Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Attention Architects & Developers:
The next patterns & practices Summit takes place November 5 – 9 in the Kodiak Room at the Microsoft Conference Center at Microsoft’s main campus in Redmond, Washington on November  5-9 2007.

Keynote presentations by:
Anders Hejlsberg, Steve McConnell, Scott Guthrie, Scott Hanselman, & John Lam

Evening Events:

• Monday Opening Reception sponsored by Infragistics at The Parlor Billiards & Spirits
• Tuesday evening kickback (w/ pizza and beer)
  "Open Source in the Enterprise" sponsored by CodePlex
• Wednesday – "An Evening with Microsoft Research"

Registration

• $1695 – Early Bird through September 31st
• $1895 – Regular after September 31st

REGISTER HERE:  http://www.acteva.com/booking.cfm?bevaid=136397

All Summit attendees also receive:

• Choice of 2 new patterns & practices or Microsoft Press book releases
• patterns & practices poster
• patterns & practices Summit fleece pullover
• 80GB USB keydisk with Summit presentations and Hands-On-Labs
• Latest patterns & practices Library DVD with additional video presentations by Microsoft patterns & practices team, webcasts, and slide pesentations

(or call 425-703-2275)

WEB SITE:  http://www.pnpsummit.com/west2007.aspx

File this under way cool.  Imagine a web site that asks what city you’re interested in going to and what dates you’ll be traveling there…

…then provides you the lowest rates available to each of hotels in the city, the link to the service providing the rate, and most importantly, whether or not the price is a "good deal" relative to historical price trending for the time of year and property.

That’s Farecast!

Farecast – Hotel rate comparison web site
LINK:  http://www.farecast.com/hotels

For example: 
I’m going to be traveling to the Bank Administration Institute (BAI) Retail Delivery Conference & Expo in Las Vegas in November.   

So by entering in Las Vegas and some dates, I get the following results:

http://www.farecast.com/hotelSearch.do?datelimit=08%2F30%2F2007&cityText=Las+Vegas%2C+NV+%28LAS%29&e=LAS_VEGAS_NV_US&cim=11%2F11%2F2007&com=11%2F15%2F2007&a=2&r=1&submitBtn.x=154&submitBtn.y=6

How cool is that?  Hard Rock Hotel’s available for $149.  Vegas, baby, Vegas!

For the record, HALO the Motion Picture is not dead.  It’s been backburnered.  Here’s the press release.

As was previously confirmed, we deeply regret that both Universal and Fox did not choose to move forward with financing the Halo film under the original terms of the agreement. At this time Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, along with their partner, Microsoft, have mutually agreed to postpone making a feature film based on the Halo video game universe until we can fulfill the promise we made to millions of Halo fans throughout the world that we would settle for no less than bringing a first class film to the big screen. We are fully supportive of Director Neill Blomkamp’s vision of the film. Neill is a tremendously gifted filmmaker and his preliminary work on Halo is truly awe-inspiring. While it will undoubtedly take a little longer for Halo to reach the big screen, we are confident that the final feature film will be well worth the wait.

In the mean time, you simply have to check this out:

VIDEO:  http://halo.msn.com/videosHD.aspx

This is full high definition video by the way, brought to you as only Silverlight can.  Now with that in mind, take a look at the heads up display in the Warthog because if you look carefully, you can make out the Elite & Grunt kill count:

Here’s a high resolution shot of the actual Warthog that was used in the filming of this short:

http://www.bungie.net/images/News/WeeklyUpdate/WarthogB110707.jpg

If you haven’t bought your Xbox 360 yet, or pre-ordered your copy, you’d better do it NOW.  Also everyone should wish the Bungie team a good and well-deserved vacation in their prayers tonight.
Oh yeah… and one other thing: 

Dear Covenant: 
If you thought a single Spartan was hard to deal with, get ready for the hornet’s nest…
…’cause here comes the pain!

<taken from http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?type=topnews&cid=12737>

Halo’s Gone Gold!
Posted by lukems at 8/29/2007 10:12 AM PDT

 Halo 3  for Xbox 360 has gone Gold! That means we delivered a final version to our internal certification group that passed all the tests and is now being whisked away to top secret manufacturing locations to be turned into retail versions of the game – and eventually packaged and sent to stores in various cases, tins and cat-helmets. We can’t wait to share it with you guys on September 25th and 26th, but we have to say thanks.

We have to say thanks to everyone at Bungie who worked so hard to make this the best game we’ve ever made. We have to say thanks to everyone at Microsoft who helped us make it the best game we ever made. We have to say thanks to our tireless team of artists, designers, engineers, musicians, technicians, writers, directors, producers, thinkers, administrators, ninjas, specialists, gorillas, webmasters and pimps. We’re a family and we made this game for you, our extended family. We hope you like it. Nobody deserves any more recognition than anyone else, but an extra special thanks goes out anyway, to the test team who got it to this stage, in a pool of their own sweat, tears and blood.

And of course, we wouldn’t be here today without the tireless devotion of our fan community – we thank you all as well for supporting Bungie Studios in our never ending quest for World Domination and we look forward to sharing another billion+ hours together on Xbox Live when Halo 3 lands in just  a few short weeks.  The wait is almost over.

We Finished our Fight.  Your fight begins in 27 days. 

Are you ready?

MICROSOFT ANNOUNCEMENTS AROUND WINDOWS VISTA SP1 & WINDOWS SERVER 2008 RELEASE

1. Windows Server 2008’s release date has been pushed back by a quarter.
   http://blogs.technet.com/windowsserver/archive/2007/08/29/windows-server-2008-timing-update.aspx
2. Windows Vista SP1 details are announced… at 9:00AM PST today.
   http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2007/08/29/announcing-the-windows-vista-service-pack-1-beta.aspx

Here’s a few things to know:

• The roadmap for Vista SP1 is CY Q1 2008 and XP SP3 is CY H1 2008. 
• Beta for Windows Vista SP1 will be available in “a few weeks”. 

On the Windows Vista SP1 front, here’s some highlights:

• Overall improved performance
• Improved performance of file copies
• Improved reliability
• Bitlocker can now encrypt more than just the C: drive or system drive.  Support for data drives.
• Is different from XP SP2 in that it is designed to not impact end-users because of UI changes
• Is different from XP SP2 in that it is designed to minimize application compatibility issues

I’ve posted the whitepaper that the Windows Vista Blog site is referring to below and if any of my customers want a specific overview delivered by our regional Windows Vista specialist, I can organize it.  Just contact me… you know how.)

DOWNLOAD:  http://www.evilkoala.org/Documents/WindowsVistaServicePack1WhitepaperAugust2007FINAL.pdf

<taken from the Windows Live Messenger team site>

The Windows Live Messenger team would like to extend a warm welcome to the Humane Society of the United States, the latest charity to join the i’m Initiative.

The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) has worked since 1954 to celebrate animals and confront cruelty in all its forms. With nearly ten million members and constituents, The HSUS is the nation’s largest and most powerful animal protection organization, working in the United States and abroad to defend the interests of animals.

You can start giving to the Humane Society of the United States by adding *hsus to your Messenger Display Name.  While you’re at it, show your support for the Humane Society by downloading their theme pack.

Again, THANK YOU for your generous support of these charities!

Y’know a thousand articles have been written up about this topic: 

• "How to generally speed up Outlook 2007" or
• "How to get Outlook 2007 to stop pausing" or
• "How to get Outlook 2007 to stop being so slow to send/receive email"

So I did a bunch of research and BOY, there’s a 1001 tweaks and tips to try when looking to identify the cause of your Outlook 2007 related problem.  I tried to summarize most of them here:

1) PST Corruption
Your installation can go nuts trying to work around purported errors in your PST.  C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice12SCANPST.EXE should fix this.
http://reddevnews.com/columns/article.aspx?editorialsid=1791

2) RSS Reader
Disable the RSS reading component of Outlook 2007 by removing it from the from the default send/receive configuration.
http://mcosier.blogspot.com/2006/07/speeding-up-outlook-2007.html
http://www.itwriting.com/blog/?p=54
http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/2031/outlook_2007_remove_or_disable_rss_feed_support

3) PST file sizes
Purportedly, large PST files sizes of 2GB or more drag down Outlook 2007 specifically, while no such issues existed with Outlook 2003.  This is because of a change in the PST/OST format to accommodate some new functionality.  As a result, the larger the PST, the more frequent the need to read & write to the store.
http://www.itwriting.com/blog/?p=123

This patch is supposed to fix this problem: (Or at least aspects of it, like search performance) 
DOWNLOAD:  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/933493
(Explanation:  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=C262BCFD-1E09-49B6-9003-C4C47539DF66&displaylang=en&Hash=1ngfrPjdlmpu3WfojsUAGqrlaz6JUUnekD43GqUH6CkAMR2B/e7O6Ok8tE74nfhWHmdEvEeXJBa1eEgvUBOdVg%3d%3d)

I personally DELETED my .OST file and had Outlook 2007 rebuild it from scratch from the Exchange Server while physically connected to our network – per the suggestion from a coworker.  I noticed that my .OST was 1.4GB in size… even though my mailbox only stores 400MB on the server.  Clearly something was amiss.  (If you find that the .OST can’t be deleted because something has it open, be sure to close Office Communicator if you have that running in your company since it holds the .OST open.)

4) Disable installed Outlook plugins/addins
You probably have 20 plugins running right now and don’t even know it.  This is a very common cause of performance issues across the Internet. Start disabling the ones you don’t think you’re gonna need.  Particularly:
– Adobe Acrobat versions prior to 8.0
– iTunes Addin
– Cyberlink Sideshow addin
http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/1959/outlook_2007_disabling_enabling_add_ins

One addin that may cause issues (unverified) is the "Deleted Item Recovery" addin.  Disabling this addin will obviously prevent you from recovering email that you’ve deleted from your Exchange Server mailbox however if you never use this feature, this won’t be a major loss so it might be worth a try.

• Tools, Trust Center, select Add-ins on the left.
• Drop the Manage dialog box down and you’ll see the option to manage Exchange Client Extensions. 
• Select that then click ‘Go’
• De-select Deleted Item Recovery and click OK.  Restart Outlook.

5) Nuke the Outlook configuration files
Try running Outlook in Safe mode and see how things are.  If this works, you know that this is probably configuration corruption related, assuming you already checked your plugins.  Read this to start nuking/renaming the configuration files.
http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/ol2007/slow.htm

6) Adjust Vista’s TCP network window auto-tuning
The new TCP/IP stack features auto-window size tuning and apparently this can have a dramatic affect on the performance of Outlook email send & receive performance  but says nothing about the overall application’s performance.  Be sure to run as administrator before you attempt the command in the link below.
http://www.itwriting.com/blog/?p=94#comment-5717
The new TCP/IP stack is talked about here:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/columns/cableguy/cg0905.mspx

7) Upgrade Outlook Rules database to 2007 format
Tools->Rules&Alerts->Options there is an “Upgrade Rules”.  Apparently, the rules database changed between Outlook 2003 and 2007 and leaving the rules in 2003 format results in going through a rules interpreter.  This is supposed to bring it into a native Outlook 2007 rules format which is especially important if you have lots of rules.

8) Disable Phishing Filter
The phishing filter technologies can drag down performance of Outlook and disabling it can enhance Outlook’s performance.
Go to Tools > Options > Junk Email: 
Uncheck "Disable links and other functionality in phishing messages" and “warn me about suspicious domain names in email addresses”.

Blocking Google’s cookie, ‘eh? 

So you think they can’t track your movements if you simply block their cookie, right?  After all – how can they track you if they don’t have a 1st party cookie associated with you?  Because you block 3rd party cookies in your browser – most people do.

Silly human.  Here’s a bit of cold water:  Even if you block 1st party & 3rd party cookies from Google, Google is still tracking you.  There’s a number of ways they do it but Google Analytics is one of the more creative ways that Google tracks you.

QUICK SOLUTION TO BLOCKING GOOGLE ANALYTICS:
1)  Open your to your HOSTS file at %SystemRoot%system32driversetc.
2)  Enter the following line:
               127.0.0.1       google-analytics.com

3) That’s it.

DETAILED SUMMARY:
Google traditionally tracks you using a 1st party Google cookie.  If you block this, normally this would be enough to protect your privacy however every time you go to any other 3rd party web site that participates in Google Analytics (and there’s a lot of them… it’s basically any site with "Ads by Google") they drop a cookie on your machine that’s a true 1st party cookie for that particular 3rd party web site, (like fredsdiscountstores.com) then they feed your actions & information to Google Analytics to cross correlate this with other information they’ve got on you, frankly using your own computer to pass the information on by having your browser session reach out to http://www.google-analytics.com.

Interesting isn’t it?

It’s very difficult to block using cookie blocking technologies because you’d effectively block EVERY 1st party cookie out there being that there’s really no way to tell which sites are using Google Analytics and which one’s aren’t.

SOLUTION:
The solution is to simply block your computer from ever going to the domain name "google-analytics.com"… ever.  This prevents your system’s registration with Google Analytics and keeps your actions from being cross-referenced with other sites that you may have visited using Google Analytics and other more detailed actions you may have taken on those sites.  While it’s impossible to prevent the site from logging your presence, it’s extremely difficult for Google Analytics to know you’d visited both Site A and Site B.

For more information, on the ways Google tracks you, check this page out:
http://kurtsthoughts.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!97895BBB8AD10F37!589.entry

Have you ever installed a workstation with 4GB of memory and noticed that it only reports 3.0GB-3.5GB of memory available?

The reason for this is, assuming the chipset on the motherboard can actually address 4GB & many can not, that hardware has to have reserved memory address ranges to be accessed and these address ranges depend on the hardware memory requirements.  And since the 32-bit address space can only address 4GB, any hardware that needs to map address space to other uses takes away from the address space that’s usable by the system. 

For example, a monstrously powered video card may have 500MB of RAM that it needs to map.  This would result in a loss of 500MB from your addressable RAM, leaving a person with 3.5GB.  Other hardware in the system reserves that last .25 GB which would leave the system with 3.25GB of addressable RAM.

If you want to use the full amount of memory on a system, the solution is to use the 64-bit version of Vista.

A coworker, Michael Greene, posted an interesting blog entry on ‘moving a workstation install of Windows Vista from a MAK key to using KMS’.  (If you don’t know the difference between a MAK and KMS, skip this post because you’re probably not the target audience)

• http://blogs.technet.com/migreene/archive/2007/08/09/1729188.aspx

This is interesting because there’s actual documentation on how to do this in Technet however he makes a point that the instructions request a ‘setup key’ as one of the steps but then fails to define what that "setup key" is.

Fortunately for all of us, Michael seems to have cracked the DaVinci Microsoft code on this one:  You basically need to look at .Sourcespid.txt on your source media and you’ll find a generic product key that is leveraged to enable seamless KMS activations.  This is the key that the instructions for MAK-KMS conversion requires.

Uh oh.  Does that mean that every disc has a unique KMS activation key pre-configured on it?  I doubt it but I really don’t know.  This is something I’m pursuing an answer for right now.