TechTalk
Hold on to Your Butts*: Linux on Windows
With thanks to Patrick Monroe Brenner, I found out that Microsoft and Canonical (Ubuntu) have hatched Linux in Win10.
Wow, baby. Imagine the possibilities if they can get it to run efficiently!
not…holding…breath
Here’s the link.
B$
*In case you’re wondering, “Hold on to your butts!” is a quote from the first Jurassic Park movie (Samuel L. Jackson).
Is Microsoft Cool Again?
…the question should be, “Was Microsoft EVER cool?”.
However, even if it has never been what one would call, “cool”, it certainly is true that it is regenerating itself.
Too bad the coming recession will crush it and other tech companies.
XML and Special Characters
I just learned the hard way when my IIS website crashed because I used an ampersand “&” instead of the word “and” in a menu title.
</Item> <Item Category="Misc"> <Option filename="/FAQ/DropBoxReg.pdf" title="How to get a Dropbox account" /> <Option filename="/FAQ/AccessingDropbox.pdf" title="Setting up GSM & Personal Dropbox" /> <Option filename="/FAQ/iClickerOverview.pdf" title="Using iClicker in GSM Classrooms" /> <Option filename="/FAQ/Crestron.pdf" title="How to use the Crestron Air Media system" />
Can you spot it?
Yeah…I had a really long title for the document in the menu list so I thought I’d shorten it with an ampersand. I thought, “It’s between quotes…that ain’t no THANG!”
FAIL. After restarting the website, I received the bad news.
I found a good article on TechRepublic about the why and workarounds for this phenomenon Beware the Ampersand…. Enjoy. B$
Role Reversal: The Band vs. Apple Watch
Aside Posted on
In a lot of ways, I’m starting to draw the conclusion from their actions that Microsoft is acting more like Apple did in it’s heyday and Apple like Microsoft…as this article about Microsoft’s The Band points out.
I’m rooting for Microsoft…who used to be my arch-enemy and less for Apple, who appears to be lacking in the vision that used to emanate from it.
Keep an eye on Yahoo as well. Necessity to stay alive rears it’s entrepreneurial head. Down but not out.
Innovation comes from taking risks with capital, effort by a team of talented believers and evangelists and is sparked by the vision created by entrepreneurs. Does that describe today’s Apple? B$
Microsoft’s Surface Pro 3 vs. Apples new MacBook, March 2015
I thought it was important to put a date in the title because technical comparisons have a very short half-life.
Since our shop appears to moving away from Dell laptops in favor of Microsoft Surface Pros, I thought it would be cool to say a couple of things and then point you to the article that compares it to it’s Apple equivalent.
I believe a lot of IT groups that are close to their customers (and recommend/purchase these items for their customers) really need these kinds of comparisons along with doing their own homework to form a clear understanding of the good, bad & ugly aspects of these consumer-level platforms. Then you can give your customers usable advice and perhaps avoid your own IT headaches when you have to support this stuff. <smile>
Although, in our shop, the tendency for our Mac users is to go to the ‘Air’ versions of Apple’s product line, the comparison I link to at the end of this rant is a still good comparison to make. Just keep in mind that this article doesn’t take into account OS differences; always a factor in enterprise-level computing.
So, some comments about the Surface Pro:
- Surface Pro’s 1 & 2 kinda sucked on features, usability and performance.
- Surface Pro 3’s features, usability and performance are outstanding.
- Imaging a Surface Pro 3 is a BITCH because it doesn’t like to boot to our MDT deployment share from USB Stick. That may be solved that using the Microsoft’s new Surface Pro drivers package. I’ll plug those puppies into MDT and see if it helps; then report my success/failure.
- I’m also sure that I haven’t researched this issue enough. I’ll bet there is a method to boot these puppies to MDT that we haven’t tried yet because of the task-time-compression that our IT shop is dealing with currently.
- In summary, the two biggest complaints on the Surface Pro:
- It’s a bitch to image (for now!)
- The thin keyboard (an extra purchase) has a “PC Jr” kind of feel to it. For those of you that aren’t 117 years old, another way of saying that is that it doesn’t provide enough bio-feedback on your fingers when you type. If you’ve ever tried to use the Win8.1 keyboard on a touch screen for speed touch typing, that’s the equivalent experience. I venture to guess that this complaint only comes from those who were trained on traditional keyboards, which give you a specific tactile feedback that you’ve hit the right key and that the “keystroke” was actually registered by the computer. I think the younger crowd have & will take to new input devices it quite easily, IMHO.
All that said, here’s the article on Tech Republic. Be careful: they’re data miners at Tech Republic. Just read it, close the page then clear any cookies they left you, lest they sign you up for tons of spam.
B$
SEXY New Site ALERT! – DeployHappiness
I just found a insanely great deployment/group policy site for those of us ‘in the BIZ’ called DeployHappiness .
You’ll find this intro screen at http://deployhappiness.com/about-deployhappiness/
Joseph, you’ve put together a kickass site, sir. Thanks!
You Can’t Delete a File Because The Damn Path is Too Bloody Long!
About 2 years ago I ran into a faculty member that was a Mac user who was using our file share system (Windows Servers 2008+) to save copies of research.
Research is the difference between tenure and oblivion for faculty at a ‘research’ university.
As is typical with Mac users, the professor was unaware of any limitations in the tiny bubble of “unlimited potential” that makes up the general Apple illusion. I say ‘Apple illusion’ because I was shocked to find out that MacOS X has very similar limitations. I should note here that those involved with media (marketing, advertising, graphics artists, etc.) are also guilty of nesting stuff dozens of folders deep. I honestly think those right-brained people are desperately trying to emulate the left-brained propensity for analytic organization.
In this case, the professor nested folders upon folders until they had gone way beyond the NTFS limitation of 260 characters and because of that, it was saved but could not read or deleted by Windows.
Here’s an EASY way to retrieve the file(s) as per Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 320081: Start at the beginning of the path and start renaming a few of the long-winded directory names until the path is under 255 characters. Once you’ve done that, the file(s) are easily moved into a sane folder (directory) structure.
Example:
- Original path: d:\ProjectAlpha\SillyLongNameForAFolder\Hambone\FruitlessComputerEndeavors\GoingToNeedToFindAnotherJob\NoOneWillHireAnIdiotThatAllowsThisToHappen\MonsterDotCom\file.txt ...for 255+ characters.
- New, renamed path: d:\pa\slnfaf\h\fce\gtntfaj\nowhaitatth\mdc\file.txt …etc., until the path is less than 225 characters…then go retrieve the file.
If you have a ton of files, then you can write a PowerShell script that renames each successive folder by the first 1 or 2 letters of the directory. There are also a few utilities out there that will do this for you. So if you wanna download some malware or foistware with the utility, go for it.
Remember: the directory structure itself may be the only identification of what the file actually contains!
Example:
- d:\ServerLogs\FileServers\Dogbert\SecurityLogs\Previous\log.txt
- d:\ServerLogs\FileServers\Dogbert\SecurityLogs\Current\log.txt
…but by renaming them without keeping track of what the file was exactly, you just screwed yourself big-time:
- d:\s\f\d\s\c\log.txt
- d:\s\f\d\s\p\log.txt
Although you get it that it’s a log file, what kind of log is it and to what system or application does it apply to?
Now apply this idea to someone’s research:
- d:\AustrianEconomicsSeminar\2012\Research\vonMises\1920-1946\biography.docx
- d:\AES\2012\R\vM\1920-1940\biography.docx
See? …You’re screwed and that faculty member/customer will NEVER trust you again. <smile>
For me, I prefer the LSD method: Long, Slow & Deliberate. So take your time, work with one file at a time and work closely with the customer. …you’re talking about a faculty member’s phony-baloney job here!
B$
Information: This Place Looks Interesting!
I’m constantly on the lookout for places to garner more of the incoherent and granular information I need to do my job in IT. I was at SourceForge the other day (one of my hangouts) and someone told me about this place: Stack Overflow
It looks like an interesting place. Tons of the esoteric information that IT peeps crave! Let me know what you think in the comments here or on twitter. B$
Technical Brian 