Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Don’t let anyone tell you that the November 19th Xbox 360 update is something you should be concerned about.  Heck, if anything, you should be eagerly anticipating it.

I won’t link to them because they don’t deserve the traffic but there is a rumor blog out there with a post claiming to have information from a “Microsoft customer service rep” that indicates that:

1. The famous November 19th Xbox 360 update – the “Dashboard Release” – could cause the “3 red lights of death” problem all over again for Xbox 360 owners throughout the world, causing an influx of support calls.
2. Microsoft is doing this on November 19th intentionally because the date is just beyond the “extended warranty period for launch Xbox 360s.

Regardless of whether or not this customer service rep is real or not, if you couldn’t already figure out on your own how colossally retarded these statements are, please allow me to point out a few things:

1. DASHBOARD != HARDWARE
   The ‘Red Ring of Death’ indicates a “general hardware issue” and is caused specifically because of hardware-related problems – not firmware or software issues.  The mechanics of why the 3 red lights appear are well understood by even the public at large and speaking as a Microsoft employee who actually has the diagnostics documentation and internal support material on the Xbox 360, this is just plain incorrect information.

   Now it is conceivable that “other” on-monitor errors could appear.  These are well documented as well however there is usually a way around these issues – again, via software (think ‘reformatting your computer’) – but none of this has anything to do with hardware or the ‘red ring of death’.

2. COVERED BY WARRANTY
   The ‘3 year Extended Warranty’ applies to all Xbox 360’s purchased starting from the date of purchase.  This means that when the Xbox 360 was released on November 22, 2005, anyone with an ORIGINAL first generation Xbox 360 purchased on launch day that somehow finds their system ‘suddenly disabled’ by the November 19th update will still be covered by the warranty.

   In other words, everyone that owns an Xbox 360 is covered by their warranty from failures on November 19th, regardless of whether it’s caused by the Dashboard update or by cosmic rays from the planet Zorganoth.

In case anyone cares, I’m on vacation… sorta.  I’m at a friend’s wedding and thus out of office and away from the blog.  I’ll be returning on Wednesday, 11/13/08.

The Microsoft Office 2007 IT Value Calculator is a Microsoft Excel workbook that was designed and developed by Forrester Consulting to calculate the return on investment, costs, and benefits of an IT administrator can expect from deploying Microsoft Office 2007 within an corporate environment. 

The financial impact of Office 2007 on an organization is calculated using formulas and macros that model Forrester’s well-known Total Economic Impact (TEI) methodology, which systematically looks at the potential effects of technology investments across four dimensions:

1. costs
2. benefits
3. flexibility
4. risks

The Microsoft 2007 IT Value Calculator Guide offers a detailed description of the calculator, including specific benefits, costs, and financial metrics modeled to quantify the financial impact of Office 2007 on an organization.

DOWNLOAD:
http://cid-00da410c7f7e038d.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Product%20Material/Office/Microsoft%20Office%2007%20IT%20Value%20Calculator%20v1.00.xls

USER GUIDE/DOCUMENTATION:
http://cid-00da410c7f7e038d.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Product%20Material/Office/User%20guide%20for%20Microsoft%20Office%2007%20IT%20Value%20Calculator%20v1.00.pdf

Microsoft® Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V, formerly known as Kidaro) enhances deployment, management and user experience for Virtual PC images on a Windows® Desktop, independent of the local desktop configuration and operating system (OS). MED-V leverages Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 to provide an enterprise solution for desktop virtualization streamlining OS upgrades, and increasing IT control and user flexibility in enterprise environments.

MED-V solution for Application-to-OS incompatibility accelerates the upgrade path to Windows Vista®. Applications that cannot be installed on Windows Vista® or have not been fully tested on Windows Vista® may be installed by the administrator in a virtual machine that runs a previous version of the OS (e.g., Windows XP or Windows 2000) and operate in their native, supported environment.

Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization is an integral tool in the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack, a dynamic solution available to Software Assurance customers that helps reduce application deployment costs, enable delivery of applications as services, and better manage and control enterprise desktop environments.

MED-V beta release will become available early 2009.  Please fill in the nomination survey to qualify for participation in the beta. 

• DATASHEET:
  http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/B/7/FB7822F4-9480-4AEF-9C18-EE4433F1366A/MDOP_Datasheet_MEDV_Enterprise_FINAL.pdf
• BETA REGISTRATION:
  https://connect.microsoft.com/site/sitehome.aspx?SiteID=665

Note:  MED-V usage requires subscription licensing of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) For more details about how to license MDOP please refer to:

• http://www.microsoftvolumelicensing.com/userights/PUR.aspx

We have a site called the Sharepoint Guidance – Pattern’s & Practices Web site which helps Sharepoint Architects & Administrators understand the considerations that may need to be taken in order to develop applications on it on the Sharepoint platform on a broad scale within a corporate Intranet.  (Visit the site at http://www.codeplex.com/spg for more information)  Much of this informational guidance is packaged up into a semi-frequent package to help architects get started. 

This guidance helps architects and developers build SharePoint intranet applications. A reference implementation (RI) demonstrates solutions to common architectural, development and lifecycle management challenges.

This guidance discusses the following:

• Architectural decisions about patterns, feature factoring and packaging.
• Design tradeoffs for common decisions many developers encounter.
• Implementation examples demonstrated in the RI and in the QuickStarts.
• How to design for testability, create unit tests, and run continuous integration.
• Set up of development, build, test, staging, and production environments.
• Managing the application life cycle including upgrade.
• Team-based intranet application development.

The following areas are not discussed in this version of the guidance:

• Content-oriented sites that use Web content management
• Internet and enterprise-scale SharePoint applications
• Multilingual SharePoint applications
• Scale or security testing of SharePoint applications

DOWNLOAD: 
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c3722dba-6ee7-4e0e-82b5-fdaf3c5ec927&DisplayLang=en

USAGE INSTRUCTIONS:
http://www.codeplex.com/spg/Wiki/View.aspx?title=Getting%20Started&referringTitle=Home

Our regional security specialist pointed out that the Microsoft Malware Protection Center published volume five of the Microsoft Security Intelligence Report. If you have not taken a look at this report before, go download it from http://www.microsoft.com/sir. It provides a thorough view of the current threat landscape and is filled with a number of great data points.

In his first scanning of the document, the following items immediately jumped out at him:

• Microsoft vulnerabilities accounted for 42% of the total vulnerabilities on Windows XP for browser based attacks; however, on Windows Vista-based machines the proportion of vulnerabilities attacked in Microsoft software dropped to just 6% of the total. This highlights our not only our continued security investments in the browser but also that attackers are focusing more and more on the applications that run in the browser.
• The infection rate for Windows Vista is significantly lower than Windows XP, regardless of service pack levels. In addition, 64-bit versions of XP and Vista have lower infection rates than their 32-bit counterparts.
• The higher the level of service pack a machine runs, the lower the rate of infection. This is consistent across client and server platforms, across all versions. Clearly, keeping up to date with the latest service pack levels and security patches is beneficial from a security perspective. While we have always thought this to be true, having a data point to prove it is great.

For a video overview of the report, check out one of these two podcasts – particularly if security is your business:

• The Bret and Vinny Show – SIR Volume 5
  (Featuring old security hat Bret Arsenault – a guy I’ve known for over a decade)
• IT Manager Webcast – Microsoft Security Intelligence Report volume 5 Key Findings
• IT Professional Webcast – Microsoft Security Intelligence Report volume 5

The folks over at the Windows Mobile blog did a really nice write up on how to get Live Mesh running on your Windows Mobile device.

Live Mesh is a great way to keep files available to you by synchronizing them across different devices.  It’s essentially a file replication engine that works across firewalls over port 433 in a similar way that Foldershare does however it works on Windows PCs at home and at work, Macintoshes, Windows Mobile devices, and “the cloud”, in other words a version of your content is accessible over the web simply by surfing to a mesh web site.

LINK:  http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsmobile/archive/2008/10/31/live-mesh-and-windows-mobile.aspx

New Features to include Microsoft Online Services, SQL Server 2008, Forefront Client Security, and Network Access Protection

DOWNLOAD:  http://www.microsoft.com/MAP

Many of you are in the midst of an IT migration or upgrade planning but do not know 100% with certainty what computers are in their IT environment or what applications have been deployed. The Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit 3.2 makes it easier for customers and partners like you to quickly identify what servers, workstations, and network devices are in your IT environment. MAP also provides specific and actionable IT proposals and reports to help you get the most value out of Microsoft products and infrastructure. Over 510,000 Microsoft customers and partners have already downloaded and used MAP and its prior versions including Costco Wholesale Corporation, Continental Airlines, and Banque de Luxembourg.

Introducing Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit
MAP is a scalable and agent-less assessment platform designed to make it easier for you to adopt the latest Microsoft technologies. In this version, MAP has expanded its assessment capabilities to include SQL Server 2008, Forefront/NAP, and Microsoft Online Services migration, as well as providing a Power Savings assessment to help you “go green.”

In summary, MAP 3.2 assessment areas now include:

• SQL Server Database Instance Discovery (NEW!)
• Microsoft Online Services Needs Assessment and Survey (NEW!)
• Forefront Client Security/NAP Readiness Assessment (NEW!)
• Power Savings Calculator (NEW!)
• Virtualization Infrastructure Assessment (e.g. reporting the mapping of hosts by guests) (NEW!)
• Windows Server 2008 Hardware Assessment
• Server Consolidation Reports and Proposals (Hyper-V or Virtual Server 2005 R2)
• Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007 Hardware Assessment
• Desktop Security Assessment to determine if desktops have anti-virus and anti-malware programs installed and up-to-date, or if the Windows Firewall is turned on

Toolkit Features
The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit performs key functions that include hardware and device inventory, compatibility analysis, and readiness reporting.

MAP utilizes an enterprise-scale, agent-less architecture that enables you to inventory your servers, desktops, applications, and network devices without installing any software agents on each machine being assessed. This tool can discover all computers within Active Directory, and most importantly, non-IT managed machines such as workgroup members.

Additionally, MAP can generate localized desktop readiness reports in seven languages including North American English, German, French, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, and Portuguese.

Benefits to You (Customers and Partners)

• Fast and Agent-less. MAP provides secure network-wide assessment of environments of up to 100,000 computers in a matter of hours instead of days, all without deploying any software agents on each inventoried machine.
• Saves Pre-Sales and Planning Time. For most IT consultants and Microsoft Partners, a detailed network inventory and assessment of servers and desktops often takes days of manual labor. With MAP, they can now drastically reduce the time it takes for the same inventory to a matter of hours; allowing them more time to focus their efforts on critical pre-sales engagement tasks. For IT professionals, MAP can significantly reduce the time it takes to gather the information necessary to make the business case for client and server migration, as well as for their upcoming virtualization projects.
• Actionable Recommendations and Reporting. MAP offers valuable inventory and readiness assessment reports with specific upgrade recommendations and virtualization candidate reports that make it easier for IT migration and deployment projects to get off the ground and running.
• Coverage from Desktops to Servers. MAP provides technology assessment and planning recommendations for many Microsoft desktop and server products including SQL Server 2008, Forefront Client Security/NAP, Microsoft Online Services, Windows Server 2008, Hyper-V, Virtual Server 2005 R2, Windows Vista, 2007 Microsoft Office, Microsoft Application Virtualization (or App-V), System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007, and more.

Next Steps
Try the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 3.2 RTM version now!

• Download Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 3.2 (RTM Bits)
• Learn more about MAP on TechNet or Microsoft Partner Program Portal
• Read Hyper-V/MAP Case Studies: See how Costco Wholesale Corporation, Continental Airlines, and Banque de Luxembourg benefitted from using the MAP Toolkit
• Read the MAP Team Blog
• Listen to TechNet and Academy Live webcasts on MAP
• Join the TechNet Forum Community for MAP

The Microsoft Professional Developers Conference is currently being held in Los Angeles (October 27th and October 30th).  Five major announcements have now been disclosed:  (For up to date information and essential resources refer to the Microsoft PDC Website)

PDC Day 1 Announcements: Read the official press announcement

• Microsoft Windows Azure Online Services: Windows® Azure is a cloud services operating system that serves as the development, service hosting and service management environment for the Azure Services Platform. Windows Azure provides developers with on-demand compute and storage to host, scale, and manage Web applications on the Internet through Microsoft® data centers.  Visit the Official Windows Azure Website  and read the article What is Azure?

PDC Day 2 Announcements: Read the official press announcement

• The company also delivered a pre-beta build of Windows 7 to PDC attendees and announced plans to release the full Windows 7 beta early next year.    In terms of the final release of Windows 7 the official guidance is three years after the release of Vista.  For further information visit the Windows 7 Website, Windows Team Blog, and Engineering Windows 7 Team Blog
• Microsoft demonstrated, for the first time, its new Web applications for Office, which are lightweight versions of Microsoft Office Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote that are used from within standard Web browsers. The company showed how anyone can use all of the Web, phone, and PC versions of Office to edit the same rich document, switching among them seamlessly with lossless file compatibility.  This new offering will be compatible with familiar Web browsers from Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari. Microsoft will release a private Technical Preview of Office Web applications later this year.   In the meantime, customers interested in learning more about the upcoming beta availability are encouraged to sign up for Microsoft Office Live Workspace at http://www.workspace.officelive.com.
• Live Services for Seamless Client-Cloud Experiences: Microsoft demonstrated many capabilities of the Live Services platform, including how developers can build rich applications and experiences that can be extended to over 400 million users of the company’s Windows Live services such as Windows Live Hotmail and Windows Live Messenger.  The company demonstrated many aspects of Live Services including Live Mesh. Live Mesh is a service for synchronizing any user’s documents, media, files and application data across multiple PCs and devices, and is available as an open beta at http://www.mesh.com for Windows and Windows Mobile.
• The Best of Web and Windows Development With Visual Studio and .NET:   In terms of software development, Microsoft highlighted how it continues to help make it easy for developers to use their existing skills to build applications from the Web to the desktop, through both the recent Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 service packs, and the forthcoming Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 releases. Building on Monday’s announcements that Visual Studio and the .NET Framework will make it easy for developers to create applications for the new Azure Services Platform, the company revealed that Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4 innovations will help developers build next-generation applications for Windows 7 and take advantage of new features in Windows 7, such as the Ribbon and support for multitouch enabled interfaces. Several other areas of improvements in Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 were shown, with a focus on Win32, C++, ASP.NET, Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation.

<taken from the Windows Server Division Blog>

Building off the great work done on Windows Server 2008, I’m happy to share that next week, a small group of Technology Adoption Program customers will be getting their hands on Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 (SP2) Beta. As we have done in the past, we routinely start testing a service pack release for Windows Server with a small group of testers first before making the beta more broadly available to the public. Windows Server 2008 helped make major strides in the areas of Web, Virtualization, and Security. SP2 builds upon this by enhancing the operating system for IT Professionals.

Windows Server 2008 SP2 addresses feedback from our customers. It contains all previously released fixes integrated into a single service pack covering both server (Windows Server 2008) and client (Windows Vista) versions. We adopted a single serviceability model for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista when we launched Windows Server 2008. Because of this, Microsoft can provide customers with a single, high-quality update that minimizes deployment and testing complexity.

In addition to the above, Windows Server 2008 SP2 contains two changes that will ease deployment and help reduce cost.

• Hyper-V RTM is included
• Additional changes to the power profile have yielded a 10% improvement over the power profile of Windows Server 2008 RTM

In case you’re wondering, no you didn’t miss Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 1.  We actually released the first version of Windows Server 2008 as “Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 1” because it depended highly on the Windows Vista codebase.  They now share (as they did back in the NT 4.0 era) common core services and so when Windows Server 2008 was released, it was based on the Windows Vista Service Pack 1 source.

Hence the next Service Pack being called “Service Pack 2”.