technical solutions and commentary

DNS Servers for forwarding internal DNS traffic upstream to:

• AT&T
• 12.127.16.68
• 12.127.17.72

Google’s Gmail keeps the interface clean and simple. There is a small one line text based add at the top of the email box frame. The user interface is simple but not usable as the Windows Live Mail in my opinion.

Microsoft Windows Live Mail has two huge banner ads one at the top and one down the right-side of the window. These are very intrusive, distracting and take a lot of screen real-estate which requires you to do a lot of scrolling. I do prefer the functionality of Windows Live Mail but the ads are a big turn off. If they could make the graphic ads a bit smaller, I’m sure I would be more willing to use Hotmail.

Yahoo Mail Beta has a larger banner add on the right-hand side of the screen and smaller ads in the bottom left corner of the mailbox. While the banner ad on the right is a little intrusive, it’s still not bad enough to make me not want to use Yahoo mail. The nice thing about Yahoo mail is that if the banner ad doesn’t fit comp[lately in the window it doesn’t give you scroll bar for the ad like Windows Live Mail does. The other nice thing about Yahoo mail is there is no banner ad at the top of the Window. I also like the Yahoo Mail beta user interface. Although I don’t like the idea of having to login to yahoo mail to read my RSS feeds from the mail client.

A Washington Post Blog pointed out that Microsoft is expanding their Anti-Piracy Program using Windows Update to push out a “patch” which scans systems for unlicensed Microsoft software, reports home, and pops-up nag screens for the user. Check it out.

Workng on a migration, I ran into some issues with getting ARTA Deposit to work on a Windows Server 2003 machine. I called ARTA tech support and spent an hour or so working on troubleshooting the install. I deployed ARTA Deposit using the ‘Large Network Install’ method with a sperate database and application server. These notes will still apply to configuring IIS on Windows Server 2003 on a single server, ‘large network install’ as well.

I spent some time searching the internet in troubleshooting this issue with no success, so I thought I would share these notes. Hopefully they will save someone else some time and phone call. You can find the configuration notes here — ARTA Deposit Install Notes.

Here is another resource from the vendor on Windows 2003 SP1.

Microsoft to double the number of Group Policy settings with the release of Windows Vista. eWeek published the article ‘Vista Promises Group Policy Overhaul‘ earlier this month pointed out “the initial version of Windows 2000 had about 650 Group Policy settings and Windows XP SP (Service Pack) 2 has about 1,500, Vista will have nearly 3,000.”

The good thing is that there are going to be a lot of new settings availble to secure removable devices and tighten security. The bad thing will be trying to sift through all these settings to try and find what you need. 

Anter changes is the ADM policy template files are being replaced with XML-based ADMX policy file. No big suprise with that. ADMX files will have to be managed from a Vista Workstation version of the GPMC console since older clients can not read the ADMX file format. Of course Vista will still be backward-compatabile with the ADM based policies.

This post is a bit off topic, however I thought this was a good example of deceptive (not illegal) marketing practices which are becoming more common today in every industry. I was in the store today and picked up a box of Reese’s Peanut Butter Bites for about $1.50. I thought that wasn’t a bad price for the “XL Box”.

When I opened it there was another sealed package inside. This is obvious a good idea to give the product a longer shelf life.

When I opened the seal and dumped the candy into the “XL Box” this is what it looked like in the box.

So from the advertised “XL Box”, there was this much actual product in the box… almost 1/3 of the “XL Box”!

So what I ended up with was literally and “XL Box” and an XS amount of candy. I think that will be the one and only time I buy Reese’s products packaged in a box.

Mary Jo Foley of Microsoft Watch commented on Microsoft’s changes to Office 14 in Office 14 to Get the ‘Role’ Treatment, Too, which is based on this article in InfoWorld. Office 14 is going to have SKU’s for Role Based workers.

It looks like Microsoft is moving in the right direction with the ‘role based’ product suites. However, typical with Office Suites are there is one application you really don’t and another Office product you need but can not get in the suite.

A good solution at least with the volume licening options for businesses would allow application substituitions. For example, I may want the Office Suite but not Access, why not let me substitute Visio for Access? Another idea for volume licensing is to have Word & Excel (Outlook is included with Exchange CALS so why not exclude that in the volume license suite anyway) the ‘core’ office suite applications, then let me pick 2-3 other apps to add to form my own suite, such as OneNote, Visio, InfoPath?

I can see where this would make distribution more complicated and may create even more SKU’s. But there are 6 or 7 versions of just Windows Vista being released at my last count which seems just as complicated as far as SKU’s and licensing goes.

According to Microsoft the next version of Exchange Server, known as Exchange 12, will only be produced in a 64-bit version. The Exchange 12 FAQ’s answer the question to as why a 32-bit version will not be produced. The current verison, Exchnage Server 2003, is only produced in a 32-bit version and is not supported on a the 64-bit version of Windows Server. The published system requirements for Exchange 2003 makes this clear stating “Exchange Server 2003 does not run on 64-bit editions of Windows Server 2003.”

What this means is Microsoft is not going to provide the ability to perform an in-place server upgrade from Exchange 2000/2003 to the next version. Unless of course a 64-bit version of Exchange 2003 is released, which is an unlikely scenario.

If you are planning to deploy an Exchange Server 2003 in your organization, don’t bother planning your hardware purchase based upon the requirements of Exchange 12. You can still run the current 32-bit edition of Windows and Exchange on an x64 processor if you decide to. But don’t invest a lot of extra money into a 64-bit server for Exchange at this time. The exception to this of course, is if you will have the luxury of rebuilding the server to install 64-bit Windows and Exchange 12 when the time comes.

If you are planning on deploying Exchange 12, it looks as if your only option to upgrade is going to be is building a new Exchange Server running on 64-bit hardware, and joining the existing Exchange organization. No in-place server upgrades.

While is not as easy or nice as the AdBlock extension in FireFox, you can still block Ads in Internet Explorer. The setup doesn’t remove the ad frames or space from web paes such as the FireFox does, however it prevents ads from being downloaded to the browser which saves bandwidth and saves from the distraction of web ads. The hack involves modifying your local hosts file to redirect known ad company domain names to your local machine. This results in the ads not being able to be located and thus not displayed in the browser. Find the steps and ad server list to add to your hosts file in this article: Blocking ads in Internet Explorer
I would not recommend doing this on a corporate network necessarily or on a network server.

If you’ve ever setup auditing policies in an Active Directory domain, you may not be sure what groups you really need to audit and log for reporting. This article Auditing Active Directory Administrative Groups from the Institute of Internal Auditors is a great resource explaining what domain roups should be audited, why, and other tip.

This Microsoft KB 243330 may also be helpful ‘Well-known security identifiers in Windows operating systems‘