greg hughes - dot net

If you work with Windows XP Professional on a Windows 2000/2003 domain and you use Group Policy, this is for you.

Microsoft has released an updated version of their spreadsheet that lists the full set of Group Policy settings described in Administrative Template (.adm) files shipped with Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 Release Candidate 2. This includes all policy settings supported on Windows 2000, Windows XP Professional and Windows Server 2003. The spreadsheet includes separate worksheets for each of the .adm files shipped, as well as a consolidated worksheet for easy searching. Using column filters, the spreadsheet allows simple filtering by operating system, component and machine/user configuration, as well as regular text search of keywords through Excel.

Essential for network admins planning a move to SP2 when it's released later this year - so go get it.

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NOTE FOR DOMAIN ADMINS AND GPO GEEKS: The .ADM template files associated with Win XP SP2 can be found on your XP computer after you apply the service pack. Search for *.ADM or browse to:

   %SYSTEMROOT%\inf\

Or, extract them from the service pack CAB files if you're feeling adventuresome.

In other words, this works just like any other set of ADM files. Once you've applied the template files to your group policy objects on a domain controller, you'll see new options for lots of things like the Windows firewall and other nifty new GPO features.

IMPORTANT: Note that applying the ADM templates to your DC does not modify the group policy data in existence - it just opens up the new policy fields. However, you should carefully test the new settings, probably in a test OU with the proper ADM templates applied. In reality, you should not test these on a production domain until you are familiar and comfortable from testing on a lab or test domain system. Also remember that as long as SP2 is in beta, nothing is guaranteed, so it's all at your own risk.

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Paul Allen and partners came significantly closer to winning the $10 million Ansari X Prize, which will be awarded to the first team to send a spaceship carrying a pilot and the weight of two passengers to an altitude of 100 kilometers twice within two weeks.

SpaceShipOne successfully launched just barely into outer space today after taking off under the belly of a larger aircraft. Rocket engines pushed it and its single pilot just outside the Earth's atmosphere, and then it fell back to earth, gliding the last part much like the space shuttle does.

It's fun to see private enterprise making this kind of thing happen. Certainly having someone like Paul Allen to bank-roll the project helps a lot, but ultimately it's great to see a non-government project get off the ground - literally.

The private space race has a number of teams actively competing for the $10 million prize.

Nick Bradbury, author of TopStyle, FeedDemon, and HomeSite, wrote the other day about stupid software thieves. It never fails to amaze how stupid people can be. 

He received an email this morning and comments on it:

"Fix your piece of s--- program! I upgraded to FeedDemon 1.10 and it crashes with 'Win32 device error.' Did you even test this s---?"

I've actually received a number of emails (and one forum post) about this bug, but I have no plans to fix it. Why? Because the error message only appears if you upgrade a cracked version of FeedDemon 1.0. This is a deliberate error message that FeedDemon 1.10 displays when it detects that you upgraded from a specific cracked version of FeedDemon 1.0.

That's right, people who use a pirated version of FeedDemon are emailing me for support.

Once again we see the sizable overlap between stupid and dishonest. In my years as a police officer - a previous career path - I saw this over and over. Not only are thieves and cheaters not very smart, they'll often make it all-too-easy to catch them.

Read Nick's blog entry - it's worth the time and the resulting laugh. And good for Nick, taking action to protect his intellectual property. I buy his software, not only because it's great, but also simply because I use it. Not to mention because it's the honest, good and right thing to do. This is an important conversation to have.

Delorme has a great and relatively new GPS device out called the Earthmate GPS Receiver. The name's not new, but this version runs off USB power, so none of the separate power cords like their old stuff used to require, and no more serial ports to fight with (for that matter, my new laptop doesn't even have a serial port).

What's so special about it? Well, for starters you plug it in, along with the Street Atlas 2004 USA software that comes with it, and you're pretty much instantly listening to your computer give you turn-by-turn directions to wherever you want to go. Plus, you can talk to your computer, verbally giving commands like "Next turn?" or "Where am I?" The computer answers your questions.

So, that sounds pretty neat you say, but so what? Well, on a recent trip to California, I spent a weekend with a friend in a rental car, traversing the southern part of the state. Everywhere we went we used the laptop with the GPS device, and we were able to find things that otherwise would have been pretty difficult, we always knew where we were, and ultimately we were able to quickly plan routes and get to places. We did a lot in a few days, and had fun in the process.

There's a bunch of new fancy GPS devices on the market, selling for over a thousand dollars. If you have a laptop and want great functionality, don't spend the money on the expensive stuff. Try this first.

I want to write something about my dad. Nothing flowery, nothing earth-shattering. Just that I love him, that I am proud to be his son, and that I hope he has a great Fathers Day.

He's been there when I was at my worst, and for that I am grateful.

So - Thank you, Dad. And by the way, I can't find your cell phone number again, and I tried you at home and work. Call me, why don't ya.

Fathers Day is a hard one for me. I am happy for my dad and my relationship with him, and also sad for other reasons on this day each year. But for both of the people on my mind this day, I am truly grateful for those relationships and the time I have been privileged to spend.

I'm also lucky to have good friends who think about me on days like this. They dropped off a card while I was out this evening. On the face it reads, "Those we hold most dear never truly leave us." I believe that.

Days like today are important. They give us pause, to thank those who have meant so much, and to remember those who have gone before us.

Happy Fathers Day.

As a homeowner of a house and a few acres in the Middle of Nowhere, I've become very well acquainted with the Home Depot over the past couple of years. I love Home Depot. Here's a few reasons why.

1. Even though I hate credit cards, I got one from Home Depot. They have regular promotions (meaning almost all the time) that allow you to charge any purchase over $300 with no payments and no interest for 12 months. Granted, it gets expensive if you don't pay it all off before time runs out, but that's not a problem in my case - I always pay it off each month. If you have issues with charging up credit cards and getting into a world of Financial Hell, just skip this part completely, you'll be happier.
2. Internet-only specials. For example, this weekend they have a special for Internet purchases only, not available in the store, for price reductions on a variety of items, including two power tools I have been considering buying. Needless to say, they got purchased today.
3. Free shipping specials. Right now if you place an order for more than $49, they'll ship it for free, as long as its not something super heavy or huge. What counts for huge? Well, not 12-inch compound miter saws or 10-inch portable table saws, if that gives you an idea. Granted, it's ground shipping, but hey - it's free.

So, I saved $55 on the tools, got free shipping, and no payments and no interest for 12 months. I'll pay it off next month, but it's nice to know I have the option to spread it out if I want to.

Plus, they're everywhere and easy to find. They're also easy when it comes to returning items that don't fit or don't work or that you don't like or whatever. I can go there and learn stuff in free classes on the weekends.

The only complaint I have about Home Depot (if you can call it that) is that their concrete floors are so darn hard, and the stores are so darn big, that by the time I'm done shopping my feet, legs and back are killing me. Of course, Costco has the same problem. Put down some of that nifty hard rubber floor material you sell, and I'll stick around a little longer each time I shop. Maybe you'll sell more stuff.

Wil Wheaton posts an entry about a great idea. Military troops are having their service times extended, and Google is giving away their free and highly-coveted 1GB email accounts - by invitation only - to random people. Why not do some good here, and give military personnel and their families a way to share bigger items like pictures of the kids, movies, etc?

GMAIL for the Troops.

It's a great idea.

Eli Robillard has a list of SharePoint resources that he has posted on his weblog site.

He's divided it in to topical areas and has posted a fairly long list of resources. It's a good list - check it out if you're a SharePointy type.

Scott and I sat down over lunch today and he (once again) proved his l33t development skills, all while teaching me some new stuff... In the end, we had the new RSS Feed to dasBlog Content Converter to show for our (primarily his) efforts.

From Scott's site:

Greg Hughes once had a LiveJournal Blog and the only remnant of his blog was an RSS Feed/Archive.  Now that he runs dasBlog he wanted to move his old content forward into dasBlog.  So, we googled a bit and couldn't find a tool that would take an RSS (2.0) feed as input and put the entries into dasBlog.

So we made one over lunch, and here it is: RSStoDasBlog.zip (219.29 KB)

RSStoDasBlog.exe MyRssFile.xml "C:\documents and settings\whatever\dasblog\content"

Use it like this by pointing it to the RSS file and your (local) dasBlog content folder.  It will create all the needed dayentry.xml files for you to upload to your remote blog.  It will also (I think) take an http:// url to an RSS file and could be used to (possible as a service?) steal RSS and mirror them in dasBlog.  Thanks to Jerry (Chris) Maguire's RSS Framework that showed up first in Google and saved me the time of running XSD.exe on an RSS XML schema. Apparently he has even newer stuff on his site.  It's got a few more moving parts than I think it needs to, but it did the job with a few changes that I marked with my initials; SDH.

Thanks to Scott both for teaching me and for helping me get the content migrated over. I'm a lame IT-management-type of guy, not a coder, but it was truly fun to learn a little something and to find that I was able to follow what he was showing me. Of course, it doesn't hurt that Scott's probably the best technical speaker/teacher I have ever met. I'm lucky to work with a number of really creative people that also happen to be really, really smart.

Speaking of really creative and smart people, Travis is now a MSDBA in addition to being a MCSD - which is both very cool and a big deal (not mention quite an accomplishment). Not many have the MCSD certification, and even fewer have both. Congrats, Trav!

There's a pretty sudden and major uptick on our mail servers - and apparently on the mail servers of others - of instances of the Zafi worm/virus attepting to propagate itself. It's particularly pervasive, and while the payload does not appear destructive, it could quickly become a cleanup nightmare, including the possibility of disabling AV software and running in its place. If ever there was a justification for a really good email antivirus product, this is one.

From Panda Software's virus encyclopedia:

Brief Description

Zafi.B is a worm that looks for directories in which antivirus programs are installed. If successful, Zafi.B overwrites the executable files with copies of itself. By doing so, the user will be unprotected against the attack of other malware. So whenever users run the antivirus, they will be running the Zafi.B without noticing. In addition, Zafi.B searches for certain processes, such as the Windows Registry Editor, the Task Manager, etc. If successful, Zafi.B ends them. Zafi.B spreads via e-mail in a message with variable characterics that can be written in different languages, and through peer to peer file sharing programs (P2P).

Visible Symptoms

Zafi.B is easy to recognize once it has affected the computer, as it attempts to open any of the web sites stored in the following path of the Windows Registry every time it is executed: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Software\ Microsoft\ Internet Explorer\ TypedURLs

See:

http://www3.ca.com/securityadvisor/virusinfo/virus.aspx?ID=39333 

on CA's web site for info about the worm and how to remove.

Also see:

http://www.pandasoftware.com/virus_info/encyclopedia/overview.aspx?idvirus=48433 

on Panda's web site for further info.

Chris Pratley asks: How do you use OneNote? From his weblog site:

"Although we have several different ways to collect information about how OneNote is used, I am always interested to hear how people use it. And this forum provides an opportunity for a dialog that our other data collection systems don’t really provide. So, let's hear it. How do you use OneNote? How is your notebook organized? What do you do with it? Would you prefer a different type of organization, or even a different concept for OneNote besides a tabbed notebook?"

He goes on to describe how he uses it, how he organizes his OneNote notebooks, and then lists some of the things he doesn't relaly like about his organizational method and its use.

Chris is asking for real-world feedback here. If you're a user of OneNote, take the time to describe for him and his readers - via a comment on his blog entry - how you use the program in your daily life. He wants to hear from others, so this is your chance!

Have been trolling the web for nifty SharePoint stuff and have come up with some interesting items worth looking into. I don't post nearly enough about SharePoint here (and I even have a category for it), so here goes a few nuggets of what I think is pretty cool stuff:

SPS 2003 Document library TreeView
A simple treeview renderer for document library in SharePoint 2003. Make navigation/visualization of your more complex document libraries a little more familar.

Building Custom Alert Result Channels in SharePoint Portal Server 2003
This definitely fits in the "cool" department. Toast alerts from SharePoint Portal - would be even niftier in the Messenger (MS/MSN) interface.

SQL Server Reporting Services Webparts for SharePoint
Display business data mined and munged with SQL Reporting Services on a SharePoint site/portal. Hello, biz intelligence - is that you?

Workflow Lite for SharePoint RC1
Display business data mined and munged with SQL Reporting Services on a SharePoint site/portal. Hello, biz intelligence - is that you?

Sharing Bookmarks, Wikis, and the Zen of SharePoint
Says Jonathan Hardwick: "But first you've got understand the Zen of SharePoint, which is this: it's SQL, but without the agonizing relational pain. Yup, under the hood beats good ol' SQL Server. That means SharePoint is all about lists." He also found a past article I wrote dreaming about wikis and SharePoint truly coming together. Anyone game???

Looks like pretty much all the free blogs at weblogs.com (about 3000 of them) are gone. Userland's apparently not especially interested in hosting free sites (they're a commercial enterprise after all), and Dave Winer, who really got the free thing going back in the day, has actually been buying servers himself recently and moving the sites over. But the weblogs.com migration and hosting is much more difficult than can be handled by Dave for free, so he's had to pull the plug. Performance problems and other issues (DNS nightmares for sub-domains, for example) have not been manageable, so the other evening, Dave posted this entry, recorded this audioblog entry, and decided he had to turn off the free service. So, he did. People who have sites hosted there can post a comment on this page with the URL of their site, and Dave promises to send the contents of all requested sites on July 1st. For complete information, listen to the audio entry. Dave explains it all there.

"This is not a company here, this is a person"
Dave Winer has provided, or through Userland has been involved in providing, a free service for many years. Unfortunately, he's faced with a difficult personal health situation and had to make a decision. It would have been much better if there was some reasonable period during which people could have downloaded their own information, but we're past that point now. Dave's a somewhat controversial (to some) and outspoken guy, but he's human like the rest of us, and hey - four years of free hosting... Regardless of the situation today, he's got to take care of himself, and IMO he deserves the community's gratitude for all the years of good and free blogging service (I even had one set up for a while back in the beginning). For my part, I wish him well and hope his heath improves and that he's able to focus better on the more important aspects of his life. As nice as it is to do for others, one must take care of one's self first in order to be available to others. Dave's done a lot for the community in the past, and regardless of the present situation, we can at least tell him thank you:

    Hey Dave - Thanks! (and good luck)

For some reason, over the past few days several people have asked me if I know what to do with an American flag that is in a fixed position on a pole (like the kind that you'd attach to your porch, for example) during a time when the flag is to be flown at half-staff. I understand why they're asking the question - I was wondering the same thing myself last week. I am just not so sure why they're asking me.

Anyhow, I did some research, and it turns out there is a correct and acceptable way to fly those flags:

For flags that can't be lowered, such as those on many homes, the American Legion says attaching a black ribbon or streamer to the top of the flag is an acceptable alternative. The ribbon should be the same width as a stripe on the flag and the same length as the flag.

If the flag is hanging on a wall, make three black bows from the same material and place one bow at each of the mounting points.

Totally non-technical, but for now completely relevant to many. So, there you go.

New security features will be introduced in Windows XP SP2 this summer that will affect Internet Explorer and ActiveX controls, file downloads, pop-up windows, and more. As a result, depending on the types of technology you've employed on your Web site, it's possible your site won't play well with the enhanced security of SP2.

So, Microsoft has released a white paper that explains the potential problem areas and how to make sure your site will work well with the updated software. You can get the info here.

NOTE: Since SP2 is available as a pre-release download for beta testers and in a preview version, now is a good time for companies with large, important Web sites to do some controlled testing and make sure they've got any kinks worked out. People in business with IT departments should definitely check in with your IT department before you download the service pack, because it introduces a number of changes that a) may break certain functionality on your computer in the beta version, and b) are not quite ready for prime time, but are ready to be tested in a controlled environment. Your IT people will almost certainly want to put some controls around the installation of the test software, such as installing it in a lab environment or similar.

Here are a couple of links to information about Windows XP SP2 and its impact on other programs and servers:

• How to Make Your Web Site Work with Windows XP Service Pack 2
• Windows XP SP2 Information for IT Professionals on Microsoft TechNet
• FAQ: How Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) Affects SQL Server and MSDE
• The New Wireless Network Setup Wizard in Windows XP Service Pack 2
• New Networking Features in Microsoft® Windows® XP Service Pack 2
• Changes to Functionality in Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2
• Windows XP Service Pack 2: Security Information for Developers

Now's the time to get ready, and for all those web-development businesses out there (the few that have survived) to prepare their big fast-push marketing campaign and make some extra cash this fall fixing sites for people who don't know what they have, and can't for the life of them figure out why end users are complaining about their suddenly-broken Web sites.