See You in New York!

Have fun if I wasn't on the west coast I'd make it. Great coverage all the way. Thanks

Continuation: Mikegalos you’re a moron using heavy doses of sophistry to babble on about things you know little off. In 2008 I’ve written some code to do some basic interactions with the bindows security subsystem, such as testing if a user has the Log On As a Service privilege. Every time I venture in this area of bindows I cringe, because the security APIs are disjointed, incoherent, and vastly over-complicated. Presumably this is due to the evolution of the Windows security subsystem as it diverged from its VMS roots, but that’s no excuse. The latest example pertains to the ‘Log on as a service’ privilege, called SeServiceLogonRight, which corresponds to a #define in the Windows SDK called SE_SERVICE_LOGON_NAME. I need to know if a given account has this privilege, because if not I need to grant it before the account can run a service. Easy, right? You’d think so. There’s an API function, PrivilegeCheck, that will test if a given token has a set of privileges. The only problem is that PrivilegeCheck wants the privileges described as LUIDs, which are the binary identity of each privilege. All I know is the so-called “programmatic name”, that is, SeServiceLogonRight. No problem; there’s an API for that, called LookupPrivilegeValue, that returns the LUID for a privilege given its name. So I wrote that up, but something’s wrong. LookupPrivilegeValue is failing with error ERROR_NO_SUCH_PRIVILEGE (that’s error number 1313). The text associated with that error code is A specified privilege does not exist. This is, of course, Bull*hit, since I got the priv name from the bindows headers. After a bit of spelunking, though, I found this MSDN document.aspx) that notes certain privileges, including SeServiceLogonRight as well as other favorites like SeInteractiveLogonRight and SeNetworkLogonRight, are so-called “account rights”. What’s the difference between an “account right” and normal privileges? Well: All of the LSA functions mentioned in the introduction above support both account rights and privileges. Unlike privileges, however, account rights are not supported by the LookupPrivilegeValue and LookupPrivilegeName functions. Nice. So, how the hell do I test for this privilege–I mean–account right? The LsaEnumerateAccountRights function enumerates the account rights held by a specified account. Lovely. The reason that sucks is that I can pass a token from OpenProcessToken to PrivilegeCheck, but LsaEnumerateAccountRights wants a SID, plus I have to open a handle to the local security policy. Why the *UCK are account rights and privileges treated as equivalent if they have different semantics and APIs? And don’t get me started on the epic FAIL that is LSA_UNICODE_STRING!

I'm there. I would bring a copy of Windows 7 Secrets for you to sign, but I don't have a backpack big enough to hold it.

Paul Wish I could justify a cross-country trip. Sounds like a great party and I've been hearing good things about Antarctica even from 3K miles away.

Nice try Balthazar. I might have believed you if it weren't for some shoddy editing on your part. http://apocryph.org/2008/10/03/windows_security_model_ridiculous/

Waethorn FYI: Central Park (which is where snowfall is typically measured in Manhattan) averages about 22" of snow per year. A lot less sticks in the built-up parts of the city but it does happen and New York in the snow is an amazing place (for the first 1/2 hour until it's all gray slush)

Waethorn- I live in western NY. Average snowfall here is 92 inches a year, last five or so it has been in the 100" to 110+ range. Record is 162" here. Your also right about Lake Ontario. "Lake Effect" snow means we can get another 1-6" on top of a regular snowfall forecast or just snow in the same range if the wind is right with no storm predicted. I have friends who live in TO (Mississauga) actually and they might have just a trace while we are getting hammered.

Waethorn Actually, if you want to see some real snow come out here to Washington state where the Mount Baker ski resort broke the world record for snowfall in a season back in 1999 with 1,140" (2,896 cm or 95')

@Balthazar9: Its true that the Windows Security API is really tricky but everything what Microsoft do is not bad so far!

@mike: The amount of snow one area gets is also related to elevation. Whistler gets a lot of snow too, but it's also a fair bit higher than Vancouver, which mostly gets rain in the winter (the city doesn't have any snow plows, so when it snows - which is extremely rare - the city just shuts down).

Waethorn said: @mike: Yes I am From Montreal, Quebec, Canada and we have a loooooot of snow!!! We get 147 inches of snow in 2007-2008 winter...

Erico, Mike and I both lived in the snow belt up North [ not together of course, but he posted it once]. Last year, Erie, where I lived, got 142 inches of snowfall, plus the lake effect on wind. Brrrrrrrr.

"The amount of snow one area gets is also related to elevation." Wow, you build cheap commodity crap AND you're a weather expert! Impressive.

DRWAM said: "Erico, Mike and I both lived in the snow belt up North [ not together of course, but he posted it once]. Last year, Erie, where I lived, got 142 inches of snowfall, plus the lake effect on wind. Brrrrrrrr." Yep! And the winter season coming...!!!

"Yep! And the winter season coming...!!!" You can tell, because it's starting to get dark at 4:30.

Paul Have fun, I am sure it will be a great party. Unfortunately travelling from Australia to New York for a party is out of the question. Even Windows 7!!!!!!!!!!!! By the way Windows 7 is available in retail stores here from this morning.

Backup I figured I should have an avatar appropriate for the Windows 7 launch. BTW: The Day 1 Launch offers were announced on the Windows blog (There will be new deals every day for a week): http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windows7/archive/2009/10/21/windows-7-s... The first batch include: Family Pack pricing Student pricing A package from Best Buy of a Laptop AND a desktop (with monitor) AND a netbook AND a wireless router AND setup of your home LAN for $1,199. Deals from Dell and Gateway Discount on an upgrade copy of Win 7 for your old system when you buy a new Win 7 machine. Looks like it's going to be a fun week!

I hope that MS gets some good media coverage. Of course the media will just call it an uber-geek event, since most of the media is clueless about tech. Someone set up their twitter and they think they know it all.

"What? No reply at Balthazar9 from Galos?" Read my post from above. He totally plagiarized the post from where I linked. That gives him zero credibility, and not worth refuting. BTW, I already went to the launch on Tuesday in NYC, got my free copy of Win 7, and attended some very informative server sessions.