Monday, December 8, 2008

Windows Server 2008 Familiarization

By: Daniel Petri
Temporarily Bypass Windows Server 2008 Activation
In Windows Server 2008 (and previous Microsoft operating systems) you must activate your computer in order to use it legally. You have 30 days after installing Windows to activate it online or by telephone. If this 30-day period expires before you complete activation, Windows will stop working. If this happens, you won't be able to create new files or save changes to existing ones. You can regain full use of your computer by activating your copy of Windows. Activation is mandatory (unless of course you have a different sort of licensing in your organization).

Last evening, while giving a demo to one of my classes, I started up a virtual machine running Windows Server 2008 RC1. The VM had been installed a few weeks ago and hasn't been used since then, but before it was shut down, I had it configured with a static IP address, default gateway, and DNS server. When the machine was last configured, it was on my office network, thus, the network settings that had been applied to it fit my office network setup.The issue was that now I needed it, and I needed it at a different location- one that had a DHCP Server on it. Because of that, booting the machine with the current network configuration caused the virtual machine to not be able to access the Internet. All this is good and well, except it happened just in time for the Windows Activation pop-up to appear!
If you chose to automatically activate Windows online when you set up your computer, automatic activation begins trying to activate your copy of Windows three days after you log on for the first time. But if you haven't done so, you're stuck with the manually activation process.
As you see, just after the logon screen appears, right after you log on, the activation screen appears:
Darn! Activation? Now? Just as I needed that machine up and running in one of my demo sessions?
Is there any way to bypass the activation screen and gain access to the system's settings? All I want to do is to change the TCP/IP settings so I can activate the server online. There must be a way!
Let's try.
Pressing the Activate Windows Online Now button doesn't help much (I knew it wouldn't, I don't have Internet connectivity right now!)
Pressing the Show me other ways to activate Windows button doesn't help much either as I already know I could use a modem or a phone to activate Windows.
Pressing the Set up an Internet connection button doesn't help much because I don't have a VPN connection, nor do I need one. I just need to change my TCP/IP settings, that's it.
Forget about safe mode, that won't help either…
I tried to open Task Manager by pressing CTRL+SHIFT+ESC, but that did not work.
Hold on! What about one of the oldest tricks in the book? Will that work?
I clicked on the What is activation help link.
Immediately I was prompted with a warning message telling me that it was possible that I fell victim to software counterfeiting. That was not the case with this installation of Windows Server 2008, as I have used my own personal and legal copy of an MSDN ISO file to install it, and I used my perfectly legal product ID.
I clicked Close.
Another window popped up, asking me If I wanted to use online resources for my help search. I clicked Yes (it doesn't really matter for this demonstration).
I read a bit about activation, and then turned to see if my idea would indeed work. I typedCMD in the help search box, and pressed Enter.
Amazingly enough, the search results were not blocked. So I clicked on one of the first results – Open a command prompt window. In the help result I clicked on the link to open a Command Prompt window, and behold:
A nice, shining and black command prompt window opened in front of my eyes. I could stop right here, using NETSH to configure my network adapter to obtain an IP address from a DHCP. But why stop when the fun has just begun?
So I pressed on, typing Notepad and pressing enter. Hmmm…
What about running Task Manager? I typed taskmgr in the command prompt window and pressed Enter. BTW, you could also open Task Manager by searching for it in the Help window.
Cool. I'll return to the Task Manager windows soon, but now I want to finish what I came here for. So I went back to the Help window and performed a search on how to configure an IP address, and clicked on the Change my TCP/IP Settings link.
Sure enough, on the results I clicked to open network connections:
Getting to the Network Connections window solved my issues, and I quickly followed the easy steps to configure the server's IP address as needed:
Going back to Task Manager I wanted to test some more things, so I clicked on File > New Task (Run), typed Explorer, and pressed Enter.
Bingo! The desktop materialized in front of me and I could start working although the activation wizard was still clearly visible.
Looking at the tray area I could see the Internet connection globe. I tried to ping an Internet FQDN, and indeed, the connection was on.
That's cool. I couldn't minimize the activation screen, but I could move it out of the way. What about closing it altogether? I tried to kill the SLUI.exe process, but that turned out to be a party stopper because my current session abruptly ended and I was logged off.
But that's fine, I have my Internet connection set up and I can easily activate my copy of Windows.
I wasn't aware you could do all this with an un-activated copy of Windows. Any Windows. I will try Vista and tell you what I came up with. In any case, please read the following disclaimer:
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to be used as a hack/crack or as a way to bypass the legal activation process required by the EULA. The only reason for this article is to help those of you that are stuck, like I was, without the ability to activate their legally owned copy of Windows because of some wrong configuration setting. This article is not a hacking guide, nor is it to be used as an encouragement to use your operating system in ways that are not covered by the EULA. You should only use legally bought copies of Windows (or of any software for that matter). What you do with this information is not my business, and I cannot be held responsible for any legal results that may occur if you so chose to follow the steps outlined here. To make myself absolutely clear – Buy a legal license, activate your copy of Windows, and always use a legally owned product ID.

Windows Server 2008 Articles

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Lifehacker Recommendation: Trim Down Windows to the Bare Essentials

DUSH has sent you a link to a post on Lifehacker:

Title: Trim Down Windows to the Bare Essentials
Link: http://lifehacker.com/374376/trim-down-windows-to-the-bare-essentials

DUSH says: Check this out

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Internet acquirers such as Google (GOOG), Yahoo! (YHOO), and News Corp. (NWS

Technology

Big Tech Buyouts

How 10 Internet startups cashed in big, and what their founders will do with the loot

By Douglas MacMillan

Silicon Valley angel investor Jeff Clavier expected August to be a slow month for acquisitions. To his surprise, two of the seven companies in his portfolio got bought within weeks of each other. Kaboodle, a site that combines shopping and social networking, sold to Hearst. Maya's Mom, an online parenting community, sold to Johnson & Johnson (JNJ). "It's a good time to be an investor because there are tons of opportunities out there that are interesting," says

Clavier, who put some of his returns toward starting a $12 million early-stage venture fund.

What's good for investors is an outright bonanza for entrepreneurs. Not only are established Internet acquirers such as Google (GOOG), Yahoo! (YHOO), and News Corp. (NWS) spending lavishly on budding properties, companies such as Hearst and Getty Images (GYI) are placing smaller, strategic bets.

But what changes when these company founders see their handiwork snapped up by the highest bidder? Sure, some of these lucky ducks will plow proceeds into the next big thing. But many opt to stick around, keeping a hand at the tiller long after the ownership changeover.

In this slide show, BusinessWeek.com highlights the founders and venture capitalists behind some of this year's biggest tech buyouts to learn how they got their seat at the negotiating table with millions on the line, and what it's like to be among Silicon Valley's nouveau riche.

Mozy

Founder: Josh Coates
Acquisition Price: $76 million
Buyer: EMC
Funding: $1.9 million from Wasatch Venture Fund, Tim Draper, and Drew Major

The Runup:
Perhaps taking a cue from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who rebuffed a $1 billion offer from Yahoo, Mozy founder Josh Coates spurned advances from a major Internet player last year (rumored to be Google), holding out for a better offer. In October, Mozy, a provider of online data security, got acquired by surprise buyer EMC for nearly 40 times the investment.

The Payoff:
"Deals aren't like winning a lottery. Deals are messy slugfests," says Coates, who studied computer engineering at the University of California at Berkeley and started enterprise online storage company Scale8 before founding American Fork (Utah)-based Berkeley Data Systems and launching Mozy, its consumer-oriented storage service, in 2005. He says nothing in his career prepared him for the deal, which involved hundreds of hours "duking it out" with attorneys, directors, and bankers. EMC plans to keep the Mozy brand intact, but will move Coates into its existing technology division.

MORE....

Good Buisness Cards - and a note to my self - FireFux is better for copy and paste!

Clever and Unique Business Cards Pt. 1

By:NikOct 16, 2008 at 4:22 PMViews:24,525Comments:0Saved: 0

Interesting!!

SEO Training for Web Design Professionals

VM WARE or WAR!

Written By: Steve Kaplan - INX

Microsoft extends most of its virtualization licensing benefits to platforms other than just its own Virtual Server. An organization, for instance, can run up to four instances of Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition on a VMware ESX Server by purchasing just one license. Microsoft’s stance in regards to virtual appliances, though, remains unclear. On one hand, the company amended its licensing agreement this year to no longer require Virtual Server in order to activate a published Microsoft Virtual Hard Drive (VHD)-formatted virtual machine. On the other hand, Microsoft anti-virus and activation mechanisms cause these virtual machines to de-activate when they are run on other virtualization platforms. As virtual appliances continue to proliferate, this confusion may negatively affect the ultimate popularity of the VHD format.

The Allure of Virtual Appliances

Virtual appliances are quietly revolutionizing the distribution of both software and specific application functionality. Hardware appliances manufactured by Cisco, Citrix, Checkpoint and many other firms have long been sold to handle isolated IT functions such as VPN, back-up and firewall. This method of application distribution has several advantages over simply distributing software applications to be installed by customers on standard X86 machines. The hardware appliance typically includes a slimmed down version of the OS tailored to optimally manage just the specific application. This utilizes the computing resources more efficiently while improving reliability, simplifying troubleshooting and enhancing security. It requires less frequent patching and eliminates problems resulting from customers using incompatible hardware or from incorrectly installing the application.

The downside to hardware appliances is that they are costly to purchase. They take up rack space and require power to both operate and to cool. Hardware appliances result in more underutilized servers and in non-standardized hardware in the datacenter. They have parts that can fail meaning that duplicate devices may be required in order to guarantee redundancy. Further redundant devices may be required at disaster recovery sites.

By repackaging a hardware appliance as a virtual appliance, manufacturers gain all the advantages of utilizing a specialized operating system in a controlled environment, but without requiring a dedicated hardware server. Deployment is simplified, costs are reduced and high availability is enabled without requiring duplicate hardware. The virtual appliance can even be replicated off site for disaster recovery. Downloading, deploying, evaluating, and replacing virtual appliances is also much quicker and easier.

Software manufacturers are increasingly delivering their applications as virtual appliances for these exact same reasons. By packaging, say, a database as a virtual appliance, the software manufacturer no longer needs to be concerned about what hardware, drivers and OS version the application is being installed upon. The manufacturer’s best practices are already incorporated into the virtual machine ensuring that it is configured correctly. Complexity is reduced while reliability is improved. Manufacturers currently selling virtual appliances range from well-known industry leaders such as BEA to hundreds of small firms who are capitalizing on the enhanced functionality that virtual servers enable in terms of performance, reliability and security.

Virtual appliances enable further advantages when operating within a largely virtualized infrastructure. Organizations can collapse more of the infrastructure services into the virtual infrastructure along with the application servers. Virtual appliances relying on the network transport, such as firewalls, gain significant performance advantages by keeping the connections inside of the physical host servers utilizing the virtual switch. There is less latency within the virtual infrastructure than routing traffic from the virtual infrastructure out to the physical network and back.

Virtual Appliance Format

VMware currently dominates the virtual appliance market with its Virtual Machine Disk Format (VMDK). Microsoft is taking a big gamble by not fully supporting the running of its VHD format virtual machines within a VMware environment. VMware is the world’s fastest growing large software company in history – by a factor of two. The company will do well over $1 Billion in sales this year and shows no sign of slowing in terms of revenues, innovation and leadership. Over 10,000 attendees are expected at this year’s VMworld in San Francisco, and VMware centric organizations tend to be exceptionally enthusiastic about the platform.

Should Microsoft continue its restrictive stance on virtual appliances, it may compel some organizations to choose its virtualization platform over VMware. But it will also, without a doubt, push many software manufacturers to go through the trouble and expense of rewriting their applications to utilize an open systems based operating system as part of a virtual appliance. Alteratively, by promoting Windows based virtual machines within all formats, Microsoft has an opportunity to evolve the traditional operating system– designed to support many disparate applications – to the new slim, high performing and secure O/S component of virtual appliances.

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Some important news from Wikipedia to understand clearly

As you'll see in this video, there has been important progress in making Wikipedia compatible with the world of Creative Commons licensed work. But we should be very precise about this extremely good news: As Jimmy announces, the Wikimedia Foundation Board has agreed with a proposal made by the Free Software Foundation that will permit Wikipedia (and other such wikis) to relicense under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.

That is very different from saying that Wikipedia has relicensed under a CC license. The decision whether to take advantage of this freedom granted by the FSF when the FSF grants it will be a decision the Wikipedia community will have to make. We are very hopeful that the community will ratify this move to compatible freedoms. And if they do, we are looking forward to an extraordinary celebration.

Read the Wikimedia Foundation resolution here.

My endless thanks to everyone who has helped make this possible, from Richard Stallman and the FSF board, to the important leaders within the Wikipedia community who say yet another legal obstacle to freedom that they could remove.

Posted on December 1, 2007 5:10 PM | Permalink | technorati

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