Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Active Directory Rights Management Services (AD RMS) helps organizations safeguard confidential information from unauthorized use. With persistent usage policies which remain with the information regardless of where it goes, AD RMS helps protect against potential data breaches, and ensures that corporate information is being used as intended. Whether you need a solution to prevent the forwarding of email outside of your organization, or an enterprise-wide security policy enforcement tool for Microsoft Office and SharePoint – you will discover how AD RMS provides an additional layer of assurance to secure collaboration.

Join Microsoft and Titus International (Gold Certified Microsoft Security Solutions Partner) for a detailed overview of information protection (and specifically rights management services) followed by a hands-on lab training and see how AD RMS can help protect your organization. Experience firsthand how easy AD RMS is to install and manage.

The objectives of this course is to provide you with the knowledge and hands-on experience to effectively design and deploy AD RMS. In particular, at the end of this course, you should be able to:

• Explain the AD RMS architecture and infrastructure
• Explain AD RMS and its relationship to Desktop applications
• Install AD RMS
• Understand AD RMS configuration such as trust policies and rights policy templates
• Interoperate with other organizations’ AD RMS deployments
• Understand the integration of RM-enabled applications such as Microsoft Office and SharePoint 2007
• Understand the management of AD RMS deployment

The first ½ day will help business and technical decision makers:

• Understand what AD RMS does and how our technology secures documents regardless of where they are stored (data at rest) or in transit (data in motion)
• Understand how Microsoft Office and SharePoint leverage AD RMS to enable information security and encryption as well as secure collaboration
• See the ease of the end user experience

The hands-on labs (1 ½ days) will help you:

• Understand AD RMS and its relationship to desktop applications
• Understand the AD RMS architecture and infrastructure
• Be able to install and configure AD RMS
• Understand AD RMS configuration such as trust policies and rights policies
• Understand how AD RMS can be used to help protect digital information flowing out of the enterprise to individuals and other organizations
• Understand the integration of AD RMS-enabled applications such as Microsoft Outlook 2007, Word 2007, Excel 2007 and PowerPoint 2007
• Understand the management of a deployment of AD RMS

What Is a Hands-on-Lab?
This isn’t your typical IT class. This hands-on lab is for experienced IT Pros who want to "try it out." You’ll spend most of the day getting hands-on practice and experience with the new product features and scenarios in your own lab environment with very little instructor presentation.

Who Should Attend
This course will be segmented in such a way where the first half day will be an AD RMS overview for Technical/Business Decision Makers to help with planning and implementing an information security strategy of which AD RMS is a component. The audience for the course also includes IT security staff as well as system administrators and engineers who work with the installation, configuration, and maintenance of a variety of server types and have two to three years of experience managing an enterprise-level Microsoft Windows Server environment.

Date/Time
Tuesday, May 06, 2008 8:30 AM – Wednesday, May 07, 2008 5:00 PM Pacific Time (US & Canada)

Location
Microsoft Technology Center: Irvine
3 Park Plaza, Suite 1600
Irvine California 92614-8505

Registration
If you are interested in attending this hands-on-lab, (and you’re a customer of mine) please contact me directly and I will provide you with registration information.  This is an invite-only event for our named Enterprise accounts only.

I’m sure everyone just passed on by on this little download, not knowing what HDR stood for, after all the download is entitled, "Gamefest Unplugged (Europe) 2007: HDR The Bungie Way".  Meanwhile it was only posted this March 6th, 2008.

WHAT IS "HDR"?
Well, first a quick explanation: HDR stands for "High Dynamic Range", a lighting style that has become all the craze in the photography and artwork business in the last 3-4 years. 

The concept is relatively simple:  Maximize the range of bright and dark light on a single photo or painting while still presenting precise & exacting detail and imagery to the viewer. They say a "picture is a thousand words" so here’s a sample of an image using HDR techniques, taken from Wikipedia:

Notice the incredible about of contrast between the lights and darks.  Look at how bright the colors are around the illuminated alcoves in the homes and see how dark yet visible the hillsides are leaving up to the castles above.  Here’s another:

See how detailed the photo of New York in the darker areas of the photos while the lighted areas in the windows shine bright yet you can still make out the details of the buildings and there’s no "wash out" caused by the contrast.  This creates an image that filled with information that is so interesting and beautiful it almost becomes overwhelming in its detail.  Entire portrait & painting studios have been created to take advantage of this "newly discovered" technique for photography & painting.

I’m not expert in any of this – I only started getting interested in this stuff because Microsoft has been developing software that allows people to take an overexposed and an underexposed shot and combine the two to create a single HDR image using basic PC technology.  Today, HDR photography is an art that is reserved for more expert and experienced photographers.

WHAT DOES BUNGIE HAVE TO DO WITH THIS?
Well, those Bungie guys did a Powerpoint at GameFest, an event that Microsoft holds for game developers, back in 2006 that talked about how to create HDR for video games while taking into consideration the limitations of the hardware, the storage maximums on the DVD media of your game, and the memory available on various gaming systems.

For example, these demonstrate a technique called Bloom Curve that’s not photorealistic however it certainly looks great for gaming.  It increases the dynamic range of an image using a ridiculous amount of downsampling and blurring… you have to see the Powerpoint to understand.

Here’s a few highlights:

• Slide 55 talks about the simple technique for combining two prerendered images together to create a single HDR image – similar to what they do in today’s photographic HDR.
• Slides 69 to 83 demonstrate how to add some really cool bloom effects to the visible image to maintain detail in what the player sees while still providing a rich dynamic range of light.

I’m messin’ around on the Microsoft Downloads site (Microsoft Downloads) and I stumble upon a bunch of newly published guides for LiveMeeting 2007. 

• Office Live Meeting Service Administrator’s Guide
  This guide provides the information administrators need to deploy Microsoft Office Live Meeting clients, configure their conference center, and manage the Microsoft Office Live Meeting service within their organizations.
• Office Live Meeting Service Security Guide
  This guide provides an overview of the security considerations that you should make when you use the Live Meeting service, the Live Meeting security measures available to you, and the procedures for scheduling and conducting secure meetings.
• Office Live Meeting 2007 Client Deployment Guide
  This guide helps administrators deploy the Live Meeting client for a Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 environment.
• Office Communications Server 2007 Supportability Guide
  This document provides information about supported configurations in Office Communications Server 2007 environments.
• Office Communications Server 2007 Document: Planning Guide
  This guide describes how to plan a successful Office Communications Server 2007 deployment.
• Office Communicator Web Access (2007 Release) Administration Guide
  This guide helps you administer Communicator Web Access (2007 release) for your organization.

Group Policy preferences is a new feature in Microsoft Windows Server 2008.

Group Policy preferences enable information technology professionals to configure, deploy, and manage operating system and application settings they previously were not able to manage using Group Policy. Examples include mapped drives, scheduled tasks, and Start menu settings. For many types of operating system and application settings, using Group Policy preferences is a better alternative to configuring them in Windows images or using logon scripts.

Press Release:
http://blogs.technet.com/grouppolicy/archive/2007/11/16/group-policy-preferences-announced-at-it-forum.aspx

If you’ve been exploring Group Policy preferences using Windows Server 2008 or Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) for Windows Vista, you may be wondering what client computers require to recognize GP preference settings. After all, GP preference settings weren’t around when Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, and Windows XP were released. The answer is the Group Policy preference client-side extensions (CSEs). The CSEs are included as part of Windows Server 2008, and will also be available as a separate download for the following operating systems:

• Windows Vista RTM and later
• Windows Server 2003 with SP1 and later
• Windows XP with SP2 and later

Resources:

Windows Server Group Policy TechCenter

• http://uat.technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/grouppolicy/default.aspx

Group Policy Preferences Overview Whitepaper

• http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=42e30e3f-6f01-4610-9d6e-f6e0fb7a0790&DisplayLang=en

Group Policy Team Blog

• http://blogs.technet.com/grouppolicy/default.aspx

Group Policy Preference CSE (client-side extensions) Downloads:

• Group Policy Preference Client Side Extensions for Windows XP (KB943729)
• Group Policy Preference Client Side Extensions for Windows XP x64 Edition (KB943729)
• Group Policy Preference Client Side Extensions for Windows Server 2003 (KB943729)
• Group Policy Preference Client Side Extensions for Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition (KB943729)
• Group Policy Preference Client Side Extensions for Windows Vista (KB943729)
• Group Policy Preference Client Side Extensions for Windows Vista x64 Edition (KB943729)

We have an update coming at the beginning of March to disable the Scalable Networking Pack features on Windows Server 2003 SP2 machines.

The Scalable Networking Pack can cause issues with machines without the appropriate hardware necessary and thus cannot take advantage of it’s capabilities.  In order to avoid support related issues with the SNP on the vast majority of systems where customers won’t be able to specifically take advantage of the SNP, we will have an update available publicly which modifies the registry to effectively disable these features.

Again, please note that this hotfix does nothing more than set the following registry keys to ‘disabled’ and REQUIRES a reboot of the server in which this hotfix has been applied to.  Here is what is being added to the registry.

• HKLM,"SYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesTcpipParameters","EnableTCPChimney",0
• HKLM,"SYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesTcpipParameters","EnableRSS",0
• HKLM,"SYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesTcpipParameters","EnableTCPA",0

Windows XP SP3 is continuing to progress through the development process towards release.  You may find the following resource links useful in your planning/testing.

Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) Release Candidate 2 (RC2)

Updated February 21, 2008:
Windows XP SP3 is a rollup that includes all previously released updates for Windows XP, including security updates, out-of-band releases, and hotfixes. It contains a small number of new updates, but should not significantly change the Windows XP experience.

Get Windows XP Service Pack 3 Release Candidate 2

• Download and deploy Windows XP Service Pack 3 RC2
  This pre-release software is provided for testing purposes only. Microsoft does not recommend installing this software on primary or mission critical systems. Microsoft recommends that you have a backup of your data prior to installing any pre-release software.
• Windows XP SP3: What is new and how to deploy
  This white paper summarizes what is new in Windows XP SP3, and how to deploy the service pack.

On Thursday, the announcement was made at the MIX conference in Las Vegas, the IE team made eight announcements about IE8. The most interesting for many people is that a developer beta is now available. Download it here.

While anyone can download it, this is a developer beta. We released it at MIX for a good reason: great web experiences start with web developers, and we want to engage developers first. We believe that to build a better browser for the people who use the web, we need to build a better browser for the people who make the web.

Non-developers are welcome to try it, but they’ll be more interested in Beta 2.   If you install it, it will write over the previous version, so I suggest you use the VHD instead to try it out without affecting the installed browser: 

• http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=21EABB90-958F-4B64-B5F1-73D0A413C8EF&displaylang=en.

The rest of our talks and demos focused on seven other areas that appeal to developers:

1. Our goal is to deliver complete, full CSS 2.1 support in the final IE8 product. IE8 Beta 1 for developers delivers better interoperability with other major browsers, addressing major pain points (e.g. floats and margins) from previous IE releases. We’re not finished – there’s much more to come in Beta 2.
2. We’ve contributed over 700 test cases to the W3C CSS working group because we think a comprehensive certification test suite for CSS is important for true interoperability and we support the W3C’s effort to deliver such a suite. The CSS spec is good, but contains many ambiguities, and a test suite will help resolve them and benefit web developers and designers. We’re making these available under the BSD License, which is the license that the W3C CSS working group has proposed using for the rest of its test cases. Of course, we will contribute more tests en route to a full test suite, and welcome your feedback on the tests using the W3C’s CSS test suite mailing list.
3. We’ve delivered better scripting performance because we heard from developers that they needed it given how heavily the latest rich web experiences rely on script.
4. We’ve started delivering support for HTML5 because we understand that developers want to start delivering richer web experiences, with great interoperability, as soon as possible.
5. We’ve delivered the first installment of great, built-in developer tools. We understand that script, CSS, and layout debugging are crucial today. Again, we’re not finished here – there’s more to come.
6. We’ve delivered a better way for web services to integrate into the user’s workflow with “Activities.” For example, a user can select text on a web page and map it, blog it, look for it, or just act on it without having to copy it, open a new tab, navigate to  another site, and paste. We made the OpenService Format specification available under the Microsoft Open Specification Promise and the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license.
7. We’ve delivered a better way for web services to enable their users to keep an eye on interesting parts of a webpage within the browser with “WebSlices.” Developers can make parts of their pages “subscribable” with just a little mark-up, and users can easily subscribe and keep an eye on information (like their social network, an auction, or a sports score) within the browser, even when users are not at the developer’s site. We’ve made the WebSlice Format specification available under the Microsoft Open Specification Promise and is dedicating copyright in the specification to the public domain using the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication. 

The list above is the very short version of what’s in IE8 and does not represent everything that’s in the final product. There’s a lot more. This list details specific investments for developers. As with previous releases, members of the IE team will post to this blog in detail over the coming days, weeks and months. In the meantime, you can find a lot more information at the revamped IE Development Center: http://msdn.microsoft.com/ie.

One theme I hope developers notice here is interoperability. The team understands how big an impact differences between browsers (and previous versions of IE in particular) have had on developers in terms of wasted time, frustration, and (in some cases) limiting the experience that they deliver to users.  We want to deliver a big step forward in real-world interoperability for developers with IE8, and standards are at the core of our approach. This topic deserves a lot more than just this paragraph; expect more soon. 

The beta is available today for Windows Vista (“Gold” and SP1), Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003 SP2, and Windows XP SP2 and SP3, both in 32- and 64-bit versions. We will release the developer beta in German, and Simplified Chinese shortly. We’re interested in reading your feedback in the beta newsgroup and developer forums.

Please try it out – the browser itself, the developer tools, writing an Activity, marking part of your page as a WebSlice – and let us know what you think. 

For those of you who weren’t able to make it to the big shindig here in Los Angeles where our CEO/President Steve Ballmer spoke, (and we had the Barenaked Ladies playing at the after party) you can still make a local launch in your area. 

Here’s a few of the launches that impact you guys: (My customers)

Honolulu, Hawaii – April 30th

• http://www.microsoft.com/heroeshappenhere/events/Honolulu/default.mspx
• https://microsoft.crgevents.com/heroeshappenhere/Register/Login/Honolulu.aspx

Phoenix, Arizona – April 1st

• http://www.microsoft.com/heroeshappenhere/events/Phoenix/default.mspx
• https://microsoft.crgevents.com/heroeshappenhere/Register/Login/Phoenix.aspx

Dallas, Texas – April 8th

• http://www.microsoft.com/heroeshappenhere/events/Dallas/default.mspx
• https://microsoft.crgevents.com/heroeshappenhere/Register/Login/Dallas.aspx

I’m not gonna lie:  Infoworld’s got more information on Silverlight 2 Beta 1 than I do.  There’s like this informational blockage between our regional dev evangelist folks and us doing formal account work.  They never distribute information to folks locally, so it’s a rare day that I get decent developer news internally.

So here’s an excerpt from Infoworld’s reporting:

[Silverlight] Version 2 features support for managed code and developing with multiple languages, including IronRuby, IronPython, JavaScript, and .Net.

…

With Silverlight 2, Microsoft brought out a host of early adopters, including NBC Sports, which is using Silverlight for upcoming Olympics coverage; Hard Rock International, of Hard Rock Cafe fame; and Cirque du Soleil. Display capabilities both for the Web and mobile devices were highlighted.

NBC Sports plans to use Silverlight to Webcast 2,200 hours of coverage. "You’re going to be able to go online and you’re going to be able to consume video how you want it, when you want it," said Perkins Miller, senior vice president of NBC Sports and Olympics.

Hard Rock showed a Silverlight application enabling users to zoom in onto pictures of rock memorabilia, while Cirque du Soleil showed a performer-casting intranet application featuring video. In the mobile space, Weatherbug demonstrated a weather information application running on a Nokia phone.

READ:
http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/03/05/microsoft-mix08-silverlight-beta_1.html

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

Below are the top five key questions we expect from our customers as they upgrade and deploy Windows Server 2008:

1. Where can I find prescriptive guidance on upgrading to Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and Microsoft applications support for Windows Server 2008?

• Upgrading Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2008
• Timeline for Microsoft server application to support Windows Server 2008
• Installing Windows Server 2008
• Installing SQL Server 2005 on Windows Server 2008
• Installing Exchange Server 2007 SP1 on Windows Server 2008
• Installing Microsoft Office SharePoint Services SP1 on Windows Server 2008

2. Where do I find which applications, hardware and devices drivers have been certified for Windows Server 2008 and more importantly do my application vendors support Windows Server 2008?

• The comprehensive list of Applications, Hardware Systems and Devices that have been certified on Windows Server 2008 can be found in the Windows Server Catalog.
• The Windows Server Catalog site also contains a list of Ready applications, these represent the breadth of applications our ISVs have pledged their support on Windows Server 2008. This list provides customers details on the ISVs, their applications and current support status for Windows Server 2008.

3. What tools can I use to help me assess, plan and migrate my IT environment to Windows Server 2008?

• The Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Solution Accelerator is an integrated platform with tools and guidance that make it easier for you to assess your current IT infrastructure and determine the right Microsoft technologies for your IT needs.
• The Microsoft Web Deployment Tool provides deployment and migration support for IIS 6.0 and 7.0. It incorporates many features that enable web server administrators to deploy, sync and migrate sites.

4. What tools can I use to determine if my applications or ISV applications will run on the new platform?

• “Works with” highly automated application will help determine baseline compatibility with Windows Server 2008 in 1 to 4 hours. Any aspects of the application that do not meet baseline compatibility are identified in a detailed summary.
• “Certified for” wizard-style toolset is more rigorous, includes additional 80 test cases covering security, availability, reliability, stability and windows fundamentals. Excellent resource for testing mission critical line of business applications and the full test pass requires about 3 to 5 days completing.

  (These tools are the same tools provided to ISVs which customers can also leverage to test both commercial applications and their own custom developed applications.)

5. Where can I get support and assistance on the tools, guides and resources specific to application compatibility and deployment?

• Windows Server 2008 Application Compatibility and Certification Forum – developer community site focused on designing quality applications and how to best leverage the application readiness tools
• Windows Server 2008  Migration Forum – IT Pro centric forum to address concerns upgrading or migrating to the new platform.
• Windows Server 2008 Developer Center – extensive developer resources focused on how to take advantage of new features and build quality applications
• TechNet Deployment Center – consolidated content, knowledge base articles and other resources that focus on Windows Server 2008 deployment topics. The deployment center is scheduled to be launched on February 21^st .