Kurt Shintaku's Blog

UPDATE 5/8/2005: 
I’ve been innundated with emails about this stupid entry in my blog.  While most of the time, these come through my public email address linked to this MSN Space, just today, I received a query directly to my personal work email address at Microsoft, which I thought was getting a bit pushy.

Let me be clear:  This blog is written for my customers ONLY and not the general public that might somehow stumble upon it’s contents through some desperate Google search.  If someone outside of my customers happen to learn something as a result of a posting I make, great… but I don’t have the bandwidth to field questions, comments, opinions, feedback, much less requests about any topic in this blog from anyone other than employees of my customers.  And they know who they are.

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As many of you know, we stopped making wireless equipment, and right around the time people expected a update for the MN-740 XBox Wireless Adapter to enable WPA encryption, we canned the whole wireless line due to a lack in sales I presume.
 
So imagine my surprise to see this:  http://games.dlink.com/products/?pid=383 
 
For those of you who own a MN-740 (or a few, like in my case), you’ll probably notice a remarkable similarity.  You’ll notice that the adapter now supports both 802.11b & 802.11a and most importantly, has WPA support while providing an update for the XBox to enable configuration through the XBox Console.  This is the only external adapter I’ve found that supports WPA security as opposed to just WEP-128bit, which is trivially crackable.
 
So if you’re looking for a WPA-configurable wireless network adapter for your XBox to operate on your WPA-enabled wireless network, then this might be a great choice.

http://games.dlink.com/products/support.asp?pid=383#quickInstallGuides

I’m dying to disclose what this is all about, but in the meantime, take a look at this:
http://www.startsomethingpc.com/

This is gonna be really really cool.  Trust me.

Visio 2003 Connector for the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (MBSA)
Do you know the security status of your network? Get a visual. The Visio Connector for MBSA lets you view the results of a Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer scan in a clear, comprehensive Microsoft Office Visio 2003 network diagram. You must have both Visio 2003 and the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer — a free security tool from Microsoft — for this connector to function.

http://download.microsoft.com/download/d/3/6/d3690340-74e6-47db-8fa6-b3e6019eb8eb/Visio%20Connector%20for%20MBSA.msi

Microsoft Windows Rights Management Services with Service Pack 1
Windows Rights Management Services (RMS) 1.0 Service Pack 1 (SP1) for Microsoft Windows Server 2003, a security service for Windows Server 2003, is information protection that works with RMS-enabled applications to help safeguard digital information from unauthorized use – both online and offline, inside and outside of the firewall. For more information about RMS SP1, please go to http://www.microsoft.com/rms.

Since this server component is provided as a premium service for Windows Server 2003, a Windows RMS Client Access License (CAL) is required for each user publishing and/or consuming Rights Management Services (RMS)-protected content. However, up to two users may simultaneously access or use RMS solely for administration of the software without a CAL. For more details on licensing requirements, please review the End User License Agreement when downloading this premium service.
Although RMS is designed for and tested with database servers running SQL Server 2000 and MSDE, and Microsoft does not support the usage of RMS together with a database provider other than either SQL Server 2000 or MSDE, RMS can be run on other database servers that use the ADO.NET interfaces that are provided by the Microsoft .NET Framework. Therefore, other database vendors may have developed compatible database providers for RMS. You may use any database provider together with RMS on the condition that the corresponding database server complies with the following criteria:
The database server must be Transact-SQL compliant because RMS initialization scripts and RMS stored procedures use Transact-SQL.
The database server must support any Microsoft SQL Server-specific extensions.
The database provider must be able to:
Respond to method calls of the System.Data.SqlClient namespace of the .NET Framework.
Provide the corresponding functionality of the System.Data.SqlClient namespace.
Use Windows Integrated Authentication instead of SQL authentication.
If you use RMS in any other configuration, contact the relevant database vendor or solution provider whose database provider you are using in your customized deployment.

http://www.microsoft.com/rms

Got EA? 

Because WinXP Pro licensees with SA get WinXP x64 at NO CHARGE.

That’s right.  Volume Licensing customers who have Microsoft Windows XP Professional Upgrade Licenses or Software Assurance on the Windows XP Professional Edition operating system are eligible to install the recently released Windows XP Professional x64 Edition using Windows XP Professional x64 Edition media. Eligible customers can now deploy Windows XP Professional, Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, or Windows XP Professional x64 Edition under their existing license agreements.  

Here’s a fun technical exercise:
Did you know you if you really want to, can technically dual boot WinXP Pro & winXP x64 on the same 64-bit Extended workstation?  Both will run flawlessly on the same machine as long as there’s an AMD Athlon64 or Intel Pentium EM64T chip on board and is a good way to upgrade your system if you want to leave your existing 32-bit installation intact as you slowly migrate your 32-bit applications over to run on WinXPx64.  Remember that WinXPx64 runs Win32-bit applications at native processing speeds without emulation.

As the industry rapidly evolves to 64-bit processor computing, WinXPx64 will become the premier operating system for all desktop computing.  With flawless execution of 32-bit applications on the x64 bit platform, combined with the elegant path for re-compiling Win 32-bit applications to 64-bit, there is little doubt that people with Windows on Software Assurance/Maintenance have saved a huge amount of licensing long term through this grandfathering opportunity.