The Professional Developers Conference is Microsoft's largest shindig for developer's in the world. I've attended this twice in my life and... well... it's really something else. Everyone there is a seriously hardcore developer of some sort - as in, this is their livelyhood.
Occasionally, you'll see execs or marketing folks from companies trying to court Microsoft or trying to sell to the developers there, and of course you'll also see recruiters galore hunting down good talent, but by far and large, most everyone's a Visual Studio trained developer.
Usually over 10,000 developers show up for the week to hear over 160 different presentations and sessions on developing for Microsoft's platform. And it's not cheap - it's basically the same cost to register as TechEd so if you don't speak C# or Visual Basic or at least Java, this probably isn't for you.
The registration site just went live at http://www.microsoftpdc.com/. Why do you care? Well, for one you can get $200 off by registering early... and Ray Ozzie is going to be keynoting the event. Additionally, they've provided a number of interesting resources for people considering going, including:
In case you're on the MAP tool beta before for the version 3.0, you should already have received a notification to join the Private Beta for MAP 3.1 slated to release in June 2008. This MAP 3.1 beta will include the much anticipated Hyper-V modeling and assessment for server virtualization.
Due to massive demand, we are soon going to reach the capacity limit of this Private Beta.
If you have not joined yet, please follow the 5-step process here to apply.
<stolen from the Visio blog> For anyone who wasn't able to attend the Visio Conference 2008 this February or has been itching to show everyone else the cool things coming in Visio "vNext", the wait is over! Videos from all the conference sessions are posted on http://www.visiotoolbox.com. Click on the conference link in the bottom-right corner of the page - or follow the links below.
Each session consists of the PowerPoint slide deck, speaker audio and video of the demos. Use the links below to jump to the sessions for each track:
Troubleshooting You should be able to click on a link and then click on Play. The videos take a varying amount of time to load - a few minutes in some cases. If you find that the UI frame around the slides / video is missing, try refreshing the web page. This will reload the controls but the session will resume playing where you left off.
The 14 recorded presentations are based on training modules from a three-day, in-person training course ‘Implementing and Deploying an Enterprise Search solution’.
The presentations provide details about key Enterprise Search capabilities in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.
<stolen from the SC team blog> Today we release Configuration Manager 2007 SP1! It is amazing to see that this was not a release based in bug fix, quite the opposite, there are hardly any hotfixes included in this release.
This is a reflection of changes such as the ship of Windows Server 2008 and Vista SP1. With some engineering cycles aligning, we have added some additional features that were ready to go at this time, details are as follows:
As a recap SP1 specifically contains:
Complete support for management of Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008.
Support for Configuration Manager 2007 Server Site roles on Server 2008.
Integration with Intel VPro technologies.
Asset Intelligence 1.5
You can find additional details, and information for download on our product homepages, located here.
The Exchange Product team has put together the following flowcharts that show the likely processes and decision making flow that might be involved in certain disaster recovery situations based on a CCR Exchange 2007 design.
These decision matrices do not provide the definitive answer and there are often numerous possible recovery paths in any given Disaster Recovery scenario. They do, however, highlight the decisions that are likely to be made and the importance of understanding what the processes an administrator might have to follow to recover service and data to their user community.
The flowcharts are available as a download for you to print in full resolution. To get the ZIP file with XPS and PDF version of those charts, please visit the link here.
Some of you may recall that the copy of “Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition” (both 32-bit & 64-bit DVDs) that was handed out to attendees at the “Heroes Happen Here” launch event over the past few months has a special DVD label on it that reads:
Windows Server 2008 Enterprise PROMOTIONAL EDITION One Year Evaluation License Microsoft Not For Resale
Well, it turns out that “PROMOTIONAL EDITION One Year Evaluation License” actually means something special:
Apparently, while everyone in attendance assumed that the software was a 365-day time-bombed product that was limited by some technical element, it’s not. There is no technically implemented time limit on the software.
Translation: It’s a full NFR copy of Windows Server 2008, however the “legal license” to use the software is 365 days and is not unlimited like previous NFRs. Hence the term “Promotional Edition”.
So take heart in knowing that there isn't any reason to worry that the software's just going to up and "quit" on you in the future. It's the same software on the disc as if you'd picked up a retail copy.
Have you ever wanted to execute a SysInternals tool over the web without first downloading them from the web site? This can be particularly useful if you're running scripts and you can't guarantee that a tool will be available on the machine the script is running on, but you know it'll have Internet access.
We’re excited to announce the beta of Sysinternals Live, a service that enables you to execute Sysinternals tools directly from the Web without hunting for and manually downloading them. Simply enter a tool’s Sysinternals Live path into Windows Explorer or a command prompt as \\live.sysinternals.com\tools\<toolname> or view the entire Sysinternals Live tools directory in a browser at http://live.sysinternals.com.
For example, a common thing you may want to do is to flush the write cache on all drives on a system to ensure that if you disconnect one of them, like a USB drive, that it won't lose any unwritten data and leave the drive in a corrupt state.
"This major ZoomIt update adds the drawing color pink, adds screen blanking to the undo history, extends the maximum pen size from 9 to 19 pixels, has an option to hide the tray icon and makes it easy to save zoomed and annotated screens as bitmap files."
ZoomIt maps very well to the extra buttons on the Wireless Presenter Mouse 6000 by the way.
If you attended the “Heroes Happen Here” launch event for Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, and SQL Server 2008, (and you stayed to retrieve your handout bag) you received a special DVD book/binder containing:
Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition (both 32-bit & 64-bit edition discs)
Visual Studio 2008 Standard Edition
SQL Server 2008 Developer Edition Community Technology Preview 5.0 (November 2007)
What was also included in the front of the book, along with the licensing terms document was a voucher with a unique PIN on it for a complimentary copy of SQL Server 2008 Standard Edition when it releases.
This valuable voucher expires EOD on June 2nd, 2008. (As in this coming Monday.)
ACTION:Take the PIN printed on this voucher and go to http://www.sqlserverheroes.com to register it ASAP. That voucher is useless after June 2nd!
The product will be PHYSICALLY shipped to you at the address you register with. There is a frequently asked questions list available at: http://www.sqlserverheroes.com/faq.aspx
The net-net of the article is that both security software such as rootkit detection products and ESPECIALLY antivirus software really don't protect users against rootkit installations.
ANTIVIRUS IS NOT ENOUGH No antivirus program tested was able to detect all the rootkit vectors they were tested against, meaning that the world for the most part is vulnerable to some sort of rootkit, being that most people only have antivirus software installed on their machines as opposed to specialized anti-rootkit tools.
VISTA UAC SAVES THE DAY Windows Vista User Account Control however was able to detect & block every rootkit installation attempt. This provides users with at least a fighting chance to defend themselves from rootkit installations.
I've seen this a lot recently, implemented by folks that I would otherwise respect: IT Departments setting users up with fingerprint-based Windows domain authentication.
This is a bad idea.
Recently, the topic came up again and was discussed internally amongst some of the techs here at Microsoft.
FINGERPRINTS ARE WEAK KEYS Although many vendors attempt to refute this, fingerprints are generally weak keys used to protect stronger keys - the Kerberos token used by Active Directory.
The number of data points that are collected by fingerprint scanning devices represent a keyspace that is smaller with lower entropy than Microsoft's own "strong password" restrictions. In other words, in using a fingerprint for identification, you'd have a solution more vulnerable to brute force attacks than a typewritten password. It should be noted that brute force doesn't necessarily imply "random password attempts" against the Active Directory: Solutions like hash lookups on pre-cached tables stored on dual layer DVDs are known to rapidly accelerate attacks.
COPYING YOUR IDENTITY - STEALING YOUR FINGERPRINT A coworker also pointed out that it's relatively trivial to capture someone's fingerprint then submit the capture to a fingerprint device as your own login. The whole "CSI-picks-up-the-person's-fingerprints-from-a-glass-of-water" trick very much works via the fairly well-publicized rubber cement technique:
There aren't really any known economical ways of preventing this as well. While vendors have moved to a "swipe-and-scan" type of reader in most systems, this is ultimately equally vulnerable as well.
FINGERPRINTS: CONVENIENT FOR CONSUMERS, INSECURE FOR ENTERPRISES There's still very much a reason to look at fingerprint identification. Securing things like your online mail account or the password to your blog might be good reasons to have fingerprint authentication for convenience to the consumer.
For Enterprise customers however, there are so many other more secure solutions with relatively equal costs associated with them yet with much more flexible administration. Here's something to think about:
Microsoft sells fingerprint identification hardware solutions, and yet...
Microsoft uses smartcard authentication for every employee.
And by the way, what happens when someone's been compromised? ...how does the Domain Administrator revoke your finger?
Last month, one of my great dreams as a geek at Microsoft were fulfilled. Today, a piece of technology that I've been yearning for for over 12 years finally became available to me. Today, I got to experience something that has been on my hot list for a very long time.
Today... my Exchange Mailbox is "Unified Communications" enabled.
Hyperlinked Dialing Anytime a phone number is prefaced anywhere on my computer (within a Word document, in a Outlook email, in a Web page in Internet Explorer) with the prefix of "TEL:", I can with a single click dial the phone number. My computer will automatically leverage Office Communicator and initiate a regular phone call through the speakers/microphone of my computer. For example:
tel:3105551212
Roaming VOIP Phone Any person calling my office number not only rings the phone in my office but also rings my computer's "soft phone" if I'm connected to the Internet. This means that I can "pick up the call" on my computer and talk to the caller through the speakers/microphone on my computer, and if the call originates on Microsoft's VOIP network, it's received in full 64kbps high fidelity, i.e. CD quality audio.
So I can be in Hawaii and if people call my office phone, I can pick up the call in the middle of a Starbucks using a Bluetooth headset... or just the speakers and microphone on my laptop if I'm in the privacy of my hotel room.
Converged Inbox & Voicemail Anytime a voicemail is left, it automatically appears in my Outlook 2007 inbox and appears as more than just an "attachment" which is the way most unified communication's voicemail appear.
Outlook examines the voicemail object and presents the voice mail as a SPECIAL object in Outlook which allows a person to not only listen to the voicemail but also rapidly type comments and notes into the same Outlook object.
And y'know that 'visual voicemail' stuff that Apple has for the iPhone? GOT IT.
Outlook Voice Access My Email, Calendar, & Contacts are all accessible over the phone from a central 800 phone number - the same phone number, I use to access my voicemail.
When you call the phone, you can do all of the following using your voice or your keypad:
Advanced Group Policy Management v3.0 (part of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack) is now available in beta through the connect site - but not as an open beta.
It features support for 64bit, GP Pref, localization, customizable permissions and purging of history data. Through the customizable permission customers can enforce the use of AGPM. GA will be around end of Q3 CY08.
Details on new feature support:
Full x64 support Both the client and server components fully support x64 architecture and operating systems. There is a 64 & 32 bit version of both the client and server. Wow64 is not be supported. This means that a 64-bit version of AGPM must be installed on a 64-bit version of the host Operating System and a 32-bit version of AGPM must be installed on a 32-bit version of AGPM. Communication between different bitness client and server is fully supported. This means that a 64-bit AGPM client can communicate with a 32-bit AGPM server and a 32-bit AGPM client can communicate with a 64-bit AGPM server.
Windows Vista SP1 & Windows Server 2008 Significant changes have been made to the GPMC in these OSs and AGPM depends on the GPMC interfaces extensively. Therefore this version of AGPM is only installable on Windows Vista SP1 with Remote Server Administration Toolkit (RSAT) or Windows Server 2008. Windows Vista SP1 does not have the GPMC integrated into the operating system. The GPMC needs to be installed on Windows Vista SP1 through an optional tool called RSAT prior to installing either the client or server. Note: Although version 2.5 will still be available for customers who do not plan to upgrade to these operating systems, version 3.0 client or service will not communicate with the version 2.5 client or service.
Customizable permissions Version 3.0 allows the permissions deployed to a GPO to be customized. The default permissions are the same as version 2.5, however, custom permissions can be configured for each domain. The permissions configured on the “Production Delegation” tab will replace any permission already on a production GPO when it is controlled or deployed from the AGPM server. Applying the above permissions to the production GPO when taken into AGPM control will prevent changes to production GPOs from outside of AGPM as soon as a GPO is controlled.
More robust change tracking The AGPM history has been changed to track more changes made to GPOs such as when/who made a request, when/who Approved/Rejected the request, when/who made changes to AGPM delegation, etc.
Purge Historical data This version gives the AGPM administrator the ability to purge old data by specifying on the AGPM Server tab how many historical versions to retain. Purging old data deletes the data (GPO backup) from the archive so this data is no longer be accessible. The information about the historical action is, however, retained in the history and an entry is recorded in the history that data was purged. This means that if a checked in GPO from 6 months ago was purged, reports, etc. cannot be run against it but the history view still shows that a check-in was performed.
Group Policy Preferences Support This version fully supports the new Group Policy Preferences (GPP) functionality added to Windows Server 2008.
General UI improvements Changes have been made to field names and ordering to better describe the information contained in the field. Additionally the order in which the fields are displayed has been changed to make more pertinent information easier to find.
Localization Localized in 13 additional languages which will be available 3 months after English version ships. (Beta is English only)
BETA REGISTRATION If you are a customer of mine and are interested in participating, please contact me and I can help get you enrolled.
Check this out: It's a 39 Minute, 227MB Silverlight video showcasing 31 different demos of some of the latest and coolest innovations/developments from Microsoft Live Labs. (Be sure to check out the 9 Gigapixel photo zoom demo of Sea Dragon & Virtual Earch HDView. We've had this for half a decade now but it's only now possible for public consumption)
On May 20th Microsoft announced with Citrix, the immediate availability of a new branch office appliance that optimizes application delivery to remote branch offices.
This appliance accelerates applications over the Wide Area Network and pre-positions application content closer to branch office users, called the Citrix Branch Repeater this appliance will be sold by Citrix as part of the Citrix Delivery Center™ product family, an end-to-end infrastructure designed to help customers transform static datacenters into dynamic delivery centers.
Just as digital television repeaters amplify and retransmit media signals to homes in a given neighborhood, Citrix Branch Repeater sits between corporate datacenters and branch offices, amplifying and retransmitting applications to branch office users. The Citrix Branch Repeater provides an ideal complement to application virtualization solutions, enhancing application delivery and performance while simultaneously delivering critical Windows Server infrastructure services in the branch.
News in the branch office market has been dominated in recent years by WAN optimization appliances. These appliances accelerate access to applications over the WAN and minimize bandwidth utilization. This compelling value prop allows customers to centralize their server infrastructure while mitigating challenges of performance degradation and reducing their monthly WAN costs. Over the last year we have seen these appliances, often built on Linux, move up the stack and offer services such as print, DNS, DHCP, authentication, and security. WAN optimization appliances with Windows Server present a tremendous opportunity for us to protect the Windows socket in the branch office to ensure that our customers remain committed to our core infrastructure services from the datacenter to the branch. We believe this socket will be a valuable platform on which to sell additional services such as management, security and unified communications offerings to the branch customer. As customers investigate WAN optimization alternatives, it is critical that we engage them early to help them understand the value of joint solutions like the Citrix Branch Repeater.
While the current version of the Citrix Branch Repeater is built on Windows Server 2003 and ISA Server 2006, Citrix has begun development and testing of the Branch Repeater on Windows Server 2008 and will provide an update on availability of these versions of the Windows 2008 based product at a later date.
The enclosed press release and FAQs contains more detailed information. We have also scheduled an Academy Live session on June 3rd titled – Branch Office Infrastructure: Partners Competitors, and Opportunities. This session will cover this announcement as well as branch office products from our partners Cisco and Packeteer.
Hyper-V RC1 was released to web and is now available for testing. Please note the linked details related to upgrading and testing.
In addition, the most current details can be located in Taylor Brown’s blog. This is also an excellent resource as you move forward with your solutions.
One key item to note is the inability of the VMM beta to be used with RC1. If you are also testing VMM please review the details located in Rakesh Malhorta’s VM Management TechNet blog:
Windows Server 2008 x64 Hyper-V RC1 Update - KB950049 This is the Hyper-V RC1 package for Windows Server 2008 x64. This package must be installed on Hyper-V server’s (physical machines). It includes the Hyper-V Server components for Full and Core installs, the Hyper-V Integration Components for Server 2008 x64 (see note below for RC1 improvements over RC0) and the Hyper-V Management Components for Full Windows installs. Note This package is permanent. Once installed, it cannot be uninstalled. So you can’t go back to RC0 or Beta after installing RC1.
Windows Server 2008 x86 Hyper-V RC1 Update – KB950049 This is the Hyper-V RC1 package for Windows Server 2008 x86. This package includes only the Hyper-V Management Components for Full Windows installs and the Hyper-V Integration Components for Server 2008 x86 (see note below for RC1 improvements over RC0). It does not contain the Hyper-V Server components, Hyper-V is x64 only! Note This package is permanent. Once installed, it cannot be uninstalled. So you can’t go back to RC0 or Beta after installing RC1.
Saved-state files are not supported between RC0 and RC1 releases of Hyper-V. All virtual machine saved states should be discarded before upgrading to RC1, or prior to resuming virtual machines after upgrading to Hyper-V RC1.
Online snapshots contain virtual machine save-states and thus online snapshots taken with Hyper-V RC0 are not supported after updating to Hyper-V to RC1. Either apply any online snapshots and shut down the VM or discard the virtual machine save state associated with the snapshot before or after the update to Hyper-V RC1.
System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 Beta does not support Hyper-V RC1.
New Integration Components (ICs) must be installed for your supported guest operating systems. Integration Components are specific to the build of Hyper-V. RC1 Integration Components for all supported Windows Operating Systems are provided using the ‘Action’ -> ‘Insert Integration Services Setup Disk’ action.
RC1 Integration Components for all supported Windows Operating Systems are now part of the IC Setup Disk. This now includes Windows Server 2008! Simply install the Hyper-V RC1 Integration Components for Windows Server 2008 the same way you do all other Windows ICs (‘Action’ -> ‘Insert Integration Services Setup Disk’). Note You need to close the found new hardware wizard before setup will begin on all Windows Operating Systems.
Improvements Over Hyper-V RC0 In addition to bug fixes and stability improvements we also made some additional changes largely based on feedback from customers.
Integration Components For Windows Server 2008 guest’s included in Integration Services Setup Disk
New Graphics for Hyper-V Manager and Virtual Machine Connection – including a “Now” icon in the snapshot pane
IPv4 Address Migration - when creating a new Virtual Network bound to an adapter with a static IPv4 address the IPv4 settings are migrated to the new virtual adapter
ANSWER: Every web site listed is running on an externally facing implementation of Microsoft Sharepoint Technologies. Some "Windows Sharepoint Services"-based, most "Office Sharepoint Server 2007"-based.
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Advanced Group Policy Management v3.0 (part of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack) is now available in beta through the connect site - but not as an open beta. 
