logically, and reinforces the separate processes model (you can drag tabs from one window to another, for example).
• Chrome's security model is clever, again thanks to the multi-process model.

As can be expected with this kind of thing, the media is buzzing about this new entry into the browser space. Some people are heralding its arrival, while others are brushing it off. There are several problems I foresee with Chrome that I believe will prevent it from becoming the new defacto web browser:

Accessibility

This is the biggest potential flaw with this web browser. According to one report, Chrome is far from accessible. No matter how good Chrome turns out to be from a functionality point-of-view, if it's not accessible, it won't be accepted by major corporations or government entities. Given Google's very poor track record, I don't have high hopes on improvements in this area.

No Add-ons

As far as I know, Chrome does not support add-ons like Firefox. That means no Adblock Plus, CoLT, or Firebug. That's a deal breaker for me.

Security Concerns

Google's security model for Chrome is clever, but as security problems are found, how quickly will they be patched? Google has never been prompt on releases (the last Google Talk update was in 2006), so I'm leery of how readily they will respond.

Stupid Name

Chrome is a ridiculous name. How many millions of other stuff out there has the word 'chrome' in it? It doesn't stand out, and seems a little bland, in my opinion.

I haven't yet downloaded the browser to try it out, but I plan on doing so soon. Have you tried it out? If so, what do you think?

Just the other day, after weeks of nagging by the automatic update daemon, I installed Windows XP service pack 3 on my desktop machine. So far, so good. I was quite leery of installing the update pack, seeing as Microsoft has fallen off the beam of competent programming in recent times. In fact, I'm still putting off updating my work laptop, out of fear that something will stop working. I've read reports online (and heard firsthand accounts at work) of automatic updates failing to install properly after installing SP3. Since no updates have been pushed out since I updated my system, I can't say one way or the other.

Just yesterday, Microsoft released a 'critical update' for issue 951748, fixing a DNS security hole. It turns out that this fix completely hoses the Zone Alarm software firewall (which I happen to run). In essence, you completely lose your internet connection.

The folks that make the Zone Alarm firewall are aware of the problem. For now, they suggest two workarounds: either uninstall the MS fix or set the firewall security slider to medium (down from high). Hopefully, a true fix will be issued within the next few days.

Update: This problem has even made Slashdot.

Are there any readers here who use Windows and don't make use of an anti-virus client? I've been thinking about ditching my anti-virus client altogether on my personal system, and after reading an interesting article on the subject, I'm wondering if anyone else out there has taken this route. In my experience, anti-virus solutions are slow, ineffective (I'm not sure they've ever flagged anything for me over the years), and are generally a bother to keep up with.

If you've ditched anti-virus, why'd you do it? And what have been your results?

My license for SlickEdit at work was renewed recently, so I upgraded to SlickEdit 2007, the latest release of this already amazing program. A boat-load of new features are included in this new release, but my absolute favorite is the new dynamic surround feature. Check out this demo of the feature in action (be sure to turn up your speakers; the sound is a little low). How super cool is that? I have actually wanted this particular feature for some time, so I'm very excited that it has actually been implemented. You can even unsurround things, should you choose to do so!

There are plenty of other great new features to be had:

• Improved XML / HTML formatting
• Export documents to HTML (preserving all syntax-highlighting ... how great is this?!?)
• Copy and paste in color
• Drag and drop support in KDE and Gnome
• Get live errors in Java as you type (similar to the corresponding functionality in Eclipse, I assume)
• And more!

You can check out the complete list [PDF] of new features (all 5 pages worth) at the SlickEdit website. I'm seriously considering upgrading my license at home, though the $139 upgrade price is pretty steep. If you are in the market for a good code editor, I strongly recommend SlickEdit.

There's an interesting article at InformationWeek about the new Windows architecture that Microsoft is developing. Windows 7, which is slated to be the successor to Vista, will use a new "MinWin" architecture. Essentially, the Windows core will be stripped down to the bare essentials, and additional functionality will be supplied through modules. According to the article, Eric Traut, a Microsoft distinguished engineer, demoed a version of the Windows core running with only a 25 MB footprint (as opposed to the 4 GB footprint of Vista).

I think this is a step in the right direction. Hard drive size increases have made sloppy programming, resulting in software bloat, much more prevalent. It's time to step back, trim the fat, and work towards leaner software.

There are a few gripes I've got with iTunes, all of which revolve around my subscriptions to podcasts:

1. Large downloads freeze iTunes (and sometimes the entire system) upon completion.

When a large (~250 to 500 MB) video podcast file has completed downloading, iTunes will completely freeze up. It feels to me like this hang is related to copying the file from a temporary download location to the intended destination (which is undoubtedly what iTunes is doing). Seeing as iTunes is a multi-threaded application, this should not, under any circumstance, happen. It should spawn a child thread to do the copy operation in the background, so that I can still use the application. Every once in a while, I even see my entire system hang up during this operation, which is doubly bad.

2. Some video files cannot be recycled immediately after viewing them.

After completing a video podcast, I find that I cannot immediately recycle the corresponding file from within iTunes. If I try to do so, the entry in iTunes is removed, but the file does not get removed! To recycle the file properly, I have to shut down iTunes, start it back up, and delete the entry. Somewhere a handle isn't being released properly, and the file remains locked. Again, this is a bug that could easily be solved.

3. The Windows screen saver screws up video playback.

If you have iTunes installed on a Windows system, try this experiment. Get a video file through iTunes (a video podcast for example), and start it playing. Pause the video and walk away from your computer for a while. Allow the screen saver to turn on and, when it has, come back to your computer. When the screen saver is cleared, try to play the video again. What happens? No video! This particular bug has existed for years (I've seen forum references to this bug as far back as iTunes 5 and 6), and it's apparently a known bug at Apple. That they don't get around to fixing it is very intriguing to me.

If there has ever been proof that we are living in the end times, it's this: Internet Explorer 8 has passed the Acid2 test. This is the scariest thing I've heard all year.

Interestingly enough, IE8 only passes this test in 'Standards Mode.' From what I've gathered through brief searching around the web, this appears to be an IE8-only feature that requires some 'magic meta-tag' to enable, though I'm only getting the sketchiest details. The comments in this post shed a little light, but not as much as I might have hoped for.

This past Sunday afternoon, I made the decision to purchase The Orange Box on Steam, forgoing the traditional media route. You might recall that I did the same thing with Half-Life 2: Episode 1, swearing to never do it again. I have since changed my mind on the matter. It occurred to me that Valve is a company I truly want to support. Unlike any other game developer, I actually look forward to their game releases. Much like supporting local farmers through a local farmer's market, I decided I would buy this package right from the source, cutting out the middle man.

The only downside to electronic distribution is the fact that you have to actually download the content. Half-Life 2: Episode 2 is approximately 6 GB in size (according to Steam), so it took a while to get, even on our cable connection. Having the physical media to install with would have been much quicker, but I feel that my direct support of Valve outweighs that minor quibble.

I have since downloaded both Episode 2 and Portal, and have played through both once (I was up very late last night). There is so much I want to write about each, that I will separate my thoughts for both into two posts. Stay tuned.