Recently a friend was complaining to me about the “screen flickering” that occurs whenever a User Account Control (UAC) prompt comes up in Vista and he wanted to know how to turn it off—not UAC, just the dimming and flickering effects. He said he already looked in the display settings and didn’t see anything there. Read the rest of this entry »

One thing I have always liked about NTFS security is the fine-grained control you have over file permissions. But this power comes at a price—you must understand a whole new world of acronyms, confusing metaphors, and expanded definition of words such as principal, trustee, and inheritance. To fully take advantage of file permissions you need to understand how the whole thing works and delve into the lower levels where there is no pretty user interface and no cushion between you and the inner working of windows. You know you are close to understanding NTFS file permissions when you stop talking about files and folders and instead refer to objects and containers. Read the rest of this entry »