Windows 7 details leaked.

Computer World is reporting that some of the new features for Windows 7 were leaked on the Microsoft site (which since, they did it, wouldn’t it be an announcement and not a leak?) today. Like Vista, Windows 7 will come in a few varying flavors from home, Enterprise, to ultimate. The encryption tool, BitLocker, will make another appearance in windows 7 as well. One new feature (not a bug!) will be Driver Protection. Driver Protection will more or less block ‘unstable’ drivers from coming through windows update – something that’s rather plagued vista (where’d my CD BURNER go?!). Details regarding Alpha testing for the OS are expected to be announced later today.

Windows VPS overview

One of our increasingly popular services is a Windows VPS (Virtual Private Server). And we’ve seen the uses for them vary depending on the customer. Some of them wish to migrate their bookkeeping software to a centralized location, so that it can be accessed worldwide. Others are looking to replace their workstations and would like the advantages of an IT person without having the expense. But what are the capabilities of a VPS server, and what are their strengths and weaknesses.

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Building Web Sites for Profit and Fun – Tools of the Trade

Every trade has it’s tools and web development is no exception. It has quite a few in fact. Throughout the years of doing web development I have used many different tools and have settled on a core group of half a dozen or so. It is definitely worth your while examining those I recommend, and possible a few that will receive honorable mention here. While it’s true that tools don’t make talent, they certainly speed it along!
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Windows Media Services Problems?

Yesterday I ran into a problem with a Windows Media Server that I found surprisingly little information about. A round of Windows updates came through which were meant to beef up security, but it also seems they were destined to Break Everything! The error message I received when Windows Media Encoder attempted to make a connection to WMS was this;

the server that received the http push request is not a compatible version of windows media services (WMS). This error may indicate the push request was received by IIS instead of WMS. Ensure WMS is started and has the HTTP Server control protocol properly enabled and try again. (0xC00D2F0C)

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Building Web Sites for Profit and Fun – a Money Making Tutorial Intro.

There was once a time when business moved with the pace of the locals, generally slow and steady. Today, business must keep up with the world and the fast pace of the internet. It’s a fascinating prospect and a momentous movement. But it can be very challenging and scary at times as well. More and more, it seems, success is dependent on the effective and efficient utilization of the internet. Throughout my sojourn in this digital realm, I have run across many who have an aptitude and a desire to build effective websites for profit but really don’t know the finer points of making a success out of it. So here I am going to expound and share some secrets I have learned over the ten years I have been doing this.
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Google Goggles – they might just save you an awkward phone call.

Everyone has received an inebriated email from an ex-lover or co-worker (or anyone you know, for that matter!). You know the type of email; too much information, confession-booth ‘I still love you’, and just plain not-thought-out ‘wow you’re drunk’ type of emails. Maybe you’ve even sent some of these emails yourself? Well the good people at google labs have taken steps to help stop the scourge of ‘drunk emailing’. Once you install the Mail Goggles you can set a time frame for activation (the default is Friday and Saturday 10PM – 4AM) and once activated, Mail Goggles will make you solve five math problems in a short period of time in order to send a message. The thought is, if you’re clear of mind enough to do math, you’re clear of mind enough to send an email without regret. So sorry, Laquanda, no more drunk emails from this admin about our tenth-grade missed connection. Now if only Google can make something similar for Android, maybe we could quell those ‘drunk-dials’ too.

cr0wnd

Maybe this will save you some headaches – if you’re tailing your cron log (tail -f /var/log/cron) and find a bunch of “account expired” records and you know that specific account is not expired, this might help. Try suspending and unsuspending the account. Still no go? This is a rare and very odd issue we ran into, but you may want to check (especially if you’re receiving these errors after repartitioning hard drive space) the crond file itself in /etc/pam.d. In this case it was blanked-out after repartitioning some drive space. If it is blanked out, it will revert to /etc/pam.d/other – which be default, in most cases, is deny. A quick and easy fix is to copy the entires in SSHD – save and restart crond.