I was at a client's last week, we were discussing a project that we are assisting with. We had just reached the point in the conversation where I asked how the project was doing.

There was a thump sound from the window, we turned to look and there were 2 buzzards sitting on the ledge outside the 10th floor window!

Should we infer anything about the project based on this!

Cheers,

Robert Porter

 

An updated version of the original "Shift Happens" video. Well worth watching if you have not seen it, and even if you have it is worth another look. Mind blowing information.

Cheers,

Robert Porter

 

I can never remember what features exist in each of the many versions of Visual Studio. And 2008 added many new editions.

Luckily Microsoft has published a comparison matrix for our reference, it can be found here.

Click the plus sign in the boxes next to each category in order to see the feature comparisons in tabular form.

Cheers,

Robert Porter

 

I love the television show NUMB3RS, and I have been a fan of the Mac vs. PC commercials. Now I can get my fix of both in one shot!

 

 

Well, I was using Windows Live Writer, but since I re-paved my Laptop and re-installed Vista from scratch, Windows Live Writer crashes every time I start it and I have been unable to find a resolution.

So, I am back to using BlogJet which is actually not a bad thing, but it will take me awhile to get back to full speed.

I have started a new job in the interim as well. I now work at Ironworks a Richmond VA based consulting services company. It’s been a welcome change from the past which had involved a high degree of travel. I work out of the Raleigh NC office which is a fairly quick drive.

More as I can!

Cheers,

Robert Porter

 

If you have experienced issues connecting to Windows 2003 Servers and other Remote Desktop hosts, or connecting to Citrix sessions from Windows Vista there is a solution you may wish to try.

For an excellent post on the why's and wherefores of the issue see this post from Tom Keating. For more on the Citrix issues see this thread from the Citrix support forums.

The short answer is that the TCP Stack in Vista supports automatic receive window tuning, and this appears to result in connectivity issues in certain situations. The fix is to disable autotuning by running this command as an administrator. (Followed by a log out/log in cycle).

The following is copied directly from Tom's blog post.

- Run a command prompt (cmd.exe) as an Administrator
- Type: netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled
If you want to to re-enable it:
- Type: netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=normal
In some cases you may need to use this command in addition to the above, but I didn't have to:
- Type: netsh interface tcp set global rss=disabled

Now be aware that this will turn off auto tuning on all connections, read Tom's article for a good explanation of how this might be prevented and the possible consequences. I can attest to the fact that it resolved a number of connectivity issues I was having.

Thanks to Mike DieBold of the Kentucky Retirement System for pointing this solution out to me!

Cheers,

Robert Porter

 

Rhys, my oldest son, becomes a teenager tomorrow, December 9th by virtue of being 13.

I took this picture of him a few minutes ago, he has several friends over for a sleepover tonight. They are playing an XBox game and will probably stay up way to late as usual.

He is an avid gamer and very creative, he likes to draw and tell stories, write and read. I am constantly surprised by how fast they grow!

Anyway, wanted to take a moment to acknowledge one of the prime reasons I do what I do, after all, we work for our families!

Happy Birthday Rhys! Many, many more!

Cheers,

Robert

 

I will be working in Kentucky this week, which means posting may be a bit light for awhile.

Going to be looking at VS2008 this week, and will try and come up with a couple of posts about my install experience and first impressions etc.

Also will be working with some interesting Vista related stability focused hotfixes that I have recently become aware of. As I get the chance to check these out I will post about them as well.

Meantime, going to see if I can introduce at least some agile practices at my new project. Am not going to hold my breath as I am not in a position with any significant influence, however I can try.

Currently, I am stuck in RDU airport waiting for the aircraft to be repaired. I was originally supposed to be in Kentucky by 9 AM, now looking like about 3:30 PM if there are no further delays. <sigh> Travel is often not according to plan, hope my luggage manages to find me!

UPDATE: It took all day to get to Kentucky, and my luggage is still a few hours behind me.

Cheers,

Robert Porter

 

Scary thought seen at blogoscoped in an article by Philipp Lenssen's. He raises a point that I have not fully explored. With our increasing use of and dependence on "elsewhere" hosted services such as Google and Windows Live, what would you do if your account was hacked?

Another factor that in my mind increases the risk, is that with more and more services available via a single sign on, if your account is compromised you could have a great deal of vulnerability across a very large surface in a very short period of time.

Take Google for instance. If my account was compromised the attacker would have access to my:

• Email, and Archives (GMail)
• Contacts (GMail)
• Notes (GMail)
• Appointments and Schedule (GMail)
• Documents (Google Docs)
• Photo Albums (Flickr and Picasa)
• Blogs and Blogs I have access to. (Blogger)
• AdSense Account

Now I operate by the rule that anything I store on someone else's server is accessible to the world anyway. For that reason I don't store any family or professional secrets, medical info etc online, however even my day to day info would be a goldmine for a potential identity thief. Or to a competitor.

But increasingly more and more information is being hosted behind fewer and fewer federated logins. Which means you can have large areas of your online life compromised by losing a single password.

Not to mention the potential damage that could be done just by having access to your account, such as sending emails that actually DO come from you (just not actually authored by you), to everyone in your contact list.

It does not take long to think of nightmare scenario's. So as Philipp asked "What would you do" if this happened to you? Do you have all that data and email backed up somewhere? Even if Google or Microsoft restores your access to your account, some or all of your data may be gone.

Has anyone had something like this happen to them? If so what did you do to regain access and did you lose anything irreplaceable?

Something to think about!

Cheers,

Robert Porter

 

I have added a "Home" page again, which is currently visible at http://www.rp2c.com which will soon have several static pages that will be linked to from this blog.

My thoughts at the moment are to add the following:

 

Projects Page: Projects I am working on or involved in.

Tools Page: Tools I use day in and day out, and my thoughts on them.

Community: Links to various community sites I find useful.

 

There will be static links in the sidebar on the main blog page for each of these, as well as links from the home page mentioned above. Please let me know if you think I am missing something.

Cheers,

Robert Porter

 

Do you, like me, have multiple Windows Live ID's? Or old passport accounts? Want to link them? Now you can!

Windows Live now has a service that let's you link multiple ID's together. The site offers the following explanation of the service:

About Linked IDs

If you have a Windows Live ID that you use for work and one that you use at home, you can link them. When you link more than one Windows Live ID, you can sign in to a Windows Live site or service with one account and still have access to information related to the linked accounts.

Basically it allows you to have access to both ID's and their respective contact lists etc, while signed in with one of them.

Click here to explore the Linked ID service.

 

I recently signed up for (again), a Google Adsense account. The idea is simple and straightforward, you sign up, inject some code into your web site or blog, and ad's are delivered via Google. Google tracks the click through's from your site, and depending on a number of factors you begin to earn revenue.

The ad's will gradually adjust so that they are relevant to the content of your blog. This is accomplished by some arcane algorithm that Google uses as they index Adsense enabled sites and blogs. At the moment, the ad's on my blog seem to have developed a fixation with my name, "Bob" and I have ad's for "Bob The Builder Pajamas" and "Bob Dylan Art".  And somehow it decided that my blog was the perfect forum for selling woman's underwear last night and I had tall "skyscraper" images of scantily clad women all over my blog. (Try explaining that one to your wife!!!)

As of yet, I have earned a grand total of... Drum roll please.... ZIP, Nada, Zilch! But it has been only a few days. I also signed up for the affiliate program with my webhost, and if someone clicks on their banner ad's on my site, and meets some other conditions, I can earn referral fee's etc.

So if you need a good, .NET enabled, dasBlog friendly webhost, please come to my site, and click on the banner for WebHost4Life, and then sign up for a year of no hassle, worry free, low cost webhosting!  My wallet will thank you!

Cheers,

Robert Porter

 

For those of us old enough to remember the pre-Windows era, the arrival of 3 technologies marked a turning point in history. One that was not immediately recognized by some of the biggest technology and software companies until it was to late. And I think we are witnessing a repeat of that event.

Some History

I began programming computers professionally in 1979. I worked at Travelers Insurance company in Hartford Connecticut programming an number of different IBM mainframes in COBOL and Assembler. In 1981 I began writing code for the Zilog Z80 running CP/M and later the 6502 chip made famous by the Commodore Vic and later the 64 and 128 models.

Sometime after that I began writing assembler code for early Intel processors including the 4004, 8008 and finally the 8086 and all of it's descendants. These programs were all character based, typically with a monochrome screen with 80 columns and 25 rows.

I made a fair amount of money writing what were called TSR's for the IBM/Microsoft DOS platforms. A TSR was a Terminate and Stay Resident program, it was designed to run, install itself, hook a keyboard interrupt, and then go to sleep. It could be awakened by pressing the key combination associated with it. Sort of an early attempt at multitasking.

In 1990 Microsoft released Windows 3.0. I had played with Windows 1.0 in 1983 a little, and Windows 2.03 later, and was unimpressed. I saw potential but the hardware of the day just did not allow for an affordable system that was capable of running these earlier versions. But 3.0 and later 3.1 and 3.11 were stunning! I took one look and never looked back. I knew this was the future of PC's and corporate computing.

At the time WordPerfect was the dominant Word Processing application and Lotus 1-2-3 was the dominant Spreadsheet application in the DOS world. And Novel was the dominant Network OS for PC's. And they (and most of the rest of us) assumed they would continue in those roles.

What they did not realize was that Windows heralded a true paradigm shift in the world of the PC. I know that phrase is over used, but it really fits. Both Lotus and WordPerfect were slow to offer versions of their applications for Windows, and when they finally did, they were terrible products that did not work well, lacked features their DOS versions had, and just did not "fit" in the Windows environment.

Microsoft had already had a lot of experience writing applications for a graphical environment, courtesy of their work for Apple. Word, and especially Excel, were great applications for their time, and took full advantage of the Windows environment, and WYSIWYG formatting and editing. Not surprising perhaps considering they also created the OS.

Novel, on the other hand did not seem to take the threat of Windows seriously. Yet NT was on the horizon and Windows for Workgroups was already making huge inroads into the lower end of the networking market.

In a few short years WordPerfect all but disappeared, Lotus lost it's dominant position in its market and eventually was subsumed into the original "Borg" of the software industry, IBM. Novel limped along longer, but it too is a shadow of its former glory.

All of them missed the proverbial boat when Microsoft brought it's triple whammy to the market, Operating System, Applications, and it's own Network Operating System. All more or less integrated, all capable of working well together and all "good enough" for most users and small to midsize business.

Flash Forward

Are we watching another watershed moment in computing history now? I think so, but I am not sure what to call it. It's not a new concept, but technology and infrastructure have caught up and now the model is actually workable. It's leading representatives are Google Office and Microsoft Live Office. Neither are quit there yet, but it sure looks like they are heading in the right direction.

Network bandwidth is increasingly available at ever cheaper rates. The concept has several names, but they all describe a similar set of concepts. Zero or low touch install of applications, a browser based experience but with a much richer more desktop type user experience. Usage licensing, (Software as a Service?) as opposed to shrink wrap licensing.

There are still some huge barriers to adoption, security, trust, access and reliability, etc. But these issues are slowly getting worked out. I still prefer a locally installed desktop application over the available web based alternatives, but the feature and experience gap is steadily narrowing. The economic model has yet to prove itself either, but concepts such as Micro Payments, services such as PayPal and others are all aiding that effort as well.

So what do you think? Who will be the casualties of this shift? Who will be the winners? How far are we from a truly major change in how and where we we get the applications we use in our daily lives?

Think about it!

Cheers,

Robert Porter

 

In a word, MsiZap. A great utility I stumbled on while looking for some help getting rid of entries in my Add/Remove programs list that had issues or failures with uninstalling.

Here is the article on the utility and it's usage. It worked well for me, sharing now with you!

Cheers,

Robert Porter

 

Scott Hanselman posted an article (see below) about what he calls the "Nuclear Option" for restoring network connectivity issues. I took the commands from his post and created a cmd file that I could run and it works well.

I knew about some of these, but not all, and I can never remember the ones I did know when I need them. So this post is as much a reminder to me as anything else.

Go see his post for more information.

 

 

Cheers,

Robert Porter

 

Fun to do, give it a whirl and see what kind of Nerd you are! (Or are not.)

 

Never mind your cheese, I want to know what happened to the universe while I was not looking.

I distinctly recall numerous points in time over the duration of my career where I was suddenly struck by how dramatically my universe had changed.

In my personal context, my universe is the whole of the IT Development/IT Engineering space. And my universe has again been rocked by one of those OMG moments when I came up for air and looked around a bit.

Like most disciplines mine has been largely one of increasing specialization. As time goes by and new technologies emerge it is increasingly difficult to stay aware of, let alone abreast of, my field as a whole.

Buzzwords enter the lexicon, gain acceptance, are used in trade publications, then fade to obscurity before I ever know what they really meant.

Whole technologies have come into being, flourished, and gone before I ever became aware of them in some cases.

Two teams, working with the same technology, but isolated from each other, will develop an distinct shorthand both verbal and written, to describe the exact same things. Yet each group will find the other groups patter to be mostly unintelligible.

This balkanization and hyper specialization is especially prevalent in any tech based area of endeavor. Add to that the speed with which innovation is occurring throughout the world and you get a tsunami of tech washing over you daily.

There are people that make entire careers out of one module of a program like SAP. Or people that specialize in one vertical technology platform such as Biztalk, or Sharepoint for example.

And this is not necessarily by choice, rather it is being driven for the most part by sheer practical necessity.

Even people on the far right end of the bell curve are having to focus their attention on an ever decreasing slice of the available whole.

This is not in and of itself a "bad thing" but it is a phenomena that has serious potential implications for both business and society as a whole.

From a slightly different perspective we in the IT world are following in the footsteps of the Medical profession. Yet we in IT have already exceeded the degree of sub specialization that the Medical field has obtained.

Some of us can remember when a medical "specialist" was a fairly rare thing. They were typically available in the handful of large hospitals and research institutions that could afford to support them and their particular demands on the infrastructure of the day.

Now I routinely see specialists as needed, and have a choice of dozens if not hundreds of specialists in any given field, in my own hometown. General Practitioners still exist, and they fill an increasingly vital role.

A good GP is a person that can help you plan your overall healthcare approach and needs. They act as the central clearing house with both a big picture view of you and your health as well as a detailed view of specific areas of interest.

They help you decide if a specialist is needed, which one to use, and they keep track of all of the resulting diagnostic information and integrate it into an overall view of your health.

So is there an analog to a medical GP in the IT world? Should there be? What role would an ITGP play?

I have my own opinion which I will share in a follow up post, but I would like to hear your opinions as well.

Cheers,

Robert Porter

 

A great friend of mine has started blogging, let me revise that, he has started publicly blogging. He has been blogging behind the firewall for sometime I believe.

Mike Kelly, whom I have known for many years now, has a blog at The Eniac Papers, his premise is the ability to share "Tribal" knowledge among the community. A phrase he may not have coined but I first heard from him!

We met and first worked together at what was then First Union Bank in Raleigh North Carolina. I still recall the first time I heard Mike mention his concept of Tribal Knowledge. He had come to ask about some arcane data in a monster lookup table. When I explained what the particular data he needed was and what to use for a where clause to retrieve it he was a little non-plussed.

He looked at me with his trademark "frown of BS happening here" look. And said as near as I can recall something along the lines of "And I was supposed to know this how? Should I wait for some tribal drum signal or did someone think it might be nice to actually document this somewhere?"

Mike has always been a share the news kind of guy. We have exchanged countless emails that contain nothing more than a link to something we think the other should see or know about. I am glad to see he is blogging now and a wider audience will benefit from his experience and considerable insight.

Cheers,

Robert Porter

 

I just opened my browser and tried to go to Windows Live, and received the following:

Other web sites are working fine, did Live die?

 

There are a number of references floating around the Internet about how to use an upgrade version of Vista to actually perform a clean install. I am not going to recap the steps here but a simple Windows Live query will yield the steps.

But I did actually use the method, and it works. In my case I really was upgrading in the sense my system had a legitimate version of XP Pro on it when I bought it, and I therefor was qualified for the upgrade price. Since the process allows a clean install as opposed to an upgrade in place it was very attractive to me.

Upgrading an OS is always a rather tricky business and invariably leaves a lot of extraneous "crud" from the previous OS laying around your hard drive and registry. So when possible I always prefer to do a clean install and start fresh.

So I used the "trick" that is being circulated to perform a clean install with an upgrade only version. I believe since I did in fact have a full valid license to XP that I am not violating the spirit of the license even if I am technically in violation.

That being said I would not condone someone installing an upgrade version unless they were qualified to do so in accordance with the intent of the license agreement. I have heard many folks make the argument that since the installer allows it to happen, it must somehow be ok.

Sorry, I don't buy that argument. If you have a licensed OS that is allowed to be upgraded, and you are in fact upgrading that system then you qualify for the upgrade price. Otherwise you should pay full price. Its fairly black and white, I don't see any gray anywhere in there.

Now is Vista, whatever version, worth the price? The market will decide that.

Cheers,

Robert Porter

 

I know this is old, but I giggle every time I see it!

 

 

 

Sorry for not posting for awhile, but I am sure you are all familiar with the holiday “black hole” effect.

Strongly Typed Datasets Tutorial Nixed

I wanted to take this opportunity to also explain that I am nixing my “Typed Dataset” tutorial series. In doing the research for this I initially had a very favorable view of this technology. Now, after attempting to use it in a production application I have to say my view is considerably less favorable. I wanted to wait until I had a chance to apply SP1 to Visual Studio 2005 and see if it resolved any of these issues. Sadly, it did not.

What I will do is post a more detailed analysis of what I encountered in attempting to use Strongly Typed Datasets and why I found the issues to be serious enough to no longer pursue using them.

On Vista

Vista is about to be released for consumer purchase, is already available for business use and on the MSDN library. I however have no intention of installing it on my primary laptop. Not until a number of issues are resolved. Not least of which is the near impossibility of getting my development environment and tool set installed and running on Vista.

Those of you that know me may be shocked to hear me say this, but I no longer put anything with either Beta or CTP status on my development system. I have been nailed too many times and ended up having to repave my system in order to get work done. So now I use a Virtual Machine to play on. I wish VM’s had been around 10 years ago, with the capabilities they have now. It would have saved me a lot of pain and anguish.

I will (and have) installed Vista in a VM in order to test my applications on, but there are still far too many incompatibilities with even Microsoft’s own tools to use Vista as a development platform. I have heard of some folks being able to get everything running on Vista, but far more often I have heard of horror stories and days of lost productivity due to the attempt.

When SP1 comes out I will give it another look.

Other Stuff

I recently converted one of my development systems to a Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard Edition server! This enables me to begin playing with more of the newer technologies from a server perspective. One of the first things I did was install Virtual Server on the new server, I will use that to run a Team System Foundation Server in a VM so I can begin to get used to what TFS has to offer. I am also anxious to get back up to speed on Active Directory and LDAP programming and since I installed AD on this server I should now be able to do that. (Wonder if I can get a Linux Server running as a VM as well and play with AD and LDAP connections?)

Robert Porter

 

There is a new Create-a-Character flash game on the South Park Studios site. My kids showed it to me today. I could not resist, here is the South Park version of me!

 

Now that Office 2007 has gone “Gold” and is available for download and soon on retail shelves, it would be a good time to go here and download the “Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats”.

According to Microsoft’s web site this does the following:

 By installing the Compatibility Pack in addition to Microsoft Office 2000, Office XP, or Office 2003, you will be able open, edit, and save files using the file formats new to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007. The Compatibility Pack can also be used in conjunction with the Microsoft Office Word Viewer 2003, Excel Viewer 2003, and PowerPoint Viewer 2003 to view files saved in these new formats. For more information about the Compatibility Pack, see Knowledge Base article 923505.

Since Office 2007 has new formats for everything it is only a matter of time before someone sends you a Word or Excel file that you cannot open with your older version of Office. This option should mitigate the pain somewhat!

Cheers,

Robert Porter

 

My friend, Ken Spry, sent me a link the other day to a web site that tests your connection (broadband) speeds. I tried both it and BellSouth’s test page today just for comparison sake.

Here are the results from http://www.speedtest.net/: (click the image for a larger view)

The interface for the speedtest.net version is all shiney and nice! It’s fun to use as well.

 

 

 

 

 

And here are the results from http://speed.fastaccess.com/:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They appear to agree with each other which is nice, I am never sure if the ISP based speed test is “rigged” to report what they sold you vs. what you are actually getting.

 

 

eWeek has published a slide show titled “The Thirteen Scariest Things in IT.” and some of them were very good. Take a quick peek yourself.

My favorites, #8 “Management by Book of the Month Club.” and “The Merger”.

Cheers,

Robert Porter

 

 

I have gone through 3 Linksys Wireless Routers in under 2 years. All were some variant of the WRTG54G. I tried numerous firmware versions including 3rd party firmware with the first 2, the last one I left vanilla other than one upgrade just after purchase to the latest available firmware from Linksys’s web site.

The first 2 turned into semi bricks. Meaning lights were on but no one was home. The first one allowed wireless connections, but no longer allowed wired connections, even though the link lights showed normal for connected ports on the front panel. I reset, repowered, and reflashed the first one, all without error, all without success.

The second one lost the wan port. After the second one I began to suspect power transients or possible spikes on the network itself. However I placed a small hub between the router and the modem (for network sniffing) and it had no issues, nor did the DSL modem. The router is powered by a DC transformer, I checked for voltage levels and they were where they should be etc.

The third one lost the wireless lan, computers could see the AP, and sometimes even connect, but they never remained connected longer than 10 seconds, and the dang thing would never connect more than once. I tried 3 different computers and my PPC phone that has Wifi, all to no avail.

So this time I bought a Netgear Wireless router. I have used Linksys since their very first broadband router came out, but after going through 3 routers in less than 2 years I decided it might be time for a change. I have had numerous clients that used both Linksys and Netgear (as well as other brands), and could not remember hearing of any difficulties with Netgear, so I plunked down 39.99 for a brand new Wireless G 4 port router.

Installation was straight forward, I connected the router directly to my laptop, ignored the insert CD first warnings, and fired up IE. Got to the setup screens, configured the router for my PPoE connection and let it suck down the DNS and static IP from my ISP. (Bellsouth recently offered me a static IP address for no charge!).

Blamo, everything was up and running, I reconfigured the wireless settings, changed the SSID, and setup WPA security, also changed the admin password etc. All my wireless clients connected no problem, on the same channel (6) that the Linksys had been running.

We shall see what happens now, but so far the Netgear had performed flawlessly. One thing I did notice, the DDNS offerings on Netgear do not include TZO, so I downloaded and setup the software client to run as a service on one of my desktops so not a show stopper but I wonder why it was not an option?

 

Some stole Dori Smith’s license plate. It’s a California plate that says “WEB GEEK”.

If you run across this plate please notify the owner. She just wants it returned, she is not asking for anyone to file charges etc. So if you see it, please follow the link above for contact info and let her know.

Cheers,

Robert Porter

 

I know this is off-topic, but if you don’t know about Jeff Cooper don’t bother reading this. If you do, go here for a memorial link.

My Dad taught me his version of Jeff Cooper’s four rules, my Dad called them Laws. Either way they form the foundation of firearm safety.

The Four Rules

• All firearms are loaded. There are no exceptions. Don't pretend that this is true. Know that it is and handle all firearms accordingly. Do not believe it when someone says: "It isn't loaded."
• Never let the muzzle of a firearm point at anything you are not willing to destroy.  If you would not want to see a bullet hole in it do not allow a firearm's muzzle to point at it.
• Keep your finger off the trigger unless your sights are on the target. Danger abounds if you keep your finger on the trigger when you are not about to shoot. Speed is not gained by prematurely placing your finger on the trigger as bringing a firearm to bear on a target takes more time than it takes to move your finger to the trigger.
• Be sure of your target and what is behind it. Never shoot at sounds or a target you cannot positively identify. Know what is in line with the target and what is behind it (bullets are designed to go through things). Be aware of your surroundings whether on a range, in the woods, or in a potentially lethal conflict.

I never meet Jeff Cooper, but I read about him a lot, he was the founder of the American Pistol Institute in 1975, the name was later changed to Gunsite. Gunsite was sold in 1992 and became something quite different. Most people that attended the original under Cooper said that what followed was a mere shadow of what Cooper had created.

A quote from the memorial page does more justice to this thought than I can.

"Another analogy, if you will: In Winchester Cathedral in SE England rests the
Round Table. One can read the legends, one can follow the code of chivalry, one
can practice skill at arms. But one cannot sit at that table ever again."

May he rest in peace with all his fellow Marines that have gone before him.

Robert Porter

 

I noticed that IBM has recently announced plans to acquire Internet Security Systems, Filenet, and Webify among others. I have worked on several projects over the years using Filenet, but have no experience with the SOA Webify. ISS makes security “appliances” and network security software.

Content management is hot, and likely to remain so, Filenet’s acquisition will help IBM balance against EMC’s acquisition of Documentum and Legato last year.

It is also a market area that Microsoft has not made much of a move into. Which only makes me wonder what their strategy will be to enter the content management arena with? I doubt they will stay out of the market, it’s a boom market and should be capable of generating significant revenue streams for some time to come, so I imagine they will have an offering soon.

Any ideas?

Cheers,

Robert Porter

 

 have learned to really dislike SQL Servers IDENTITY feature. (Those of us more familiar with Oracle, think of an IDENTITY column as a Sequence built into a table.)

In a hurry I tossed in dozens of IDENTITY columns, used em as FK’s all over as well, and then had to re populate a table….  Oh oh, now I remember why you don’t use IDENTITY with impunity!

Sigh…..

Back to the drawing (design) board. Being sloppy because I was in a hurry is no excuse, but now we get to pay the piper. (Must be a rich SOB by now!)

-Robert Porter

 

The following link will take you to where I first saw a reference to "Swanson's Rules", I really enjoy reading Scott Hanselman's Blog and he often has links that lead me to other interesting blogs.

I have not figured out how to do Trackbacks and other nice things in Blogger yet, so sorry if I am stepping on any toes.

ComputerZen.com - Scott Hanselman's Weblog

summarized the rules are:

Bill Swanson's '25 Unwritten Rules of Management'
1. Learn to say, "I don't know." If used when appropriate, it will be often.
2. It is easier to get into something than it is to get out of it.
3. If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much.
4. Look for what is missing. Many know how to improve what's there, but few can see what isn't there.
5. Viewgraph rule: When something appears on a viewgraph (an overhead transparency[, or powerpoint]), assume the world knows about it, and deal with it accordingly.
6. Work for a boss with whom you are comfortable telling it like it is. Remember that you can't pick your relatives, but you can pick your boss.
7. Constantly review developments to make sure that the actual benefits are what they are supposed to be. Avoid Newton's Law.
8. However menial and trivial your early assignments may appear, give them your best efforts.
9. Persistence or tenacity is the disposition to persevere in spite of difficulties, discouragement, or indifference. Don't be known as a good starter but a poor finisher.
10. In completing a project, don't wait for others; go after them, and make sure it gets done.
11. Confirm your instructions and the commitments of others in writing. Don't assume it will get done!
12. Don't be timid; speak up. Express yourself, and promote your ideas.
13. Practice shows that those who speak the most knowingly and confidently often end up with the assignment to get it done.
14. Strive for brevity and clarity in oral and written reports.
15. Be extremely careful of the accuracy of your statements.
16. Don't overlook the fact that you are working for a boss.
* Keep him or her informed. Avoid surprises!
* Whatever the boss wants takes top priority.
17. Promises, schedules, and estimates are important instruments in a well-ordered business.
* You must make promises. Don't lean on the often-used phrase, "I can't estimate it because it depends upon many uncertain factors."
18. Never direct a complaint to the top. A serious offense is to "cc" a person's boss.
19. When dealing with outsiders, remember that you represent the company. Be careful of your commitments.
20. Cultivate the habit of "boiling matters down" to the simplest terms. An elevator speech is the best way.
21. Don't get excited in engineering emergencies. Keep your feet on the ground.
22. Cultivate the habit of making quick, clean-cut decisions.
23. When making decisions, the pros are much easier to deal with than the cons. Your boss wants to see the cons also.
24. Don't ever lose your sense of humor.
25. Have fun at what you do. It will reflect in your work. No one likes a grump except another grump.
[from Swanson's Rules]

Enjoy! - Bobster
 

Hmmm