stuart test blog

Thanks Eileen, for the nice summary of essential Exchange 2007 reading. I’ve got a bit to catch up on!

TechNet Articles

• Getting Started with Exchange Server 2007: Server Roles
• New Performance and Scalability Functionality

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Live Webcasts

• High Availability and Clustering in Exchange Server 2007 
• How Microsoft IT Designs Its 64-bit Exchange Server 2007 Infrastructure 
• Introduction to the New Exchange Server 2007 Administrator Interface 
• Exchange Server 2007 Transport and Routing Architecture 
• Introduction to Windows PowerShell Scripting in Exchange Server 2007 
• Giving Administrators More Control in Exchange Server 2007 
• Improvements to Calendaring in Exchange 2007 

Virtual Labs

• Introduction to Microsoft Exchange Server 2007

Web Resources

• Exchange Server 2007 Preview Site
• All Exchange Server Webcasts
• Exchange Server 2007 TechCenter

Source: Eileen Brown’s WebLog : Exchange server 2007: loads more resources

I’ve just installed some new updates on the server to enhance the performance.

Let me know if there are any issues.

Looks like Yahoo! have once angered the Flickr users by using photos on one of their new websites which violates the license agreements of those photos. Yahoo!’s new wii.yahoo.com site shows the latest Flickr photos tagged with “Wii” on the home page. This led to an angry discussion in the forums about how Yahoo! are stealing photos against their own terms and conditions. The result of the discussion was that a number of users tagged all their photos with “Wii” and some other posted photos like the “Yahoo is Poo!” image below, and this image of an angry user showing the bird: http://www.flickr.com/photos/51035785985@N01/368161449

Originally uploaded by ellectric.

I’ve removed the Snap Previews from the site as I had complaints that they were slow, annoying, and added no real value. I still think the Snap search site is pretty nifty, but the previews won’t be making a return.

Paull Thurrott looks at the ridiculous number of Windows Vista versions and how confusing they all are for end users.

When I first revealed that Microsoft would sell Windows Vista in an unprecedented number of product versions way back in September 2005, I questioned the reasoning behind this decision. Consumers, I felt, would be confused by the myriad of options available to them, and the diversification of the Windows product line would cause support headaches.

Clearly, I suffer from a lack of imagination because it’s way worse than I ever thought it could be now that Vista is widely available. Simply counting the number of Vista versions Microsoft is currently selling is an effort in futility. Sure, there’s Windows Vista Starter, Vista Home Basic, Vista Home Premium, Vista Business, Vista Enterprise, and Vista Ultimate. But there are also the so-called N versions of Vista Home Premium and Vista Business in the EU (where, I believe, “N” stands for “no one is interested”). There are separate Upgrade and Full versions of Vista Home Basic, Home Premium (and Home Premium N), Business (and Business N), and Ultimate. And though Vista Ultimate includes both 32-bit and 64-bit media in the retail box, Vista Home Basic, Home Premium, and Business all ship in separate 32-bit and 64-bit versions as well. Are there separate 32-bit and 64-bit Upgrade and Full versions of these products? You know, I’m not sure.

Flickr have just notified all users that they must merge their “old skool” Flickr accounts with a Yahoo! ID by the 15th of March or else they won’t be able to log in. Lots of Flickr users (including me) are not happy with this and the blogosphere is making this known (also the mainstream news sites like BBC.) Yahoo! are also forcing a couple of other limits on their pro accounts which weren’t there previously: you are now only allowed 3000 contacts, and a maximum of 75 tags per photo. This doesn’t affect me at all, but long time, hardcore Flickr users are affected and these super-Flickr-fans are now slating the company and encouraging users to leave.

My take on the login system is that it’s much easier to associate a seperate login for each website I visit. That way I can manage password resets, email notifications, display names, etc, all seperately. That’s why I never liked Microsoft’s Passport system, and this is also why I don’t want to switch over to a Yahoo! ID. I already have a Yahoo! ID that I set up to check out their new webmail system but I never use it and don’t care about it – i.e. it is disposable. The other problem with getting a new Yahoo! ID for those that don’t already have one, is that it’s nearly impossible to get one that even closely resembles what you really want. The reason for this is that Yahoo! has a huge user base, and all of the good names are taken – so you’ll end up seeing users having to get a Yahoo! ID that looks like this: john.smith.74588394

So what to do next… Well I guess I’ll end up merging my Flickr account into my Yahoo! ID if I have absolutely no choice, but at the same time I will lose all loyalty I have towards Flickr and will start looking else where. The closest thing to Flickr at the moment is Zooomr, and thanks to a bloggers promotion I have a pro account set up there too. Unfortunately Zooomr has an even more complicated login process than Flickr – they force you into signing up for an OpenID, which is reminiscent of Microsoft’s failed Passport system. You can also, somehow, log in using your Google ID which is no better as I have to get a password emailed to me everytime I log in. So it would seem hypocritical to switch to Zooomr because of Yahoo!’s login system, when Zooomr’s is just as bad (if not worse!)

There’s been a bit of discussion recently about the merits of Vista’s UAC; Jim Allchin wrote a long blog post detailing how they tried to balance the security with usability. My personal opinion is that UAC is too strict and becomes too annoying with too many prompts for seemingly innocent tasks. Installing iTunes, for example, causes 3 or 4 UAC prompts to appear during the installation. Also, editing/deleting files which your user account does not have explicit rights to, causes UAC prompts to appear too.

In my opinion, Microsoft have not got the balance right just yet – the security outweighs the usability.

I know a lot of people that are turning off UAC as soon as they can, and are also recommending to others to turn it off too. This of course is the worse scenario as I do believe that UAC is a good thing, but if it’s too hard to work with people will just switch it off and lose out on the protection that it offers.

To prove my point that this is going to be a big problem as Vista gets released to the general public, Lifehacker have just posted a very helpful article on how to completely disable UAC and the related security warnings that pop up after it has been turned off. This obviously leaves your system in a much less-secure state. Not much progress!

Is this the height of laziness? If you can’t be bothered taking your dog for a walk, you can get them their own treadmill!

[Via: Gizmodo]

I’m not sure if it’s too early to call this a “movement” but Ethan Kaplan from blackrimglasses wants everyone to unsubscribe from RSS feeds that don’t provide the full posts. I’ve been meaning to do this for a while now anyway, so I’m unsubscribing from the following feeds:
All About Microsoft
Ars Technica
BetaNews.com
Digital Photography Review
Web Worker Daily
ZDNet News
Cnet News

Mark Cuban recently posted on his blog about how he thinks that BitTorrent is facing some challenges, and the (slightly-biased) Torrent Freak blog picked up on some of his points and argues against them. I actually agree with some of Mark’s comments but I think that they have been taken out of context slightly.

* Conflicting Clients – I think he means that in the future, media companies may ask users to download a custom client in order to download their movie files. For example, you may have a Sony movie downloader, and a Fox movie client, and a Paramount downloader too. All these different clients would try to use the bittorrent protocol which could cause conflicts on computers.

* End Users dont understand how P2P works – I don’t know for sure, but I’d say that the majority of bittorrent traffic on the internet today is from users that DO know what they are doing and are using it to download illegal content. These users often belong to bittorent-site communities that have rules about leechers. The maxim is usually that you allow other community members to download as much from you, as you have from them – this keeps the community going. In a commercial world, why would you donate your bandwidth and traffic to other users that are downloading from commercial sites? This only helps the corporations save on bandwidth costs. If I’m paying $10 to download a 2GB movie, and I have a 10GB or 20GB traffic limit each month, I don’t want anyone else uploading content from me – especially if it’s going to cost me extra money.

I think that once end-users understand that they are only helping corporations save money on costs, they would be less inclined to give up their precious bandwidth.