Monad Sample Script Page

I've been playing a lot with Monad, Microsoft's next genereate admin scripting tool (and generated a few blog pages too). To help me understand the product more, I've been playing with writing scripts. I thought a great way to get to know Monad better would be to try to convert some old VBS/WMI/etc scripts and in doing so, get to understand the langage and the underpinnings better.

To that end, I've put up a new sample scripts page at http://www.reskit.net/monad/samplescripts.htm. The idea is to show how MSH can do useful things. Some of the scripts can be pulled into your Profile.msh (or profile.custom.msh). As this gets executed when you start the shell, you end up with a load of cool new features in _your_ shell.

As Monad moves towards release, the community can create a huge repository of features that can leverage the basics of Monad while providing cool features for admins. In writing these scripts thus far, I've found the functions I've devloped are highy useful for me (thus far mainly useful for writing scripts and playing around with Monad). For example, I've defined my own tail, touch, head, plus tp (to run text pad, and Edit-NewFile (aliased enf) to create a new file (touch) then run tp on it to edit it. Versions of tail, head and touch are on the sample script page.

What has been most interesting is to note how, almost naturally, I've started to use the traditional admin script development model:

1. Type some lines directly in the shell. Play around and get something close to what I want. For example, I've created a new drive (web:) that points to \\maui\website\reskit.net. I've also created a web: alias that does a CD to WEB: which made the 1st editing session very much more productive.

2. Pop the lines into a script file, or local function and get basically working. Once I found WEB: useful, I put the function and new-drive into my profile.tfl.msh file.

3. Add the function to #profile.msh and use it regularly. And as I use it, I start to add more 'production oriented " I found that you can't run new-drive multiple times without an error, so I added a check to the script to first check if web: exists and if only if it doesn't, should the new drive get created. I then added a test to see if the target drive exits (it won't when I'm offline for example) and fail more gracefully.

4. The next step would be to recode these functions into a cmdlet, or perhaps create my own hosting environment where these features are built-in. This is beyond me at present.

This leveraging process - writing loads of small little commands that make the job of using the command line shell usable and productive. I'm starting to build up libraries of libararies, if you see what I mean (eg something to parse WMI dates which is useful whenever using WMI and dates!) One of the down sides of the current drop is that the COM: scripting tools don't properly exist (this is coming in the next drop). But it's clear that Monad is gonna be a very interesiting, powerful and useful tool - I'm glad I've started to learn this now!

Monad PDC Talk

Please Click Me!!

Jim Truher has announced he's giving a talk at PDC in September on Monad. He currently plans on having a breakout session on the Monad language. He wants to do a deep dive, to show thow expressive it can be. I can't wait!!

Reskit.net Monad subsite

I've put a subsite up on reskit.net devoted to Monad: http://www.reskit.net/monad. Thus far, it's just some links to articles and blog posts. I'm hoping to expand it in due course. Enjoy!

Discovering Networking with Monad and MSH

Monad presents administrators with great features and facilities, but there is a learning curve. One key aspect of learning any new feature or product is the aspect of "discoverability" - the ability to find things out simply. There are several ways to discover things, but the built-in reflection methods are at hand to help (although getting used to Monad and>.NET is a learning curvre!).

With Windows XP, there are over 900 WMI classes returned from the Get-WmiObject -List command, as shown:

[C:\]: $wmi=Get-WmiObject -list
[C:\]: $wmi.length
920
[C:\]: $wmi | format-list
(... a long list not shown!)

WMI class names are relativey self explanatory - so to find all the WMI classes that have 'net' or 'networking', you can do the following:

[C:\]: $netsettings = $wmi | where {$_.__PATH -match "net"}
[C:\]: $networksettings = $wmi | where {$_.__PATH -match "network"}

You can then use these to get the key network class names, as follows:

[C:\]: $netsettings.length
89
[C:\]: $networksettings.length
14
[C:\]: $networksettings | ft __Path

__Path
------
\\KAPOHO61\ROOT\cimv2:Win32_TSNetworkAdapterSettingError
\\KAPOHO61\ROOT\cimv2:Win32_NetworkClient
\\KAPOHO61\ROOT\cimv2:Win32_NetworkProtocol
\\KAPOHO61\ROOT\cimv2:CIM_NetworkAdapter
\\KAPOHO61\ROOT\cimv2:Win32_NetworkAdapter
\\KAPOHO61\ROOT\cimv2:Win32_NetworkConnection
\\KAPOHO61\ROOT\cimv2:Win32_PerfRawData_Tcpip_NetworkInterface
\\KAPOHO61\ROOT\cimv2:Win32_PerfFormattedData_Tcpip_NetworkInterfac
\\KAPOHO61\ROOT\cimv2:Win32_SystemNetworkConnections
\\KAPOHO61\ROOT\cimv2:Win32_TSNetworkAdapterSetting
\\KAPOHO61\ROOT\cimv2:Win32_TSNetworkAdapterListSetting
\\KAPOHO61\ROOT\cimv2:Win32_NetworkLoginProfile
\\KAPOHO61\ROOT\cimv2:Win32_NetworkAdapterConfiguration
\\KAPOHO61\ROOT\cimv2:Win32_NetworkAdapterSetting

Once you have these names, you can begin exploring:

[C:\]: $nw=Get-WMIObject Win32_NetworkAdapter
[C:\]: $nw.length
31
[C:\]: $nw | gm
(long display - deleted)

Microsoft Certified Learning Consultant Certification Debuts for MCTs

At TechEd Amstredam, Ken Rosen formally announced that MS was launching this new certification. MCP Magazine has more details about the MCLC here. This looks like being a great way for MCTs, and the institutions that hire them, to differentitate themselves and to show they can not only "do it in the classroom" but can also do the consultative stuff: analyse client needs, design course structure and content, and finally measure value for money.

Monad - Playing with dates and time

I have been playing a bit with dates and times in Monad. In Monad, you can create a variable as a date-time object, using .NET's build in datetime class, as follows:

$[C:\]> [datetime] $xmas = "12.25.2005"

You can use this, either to assign a value or in a calculation, such as: :

$[C:\]> $xmas - [datetime]::now

Days : 159
Hours : 8
Minutes : 28
Seconds : 38
Milliseconds : 558
Ticks : 137681185582531
TotalDays : 159.353224053855
TotalHours : 3824.47737729253
TotalMinutes : 229468.642637552
TotalSeconds : 13768118.5582531
TotalMilliseconds : 13768118558.2531

At TechEd, Jeffrey Snover said his daugher was really excited about how long it is till Christmas. Just for her, here's how to jazz it up a bit and create a simple function to calculate the days till Christmas:

function cdtx {[datetime]$x= "12.25.2005"; return $x-[datetime]::now}

Jeffrey could put this function definintion into his profile.msh to have it at his fingertips should it be needed (ie when his daugter asks him again). But for even more fun, why not get monad to just tell her how many days it is, Using the say-text cmdlet I posted about earlier:

say-text "It is $($xmas-[datetime]::now).days until till christmas"

It's a little pedantic - and rather precise - but it's fun.

Is Dell Right to go Dark?

The Register has a story about Dell, titled Dell: why Customer Care had to die, which describes Dell's decision to close its Dell Community Forum (DCF). I used DCF and the community support was good.

While The Register's normal satirical style is maintained in the article, there's a serious side too. Does it make sense, in these days of transparency, to go dark like this? Seems to me that by shutting down these forums, Dell do not help themselves or their customers. Microsoft, by comparison, may not like some of the comments they get on their open newsgroups, but the groups are open for your to post away. And genuine complaints not only get listened to, but get resolution. Everybody wins.

MS Takes A New Certification Road Starting in September

Well, now it's finally public and I can talk about it - well some of it anyway. MCP Magazine has now published the details about Major changes in MS certification which starts, says MCP magazine, in September. As MCP magazine says: "It's obvious that the new program differs significantly from the current program." So please read their article carefully (along with the official MS information once that gets posted).

There are two ways to look at this news: the first is (as my post of mid June suggested), MS is dumping the MCSE and pretty much the entire current MCP certification programme. All the current premium certs (e.g. MCSE, MCDBA and MCSD) are being given the long term chop, in favour of a whole brand new set of certifications. On the positive side, the new certification approach is far cleaner than the current tangle of MC* certifications - three main levels and that's it (and one of those, the architect level, is not a path for most IT Pros and Developers). Assuming the new exams are 'solid', there may be some ability to avoid the paper-certification reputation that parts of MCP had become. By having brand new certs, hopefully MS can restore the quality appeal that MCSE once had. Let's hope so!

So yes, there are two ways of looking at it. Talking to MSL people, they say I suffer from a glass half full vs half empty point of view problem. And to a degree, they have a point. The new stuff really is a lot better, and looks cool. But on the other hand, it's my glass and I paid for all the liquid that ever went into the glass. As one of the charter MCSEs, I've invested 12 years of time and effort maintaining my MCP/MCSE and more recently MCSA, MCDST plus the 'add-ons'. So I'm very disappointed to see it all go, especially as the death will a slow one.

Another aspect of the news presented in Orlando is that each of the new certifications are withdrawn once the related product reaches end of life. Thus MS are building obsolescence into the new programme, a mistake in my view. MS did this several years ago, with respect to MCT Transcripts - the idea was that exams for products that had retired were removed off of the transcript. There was a huge (negative) reaction from the MCT community, and MS found a way to resurrect those older exams. In today's terminology, that would mean I'd no longer be certified in NT4. Despite the fact that I had been certified or that our customers are still using NT4 and want certified professionals to assist. While NT 3.1 might not be relevant to Microsoft today, the fact I was working on it, and passing exams 12 years ago (and ever since) is very important to me. It shows my length of tenure and commitment. Yet MS are not proposing to take all that history away. Shades of NewThink! I've yet to hear if MS has reconsidered this aspect.

It's also fairly inevitable that there is going to be at least a partial Osborne effect on certification and certification business based on these announcements, something that the training industry, in particular, are not likely to be very happy about. For me as a long time MCSE, I now see no reason to take any more MCP exams for at least another year, and probably longer. From what I can tell today, it may make sense to just wait till Longhorn Server, which is 2+ years away in terms of stable exams. Many folks who are part way through their certification programme may also stop and re-assess to work out whether or not to continue the current path or just wait for the new exams. None of this helps the training industry.

And with respect to my MCSE: Al Valvano of Microsoft is quoted by MCP Magazine reassuring me that: "[The MCSE/MCSA/MCDBA titles] are not going away and those continue to remain valid, just like there are people who continue to certify on Windows 2000".

Pass the kool-aid Al - while the certificates will continue to be offered, as I understand it, there will be "no future investment" in the MCSE/MCSE/MCDBA certs. A real life analogy: yes, you can still buy a new Rover car. But I'm not too sure just how good of an investment such a purchase would be.

VPC Virtual machines may stop responding after the computer resumes from hibernation

So this is why I've been having problems with Hibernation and VPC VMs! There's a new-ish KB article: Virtual PC 2004 and any virtual machines may stop responding after the computer resumes from hibernation that explains why. Sadly, it's a suport call, which takes time and effort if past history is anything to go on. It would be nice if this was just a download and not a phone call!

Mozilla squishes latest Firefox bugs - 70M Copies downloaded

As the count of FireFox downloads passes 70 MILLION, a new update has been released which, says ZDNet UK Newssquishes a number of Firefox bugs. Known as Version 1.05, it's available at a download site near you!

MSF 4 Formal - 1st observations

MSF 4 Formal is the 2nd half of the latest update to Microsoft Solultions Framework (the first half being MSF 4 Agile). I've just downloaded it and have started to play a bit. This post documents a few initial observations, which are put down in no particular order!

1. The team model is improved by the addition of an Architect role. This recognises the importance of architecture in soloution design. It also appears to make the role of the Program Manager a little less technical, and more Project Manager oriented than in MSF 3.

2. MSF Formal is more formal than MSF Agile for a reason. CMMI describes 5 (or 6) levels of process-based predictability of an organisation (or department) in terms of their ability to produce quality software. The higher the level the better. With most organisations at 0 or 1, MSF 4 can help you work at nigher level. This is done by adopting highly predictable (but not so agile) processes, which is good for larger or more formal projects, especially in more critical environments, where predictibility is more important than agility.

3. The process model seems de-emphasised. In looking at the material issued this week, it's hard to find much discusion of the overall process model. There's one good slide, in the governance area, which shows the MSF Process model as a waterfall model, which is of course how you usualy do MSF based projects. What I can't yet find is a good set of process descriptions. And given that CMMI is about repeatable processes I find this lack of process model hard to understand (although it might just be a beta issue).

4. Using both the Agile and Formal process guidance requires Interent Explorer. Using FoxPro just does not work. I'm sort of dissapointed that MS would, again, put out such a key project in a format that is not useable within FireFox.

5. The current documentation does not put any where near enough clear water between MSF Agile and MSF Formal. While it's probably just a beta issue, MSF Agile and MSF Formal look very, very similar, when they should be different. Well, different enough for IT Pros and Devs to easily know which one is right for them, in a given situation. The current similarity and overlap may be confusing. I'm just grateful for Rafal's great presentation last week at TechEd which provide much clairity (clarity missing today from the MS documentation).

I'll write more once I've had a chance to digest this all!

Microsoft release draft of MSF for CMMI® Process Improvement

Microsoft's MSF update to Version 4 is slowly inching towards release. Unlike earlier versions of MSF, MSF4 separates into two separate approaches: MSF Agile and MSF for Capability Maturity Model Integration Process Improvement (SIC). MSF Agile has been around for some time - a beta was issued last year. A first draft of the 'other' MSF, which I'll shorten to simply MSF 4 Formal, is now available for download.

You can now download process guidance for MSF for CMMI® Process Improvement, (MSF 4 Formal). This download is process guidance only - thus it appears that the full integration between MSF Formal and VSTS is not quite ready.

I just have three questions for the MS folks regarding MSF. First, MSF Formal is described at the download site as an "highly iterative, adaptive planning, agile software development process", which is what I thought MSF Agile was. Maybe this is just over-enthusiastic web page editing, but there is some real confusion in my mind here. Can we get teh web site updated to perhaps make the disctincitons.

Second, given that these details were released today, why didn't MS discuss them last week at TechEd? A great talk, given by the undisputed master of MSF (Rafal), would have been the perfect place for this disscussion. Instead, we got the Best Talk of TechEd EMEA but without some of the details. Imagine how much better the talk would have been had Rafal been allowed to divulge more details. Please MSF team, remember your friends!

And finally, about the name. However you slice it up, the full product name (Microsoft Solultions Framework for Capability Maturity Model Integration Process Improvement) is somewhat on the lame side. It uses 10 long words to say what 'MSF 4 Formal would in 3 very much shorter words. Admittedly, the name manages to get some value out of the assciation with CMU and CMMI, etc. But to those not initiated into the mysteries of CMMI, it's not at all clear what this is all about. It sure doesn't sound like an IT Development Approach to me!

As Rafal explained it at TechEd, MSF 4 is a recognition that MSF 3 both did not scale well to small teams, and that scaling it up was harder than it should have been. So in effect, MSF now has a light weight, artifact thin, agile framework (MSF Agile) and a more process rich, artifact and process heavy version, which comes a lot closer to a full methodology. MSF 4 Agile is therefore lighter than MSF3, with MSF 4 Formal is richer and enterprise ready than MSF 3. I hope the MS materials make this distinction clear.

I'm really excited about MSF4, despite the lame name and the lack of disclosure thus far. I can't wait to see what the certification and training story is.

European Parliment rejects patent reform

Bloomberg.com reports that the European Parliment has rejected draft legislation that would have provided patent protected inventions that utilise computer software. Eva Lichtenberger, an MEP, states: "We buried a bad law and did so without flowers. The legislation would have hindered the development of small companies and helped big businesses because they are the only ones that can afford patent lawyers and litigation costs."

If this is their view, then some policiticans must be unaware of the reality of innovation on the ground or on how SMEs really work. Without reform of our patent system, it's entirely possible for a competitor to, in effect, simply steal your intellectual property with little if any recourse. Copyright is simply not adequate against someone who can simply reverse engineer and reimplement your IP. About the only people who killing this legislation actually helps are folks who do not want to pay for intellectual property.

As I see it, patent protection helps small businesss, and does so in three ways. First it gives their innovation legal protection - this means that your competitor can not buy a copy of your software, reverse engineer it, then recode it and sell it as their own (something that can, and does, happen in the EU today). Second, it enables SMEs to dicuss their innovation with larger firms on equal footing - big firms and small firms both gain from sensible patent legislation. Finally, it gives SMEs some assistance when talking to venture capitalists - VCs seem to like the protection to their investment that patents can.

At the same time, the process must be made rigorous to stop some of the sillier patents. What I'd like to see is for real innovation, implemented in software, is protected to same degree as real innovation is protected if not implemented in software. Why should a mechanical device be patentable, but software to dramatically improve battery life on a cell phone NOT be patentable?

It is a shame that the European Parliment has simply rejected this bill, and did not tackle the deeper issues.

[later]

It appears I'm not alone in at least some of the views above. London Liberal Democrat MEP Baroness Ludford says in a press release: "Rejection only prolongs the uncertainty around patentability of software-related inventions in the EU. It is running away from the need to take a decision. I deeply regret that MEPs are proving incapable of coming up with a sensible version of the text, one which could ensure support for innovation but also reassure software writers and users that we were not going down an American-style route of allowing patents for pure software. MEPs are not covering themselves in glory. This process has displayed all the defects in the way we legislate at EU level, which must be addressed if we are to avoid portraying ourseleves as incapable of legislating on complex but vital subjects"

Virtual Server future as a separate product?

I'm sitting in the Andy Lee's keynote at TechEd Amsterdam. He's just described some of the great features of virtulisation (and he's just announced that each delegate is to get a copy of Virtual Server enterprise edition). He also announced, I think, that Virtual Server is on it's way out as a separate product. What will be coming is a hypervisior, a thin layer of virtulisation, similar to VMWare ESX, but built into Windows Server. This sounds really cool, and I'm looking forward to seeing more details about this.

WiX GrokTalk

My WiX GrokTalk is up on Groktalk.net.

This is a 10 minute talk outlining what WIX can do. I've put the slides and demos up on http://www.reskit.net/wixgrok.zip.

Technorati tags: WIX

Speech with MSH

In the MSH newsgroup, there has been a lot of discussion around how to script access to objects. As it turns out, the B1 drop of MSH does not support the '-activex' paramater to new-object (a short term issue and to be rectified in the next drop). Thus some of the simple cool scripting shown on Jeffrey's TechEd presentation slides can't currently be done with our drop.

But that hasn't stopped the beta testers. Since MSH provides, in effect, full access to the .NET framework, it can do some amazing things! The following MSH function, written by Ryan Milligan, is a way in the latest drop to invoke an object's method:

function invoke-method($obj, $name)
{
$obj.GetType().InvokeMember($name,[System.Reflection.BindingFlags]::InvokeMethod, $null, $obj, $args)
}

The following MSH function leverages invoke-method, to call the Speach API's SPVoice function to speak text passed as a paramater.

Function say-text([string] $texttosay)
{
$speech = [Activator]::CreateInstance([Type]::GetTypeFromProgID("SAPI.SpVoice"))
invoke-method $speech "Speak" $texttosay 0
}

To test this:

say-text "Hello World"

For fun - what do you think would happen if you called say-text with a number such as 123456789. Try it - I was sure surprised at the result.

I'm not sure how admins would discover the details of method names, unless they know a lot about programming against COM and .NET. But the power of MSH is that someone can post a few lines of script, which you can quickly adapt, and in the example above, refactor into a command (say-text). MSH is likely to be one of the first products delveoped where there'll be more stuff out there (script hacks such as I've posted here) than code in MSH itself.

Speeding up MSH Start Time

MSH is Microsoft's new shell - and it has been developed in managed code. Because it is managed and large, it needs to be JITed each time it is run and this takes time. To speed it up, you can do a native generation by running the following command:

C:\windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50215\ngen install "c:\Program Files\Microsoft Command Shell\msh.exe"

You may need to adjust this for folder names on your system (and despite how it looks here on Blogger, it is all one line!). On my laptop, this took startup from around 2-3 seconds to near instant. This is a beta performance issue (not having msh.exe ngened) that will get fixed for RTM, but for not, it makes startup faster.

PDC Micro Flair

Looking over at the Channel 9 PDC Flair Site, they seem to be mostly larger images. So I created a much smaller, more discreet bit of micro-flair. It's at http://www.reskit.net/tflbutton.png.

MSH - TechEd Presentation

MS has released the TechEd presentation on Monad-MSH. Enjoy!!!!

PDC Flair - the buzz grows

You can always tell a good geek event - lots of signware. Take a look over at the Channel 9 PDC Flair page to see a bunch of images, such as this one:

Please Click Me!

10,000 Visitors Here

I've had my 10,000th visitor to this site since I began the hit counter last autumn. This hit came from 55.136.0.0/16m has Javascript Disabled and the browser reports "Internet Explorer 6.0 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 4.0; Config A V1.0; Config A V1. Email me and I'll send you a copy of my TCP/IP book!

Microsoft Certified Architect

As part of a re-vamp of it's entire certificatio process, Microsoft has announced the new Certified Architect cert, which is described in more details on the "Share Ideas: Explore Architecture" page.

This new certification recognises two types of architects: Infrastrucure Architects, and Solutions Architects. As I see it, this is sort of aligned to IT Pros and Developers. The Architect page also talks about an "Enterprise Architect" but this designation is not defined in any detail. Each of the recognised architects use specs provided by an enterprise architect to create/design an appropriate solution to the problem.

The process of getting an Microsoft Certified Architect certiciation is long and involved - and it's not based on multiple-guess exams. The candidate is expected to have 10+ years of experience and can apply to become an architect through a number of means (described on the web page). Once accepted into the MCA programme, the candidate is assigned a mentor, and gets access to a library of content to help them prepare a solution description document. When complete, this document is submitted to a Revie Board meeting for assessment. The candidate has to attend the board meeting an ddefend their solution. The MCA Review Board then determines if the candidate is to be awarded the MCA cert. The MCA Review Board has 4 voting members (plus two administrators).

The idea of a review-board based cert is excellent - and has echos of the way Microsoft used to do MSF trainer certification. Thinking back, my MSF trainer oral exam was amongst the hardest exams I've taken in my professional life. Part of this was the process itself (designed to be tough), and part of it was the incredible passion for MSF on the part of the examiner (the amazing Mr Rafal). If the MCA Review Board is as tough as Rafal was, then the MCA will never be a paper cert. Interestingly, this is the 2nd MS certification to use a review board. The Microsoft Certified Learning Consultant (MCLC) uses a simlar approach, and I'm on the review board for MS EMEA. I can post more about MCLC in another blog entry - if there's any interest. I suppose both these certs show that MS has listened to the cries of "paper certification" and has made changes to remove this from at least two certifications.

In many ways, the MCA is both long overdue and most welcome (same about MCLC!). Recognising architects for what they really do, as opposed to their ability to pass multiple-guess tests and having that recognition being based on what they've actually done (i.e. the case study), the cert has much more credibility. If the bar is set high, then that's both great for the cert, but also for the entire certification programme.

This approach gives Microsoft's lower level certification streams (i.e the current set of MCSE, MCSD, MDDBA, MCDST, etc ) a higher level to go for - a hard to get capstone certifications. This in turn provides both a longer term roadmap from the lower level certs to MCA and gives credibility to the entire programme. As an example, look at Cisco, and the CCIE (which very few actually achieve) for giving the whole Cisco certification a better name.

Since MCA can only be obtained by a (successful) development and defense of a real solution, it's far less likely we'll see the paper MCAs. In talking about this cert to the folks at MSL, they make it clear that this is a real architect's certification, not a Microsoft architect. That means we may see MCAs certified on the basis of a Novell or Sun, or IBM/Linux solution. This certainly improves the credability in my eyes. I'm waiting to see who will be certified!

Precision Computing - A Good MSH Blog

I've been reading Lee Homles' new blog called Precision Computing. Lee works on Monad-MSH, and his blog, started in early June 2005, is mainly about the product. His blog entries thus far are quite useful, particularly his MSH and YubNub - a community command line and script, as well as his cool cmdlet add-calenderitem.

Former CEO acquitted in first SOX prosecution

Silicon.com are running a story about Richard Scrushy, former CEO of healthcare firm HealthSouth who has been acquitted in first ever SOX prosecution.

For many IT Professionals, SOX (and similar legislation) has been interesting in the sense that if the rules are not obeyed, your CEO can face gaol! Not a very nice thought - and one that tends to focus senior management's attention. And since it's their butts on the line, the theory goes that they'll listen a lot more now than ever before.

However, according to the story, Scrushy was cleared on all counts. He had been accused engineering a multimillion-dollar company-wide fraud scheme but denied knowing anything about it. Given this high profile failure, it begs the question as to how much teeth SOX actually has.

One Last Update Rollup for Windows 2000 SP4

With days to go before mainstream support for Windows 2000 ceases, Microsoft has released a final roll up patch the OS. This patch, details of which are in KB article 891861 - Update Rollup 1 for Windows 2000 SP4.

There are a lot of fixes in this pack - so if you are still running Windows 2000 in production, you should investigate this patch.

Blog'n my way to the PDC Contest

To build excitement around PDC, MS are offering a Blog'n my way to the PDC Contest.

To enter, you hust have to put a bit of HTML into your blog, pint the contest organisers, and with a bit of luck, you'll get free admission, US$1000 worth of airfare and a room! In my case, here's my HTML:

Please click Me!

I'm planning on going to PDC to learn more about Longhorn, and especially Monad-MSH. As to value to the community, I plan to blog more about the subjects both leading up to, at and after PDC. I'm also looking at doing books and courses around many of the topics being covered at PDC.

The blog entries I plan on making will be pretty much straight text with limited graphics. Probably no audio/video, although I may do another RD GrokTalk at PDC if we can get this organised.

New Version of MS Anti-Spyware Beta

I've been running Microsoft's beta antispyware package on several systems. For the most part, it's been uneventful. I see onscreen dialogs ,once a day when the full scan runs, and every so often, there's a new set of signatures are downloaded. Today I got a offered a "new version". I've accepted and it's downloaded and is running, but there are a couple of things that bother me.

First, it was all too easy to just click yes, yes, yes to install. Is this an attack vector? Second, I'm not sure what's changed or why I needed this update (same refers to the occasional signature updates). I'd like to see update notes. And third, the installation requires a reboot - which was not disclosed before I started the install (see my first point!). GRRRRRR!!!

Finally, I'm not sure it's really doing much. Thus far, after several months of use (and aside from one recurring false positive), it's found nothing new on my 3 main systems. I'm not interested in going to sites where I might get sypware installed automatically, so I'm NOT offereing to do that bit of beta testing!

I guess I'd like to see regular release notes (dump them into the install folder) and some more details on the efficacy of this product in the wild. An updated RTM schedule would also be appreciated!

More on MS Certification

Further to my recent blog article on Microsoft certifications, Microsoft has begun the process of rolling this out. The material I saw yesterday was indeed NDA, although it was not then properly identified as such as is the expected practice when material is not for wider disclosure. I now understand that the formal unveiling is to happen in July at the World Wide Partner's conference, so we'll have to wait till then for the complete picture. I can't wait to able to discuss the details of this with other IT Professionals, MCTs, etc.

Windows XP-lite 'not value for money'

According to a Silicon.com story, Windows XP-lite is 'not value for money'. The story explains that PC World will not be carrying the media-player-less version of Windows XP the EC forced Microsoft to sell. Earlier this month, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo and Fujitsu Siemens told ZDNet UK that they were not going to pre-load XP Reduced Media Edition either. Well what a surprise - NOT!!

I can not work out why anyone could not see what was going to happen here. The EC could probably not tell MS what to charge for this edition, so of course MS is going to charge the same price for a media player-less version as for the media player included version fo XP! As a MS spokesman was quoted as saying : "This is consistent with the Commission Decision, as confirmed by European Commission's statements and releases which acknowledge that Microsoft is permitted to offer the products at the same price. It is noteworthy that media players are generally made available for free via web downloads." Well yes - most geeks I know download the latest version(s) of their favourite media player and do not rely on what's in the box!

As I explained last week to Patrick De Smedt, Chairman of Microsoft EMEA, any serious audio fan was never going to use what was shipped in Windows XP RTM for several reasons. Personally, I download winamp (mainly to be able to play the terra bytes of lossles FLAC and SHN concerts I have collected). Until recently Windows Media Player had no plug-ins for SHN/FLAC making Winamp the only game in town for us DeadHeads! And if I was going to use MS's media player product, I'd sure as heck just download the latest verison on the web site! I love Media player for playing pre-recorded web casts as you can speed up the playback (great for watching Jim Alchin!). And for those consumers less picky about what they use to play music, how is a media-player-less edition any use to them at all (espeically at the same price)? All in all, it's a penalty that does nothing to help consumers, and just costs a lot (although it's minly MS that are picking up the tab).

Google Earth

While we're waiting for Microsoft to release the next IE beta, or to announce the certification changes, I wandered over to Google's site and downloaded Google Earth. It's a full earth mapping application and is a bit of fun! I can pretty clearly see my house out in the country, but can't quite make out whether my car was in the car park at the time or if the grass was mowed.

The basic Google Earth package is free (it's in beta, no idea whether it'll stay free at release), with a Google Earth Plus version selling at $US20, and a Google Earth Pro version at $US400. The Plus version enables you to upload GPS information, import spread sheets (e.g. of houses on the market). The Pro version is "leveraged by a variety of industries".

New MS Certifications

I've just had mail detailing the new Microsoft certifications. Once I am certain this information is no longer NDA, I'll be publishing more, including my initial views of the certs. Watch this space...

Monad-MSH - Two upcomming webcasts

Microsoft is planning on doing a "Best of TechEd 2005" Webcast series over the summer. Jeffrey Snover will be doing two sessions on Monad-MSH. For those who were at TechEd, Jeffrey was only able to get through a small portion of the his talk. With this wecast, he should be able to take advantage of the 3 hours to run the full talk!

Here are the links to the web casts:

TechNet Webcast: Next Generation Command Line Scripting using Monad (Part 1)

TechNet Webcast: Next Generation Command Line Scripting using Monad (Part 2 of 2)

Enjoy!!!

Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) for Agile Software Development, Beta 2

You can download Beta 2 of the Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) for Agile Software Development.

MSF is going to change quite radically in the coming months. There will be two versions, MSF Agile, and MSF "Formal", otherwise known as MSF For CMMI Process Improvement. It appears that the guys from the silly names department seem to have been at work again (but as I sometimes get paid by the word, I can't grumble too much)

Details of MSF Agile are up on the web site, and are being baked in to Visual Studio. Details of MSF Formal have not been disclosed yet, and neither have details on MSF Certficication (at both practitioner and MCT levels) and certification training. One MS spokesman suggested this information would be available at product launch in November. We'll see how long after launch is required to deliver the training, certification, etc.

GrokTalks - 10 minute micro-presentations

The GrokTalks recorrded by the MSDN Regional Directors at MS Teched Orlando are now complete. Head over to w.grokalk.net/blog to see the full set. My talk on Wix is here!

PatentMojo - Patents in the USA

This site: PatentMojo is very interesting. It enabled you to keep an eye on new US patents. As IP (intellectual property not Internet Protocol) becomes more and more important in the technical field, so does the value of knowing who's doing what. PatentMojo offers links, RSS feeds, and a personal portal, ith links to the United States Patent Office and to individual patent applications. Sadly, I can't yet find any of my Dad's patents on there, but I'm looking!

More on WMI Scripting With MSH

In my last blog post, I got quite excited about the ability to do WMI scripting from MSH. That post generated a lot of feedback - Mark Allen's post was, as ever on the money. No, I was not trying to say short is better because it's short. APL proved that readability was more important than pure brevity. But what impressed me about WMI scripting using MSH was that it is so easy and obvious when compared to VBScript. I can see that part of my message was lost when the mail to blog translation happened - the script examples looked a lot better in my mail than they did when first rendered on this site. I've tidied up the layout a bit on that post to make the intention clearer.

I also got mail from the MSH development team pointing out I could have made the scripts shorter still, They are, of course, right! The two scripts I posted were meant to show a straightforward comparision between WMI scripts on the Script Centre, and ones you could easily write with MSH. I was trying to show MSH scripts were shorter, simpler to understand and faster/easier to develop.

Of course if you want terseness, the following script prints out the logged on user, all in one one line (well one line when I typed it!):

foreach ($comp in Get-WmiObject Win32_ComputerSystem -comp "kapoho61") {"Logged-on user: $($comp.UserName)"}

Or to simplify every further, here's an even simpler "script":

$(get-WmiObject Win32_ComputerSystem -comp "kapoho61").UserName

So to answer Mark Allen - no, I'm not advocating shortness just for the sake of it. For any production script, you have to have readibilty (and comments) and adopt a simple to maintain style. But when it's a simple as the examples here and before, you can see how much easier MSH can make both scripting WMI and scripting in general. What continues to amaze me about MSH is that there are so many ways to achieve the same end - and just about all of them shorter, and simpler than VBScript.

WMI Scripting with MSH

If MSH is to become the next best scripting thing, then its got to enable a number of different scenarios. One use of MSH is to do WMI scripting - using MSH get access to WMI objects, properties and methods.

I started by looking at the [truly amazing!] TechNet script centre, which has a large number of existing WMI scripts. As it turns out, it's surprisingly easy to write WMI scripts, once you master the differences between VBscript and Monad!

The first script I tackled is at: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/scripts/desktop/logon/dmlgv b02.mspx

'-----------
strComputer = "atl-ws-o1"
Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:" _
& "{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2")

Set colComputer = objWMIService.ExecQuery _ ("Select * from Win32_ComputerSystem")
For Each objComputer in colComputer
Wscript.Echo "Logged-on user: " & objComputer.UserName
Next
'------------

In MSH this is just 3 lines:

$strComputer = "kapoho61"
$colComputer = get-wmiObject win32_computersystem -comp $strComputer
foreach ($comp in $colcomputer){"Logged-on user: " + $comp.username}

8 lines into 3 - not bad!

My second attempt was to reproduce http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/scripts/desktop/logon/dmlgv b01.mspx

'-------------- strComputer = "."
Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:" _
& "{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2")
Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery("Select * from Win32_LogonSession")
For Each objItem in colItems
Wscript.Echo "Authentication Package: " & objItem.AuthenticationPackage
Wscript.Echo "Logon ID: " & objItem.LogonId
Wscript.Echo "Logon Type: " & objItem.LogonType
Wscript.Echo "Start Time: " & objItem.StartTime
Wscript.Echo
Next
'--------------

Becomes:

$strComputer = "kapoho61"
$colComputer = get-wmiObject win32_LogonSession -comp $strComputer
foreach ($comp in $colcomputer) {"Authentication Package: " + comp.AuthencationPackage
"Login ID: " + $comp.LogonId
"Login Type: " + =$comp.LogonType
"Start Time: " + $comp.StartTime}

11 lines into 6.

All in all - this WMI scripting stuff looks to be easy in MSH. What would be really cool now is for someone to create a msh-scriptomatic.hta (to mimic the scroptomatic.hta currently available). I just wish I was better at HTAs.

MSH Rocks!!

(submitted by email - apologies for layout!)

Getting MSH Beta 1

MSH, the Microsoft shell, is now in beta. The beta is open, and details were posted at TechEd, sans NDA restrictions. To get this beta:

1. Go to http://beta.microsoft.com and login with your Microsoft passport.

2. At the top of the beta place home page, click the appropirate spot to enter your Guest ID.

3.At the Welcome to Microsoft Beta page, enter mshPDC as the guest id, then click OK.

4. At the Welcome to Guest Access page, click Microsoft Command Shell Preview.

5. On the "Welcome.......to the Command Shell (msh) preview program!" page, select the survey and fill this out.

Once the survey if all filled out and submitted, your access should be granted within 48 hours (but should come quicker). You can then return to Betaplace and download the msh bits.

I'd argue every sysadmin in the world should download this beta and give it a spin. There is still some time to affect the shape of this fantastic product. So get it, use it, file bugs on it - and come on over to the beta newsgroups and comment.

And if you are unsure what to look at, here's some suggestions of things to think about, play with and comment on:

1. Do the -confirm and -whatif keywords make sense, are they useful?

2. Can you take existing scripts and convert them. Scripts include cmd, perl, python, shell, or vbscript.

3. How easy is it to debug a script? Can more help be provided and if so how?

4. Try writing a cmdlete - and document your successes andd pain.

5. Update format/types - how easy was this. How intuitive?

6. Try piping as many cmdlets to/between each other. MS can not test every combination so you need to try to find any misfits.

7. Try parsing XML documents. Is this obvious, hard? What could me made easier?

8. Write scripts that use WMI - for example a script to gather information about machines in your domain or subnet.

In my view, this is a fantastic opportunity for admins. It's rare that we get the chance to comment on the development of a major new management tool. While most things in V1 are fairly well locked down, but the team really wants feedback (and in my experience responds to it!). So go do it.

MSH Beta 1 Ships

Microsoft has shipped the Beta 1 version of the Monad-MSH shell. You need to have .NET Framework Beta 2 loaded as well. I'm downloading now!

[later that night...]

Well - I've got it downloaded. There's a good 74-page getting started document, which mirrors Jeffrey's outstanding TechEd talk (which was 5th highest rated overall!). I certainly recognise the flow! It's time to start self hosting.

ActiveWin.com breaks the New Microsoft MVP Program Logo

In an article titled New Microsoft MVP Program Logo, the new MVP logo is disclosed. I find it absurd, and boardeing on offencive, that MS are seriously suggesting that this logo somehow is the way that the programme is profesionalised. There was nothing wrong with the old logo and nothing unprofessional with the old programme (except of course that MS did not own the logo and the lawyers could not control it). It was different, but then so is the MVP programme.

Fortunately, MS are not going to be asking me for all the swag branded with the soon to be deceased logo, I have several bags, mice, watch, etc, etc,etc - plus a huge array of shirts! At least I hope not!

But why does any company, in this case Microsoft that dropping old stuff, and replacing it with new stuff is necessarily the best way forward? From where I sit, the old logo was not broken - and I'd have rather the huge sum that was spent (brandeing is NEVER cheap) sent to feed the starving in Africa. There is one good thing though - based on this 'professional' logo, I now realise I DO have good graphic design skills. :-)

Book: Enterprise Services with the .NET Framework

This book was waiting for me when I got back from TechEd. Written by fellow Regional Director Christian Nagle, this is just the best book I've read on this topic and one of the best I've read on .NET itself. It's gives some background, explains the topics clearly and contains good examples and samples.

As an IT Pro, I've found it very difficult to get 'into' some of the deeper aspects of .NET and development on the MS Platform. I'm a network guy, used to talking to Admins, support staff and infrastructure architecture. Although I have spent time on a couple of OS projects, and can write a bit of code, I'm basically NOT a developer. It seems to me that most books these days are written by and for developers.

Reading David Platt's Introduction to .NET, especially the first edition, was a great start for me. It's the first technical book that I've ever read cover to cover, and when I finished it, started reading it again. I've also read most of the latest version (but mainly because David signed my copy!). But because it was aimed as an introduction, it ran out of steam for me and I needed more. I find myself today, able to read and write a bit of C#, and able to understand things at a basic level - I can even watch Ari Bixhorn show Indigo code and get what he talking about at a high level. But if I dive into MSDN, or watch some of the depth level webcasts, etc - there are sentences that I just don't fully understand (yet). Of course, as an IT Pro haven't needed to understand this stuff!

In summary this book explains a lot of things, and gets me closer to a fuller understanding and for that I'm grateful. For example, I'm starting to understand what apartments are (as opposed to how to specify them in the registry!)

What this book suggests is that there is probably a need for more on .NET framework from the point of view of someone who is not a depth developer but wants to understand more. In summary, this is a good book for IT Pros to take a look at and to better understand the Enterprise Services with .Net.

Microsoft Acrylic Technology Beta

J've not yet got Microsoft Acrylic Technology Beta downloaded yet, but it looks pretty cool. Go here to download the beta (NB you will need to sign in with Passport and you need XP SP2).

Microsoft Office XML Document Formats

Microsoft has announced plans to make XML the native format for Office 12 documents. To understand this and an overview to what these documents look like, MS has just published the Microsoft Office Open XML Formats Architecture Guide.

In essence, these new documents cab/zip files. So a word 12 document will be called .docx, but can be opened, viewed, and changed with WinZip. Each of these cab files contains mainly XML files, but also other files representing embedded resources. Thus, the structure of a OLE compound document (i.e. old style doc) has been exposed as a zip file, with the constituent parts (what used to be streams in the compound documents) surfaced as native OS file types.

The result is that instead of using complex tools such as OLEVIEW to see inside a compound file, and using developing complex (and sometimes non-perfect) programming operations to manage the file, you can use WinZip to open, view and manage the contents of a docx file using native OS tools. Better yet, you can use command line tools to do document management.

This change makes it possible for you to write simple, but very, very powerful add-ins, or bolt-ons, to Office 12. Consider a development project that has lots of specs containing lots of bitmaps (i.e. the UI design) where these compound docs are now docx documents. It would be relatively simple (at least compared to OLE compound documents), to write code to open a .docx in a folder, search for the table of contents, then look directly for the sub-documents you want, e.g. all the bitmaps used in the spec set. You could then just dump this to a folder somewhere. With Monad-MSH such a script could probably be written in half a dozen lines. Heck, you could probably add a few more lines to the script to to make a NEW .docx with just the individual bit maps, add in the index information, generate an xref, etc. And for what can't be done in Monad-MSH, there's always VB.NET or C#.

This change of format types really opens up access to the components of an Office document. This makes it incredibly easy to manage the contents of a document. MS said at TechEd that one big source of errors in Office documents (i.e. ones leading to a support call!) are the add-ins to Office that usually work great (but not always). Managing OLE Compound documents was always complex, and the idea of implementing this structure directly into the OS (NSS for those who remember this!), was never released. So, instead of implementing a complex document in an easy to corrupt (and hard to fix) binary format, implement it with old tried and trusted tools (WinZip, notepad, et al). As an IT Pro, I might now be able to fix (or better salvage) damaged documents. This is cool - and it also opens up the possibility of some incredible fusion.

Finally, a few of questions. First with this new structure, why there are different programs (word, excel, ppt, etc)? This new paradigm should allow one program (Office) to do it all. As I open new document types, Office just brings in the parts I need and adds the relevant components to the zip file. As I embed other things inside the document (dropping an excel spreadsheet into a report, bringing a ppt slide to an excel spread sheet, with a link to a live video feed), it would adapt - the base document just getting a more complex TOC, and more components getting added to the zip file. Second, does this pave the way for putting basic Office functionality directly into the OS? Given the idea of adding basic workflow to Windows at some point (i.e. WinOE), why not also add some basic document management as well? You could layer an office document management interface on top of or to the side of WinOE. This could simplify the creation of basic workflow objects in an Office based productivity solution. The possibilities here are significant. And finally, does this mean you can author office documents in Notepad and WinZip? I can't wait for Office 12 beta!!

MSDN Nuggets - more short talks from MS

I like the idea of technical content wrapped up in short, easy to digest peices - long webcasts are just too hard to watch without switching off. MS has been publishing a series of these called MSDN Nuggets. You can sream individual talks (each is in the 10-20 minute range) or better yet, download a talk or even a month's worth as a zip file and watch them at your leisure. Individual talks range in size from around 2.5MB to over 5, while the months' download is around 40MB (April's is shorter at around 25MB). For folks looking to fill in the gaps, this is a cool idea.

[LATER]

I should point out these talks are from Microsoft UK. :-)

GrokTalks - 10 minute micro-presentations

This is cool - GrokTalks - 10 minute micro-presentations by Microsoft Regional Directors. These are a seres of short talks given at the RD booth at TechEd Orlando. They are short, to the point and focused. Patrick Hynd's presentation on the risks of service accounts was cool - and his tool looks good too, although not all that different from Lieberman's Service Account Manager product. I did a talk on WIX, which should appear on the site in the next few days.

Microsoft Certified Architect Program

At TechEd last week, MS was disclosing more information on the new Microsoft Certified Architect. They also providemore information on the Microsoft Certified Architect Program home page. This page also provides links to the program and to architecture itself, including links to the Microsoft Architecture Resource Center, architecture related blogs, etc.

The Certified Architect certification is the archstone in Microsoft's new look certification program. The requiremnts for this certification include at least 10 or more years of experience and both deep technical and broad leadership skills. Unlike all other MS certifications, this credential is not earned by passing multiple-guess exams. Successful candidates pass a rigorous review board with previously certified architects. It's just like the old MSF exams - I don't recall any paper MSF trainers in those days {grin}

I am looking forward to this new certification. It makes a lot of sense. There will not be a lot of candidates, well successful ones anyway - MS is guessing a few thousand over the first few years. Getting this cert should and is planned to be hard. The cool thing for me is that it is based on peer review, much like the upcoming Microsoft Certified Learning Consultant certification. If the MSF experience is anything to go by, there are unlikley to be paper MCAs - which can only be a good thing for the cert itself, and the program that is ultimately to support it.

Windows Server 2003 R2 - Order it now

For those not on the R2 beta, MS is offering the chance to order the Preview Trial version. Go to Windows Server 2003 R2 order page and sign up. The cost (at least for here in the UK!) is FREE!

In a recent blog entry, I noted the Regional Director TechEd Charity Auction. There's only a few days left on this E-Bay auction, so come on over and put in a bid. As I write this, the cost of an hour of an RDs time is US$35 - what a bargain!

Monad MSH rolls on

I've written several blog articles about Monad-MSH. Today at Teched Orlando, the architect of Monad-MSH, Jeffrey Snover, has given a break out session and a cabanna talk on this tool. Monad (the languge) and MSH (the shell itself) represents perhaps Microsoft's most innovative products to emerge in many years. I could wax poetically about just how cool this product is but that's what the talk was for!!

Microsoft is planning on delivereing a new beta drop on June 20th, so beta testers will be seeing this very soon. If you are NOT currently a beta tester: Go to http://beta.microsoft.com and sign in with a Microsoft passport. Then logon to the site using the guest ID: mshPDC, select Microsoft Command Shell and select/complete the Survey in the left column. Access to the beta should be granted within 48 hours.

Jeffery noted, and it was explicitly NOT under NDA, that Monad-MSH will ship as part of Exchange 12 (in 2006), as well as WinFX. There's also the distinct possibility that it'll get into Longhorn client, although that is not yet confirmed.

Microsoft ditches MCSE credentials

Microsoft has decided to drop the all the current Microsoft Certified credentials, including MCSE, MCSA, MCDBA, etc. In the future there will be three key credentials: Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist, Microsoft Certified IT Professional, and Microsoft Certified Architect. Fuller details will be announced in June at the Certified Partner conference.

Having invested years and years of time and money in the MCSE brand, it's going. Admittedly, MS say 'we not abandoning MCSE/MCSE - but we are looking into transition". As one of of the first MCSEs in the world, I'm not exited - yet. More details will emerge soon.

Windows Server Update Services Information site

Scott Korman, well known software distribution MVP has setup a new site for WSUS & SUS . If you want more information about these products, or participate in the forums, head on over.

The Tech*Ed Charity Auction for Aceh Recovery at IDEP

A group of Regional Directors and MS employees are doing another charity auction. The auction is up on eBay and closes at Jun-16-05 08:00:00 PDT. This is a great cause - so bid today and get an hour of a guru's time.

WSUS RTMs!

I'm at TechEd Orlando today, and on entry to Steve Ballmer's Keynote, we were given copies of Windows Server Update Services. Not had a chance to check it out yet, so I can't say how many of the issues noted on WSUS Wiki have been resolved - but it's at RTM.

POPFile - Another anti-spam POP mail filter

In a recent blog entry, I wrote about a neat little tool for anti-spam, Spam Shredder. A comment (thanks Andy) to that post recommended POP File, a free tool that does the same thing. I've now downloaded POPFILE, and it's cool. Like Spam Shredder, it's essentially a service that acts as a POP3 proxy. It uses a Bayes engine to identify and tag posts as spam or other things.

POPFile has a couple of neat features. First, it allows you to train the engine to recognise not only spam, but any traffic and place the mails into a 'bucket'. Each bucket allows you to specify whether to modify the subject header (adding [bucket-name] to the header), or to add extra header fields when the mail is passed from POPFile to your mail client. Based on these actions, you can then use your mail client to filter the traffic into folders. I've created three buckets (WORK, PERSONAL and GOOGLE) for stuff I want, and a two further buckets (SPAM and DNs) for real spam and those delivery bounces that are usually spam.

Unlike Spam Shredder, PopFile only supports one mail server. Bur all in all, I find it a nice product. Since installation, it's accuracy has stedily grown - it's currently around 90% after 2 days of training.

TechEd 2005 Grok Talks

This year at TechEd Orlando, the MS Regional Directors are offering a series of short and sweet talks - Grok Talks. The idea is that in 10 minutes, the presenter can drill down into a subject and convey a few key points. </p><p>

I'll be doing one on WIX - Windows Installer XML. If anyone wants copies of the slides, email me at grok@psp.co.uk and I'll send them out, along with the demo files.

Off to TechEd 2005 in Orlando

In a few hours, I'm off to Teched 2005 in Orlando. I'm giving a talk to the MCT track on MSF and MOF, plus giving one of the Regional Director Grok Talks on the WiX tool kit. Two technologies I'm planning to take a closer look at are the new Office 12 XML native format and MSH-Monad.

And speaking of MSH-Monad, I've been able to see Jeffrey Snover's slides for his talk on Friday. I can't wait for that. It looks like MSH-Monad is pretty much complete, in terms of the basic language, and all we're waiting for now is the decision as to how MS is planning on shipping it. Hopefully all will be revealed on Friday!

Spam Shredder

I've been working with Webroot Software's Spam Shredder product. Spam Shreder (SS) is a program that runs on your PC and is in effect a semi-transparent POP3 mail proxy that passes through just the non-spam messages.

After installation, you configure SS to point to your real POP3 server but without any authentication details. You then point your mail client to your own computer (127.0.0.1) but to a special port that's opened by Spam Shreder. Your mail client then connects to SS thinking it's the real POP 3 server - SS just passes the authentication details direct from your client through to the real POP 3 server.

As SS gets each mail from the real POP3 server, the message is analysed and if NOT spam, it gets delivered. If SS thinks the message really is spam, it passes your mail client a dummy message which you can just throw away. The reason for this is simple: when your mail client asks the server for how many messages exist, SS can't know how many are spam - so it's got to send one message to the mail client for every message on the server. In my case, I just drop the dummy message.

Interestingly, although SS installs to a local machine, and appears to be just local, it does work across the network. I pointed my mail client on my laptop to SS running on my workstation, specifying the special port created by SS. It is a little slow, and I find my mail client sometimes times out and drops the connection to SS.

SS itself quarentines suspect mails - you can view the quarentine and ask SS to deliver non spam messages - or delete the rest. You also get a list of mail delivered, which you can tell SS is or is NOT spam, and the more spam it gets the more accurate it becomes. SS also has white/black lists - so some senders can get straight through, while black listed senders do not.

My results are pretty good. Thus far, there have been a couple of false positives, but out or a total of 244 mails, 2 were false positives, and 151 were dropped as spam. The two that were false positives were ones that came from a mailing list, contained lots of HTML and other junk. Both false positives were put onto the white list so won't be dropped again.

I'll have to do a more thorough test over the coming days. Oh - and the cost is $29.95.

Details of IIS7 begin to emerge

Like Robert McLaws, I've seen IIS7 a couple of times over the past few months, but could not disclose much about it. But now the lid's off, and some folks have started! See href="http://www.longhornblogs.com/robert/archive/2005/05/25/14114.aspx">Robert McLaws blogs about IIS7 for more on IIS7. I agree that it is looking very cool.

Microsoft Delivers New Tools to Help Reduce Spam

Microsoft yesterday announced new toosl to help reduce spam. First, there's the MSN Postmaster web site, http://postmaster.msn.com/ which was "developed to give bulk e-mailers/senders, ISPs, e-mail service providers (ESPs), postmasters, and domain administrators a location to learn more about issues and solutions related to sending communications to MSN Hotmail consumers."

The second feature is known as Smart Network Data Services, (SNDS). SNDS generates reports on the mail traffic that is sent to MSN Hotmail and Hotmail customers. This can help an ISP, for example, to deteming the volume of e-mail being sent from its IP space to MSN Hotmail, how that e-mail is impacted by MSN Hotmail spam filtering, and what percentage of its e-mail has been marked as spam by MSN Hotmail and MSN customers. This can help the ISP to take appropriate action in cases of zombies, or spammers using their network to send bulk spam.

PC Pro: News: Vodafone introduces revolutionary 'simple' mobile phone

PC Pro reports that Vodafone introduces a revolutionary 'simple' mobile phone. It's just a phone. It's not a PDA, not a mini-laptop, not a mini-tv. It's a phone. What a concept - a phone that's just a phone!

Phone Bill Traps Man

In USA Today, there is a report of a man trapped overnight in a lift due to nonpayment of a phone bill. The man was working in a government building over the weekend, went to the lift which broke down and he became stuck. The emergency phone did not work because the phone bill had not been paid. And the emergency bell wasn't much good since there was no one in the building to hear it. He eventually got out when a cleanign crew arrived

Not a great way to spend the evening. But it does drive home the importance of paying your bills on time. As it turns out, the phone company appears partly at fault as they sent the bill to the wrong place.

Google Toolbar 3.0 beta

A beta for the latest version of the Google tool bar has been released as a web download (just over 500kb). PC magazine has a review of the beta which looks nice! When I used IE as my main browser I found the Google tool bar a great add-in, but as I now mainly use FireFox, this tool bar, which is IE only, is less useful. ill, it's nice that there are some nice new features. One I especially like is the spell checker for web forms. When I do blog entries for http://securitybiz.blog.co.uk, for example, their web based blog engine has no spell checker, so the spell checker would be useful.

This blog has had a fair number of mentions about Google lately. I guess that's because they are constantly pumping out cool stuff. Google certainly is doing some interesting things. It's no wonder MS is a little nervous about them.

And Speaking of Google

Google's featured a lot in this blog of late. It's not really intentional, maybe it's because they're doing interesting things. The Google story on Forbes Magazine's site is very interesting. It gives some insight into Microsoft's battle in the search engine space. It's quite a long article, but worth the read.

Google's famed chef leaving

Life must be hard for Google Employees. Silicon Beat reportrs that Google's famed chef is leaving.

Google's Portal Page

Google's experimental Portal Page is good enough for your home page. Released earlier this week, the /ig page provides you with a good browser home page. It appears like the world and her brother have blogged this - so if you haven't seen it yet, head over and check it out. Most of the features, however, appear to be US only (e.g weather requries a US zip code, etc).

Calypso Wireless Dual Mode WiFi-GPRS Phones to be distributed in the UK

Now this sounds incredibly cool - a handset that will switch seamlesslly between GPRS and WLAN. BUSINESS WIRE reports that US company Calypso Wireless, Inc has done a deal with Franc Telecom, Ltd. to distribute real time two way video conferencing broadband WiFi-GSM/GPRS mobile telephones in the UK by the 4th quarter of this year.

I want one!

Format Utility for USB Drive from HP

HP have released a Windows-based Format Utility for HP Drive Key or DiskOnKey USB Device to make the drive bootable. It works on other USB sticks too!

GMail Drive Shell Extension

This utterly cool powertoy, GMail Drive shell extension 1.0.5, creates a new drive on your system, mapped to your gmail account. You can now store up to you 2gb limit on line for free.

And you think your job is bad?

I came across the My Worst Call of the Day blog today. The writer is a custoemr service rep and has some incredibly, umm, "interesting" callers.

60 companies want to wire up the Tube

The Register reports that 60 companies want to wire up the London Underground. The only place in London where you don't here those awful Nokia ring tones - but not for long.

ServerMask: Improve IIS Security

One feature of IIS that has often been requested is some way of removing all traces of the server version. If you surf to www.psp.co.uk, the server rather gives away what version of IIS is running. Doing a get on my site produces, inter alia, the following headers:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET

Knowing that this site is runing IIS 5 tells the potential cracker a lot about the OS that's runnning (i.e. Windows 2000) and therefore what attacks may work, or which do not work on that platform.

Port80's ServerMask product strips off the banners indicating what version of IIS you are running. Which in turn just adds another layer of protection to your defense in depth strategy.

Phishers Tell the Truth!

Several pieces of phish/spam hit my email box today - with perhaps the most truthful subject line I've seen in a long time: "We just offer to you take your MONEY!" Yup - were I to go to their phishing site, all they can offer me is to take my money! I wonder how many suckers they'll get on this one?

Two More QA Bloggers

I'm pleased to see two of my QA coleagues are now blogging. James Winters, for his sins is into Java but also .NET, has just started a blog, entitled Architect or Cobbler? James joins QA Principal Technolgist David Wheeler who also publishes a blog titled .NET and other stories.

Both blogs are pretty developer oriented, and require the reader to be able to read a bit of code! James has started looking at Indigo, while Dave is writing longer pieces on (at the moment) Windows Forms. Interesting reading!

Paint.NET - A free image and photo manipulation program

Tue latest update to Paint.NET has just been released. It's available for free download under the MIT License.

256GB Ram Chips

I can't tell if this is just an April Fool's joke, or real - but idea of 256GB NON-VOLITILE RAM chips is pretty neat. It's more than large enough to replace a hard disk - and just think of the potential battery life without the hard disk spinning.

But take a look at the two laptops the company has announced:an ultra lite Tablet pc that sounds a bit too good to be true: 100GB/256GB AtomChip NVRAM and Storage, 4.0GHz AtomChip CPU, 8.9" 16:9 wide view color TOSHIBA LTPS TFT LCD with (32-bit) 1024 x 600 (XGA-W ) high resolution display, with tablet capabilities. There's a slighly larger laptop with similar specc although a small-ish screen (but with all the other goodies one could want). The site does not appear to display prices so no idea on that.

WPA2 comes to Windows XP

As most IT Pros know, Wireless Encryption Protocol (WEP) as originally designed is not very secure. While better than nothing, it's not a great deal better and is easily cracked. In a great Cable Guy article, The Cable Guy (aka Joe Davies) explains WPA2 in the latest installment of his monthly TechNet column. A great introduction to WPA2. And there's an update to Windows XPSP2 to allow you to use WPA2.

[later]

I agree with the point Barry makes in the comments: you need up to date drivers for your network cards. Not all manufacturers are totally up to speed.

Online Communities - Myth or Reality?

The eLearning network are holding a conference on On-Line Communities. Lorna Williamson, from Microsoft, is one of the speakers and I'll be on stage as part of her presentation, discusising the MVP programme. For more information on the conference, see the eLearning Network future conference page.

Foxpro 1.04

On May 9th, Mozilla issued a security advisory citing two critical flaws in Firefox 1.03 (the shipping version). An updated version 1.04 is now available from the FireFox download page. If you run FireFox, upgrade now!

WinDirStat - a tool for looking at directories

Thanks to a post over on Benjaman Mitchel's blog, I took a look at WinDirStat. A pretty cool program that looks through the folders on a volume and displays the results in traditional directory listing format, but also as set of prettily coloured rectangles sized according to the size of the actual folder. THis is shown on Ben's blog (I'd include a picture here, but it's huge!).

Private IM and Blogs for Teams

Combine the concepts of communities, blogging, IM and outsourcing, blend in a bit of small project ethos, and you might come up with ubergroups.com - On-demand IM and blogs for teams, as they style themselves.

The idea is that a group shares a privte IM and blog space. The blogs can be the ideas one team member has for his/her area, some sample code. I've not played with it, but I imagine that with a little customisation, blogs could even be spec or actual code repositories. There are adhoc and permanent chat rooms - with logs that can be used to document agreement on some action or other, or just for other folks to look at (e.g. for compliance). Team members can be around the globe and need no client software aside from a browser that can do SSL. All traffic to ubergroups is based on 128-bit SSL, with a Thawate cert.

Having had a play, the fim seems based in the US, on the west coast. There seems no option to adjust the time zone. Speed is not too bad, but the features do appear a bit on the light side. Cost, for works at a $5/user per month (for 11+ users ), and a bit less for fewer users. See their pricing page for details.

UK Security Blog

A new security business blog: http://securitybiz.blog.co.uk. Comments?

Microsoft makeover gives Longhorn a red face

I hope this is a joke, but over at Silicon.com, Jo Best reports that Microsoft has given Longhorn a red face. I suppose that's one way to get rid of Blue Screens Of Death. See a picture here and read Mary Jo's take here.

MBSA 2.0 Web Cast

MS has announced both the MBSA 2.0 beta, but has also announced a MBSA Webcast. Sadly, it's at 11:00 Redmond time, which means 19:00 here in the UK, but the web cast should be available for download later.

Locking Down Devices

In two blog entries (here and here), I described the issues and one small solution, to the problem of removable device security. And Mitch Tulloch also wrote about the basic issue.

My original article was about the issues of locking down USB devices, which I thought at the time was key issue. But actually, the issues over portable devices extend beyond just USB thumb drives - it includes access to floppy disks, wi/fi devices, serial/parallell/usb/firewire ports, etc - anything a user can plug in. The question is how do you restrict people who shoudn't use external devices from doing so, while allowing those who should to have only their appropriate access? It's one more security nightmare, especially as Mitch points out, if XP has a driver for the device, an unprivaleged user can simply plug it in and away they go.

In a blog article for the UK Security Business Blog, I took a look at one solution: Ecora's DeviceLock. It has an Auditing Capability to audit user activity for a particular device type, a nice management tool, Group Policy integration and the ability to communicate through the firewall. The costs are $35/host (based on 1-49 hosts, off the US web site - UK firms would presumably need to add VAT). I assume deals can be done for larger numbers, or multinationals, etc.

Interestingly, after posting this article, I discovered another product called DeviceLock from a company called Slimline, the author of the product sold by Ecora. And for more information, TechRepublic has an on-line review of this product. From my quick calculations, the prices on SlimLine's web site are lower than Ecora's.

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Auditor Live-CD

As noted in a recent blog entry, I've been playing around with some Linux-based live-cds (CDs you can boot from without having to install Linux on your machine). Auditor is one live cd I downloaded and ran up on my Dell Inspiron 8600. I used a Toshiba PCMCIA (orinoco gold) card and within a few minutes, I had kismet up and running and sniffing traffic and could also use many of the other tools. Sadly, I can't seem to get Auditor to run on my old Dell Lattitude.

Auditor is based on Knoppix, and contains over 300 security tools, including kismet, air crack and many others. The authors have also set up some forums for support and guidance on the tool set. All in all, a pretty cool set of tools that work out of the box!

Security "LiveCDs"

The Register has an interesting article entitled Live CD paradise which describes the growing number of Linux LiveCDs - bootable Linux images. The cool thing about some of the security focused LiveCDs is is that they contain a huge array of security tools all one simple package. And as the CDs are bootable, you can run them directly on your laptop (or desktop) without having to load any OS software. You can find a full list of Live CDs at The Live CD List, which shows hundreds of ditros you can download and use pretty much immediately. Sixteen of the listed downloads are security related.

The Register's article discusses 5 separate security LiveCDs, including Knoppix and Auditor. According to the Register's article, Audiotr comes complete with working wireless sniffing tools (e.g. Kismet) that work out of the box - just boot your CD and so long as your wireless card is supported you can start sniffing. As soon as I've downloaded this CD, I'll be testing it out!

Ads On Blogs

I've been working with Google's AdSense programme over the past few days. As eagle-eyed readers might have noticed, I've changed the left hand column on the blog, and have added a Google Search Bar and a set of 4 simple text ads. The intention is not to make money - I'm not allowed to tell you how lucrative or otherwise Google AdSense is anyway. Rather, my intention is to experiment with the medium and see how well it works (or not). I'm also interested in how well the ads match up in a web log (since the latter changes hopefuly on a fairly regular basis). I'd welcome comments by mail to tfl-google@psp.co.uk.

The Flying Unix Blog - Go Alina!

Alina, one of my most valued colleges, has started up her Flying Unix blog. As a Unix person who flys light aeroplanes, I understand her blog title but others might not!

In her latest article Good for you, Amazon Alina points out a book she bought for information on Solaris 10 that was less than satisfactory, and what Amazon did in response. Good for you Alina - in pointing out where the upgrade was covered more in the title page than anywhere, and good for Amazon to deal with a poor book.

For Those Paranoid About Wireless

In many buildings I've visited in London, Manchester and Edinburgh, I've found one or more wireless networks belonging to firms other than the one I was visiting. I've also found any number of wide open private wireless networks scattered around the place. In my own firm's head office, just outside the Chairman's office, I regularly see a network belonging to another firm. These other networks my laptop can see are, in the main, "protected" by the use of WEP, but some are wide open (or have a WEP key the same as the SSID). And with a bit of web suring, you might discover that certain firms have a standard SSID and WEP key for all their sites, which makes getting onto these networks trivial when you can stand outside and just leech the signal. In additon to the 802.11 networks, there are also bluetooth devices andd IR based devices in a number of public or semi public areas that are also potentially vulnerable.

So what's to be done? Several things really. First, as far as 802.11 goes, you should be investing in more advanced wireless security products as well as the use of smart cards, etc. WEP is easy to crack for the dedicated hacker who loads up a Linux laptop, and uses readily available tools. And since most firms using standard WEP are not likely to change WEP keys that often, WEP really is not adequate for preventing much more than casual usage attempts. For a look at the tools available, or perhaps to scare yourself silly as to how easy this might be, Google is your friend.

The use of WPA etc, make cracking 802.11 networks harder, but if you can avoid any RF signal from entering or leaving your site, you reduce if not emiminate the risks from the passer by attacker. A US firm, Force Field Wireless has several products aimed at helping you to reduce the RF emisions. Their DefendAir Radio Shield paint, or your own paint mixed with Paint Additive, reduces the RF transmission through any paintable surface. With a few coats, you get little or no useful RF emsssions through walls, ceilings, etc. This might be an ideal product for use in a board room - although remember that the RF spectrum that is eliminated includes cell phones! And an office with no cell phones ringing is not all bad.

For the even more paranoid, a UK firm, Glasslock has special glass to reduce the the risk of evedropping via the glass.

These things are not a particularly cheap way of doing things. The paint additive is US$34.95 enough to mix with 1 gallon of your own paint, or buy ready mixed paint at US$69.95/US Gallon (128 fl oz). But there are places and uses for these things. And besides, even if you aren't paranoid, they're probably still out there looking to get to you, your network and your data.

Free Fonts

The FontShop regularly features some free fonts you can download. From their Fre Fonts page, you can download several free fonts. Today the fonts include: Arnhem Bold (a nice bold serifed font), FF Nexus Sans Bold (a gold sans serifed font), Blackcurrant Cameo (a cute font but not for every day use) and FF Dingbests (a selectio of dignbap fonts - pictograms that can ve useful in a variety of communicatios).

FireFox Passes 50 Million Downloads

When I rebuilt my laptop after a hardware refresh, I added the TickerFox extension - a download counter odometer extension. This extensions adds a counter of the number of downlaods to date of FireFox. I noticed this afternoon, the counter has hit 50 million. And in the time it took me to write this entry, another 2 thousand downloads occured (sorry for such slow typing). WOW!

Patch Management Best Practices E-book

For those wanting to know more about the best practices in patch management, Ecora has a free electronic book Patch Management Best Practices E-book which you can download. Written by Anne Stanton and Susan Bradley this is a great read for anyone tasked with making patch managemenet happen in their organisation.

I'm going to TechEd US!

I got a nice email last week that said "The MCT Community has spoken, and your session, MSF and MOF: What Is It, and Why Should an MCT Care?? has been selected as a breakout session in the MCT track at TechEd 2005. In addition, you have been selected to represent the community as an MCT Ambassador at the TechEd Track Cabanas. Now all I have to do is find a hotel!

Windows Server R2 Beta 2 Gets A Lot Closer

As reported by Mary Jo, in an eWeek article titled Microsoft Delivers Windows Server R2 Beta 2, the release of R2 comes a little closer.

For me, R2 is one of the best secrets around - hardly anyone seems to have heard of it. Thus far this calender ear, I've had very, very few delegates who've even heard of R2, let alone had seen it, or had much awareness of what it was and would do. I'm downloading B2 now, and hope to have a small new forest built with it by the end of the weekend!

Windows Installer 3.1 is available

The latest version of the Windows Installe, Windows Installer 3.1 is available for download from Microsoft.

VMware Workstation 5.0 ships

VMware have now shipped VMware Workstation 5.0. For more details on what's in this new version: see the VMware Workstation 5.0 home page.

I've had the various beta and release candidate drops running here for some time with fantastic stability, and great performance. All in all, a nice product and a big improvement over 4.5.

Mounting ISO files virtually

Like many MSDN customers, I have a large on-line collection of ISO images of most MS products, for installation onto my test networks. They work great for Virtual Machines - you can just mount the ISO as easily as putting a real CD/DVD into a physical drive.

MS released a cool tool to beta testers years ago called VCD (Virtual CD), which allows you to mount the ISO into your real system. I always thought it was a beta-only release - thanks to a pointer from fellow MVP Duncan McAlynn's blog, it looks likle MS have released it on the download site.

This is one of those "must have" tools in every admins tool box.

The download is an self extracting .exe and contains three files. There's a short readme.txt file, plus a front end (VCdControlTool.exe) and a driver (VcdRom.sys). Naturally, you need the appropriate rights to load drivers in order to use VCD.

Visual Studio Hosted Labs

Microsoft has opened the Visual Studio Hosted Experience where you can do free hands on labs with the latest VS/Yukon technology. Cool!

Mistakes in Articles

I hate it when I read a magazine article that contains mistakes. And I hate it even more when it's my article that is in error. Sadly, although we try, writers do occasionally get it wrong. That happened recently to me - the March edition of Service Management Magazine contains an article about Beta 2 of WUS (Windows Update Service) with 3 minor errors. I wrote the article back in early December, just after WUS B2 was released before I'd really had a chance to really play with it in anger. Since then,the product has been renamed Windows Server Update Service (WSUS) and an improved release candidate for WSUS has been released (and I've filed a bunch of bug reports {grin}). The product has moved on a great deal - and for the better.

I've had a strong mail from Jason Leznek, a Product Manager for WSUS at Microsoft who is "concerned over the inaccuracies" in the article. He also demands that the mistakes get put right as quickly as possible. Since magazine articles are written a long time in advance (the WUS article that appeared mid-March was completed in early December '04), getting the errors corrected in the print edition is going to take some time. In the meanwhile, I'm happy to post these corrections both here in my blog and in the WSUS newsgroups.

There were three relatively trivial errors contained in the article:

1. The article suggested that SQL suport was not included in WSUS. SQL is supported and I've seen two SQL patches already. But since installing one of them (MS03-031) my ISA Server firewall service no longer starts up automatically. Exchange is also meant to be supported in WSUS, but I've see no Exchange patches yet and the Windows Server 2003 SP1 update has also not been seen yet. While I still can't understand why MS won't suport ALL main stream MS products with this first release (aside from sheer inertia), but that's the way it is.

2. The article incorrectly stated that the WSUS was not supported on the Windows Server 2003 Web edition. Web Edition is supported, although there are some minor restrictions for its use. See http://www.wsuswiki.com/WSUSRestritionsWith2k3Web for more details on using the Web edition for WSUS.

3. MS also are unhappy at my view that WSUS is not AD integrated. Jason points out that the Automatic Update client can get WSUS configuration from a Group Policy setting, for those computers that are members of an AD domain. So he's right, byut up to a point. The WSUS server itself, however, is unaware of the AD. This means WSUS target groups are not obtained from AD, for example - the WSUS administator has to create them manually. Additionally, the WSUS server does not get it's list of machines from the Active Directory - WSUS only knows about those machines that have made a connection. This means that in a larger domain environment it's more difficult to determine which machines have never contacted the WSUS server and are therefore potentially unpatched - and initial client remediaion remains a deployment issue for larger organisations. So while the AD client is AD aware, the server isn't - I can't really say that WSUS is AD-integrated the way that, for example, ISA Server or Exchange is.

Having made these mistakes, the real question is whether I still feel that WSUS is a good product? Basically yes, although my enthusiasm is certainly not quite as high as it was earlier. WSUS is not as easy to use as I'd have liked, and client remdiation still seems to be an issue (although the clientdiag.exe shipped with the RC does indeed help to resolve most of the easy issues). One example of usability issues I've seen us an AU client (which happens to be my mail server that is otherwise running just fine) which has registered with the WSUS server but has never picked up updates from WSUS. There's no error messages in WSUS, and the client diagnostic tool fails. I certainly feel some empathy for admins who want this to be a simple, simple, simple product. Maybe that's a point though - patching is not simple. But even so, WSUS is not as simple a product as I'd have liked. Another example of lack of ease of use of WSUS concerns the April updates, released yesterday - which I've just finished installing on my test network. In all the communication material I've seen from MS in the past 24 hours, each update is titled with the MSRC ID, e.g MS05-19, MS05-20, etc. However the titles of the updates issued to WSUS only use KB numbers, with the MSRC ids burried in the update's detail pages (which is slow to bring up). While you can open each patch individually, and work out the MSRC number, this is harder than it should be. Some more joined up thinking and communication about these updates sure would be useful, or the abilitiy to add columns to the UI.

So should you go for WSUS? For smaller, all MS environments, it's appropriate, especially since WSUS is a free tool and it's miles better than SUS which it replaces. For larger larger either all or mostly-all Microsoft environents, SMS is propbably a better bet - it delivers a lot more functionality (albeit at a price) and the remediation approaches are well understood in the community. And for more heterogenous environements, you may need to either run multiple products (using WSUS for your Windows systems or look at some of the 3rd party tools on the market since support for non-MS products and services is not included in WSUS and there are no formal released plans, thus far, for this to happen (at least that I'm aware of!). And if you do decide to take WSUS, be prepared for some up front work to get it up and running.

And finally - an apology for the mistakes made in the article. I'll try to get the next article proofread and edited better.

Interesting Blog Comments

I'm just back from a few days away and I got a rather rude shock in my mail - a copy of a somewhat snide comment posted to this blog. I noted last Thursday that the WSUS Wiki had moved to a new site and had some new content. Someone posted a complaint about critical comments being removed, and wondereing if the WSUS Wiki would be be handled the same way.

I've got no real idea what this comment is on about, although I think it's referring to a comment in an earlier posting regarding the WSUS RC. I subsequently made some updates to the blog entry as I was about to head off (and have tonight clarified things a bit more). But as the complaint is not clear, I can't tell. For the record, I made an error in a blog entry - and that was put right last week.

As to be expected, there has been a tremendous amount of updating of the WSUS Wiki, based on the RC. I'm sure comments have been modified in the light of both the RC and (for my part at least) a better understanding of what the WSUS team is doing with their product. I sincerely hope that the wiki will be accurate and correctly focused and that when errors are made they are corrected quicly and appropriately.

I don't mind getting critical comments here. When I get it wrong, I try to make it right and fix the issue. But it does really rather annoy me when I get comments and mails (like this one) from users who feel they can remain anonymous. Microsoft employees really should know better.

So if you have a point to make, or want to correct an error or make any sort of comment, then be honest and use your name. Better yet, email me privately at tfl@psp.co.uk and I'll be very happy to fix any errors made here.

I never really could understand why folks turn off blog comments - till now.