Ping.fm is kinda cool

Unlimited Terminal Services with Easier licensing schema?!

It's been a while since I've watched Hak5 (episode 423), but I figured I would throw it on in the background while finishing some stuff last night. It turned out to be some pretty insightful background noise to work to.

I've had to deal with the headache that surrounds Windows Terminal Services for quite some time; enter XP Unlimited (link). Terminal Services has always been a pain in the butt to both administrate the licensing associated with all the scaling of new users as well as the technical end (well maybe the tech end isn't so bad if you know what your doing).

Well XP Unlimited allows complete unlimited Terminal Services access without requiring a Windows Server 2003 OS installed on a bulky server. (although depending on what you plan on doing over the TS desktop this might still be recommended) So you no longer have to worry about licensing complications, it will run on a cheaper OS (with unlimited and unrestricted access), and also has its own management interface that wraps everything up nicely.

http://www.xpunlimited.com/index.html

link to their white paper

windows machine is back

This thing is starting to become something of a Frankenstein that needs to be put out of its missery.  We ended up moving our wireless router to another room and my desktop has only every used its gigabit wired network connection for internet access.  (not that I've ever really put all that potential to real use)

I've been without my big screen for almost a whole two months.  (apparently samsung syncmaster 245bw's don't play nice with MacBooks)  So I've been making do with the small screen on the laptop getting online wherever I can manage.  Its been nice, but I was at Wal-Mart today and decided it was time to get my machine back online. ('Cause I mean what's the point in having it occupy 1/3 of my deskspace if I can't use it right?)

The big screen is nice, but I don't really miss Windows.  Guess at least I've got my zombie download machine back anyways....

Now if I could just get this ceiling fan to stop flickering sporadically.

Notes on genomics internet research

Some Videos:
Barry Schuler: An introduction to genomics - http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks /barry_schuler_genomics_101.html

Juan Enriquez: Decoding the future with genomic - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KdOPY1Iqiw
"A single genomics company outputs more data in a single month than is held in the US Library of Congress"

Craig Venter: A voyage of DNA, genes and the sea - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5X6Qy772YU

One thing that is really interesting about the first two videos is the analogy to computers that both Schuler and Enriquez use to explain the DNA involvement in genomics. Schuler takes it one step further to say that modifying the software also modifies the hardware. I find this concept very intriguing and confirms my interest in this field. I'm very excited that I have changed my undergrad major and plan on going into bioinformatics.

Just when I thought I was done

So I don't have to worry about the GAC for the Xceed components, but MapInfo used GAC assemblies to distribute the MapXtreme application we use to display maps inside our C#.Net app.

So here are a few more articles I've found in my quest for knowledge...
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315682

CodeProject summary of GAC concepts - http://www.codeproject.com/KB/dotnet/demystifygac.aspx?df=100&forumid=15829&exp=0&select=856234

How to get a dll from the GAC - http://bloggingabout.net/blogs/wellink/archive/2006/07/12/12947.aspx

Registering a

one of those lol moments

Turns out the easiest way to work with managed dll's is to not register and access them through GAC, but rather directly. This cuts out a huge headache of dealing with tying into the OS.

After all the research I've done, I'm kinda glad to be rid of it...

Playing with assemblies in the GAC

There's a tool in the .Net Framework SDK for messing with .Net's Global Assembly Cache called gacutil.exe. This tool allows you to get information about existing registered assemblies in the cache, register new assemblies, etc...
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ex0ss12c(VS.80).aspx

.Net 3.5 SP1 framework download (for offline installation) - http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/0/e/20e90413-712f-438c-988e-fdaa79a8ac3d/dotnetfx35.exe

NSIS color coding for TextMate

Color coding for NSIS in TextMate would rock right about now...

silently installing .Net 3.5

Very good info about the installation requirements of .Net 3.5 - http://www.msfn.org/board/NET-Framework-35-Silent-Installer-t108344.html

reasons why the .Net 3.5 framework installer might want to still go out to the web - http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/archive/2008/07/17/8745415.aspx

.Net 3.5 offline installer - http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/0/f/60fc5854-3cb8-4892-b6db-bd4f42510f28/dotnetfx35.exe

According to this forum listing you should be able to run a local copy of the offline .Net 3.5 framework installation from the command line with the /q for a silent installation. In testing this it looks like its good to go. I've been working with this line in my .Net installer component for past NSIS installations (with older .Net runtime installations):
ExecWait '$TEMP\dotnetfx.exe /q /c:"install /q"'

so on the regular command line this would look more like:
>dotnetfx35.exe /q /c:/"install /q"

With the older .net installation it was easy just to store it inside of the setup.exe I was compiling, extract it to the temp dir, and run it from there. We've been using .net 2.0 with this approach, when the .net installation was a mere 20mb. Now the offline .Net 3.5 sp1 release is closer to 200mb. So storing the .net installation in the setup.exe only adds time to the installation and wastes considerably more hard drive space on the target deployment machine for installation purposes only (once installed, the .net installation doesn't need to remain on the machine).

So I'll be revising a couple of lines in my custom NSIS .Net install module.

GAC: Global Assembly Cache

Using NSIS, I'm writing an installer for a .Net based application along with third party software that the application depends on. We're going to registering some managed .Net .dll's into the GAC (or the Global Assembly Cache).

Since I've never done this before I did a little bit of research. Suffice it to say Wikipedia was a more helpful resource than Microsoft's Knowledge base in getting started.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Assembly_Cache

Let the fun begin!

vista accessing remote shares

I worked on a Vista machine today that was not able to access remote shares, and so couldn't map network drives, etc. It was able to get online, rdp to the server, and perform other network based tasks.

When trying to map the drive out over the command line, an error 67 would return. When trying to access the share from Windows Explorer, I would get an unspecified error number. (probably would have been nicer to receive an error that a service responsible for this functionality was not accessible.

What ended up being the problem was that the Computer Browser Windows service was not able to start because it depends on the Workstation Windows service that for some reason had been disabled.

setting up email on the iPhone

This is definitely something that was easier to do on the blackberry. Maybe its partly my servers using non-standard ports, but all my blackberry needed was my email address and password and it set itself up completely for all of my email accounts.

Apple needs to work on this if they want to keep serious email people happy.