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I've seen a dozen explanations of Meltdown/Spectre at a level that your old aunt would be able to comprehend.
Does anyone have a link to a decent description at the technical level of a Comp.Sci major?
I am particularly puzzled by this "bug" being present in seveal distinct chip families from independent and competing manufacturers. This seems to indicate something way beyond a simple typo in the design documents, but more of an issue at the architectural level, high above specific chip layouts.
Or, do "they" not want to publish such information, because "they" believe it would allow me to break into the machines of my colleagues, friends and neighbours, to steal their telephone books?
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For those of you oldtimers who have read Thomas Ryan's 1977 novel: The adolesence of P1.
For the AI aspects, the novel may be funny but not really worth a dime (in that respect, James P Hogan's 1979: The two faces of tomorrow is in a different league, and still highly recommendable!). But the explanation of how P1 managed to get access to privileged data bears some striking resemblances to the current security holes!
(The actual mechanimsm is not an essential part of the P1 story, but it is mentioned. If you decide to pick up the novel to read it, do it for the fun of the story, not for the professional aspect  )
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I must say, that time lapse movie they link to is pretty cool. 
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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This is not a programming question but just a view regarding Visual Studio downloads.
Unlike the previous Visual Studio installs and downloads, 2017 seems to be little painful.
1) The installer does not have pretty straight forward web install.
2) The offline too is rather very fat around 40 GB
3) Even the installation needs specific group policies to be enabled on the corporate environment. For me, net.exe was blocked by Group Policy and I had to request the system administrator to exempt my desktop to go ahead installing the IDE.
How many have moved or upgraded to VS 2017? What are your experiences?
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As a private individual (not constrained by corporate policies), I had no issues installing VS 2017 Community Edition. And I love the new IDE. However, I only installed it for C#, WPF and UWP projects, so it's not too bloated. It used around 8 GB disk space.
Note regarding UWP: Only with the very latest update does the UI designer work as it should. Earlier versions did build UWP projects as it should, but the visual rendering of the UI in the designer was a mess. In Xaml older version also had string of bogus complaints that static resources could not be found, although the UWP projects built just fine. All these bugs were fixed in the very latest update.
I will never go back to earlier versions of Visual Studio.
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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Mostly doing C++/MFC and some C#.
We, as developers, are local-admin on our machines, so we can install new software like Visual Studio.
Installation of VS2017 was very easy, except that there are way too much options and checkbox to click.
I'd rather be phishing!
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The downloader also has put me off so far.
It's one thing to say you can select just the components you need/want (via an ![Elephant | [mastadon]](https://codeproject.global.ssl.fastly.net/script/Forums/Images/elephant.gif) ing command line).
I've wondered if you later want to add one more component, do you need to rebuild the entire selective download or can you add-on just the individual item(s) (Not clear in the instructions and even answers - seems to look like you need to know what you want and will ever need first time around.)
My bet is most give up on pathetically designed selection process and just take the lot; yeah sure: disk space (even SSD) is plentiful and cheap nowadays but still, that seems too much like buying 6 happy meals to get a complete set of the new free toys - just wasteful.
Signature ready for installation. Please Reboot now.
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There is a new "Visual Studio Installer" GUI that comes with VS2017.
It lets you pick items/packages to install.
I'd rather be phishing!
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Quote: It's one thing to say you can select just the components you need/want (via an ing command line)
Use the installer that comes with the download and you can select options by simple checking some checkboxes.
It helps if you have a fast Internet connection, otherwise you have to be patient!
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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Ah, but my questions are:
1. does the gui allow altering the config (i.e. add/remove)?
2. can it build an off-line installer set?
3. [for both #1 and #2] if you alter components does it re-build (re-download) the entire set or just alter the affected parts?
Signature ready for installation. Please Reboot now.
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OK, I have not done all you are interested in, but I believe you can alter the config by running the installer.
I do not know about the off-line installer, but I will be surprised if it's not possible.
I initially only installed it for C# and WPF. Then later I added UWP by running the installer. I don't believe it re-installed everything.
I apologize for not being able to give you more specific answers.
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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Lopatir wrote: can it build an off-line installer set?
I have a small(ish) VHD file that contains the VS2017 installer. Every once in a while I mount it and run a batch file that runs the setup.exe with some command line args (I forget the details--hence the batch file) so all it does is download the most recent version of all packages - skipping whatever hasn't changed.
I can then mount this VHD (preferably in read-only mode) on any machine and run the setup.exe from there, then detach when it's done. If the VHD is up to date, then the machine doesn't need anything else.
The benefit over ISO files, I suppose, is that previously even tiny updates required a download of a multi-GB ISO. With the current scheme, it download downloads the deltas.
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I'm using the Community version of VS2017.
1. Yes. Using the installer you can add and remove items. I normally program Visual Basic but I now want to have a go at some Android programming using Xamamrin. Just check the box, the installer says it needs another 22Gb, click Go to start the install!
2. Yes. I can remember the actual command line (Google it!) but it will download all the files to a designated directory. It will be quite large!
3. To alter your installation just go back to the Installer and check or uncheck the changes you need. The installer tells you how much space is needed or will be released.
I moved up from VS2010 and was a bit daunted by this new method. I spent quite a while in a Virtual Box Window 7 machine testing everything out before doing it on my main machine. It took a few goes until I'd got it right!
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Scott Hanselman has a blog post on how to build an offline installer here
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Go to ParentHave you seen the new happy meal toys! It's a train set!
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One annoying thing is that for the team, each machine has to download separately rather than a single offline installer shared. While this may work in most countries, we're still heavily restricted in bandwidth here ( South Africa ) and having to explain why the department suddenly pulls 50Gb in a day is an annoyance.
And don't get me started on windows 10 updates and its download habbits..
But otherwise,yes , love the IDE.
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Do you stil pay for every byte of bandwidth used in SA, or can you get unlimited bandwidth for a fixed amount?
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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Depends on type. You do have some uncapped accounts but they normally have severe fups etc. We have a high speed ( for us ) synchronis fibre link on our mpls backbone which basically means we have decent support if it breaks. Normal internet support is laughable and best effort.
To answer your question, yes we have pay per byte and unlimited, but even with unlimited its a large amount of bandwidth to use if the pipe is shared with the balance of the company and its kind of silly for every dev machine to have to do the same download rather than a single repository server that they talk to.
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Quote: Normal internet support is laughable and best effort.
I suppose some government entity (like Telkom?) has a state controlled monopoly over the Internet service. That will explain your remark! 
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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Mostly copper backend yes. As fibre becomes more prevalent and other meduims that may change but basic internet is always deemed a best effort service, unless you pay for a mpls level support or run it through such a pipe.
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I haven't upgraded to VS 2017 yet as I have hear too many issues with it. As a result I am still using VS 2015 with no issues at all.
I may skip 2017 altogether and wait until the next release, which is what I have done in the past.
Steve Naidamast
Sr. Software Engineer
Black Falcon Software, Inc.
blackfalconsoftware@outlook.com
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It's even worse than you think. VS 2017 gets updated frequently and those updates become additional 40GB downloads when you try to use off-line installation.
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Deepak Vasudevan wrote: How many have moved or upgraded to VS 2017? What are your experiences?
I tried the preview, then went to the release. I have not had problems with it. My biggest complaint is that Xamarin.Forms 3.0 is not released yet.
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