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Recently I was offered a partnership with another technician here in
my home town. He is a respected professional whom I would work very
well with. On the surface this would seem like a logical move for any
self employed IT professional, right? Well, it actually depends...
Speaking for myself, I had to decline the offer. What in the world
would possess me to do such a thing? Simple, plain old-fashioned common
sense. The person that offered me a partnership had the skills, no
question there. He did not however, bring a roster of clients to the
bargaining table. Even though he is a very bright and capable
technician, times are really tough for self-employed IT Professionals
in Washington State right now. It just did not make any sense to form
up a partnership with someone that was not going to be introducing new
revenue into my company.
When I said that things are really tough right now in my state, I was
not kidding. In my home town alone, I have watched these folks drop
like flies left and right. They all had the skills, but there were
simply too many "cooks in the kitchen" and reality was finally
beginning to set in financially for most of them. I have been able to
endure any potential hardships because of marketing techniques that I
have covered in previous issues of this newsletter. Also, there have
been strategic alliances made recently with such major technology
players such as Lockergnome and the continued work with my own Web
site, Inside Matt's Head.
So if a fellow IT Pro approaches you about getting together in a
partnership, really think it over. Is this really going to help your
business grow, or will this simply enable the potential partner to
enjoy the fruits of YOUR labor?
Let's get digital,
Matt Hartley
By Matt Hartley
Welcome to "Just Ask Matt!" - The IT industry's answer to the help
column, only slightly more medicated. Today, Craig writes:
I am contemplating an upgrade of my MB, CPU and RAM. I
want to keep my existing HD since it is a newer model (7200 /100). I am
aware that I might run into problems with XP not booting. Do you know a
method to accomplish what I want without having to start from scratch?
Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.
Well, Craig you are in luck - because you actually can, in fact, do
this!
Option #1: If you are swapping a motherboard with the same
chipset, just do the motherboard swap and let XP detect the changes.
Option #2:Use the force, Luke! Force a hardware redetection.
Boot off of XP CD, select install. The CD will detect the existing
install of XP, it will ask you if you would like to repair it - select
yes. The setup program will now re-enumerate the hardware so that it
can boot from the new controller.
Option #3: Use the file and transfer wizard. Save them to
another hard drive on the network or even a set of CD ROMs.
This is a common question that I receive from Gnomies and clients,
alike. This is something that Microsoft does to help detour piracy and
honestly, it probably does help a little. It feels like the more
"secure" developers make software, the more bugs need to be worked out.
Now to be fair, developers really are left with very little choice with
piracy being so blatant and rampant these days.
Good luck with your hardware upgrade and remember to be careful of
the evil forces of static electricity.
Do you have an IT-related question? Perhaps you are just burnt out on
writing on the walls with crayons? Whatever the comments may be,
drop me a line and you, too, can "Just Ask Matt!"
By Eric Lippert
I spent the weekend falling down Whistler and Blackcomb mountains
with slippery boards attached to each foot. I'm getting better at
falling at least - in all my wipeouts I managed to keep my skis on,
which was a big improvement over last year's multiple "yard sale"
experience. Now I'm working on that fall, backwards somersault, get on
skis, continue down mountain trick. (I suppose that's the ski
equivalent of capsizing a Laser and righting it without getting wet,
which I'm already pretty good at.)
But, enough chit-chat. Last time I was discussing object creation.
Let's pick that up, and next time I'll discuss how objects with state
are created.
Script In IE Security Part Five: Creating Objects With The IE
Security Manager
Object creation becomes somewhat more complicated if the IE security
manager is available.
First, as before, the script engine gets the class ID and code
location from the registry.
Second, the script engine obtains the Internet Host Security Manager.
This is done by calling QueryService on the script engine's site (i.e.
the script engine host application) for
SID_SInternetHostSecurityManager. Once the IInternetHostSecurityManager
is obtained, the script engine obtains policy bits representing
Internet Explorer's position on the classid by calling
ProcessUrlAction(URLACTION_ACTIVEX_RUN). If the policy does not have
the URLPOLICY_ALLOW bit set or if the call to ProcessUrlAction failed
for any reason then the object is never created and the script engine
reports an error to the user.
The purpose of this check on the classid is so that IE can have a
list of "known to be untrustworthy" classids and prevent them from
running at all. Also, IE can check its security configuration at this
point - if ActiveX objects are turned off altogether it can tell the
script engine that nothing is safe to create.
Once the security manager approves the object for creation, the
script engine does the same thing as before, as far as creating a class
factory and object instance goes. At this point the object is trusted
and its code has run. However, the subsequent safety check is somewhat
different from the previous case. If the "use the Security Manager" bit
is set then the script engines do not do any safety check on the
objects; they assume that the Security Manager will do that. The script
engine does that by passing the object's IUnknown and classid to
QueryCustomPolicy(GUID_CUSTOM_CONFIRMOBJECTSAFETY). (If the script
engine is planning on loading persisted state it also specifies the
CONFIRMSAFETYACTION_LOADOBJECT flag - more on persisted state later.)
The Security Manager then does all the appropriate IObjectSafety
work, including setting the "be safe for untrusted data" bit on the
object if the script engine is planning to load in persisted state. If
any of this fails then the Security Manager reports that back to the
script engine, which throws away the object and reports an error to the
user.
Depending on the IE security settings, the browser may create a
dialog box to ask the user to make a trust decision right there. Note
that if this happens then the browser asks whether the user trusts the
page author, not whether the user trusts the individual controls. This
is an interesting distinction, which I may come back to later.
At this point, if there is no state to load, we are done. The
Security Manager has claimed that the object is safe to create and safe
to run. If there is persisted state, then we have more work to do...
By Matt Hartley
I find that within any given day I do a great deal of my work on the
Web. Tracking down the latest technology related events, seeing what is
happening in the news and even scouring around on Google trying to
locate the latest hardware drivers for my clients.
Using Google for these tasks has been the "standard" for some time
now. The only problem is that it can be a real pain to scour through a
ton of "stuff" when you already know what it is you are looking for.
The folks at GuruNet have a very useful and viable solution for those
of us that need to "get a question answered" or do some research on a
specific subject. Actually it is a lot like having your own little
expert on everything right there in your system tray.
So what the GuruNet software do for you?
- Alt-Click on any word/phrase - GuruNet provides "instant answers" to
just about anything you ask it. In an e-mail, Web page, or a document
you might find a word that is completely foreign to you. So you do an
Alt-Click with your mouse and BAM you have the definition of that word
right at your fingertips.
- Contextual recognition - GuruNet uses surrounding words to help it
find the information that you need when making a query. Spell checking
is handled automatically while quickly offering you alternatives in the
"did you mean?" tab provided in the program.
- Authoritative data sources - GuruNet provides all content "garbage
free" so that you can get your work done without the distractions of
irrelevant sites that might draw attention elsewhere.
This is all great and everything, but is this software right for me?
Fair enough. This software is perfect if you are:
- A Teacher
- A Student
- A Professional
- A Newspaper reporter
- Doing research for a law firm
- Anyone needing the ability to find information that they can offer
to clients/readers/co-workers as FACT
Searches that GuruNet excels in include:
- Nutritional values
- History
- Important events
- Laws (Specific court cases, specific laws, etc.)
- Sports history/trivia (settle bets without starting a bar brawl,
prove that you are the master of sports trivia)
- Medical reference (Diseases, medications, treatments, etc.)
GuruNet is not by any means here to replace your favorite search
engine. Rather, it is designed to help focus your search to only the
most relevant information that has been PROVEN to meet the needs of
your query. Google is an awesome search engine, but when you need to
scour encyclopedias, dictionaries, and other content providers proven
to be accurate with no "maybe it's correct" information... GuruNet is
the logical choice.
So whether you have kids in school or you simply want to have access
to accurate, up-to-date information that you can offer as concrete FACT
without those "I hope this Web site's information is correct" jitters,
GuruNet is truly a must have product. I am quite impressed and look
forward to seeing what advancements they offer as this software
continues to mature and grow.
By Howie Merrill
I was asked today to put some documentation on our intranet page.
This request immediately annoyed me because any documentation I was
directly responsible for was already on the intranet. Anything else was
the responsibility of other people in my group.
This fact was discussed over and over again at staff meetings and yet
no one in the group ever responded.
I sent e-mails literally begging for something to put out there so my
manager would finally leave me alone.
Nothing.
Today, I had an idea.
sent out an e-mail stating that unless I get specific requested
documentation, the attached will be published next week.
I believe I will get a response now... thought you might appreciate
these:
DASD
Some DASD are small.
Some DASD are big.
Big DASD can be just as fast as little DASD, although no one really
knows why. The advantage of big DASD is to make people feel better
about where they place their files. If their files are on big DASD,
they feel more comfortable 'cause there is so much more room to stretch
out. That's why we encourage you to relax and place all your data on
big DASD.
We place mostly DB2 data on small DASD. Because we do not like DB2,
we treat it badly. DB2 does things like cause performance problems.
Therefore, until DB2 behaves, it will always be on small DASD.
But your data is nice data and it can be on big DASD if you are nice
to us.
We back up some DASD. We try to keep it a secret so that even we do
not know if we can restore a dataset when you absentmindedly delete
something. We know that rarely happens, but when it does, it is always
such fun trying to see if we happen to have a backup.
Sometimes that backup is in the vault. We do not like to have to get
backups from the vault, so we make you wait for your data. Sometimes we
make you wait so long that by the time the tape comes back from the
vault, you have already managed to recreate your data.
If you keep deleting data by accident, we make you put your data on
little DASD just like DB2 because now you are bad, also.
So be good and do not delete your data and you will be allowed to
keep your data comfortably stored on our big DASD. Thank you for your
cooperation.
TAPE
Tape can be square.
And tape can be round.
We in Storage frown upon using round tape and strongly encourage the
use of the square ones. They hold more data. We have lots more of them.
And they are more reliable. Of course, we in Storage make it extremely
difficult for you to code your JCL properly to use tape. That is
because we like when you waste DASD with large datasets that really
belong on tape. Otherwise, we would force you to put everything on
tape.
There are little tapes.
And there are big tapes.
Big tapes are better for big datasets and little tapes are better for
little datasets, but since you never know if your datasets are going to
be big or small, we strongly recommend using only big tapes and wasting
lots of tape space.
Retention of tape should be forever. This way you never lose data.
Anyone that specifies a retention period other than forever is at the
mercy of recovering the data since we do not backup tape. We do backup
DASD. But only some of them and only sometimes. So we do not strongly
recommend using DASD, either.
I realize this is confusing, but that is on purpose. If we made it
easy for you to decide where to put your data, we would run out of
space - and that would be bad.
So don't create any data and we can all be happy.
Have a nice day.
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