Foul on Microsoft: Improper verbification

From the ZDNet blog, with my own emphasis:

“We’ve been gradually realizing customers who consumer more proactive services are happier and healthier and require less reactive services with their charge models.”

I hope this is a typo, but knowing the propensity for Microsoft-speak, I would not be surprised if the marketing term has made this noun into a verb.

One of the synonyms of consumer is customer. If you make that subsitution, the phrase becomes “…customers who customer more proactive services…”

Remote administration of COM+ through a firewall

Goal: Administer COM+ applications on remote computers.

Problem: Windows firewall on the remote computer blocks the connection.

Solution: Set up the firewall to accept dynamic RPC ports.

The most relevant article to this topic is available here.

I searched Google for an hour, and could not find anywhere that somebody had documented how to set up a firewall to allow remote administration of COM+ Applications. The Component Services snap-in lets you add another computer. If that computer has the basic Windows Firewall active, you will not be able to connect to or see anything on the other computer. This is indicated by a nice red arrow on the icon for the remote computer.

Component Services uses dynamic RPC ports to communicate with other computers. The article describes how to restrict the ports that RPC uses.

I used the rpccfg.exe tool from the resource kit. A link to download it is in the support article. This is run on the remote PC. I used it to restrict RPC to ports 5001-5100.

The next problem was how to tell the Windows Firewall to allow these ports through from the administration PC. Windows Firewall does not allow port ranges in the exceptions. Powershell to the rescue! The following Powershell script set up exceptions for each port:

PS C:\> 5001..5100 | % { `
netsh firewall add portopening `
protocol = TCP port = $_ `
name = "Remote admin RPC $_" `
scope = CUSTOM addresses = 192.168.1.111}

Windows Server “Longhorn” Beta 2 is evil

I just received the July Technet shipment. The shipment included a disc for Windows Server “Longhorn” Beta 2 (x86). The disc number is 0666. Is this a sign of what we can expect from installing the beta?

New WordPress version

I just updated the blog to WordPress version 2.0.2. It was pretty easy. The hardest part for me is having to manually tweak the permissions on new files. This blog runs on TrustiX, and it makes files rw,-,-. I’d like the default to be rw,r,r. Directories get set to rwx,-,-. I’d like the default to be rwx,r-x,r-x.
I think I need to look into how a UMASK works and set it before I install the new files.

Microsoft Windows AntiSpyware

I’ve seen more and more people using this tool. I’m not one who usually installs beta versions of products, but this one seems to be worth it.

Virtual Street Reality

Virtual Street Reality is mind-boggling. After you spend a lot of time creating this kind of artwork, regular life must just seem totally boring.

What was Kanye West thinking?

I usually avoid these kinds of topics. But there is a time and a place for everything. Kanye West’s rambling, incoherent diatribe that ended with “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” was the wrong time and place. I can’t believe that he would use this time of suffering to promote his own agenda. I’m sure somebody is going to come to his defense, but this just seems to be an indefensible action to me.

Somebody updated his Wikipedia topic within minutes after his statement.

Bad writing (intentionally)

I enjoyed reading the entries from the latest Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. This entry made me laugh so hard, I was tearing up.

After she realized the man she had fallen in love with was her long lost twin brother and they must break up immediately, they shared one last kiss that left a bitter yet sweet taste in her mouth–kind of like throwing up after eating a junior mint.

Tami Farmer
Rome, GA

What is common knowledge?

Korby Parnell recently wrote about an interesting spam message he received. I was surprised to read Korby’s question, “Why would a spammer cram all these strange words into an email body?”

At first, I thought to myself, “How could he not know that?” As a computer professional in software development, I thought, certainly one should be up-to-date on the latest spammer techniques. Even more so for somebody who works for a prominent company.

The more I thought about it, I realized that it is silly to assume that somebody else should know everything you know. That’s what two-year-olds think. By the age of three, most of us figure out that we can know things that others don’t, and thus begins the age of secrets. Yet, I think we all fall into this trap.

I know that our customer support team deals with this quite often. A customer will call because they are having a problem. After a while, the suport rep will realize that the customer is making an incorrect assumption about how the system works. After the support rep explains that the system doesn’t do whatever the customer thought it did, the typical response is, “I can’t believe nobody else has reported this is a problem.” I know that we like to phrase the response as, “Well, we have over 300 companies using the software, and you really are the first one to ask for this.”

Several years ago, I watched a fascinating Scientific American Frontiers episode called “It’s a Kid’s World“. I learned from this episode that young children don’t realize that their thoughts are private. They seem to operate on the principle that thoughts are public knowledge. Perhaps a little bit of that carries over into our adult lives?

If you want to explore the episode, the part about public vs. private thougts is in the last segment, “Changing Minds.” Be patient with the video. I don’t think the PBS servers are state-of-the-art.

Joke: Musically Drinking

This one’s for my wife to appreciate. Found in the rec.music.makers.trumpet newsgroup…

So, these three notes walk into a bar – a G, an Eb,
and a C. The bartender looks up and says, “We don’t
serve minors.” The Eb leaves, and the other two have a
fifth between them. After a few drinks, the G was out
flat, and the experience was diminished. Eventually,
the C sobers up, sees one of his friends missing, the
other one passed out, and realizes to his horror that
he’s under a rest. C was brought to trial, found
guilty and convicted of contributing to the diminution
of a minor and was sentenced to ten years of DS
without Coda at the Paul Williams/Neil Sedaka
Correctional Facility. While in the Correctional
Facility C started to play experimental jazz and
became a free note just in time before a group of
other notes were caught trying to break out in an
ascending scale over the wails.

Postlude: I wanted to assure you that I am sending the
above to you exactly the way I received it, without
any variations. I did reply to the sender, however, as
I was afraid someone was going to put him behind a few
bars at Sing Sing for the treble he had gotten into -
but was glad to hear it wasn’t a major offense!