Steve's Seaside Life

Steve's Seaside Life Blog

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Microsoft’s new command shell

Microsoft have finally decided to take the Windows Command shell seriously, or at least Jeffrey Snover – the lead architect did.  They are creating a next generation sell that is built on top of .NET.  John Udell does a great job of describing it so please read his article, it will blow you away and don’t for get to watch the video as well.

MSH is quirky, complex, delightful, and utterly addictive. You can, for example, convert objects to and from XML so that programs that don’t natively speak .Net can have a crack at them. There’s SQL-like sorting and grouping. You write ad hoc extensions in a built-in scripting language that feels vaguely Perlish. For more permanent extensions, called cmdlets, you use .Net languages.

With MSH, Windows system administration manages to be both fun and productive. And the story will only improve as the .Net Framework continues to enfold Windows’ management APIs. Competitors take note: Windows is about to convert one of its great weaknesses into a strength. [Full story at InfoWorld.com]

 

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Maybe theres hope for mainstream inter-enterprise collaboration afterall

I have been frustrated since the beginning of the Internet at the difficulty of collaborating inter enterprise.  The current techniques don’t work for me.  They frequently depend on too much inter-enterprise coorperation, expensive client software, too many firewall ports opened etc.  Well it seems that a mainstream solution is finally on the horizon with Microsoft’s LCS 2005 product.  Here are a few snipits to get you started:

The product, formerly code-named “Vienna,” is expected to be available in beta sometime in June or July. Microsoft is looking for customers to test the product in beta, leading to a general availability release of LCS 2005 by the fourth quarter.

and it allows inter-enterprise connections:

Chief among the new features in this version will be support for federation of IM and presence so that customers can extend the technology to their partners, suppliers and customers. This will allow users to see presence information across, not just within, enterprises, from other applications such as Microsoft Outlook, Excel and SharePoint Services.

fairly firewall friendly:

Users from outside the network will use the Windows Messenger client and tunnel into the network using Session Initiation Protocol over firewall port 5061, Microsoft officials said. Full encryption and authentication …

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Welcome back to the Tablet!

Back in June I handed my TC 1100 Tablet back to the project I was working on and wrote a farewell blog article where I wrote up my on off love affair with Tablet PC computing.  In that article I concluded that a Tablet did not really meet my needs a home worker.  Well as time has progressed I have missed the Tablet more and more, and eventually a great deal on eBay offer seduced me and I now have an older TC1000 with 768MB of memory and a cheap TDK PC Card Bluetooth adapter. So what changed my mind:

 

  • I realised that I loved the slate format but hated the keyboard on the TC1*, and that all of the usage scenarios were slate format ones.  I had been trying to use my Tablet before in a multi-purpose role, I don’t do that now I have a range of machines that I use for specific purposes.  For example, almost all of my writing, evaluation and analysis work is done at my desk using my three monitor setup driving 2 Windows 2003 servers.  All of my company mobile working needs I use a IBM T40 …

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Workspace modifications I have made to accomodate Stills

Summary Status Description Efficacy Working from home Approved and implemented Allows me to work when I would otherwise be too ill to travel.  Allows me to spread the workload throughout the day reducing intensity. Reduces exposure to infectious agents. Allows more frequent and effective breaks. Reduces stress Allows distraction and...

All Posts / Chronic Illness

AOSD Update

When I provided my last update I had just gone back onto 10mg of Steroids and was feeling quite a bit better.  It didn’t last very long and have been having a pertty wild time over the last month as my symptoms have been so variable.  I have also noticed that more “bits of me” are in pain, now added to the long list are Toes, Back, Chest, Jaw.   I have also been working pretty hard trying to get a project finished which turned out pretty well by all accounts so that was quite encouraging, but it did me in so I took last week off as a holiday to recover, but ended up spending most of the time writing and on the phone trying to sort out extended sick pay, dispability living allowance and grant assistance for a special seat and keyboard.  I also took the opportunity to write up some of the most frequently requested information, so I don’t have to keep writing it out, or more likely forgetting important information when people ask.

I have attached the files for anyone who is interested in the drugs and non-drug treatments I have been using.

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The importance of the thick client platform

It amazes me that so many people seem happy to predict the demise of Microsoft over the next few years, whilist they seem happy to evangalise every other thick client platform, from the relative thin Mozilla platform:

Business 2.0 :: Magazine Article :: In Front :: Microsoft’s Worst Nightmare It all adds up to a business opportunity for startups, established software companies, and Web giants alike. Though Ross and the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation don’t stand to make money, Firefox’s open platform gives it enormous potential to hatch a new class of applications that live on the desktop but do business on the Web. Amazon (AMZN) could build a search application into the browser that lets users buy books without visiting its website. Google could make Web-based Gmail accounts behave like desktop applications such as Outlook. Word processing, calendar applications — virtually anything could be programmed right into Firefox.

To the OpenOffice.org platform, to the much more comprehensive LSB platform, to the huge Linux + GNU platform. 

Well to be honest if there was ever a company that understood the importance of platforms – upon which people can deliver applications – it’s Microsoft and there is plenty of evidence that Microsoft …

All Posts / Chronic Illness / Living Well

How Still’s has affected my life – the answer suprised me!

I visitied my specialist last week and he asked me how Still’s affected me, focussing on issues like could I dress myself, cook etc.  I am fortunate that Steroids seems to keep the major inflamatory affects of Stills reasonably under control so I am able to lead a fairly normal life, when I don’t feel too good I just don’t do certain things, or get one of my 4 girls or my wife to help out.  

After I had left though I got to thininking how I have modified my life to work around Still’s and I realised what a major effect it has had, it’s just that I have adjusted in such a way that it does not seem that I have given too much up overall. In fact taken as a whole I think I am happier post Still’s, but that’s probably as much to do with my positive outlook on life as anything else.  These are some of the changes:

1.      I cann’t do all sorts of things I used to do:

a.       No DIY

b.      No climbing

c.       No weight training

d.      No hiking

e.       No heavy …

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Microsoft – Inremental innovation as well as integrated innovation

Microsoft has made much of its “integrated innovation” value proposition.  But for many enterprises its incremental release of feature packs is probably of more interest.  This is evident when you look at both XP and 2003 Server, but 2003 server is the more impressive of the two. 

So far Microsoft have released the following feature packs:

Automated Deployment Services (ADS). Available as a download, ADS for Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition, includes a new set of imaging tools that enable you to automate the deployment of Microsoft operating systems.

Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM). For organizations that require flexible support for directory-enabled applications, ADAM is a breakthrough in directory services technology based on the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP).


File Replication Services (FRS) Monitoring Tools. A number of tools are available for managing FRS, the replication engine that keeps Distributed File System (DFS) shares synchronized, including both continuous monitoring tools, such as Ultrasound and Sonar, and snapshot troubleshooting tools such as FRSDiag.

Group Policy Management Console (GPMC). GPMC simplifies the management of Group Policy by making it easier to understand, deploy, manage, and troubleshoot Group Policy implementations.

Identity integration. Identity Integration Feature Pack for Microsoft Windows Server Active …

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I installed google desktop search, but not for long …

A friend recently pointed out that google have just released their desktop search product in beta, everything google does seems to be in beta, a few hours before almost everyone on my blogroll also reported the fact!

Anyway like thousands of other bloggers I quickly installed it.  At first I was none too happy with it though.  It did not ask me where to store its index, what file types to index, which areas to index.  In fact it seemed way too simple to setup.  So I uninstalled it worrying that it was going to go away and index every file on my two 120G disks.  Well I should have looked a bit harder at the FAQ and when I did I realised that it can take such a simple approach to life because it only indexes Office documents and HTML files, and these don’t take up anywhere near as much space.  However I guess, but have not checked, that it did index my multiple backup areas.

So having reinstalled it what do I think.  Well to be honest I don’t like it all that much.  I have huge numbers of files, often many versions of the same file and …

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Microsoft stalls as Citrix continues on a roll

Microsoft watch reported today that Microsoft are dropping the “anywhere access” functionality scheduled to ship in Windows 2003 Server R2.  Which is a real disappointment, tempered slightly by the fact that Citrix continue to innovate around their platform.

In May, Microsoft officials said to expect R2 to include bug fixes for Windows Server 2003, as well as some of the 12 to 15 Windows Server “feature packs” that the company has rolled out since Windows Server 2003 shipped in April 2003. These feature packs include Active Directory Application Mode, SharePoint Services, Windows Update Services. Officials also said at that time that R2 would include full Network Access Protection and “Anywhere Access” capabilities, the latter of which was expected to draw on Microsoft’s next-generation Terminal Server features.

But now Microsoft has decided to push the Network Access Protection security capabilities it into Windows Server “Longhorn,” the Windows Server release due in 2007.

“Delivering Network Access Protection in R2 would have forced too many changes at a low level,” said Samm DiStasio, a group product manager with Microsoft’s Windows Server division, in explaining the company’s decision to postpone the feature until Longhorn Server.

At the same time, the Redmond software vendor has …