From the monthly archives:

February 2008

TIP: How to access SQL Server Developer edition over a network

February 25, 2008Main

This one has caught out people for ages, so I thought I'd clarify that it IS possible to connect to SQL Server 2005 Developer edition over a network.

The problem is that the Express and Developer versions of SQL Server 2005 turn OFF remote access by default (Standard and Enterprise have it ON by default). That's [...]

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LINK: List of programs that break with Vista SP1

February 25, 2008Microsoft

NOTE: I meant to get this out last week but you may have noticed my link blog was down for the best part of a week

Microsoft has released a list of programs that are affected by Vista SP1. Not much to worry about, as most have newer versions available that support SP1.
Zone Alarm [...]

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SBTUG: This Wed 27 Feb – Mike Culver, Steve Riley – Amazon Web Services, Security

February 24, 2008Main

Another monster meeting at SBTUG this month.

Presentations

Our first presentation has Mike Culver (Amazon Evangelist) talking about Amazon Web Services. Come along and learn how more than a quarter of a million developers are taking advantage of building applications on the back of Amazon's infrastructure.

Following Mike will be Steve Riley, Senior Security Strategist with Microsoft, talking [...]

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ELCOM: More Microsoft 2008 Stack testing results

February 21, 2008Elcom

We've done a little more testing of our product on the Microsoft 2008 stack and I'm pleased (and a little worried) with the results.

The pleasing part: we are now showing results on the 2008 stack as being 16X faster than the 2003/2005 stack.

The worrying part: results of 16X faster are very high – what if [...]

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MICROSOFT: As good as open source

February 21, 2008Main

Ask most people what the best thing about Open Source is, and they'll tell you one of two things:

1. It's not Microsoft, or

2. It's free

We've all heard the Cost of Ownership arguments and know that being free to use is not necessarily free to operate, but that's not really an issue for people like, um, [...]

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TIP: Using Jungle Disk and Amazon S3 for backups

February 14, 2008Main

You've all heard of Amazon's Simple Storage Service by now. If not then check it out and sign up for own Web Services account.

Amazon S3 gives you access to scalable storage for 15c per GB per month, with a 10c per GB data transfer cost.

Assuming you just use the service to upload data for backup [...]

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Video.Show 1.0 released

February 14, 2008Microsoft

Jon Galloway gives us the low down on this really cool application. It uses Silverlight Streaming, AJAX Toolkit and .NET 3.5 and other goodness, and describes itself as delivering YouTube-in-a-box.
(Note, you'll need Expression Encoder installed)
Technorati Tags: Video.Show, Silverlight, Expression, .NET 3.5

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Being the dumbest person in the room

February 14, 2008Personal

I really liked John Galloway's post on The Man who Knew Too Much, in which he outlines the wrong assumptions and actions we can sometimes make/take when surrounded by smart people, being too busy, etc.
However, the item that caught my attention was his link to the strategy of aspiring to be the dumbest person in [...]

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Appalling customer service – Woodstone

February 13, 2008General Tech

Here's an email our Sys Admin received in reply to a query to a vendor whose product wasn't working on our servers…

It made our decision to select a new vendor pretty easy.
Technorati Tags: Customer service

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VS2008 Hot fix available

February 13, 2008General Tech

Scott Guthrie has noted the hot fix fixes…
Note, it is a huge download – coming in at a whopping 2.6 MB
See, it's not that hard to get fixes out.
I said yesterday that I was impressed with how intent on producing high quality software Microsoft has been of late. This is yet another example. [...]

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Australia said sorry today

February 13, 2008Personal

We finally said sorry today. I agree that we removed a "stain from the soul of Australia".
An apology is a liberating event. Forgiveness is the healer.
Never underestimate the power of words.
Technorati Tags: Australia says sorry

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On reducing spam

February 13, 2008Technology

Alan Lee gives an overview of how we reduced our spam email count here at Elcom. Interestingly, Alan found that 95% of all our email was spam – a figure that matched with reports I mentioned earlier in the year.
The numbers: In the first week of implementing the changes we blocked 206,563 emails out of [...]

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More Happiness Strategies for Valentine’s Day – this time for couples

February 13, 2008Personal

Happiness Strategies continues the good oil for Valentine's day – this time reminding people in a relationship about focusing on the good list – not the so called widow's list.
Technorati Tags: Happiness Strategies, Valentine's Day

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100 Tips to Defeat Content Thieves

February 13, 2008General Tech

The always excellent, helpful and well researched Virtual Hosting Blog has another ripper with this post on Tips to Defeat Content Thieves.
Technorati Tags: Content, Protection

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Google advertising continues to boggle my mind

February 12, 2008General Tech

Even though their ad share slipped ever so slightly in quarter 4 last year, they still pulled in over $25B.
I can't believe people click on so many ads. I mean, who is actually clicking on these damn things? I noted before that I don't even see the ads, but it seems many do.
I'm so [...]

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XML turns 10 – Happy Birthday

February 12, 2008Technology

XML turned 10 years old on10 Feb.
I remember working on a project back in the very late 90s (can't be sure when but it was using SQL 7.0) and we decided to use XML as a mechanism for storing certification results (so yes, we were using XML in SQL 7.0 – quite an achievement in [...]

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Heroes Happen at Elcom :-)

February 12, 2008Elcom

As Angus notes, we've got a nice little flash animation on the Elcom web site alerting users to our Community Manager CMS product running on the Microsoft 2008 stack. Here's the details of how we installed and tested, and the result: 500% performance increase. (You read that right – 500%)
Technorati Tags: Elcom Technology, Microsoft 2008 [...]

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Brad Marsh on SQL 2008 Database encryption

February 12, 2008Elcom

Brad Marsh, one of the techies at Elcom, discusses his experiences with SQL Server 2008 database encryption.
Technorati Tags: Brad Marsh, SQL Server 2008, Database encryption

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