Kurt Shintaku's Blog

There’s been a lot of chatter about our usage of "activation" recently.

The bottom line is that Microsoft is gradually moving away from "serial number-based" license enforcement in favor of product activation – hopefully everyone’s figured that out by now.  And what’s more, 57% of all software vendors JUST LIKE US are doing the exact same thing in 2007, and we’re just one of them, so if you think we’re an issue, I’d look at your corporate-approved software list really carefully and prepare yourself for 2007.

The good news is that because Microsoft covers a broad spectrum of products that customers commonly use, you can be sure that we’re doing our best to unify & optimize the activation process for all our products using the exact same methodology & the exact same activation systems across the board.  This means that our goal will be that all Microsoft products activate in the same fashion using the same process and the same type of activation keys & corporate "Activation Servers" or Clearinghouse Services on the Internet without confusion.

This means: One Activation Server installation (or two for redundancy)… one DNS domain to authorize at the firewall… one port to open on workstation firewalls… one methodology to educate IT folks about.

Here’s a clipping from a report from SoftSummit on the topic of Activation’s prevalence:

This is a from a free report that was delivered at SoftSummit.  Read the whole report yourself.
http://www.softsummit.com/pdfs_registered/SW_Pricing_Licensing_Report_2006.pdf

First of all, to the Linux set (and I’m sure the Cult of Apple), I’m sure this is the most scary pumpkin-carving they’ve ever seen.  Boo!

In addition to my delightfully festive photo, today we announced that we’ve formed a partnership with Novell around Linux. 

That’s right – Novell & Linux.  This ain’t April Fools Day either.  ("Wow… did you see that?  A pig with wings just flew by!")

Novell Inc. President and CEO Ronald W. Hovsepian (below left) and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer (below right) made the announcement earlier today in the interests of increasing customer choice when using the Windows platform while providing flexible & interoperable solutions.  Here’s a quick summary of what the agreement means in case you’re looking for the Cliff’s Notes version:

1) MICROSOFT-SUPPORTED INTEGRATION
We’ll be cooperatively managing the development of certain supported integration & interop technologies for virtualization, web services (such as XML-solutions that integrate with Biztalk Server 2006), management (Active Directory related stuff for example) and document format compatibility for SuSE Linux. 

2) MICROSOFT-ASSISTED WORLDWIDE SALES & MARKETING
For customers that want Linux-based solutions while needing Microsoft integration support:  If there is a technology that Novell & Microsoft have collaborated on in that space, Microsoft will be directly encouraging them to Novell’s SuSE Linux-based solutions for those specific scenarios.

3) INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY PATENT AGREEMENT
Customers that use SuSE Linux (among some other Novell OSS technology) are indemnified from any potential infrigement upon Microsoft intellectual property patents.  Microsoft & Novell have resolved these patent issues between them enabling customers to leverage either company’s technologies while having the confidence in maintaining legal usage compliance.

But don’t be confused – Microsoft firmly believes that Windows platform technologies have a superior value to Linux however for those that insist on Linux-based solutions, we will be encouraging them to work with Novell, even while we compete in other areas.

More on the whole announcement here:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/nov06/11-02MSNovellPR.mspx

Normally, I wouldn’t care whether or not anyone sees this product being that it’s more consumer-oriented and all of you folks are corporate customers, right?

Well, this is actually "trial software", meaning that the thing will lose a lot of it’s features after 60 days of installing it.  That being said, the new 11.1 version is pretty damned cool.

1. PANARAMA PHOTOS
   Using photo-stitching technology, you can take snapshots all over the place and stitch them all together using Digital Image Suite making one huge photo that you can crop and print out.
   
2. OPTIMIZE PHOTOS
   There is a single-click button for adjusting the contrast, color, blurriness, etc.  Or you can do it manually if you’re picky.  All designed for the novice.
   
3. PHOTO STORY
   You can select 20 photos and a single MP3 file… and PRESTO.  You instantly have a VideoCD/DVD that smoothly glides the photos across the screen and gracefully transitions from photo to photo all to the tune of the music you included.  For example, here’s a few sample photo stories:            http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/wmx/photostory/park.asx
        http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/wmx/photostory/hawaii.asx
   (Good stuff for sending to computer-illiterate relatives that have DVD players…)

And besides – if you like the product, I can definitely get you a copy of the Digital Image Suite 10 product… or order you the new 11.1 release if you find you like it and want the full thing.

DOWNLOAD: 
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=7c3b3ded-a15f-48c5-b724-7796fe8c151e&displaylang=en
(Warning:  It’s a 110MB download.)

We released Windows Media Player 11 which is an uber-cool rev of our multimedia player for Windows. 

What makes it cool to me?

• AUTO-CATALOGING FOR UNKNOWN FILES
  Windows Media Player 11 can look at an unnamed, undescribed file’s data and identify it by matching it up with criteria through a web service online.  So if you’ve got the album name wrong, it’ll tell you and automatically correct it if you wish.  So cool. 
• A NEW, GOOD MUSIC SERVICE
  Urge is MTV Network’s music service which is highlighted in WMP11.  Normally I wouldn’t care except that music companies for the most part have to play nice with the independent, unaffliated MTV because of their influence with the younger set.  This means that it’s already got a really rich, reliable library of music to buy and will continue to be well-plugged into the latest music, unlike some other attempts at creating online music services.
• DEVICE SUPPORT
  Windows Media Player works with over 200 portable devices & home media appliances like UP&P stereos and such.  Meanwhile iTMS supports, like… 5 devices? 
• AUDIO ACCURACY
  Windows Media Player 11 supports ripping into Windows Media Audio Pro & WAV Lossless, which are codecs that provide flawless replications of the audio sources that are being copied.  For the archiver, this is the way to get the "absolute best, precision copies" instead of making 192kbps MP3s which are huge yet still inaccurate.

There are a few things you need to know about the player though:

• NO WINDOWS 2000
  If you’re lame and you haven’t upgraded from the 7-year-old release of our Windows product, then there’s no soup for you.  But you probably already knew that given none of our other free Genuine Windows Applications run on Windows 2000 anyway so if you really are on Win2K, what do you care?
• REQUIRES WINDOWS XP SERVICE PACK 2
  If you’re lame and you haven’t gotten Service Pack 2 applied, you’re not only asking for trouble, you’re going to rapidly find that nothing we build in the future will support you.  Windows XP SP1 went out of support last month on October 10th, 2006 so you’ll get no sympathy if a new virus hits and you don’t have coverage because we’re not building patches that support SP1 or unpatched Windows XP.
• DVD PLAYBACK STILL NEEDS MPEG2 CODEC
  DVD playback still require that you purchase a license for 3rd party software that plugs into Windows Media Player to provide the MPEG2 codec.  MPEG2 is the encoding algorithm used with DVD’s and is licensed from the MPEG organization, a private foundation that created the MPEG2 standard.  Because the license for MPEG2 is usually $16 + any costs associated with the middleware software that goes between the codec & it’s intended player, Microsoft chose not to burden all Windows buyers with the additional costs associated with bundling the MPEG2 license into the OS – since not everyone wants to play back DVDs.  Instead you have to purchase it separately from any of the following 3rd parties:  http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=65291

DOWNLOAD:  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=1d224714-e238-4e45-8668-5166114010ca&DisplayLang=en

Organizations that use AU to keep their computers up-to-date can use a free Blocker Toolkit to block automatic delivery of IE7. This blocker has no expiration date; you can find more information in the blocker FAQ. I also recommend you review the additional information for IT administrators at the Windows Update/Microsoft Update site on TechNet. Organizations that want to block the distribution of IE7 through AU should have their blocking measures in place by TODAY, November 1, 2006.

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2006/10/19/be-ready-for-automatic-update-distribution-of-ie7-by-november-1.aspx

Are you interested in Business Orchestration?  Workflow?  Rule Engines?  Or maybe you’re already using Microsoft Biztalk Server?

For the uninitiated, Microsoft Biztalk Server is a middle-tier server that runs on Windows Server.  What it does among other things (I’m going to forget a ton of things that it does but this is a basic explanation) is:

– ACCEPTS DATA STREAMS: 
It takes data from virtually any service through it’s "adapters" and enables it to be processed and sent out in another format.  It’s like a universal translator for applications & services… SAP to Peoplesoft.  Oracle Financials to proprietary front ends.  XML-based services to other legacy systems.
– RULES PROCESSING: 
It takes information and processes it using user-defined rules written in script or in .NET.  This is incredibly powerful because it enables decision making to be processed extremely quickly depending on changing conditions.  For example, a stock price may change during the day and depending on the price, you may decide to process incoming data differently.  You may need to change the rules in the middle of the day and Biztalk can do this.
– XML HUB:
At it’s heart, Biztalk is a hub for XML data I/O.  Companies looking at Services-Oriented Architectures should consider Microsoft Biztalk Server for no other reason that it’s a high performing, exceptionally scalable XML transformation engine.  And it’s perfect for anyone looking to leverage existing knowledge around Windows development or anyone that already has Microsoft-based infrastructures with SQL Server, etc.

Great Blog here!
Our specialist, Richard Seroter, is a Biztalk genius and has trained many of the key Biztalk experts in Southern California.  He maintains a Biztalk Blog at:

http://blogs.msdn.com/RichardBPI/

Check it out!

No, this isn’t that IE Addon web site.

Enhance IE is a site managed by Eric Lawrence, a program manager in the Internet Explorer group.  He’s created a web site that is very straight forward and shows how to tweak and turbo-charge Internet Explorer 7.0 so that it does several things that the base product doesn’t have – like a Download Manager for instance.

It’s a great starter reference.  Check it out.

WEB:  http://www.enhanceie.com/ie/

By now, you’ve read hopefully with great interest how Internet Explorer 7.0, above all other bells & whistles, was designed to be the most secure browser we could make without making it incompatible with today’s leading applications & web services.

I can’t overstate this point enough for two reasons:

1. Security was focused upon, instead of features.  Some pundits accuse Microsoft of being slow and simply playing catch up ot Firefox, Opera, and other smaller browsers.  I think any IT support person would agree that they’d trade most any feature for the opportunity to NOT have to go back and patch desktops & servers, even if it just prevented the need to patch the corporate infrastructure just once. 

   Patching the enterprise is a hellacious process and IE 7.0 is designed to prevent the need for patching as much as possible in the future.

2. IE 7.0 is viewed as such a huge leap for operating system security, that we’re pushing it out as a critical update to anyone using Microsoft Update.  This is being done because:
   a) Internet Explorer 7.0 should be the browsing foundation that people build upon – not IE 6.02 which will become harder and harder Microsoft to maintain over time as IE 7.0 security innovations because apparent, and
   b) Internet Explorer, as a core part of the OS, (recall that it’s the HTML rendering engine for virtually every application that runs on Windows including Office) has to be secure because it touches so many other information tools.  Unlike Firefox, Internet Explorer a browsing engine that is used by basically every ISV on the market for rendering HTML and as such, it has a much much greater responsibility to the end user.

Not to tempt fate, <grin> but much in the way that Outlook 2003 was the effective "death knell" for mail client security issues, (when was the last time you heard about an Outlook virus? 2-3 years ago?) Internet Explorer 7.0 has aimed to accomplish the same thing for browsing with this release. 

Here’s a few bullets to help describe the extent to which, deliberate care was taken to make Internet Explorer’s primary key differentiator it’s trustworthy security.

• MOST SECURE BROWSER AVAILABLE
  Joshua Allen did this blog video that explains, "Why Internet Explorer 7.0 is the most secure browser available today"
  VIDEO:  Internet Explorer 7.0 Security
  (http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/8/c/58cec426-17fd-482b-bf68-7ead3f801537/ie_security.wmv)
• BALANCE BETWEEN SECURITY & COMPATIBILITY
  The Internet Explorer Team also did a blog entry about IE 7.0 and how it strikes a balance between compatibility and security.
  BLOG:  http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2006/10/18/ssl-tls-amp-a-little-activex-how-ie7-strikes-a-balance-between-security-and-compatibility.aspx
• WINDOWS VISTA
  Windows Vista’s Internet Explorer 7.0 will implement "protected mode" whereas the IE7.0 for WinXPSP2 can/does not.  Windows Vista accomplishes this by limiting Internet Explorer 7 to just enough permissions to browse the web, but not enough to modify files or settings keeping the PC safer from web-based attacks.  Even if a malicious site attacks a potential vulnerability in Internet Explorer 7, the site’s code will not have enough privileges to install software, copy files to the Startup folder, or hijack the settings for your browser’s home page or search provider.

  Windows Vista will also implement "parental controls" which will enable parents to restrict logged in children from accessing any specific sites or more importantly, any sites that are outside of a specific grouping of domain names.

The folks over in the IE team created this quick reference sheet for folks that live through their browser.

The sheet goes over a few interesting things that I’d forgotten about that you folks might find useful.  For example:

• How to turn on "Autocomplete"; make the URLs of previous web sites automatically show up in the Address bar as you type
• Keyboard Shortcut:  Open "Feeds", as in the new "RSS Feeds" component of Internet Explorer 7.0 to glance at recent news.
• Keyboard Shortcut:  Jump to the "Search" bar to find content without moving the mouse.
• Keyboard Shortcut:  Open "link" in a new background or foreground tab.

The Quick Ref sheet is in Adobe Acrobat (.PDF) format so you’ll need to have the Adobe Acrobat Reader to see it.

DOWNLOAD:  http://download.microsoft.com/download/B/3/B/B3BDE1B0-7BDB-4912-AC6C-A5273F6B6677/IE7_QuickReference.pdf

In case you hadn’t noticed or heard, Windows Vista’s backup utility is a program called "Windows Backup".  It’s special because unlike Windows XP’s backup utility, when you do a FULL backup of your system, it creates a .VHD file which contains the contents of the drive.  For the uninitiated, this is the same "virtual hard drive" file format used by Virtual PC virtual machine hard disks. 

You would be correct in saying, "Whoa.  That’s cool."  And yes, it does this all ONLINE and LIVE.  You don’t need to shutdown or halt any usage of the file system… it does it all like a "snapshot", to use server backup terminology.

Good news & Bad news
Now there’s good news & there’s bad news according to my peer, Michael Greene:

• Here’s the buzzkill:   This isn’t an actual P2V tool.  In other words, it’s not creating a virtualized version of your workstation which can be "booted" in Virtual PC.  There are efforts underway by 3rd parties to actually get these .VHDs to boot up but as it stands, no such opportunity exists.  I suspect that it would have been trivial to make these .VHD bootable – in fact, they probably initially had the .VHD bootable however the potential for conflict between two identical workstation on the same network would be too great, not to mention the licensing implications of not just the OS but also the software duplicated in the .VHD.
• Here’s the upper:  You can mount the .VHD file just fine using the VHDMOUNT tool.  Mounting is UNIX terminology for accessing a resource as a virtual directory or as a virtual drive on your workstation.  In other words, it’s possible to view the contents of the .VHD file as if it were just another directory on your computer.

This would obviously be useful for recovering a few "backup files" that you might need on the spur of the moment from a previous snapshot. 

Double Click to Mount
What makes this even cooler is that it’s possible to "double click" on a .VHD to instantly mount it, without much effort at all.  Virtual PC Guy’s Blog (Ben Armstrong) posted instructions on how to do this here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2006/09/01/734435.aspx