Jan 31, 2007 | blog
WTF?
How many people have read the KB article (931667) over at Microsoft concerning the “Addressing the daylight saving time changes in 2007 using the Outlook Time Zone Data Update Tool“? Go read it, I’ll wait…
Ok, glad your back – now I know that it was really congress that passed this smelly turd along to everyone – thanks bastards – but it seems to me that Microsoft really dropped the ball on this. I mean, in the original design phase of Exchange and Outlook, they could have asked the question “what if the DST parameters change” and followed the conversation, just to see what ideas come up. Maybe there would have been a better design, maybe not. Maybe the way Exchange stores this information is the same way every calendaring system stores it. That’s a scary thought – that nobody ever thought of handling this kind of change on the fly!
Not only do you need to patch the systems so that the new range of DST for 2007 is properly set up in the system, but you have to run an update tool to convert all the appointment data in the data stores to the proper time for the meeting. That means that you have to run the tool on anything that stores its own calendar information.
So a stand-alone user needs to run the tool, and enterprises need to run the tool on their Exchange servers. This is all well and good, and hopefully will be a one-time deal, but what about all those archived PST files? What if someone pulls some archived recurring meeting and resends it to people? If you read the KB, there is a usage scenario that actually points out that it will not contain the correct meeting times.
There are more. If your mobile device (or other types) are not updated with the proper DST 2007 information, you could create an appointment or meeting (Task?) with a time setting that would not trigger a reminder at the time you expected it to – it would be an hour late.
Maybe I’m making too much out of this, but all I see for our help desk at work is a flood of calls that could have been prevented by MS long ago. Tell me I’m wrong!
Link to: Addressing the daylight saving time changes in 2007 using the Outlook Time Zone Data Update Tool
Oct 25, 2006 | blog
Alright, I’ve had enough whining from Dave Winer’s blog. Obviously all he wants to rant about during the election cycle is his slant of politics – which of course, while different than my viewpoint, is full of old-media bits and bites. He has made some good points over the last few weeks, but he’s still swallowing all the leftist-media bullshit and regurgitating it on his blog.
We all have that wonderful freedom here in America to talk about what we want to, I’m simply exercising my freedom to look elsewhere for information. I respect Dave Winer for many of the great things he has brought forward in technology that improves all of our online lives, but for now I’m unsubscribing from his blog Scripting News. Maybe in December or January I’ll check back to see if he has his politico hat off.
Oct 6, 2006 | blog
This post is directed to the Windows Live Writer team! I really enjoy the WLW tool for blogging, in fact I’ve been using the latest build since it was released a week or so ago and have not blogged about it.
I could rave about all the features, but I’ll simply say that the tagging, category improvements, performance, PNG support and the WLW Gallery at Windows Live are great improvements to WLW. Keep up the good work!
Now my one negative comment. Pre-set post date info does not work with WordPress. If I want to set the date a post appears on my blog, sometime in the future, the blog mysteriously travels back in time to December 31st, 1969! Is there a chance that this could be fixed? I’ve seen the same behavior in Word 2007 B2.
Fixing this one feature would make this already fantastic tool, indispensable.
Link to: Writer Zone
Oct 4, 2006 | blog
Will wonders never cease – another idiot analyst on the Street finally thinks that MS will ship Vista on schedule.
This isn’t news – this is obvious.
Link to Microsoft Likely to Ship Vista On Time: Analyst
Oct 3, 2006 | blog
Well, this is one piece of Windows Vista that I had not heard much on. It seems that corporations planning on deploying Vista will require a mechanism to validate or “Authenticate” their Vista installs similar to how retail versions of XP need to be authenticated.
For those who’ve yet to hear about it, Volume Activation is a new digital-license activation technology aimed at businesses. It’s part of the larger “Software Protection Platform” that Microsoft is constructing to combat piracy. In short, Microsoft is not going to allow enterprises to operate on an honor system, when it comes to proving how many copies of Windows they’ve paid to license. Just like it does with individual Windows users, Microsoft is going to start requiring companies to authenticate their new versions of Windows within 30 days of installing.
This will cause more deployment headaches and costs than previous Windows desktop operating systems. It also drives home the concept of centralization again. Instead of all those PCs, move 90% or greater back to the Data Center using Terminal Services/Citrix, and some Virtualization for really unique installs.
Yeah, we can’t get away from Microsoft extracting their full licensing costs, but we can reduce the amount of time and money we spend managing the desktop. Put a dumb terminal on the desktop and move the OS & App’s to the Data Center.
Source: Neowin.net – Volume Activation 2.0: Another Potential Vista Gotcha?
