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November 28 Another Company Failing to Deliver Rebates: Aluratek
Ok so some time ago I posted all the information for a company that had not paid up on rebates and shortly after posting all that information I got my check, hmmm, so here is another company that owes me money and all the info I have found to date about them:
I have sent further emails and will give it a few more days before I see who all I can file a complaint with as I don't know about you but I am tired of these companies not paying up on rebates until you threaten a complaint or other action. If you have any missing rebates from Aluratek please post a comment and let's hold these companies to their promises. November 24 XP SP3 - It's Really Coming?
I've posted in the past that I thought Microsoft would ditch XP SP3 for multiple reasons and I still think those reasons work however it appears they will in fact be shipping XP SP3 and are probably closer than we think in shipping it because XP SP3 Release Candidate 1 is out.
So I might just be wrong as at least the RC is there but I still question how they are going to market Vista SP1 and release XP SP3 at or near the same time. November 16 So Does Microsoft Use Their Own Software?It's been a contention for years that Microsoft used non-Microsoft products such as Apache web servers back in the day but of late Microsoft has been very diligent about "eating their own cooking". Almost all the Microsoft servers now run IIS7 which isn't even released and certainly not Apache, all their presentations they do for various trade groups tend to be built on Virtual Server and not VMWare however there are times Microsoft just goes with the flow and uses what's obviously the better program. Case in point is SilverLight, Microsoft's Flash Killer, well maybe. There are very few Silverlight sites anywhere to be found and that includes even on Microsoft's servers. That being the case it's not all that odd to see Flash put out by Microsoft however when they release a brand new product on a brand new "flashy" site you would think they would try to use their own code but do they? This site with it's cool little talking numbers is Flash and you will find no Silverlight anywhere on it. Now if we dig a bit deeper I'll show you something even funnier, Microsoft using MACS! Yeap that's right let's click on the tab "Add-ons" and take a look at what we see gets a lot less "Flashy" however if you look at the site and the code behind it:
You will see a little interesting name in that code and that is "BBEdit 8.7", a MAC HTML Editor! That's right BBEdit is not ported to Windows, it's MAC OSX only! I know Microsoft hires out jobs like this but I'm doubting Bill would approve to have anything associated with Microsoft to leave any traces of what was used to create it when those traces point to anything other than Microsoft products. In fact some of the code on these pages comes from another third party for various code scripts so even the code was borrowed and not original. Oh well guess Microsoft doesn't like it's own cooking... November 14 Vista Is ME of 2007?
It appears the general mood has started changing pretty fast here lately to one where Vista isn't the new, cool OS but the dog that ME was in it's day. With OEM's demanding Microsoft extend their option to sell XP loaded PC's to the likes of John C Dvorak calling Vista a "turkey" among other things those with voices in the community are getting louder and louder, will Microsoft listen?
Of course Apple is wasting no time taking advantage of Microsoft's dud with a number of commercials poking fun at Vista with their MAC/PC guys. The latest one jumps into the mix of how many users are 'downgrading' to XP. The downside from a real world point of view is this is exactly what is happening and putting end customers in a potential bind because as it stands right now XP support will end in 2009 yet if those customers are buying XP now they either have to buy another OS in just over a year or work on an unsupported OS. So where does that leave Vista and the end user? First off as I've said before XP SP3 is due out in the spring along with Vista SP1 but do you think Microsoft is going to create a marketing nightmare of releasing the first Service Pack for Vista touting it's updates yet at the same time release a Service Pack for an OS they want to retire the next year? As well as the potential slap in the face to Vista there is also the issue of Microsoft's Life Cycle which says mainstream support will end either 12 months after a Service Pack or at the end of the products Life Cycle, WHICHEVER COMES FIRST. Can you imagine the screaming that will go on if they release SP3 for XP and then stop supporting XP within a year? To me this says either Microsoft will force out XP SP3 around January 1, after the Christmas buying but before Vista SP1 or there will be no SP3 at all and they will instead rename it to a Product Roll-up. So what to do, what to do. I think the old saying "if it ain't broke don't fix it" comes in very handy here. XP at the present time is time tested, it's weaknesses known, it's security tightened and compatibility with current software and hardware well established. Considering we saw Microsoft extend support for for Windows NT by a year and changed it's Extended Support to cover XP for five years after Mainstream support ends I will be highly surprised if Microsoft sticks with the current Life Cycle on XP. Extending mainstream by a year or even two would allow for Microsoft to potentially have Windows 7 in the pipe and quietly let Vista die the death it may justly deserve. Granted the odds Microsoft can keep Windows 7 on any type of schedule is another story entirely however if they opened a two to three year window for either fixing Vista so it doesn't need a Quad Core Xeon and 16GB's of ram to run properly or getting Windows 7 ready for shipping it would make more sense than telling millions of customers run Vista and deal with it or worse have millions running an OS that is no longer having it's holes plugged. November 13 WSUS Crash, The Excuses, The BlameI am floored by the number of boxes this issue took out this week and it clearly shows two major weaknesses in the process. I am of the opinion that first off it shows Microsoft does not fully code review and test prior to pushing stuff out otherwise this should have been caught. As some had said this was "SQL 101" and Microsoft should be better than that. Second is I think the fault lies on "System Admins" which are not doing anything to Admin a server and probably worse charging customers for that 'service'. Anyway I don't want to double post so in response to a Blog about the WSUS event this week I wanted to post my response to Eriq here just in case he doesn't feel compelled to post my response to his own blog.
November 12 Take a trip inside Intel's Oregon FabEver wanted to see how a computer chip is made or why they wear those funny little suits? Your browser does not support JavaScript. This media can be viewed at http://www.podtech.net/home/1981/intel-says-goodbye-to-silicon-dioxide-in-new-45-nanometer-fab Microsoft Update Breaks Small Business Server Reporting?Appears Microsoft pushed out some sort of update over the weekend and it's broke the reporting in SBS 2003 R2 and maybe SBS 2003 as well. It's not clear as of yet but it looks like they pushed out some bad metadata however it's been noted that such a push should not be breaking multiple sites or services in IIS. More news to follow but as of right now there is no fix to "Page cannot be displayed" when running your SBS Reports such as the weekly generated Server Performance Reports. So far none of our own clients have been hit with this so I suspect it's more related to the product list selected in the WSUS Products console if it truly has to do with the metadata but even then I agree with some others that any WSUS metadata being pushed down breaking other IIS sites and services is very bad, very bad indeed. UPDATE 12:50PM EST:
UPDATE 6:20PM EST:
So the fix is to manually force a sync in WSUS 3.0 or wait for WSUS 2.0 to do it's daily sync and it will pull down the corrected metadata. November 11 Yet Another Tech SiteAs if there are not enough locations for trying to find the answers here comes another tech site billing itself as a tech site for IT Pro.
November 06 An Open Letter To DLinkOver 6 months ago I opened a case with DLink concerning the DIR-635 model and it's issues with PPTP and the included ALG and SPI settings. At that time a tech said he would dig deeper and confirm my testing yet weeks after weeks went by with no response from him and he totally ignored my request via email and phone to give me an update. To date this model has issues with PPTP in which either ALG or SPI screw up the proper passing of PPTP In or Out depending on how you set it up but it is IMPOSSIBLE to setup this unit to allow both incoming and outgoing PPTP. This model is broke. It does not perform as advertised. You have not updated the firmware in a year thus either admit it's broke or have abandoned it and it's users. I specifically looked for a unit that was of higher quality than the $40 weekend special and spent over $100 on this unit to find it performs no better than the $45 units. PPTP use to be so simple however it appears none of the home cable router providers can build a unit that properly passes PPTP and GRE both In and Out anymore. At the same time I can build a Linux Boot Floppy that in fact will do this and will run on any piece of left over junk PC including those old 486's with ISA network cards. If DLink has a product they can stand behind and state it clearly will perform both Inbound and Outbound PPTP correctly please show me that product and send me a statement that you know that unit will work or your good for double your money back otherwise I have to believe you know your products do not operate correctly and are unwilling to put your money behind your product. Disgusted, November 04 Do People Really Fall For This?I got this in email some time back and keep meaning to Blog about it but never really got around to it. I noticed however here of late a large number of TV spots by FakeChecks.org where they use a real seedy guy to attempt to run the same scam as you see in the email below but he does it in person so it made me go dig this up and type out a quick post. Anyway I am always amazed that this stuff gets anyone clicking and following the links however it's obvious it does or they wouldn't keep trying. The group putting up these series of commercials is FakeChecks.org which is backed by the National Consumer League and has some decent material on their site to get you thinking about if it's a scam or not. Of course my rule is "if it sounds too good", ah you've heard that one huh, well DUH! So if you get this type of stuff in your email or anything else that sounds too good to be true please just hit ! FraudTest: http://www.fakechecks.org/fraudtest.html FakeChecks.org TV Spot: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iR6mZO9qXU
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