Robert McLaws: Windows Edition : Windows Server "Longhorn"

20 Years of PDC Keynotes Online

Robert McLaws — Sat, 21 May 2011 06:17:59 GMT

When I heard earlier today that Microsoft had put all of the Microsoft PDC keynotes online, I was very excited. But I have to admit, it was for selfish reasons. Because I would finally get to tell one of my favorite experiences. Apologies for the self-indulgent post… but then again, aren’t all my posts that way? I figured since the Rapture is coming in a few hours, I could indulge myself in a memory or two.

You see, PDC 2003 was my first Microsoft conference. It was also time when those terrible fires in LA happened, that cancelled many flights out (including mine). It had been a crazy couple days trying to figure out how to get there, but I ended up having to take a bus overnight from Phoenix to LA. It was a long night, and I didn’t get any sleep the entire bus ride.

It turns out, I ended up being an hour late. I was really disappointed at not being able to see Bill Gates speak in person. Corny, I know… he’s something of a hero of mine. Bite me. Anyway, I had WAAAAY overpacked, and ended up rolling into the middle of Allchin’s keynote with my HUGE suitcase. Who happens to be standing there but Robert Scoble. So we grab a seat, I’m excited but exhausted, and not 5 minutes later, this slide comes up. I didn’t have enough time to get my camera out, so I couldn’t catch a picture of the new Longhorn-focused website I had just launched on Jim Allchin’s slide deck.

But now I can.

Had I been any more tired, I probably would have stood up and yelled “That’s my site!” But I kept it together. Later, Scoble told me that Gates, Ballmer, and Allchin were backstage checking out LonghornBlogs.com, and reading what people were saying about the conference (this was WAAAY before Twitter). I wish I could have seen that.

At any rate. If you get a chance, you should take a look at the PDC 2003 and 2005 videos. Pretty interesting contrasts of what was going on at Microsoft before and after MSBlaster. That is, if you’re still here tomorrow.

A Little Trip Through the Wayback Machine

Robert McLaws — Fri, 15 May 2009 20:14:51 GMT

I was doing some ego surfing this morning, when I came across a reference to my company (Interscape Technologies) in an unusual place: a PDF file. Curious, I clicked the link… and what I found totally caught me by surprise.

Apparently, two professors from the Catholic University in Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Germany presented a research paper at the International Federation of Scholarly Associations of Management (IFSAM) World Congress in 2006 (Track 3, Session 1). This paper used LonghornBlogs.com as a case study in how blogging is a “neopoiesis” (novel formation, instead of an emergence) for self-organizing, globally-distributed knowledge management.

The research involved is fascinating. I had no idea that someone had put that much effort into deconstructing the site. They also drew some very interesting conclusions, and even mapped out the interaction between bloggers, as depicted below:

(Click to enlarge)

I vaguely remember being contacted for the survey they mention in the 34-page paper. I had no idea what they were using it for. We weren’t really thinking about it this way at the time, but LonghornBlogs was one of the first IT-related group blogs available at the time, along with dotnetweblogs.com and geekswithblogs.net. Fellow bloggers like Robert Scoble, Rob Howard, Scott Watermasysk, Drew Marsh, Jeff Julian, and others had a big hand in making IT blogging what it is today. I’m glad to have played a small part in that.

I’m curious to see what came of this research, so if you were affiliated with this paper, please use the “Contact” link to get in touch with me.

And on that note, I’m back from my hiatus and will be starting up my coverage of Windows 7 very soon.

The Long-Term Impact of User Account Control

Robert McLaws — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 02:24:28 GMT

TechNet Magazine has a great article this month about UAC.

UAC was not deliberately designed to be the most annoying feature in the history of Windows. Rather, this set of technologies was designed to set us on a path where users do not need to expose their systems to potentially malicious code as frequently as they have during the past few years.
In its current form, UAC will not stop really good attackers, or ones who have the help of really good attackers. If the bad guys can't think of any other way to defeat UAC, they will almost certainly resort to asking the user to do it for them. Given the choice of dancing pigs and security, we know from experience that the dancing pigs win every time. Users have learned to dismiss dialogs, and so they will until we manage to teach them otherwise. This results from many contributing factors, including the fact that there are too many warning dialogs, that the messages in them are useless, and that many of the manuals for whatever devices users buy include a note to "please click yes to the security warning dialog to dismiss it."
UAC does not provide foolproof security. In fact, it makes the good old local privilege elevation attack interesting again. This is a class of attack that has largely been discounted because, on Windows, nearly everyone was an admin anyway so elevating to some other admin was quite pointless. That said, UAC definitely changes the nature of such attacks and transforms the rules of the game to be much more like what prevailed on UNIX for more than 20 years.

I think it's funny that people have been doing so much complaining about it... I have UAC enabled on all my machines and I hardly get ANY dialogs at all. But then again, I don't use many legacy programs, either. Whichever side of the UAC fence you're on, it's a great read.

Install Windows x64 Over x86: Take That, Microsoft!

Robert McLaws — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 01:30:00 GMT

Say you've got a server running Windows Server 2003 x86, and you have no CD-ROM drive, and no physical access to the box. The only way to get to it is through RDP. Now, say you want to move it to 64-bit to be able to add more RAM. It should be as simple as mounting an Windows Server x64 ISO and starting the installation from Windows, right?

WRONG, PAL!

You see, installing x64 from inside x86 is not allowed, Microsoft says so. You can't even do a clean install that way. So you're thinking, maybe you could do it with Windows Server 2008. right?

WRONG AGAIN! You can't do a clean install of Windows Server 2008 x64 over Windows Server 2003 x86 either. Any way you slice it, the x64 installer won't even execute on Windows x86.

I have been dealing with this problem for over a year now. My host, ServerBeach, doesn't support x64 installations yet, so I've been SOL. Last week, I set out to find the solution. ServerBeach graciously offered their assistance, since other clients have been asking for this too, and their support has been amazing.

Well, after beating my head against my desk for the past week, today I finally accomplished it: a completely unattended upgrade to Windows Server 2008 x64 from inside Windows Server 2003 x86. It turns out, there are actually two ways this is possible, neither of which is for the faint of heart. Once will only work for WS2008, and the other will work for both WS2003 and WS2008.

Right now, I'm trying to buy new servers in ServerBeach's Texas data center so I can beef up my hosting network, but as soon as I can, I'll be documenting the process step-by-step, so that others may do the same.

I'm so happy right now I could explode. Woo hoo!

Windows Server "Longhorn" Beta 3 Has Been Released

Robert McLaws — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 00:13:00 GMT

Ian McDonald let the cat out of the bag... Longhorn Beta 3 is out in the wild! Usually this kind of thing is posted to connect first, but you can get it from the Microsoft Downloads page RIGHT NOW.

You'll be able to get more details soon here. (not live yet)

Direct Download Links:

Thanks to AeroXP for the heads-up earlier today.