Joseph Hinkle at MyITForum.com

Relaunching

jhinkle — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:24:32 GMT

I've spent the last year or so learning, doing, and resting. During that time, I haven't even thought about writing or sharing in any serious sense. However, over the past couple of months, I've started to get more energy around writing my thoughts again.

That leads me to a different dilemma. My job isn't technical anymore, so I'm not involved in the things I was originally driven to share. I'm a manager, in almost the truest sense possible, at this point. I'm involved at a much higher level than I ever really imagined possible for me. I have different issues, mostly people and technology direction, that I'm concerned about on a daily basis. I'm left wondering what it is exactly that I want to share.

I think I'm most interested in technical management issues of the day, whether it be outsourcing pieces of infrastructure or new directions in virtualization, so that's most likely the direction I'll head. I won't be compelled to share every random thing I've seen over the past day or two in this venue. That will stay on my Twitter account (@josephhinkle).

I have been fortunate to be a part of this community for the past eight years. Rod and the rest of the gang has created a fantastic resource and meeting place that continues to grow in amazing ways. I hope all of you realize how unique MyITForum truly is. I can only hope that I can find something valuable to contribute again. Either way, it should be fun trying!

-Joseph

Simplicity in licensing

jhinkle — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 23:55:57 GMT

I was having a discussion on Microsoft licensing today, which will probably be a frequent topic for me. Think about what would be needed to manage Windows for a large enterprise, assuming a Microsoft solution set. Windows Enterprise is becoming a must-have license. ConfigMgr, MDOP for virtualization, and the newly announced client management license suite would also provide needed deployment and management components.

To get that, the customer would need to acquire the Windows platform, MDOP, the Core CAL, the Enterprise CAL for client management, and ConfigMgr licenses for the servers. To manage the server environment, the server management suite or the new Core Infrastructure enrollment would also be needed. That would entail two pillars of the Microsoft platform in Windows and the Core CAL, plus four additional products.

The challenge for Microsoft is to stack these components into groups that make sense. Grouping the products into suites that provide value together makes the business case simpler. In the example above, licenses would be purchased in two completely separate stacks: Windows and CAL. When the Client Management License suite and MDOP are in completely different groups, it becomes more difficult to create a business case.

I would use the recent change to the Terminal Services CAL as an example of the right approach. APP-V for Terminal Services was rolled into the new CAL. That's a fantastic change. It simplified the model and provides great value to companies who want to publish apps with RDS.

Bundles like the Enrollment for Core Infrastructure also make a ton of sense. The enrollment provides the server OS and everything needed to manage it. Great! It's simple and easy to build a case for, assuming that the price is right. The same could happen on the client-side. Take Windows, MDOP, ConfigMgr, DPM, OM, ServiceMgr, and Forefront for Windows and roll it together. That creates a complete management and feature set with the System Center suite and the rights to Windows Enterprise.

A communication and collaboration suite would also make sense. If Exchange, Office Communication Server, SharePoint and Forefront for Exchange and SharePoint were licensed as a CAL bundle, the intrinsic benefits to that combination would be apparent. It also breaks the acquisition into manageable pieces.

This type of approach would also let companies opt into new technologies as initiatives, rather than acquiring a large number of products that creates a nearly insurmountable implementation burden. If I signed a full-platform Enterprise Agreement today, it would take at least a year for my company to realize a significant benefit from it. I would almost be into renewal before I had all of the products implemented. That kind of ROI story isn't compelling.

I know that Microsoft recognizes this problem on some level, as is evidenced by the improvements I listed above. There seems to be an effort to fix the issue and for that, I applaud them. A system that complex will not be fixed in a day. I can only hope that a solution is implemented that creates a more customer-friendly environment in the short-term.

Wikipedia:Lamest edit wars

jhinkle — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 02:28:04 GMT

Some of these are really funny. The C# debate appeals to the geek in me.

C#

In the name of the programming language C#, is that # thing (octothorpe) after the C a number sign or the musical sharp symbol? What should the wrongname template say? Some argue that a Microsoft FAQ supports the sharp symbol, while others argue that the ECMA standard promotes the # symbol and that it has better browser support. Some propose using # as a superscript (C^#), which few editors like. Editors repeatedly reverted between each other, some refusing to discuss the issue on the talk page. The issue was resolved with an e-mail exchange with Microsoft stating that in their view it's an octothorpe symbol representing the sharp symbol, similar to how "<=" represents the less than or equal symbol, and that thus Microsoft does not disagree with ECMA. Written "Netscape" but pronounced "Mozilla", eh?

Wikipedia:Lamest edit wars - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Intro to Computer Science free online from Stanford

jhinkle — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 02:42:23 GMT

I can remember when I took that class, albeit not at Stanford. It was the fall of 1996 and I had never written a program in C before. I did have some really bad habits from teaching myself BASIC and Pascal though.

Now, you can get all of that knowledge for free on the Internet. I can't image how much farther along I would be if I had had the opportunities then that I have now. The world is an amazing placew.

This course is the largest of the introductory programming courses and is one of the largest courses at Stanford. Topics focus on the introduction to the engineering of computer applications emphasizing modern software engineering principles: object-oriented design, decomposition, encapsulation, abstraction, and testing.

Stanford School of Engineering

Worldwide Tropical Cyclone Names

jhinkle — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 02:24:56 GMT

Since 1953, Atlantic tropical storms have been named from lists originated by the National Hurricane Center. They are now maintained and updated by an international committee of the World Meteorological Organization. The original name lists featured only women's names. In 1979, men's names were introduced and they alternate with the women's names. Six lists are used in rotation. Thus, the 2008 list will be used again in 2014. Here is more information about the history of naming hurricanes.

Worldwide Tropical Cyclone Names

TSA's New 'Checkpoint Friendly' Laptop Bag Procedures

jhinkle — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 02:09:15 GMT

I still have an "accordion-style" laptop bag that I'm very happy with. I'm tempted to get a new laptop friendly one if I keep flying so much. Theoretically, this week is the end of my travels for a while though (YEAH!).

The guidelines below took affect on August 15th. You can leave a laptop in a bag in the OK section when you send it through the x-ray machine.

TSA: New 'Checkpoint Friendly' Laptop Bag Procedures

Adeona - Free stolen laptop tracking service

jhinkle — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 02:03:01 GMT

Interesting solution.

Adeona is the first Open Source system for tracking the location of your lost or stolen laptop that does not rely on a proprietary, central service. This means that you can install Adeona on your laptop and go — there's no need to rely on a single third party. What's more, Adeona addresses a critical privacy goal different from existing commercial offerings. It is privacy-preserving. This means that no one besides the owner (or an agent of the owner's choosing) can use Adeona to track a laptop. Unlike other systems, users of Adeona can rest assured that no one can abuse the system in order to track where they use their laptop.

Adeona: A Free, Open Source System for Helping Track and Recover Lost and Stolen Laptops

Remote Desktop Client 2 for Mac

jhinkle — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 00:50:43 GMT

The Microsoft RDP Client for Mac update went official today. Download here.

Onion News Network: "World of World of Warcraft"

jhinkle — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 00:34:49 GMT

This hit a few weeks ago, but I just got back to it. Funny stuff.

World of World of Warcraft

Do any of you have a Kindle?

jhinkle — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 21:34:39 GMT

I've been thinking about getting an Amazon Kindle. It's driven mostly on the portability The book prices are a fairly compelling argument as well, since business books tend to be fairly expensive for the amount of content. My biggest problem is that I haven't actually seen one yet. It probably won't stop me from getting one in the end. Have any of you seen one? Owned one?

I'm running Vista 64 too!

jhinkle — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 21:23:17 GMT

Garth mentioned that he was running Vista 64 on his laptop. I've been running it on my Latitude D531 for the last month or so with few issues. I had some initial touchpad driver issues, but I found a driver for the 630 that would work on Vista x64. Cisco doesn't have a full VPN client, but the AnyConnect SSL VPN client works well.

On the bright side, it performs well compared to Vista32. I haven't run XP64 to see if it performs better or worse though. I have the RAM maxed out at 4GB, so it's nice to get the full compliment when running VMWare Workstation on it.

Foes of Web driving class get Scooby Doo certified | ajc.com

jhinkle — Fri, 09 May 2008 01:46:51 GMT

Scooby Doo can get behind the wheel again in Florida.

Not in real life, of course. The talking dog doesn't exist. But opponents of a bill to let Georgia's habitual traffic violators take court-ordered driving classes online signed the cartoon canine up for an Internet course in Florida, which has a similar law.

Ruh-roh. Not only did he pass, Doo got a certificate.

The stunt was pulled by Driving Educators of Georgia, a statewide association of driving schools trying to persuade Gov. Sonny Perdue to veto the legislation known as HB 1027. The group argues such a system would make it easier for reckless drivers to get their licenses back. It also would be prone to fraud, the group says.
[From Foes of Web driving class get Scooby Doo certified | ajc.com]

MMS 2008: Henry Wilson is a hack

jhinkle — Fri, 09 May 2008 01:35:37 GMT

At least he gave me credit this yea r. At the bottom. Next year, I expect a general pronouncement of my greatness at the top of the document. It's the least you could do.

MMS 2008

Xobni rocks

jhinkle — Fri, 09 May 2008 01:31:48 GMT

I've been using Xobni for a couple of days and I'm really impressed. I'm a statistics junkie about stuff that I do, so email statistics are just fantastic. The search engine is nice, but the forwarding and reply controls from the Xobni bar make that much more valuable. It does duplicate some of the functionality that was introduced in Outlook 2007, so it you already are using 2007, it isn't as mind-blowing as it would be on 2003.

That said, statistics rule, therefore Xobni rules. People are ranked by the number of emails sent to and received from them, thought it seems that sent counts more than received. The Xobni Analytics feature is fantastic. It gives views on email by time of day and some other neat layers that I can't remember right now. Good stuff.

Outlook contact information is integrated, but Global Address List contact information, like phone numbers, is not integrated. There may be a way, but I haven't found it yet.

Give it a try if you haven't already.

Taking the email discussion list plunge

jhinkle — Fri, 09 May 2008 01:21:49 GMT

I stopped subscribing to discussion lists long ago, but I decided to try it again with MyITForum. I was apparently missing something the last seven years.

Xobni beta is public now

jhinkle — Tue, 06 May 2008 01:50:46 GMT

Brian mentioned Xobni a few weeks ago. I just hopped over to the site and noticed that it isn't invite only anymore. I'll give it a try at work tomorrow.

Wise Package Studio 7 SP3

jhinkle — Tue, 06 May 2008 01:47:04 GMT

Run out right now and download Wise Package Studio 7 SP3. You know you want to.

The second sentence is a little scary, isn't it.

Wise has announced the availability of WPS 7 SP3. You can get a copy from the License Management Portal.

It will also be available in a couple of weeks from the Wise download page when the guys who administer this site return from a sales conference.
[From Wise Package Studio 7 SP3 | Altiris Juice]

Soundamus

jhinkle — Tue, 06 May 2008 01:43:21 GMT

If you use Last.FM, Soundamus generates and RSS feed of upcoming releases from the artists that you listen to. Interesting stuff.

Service Manager session?

jhinkle — Tue, 06 May 2008 01:38:19 GMT

I just realized that I missed the Service Manager session. Did anyone go and take notes?

32-processor hibernate patch

jhinkle — Tue, 06 May 2008 01:31:22 GMT

I was having this problem on my home computer. Yeah. that's it.

SYMPTOMS
Consider the following scenario:
• You have a multiprocessor computer that is running Windows Vista or Windows XP.
• The computer has exactly 32 processors.
• You resume the computer from hibernation (S4).
In this scenario, the computer stops responding on a black screen.
[From A multiprocessor computer that is running Windows Vista or Windows XP stops responding on a black screen after you resume the computer from hibernation]

Giant chocolate bass?

jhinkle — Tue, 06 May 2008 01:11:20 GMT

My wife found this at Walgreens. Her response: "I caught you a delicious bass".

Sorry the picture isn't bigger.

New Nine Inch Nails album for free

jhinkle — Tue, 06 May 2008 01:06:50 GMT

Interesting trend in music.

Tropicana Entertainment to file for Chapter 11 protection

jhinkle — Tue, 06 May 2008 01:02:38 GMT

In the spirit of Las Vegas, I present Casino News! I'm not terribly surprised. We walked past the Tropicana last week and it looked like it had gone down-hill a lot since my first MMS.

The owner of Tropicana casinos in Atlantic City and Las Vegas filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Monday, nearly five months after New Jersey regulators stripped the Tropicana Casino and Resort of its license.
[From The Associated Press: Tropicana Entertainment to file for Chapter 11 protection]

MMS 2008

A red-letter day

jhinkle — Tue, 06 May 2008 00:41:07 GMT

My Enterprise Agreement was accepted by Microsoft today. I can actually deploy ConfigMgr now!

AFP, Windows Server, and lots of files

jhinkle — Mon, 05 May 2008 20:51:09 GMT

An excerpt from an email I had to write tonight, explaining why some folks in my group spent way too much time trying to do something that could have been solved for $1500.

Macintosh computers can access Windows file shares in a variety of ways. For many years, Macs communicated to all network shares using AFP, or Apple Filing Protocol. As such, Microsoft developed what is now known as Windows Services for Macintosh. Windows Services for Macintosh adds AFP support to Windows 2000 Server and Windows 2003 Server. This implementation, based on AFP 2.2, has several limitations, including a 31 character file names, 65,536 files per volume, as well as a 2TB volume size. Windows Services for Macintosh also requires an index to be built when a server is restarted and at other times through the life of the volume. Our Mac-specific volumes are shared using Windows Services for Macintosh.

The location was experiencing an issue where the index was not properly being rebuilt, due to the size and number of files in the share. This was preventing the plant from mounting the volume properly on the Macs using AFP. When mounted using SMB, the Windows file sharing protocol, additional detail was lost. This detail is stored as a resource fork that is automatically "joined" with the original file using AFP.

There is a lot more than that, but that generally details the problem. Group Logic has a product named ExtremeZ-IP that fixes many of the limitations of the Microsoft implementation of the older version of AFP. It does it by implementing the latest version (of course). It will also support Windows Server 2008 shortly.

Vista Roundtable Springboard Live #1

jhinkle — Mon, 05 May 2008 19:52:28 GMT

In case you missed it, a Vista roundtable hosted by Mark Russinovich. I'm most of the way through it. It's good, but not terribly surprising.

Still undecided about Windows Vista? Join Mark Russinovich and a panel of experts for a discussion on adopting Windows Vista into a desktop infrastructure. The panel features subject-matter experts and IT pros from around the world who have tackled Windows Vista deployment—hear about the challenges, workarounds, and tips & tricks they have learned along the way.
[From Springboard Live #1]

XP SP3 slipstreaming on Vista problem

jhinkle — Mon, 05 May 2008 13:16:11 GMT

From bink.nu

I found out that the problem is when you do the XP Sp3 slipstream process on a WIndows Vista machine, the API gives a different response and screws up the PID process. This is a bug and Microsoft knew about this in December, still the bug remained and made it all the way to RTM, nice work Microsoft. So XP SP slipstream only on XP or 2003 machines!!!

HP SoftPaq Download Manager

jhinkle — Mon, 05 May 2008 01:01:41 GMT

Neat. I wish I had this a couple of years afo.

HP SoftPaq Download Manager provides a simple, powerful way to download software updates for the HP client PC models in your environment. HP SDM can significantly reduce the amount of time it takes to locate and download updates. SoftPaqs can be downloaded in as few as three easy steps from a single user interface after initial setup.
[From HP SoftPaq Download Manager]

MMS 2008: Safe and sound

jhinkle — Sun, 04 May 2008 01:43:39 GMT

I'm glad to see everyone made it home safe and sound. I have a couple of funny things to post later, but for now, it is time to sleep. The conference was great this year, especially the 'Advanced OS Deployment' and 'Configuration Manager Installation' sessions. As always, it was well worth the trip.

MMS 2008

MMS 2008: Introduction to Group Policy Prefrences

jhinkle — Fri, 02 May 2008 13:40:43 GMT

Presented by Jason Leznek and Lilia Gutnik. Props to Lilia for mentioning XKCD. She seems almost as sarcastic as the comic. Not that I know anything about sarcasm.

What are group policy preferences?
- Acquired Desktop Standard in Oct 2006
- GPOVault - Advanced Group Policy Management - MDOP
- PolicyMaker - managing clients through group policy - a component of GPMC in Windows Server 2008 and also part of Remote Server Administration Tools
Where can I manage GPP?
- Windows Server 2008
- Vista SP1 with rSAT
What can GPP manage?
- Windows Server 2008
- Client Side Extensions for Vista RTM+, Server 2003 SP1, XP SP2+
What do GPPs do?
- Preferences are not true policy - set defaults
- Not limited to policy-aware settings
- Better admin UI
- Better targeting
Policies vs prefrences
- Policy - Admin sets and locks user out - highest precedence - specific registry keys
- Preferences - user may change - apps don't have to be policy aware - can be pulled back if it fall out of scope
Precedence - LSDOU - Computer beats users, policies beat preferences, Client-side extension process order
More settings are available - Control Panel: Folder options, scheduled tasks, services, power options; Windows Settings: drive maps, folders, shortcuts, registry keys, applications
UI is same as end-user - looks like the appropriate dialog
Better targeting - Can target individual computers, IP range, time, OS, free space, etc
Added drag and drop and multiple instance support
New settings can create, replace, update, or delete - Can be set to apply once and not to reapply
Can control local admin group on a user by user basis
Report - all included, including targeting criterion - GPResults shows winning items, but doesn't necessarily reflect final settings

MMS 2008