2007 September

I was actually watching this happen, when Chris was working to install SP1 for Vista onto his machine. And while I am most definitely not a full time Windows user, I have to agree with the sentiment that beta means beta. So even though I could make a book out of the various things that […]

We had an opportunity recently to speak with Trey Johnson, Chief Business Intelligence Architect at Cizer, about the current state of BI in the industry and some of the new technologies available on the Microsoft side of things. We also touched on what business intelligence means these days and some of the things IT professionals […]

Shadow copy is a new feature of Windows Server 2003 that basically takes a snapshot of a file or folder at a given point in time, and stores that snapshot for a configured amount of time. While the value may not be evident at first, it should definitely gain attention when coupled with the age-old […]

The Deal is the indispensable magazine for all dealmakers covering M&A, bankruptcy, private equity, venture capital, law & tax, corporate restructuring, and much more.
Each issue of The Deal quickly brings you up to speed on current deals in every sector from all around the world. We cover the players - the people behind the deals […]

You read stories like this and find yourself wondering - could there be some real truth to how dependent we are on networked power grids? At one time, I was led to believe that they were each fairly compartmentalized, but after reading articles like the one linked above, it sure puts things into a tailspin […]

I’ve been wondering how long it was going to be until people started finding the likely holes in web applications like with Google Docs of course everyone’s favorite - Gmail. It seems that gaining someone’s information is just not that difficult after all. Thankfully the bug squishing has begun to take place and since the […]

Crises aren’t limited to computer breaches, hurricanes, and tsunamis. Unfortunately, more crises have occurred in the past few years than in the 20 years before that. Too many organizations react to crisis instead of making crisis management a part of its organization like human resources and finance.
The unusual way of doing business in the past […]

The Recovery Console is a useful utility for troubleshooting and recovering a system. When you use the Recovery Console, you can gain limited access to any volumes without starting the Windows Graphical interface. The utility provides you with the following capabilities:

Use, copy, rename, or replace operating system files and folders
Enable or disable services or devices […]

Today my secondary desk (for my other two Linux boxes; including my Zonbu box plus my Windows box) arrived today. Unfortunately, it is nothing like this one. Seriously, I would love to take that bad boy home for test drive! But with that said, it will be nice to have the extra space in order […]

In the last few columns, we have explored some unexpected properties of noise, and we could easily continue that line of thought for a whole book. There is much more to noise than meets the ear. However, I recently discovered a new book that is peripherally related to the main subject of this series. The […]

Do a search for any telecommunications company and you’ll see plenty of complaints about all of them. That’s because their systems are complex.
I’ve worked at two telecommunications companies for ten years and it gave me perspective into why customer service is often not a smooth process. Both of these companies have been around since the […]

The Recovery Console can be started using two different methods. You can start the console using the Windows Server 2003 installation CD. Insert the CD into your CD-ROM drive. During the text-mode portion of setup, choose R when prompted to perform a repair or recovery. Alternatively, if you completed the steps to install the Recovery […]

Considering the fact that my dog’s dry skin has caused me to turn her into a flotation device, I cannot help but feel like there might be a bigger picture here. Hey, she’s already being made to wear ridiculous contraptions, I would be willing to kick it up a notch, even for a just a […]

Well call me a monkey’s uncle, it looks like we now have the ability to listen to real, mainstream, non-”I’ve never heard of them” music in MP3 format, regardless of which OS you happen to run. Heck yes! It’s funny because even though Amazon is offering download software for Windows and OS X, it is […]

The Recovery Console can be access in two ways. It is accessible by booting to the installation CD, or you can also place it in the Advanced Boot options (F8 during boot, which gives you options like safe mode, last known good, boot logging, etc), by running \i386\winnt32.exe\cmdcons from the installation CD.
The advantage of installing […]

I never wanted to start a business. The thought of managing all the administrative stuff like accounting, legal, and other stuff turned me off. I like doing my job and focusing all of my energies there. Surprising as that’s what I am doing today… managing my own business.
It’s a one-person business and I manage taxes, […]

Please do not misunderstand, I have zero intention of leaving Ubuntu - I find it very reliable once you ‘defrag’ your brain from what you have been taught in the Windows world. But I work in a world of many operating systems, so this means it is worth it to boot into it with Windows […]

Finally. It took one month, 46 email messages, and two visits to the store to resolve a problem with my Sidekick II. The solution wasn’t complicated, but I can’t honestly say it would’ve worked had I not got a new SIM card.
SMS (short message service) had not been working for months, but I didn’t notice […]

Windows Server 2003 includes many different utilities. One such utility, designed for more advanced users and administrators, is known as the Recovery Console. The Recovery Console is a useful tool for troubleshooting.
The Recovery Console is normally used when you are unable to recover your computer using Safe Mode and other startup options. For example, you […]

Learn how DB2 9’s data row compression saves up to 80% in disk space.
The new data row compression technology in DB2 9 can save up to 80% savings on disk space and I/O improvements of up to 40%. If the volume of the data you need to manage is exploding, you may want to take […]