March 2005 - Posts

• Community Server CSverter 1.0

  For those that haven't seen the news elsewhere, Jayson has pretty much completed work on his scripts to convert your blog's database from .Text to Community Server. If you need it, go download it. I know he put alot of work into them, so stop by his blog and say thanks. I am going to wait a few months until everyone else works the any issues out with the new Community Server... Posted Mar 22 2005, 10:51 AM by Bob with no comments

• I remember back when...

  For those interested in Computer history and looking for a couple of hardback books to add to your collection, I highly recommend ENIAC: The Triumps and Tragedies of the World's Firt Computer by Scott McCartney and The Difference Engine by William Gibson. Both give a nice glance into the things that were accomplished with so little. Almost makes it hard to complain about how slow the 3.4 ghz machine in front of me is...almost... Posted Mar 22 2005, 07:57 AM by Bob with no comments

• Visual Studio 2005 delayed and the *new* pricing scheme...

  It looks like Visual Studio 2005 will barely make the cut off from being Visual Studio 2006, assuming the release schedule the SQL Server/Visual Studio products doesn't slip again. In other news, Developers wake up with feeling sore and used after checking out the pricing 'enhancements' with the new MSDN releases. With the release of Visual Studio 2005 there will no longer be an MSDN professional or MSDN universal. They are being replaced, and technically speaking, there is no MSDN Universal. It is replaced by 3 partial solutions. There no longer seems to be a single developer solution that provides *everything* to a developer the way Universal Edition did before, so you better hope you work for a company with a Volume License MSDN Agreement so they can 'upgrade' to a plan that includes all three versions, and now there is also a 'Team Foundation CAL' what ever the hell that is. I have been a big fan of MSDN subscriptions up until this point, but I don't think I like this new development. Below is a list of the offerings for each version, listed as an upgrade from the previous version so you can compare. I tried to call MSDN Fullfillment to get additional information, but they had less idea what was going on then I did. I guess that's what kind of support you get when you pay over $2000 for a software package...   MSDN Universal MSDN Enterprise MSDN Professional Version Upgrade $2,299 US Estimated Price $2,799 US Version Upgrade $1,599 US Estimated Price $2,199 US Version Upgrade $899 US Estimated Price $1,199 US Transition Benefit: Receive, at no additional cost, one of the Visual Studio 2005 Team Editions for Software Developers, Architects, or Testers. New MSDN subscriptions for these products have an estimated retail price of $5,469/yr and include a Team Foundation Client Access License with an estimated price of $499. Transition Benefit: Receive, at no additional cost, the Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Software Developers. The new MSDN subscription for the Team Edition for Software Developers has an estimated retail price of $5,469/year and includes a Team Foundation Client Access License with an estimated value of $499. Transition Benefit: Receive, at no additional cost, the Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition. Visual Studio 2005 Professional has an estimated retail price of $799. Highlights Continuously updated, priority access to: Technical content Guaranteed online support Phone incident support (4) Microsoft operating systems (limited use rights) Broad range of Windows Server System products (limited use rights) Comprehensive set of Microsoft developer tools, including Visual Studio. NET Enterprise Architect 2003 Microsoft Productivity Applications Upon release, Visual Studio 2005 Professional and your choice of Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Developers: Includes code analysis, coverage, profiling and unit testing tools along with a Team Foundation CAL. Team Edition for Architects: Includes Application, infrastructure, and deployment modeling tools along with a Team Foundation CAL. Team Edition for Testers: Includes advanced load testing tools along with a Team Foundation CAL. Highlights Continuously updated, priority access to: Technical content Guaranteed online support Phone incident support (3) Microsoft operating systems (limited use rights) Five core Windows Server System products (limited use rights) Latest development tools, including Visual Studio .NET Enterprise Developer 2003 Upon release, Visual Studio 2005 Professional and the Team Edition for Developers: Includes code analysis, coverage, profiling and unit testing tools along with a Team Foundation CAL. Highlights Continuously updated, priority access to: Technical content Guaranteed online support Phone incident support (2) Microsoft operating systems (limited use rights) Two core Windows Server System products (limited use rights) Latest development tools, including Visual Studio .NET Professional 2003 Upon release, Visual Studio 2005 Professional: Includes highly productive, professional developer tools for individuals working alone or in small teams. Posted Mar 22 2005, 07:21 AM by Bob with no comments

• IE 7.0

  So, I've given quite a bit of thought to browsers lately. I do not like Firefox much, but by the same token, I do not hold blame against those that do. It is not a bad browser, it just irks me in some of its behavior. That being said, I am somewhat excited about IE 7.0 and wanted to discuss the future of IE as I see it, both the rumors, and things I may decide to believe as being true. Steve, when you read this, send me a new build of the beta please ;) Why a new version of IE? There are many reasons for this. Many people want more features, many people just want more security. As for security, when you consider the number of people attempting to exploit IE, I think the IE version after the release of XP SP2/ Windows 2003 SP1 is more secure than people give it credit for. Is it still a problem? Without doubt. More security only becomes a bad thing once something becomes so encoumbered in behavioral changes and lack of user friendliness that it is no longer usable. When does this flip happen between the security versus usability? I think that is something that each individual user has to decide for themselves...though alot of people will lower their security settings to keep from having to click OK too often, and to those people I say, “You do not deserve to have a computer anyhow, please take it back to BestBuy and cancel your AOL account. Thank You.” Personally, as far as the security issue is concerned, I disagree with Microsoft's decisions on making IE 7.0. To me, the next solution in releasing a new Internet Explorer is...Releasing a *NEW* Internet Explorer. Same with Windows. We get these promises of rewritten code that is going to be more secure. This has never happened. Take many of the *core* NT 4 files and compare the hex code to that of many of the core XP files. Same with Internet Explorer. To me, a new Internet Explorer means drop the old code, archive it, depricate it and write Bob a new version in C#. Managed code is inherently more secure that native code, and for those too hard headed to believe that, close the browser, I don't like you anyhow. The second reason for a new version of IE is for new features. I agree IE has been static along time, but, I also think that a stable feature set that has been tested and is secure is better than adding new features often that add new opportunities for vulnerabilities. I did however really enjoy the addition of both the pop up blocker and the add on manager in the last iteration of IE. This came along with the security additions that allowed you as the user to decide if you wanted to install a specific plug in or not. Much better than things just POOF and happening before, and no add in manager to take them back out. Registry anyone? The one thing that I think I would like to have seen done alittle differently with the whole 'This thingie or that thingie needs to be installed for this page to work better'. Once you close the little alert drop down part for the page, it should not display again until you ask it too, or you browse to another domain. Yes, I know from the last 732 times you told me that this site wants Flash, I don't want to install Flash... Ok, I think we should also look at some of the items people would like to see added to Internet Explorer. 1. Tabbed Browsing. To me tabbed browsing is not something I would even care to see, but it is a popular enough item that it should be added. 2. Support for IDN domain names. This is already in IE 6 listed as UTF-8, but it is off by default. If they want to turn this on, I hope they implement something obvious when someone is using unicode characters in the URL, or we will see something like the IDN homograph spoofing in Mozilla, something the open source guys were happy to sweep under the rug, but heaven forbid that IE would have been the one... 3. Support for CSS 2.0, 3.0. I totally agree we should have 100% support for XHTML, CSS, XML and XSL. I do think that should be limited to CSS 2.0 for the moment though, considering CSS 3.0 isn't even truly a standard yet. 4. True support for PNG and support for JPG 2000. For PNG, I agree. True suppport for PNG and the transparency levels should already be there. For JPEG 2000 support, I do not necessarily agree. I think support for JPEG 2000 could be comfortably rolled out with Longhorn, and from now till then, as a optional update. 5. Integration with Microsoft's spyware tools. I don't care if they include them or not, anything free is good, but I would prefer they increased security and control of IE to the point where spyware tools would be 'something we used to have to use.' I don't think I ask for much, not from a company with millions of Windows users and the deep pockets Microsoft has, especially when you consider those deep pockets came from we the customers not so deep pockets... Posted Mar 22 2005, 04:18 AM by Bob with 1 comment(s)

• Mail by Bob...

  Well, as you'll recall, I was at one point sending steveb an email about once a week voicing my opinion and desire for a new version of IE, even going as far as to offer to rewrite it for free. Even though Microsoft vehemently claimed there was not going to be a new IE before Longhorn, it seems Steve listened. We have a new IE 7 coming out in beta this summer. I decided that it must have been my emails, I mean, what else could it have been. I have another issue I found that I would like to see resolved, well a combination issue really, so I am going to craft a new email and see what we can get done. If anyone else has anything they would like me to pass on to Steve, drop me a line and I'll be glad to help. To:steveb@microsoft.com From:bob@blogbybob.com Subject:Metric Issue in Windows XP/Windows 2003 Good morning!     I am happy to see that Microsoft will be releasing a new version of IE sooner than was originally expected, I would love to be on the beta ;). I know alot of people are pressing for 'features', but as an average user, I would be happy to just see security. I will be blogging about my thoughts on some of the things I've read about IE 7 later today or tomorrow if you want to stop by and read it. Anyhow, that isn't the reason for this email, there is something I noticed in Windows 2003 and most likely in XP as well that I thought you might be interested in, I know alot of people would like to see a solution crafted for it. In Exchange, when you use multiple servers, the servers 'auto calibrate', taking measures of latency/bandwidth etc between servers to find the best path to move data. This is something that Windows itself could use. When I plug into ethernet while still on wireless so I can move a large file, Windows doesn't take any metric reading and figure out that 'Hey, I can move data alot faster over that ethernet' unless you manually disable the wireless connection. I would think that you have seen this before, maybe you even have a patch for it? In a related behavioral issue, meaning another issue of metric, when you copy from one network share to another, the data is moved from the first network share, to the local machine and then to the second network share. This doesn't take advantage of the possibly faster connections that are between the servers themselves, and even ignoring that, is substantially slower than moving them directly. Anyhow, thanks again for the great work on getting some 'Distinguished Engineers' working on IE 7, and I look forward to hearing your feedback from my blog about it when I get it up. Bob Posted Mar 19 2005, 01:19 AM by Bob with no comments

• Speaking of Jealousy....

  Most Mac people would never admit that their mouse is inferior with its *one* button, though we know better. It seems that they are finally realizing it would be easier to admit to the truth and have another mouse button than to continue the ruse. I love the quote from the article.... A Two-Button Apple Mouse In other news, Hell has not frozen over yet, but it very well may. Posted Mar 17 2005, 08:14 AM by Bob with no comments

• Jealous No More

  As you will recall, I used PearPC earlier to emulate Mac hardware so I could run OS X. Now, OS X is a pretty thing, I did not use it enough to see if it was better or worse than Windows, and I will mainly keep my opinion to myself to keep from making the Mac people mad...as if that isn't answer enough. There was one thing that I was truly jealous of though. In Windows we have this ugly taskbar and an ugly start button, though it can be 'prettified', as if that is a word, somewhat by changing to the MCE 2005 skin (thanks Mike), but it is still just a start button and a taskbar...and the Mac people have their cool looking 'dock' thing. That things kicks much bunghole... I started thinking and remembered that a few years back, a friend from Microsoft (Hi Seth...) used to use YzDock on his PC to get similar functionality. I started looking around and found out that YzDock is no longer being made but the concensus seems to be that the best current offer is Object Dock Plus 1.1 (thanks Ray...). I installed Object Dock and was somewhat overwhelmed. They dont just have the 'Dock' that the Mac has, they have a huge assortment of possible docks, tabs and various of 'things', and you can have more than one of each. I don't need all of that. My long term goal was just to replace the taskbar with something that wasn't so outdated looking, but something that would not hinder my ability to use my PC. What I came to find out, is that not only was I able to do just that, but I was able to feel more comfortable running with a desktop that has no icons. Everything I need is in the Dock and a click away. The only thing I quickly noticed was that I no longer had a start button. This was somewhat alleviated by the fact I could drop a 'Start Menu' folder on the task bar that would give me the same choices as under 'Start|All Programs' but what about all the other things you would use the Start button for? Shutting down, the Run prompt and whatever else excites you about the start button. After a few minutes of deliberation, I remember, 'Hell, I have a Windows key'. The Windows key, of course, does the same thing as if you had clicked the Start button. Though there was one graphical glitch about it. The bottom of the Start menu kind of 'hovers' out there and leaves a gap between it and the bottom of the screen. I can live with that. I have been using this setup for a few days now and am starting to acclimate well to it. The only other issue I found with it is if you add a 'folder' to the bar, you can't drag files into the folder, they try to drop on the dock itself. Well, that and if you try to add the MSN docklet that comes with it, the Dock crashes... Even with the few issues, I think it may end up being a permanent solution for me. If you are nervous about getting rid of your taskbar, you also have the option of using both the task bar and the Dock, but I didn't want a second thing to clutter my desktop, I wanted something to help keep it uncluttered. Don't get me wrong though, it *will* take some getting used to, unless of course you came from a Mac...then you just have to get used to having a right mouse button... On a side track, I noticed that in Longhorn, there is no 'Quick Launch' area on the taskbar like there are in the previous versions of Windows. This is something that had me very concerned, I tend to keep everything I launch in the Quick Launch rather that making shortcuts on my desktop and the lack of said area on Longhorn was definitely a show stopper in my book. Maybe we will get lucky and the reason they were removing it was the inclusion of functionality similar to Object Dock in Longhorn... Yeah, I know, but I can dream can't I?? Posted Mar 12 2005, 03:03 PM by Bob with no comments

• MSN Search versus Google

  There is always alot of talk about how awesome Google is and I could never argue. When I worked in support at Microsoft, our team's efficiency went through the floor anytime Google was down. Now, a couple of years later, I decided to do a comparison to see if this was still the case. What prompted this? I have noticed alot more of my traffic coming from MSN search rather than from Google, which is not at all what I would expect being a Google fan...Hell, I am wearing a Google shirt now, the Mars Rover one for those familiar with Google shirts...I have a total of 4 Google shirts, Mars Rover, DNA, Earth Day and another one that isn't on their site anymore. I am still debating on whether or not to get the Google beach towel. So I begin my research by making the only search that means anything to Bob. I search both sites for Blog by Bob. MSN Search - 1-10 of 2,367,046 containing blog by bob (0.09 seconds)...My site is the 3rd link down. Sweet! Google - Results 1 - 10 of about 6,250,000 for blog by bob. (0.11 seconds) ...I am on page 18 of the results and have yet to see my site... So what happened on Google? I think the culprit is the "by" is a very common word and was not included in your search. This is similar to Microsoft's interesting tidbits they like to call 'features' and can't be turned off. Will this mean I will be using MSN Search from now on? No, Google is still the best in my opinion thought Microsoft has made some advances. Heck, look at the numbers above, Google searched 6.25 million sites where MSN searched 2.3 million. Google just isn't necessarily the best way to find Bob. It must be those other 4 million sites hogging all my search criteria...     Just out of curiosity, I decided to check out Blog by Bob on a couple of other sites... Ask Jeeves - 6th result Yahoo - 5th Result Doesn't look like I will be taking over the world anytime soon... Posted Mar 11 2005, 11:49 AM by Bob with no comments

• Like Taking Candy From a Baby...

  It seems that people are starting to wake up and realize that VB.NET isn't Visual Basic, but some new technology with the same name. Maybe once they get over the shock and finish with the tears, they will realize how superior .NET compared to VB 6 and actually start writing some decent code. Probably not though, since they even have a petition to keep VB alive, too bad there isn't a 'vote against this petition' button so I could participate. If we are *real* lucky, they might even take the plunge and start coding in C# so my eyes don't bleed when I try to read their code... Posted Mar 11 2005, 10:57 AM by Bob with 1 comment(s)

• Fitting...

  Wandering around the internet, I came across the 'Top 11 Geek Adages”, most of which weren't even worth a chuckle, but one that rings quite true in these circles... “1. If a tree falls in the forest and no ones blogs about it, does it make a noise?” And yes, the typo was theirs, not mine... Posted Mar 11 2005, 07:47 AM by Bob with no comments

• ChoicePoint

  Some times it takes something like this to remind us how vulnerable our data is. Interestingly enough, their have a large building located in Charlotte,NC, right across from the building I work in. Just goes to show it can happen anywhere. I know one of their data people, she used to work where I work now, I bet there is alot of attention around their office these days... "claims history data, motor vehicle records, police records, credit information and modeling services...employment background screenings and drug testing administration services, public record searches, vital record services, credential verification, due diligence information, Uniform Commercial Code searches and filings, DNA identification services, authentication services and people and shareholder locator information searches...print fulfillment, teleservices, database and campaign management services..." Thats alot of personal information stored in one place, and they weren't even hacked, they were socially engineered...someone asked and they gave the data to them... Posted Mar 05 2005, 11:10 AM by Bob with no comments

• Lack of updates...

  Sorry for the lack of updates lately, there has been a lot going on at work. I knew it was time to blog when I received the following email... 'How are you? Why haven't you updated you blog since the 16th???' Notice the *3* questions marks, along with the fact the email was from my Grandmother. Nice to see I have at least one loyal reader ;) Hi Grandma! Posted Mar 02 2005, 01:49 PM by Bob with no comments

• ISA 2004 Enterprise Edition

  I was over reading Tristank's blog and noticed that ISA 2004 Enterprise Edition has been released. First Tom Shinder finally releases his ISA 2004 book and now Enterprise Edition is out. I think it may be time to build one of those bomb shelters I have heard of, surely the apocalypse is near... Posted Mar 02 2005, 01:43 PM by Bob with no comments

• Licensing from the "experts"...

  When I worked on contract at Microsoft, one of the things I was known for being good at was untangling licensing issues for customers that called in. The more I read about licensing the more I became interested, so the more I read. I don't necessarily think that is a “good” thing, but hey, to each his own... Following this vein, I was reading this article about licensing changes coming down the pipe with the release of SQL Server 2005 and the addition of new available level between the mostly free version of MSDE (mostly free since you need to have the prerequisite product giving you the right to use it) and Standard Edition. This new version will be called the Workgroup edition and is targeted at Small and Medium businesses whose needs are beyond that of MSDE but don't necessarily need the full Standard edition. First off, the 2005 version of MSDE is actually not a bad product, the concurrency issues have been straightened out so it behaves as you would expect and the maximum database size is now 4 gigs instead of 2 gigs as it was in MSDE 2000. This alone makes it a much more viable alternative than it previously was. There is the lack of the Database tools still to contend with, but there are plenty of alternatives out there. The new Workgroup Edition ships with the ability to use up to 2 CPUs, 2 gigs of RAM and no limit to the size of the databases it will host. This lines up well with Windows 2003 standard and it costs substatially less than SQL Server 2005 Standard. One thing I would like to see them add to SQL 2005 Workgroup edition, and they may have already, I haven't checked, is the ability to be used on Windows 2003 Web Server Edition. That is a personal opinion, but one I feel entitled to. The one thing the authors in the previos article seem to take offense to is the fact that Workgroup Edition will have it's own CALs, CALs that won't connect to Standard or Enterprise edition. These CALs cost ~$30 less per CAL then their conterpart. The going reasoning is that the company will be forced to buy CALs again if they need to upgrade to a large version of SQL Server and raise the total expenditure of their path to a final solution. My thoughts on this are “There are many solutions to this.” There are many considerations to be made when designing a system. Too often short term goals, budgetary or otherwise, have a tendency to prevail. If a company is rolling out the Workgroup Edition, they have an obligation to look at the long term ramifications. For most companies that will use Workgroup Edition, I don't think this will be an issue. The minor limitations imposed on them will easily be lived with. If they find the solution does *not* scale to their expectations, maybe they shouldn't be planning these kinds of systems, maybe they should be doing something else, like flipping burgers down at the corner. There is a middle ground here as well. There *will* be an upgrade path to Standard Edition from Workgroup Edition. If Workgroup Edition looks like it will be close but they don't want to fork over the extra money for Standard Edition until they are sure they will need it, they can also find a compromise, the Standard Edition CALs will allow connecting to Workgroup Edition. Buy Workgroup Edition, regular CALs and be somewhat braced for expansion in the future. The last point I will make is the lack of research, or lack of accurate stating facts. On the third page,  I come across an interesting jewel. The article's author gives us some relief by saying ... “...customers also told Microsoft that they didn't want to pay for passive failover servers. Thus, with SQL Server 2005, Microsoft won't require an additional license for a secondary server, as long as it's just used for passive failover...” Hello? This is not a change from SQL 2000. Passive failover nodes use the license of the active server once it fails over... Anyhow, other than that it was a good read. I am probably one of the few people that enjoys reading the intricasies of licensing, but I assure you, that does not make me anything but normal... Posted Mar 02 2005, 01:38 PM by Bob with no comments

• Amiga Forever...or something...

  I was big into the whole Commodore 64/128 thing when I was growing up, I mean, who can resist a .98 mhz computer? I remember playing Defender of the Crown and honestly wondering how computer games had come so far in such a short period of time... Shortly after this I allowed the common man to convince me the world was IBM and switched to a 'normal' PC. The ramifications of this? I missed out on the whole Amiga scene. This has been on my mind for a decade and I finally decided to do something about it. I downloaded Winuae, which is a very nice Amiga emulator with alot of cool options which I have no idea what they do. I randomly configure everything with my eyes closed, and loaded the kickstart ROM I pulled of an old broken Amiga a friend gave me when I started this project. Well, I get a splash screen with an animation that makes me assume it needs a boot disk I look through the assorted items in the Amiga box and find a floppy that looks like it might be an OS. An OS on a floppy scares me, not to mention I do not have any machines in my house that still have floppy drives. A quick call to my friend and he has the OS on an image he used when he ran the emulator on his own machine, something he did a long, long time ago. He sends me the image and I am off and running again. I boot the machine again, and holy ***! I have an odd colored Windows 3.11 running on my Amiga... After some research, I find that this is an older version of WorkBench, so I am going to look around and see where I can possibly buy a newer version. I want to play with my Amiga and I'll be damned if a decade of elapsed time is going to stop me. Posted Mar 02 2005, 03:54 AM by Bob with 1 comment(s)