Two years in the making, one short mp3 file. What’s in this episode?
– What is a VladCast?
– You killed SBS Show, you bastards!
– Whats next…?Play VladCast: [audio:http://www.vladville.com/media/vladcast1.mp3]
Add feed to iTunes / File Attachment: vladcast1.mp3 (1695 KB)
Bink is reporting about the end of the road for OEM XP installations coming at the end of the year. That’s right, coming January 2008 you will no longer be able to purchase a brand new computer with Windows XP.
To most of us in the IT world that use Vista there is probably little compassion on this front. First, Vista rocks. Second, if you’re a business you can purchase Windows under volume licensing programs that allow for use of previous releases of the software. So who does this impact?
SOHO’s and small business that doesn’t subscribe to Volume Licensing because of the “double licensing charge”. SOHO is not getting Software Assurance. Small business that doesn’t have a predictable growth pattern will buy systems one at a time.
So where are these segments going to? It pains me to say, but we’re seeing more and more Apple systems out there used in business. What does this mean for Microsoft? Well, they could again try to lower the bar on piracy so more people would install the useful higher-end versions of Vista… but I doubt that will happen. Piracy has been marginalized in business due to two factors: security and fairness. First, you can no longer trust that the image you get from a warez site (new kids read: bittorrent) is not loaded with rootkits, etc. Second, consumers are less likely to commit a criminal act of theft if they can get a reasonable alternative at a reasonable price. For example, Mac OS X is around $100 and upgrades for less than that. Ubuntu Linux is free. Both present a compelling alternative to a startup that is not bound to Microsoft’s platform.
Why am I telling you all this? Well, this market development is causing Own Web Now to start supporting these alternative platforms because they are showing up at our clients sites. Customer is always right, eh?
This is the second SBS Show with Erick Simpson and combined with the first one perhaps the audio bible of managed services – how to offer them, how to sell them, how to provide them, how to manage it all. Must hear.
SBS Show Episode #26 – Managed Services Howto with Erick Simpson (final)
If you haven’t heard SBS Show #25 you might want to listen to the two of these at the same time.
I don’t expect any sympathy so please don’t flame me. While you’ve all been working around the clock patching and working in the IT world I’ve been trying to shake my cold, flu, bronchitis, or whatever it is today… which means hours and hours and hours of Cracktown. And as I got killed for the umpteenth time trying to drive into the Volt dynamite mine I finally heard something familiar in the voice of the game’s guide.. It’s Duke Nukem!!!
The more you screw up, the more the game insults you. Perhaps it was nyquil, perhaps it was the exaustion.. but I’d like to know anyhow. Is it Duke?
This cracked me up. Someone wrote an iPhone emulator for Windows Mobile. Would I have died to be in on that discussion: “Here we have an awesome portable media appliance, cell phone, remote management platform…. how do we dumb down the crap out of it and turn it into a pre-K toy? Oh, I know, how about an iPhone emulator?”
Have to admit, the product that the developer of this software has (Pocket Programming Language) seems to be a very impressive little IDE for form creation and management for Pocket PC applications. We’re working on a Shockey Monkey mobile agent right now and something like this would really have come useful about a month or so ago and it’s really gonna be useful going forward. Mobile forms management in Visual Studio…. 
As most of you know, Susanne (pictured in front of her castle) has been on her vacation climbing mountains and elephants and all sorts of things. Lot’s of you have asked about her since she’s been gone and I’ve had to inform you that I’m not her daddy. So I tracked him down instead:
Terry D says:
Hi Vlad. The last I heard she had popped up to say that all was well, slight knee pain and the odd nose bleed.
Terry D says:
The first week she was riding around on elephants and generally relaxing.
So there you go, your girl is all good. She’ll be back next week, for those of you holding your breath.
Vijay asks: Are we apologists for Microsoft?
Yes. Yes, we are. Absolutely, totally, without a doubt.
Please go read what Vijay has to say. It is a very positive look at the state of Microsoft partnership, to say the least. Kind of flawed at the close (HP’s scandals and internal affairs do not directly impact my bottom line, Microsoft’s incompetence does) but good summary overall.
If I were to put my finger at one thing.. one thing.. that Microsoft is doing wrong, and is the root cause of why Microsoft is easilly the most hated software and hardware manufacturer in the universe – it would be their total and utter lack of humility when dealing with their customers and partners problems. You will never hear a Microsoft official apologize, you will never see them use the word “sorry”, you will never see the slightest bit of remorse for the damage they continue to do not just to the partner ecosystem but to the customer as well.
For example, one of the nicest people I know at Microsoft sent the email earlier this weekend, using the following phrase “We sincerely appreciate your patience and efforts..”; It is this inability to connect with the pain of partners and customers that is costing Microsoft not just in terms of product sales but also in goodwill and faith customers place in the vendor. It is not hard to say sorry. We say it all the time. For Microsoft software. That is what makes us apologists, by definition.
Now that I’m done with the rant, there is actually a very legitimate reason for using these expressions. For example, Disney has for years emphasised that they are never to admit fault, guilt or remorse when they are at fault. There is never to be an admission of fault by a cast member.
Guest: “You messed up my vacation. You messed up my reservation. You didn’t wake me up.”
Cast: “I am sorry you feel that way.”
Notice they are not really sorry for any of the wrong-doing. They are sorry you feel that way. Anotherwords: “Dear customer, you’re wrong.”
If that is the type of behavior Microsoft wants to adopt in the small business I’m afraid Microsoft solutions will not stay here in the long term. I do not use “the most hated software company” words lightly, Microsoft is deeply despised by many of its customers and partners. It is a shame for those of us that work with Microsoft’s employees and know them to be probably the nicest people out there, both on and off the clock. However, this type of direct communication and the inability to show compassion for the pains, in an official way, that the ecosystem is creating is not going to be good for Microsoft. I hope they can take those words to their superiors and explain to them just whats happening down here. These changes must to come from the top down because there are already awesome people at Microsoft, someone just needs to stop the pattern of hiring marketing pukes that ruin the overall reputation by showing no respect, compassion or even acknowledgement of the mistakes when they happen. Microsoft needs more Kevin Beares’s, and less Joels.
An interesting bug came up in the OWN Forums over the weekend, when downloading Office 2007 Word (docx) document from an Apache hosted site, the file either comes up garbled (application/octet-stream) or opens up a zip folder. This is usually the case when you have a mime-type and content-type mismatch and can get even uglier.. so what’s the solution? You have to define new Office 2007 mime types in your web server (or more precisely, server-side mime type database) so it knows how to communicate the content properly to the web browser. Office 2007 uses the new zipped XML OpenDocument format. After Googling for a few minutes and not finding the solution on the first four pages of searches I came to my buddy David Overton’s page – Now I remember where I read about the new Office 2007 mime types! I’m sure David will be extatic to know his hard work (which applies to IIS6 by the way) is now going to help Apache users everywhere get Office 2007 documents easilly. Joke aside, truth is Apache is the dominant web server and there is at least 70% chance you’re browsing an Apache site (you are right now, it’s what powers Vladville!) or about 98% chance if you’re not in a corporate environment.
Office 2007 mime types from David Overton.
First you’ll notice that there are many different mime types associated with Office 2007 OpenDocument format for just Word documents and templates: .docx, docm, dotm, dotx:
.docm = application/vnd.ms-word.document
.docx = application/vnd.openxmlformats-
officedocument.wordprocessingml.document
.dotm = application/vnd.ms-word.template
.dotx = application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.template
You can hardcode in one of these at a time, however, there is a shortcut. Just open your /etc/mime.types and add this to the last line:
application/vnd.openxmlformats docx pptx xlsx
Restart the Apache service and you’re set. This takes care of the top three popular Office 2007 formats. If you don’t have access to the system mime type configuration (you likely don’t) you can always override the settings using your .htaccess file. Enjoy and thank David! Here is the end result:
Extra note: Above applies to Apache servers hosted on Linux, however, if you host your Apache server on Windows the server distribution is likely shipping a mime configuration database in a specific path, one that you may or may not be able to find easilly. No worries, you can always add the content types directly to the httpd.conf file which is very easy to locate in most popular Windows Apache distributions such as Vertrigo. To add the new mime type directly in Apache httpd.conf (for Linux fans, /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf):
AddType application/vnd.openxmlformats .docx .pptx .xlsx
Please note that httpd.conf definitions override the /etc/mime.types definitions and dependant on the directory configuration, htaccess can (and usually does) override both.
Believe it or not, this question comes up more often than anything else in the ITPRO circles – “I need to add more hard drives to my PC but I don’t have any more 3.5” slots. This happens to be true for most people that bought a desktop PC from Dell, HP, Sony, etc because those manufacturers use a 3.5” internal bracket to suspend the drives from the 5.25” cages. If you bought an OEM case, such as ones from Thermaltake, Antec or Cooler Master you would have six or more internal 3.5” slots.
Let’s face it, the storage demand over even the past two years has gone through the roof. If you thought you needed another hard drive for your MP3s, imagine what happens when you start doing videos. You’re likely running out of room in your case and are resorting to the external USB hard drives all plugged into that $4 Walmart power strip. Now while there are certainly faster ways to light your house on fire, this solution certainly brings that sense of surprise when the fire department tells you that the third USB hard drive you jam-fitted into the power strip at an angle is the one that sparked the place down to foundation.
Could be worse though. Let’s suppose you bought a Media PC case that was designed by an Asian. There is nothing worse than opening a Made in Taiwan case, looking at the mess, and not being able to beat the dumb#@%* that designed it half to death. There are times I look at these cases and wonder if those bastards were just hoping to extend their little spec of dirt in the middle of Pacific with all the returned cases because their design made them useless. For example, the last Media PC case I bought had a 3.5” slot where 2” of it were blocked off by the case fan. Brilliant! How the #@%% am I supposed to plug in the SATA data and power cables into it?
Now that the brief moment of rage is gone, let me offer you a solution that OEM’s have been using for over a decade. The solution is called a 3.5 to 5.25 hard drive mounting bracket. These metal brackets mount to the side of your 3.5” drive and make it fit into the 5.25 slot, of which every midtower case seems to have at least 2–3 spare ones. These brackets cost just a buck or two. There are also 3.5” hard drive cooler kits, Internal cooling cages, Internal RAID expansion kits, hot-swap SATA adapters and more. All are great solutions to the climbing demand for storage and major PC manufacturers inability to provide consumers with reasonable way to expand internal storage. So there you go, I hope I saved your house from a USB drive started fire 
Happy Easter!
ExchangeDefender service providers have been playing with the new MSP control panels we’ve developed for the v3 release. I’ve unfortunately been very much under the weather but I took a moment earlier tonight to record a brief instructional video. It shows you just how easy it is to customize the service, roll out to new customers and continue to support them. Service Provider battle is a hard one to design software for – on one hand you have extreme power users and technies that want access to everything, on the other hand you have the sales guy whose sole job it is to process orders, and if the look and feel of the screen change even the slightest he is paralyzed with fear. I hope we danced close enough to the middle to make everyone happy.
Check out these videos demonstrating ExchangeDefender SP:
ExchangeDefender (and really all the new services and releases) are taking the same public input / scrutany development process I started with Shockey Monkey, meaning that if there is a legitimate need for a feature… by god we’ll build it in!
© 2005– Vladimir Mazek
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