“During a podcast posted on the Windows Vista team blog, Hallauer said it is imperative that testers get to work immediately when RC1 is released and dedicate as much time as possible to testing and providing feedback back to Microsoft so it can meet its internal release dates.”

So MS is demanding Beta testers who work for free to do so and do so many hours a day so that MS can met it’s time frame for releasing a product they want to turn around and charge those Beta testers $400 for when they do release it.

Hmmm, I build Toll bridges and I want you to come test if the bridge can hold your car and I want you to test it over and over and if it does fail and your car and you fall to your death I am not responsible nor will I compensate you in any way however if it doesn’t fail and it passes all test I will then turn around and start charging you for using the bridge. I don’t think that would fly with the general public, do you?

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A couple of folks at NYU have come up with a tool they claim can help protect your privacy by using the old trick of "hiding in plane sight". A Firefox add on or extension the program sends dozens or even hundreds of useless search queries to the four major search engines, AOL, Yahoo, Google and MSN in an effort to hide your personal search queries in a background of useless noise.

Although an interesting idea I wonder about the legality of such a program and if by using it your not in truth taking part in a large DOS (Denial Of Service) attack against the search engine providers. The use of any software to constantly query a search engine is little different than tools used by hackers to try and take down web sites and providers by simply overwhelming their systems with useless request or connections. Imagine hundreds, thousands or millions of systems sending dozens of request per minute to Google for useless search request, if that's not a DOS I'm not sure what is.

Thankfully the creators of this program have limited the number of queries per hour to a max of 10 per minute,

but how much would it take to reverse engineer the code to change those limits or take it and turn it into a nasty little worm which is designed to attack any or all the search engines out there? I'm not a programmer other than the rare Access database or web page but even I was able to pull the code out of this little tool and see the timing code which could easily be changed:

 

<menuitem id="t0" value="6000" label="10 per min" />
<menuitem id="t1" value="12000" label="5 per min" />
<menuitem id="t2" value="60000" label="1 per min" />
<menuitem id="t3" value="120000" label="30 per hour" />
<menuitem id="t4" value="360000" label="10 per hour" />
<menuitem id="t5" value="3600000" label="1 per hour" />

DOS attacks aside there is the question of abuse and theft of service. "What, theft of service you say, how's that?"

When you use a search engine you are agreeing by using that site to their Terms of Service. In Google's case they clearly state "No Automated Querying" so the use of TrackMeNot violates that clause very clearly. Search engines make their revenue from the so called "Pay per Click" as well as paid listing services and using their services with the intent to do nothing more than query it's database and use it's resources is in a sense theft of service. I'm not saying Google could ever take you to court and win a settlement but just the risk of being sued should make give one using tools like this second thoughts.

Lastly the argument that all the search engine data that's out there on your searches that the government wants access to let alone AOL let's lose on the Internet should in some way be corrupted by users as an intentional way of making it useless to protect your fourth amendment rights doesn't hold water for me. This line of thinking does not surprise me though coming from people that believe it is ok, and in fact they support the use of online services that clearly state the use of their service is based on the user agreeing to provide some personal info and then developed a project to deceive those sites which again is clearly theft of service.

Anyway that's my thoughts on this and I look forward to seeing what others have to say...

Just found a pretty neat little tool called VSPlus which just might make your life as an Admin a little easier. If your new to Virtual Server or Virtual PC let me try to explain what this technology let's you do.

Virtual Server is Microsoft's flavor of a virtual machine running inside or on top of a real machine. Microsoft bought Virtual PC from Connectix back in 2003. Almost at once Microsoft started working on the code to build Virtual Server and with the release of VS2005r2 they released the product for free. Say you have Windows XP installed on your PC with VS2005 you can install another OS not in the typical dual boot setup but inside Windows XP itself so your desktop can run with all it's normal app's and then you might have installed Windows 98 in VS to support some old application or for testing right along side your XP, at the same time, on the same box, pretty cool.

So anyway back to VSPlus and where it comes in. As a home user your unlikely to have more than a single VS running at any given time but in a corporate setup there many be dozens or even hundreds of VS's running. The reason for this in a corporate setup is because they need to do a lot of testing of software and products and having hundreds of physical servers is both costly and bulky. It's also likely to see sites consolidating older physical servers such as NT4 into Virtual Servers so even though they may need that NT4 they need it on newer supported hardware. A single fast server can support multiple virtual servers depending on the requirements for each VS and the memory and other resources on the physical server. As is always the case memory is king anymore.

Say you walk into a server room and there are 10 physical servers but you know as an Admin there are 20 Virtual Servers in there how would you get started shutting them all down? VSPlus gives you a nice GUI to move around those servers, change their running state and more all from a single GUI instead of having to get on various physical servers and one by one working your way through the list. Probably the biggest cool points however go to the command line tools that allow you to change the current state of the Virtual Machine which if your wanting to script a backup of the VM you can shutdown the VM, back it up to say a NAS and then start it right back up:

VSPcmd testserver Shutdown

copy c:\MYVS\*.* \\NAS1\VSBackups\*.*

VSPcmd testserver TurnOn

As an example let's say I run my business web site in a Virtual Machine on a Virtual Server. Now it's pretty static but I do make some changes now and again plus there are pages supported by other users that get uploaded on a regular basis so I do really need to be backing this site up. Sure I could setup a backup using NTBackup or some other commercial software in case the server went down or say the site got hacked but think about this instead. Say I take the site down using the VSPlus command line tools to stop the server, back up the virtual machine files to a NAS then with the same command tools start the server back up. Now you hackers out there have at it, take my site down, deface it if you want, heck trash the Windows OS it's running on infecting it with all types of worms because all I have to do is take down the Virtual Machine, delete the virtual files and copy my backup onto the server and turn it back on, tada total restore of the web site and it's server in 10 minutes if that long!

Per the Dictionary found here at, http://dictionary.laborlawtalk.com/beta_test, we have:

Alpha – the first version of a computer program (of course we have pre-alpha from folks such as MS and others)

Beta – An intermediate step in the programming process awaiting full debugging (MS and others have Beta1, 2, 3 and so on)

RC, Release Candidate – Ready to Release unless FATAL Bugs appear,

Gold Release, RTM – Typically signed and is the final code similar to RC but with final minor bug fixes. MS often uses RTM, Release To Manufacture

So guys what I'm getting at is Beta Software is not "FREE" software for you to use. Beta software is buggy test code released in either private or public "Beta Test" in order to find software bugs. The performance level of such software is usually far below final release as the code may contain any number of debugging tools within it. Compatibility, security, and stability issues are going to be high and support from the vendor is likely to be very thin if at all as their goal is to find bugs and fix them for the next release.

Typically we see the term Build used to define the various versions within a Beta release. MS in this case uses the term Build to denote another release of Beta code which may address bug issues or changes in the software packages such as adding or taking away feature sets. An example would be the ability to have concurrent or multiple Remote Desktop sessions in XP SP2 Beta was in Build 2055 but pulled from Build 2082 and in the final release of SP2.

So if your the type that likes to test and try new things, doesn't mind a system crashing and having to reformat and reinstalling from scratch then go for it and load a Beta. If this is your production, primary PC and down time equals loss of business dollars then don't be loading Beta software just to test it out. I currently have a site that decided to be in the Beta program for their primary Line of Business application and so far I've billed them close to $500 for supporting down time caused by various versions of that software not to mention loss of productivity.

On July 10th I posted a few notes about Dell which seen to have been pretty much dead on. Dell released it's earnings and news today and it's not a pretty picture with the stock off over $2 today and really testing that $20 level I posted would be key.

So for a quick review back on the 10th I said:

• Profits thinning, competition up
• Rumor is that Dell is in trouble (non-specific)
• Dell would start using AMD chips in desktops
• $20 is a key stock price

So let's see how I did. In today's news Dell announced it has been under investigation by the SEC and has been for a year. They further state they have in fact found some "potential issues" with the way they report revenue. Does that mean they "cooked" the books to show higher profits or profits not yet realized just like CA and how many other Tech companies lately we don't know yet?

Profits are not just thinning they were down 51%! Yeap all those $399 laptops they advertise which were far below cost has starting catching up with them. The fact they sell the same version of MS Office to the Home User at a higher price than they sell it to the Business User no longer works to get an extra 20% from the home user. Let's not even bring up the 300-400 million it's said to cost Dell in the recent exploding laptop recall.

Dell also announced it would start using AMD chips in it's Dimension desktop line. This was an easy one to see coming even though Dell denied it when they originally said they were going to use AMD in their server line up. Folks don't downplay this move as it will kill any remaining discounts Intel has been giving Dell over the years for being an Intel only house. Without those huge discounts the margin on a PC drops to the point Dell really can't make a profit on the PC itself and the profit has to come from add on's such as software and warranties.

Lastly the $20 stock level being key for Dell will have to be a wait and see but already several of the analyst have said RUN don't walk from this stock. BTW thanks Goldman for being so on the ball with your stock advice. Dell has gone from $40 to $20 in a year and now you say sell.

So what's my crystal ball have it in now for Dell? Well if I had such a look into the future I would not be blogging and instead would have my own little island and a hard day would be having to decide to wear shoes or not. What I will say is I stick to my comments that if Dell goes under $20 then things could get very bad, very quick. Even at $20 with the profits dropping like they are Dell is going to have to review it's PC building business and if there is a real cost savings with building in the US. Considering Dell just opened a new plant right down the road from me I hate to see those jobs at risk but I feel it is very likely Dell will look at reducing it's labor force. That being the case expect support and assembly jobs to be at the top of the cutting list.

Man I just about got myself banned from the local store with all those Blue Shirts today. I made a quick stop to pick up some CD’s that were on sale, of course they didn’t have them but that’s another story. Anyway while trying to find what I needed I hear this gal ask one of the salesmen “I need a PC”, CRINGE!!!! The salesman actually asked her a couple of good questions like what do you want to do with it, home or business and who will be using it to which she said, “just me and mainly for email, Internet and maybe some document stuff.”

Now for the “hold me back I’m going to knock this guy stupid”!

He walks her over to a nice looking PC and says this is exactly what you need:

• AMD 64 Dual Core 4200+
• 2GB Ram
• 250GB HD
• Windows MCE
• nVidia Geforce 6150
• CD/CDRW/DVD/DVDR/DVD-DL Lightscribe drive
• 17” LCD and no speakers (yeap MCE w/ no speakers)

Wait did I not hear her say something about documents, huh maybe MS Office would be a good solution but no he went with a PC with 2GB of ram and to hell with needing something to do documents with let alone all that for email and Internet (yes I know WordPad is on there, oh boy)! Guys I have servers with only 1GB of memory out there and the average is 2GB.

Basically any time I go in that store I have to try and shut my ears and just go get what I came in for. Why shop there if I hate it so bad you ask? Well as much as I hate to say it you can't beat their sales prices, that is if the item is in stock which it hardly every is. I mean 2GB Sandisk flash drives for $45 (best online price $60), 100 CD-R's for $10 and a 10 pack of Lightscribe DVD's for $5, I'm no fool I know a good deal when I see one.

So anyway please, PLEASE, if your a novice and are in need of a PC PLEASE talk with your local MS Partner, Intel Product Dealer, White Box maker or your neighbor's 16 year old before you walk into any store and just buy what the salesman points you too. Most consultants will give you some free advice as to what to look for and what to be wary of, tall you how to shop and where to shop.

Most of you have probably heard about the Dell laptop that exploded at a Japanese conference last month. Well today Dell announced a recall of over FOUR MILLION laptop batteries due to "overheating" of the batteries made by Sony. Now we all know how hot a laptop can get but excuse me Mr. Dell but when there are flames coming out of a system it's not an "overheating" issue, it's FIRE!

In truth this is not a new problem and Dell has recalled other batteries in the past. HP recalled around 135,000 batteries last year for a similar problem and another batch this past spring. What is news however is the shear volume of batteries which even with Dell's revenue has got to put a dent in profit margins which are already getting thinner.

Of course this same week we have TSA and DHS putting all liquids on the ban list for your carry-on bags however that laptop being used in the seat next to you probably a bigger risk than the water the baby two seats up is drinking. Now I don't want to fault DHS to much and sure don't care to end up on some watch list not to mention the fact I take a laptop on every flight but come on guys the mom and her baby that wanted to bring on some extra juice is not the concern, the flaming laptop probably is though.

So anyway back top the subject I'd like to make a few suggestions for all you laptop users out there to prolong your systems and maybe just save your office from burning down:

• Don't leave your battery in your laptop if it's on your desk and going to be for an extended period. The constant charge/drain cycle will reduce the battery life not to mention the potential for overheating. The system I am on right now never has a battery in it until a day or two before a trip, my field notebook I fully charge and then set it aside in my tech bag, recharging as needed.
• Store all batteries with around 80% charge and in your desk drawer if they are not to be used for awhile. Some say to toss them in the frig but most manufactures list a temp around room temp as ideal. Take them out and recharge on a regular basis and don't let them become fully drained.
• When you order your laptop check the cell count on the battery that comes with it. Many of the systems listed by Dell, HP and others will sell a cheap 4 cell battery to reduce cost and weight knowing full well users need a 6 cell or larger to be of any use. Go ahead and get the larger battery when ordering and make sure to call in if ordering online to see if you can get a deal.
• Don't be afraid of eBay and other third party sites for ordering a battery. Many of these sites are importing direct from the same sources the big guys order from but they tend to be unlabeled versions of the same parts. Check the warranty, cell count and amp hours and if possible customer reviews but your likely to find as good or better battery for 75% of the cost of the OEM. Think of it like buying Store Brand canned vegetables. You know green beans are green beans, they are probably canned by the same company but you might get a bean steam every now and then but for half the price, go for it.