David Moisan's Blog

SATV Cablecast Renovation about to get underway

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 19:09:16 GMT

Starting tomorrow, SATV will go off the air for an upgrade. We will get shiny new equipment, and I'm blogging the whole thing! Our first step is to demolish the old console. I expect we'll find surprises like this:

This cable formerly powered one of the PC's in Cablecast. It went down one day, and this is what I found!

Windows 3.11 Retired and My Belated Suggestion for Clippy

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 17:00:50 GMT

Paul Thurrott (“Forget About XP- Let's Save Windows for Workgroups 3.11!”) and numerous others have written about Microsoft’s retirement of Windows For Workgroups, which has had quite an afterlife in embedded systems.

(This is not new: The 1800-series Red Line trains on Boston’s MBTA are reported to have an “A>” prompt on a console in the driver’s cabin; DOS 6.22 has been seen in embedded systems, and probably in those trains.)

Paul made a nice banner:

Windows 3.11 is special for me; it was the first Windows version I ever used.

It made me think of another “special” persona at Microsoft, Clippy! He had a retirement party a few years back. He made the rounds to various Microsoft events around the country. He happened to ask me for career directions and I obliged:

I hope he’s having a good life.

Monitoring SATV with the SuperGoose

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 15:00:54 GMT

One thing that is very important to any IT shop is environmental monitoring. There are too many instances of overheated or soggy servers these days, especially as more servers are outside traditional datacenter spaces as in them. We wanted our cablecast area, and other critical areas like our server room to be monitored for temperature and water detection.

We went with an inexpensive box from ITWatchdogs.com:

This is the SuperGoose. It can accept 16 digital sensors and three analog inputs. In practice, we use digital temperature sensors and analog water sensors. It is web-based and allows alerts to be sent based on conditions. As you can see, it also has a digital display and an alarm.

To avoid running more wire throughout the building, I built some breakout boxes from common network components from Home Depot and Radio Shack so I could use an unused network drop to run both the digital and analog sensors to remote locations and permit expansion in the future.

This is the master breakout box that goes to remote sensors in the Control Room and Engineering. I’ve made the wiring diagram available [PDF].

One thing you need to know if you do your own sensor wiring with this system: The documentation is wrong! Documents on the ITWatchdogs site give two different pinouts for the digital sensors. Neither one is correct.

The digital sensors need conductors 2, 3 and 4 passed straight-through to the Goose—no crossover cables! You’ll probably run into this when you reuse old RJ11 phone cables for your sensors; almost all of them are crossed. MilesTek sells straight-through RJ11 cables cheap—use them!

The analog sensors are straightforward; just one contact and ground.

The SuperGoose works fine; the only thing I wish for is a web page on the Goose that indicated active alarms at a glance. The Goose makes the data and log available so it’s possible I could write an app or a Vista gadget to indicate alarms.

It’s an inexpensive solution that I highly recommend for small shops.

Moving forward: Changes at SATV

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 14:22:39 GMT

We’ve been talking for years about upgrading our cablecast plant. I’ve described it in an earlier post, Information Technology and Coping with the Second Energy Crisis. You may also remember the problems I had in there a few months ago, mentioned in passing, Why Johnny is not a Tech, and also our problems ensuring access for the visually impaired, Future of SATV's Audible Bulletin Board on my other blog.

We’re purchasing a system from Tightrope Media Systems, our current vendor. I’m sure their tech support staff (Hi, Jeremy!) will be so happy!

The installation will start around August 20th, and I will blog the whole process with pictures.

Weird Display Artifacts With Vista Aero

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 14:15:40 GMT

Notice the ghosted text in the upper center. It was caused by Movie Maker crashing the night before. The artifact persisted until the system was rebooted.

Spreading a Meme: Scripting/Sysadmin

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 13:58:14 GMT

Mind Of Root is spreading a meme! What was one’s first job as a sysadmin and when did they learn scripting?

How old were you when you started using computers?

I was, um, 16, and a freshman at Salem High. We had a PDP-11/60 and a computer lab. I loved it.

What was my first machine?

My brother bought a TRS-80 Color Computer in my junior year of HS, and I used it through college, eventually buying enough parts for it that I had half ownership. The first computer I owned personally was a 286 PC clone in 1991.

What was the first real script you wrote?

In high-school, I and my brother and several of our friends took turns being sysadmin for the PDP-11. It ran RSTS, which was a BASIC-based timeshare system for educational use. Its scripting language was BASIC! I wrote a script to backup files from our system disk (a large removable disk pack) to our secondary disk (another pack). The backup system on RSTS, like most all minicomputers at the time, was made to use tape as the backup media, like the (now old-style) NTBackup, and we didn’t have any tape drives.

What scripting languages have you used?

BASIC (!!), VBScript, CMD, Perl and now PowerShell.

What was your first professional sysadmin gig?

That would be the job I hold now at Salem Access Television, the first job I’ve had in a while where I get to be sysadmin, though of course I have much deeper responsibilities there.

If you knew then what you know now, would have started in IT?

When I got out of college, I felt a little disillusioned and considered technical writing. I never seriously considered a non-technical career (like management), but I wasn’t going to be a coder as I had originally trained for. After going through the “Parachute” job book too many times. I now believe IT was the right thing for me after all. It’s a craft of sorts.

If there is one thing you learned along the way that you would tell new sysadmins, what would it be?

Get involved with community; it’s much easier to stay connected than it was when I was an intimidated freshman in college. I was alone for too much of my college life. Don’t be afraid to look at the big picture; as you get more experience, you won’t see your world only through a shell prompt. Also don’t forget the larger community—at SATV I am making a difference for us in how we serve our community. Keeping things smooth can be its own reward.

What’s the most fun you’ve ever had scripting?

I have fun just learning scripting, though I admit I haven’t had the time or energy to get into the real esoteric stuff that’s in PowerShell CTP 2, though I do run it and do tinker from time to time.

Who am I calling out?

SBS 2008 has PowerShell built in. It will be the first exposure to PowerShell for many SBS admins, so I want to call out people in the SBS community:

When Life is Copy Protected...

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 02:41:08 GMT

Microsoft has filed a very scary patent. The original purpose seems benign, according to Unwired View:

In addition to many benefits brought to us by mobile phones, there have been a few drawbacks as well. Especially, related to ethics/culture/social issues of the mobile phone use.
Don’t you just hate it, when during an engaging presentation, show or movie, a mobile phone of some as#$%^&&, sorry, forgetful person, begins to ring? What about someone taking out his high end cameraphone and doing something with it in the locker room? Can you be sure he’s not taking your nude pictures in the shower? What about someone secretly recording confidential conversation on his mobile phone?
Microsoft seems to have an idea how to solve all these problems at once. By creating device manners policy DMP [sic]), to which all mobile devices will have to comply to. And they even want to patent it
[From the Microsoft patent:]
Such policy may be used to communicate to various mobile and other devices the “manners” with which compliance is expected or required. Similar to some of the social manners honored among people, such as with “no smoking” or “employees only” zones, “no swimming” or “no flash photography” areas, and scenarios for “please wash your hands” or “no talking out loud”, devices may recognize and comply with analogous “device manners” policy.

This won't stop there. I can anticipate lots of potential "no photography" zones:

Schools: "Behind Every Camera is a Pedo!"
Government buildings: I guess I can't film public hearings anymore like I used to.
Public places: Remember, papparazzi!
Workplaces: Maybe you'll be allowed to take pictures of the office party...if you're good with the boss! You're a whistleblower? Siberia might be safer.
Anywhere where someone in power is scared of their own people.

That last is the scariest place of them all, for it is everywhere in America. Everywhere in our country, people take pictures of things the powers-that-be would rather not have seen.

Youtube has video on atrocities in Myanmar. Perhaps in a few years there'll be smuggled videos and photos from America.

I live in the “tourist town” of Salem. What if the Peabody Essex Museum wanted exclusive photo rights for the whole city?

Original: Microsoft wants to teach manners to you mobile device » Unwired View

Update: Boing Boing Gadgets posted about this. DCulbertson writes in the comments:

Suppose it was implemented. I wonder how many public places would eventually have the "no pictures" flag set? Meaning even if it's legal to take photos, you couldn't... Then how many police cars and federal agents would have DMP boxes with "no photos / no video / no audio recording" flags set. No more individuals documenting arrests or police action.

Someone, somewhere in the Department of Homeland Security, is smiling.

Update: Bruce Schneier as usual has an excellent take. Also see his column in Wired, “I’ve Seen the Future and it has a Kill Switch”.

Why Johnny is not a Tech

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 00:46:19 GMT

Nick Corcodilos, "Ask the Headhunter" is one of my favorite IT pundits; he's an executive recruiter who loves to puncture the job-hunting myths I suffered through early in my career. You know the ones, "send resumes everywhere" (now, "live on Monster.com"), have the "right" resume, and the "right" answers.

He had a great blog post a few months ago that I'm just now getting to, Why Johnny doesn’t work. He asks:

The dominant explanation for why students aren’t graduating with technical degrees is H-1B and outsourcing. It goes like this: Because American companies send technical jobs overseas, and because they hire foreign nationals under the H-1B visa program, (both supposedly at lower cost than hiring Americans), students regard technical careers (in electronics engineering, software development, information technology) as undesirable. They believe they won’t get healthy salaries or enjoy any reasonable job security. They may be right.
But I see another trend that’s far more disturbing than the behavior of companies and students. K-12 schools seem to be de-emphasizing the fundamentals of technology. They seem to be teaching kids how to be technology consumers rather than designers. A case in point is my local school district, which recently spent over $30M to build a state-of-the-art middle school. Every classroom is wired for sound, video, and computers. Every teacher has a laptop, and big LCD displays dot the facility. The auditorium is state-of-the-art; the soundboard alone blows away what you’d find in most commercial theaters. The school is equipped with a video production facility that kids use to produce what’s described as professional-quality videos. The computer lab lets kids use sound samples to produce their own music CD’s. It’s all really great.
The trouble is, no one is teaching the kids how all this technology works, and how they can build their own.

I grew up reading. When I got my first jack-in-the-box, I took it apart. (Mom wasn't happy...then!) I played with electronic stuff from an early age. I read the old Lafayette and Radio Shack catalogs and I was fascinated! I could tell you how a TV worked when I was in fourth grade. During college, I had a very tiny side business taking TV's and electronics from dumpsters and fixing them for family and friends.

A lot of people like me, in my generation, went into IT through their fascination with electronics and computers. Like Nick, I've seen people become mere consumers of technology and I'm worried.

A story from SATV: We have three rack-mount Windows 2000 machines that handle our entire on-air operation; one machine is the master machine with the database and Channel 16 display (Government channel), and the other two handle the displays for Channel 3 (Public Access) and Channel 15 (Education).

One day, during a routine Windows update, Channel 3 went down, and very hard. The CPU fan would not spin up, even after it was swapped for a known good one. We pouted on that one for a day, waiting to hear from the vendor's tech support (they were turnkey systems.)

Next day, I have a bright idea. A few years ago when those systems were new, we had one we thought was unstable due to hardware (it turned out to be a Windows bug, another story). We got a replacement machine but never returned the old machine for some reason.

Why not use the old machine? I took the hard drive from the dead machine and swapped it into the old, supposedly unstable machine.

It worked. It ran for many hours. Success! If I had had that idea the day before...

The fun came when we explained this to the vendor! The poor tech support guy was floored when Sal, our executive director, explained everything that transpired. He just could not conceive of someone doing what I did to get a machine going. We asked him to check with his boss--the vendor has a long, involved, but mostly pleasant history with us. His boss called us back, "Oh, it's SATV, I know all about you!" (We're trading in those systems towards a forklift upgrade from them including a video server so this'll be all out in the wash soon.)

Even in the computer industry, most people don't seem to realize computers are made up of components. Even Macs. The modern education that Nick talks about seems to make kids incurious. Why do you need to know how your iPod works? The Chinese will make more! They can handle the science and engineering, don't worry about science, just buy stuff!

One commenter on Nick's post made me think of an even sadder example:

Third, technology has radically changed the methods of “making stuff.” If you want a state-of-the art shop, it better have a CNC mill, laser cutter, and CAD workstations. I experienced this kind of obsolecense first-hand in high school. I was on the school newspaper, and spent two years learning all the skills of offset printing: photo screening, making full-size (11×17 inch) negatives of page folios, burning printing plates, and running the offset press. Then the district office bought an 11×17 photocopy machine. In that instant, all that equipment and skills were worthless. But our time from layout to finished product went from 3 days to 2 hours, and at lower cost.

A few years ago, I volunteered to be the technical person for the Salem Commission on Disabilities (before I joined them). There was a contest among elementary school students to design a logo for the Commission and a winning logo was picked. Now we needed to get that on our letterhead.

I had volunteered to scan the logo in on my computer, but the commissioners were adamant that it be done "professionally" and several of us went to someone we knew at North Shore Vocational Technical School; this guy was teaching the graphics arts class.

We met the guy and asked if they had a high-end scanner. He did not. It was all film and plates. This was only a few years ago, and by then, digital press was very well established; I'd attended enough Seybold trade shows to see that. Digital press should have been available even at that school's budget, and I was very sad for him and his students.

In the end I scanned it myself and the results were good enough. If that teacher, or more likely, his department head had just been more curious, his students would not have been sent out dead on arrival in obsolete technologies.

Don't fear. If you're a student all you need to do is get your MBA or law degree, Make Money and Make Deals! Engineering, science and curiosity is for the Indians and the Chinese.

Working with SBS 2008, Part 3: Migration Migraines

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 23:56:56 GMT

If you saw the original drafts of my last two posts that I stupidly put online, Working with SBS 2008, Part 1- Single-Server Migration and Working With SBS 2008, Part 2- Answer files and the installation, you know I tried doing a Swing migration on my "old" SBS 2008 beta box. Didn't work. But I still got my server migrated, though the swing was a complete bust.

There were three things I needed migrated: My user profile on my workstation, my email and my Sharepoint site (which only had a few items in it as a test). There were some other files on the server I wanted saved but those were trivial to deal with.

The profile was the easiest. I used the Windows User State Migration Tool (USMT) Version 3.0.1. It's the command-line scriptable counterpart to the Windows migration wizard included in Vista and XP. It was easier yet to save the profile when I stopped trying to websurf on the machine while USMT was running!

Sharepoint 3.0 is backed up via the Sharepoint Site Administration page. Wish I could say how the restore went but I accidentally deleted the backup files.

An obstacle I ran into was the backup volume on the old server. SBS 2008 uses disk-based backup and configures a volume with a VHD file, the same format as Virtual Server and Virtual PC(though the VHD has no boot sector and cannot be used for virtual-to-physical migrations.)

You can open the disk, extract the VHD and use vhdmount from Virtual Server to access the files I wanted to restore, but I really wanted my new copy of SBS to recognize the restore volume and use it to restore applications under Windows, much as the System Restore feature of the Server 2008/Vista install disk lets you mount your backup disk and restore from it.

Apparently, Windows Server Backup doesn't do that, so it's vhdmount for me. I used that on the new SBS machine to extract the Exchange databases from the old backup, which are in the directory c:\program files\microsoft exchange\mailbox\first storage group\mailbox database.edb.

This is where I ran into a wall: I copied the mailbox directory to a temp directory and ran the Exchange Troubleshooting Assistant to create a Recovery Storage Group to hold the restored database and merge the mailboxes (only mine!) into the new database.

This is what happened instead:

Log Name:      Application
Source:        MSExchangeIS
Date:          6/3/2008 8:47:28 AM
Event ID:      1088
Task Category: General
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      SLAPPY.dmproductions.local
Description:
The information store could not be loaded because the distinguished name (DN) /O=[a different site name for the SBS beta]/OU=EXCHANGE ADMINISTRATIVE GROUP (FYDIBOHF23SPDLT)/CN=RECIPIENTS/CN= of message database "Recovery Storage Group\Mailbox Database" does not match the DN of directory /O=FIRST ORGANIZATION/OU=EXCHANGE ADMINISTRATIVE GROUP (FYDIBOHF23SPDLT)/CN=RECIPIENTS/CN=.

The database may have been restored to a computer that is in an organization or site different than the original database.

By design, I cannot mount the old database. I made the conclusion only after many contortions where I ran eseutil with many different options, thinking the database was corrupted. It likely was not; I just couldn't do anything with it.

Nice thinking by the SBS team, and that is not sarcasm. MS product managers are adamant that one cannot use beta code for production nor can one expect to migrate between betas or between betas and release candidates. This is the first time I've ever seen it enforced in a database!

I did have a PST file for backup, but because I forgot a checkbox when saving my mail, I only had an older copy from two months ago. Annoying--I did do my business with the Salem Commission on Disabilities via email, but not a big disaster for me.

This migration was a migraine, and I'm bitterly disappointed I could not do a Swing. But, SBS 2008 runs fine and when RC1 comes, I will have forgotten this.

I'm moving on.

Getting local crash dumps of applications in Vista and Server 2008

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 00:41:02 GMT

Mark Russinovich has another excellent post, Mark's Blog : The Case of the Random IE and WMP Crashes. He had a problem with Windows Media Player frequently falling down and going boom.

Now, WER (Windows Error Reporting) does take dumps and sends them to Microsoft, but it hasn't been possible to get a copy of the dump to analyze with Debugging Tools for Windows. Mark sort of cheated to get his dump; he grabbed the dump from the temp directory while the WER dialog was waiting for him to close it. It's the kind of thing I've done.

Vista SP1--and by extension Server 2008--has a registry key setting that will save local dumps:

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting\LocalDumps

This will make WER save all dumps in %LOCALAPPDATA% (Powershell: $Env:localappdata), which is usually c:\users\<user>\AppData\Local.

I don't often analyze bluescreens--they just don't happen for me that often either at home or at SATV--but I do get a lot of apps in testing that just go boom for whatever reason. This should help.

Working With SBS 2008, Part 2: Answer files and the installation

Sat, 31 May 2008 20:54:51 GMT

Continued from my last post.

To move on with our migration, we need to go through the steps to create an answer file to define our new network, not only defining the name and IP address of our new server, ~~but also the name and IP of our "swing" server that we'll be running in Virtual PC on my workstation.~~

A few housekeeping details were mentioned in the Reload Nuggets post that I'll repeat here: Unlike SBS 2000 and SBS 2003, SBS 2008 Premium does not include ISA Server! You'll need an external router or firewall device on the edge of your network. It's beyond the scope of this blog post to suggest a firewall, since it depends much on what, if any, services you need exposed on the Net and the resources you have available. Suffice it to say there are numerous options, from a simple cheap broadband router, to a Linux-based junk-computer firewall, all the way to a member server running Windows 2008 and ISA 2006 (which you can do with the 2nd copy of Windows Server that comes with SBS 2008 Premium.)

Next step is to run the SBS Answer File Generator, which is in the /tools folder of SBS 2008 Disc 1. Make life easier on yourself and just copy that whole directory to your XP or Vista workstation. Run SBSAfg.exe. These are the settings we'll use:

Installation Type: New Installation

Get Installation Updates: True
Run Unattended: False
Clock and Time Zone settings: [set these as desired]
Company information: [fill this out as appropriate]
Server Name: SLAPPY [I name my machines after Animaniacs characters <g>. Slappy's a cranky mean squirrel]
Domain Name: [your existing domain name, which will be "something.local" if you kept up with SBS best practices]
Password: [you should know this one]
Domain Administrator Account Name: [you should know this too...]
DHCP is running on the source server: False
Default Gateway: x.x.x.1 [your router's or edge firewall's address]
Server IP address: x.x.x.x

Save the answer file (sbsanswerfile.xml) and copy it to a USB stick. You do want to print the answer file from the program as well. Make a hard copy and save it to XPS or PDF for reference. This is something you'll want to keep in your file or customer's file when you do a "real" installation.

Boot the machine you will use for your SBS machine and insert Disc 1. Plug in your USB key with the answer file and any disk drivers you might need. Go through the dialogs and start the installation. This part takes about 45 minutes.

After several reboots, you'll see the wizard "Install Windows Small Business Server 2008" which will take you through the information you supplied in your answer file.

There's more waiting, more rebooting and finally:

Working with SBS 2008, Part 1: Single-Server Migration

Sat, 31 May 2008 17:46:50 GMT

The SBS 2008 Technical Preview is now out. Reload Nuggets has an excellent walkthrough if you are installing SBS 2008 clean. If this applies to you, go there immediately and stop reading. Otherwise:

I mentioned in my earlier post that I have a weird SBS site at home (in the corner of my bedroom where the network cables are coiled up, under my workbench.) Microsoft officially supports two scenarios for SBS: A new clean installation--which is virtually automatic, and a two-server migration where the old server is connected to the new one and files, AD, Sharepoint and Exchange are copied from old to new.

To be fair to Microsoft, there are very few SBS customers that are in a position to do a same-server migration. SBS 2008 is 64-bit only; SATV, like most other SBS shops, has a 32-bit machine and it cannot be migrated to the new SBS (though it can and probably will be migrated with the MS two-server scenario).

That was exactly my position when I first participated in the private SBS 2008 beta: I have a 64-bit Tyan Tomcat 1000S (Opteron 1215) and 4 gigs of memory. I did get SBS 2008 onto the machine and my personal shop migrated, albeit with enough rough edges to cut my fingers off.

~~We're doing a Swing Migration.~~ Actually, we aren't. After much testing, I've found it is simply not feasible to perform a migration the way I had first thought.

This is the result of my trying to do a Swing migration:

Ha ha, "non-critical". Sure. Exchange and Sharepoint were missing and for some reason the install files were not on the machine and I could not find them on the DVD, likely buried in the disk image. I really admire Jeff Middleton and wanted to perform his migration method, but it didn't work out. Stupid of me to blog about it before I even knew if it would work! My fault, not Jeff's.

But, I move on. I used an answer file to get the machine named the way I like it and fit into the domain I already have, so that's my next post.

Remembering Jeannette Moisan

Sun, 25 May 2008 17:11:22 GMT

Normally, I don't post personal notes; I keep those for my Salem blog. However, I have to pay tribute to a woman without which I would not be in IT:

Jeannette and one of her foster children.

I've written more about Jeannette, her life as a foster mother and as an advocate for the disabled on my other blog. While I love IT and love to work hard in my field, I must always remember the person who most helped me get here. Jeannette was a great woman, a dear friend, and intensely proud of me and my choice of field.

SBS 2008: I can finally say what I've been doing for the past six months

Sun, 25 May 2008 01:48:31 GMT

My colleague Phillip E. writes about Small Business Server 2008:

For those of us on the private SBS 2008 "Cougar" beta program, we have been privileged to have access to the new RC0 build of SBS 2008 since late last Thursday.

I think I can talk about what I've been doing for the past several months: I was on the private beta for SBS 2008. Microsoft still has the beta testers under an NDA for the beta bits that we tested, but I have my hands on the RC0 build and will give my impressions of it when I cut over to it on my personal box sometime next week.

Without going into too many details, I have a quirky home office with some weird requirements. Combine that with a case of abandoned hardware (on a motherboard, no less!) and it was a very interesting beta!

As Phil puts it, SBS 2008 will be a steep(-ish) learning curve going from SBS 2003. There's a lot that's different and I have had to resolve problems and make some decisions I've not made before in my testing.

Vista, as you may know, makes some breaking security changes to try to enforce best practices amongst developers and users. Windows Server 2008 similarly makes some changes, including Vista's changes, but most notably how Windows Backup works. There are also changes in SBS itself to be well aware of, especially if you are an SBS Premium shop (as is Salem Access Television.)

On the other hand, It's been working out so far, since the post you're reading is passing through my SBS box. I've always been a big fan of Microsoft's server products, and SBS 2008 is no exception.

I'll be liveblogging my latest installation. Stay tuned for that one.

One Laptop Per Child and the Blank Slate

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 23:46:53 GMT

In "Is Anybody Home at One Laptop Per Child?", Edward Cherlin wonders what is happening at OLPC:

Ivan Krstić says in his blog that he quit OLPC a few weeks ago because he was no longer to work with Walter Bender, but with an unnamed manager with no technical knowledge. Also that OLPC's kernel manager is leaving.
Walter is, in his own words, "out of the loop" now. Supposedly there will be a new CEO and COO sometime.
In the meantime, Nicholas Negroponte is the only person in charge, and he has nothing to do with the people doing the work. We are not allowed to talk with him, we cannot get questions sent to him for answers, and he will not tell anybody what is going on, except to make bizarre remarks to reporters about becoming more like Microsoft.
Well, all right, I exaggerate. I have sent in one communication that I was told would be passed on to Nicholas. But I don't exaggerate by much. I haven't heard a peep in response.

From the start of the OLPC project, I've always wondered at Negroponte's motives. Of course, no one can be against educating children in the third world, but I have always thought that the OLPC was utopian in every sense of the word. This is what I said on Technocrat a few months ago:

The OPLC strikes me as a quintessentially utopian experiment. It's a tabula rasa, a blank slate. In Steven Pinker's, "The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature", Pinker discusses the ways in which people deny human nature for various utopian reasons, and the ways in which they all fail.

I have always thought Negroponte was a utopian. His OLPC is going to be the force that saves the world (and one thinks, brings down Microsoft...) The third-world children that are his beneficiaries are unsullied by the modern technological culture. Rousseau would have identified these "noble savages" immediately. I wonder, however rationalized, if that was the real reason why the OLPC's were not intended to be sold in the first world let alone America. No noble savages here, we're already corrupted by civilization.

These "noble savages", I mean, children, won't need teachers; they'll teach themselves! They'll fix laptops themselves--without even knowing what a screwdriver is (or so the hype makes it seem)! (I ripped apart my jack-in-the-box toy when I was 3, but I seem to recall reading LOTS of books when I became one of these tinkerers. Where are the books for these noble savages?)

The hardware is brilliant, but I admit I was turned off when I saw that crank in the early mockups. The AMD chip is low powered, but there is no way that it can be powered by a crank. And if you've seen one of Trevor Baylis' radios, the crank-spring-generator assembly is rather large, and that for a relatively low-powered cheap radio. Not a single techie pointed this out during the OLPC hype. I wonder if that turned off Baylis, in addition to, his management concerns.

Early prototype of OLPC with power crank, which turned out not to be feasible [from Wikimedia Commons]

Lee Felsenstein wrote about the crank in 2005:

But what of the absence of reliable electrical power? OLPC statements refer to the hand-cranked generator included in each unit, having a ratio of 100:1 for operating time to crank time. For an optimistically low power drain of 1 watt this implies a 100 watt generator.
A hand crank of 6 inch (15.24 cm) length operating at 2 turns per second would require a tangential force of 11.8 pounds (5.3 kg), assuming 100% efficiency of generation and storage. This would tire a strong adult quite rapidly. It would seem apparent that the figure of 100:1 was arrived at by means other than calculation.

Even after the OLPC entered full production, there are still problems with hand-operated generators. From OLPC Human Power Generation Reality Check:

The Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art is acquiring two XO laptops for their permanent collection because MOMA's Paul Galloway believes the design of the XO Laptop and the ideas it embodies belong in the museum's collection. While I'll not dispute his concept, I do think the display is in error
If you look closely, you'll see that the display case has two XO laptops and a Potenco pull-cord generator. Personally, I don't think the MOMA should be showing off vaporware.
While XO laptop is in full-scale production, I even have one myself, no one has a Potenco yoyo, no matter the fancy Wired interviews. Individual purchase inquiries are rebuffed with this polite but vague brush off we've heard since last June:
We appreciate your interest in Potenco's human power generators. We'll be posting much more information about the product as we move into full scale production.

I'm not surprised there are problems with human power generation. There's a reason we moved from humans to horses to, gasp, "Machines!" to generate power. It is infeasible to hand crank an OLPC, and perhaps just barely possible to use a string-powered generator as the Potenco uses.

Those are just some of the problems OLPC faces. There are some bright kids out there, including this child from Peru whom I see myself in, but it's still a very utopian experiment. That kid from Peru would probably be a engineer, a tech or a mechanic, but you still have to reach all the other kids.

OLPC is just the latest generation of the thinking I encountered when I learned computers in the 1970's. Back then, the thought was if you taught kids computers and BASIC, they would know everything. While I much prefer technical pursuits instead of, say, management or business (no MBA for me), there's no way that lines of code are going to replace the many dozens if not hundreds of books and magazines that I devoured at a young age.

It's a wonderful piece of hardware. I just wonder if the organization can live up to those same expectations.

Linux: Great quote on Linux and people with disabilities

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 23:51:35 GMT

A housekeeping note: I've been away from this blog for a while. I've been kept away by a private beta I'm in, and local politics (see my other blog).

Jeff Atwood is donating $5,000 to a .NET open source project. A commenter makes an excellent point about why MS seems to reinvent the wheel:

Simon - Subversion, CruiseControl and Nant are great for my purposes in this little shop, but those tools don't scale well to large businesses. Microsoft didn't develop Team System due to NIH, they developed it because they were targeting an entirely different market.
I really wish people would at least try to understand what the hell they're talking about before piping up. Microsoft has to worry about i18n, backwards compatibility, patent and copyright issues, security issues, usability issues, and all of that fun stuff that's part of developing "commercial" software. It's not as if they can just pick up a copy of Subversion and deploy it with Visual Studio and have everything just work; and if they're going to have to tackle the mountains of work involved in bringing those tools up to snuff for everyone who uses VS, why the hell should they do it for free? Those translators and testers and lawyers and analysts all cost money.
I think it's wonderful to be donating real money to open source projects. But please, for the love of god, stop bitching about how Microsoft or Google or whoever is dragging its heels and refusing to accept the divine blessing of open-source software. Microsoft has millions of customers to worry about; CruiseControl or [insert your favourite FOSS project here] only has to worry about white English-speaking Americans and Europeans without any disabilities and with plenty of time on their hands to fix all the minor compatibility problems themselves.
Aaron G on April 11, 2008 07:29 AM

Emphasis added. I still haven't tried the latest Ubuntu. Unless I hear that they've updated Gnopernicus, the screen magnifier I had such trouble with, I'm going to pass for a bit longer, perhaps indefinitely.

WSUS: 0x80040E14 Error when updating to WSUS 3.0 SP1

Sat, 09 Feb 2008 03:25:34 GMT

WSUS 3.0 SP1 is now out. You might get an error 0x80040e14 immediately on starting setup.

Check the WSUS database directory; this will be C:/WSUS or D:/WSUS. If you previously updated from WSUS 2, there may be a file in the directory, SUSDB.BAK. WSUS 3 SP1 setup backs up the database and will not run if this file is left over from a previous update.

Delete SUSDB.BAK and rerun setup. If that fails, check your permissions for \WSUS and make sure there is access for the account you use to run setup.

Network Pizza Model

Sun, 03 Feb 2008 04:43:02 GMT

It's Super Bowl Sunday and in sports-mad Boston that means food, even more so now that the Patriots are aiming for 19-0. Here's an old joke amongst network techs about pizza and the 7-layer OSI model. I never see this in search engines anymore, so:

Date: Sat, 26 Mar 94 14:18:59 MST
From: [...] (Charlie Shub)
Subject: The OSI Pizza Model
To: spaf
* From: DAVID LAWRENCE NICOL [...] to the ACM student chapter list...
THE OSI X.400 7-LAYER REFERENCE PIZZA:
Level 7: Meal layer. Hungry humans get nourished and revitalized.
Level 6: Presentation layer. Do you use a plate? Forks? Napkins?
Level 5: Session layer. Was level 4 prompt? Do you tip two dollars or three?
Level 4: Transport layer. Some poor shmoe has to find your cul-de-sac.
Level 3: Network layer. You call your Pizza service provider on the phone and have a synchronous negotiation regarding aspects of levels 2 and 4.
Level 2: Sauce and toppings, as specified in Level 3.
Level 1: Physical crust layer. The bread on which the entire pizza is
constructed.

I make my own pizza from scratch ever since the time 10 years ago that a local pizza place managed to alienate me enough to lose my temper through their poor customer service. They changed ownership but I never went back. I learned to bake for myself instead!

Layer 1 Physical Crust Layer

1/3 cup olive oil
1 tsp salt
1-1/4 cup water
3 cups flour
1/2 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese
1/4 tsp oregano
2 tsp active dry yeast

Layer 2 Sauce and toppings

Pizza sauce (I use the jar type; I'm not strong on sauces so make your own...)
Fancy blended shredded cheese (any pizza combo or make your own combo)
Pepperoni
Peppers
Feta cheese

Layer 1 Construction

Mix oil, salt, half of the water (1 cup worth), cheese, and flour. Stir until combined, cover and let stand for 20 minutes. Continue mixing until the dough ball forms and is tacky (not too dry or wet.) Add water if dry. Mix in yeast. Once you have a good dough ball, cover the mixing bowl and let stand for 45 minutes to rise.

Bread machine instructions: Put machine in dough cycle and add all ingredients. If you're using a machine, you probably know enough to check the dough wetness as the machine runs.

Remove dough onto a flat surface (I like parchment paper). If you want to make small rounds, divide the dough ball now. Brush the dough ball(s) with olive oil, cover with towel and let rise 45 minutes. Preheat oven to 450 degrees while the dough is rising.

Layer 2 construction should be easy enough to figure out. Layers 3 through 7 will be very site-specific--I can't help you there.

Yields 1 round or two smaller rounds.

Yucks Digest V4 #11 (shorts)

Windows 2008 Conundrum: Changing a motherboard or storage controller out from under Vista and Windows Server 2008

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 02:06:57 GMT

I've owned a personal SBS box for about five years. I started in 2002 with an eval copy of SBS 2000 on an old, old Pentium II 300 MHz, Intel 440BX. I got an old copy of SBS 4.5 (!!!), which we once used at SATV until 2001. That was very brief; I moved to SBS 2003 shortly thereafter in 2004 or so.

During that time I've had to change hardware out from under SBS many, many times. My box is a quasi-test machine so I have looser standards for software trials than in a real production systems, essentially "run a backup and then run SETUP.EXE and see what happens." Mostly nothing happens. Other times...

The big issue for Windows in general and servers in particular: Storage controller drivers. Nothing brings you to tears faster than to see "0x0000007B INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE" on your very-necessary SBS box after moving it to a new controller.

The usual resolution involves a repair install where you can insert the Windows media, hit F6 and provide the storage drivers you need. This is usually the only driver you really need to provide; after that point, it's a matter of installing drivers in Windows as usual. Vista and Windows Server 2008 let you provide drivers via a USB stick or other removable media. This is excellent.

Unfortunately, the boot technology is changed from XP/2003. There is no longer a repair install option. The bootloader can scan the disk and detect Windows partitions, fixing the MBR if it's inconsistent, but it does not give an option to load a new driver.

I realize that Windows has never, ever had this option in a normal boot, but then again in "old" Windows (pre-NT), one could always open the hard disk with a boot floppy. There was only one kind of IDE driver! (But, sadly, a million kinds of CDROM drivers...)

NT and NTFS happened (a good thing, mind!) and you couldn't use your boot floppy for much of anything besides installing drivers though the option exists in Vista to this day.

Tim Anderson has a few ideas in his blog, "Changing the motherboard or storage controller underneath Windows XP and Vista", that involve booting into a recovery CD like BartPE or WinPE and manually loading the correct driver, and the correct registry entries.

This is a little scary to do by hand, but it's necessary. Many times, one needs to recover a system that hasn't been backed up, but which is completely intact except that its storage drivers don't match the ones on the motherboard. This is the situation I have most often faced as an SBS administrator.

I would boot the Windows install media, insert a floppy with the drivers and then do a repair install from the Windows media, and then run Windows Update to roll the updates forward to bring the machine back to normal and be done. Works fine even on a server and even on the uber-complex SBS.

Now, with Vista and 2008, what do I do?

I've been fortunate not to have disk controller problems in Vista, but SBS 2008 is not far away and I still have no procedure for recovering from a changed disk controller.

What do I do?

I'm thinking this will involve WinPE. More later.

Vantec NexStar 3 enclosures don't like some Intel boards

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 01:40:12 GMT

I'm all-AMD at my personal office, but we are a Dell shop at SATV, so this item from Philip got my attention.

I was in the market for enclosures recently and I settled on the Vantec NexStar 3. It is a dual-interface 3.5"-disk enclosure with USB and eSATA. Both my machines have eSATA ports so this was a good choice.

Philip had the worst thing happen (other than smoke) when connecting a new device to his server--lockup! He has a ticket open with Vantec. A point he made is that the newest revision of the Vantec is the one with problems.

I've had no trouble with my Vantec, but unfortunately, it's also the new revision. I'd love to test it at SATV but my external drives are all tied up with backups.

Source: MPECS Inc. Blog: New Vantec NexStar 3 version does not like S3000AH Intel Boards

Photo Album: Computer Photos

Tue, 27 Jun 2006 01:56:49 GMT

Computer Photos

Normal Caps

Bad Caps

Photo Album: Screenshots

Tue, 13 Jun 2006 13:51:01 GMT

Screenshots

powershellide

Custom List: Blogroll

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 03:13:33 GMT