Here are some great web casts for learning future development in Vista and Windows Server 2008 for the future. Learn all the things that are not there anymore. Really what is not going to be there is a bit daunting at first for many administrators and developers. If you have the will to move forward you certainly will not regret the downsides.

• Getting Started with IIS 7.0
• An Insider's Look at IIS7 Features
• Get the Facts on Windows Vista & IIS 7.0 Compatibility
• Putting the Lego Set Together:  Inside IIS 7.0's Componentization
• How "Today's" Web Applications will work with IIS 7.0
• End-to-End Overview of IIS7
• Exploring the Future of Web Development and Management with IIS7

Microsoft Windows PowerShell command line shell and scripting language helps IT professionals achieve greater control and productivity. Using a new admin-focused scripting language, more than 130 standard command line tools, and consistent syntax and utilities, Windows PowerShell allows IT professionals to more easily control system administration and accelerate automation. Windows PowerShell is easy to adopt, learn, and use, because it works with your existing IT infrastructure and existing script investments, and because it runs on Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows Server 2003. Windows PowerShell is now included as part of Windows Server 2008 and can be evaluated in Windows Server 2008 Beta 3. Exchange Server 2007, System Center Operations Manager 2007, System Center Data Protection Manager V2, and System Center Virtual Machine Manager also leverage Windows PowerShell to improve administrator control, efficiency, and productivity.

Windows PowerShell included as part of Windows Server 2008
Windows PowerShell for the first time is included as part of the Windows operating system. Windows PowerShell is one of the numerous manageability enhancements of Windows Server 2008 including the new Server Manager, Server Core, new Event Viewer, new Task Scheduler and new Reliability and Performance Monitor.

Download Windows PowerShell 1.0
Windows PowerShell 1.0 is available as a download or can be evaluated as part of Windows Server 2008 evaluation versions. Download Windows PowerShell 1.0 for Windows XP SP2, Windows Server 2003 or Windows Vista via our Windows PowerShell download page.

The following partners have developed products that leverage Windows PowerShell to help with management of Windows or to improve applications running on Windows. Most of these products have a free component that can be used by all Windows administrators.

F5 Networks: Support use of Windows PowerShell to manage F5's BIG-IP network hardware.
Full Armor: Group-Policy Management via Windows PowerShell.
/n Software: Network management, messaging and ability to remotely manage Windows via Windows PowerShell.
PowerGadgets: Visualization product that allows users to run real-time Gadgets such as charts, gauges and maps. Uses Windows PowerShell to allow users or administrators to easily create Windows Vista Sidebar gadgets.
PowerGUI by Quest Software: Graphical user interface for executing Windows PowerShell commands and writing scripts.
PowerShell Analyzer by Shelltools: Graphical User Interface for developers as well as administrators.
Quest Software: Active Directory Management including new Windows Server 2008 features including read-only domain controllers and new user configuration.

• Still free of charge!
• Build complex regular expressions by selecting components from a palette
• Test expressions against real or sample input data
• Display all matches in a tree structure, showing captured groups, and all captures within a group
• Build replacement strings and test the match and replace functionality
• Highlight matched text in the input data
• Test automatically for syntax errors
• Generate Visual Basic or C# code
• Save and restore data in a project file
• Maintain and expand a library of frequently used regular expressions

Here are some of the additional features available in Expresso 2.x

• Expresso Analyzer interprets and diagrams a regular expression to aid in understanding and debugging
• Analyzer produces an English description of the expression that can be automatically incorporated into comments in the generated code
• Improvements to the user interface
• New "Partial Match" and "Exclude Match" enable testing selected portions of a regular expression to aid in debugging
• Code generation now supports Managed C++
• More extensive options for customizing the generated code
• Multithreaded operation allows interruption of time-consuming matches
• Performance tester for timing optimization
• Improvements and added features in the Expression Builder
• More extensive Help features
• Built-in regular expression tutorial
• Improvements to the Expression Library

We have had several requests for a simple contact form sample that one can place on their website. The requirment was to have different departments in a drop down. The second requirment was to use .Net 2.0 and the most important was to be able to use something simple like Expression Web to edit and deploy it. 

A text editor will work as their are only a couple of fields to edit. Add and edit the mail destinations, and department names, in the default.aspx. Name the mail server in the web.config that is all there is to it.

Smart Code is an Open Source template-driven code generator that lets software developers automatically produce programs and components that interact with database systems. Smar Code' templates are programs that access the Smar Code Object Model to produce tailored programs and components. Templates may be written in C# or VB.NET (or theoretically in any language that supports the creation of dynamic-link libraries). This is a very powerful paradigm.

Smart Code is the right tool for you if:

• You want to automatically generate n-tier .NET web applications, all the way from the user interface to the SQL Server stored procedures.
• You have designed the user interface for your (windows or web) application, automatically generate the code to access and update the database.
• You have developed the business tier for your application and want to automatically generate the data access layers based on the database schema.
• You want to automatically generate stored procedures for creating, deleting, updating, and searching for records in the database.
• You want to quickly build fully-functional prototypes of web-based applications that interact with database systems.
• You want to standardize the architecture of the applications that are developed in your organization.
• You want to learn by example how to architect enterprise-level web applications.
• You want to develop templates of the code you write so that in the future you can generate code automatically.
• You want to deliver applications with consistent quality.
• You are tired of writing the same repetitive code over and over again.
• You want an powerful and Open Source tool.

This is a great Expression web 2 part tutorial on creating an ASP.NET contact form that sends e-mail.

In the first part of this tutorial, you'll learn how to create the user-interface portion of the form and add ASP.NET validation so that the fields are required and valid.

The second part of the tutorial covers the server-side C# code that sends the e-mail. Downloadable examples in both VB and C# also area available.

See the tutorials here.

This is a very basic contact form which can be used for any kind of website. Web form contains name, email, subject and message inputs. Change only mail server and default email within the script.   Code: ASP.NET v2.0 & VB

<%@ Page Language="VB" Debug="true" %>
<% @Import Namespace="System.Web.Mail" %>
<script language="vb" runat="server">

Sub Send2Mail (sender as Object, e as EventArgs)

Dim objMail as New MailMessage()

  objMail.To = "Whoever@DomainName.com"
  objMail.From = strEmail.Text

  objMail.BodyFormat = MailFormat.Text
  objMail.Priority = MailPriority.Normal
  objMail.Subject = strSubject.Text

  objMail.Body = "Name : " + strName.Text + vbNewLine + "Email : " + strEmail.text + vbnewLine + "Message : " + strYourMsg.text
  
  SmtpMail.SmtpServer = "mail.Domainname.com"
  SmtpMail.Send(objMail)

  strMessage.Visible = true

End Sub

</script>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
<title>How to send email</title>
</head>
<body>

  <asp:panel id="strMessage" runat="server" Visible="False">
      Thanks for your kind message ...  </asp:panel>

    <form runat="server">
      <b>First Name:</b> <br/>
      <asp:textbox id="strName" runat="server" />
      <br><br>

      <b>Email Address:</b><br/>
      <asp:textbox id="strEmail" runat="server" />
       <br><br>

      <b>Subject:</b><br/>
      <asp:textbox id="strSubject" runat="server" />
       <br><br>

       <b>Your Message</b><br/>
      <asp:textbox id="strYourMsg" runat="server" Columns="45" Rows="10" TextMode="MultiLine" />
        <br />
      <asp:button runat="server" id="func" Text="Send Message"
                  OnClick="Send2Mail" />
    </form>
</body>
</html>

This is a simple application to deter spammers. ASP.NET Version Features: Put an end to those exposed mailto links to robots. C#/Access2003 driven. Easy set-up, the database holds the true email addresses. It is next to impossible for a bot to expose these links.

Authors Website  safermail-ASPNET.zip (17.2 KB)

There are many approaches to doing this for protecting your server though personally the worse thing is to have none when you need one. We have put together a really simple down and dirty approach to backing up IIS 6.0 meta backup below. This approach first creates the backup then renames them to the current date. We run the first bat file daily to assure your system is protected.

@ C:
@cd %systemroot%\system32

@cscript iisback.vbs /backup /b backup

@cd %systemroot%\system32\inetsrv\MetaBack"

ren backup.MD0 %DATE:~4,2%-%DATE:~7,2%-%DATE:~10,4%-backup.MD0
ren backup.SC0 %DATE:~4,2%-%DATE:~7,2%-%DATE:~10,4%-backup.SC0

Then to avoid the folder from filling up and retaining 7 days of backups we just run a second script we only run once a week.

echo on
rem Delete Meta Backup File
FORFILES /p C:\Windows\system32\inetsrv\MetaBack /s /m *.MDO /d -7 /c "CMD /C del /Q @FILE"
FORFILES /p C:\Windows\system32\inetsrv\MetaBack /s /m *.SCO /d -7 /c "CMD /C del /Q @FILE"
rem

All web applications make extensive use of the HTTP protocol (or HTTPS for secure sites). Even simple web pages require the use of multiple HTTP requests to download HTML, graphics and javascript. The ability to view the HTTP interaction between the browser and web site is crucial to these areas of web development:

• Trouble shooting
• Performance tuning
• Verifying that a site is secure and does not expose sensitive information

Seven reasons to use HttpWatch rather than other HTTP monitoring tools:

1. Easy to Use - start logging after just a couple of mouse clicks in Internet Explorer. No other proxies, debuggers or network sniffers have to be configured
2. Productive - quickly see cookies, headers, POST data and query strings without having to manually decode raw HTTP packets
3. Robust - reliably log thousands of HTTP transactions for hours or days while tracking down intermittent problems
4. Accurate - HttpWatch has minimal impact on the normal interaction of Internet Explorer with a web site. No extra network hops are added, allowing you to measure real world HTTP performance
5. Flexible - HttpWatch only requires client-side installation and will work with any server side technology that renders HTTP pages in Internet Explorer. No special server-side permissions or configurations are required - ideal for use against production servers on the Internet or Intranet
6. Comprehensive - works with HTTP compression, redirection, SSL encryption & NTLM authentication. A complete automation interface provides access to recorded data and allows HttpWatch to be controlled from most popular programming languages.
7. Professional Support -  updates and bug fixes are provided free of charge on our website and technical support is available by email, phone or fax.

Download it here

This is a very simple method to redirect a single IIS entry to multiple FQDN's. You can add as many as you wish just repeat Elseif code. Place this as the default document and you are set.

<%
Dim srvrname
srvrname= lcase(Request.servervariables("SERVER_NAME"))
if srvrname="www.domainname.com" or srvrname="domainname.com" then
 Response.Redirect "default.htm"%>
<%Elseif srvrname="www.domain2.com" or srvrname="domain2.com" then
  Response.Redirect "/domain2/default.asp"%>
<%end if%>

IIS Redirect
In internet services manager, right click on the file or folder you wish to redirect
Select the radio titled "a redirection to a URL".
Enter the redirection page
Check "The exact url entered above" and the "A permanent redirection for this resource"
Click on 'Apply'

ColdFusion Redirect
<.cfheader statuscode="301" statustext="Moved permanently">
<.cfheader name="Location" value="http://www.new-url.com">

PHP Redirect
<?
Header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" );
Header( "Location: http://www.new-url.com" );
?>

ASP Redirect
<%@ Language=VBScript %>
<%
Response.Status="301 Moved Permanently";
Response.AddHeader("Location","http://www.new-url.com/");
%>

ASP .NET Redirect
<script runat="server">
private void Page_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
Response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently";
Response.AddHeader("Location","http://www.new-url.com");
}
</script>

JSP (Java) Redirect
<%
response.setStatus(301);
response.setHeader( "Location", "http://www.new-url.com/" );
response.setHeader( "Connection", "close" );
%>

CGI PERL Redirect
$q = new CGI;
print $q->redirect("http://www.new-url.com/");

Ruby on Rails Redirect
def old_action
headers["Status"] = "301 Moved Permanently"
redirect_to "http://www.new-url.com/"
end

University of Missouri officials said campus computer technicians confirmed a breach of a database last week by a user or users whose Internet accounts were traced to China and Australia.

The hacker accessed personal information of 22,396 University of Missouri-Columbia students or alumni who also worked at one of the system's four campuses in St. Louis, Kansas City, Rolla or Columbia in 2004.

The hacker obtained the information through a Web page used to make queries about the status of trouble reports to the university's computer help desk, which is based in Columbia. The information had been compiled for a report, but the data had not been removed from the computer system.

In January, a hacker obtained the Social Security numbers of 1,220 university researchers, as well as personal passwords of as many as 2,500 people who used an online grant application system.

The university is contacting people affected by the latest breach and providing instructions on how to monitor their credit reports and other financial records for suspicious activity, officials said.

Symantec Corp. researchers Friday warned of an in-the-wild Trojan horse that poses as a Windows activation program to dupe users into entering credit card information in an attempt to reanimate their machines.

Dubbed Kardphisher, the Trojan is nothing much technically, reported Takashi Katsuki, a Symantec researcher. But its author has "obviously taken great pains to make it appear legitimate."

Once the Trojan's installed, it throws up an official-looking screen that claims the user's copy of Windows was activated by someone else. "To help reduce software piracy, please re-activate your copy of Windows now," the screen reads. "We will ask you for your billing details, but your credit card will NOT be charged."

Selecting "No," said Katsuki, shuts down the PC. "Yes," meanwhile, takes the user to a second screen where he or she is asked to enter her name and credit card information, which is then transmitted to the hacker's server. "This Trojan teaches us all a good lesson," added Katsuki. "Trust no one."

Software maker Microsoft Corp. asked search engine operator Yahoo Inc. to re-enter formal negotiations for an acquisition that could be worth $50 billion, the New York Post reported on Friday.

At the time The search and advertising industry could change drastically over the next year if Microsoft has its way with Yahoo. In the last several weeks, it was well publicized that Microsoft and Google went head on in a bidding war for Internet advertising giant DoubleClick. Eventually, Google won and settled with DoubleClick for roughly $3.1 billion -- a sum that had analysts questioning Microsoft's true motives.

of the acquisition, Microsoft had roughly $25 billion of available cash in its bank; more than double that of Google's $11.9 billion. Observing these figures, it was odd to see Microsoft back out of a deal it could easily win. "The best side to be on in a bidding war is the losing side," said legendary Wall Street tycoon Warren Buffet. Buffet is implying that the loser in a bidding war has forced the winner to over-pay for something.

Today, Forbes is reporting that Microsoft is in negotiations with Yahoo for a possible acquisition that could be worth $50 billion. According to the report, Microsoft is feeling greater pressure to compete in the online advertising space. Just recently, Yahoo announced its acquisition of online advertising firm Right Media for $680 million. While this is far from Google's $3.1 billion expense on DoubleClick, it does indicate that Yahoo is already quite a force in online advertising.

Another sticking point for Microsoft is the fact that both Google and Yahoo are ahead of the game when it comes to search. Microsoft has been playing catch up to Google and Yahoo with MSN Search, but having Yahoo under its belt would surely set the company onto a different playing field altogether.

Despite an impending deal with Yahoo, Microsoft hasn’t taken its eyes completely off the Google – DoubleClick deal. Microsoft is loudly voicing its opinion against the deal and has asked regulators to carefully monitor the acquisition.

AMD prepares its Phenom FX, Phenom X4 and Phenom X2 lineups for launch

AMD is preparing the launch of its next-generation K10-derivedStars-family single, dual and quad-core processors. The next-generation Stars-family splits into three different brand names – Phenom, Athlon and Sempron. Ringing in the flagship are three Agena FX-based AMD Phenom FX processors. AMD has yet to confirm clock speeds for the three models; however, the latest roadmap reveals ballparks for the processors.

The top-end AMD Phenom FX processor clocks in the 2.4-2.6 GHz speed range. Slotting below the top-end Phenom FX is a 2.2-2.4 GHz model. These two models occupy AMD’s upcoming Socket 1207+ and current Socket 1207 Quad FX platforms. AMD also has a Phenom FX for single-processor customers as well, clocked at 2.4-2.6 GHz.

AMD further differentiates its Phenom FX processors with different Hyper Transport 3.0 clock speeds. The flagship 2.4-2.6 GHz model features a 3.6 GHz HT 3.0 clock speed while the two 2.2-2.4 GHz models have a lower 3.2 GHz HT 3.0 clock. All three models share the same 4x512KB L2 cache and 2MB L3 cache configuration. AMD has yet to determine the TDP of its Phenom FX processors.

Catering towards high-end user are two Socket AM2+ AMD Phenom X4 processors. AMD remains undecided on its model numbers; however, clock speeds on the Agena-based Phenom X4 processors are set. The two AMD Phenom X4 processors clock in at 2.4 GHz and 2.2 GHz. These models share the same 4x512KB L2 cache and 2MB L3 cache configuration as the Phenom FX processors.

HT 3.0 speeds differ on the two models, the 2.4 GHz features a 3.6 GHz HT 3.0 speed while the 2.2 GHz model features a 3.2 GHz HT 3.0 speed. AMD rates the Phenom X4 processors with 89W TDPs. AMD plans to start taking orders for its Phenom FX and Phenom X4 processors in Q3’2007. "Road Map and full article"

Cold fusion, the ability to generate nuclear power at room temperatures, has proven to be a highly elusive feat. In fact, it is considered by many experts to be a mere pipe dream -- a potentially unlimited source of clean energy that remains tantalizing,  but so far unattainable.

However, a recently published academic paper from the Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center (Spawar) in San Diego throws cold water on skeptics of cold fusion. Appearing in the respected journal Naturwissenschaften, which counts Albert Einstein among its distinguished authors, the article claims that Spawar scientists Stanislaw Szpak and Pamela Mosier-Boss have achieved a low energy nuclear reaction (LERN) that can be replicated and verified by the scientific community.

Cold fusion has gotten the cold shoulder from serious nuclear physicists since 1989, when Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann were unable to substantiate their sensational claims that deuterium nuclei could be forced to fuse and release excess energy at room temperature. Spawar researchers apparently kept the faith, however, and continued to refine the procedure by experimenting with new fusionable materials.

Szpak and Boss now claim to have succeeded at last by coating a thin wire with palladium and deuterium, then subjected it to magnetic and electric fields. The researchers have offered plastic films called CR-39 detectors as evidence that charged particles have emerging from their reaction experiments.

The Spawar method shows promise, particularly in terms of being easily reproduced and verified by other institutions. Such verification is essential to widespread acceptance of the apparent breakthrough, an important precursor to scientists receiving the necessary funding to fuel additional research in the field.

An external computer hard drive containing the personal, bank and payroll information of up to 100,000 former and current Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees was reportedly stolen from a human resources office in Crystal City, VA.  The Federal Bureau of Investigation and U.S. Secret Service are now helping the TSA investigate the theft -- FBI is conducting the investigation, with the Secret Service conducting a "forensic review of equipment and facilities."

The TSA learned about the missing hard drive sometime Thursday, but the agency informed possibly affected employees Friday evening -- a delay which has upset some employees.  TSA spokesperson Ellen Howe reassured agency employees by stating the TSA was "not trying to stall."

"TSA has no evidence that an unauthorized individual is using your personal information, but we bring this incident to your attention so that you can be alert to signs of any possible misuse of your identity," said Kip Hawley, TSA Administrator.

The TSA is unaware if the hard drive has left its premises.  The hard drive contained sensitive information on employees who worked for the TSA from January 2002 until August 2005.  The agency employs almost 50,000 people and is the agency responsible for securing transportation systems in the country, including airports and railroads.

Letters were sent out to all affected employees promising one year of credit monitoring services.

Online video network Joost landed programming deals with Turner Broadcasting System Inc., Sony Pictures Television and Hasbro Inc., as it prepares to launch to the public later this month.

The service, founded by the creators of Internet phone service Skype and file-sharing service Kazaa, aims to be for the Internet what cable television is to living rooms by offering feature-length, higher-quality videos.

Joost differs from the snack-sized fare of video clips uploaded by users of top online video service, Google Inc.'s YouTube, which streams some 100 million videos over the Web on a daily basis.

"There's a huge hunger for long-form, high-quality online entertainment content," Yvette Alberdingk Thijm, executive vice president of content strategy at Joost, said.

Turner, a division of the world's largest media company Time Warner Inc., will offer Joost shows from news network CNN and Adult Swim.

Sony Pictures Television, a unit of electronics maker Sony Corp., will offer vintage shows from its archives including episodes of "Charlie's Angels," "Spiderman," "Starsky & Hutch" and "NewsRadio."

The announcement of more programming partners comes a day after Google responded to a $1 billion lawsuit brought on by Viacom Inc., charging the company with willfully infringing on its copyrights.

Google Inc. and MySQL AB are close to finalizing a deal that could find the open-source database vendor incorporating powerful features created by the search giant into future versions of the popular database.

On Monday, Google publicly released the source code for several custom features it had built in-house to enhance the performance and reliability of its search engine. The add-ons were released via the General Public License (GPL).

Google’s announcement, done without MySQL and on the eve of MySQL’s annual worldwide conference in Santa Clara, Calif., appeared to be a subtle attempt to put pressure on MySQL to add the features to the official version of the software, something the company has until recently been loath to do.

Since then, sources say Google has signed a Contributor License Agreement (CLA), a key legal document required by MySQL to accept source code from outside companies or developers and port it to its popular database, reportedly used in 11 million servers worldwide.

Google is widely believed to be the largest MySQL user in the world, with hundreds or even thousands of MySQL servers running in data centers around the world.

What remains to be worked out are the exact features that Google will transfer to MySQL and the compensation MySQL will offer in return, which could range from symbolic gifts such as T-shirts to monies up to hundreds of thousands of dollars, said Steve Curry, a MySQL spokesman. Curry declined to confirm the status of the deal.

Read More

Around $1.7 billion of unpaid VAT did not appear on a U.K. Revenue and Customs debt case management system because of a failure to transfer data from the main VAT computer system, legislators have been told.

Edward Leigh, chair of the powerful Commons public accounts committee, highlighted a series of problems with major government IT projects in a parliamentary debate on the committee's inquiries

He told MPs: "We found that not all information on VAT debt recorded on the main VAT computer system had been transferred to the so-called trader register.

"That may appear to be an obscure point, but it meant that some $1.7 billion of debt failed to appear on the debt case management system. That is hardly a first-rate example of financial management by a department that should be at the forefront of such matters."

Leigh cited evidence given to the committee earlier this month by Ian Taylor, a past president of the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply who is now director of the center for procurement performance at the Department for Education and Skills.

Taylor had told the PAC "that in his view, public sector people are every bit as skilled as those in the private sector, but the information systems in the public sector are so bad that no private sector firm could afford to put up with them. They would simply go out of business," Leigh said.

The committee chair added: "They do not provide the data that public sector leaders need to manage effectively or to develop robust strategies for delivery."

Leigh also hit back at the government after it attempted to deflect criticism of the NHS's $23.4 billion IT program by claiming that a damning PAC report was based on "out of date" findings by the National Audit Office.

The PAC warned that the NHS scheme was unlikely to deliver significant benefits, unless there was a fundamental change in the rate of progress on the 10-year project. 

The committee chair told MPs he had spoken to Sir John Bourn, head of the NAO, to put a timescale on the auditors' promised -- and unprecedented -- second examination of the project. "Following my encouragement, we are to have another NAO report on the NHS computer in the next year so that we can have an update to check whether all the excellent recommendations of the NAO and the PAC... are being carried out."

Responding to the debate -- which also touched on the IT fiasco at the Rural Payments Agency that is estimated to have cost $940 million -- Treasury minister John Healy gave an indication that the government might reconsider its hardline stance against making public the findings of Office of Government Commerce "gateway reviews" of major IT schemes.

Microsoft Corp. is posting the final beta and first publicly available and feature-complete version of Windows Server "Longhorn," marking the final time the product will be available for testing and feedback before the long-awaited server update is available later this year.

Microsoft is making downloads of Longhorn Beta 3 available from the company's Web site, said Ward Ralston, senior technical product manager for the software. It's the first time that anyone who is interested can get their hands on the product, which has been in private beta release only until now.

It is also the first time users can get a look at the new scripting and command-line technology, Microsoft PowerShell, in the Longhorn server, he said. The technology, which allows administrators to more easily automate tasks across Windows servers on a network, was previously available as a separate add-on, but it will be built directly into Longhorn and is making its first appearance in a test version of the product.

Customers also can get a first look in Beta 3 at two new Longhorn features -- a new always-on firewall in Server Manager and an installation option called Server Core.

Server Manager in Longhorn is designed to keep the server firewall up 100% of the time, which means server administrators will have to unlock the firewall using the Server Manager console when they want to install components, he said. This allows administrators to install components needed for certain server roles, leaving anything extraneous out of the system.

The server also will intelligently know what dependencies and restraints the roles will have once installed, and it will configure the server automatically to run most effectively in those scenarios, Ralston added.

Server Core is a minimal installation option for Windows Server that installs only components for eight server roles -- out of a possible 18 -- on the server and automatically configures them for the most reliable performance. This limits the amount of code that needs to run on the server and should decrease the time needed for and the number of updates because the server will only need to be rebooted for updates related only to those roles, Ralston said.

Longhorn is due for final release sometime in the second half of the year, a time frame that was revised several times.

Legislation that would lift an online gambling ban imposed by Congress last year was introduced on Thursday by the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.

Calling the Internet gambling prohibition "imprudently adopted," Democratic Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts outlined a bill to make it legal again for banks and credit card companies to make payments to online gambling sites.

"The fundamental issue here is a matter of individual freedom," Frank told a news conference, adding his committee would hold a hearing on the matter in June.

The bill includes provisions for licensing and regulating online gambling companies to protect against underage gambling, compulsive gambling, money-laundering and fraud.

But Frank conceded, "The votes aren't there to change it right away" and he listed only 11 co-sponsors in the 435-member House for lifting the ban.

Frank said his proposal could face opposition from religious conservatives, and from some liberals who find gambling "tacky." However, he also said the ban imposed by Congress had awakened many voters to the issue and predicted support for the bill could grow.

An anti-spam organization filed a federal lawsuit Thursday targeting so-called spam harvesters, who facilitate the mass distribution of junk e-mail by trolling the Internet and collecting millions of e-mail addresses.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Alexandria by a Utah company called Unspam Technologies Inc. The company runs a Web site called Project Honey Pot dedicated to tracking spam harvesters worldwide.

Project Honey Pot has collected thousands of Internet addresses that it has linked to spam harvesters, but it so far has been unable to link those addresses to an actual person.

The lawsuit names a variety of John Does as defendants, and the plaintiffs hope that the legal process will allow them to track the actual people who are harvesting the e-mail addresses, said lead attorney Jon Praed with the Arlington-based Internet Law Group.

Collecting e-mail addresses is not by itself illegal, but Praed said the plaintiffs will be able to link the harvesting to spam e-mails, which are illegal under federal and state laws. Those laws allow individuals who receive unwanted spam to seek civil damages.

Praed said legitimate businesses are afraid to post e-mail addresses on their Web sites for fear that automated Web crawlers will find the addresses, record them and sell them to spammers who will inundate them with junk e-mail.

Praed said the lawsuit will "focus on the worst of the worst," using information that Project Honey Pot has already collected and analyzed.

If you thought the Core micro architecture was a vast change from the Netburst Pentium 4 range, just wait until you get a look at what Nehalem has in store! With AMD ramping up the game as it seeds Fusion and other technologies to integrate more into the CPU core, we all wondered how Intel was going to react.

While the expressed details are still to be confirmed, we have learned that there are a lot of changes in store for Intel's upcoming platform, and that perhaps the ideas and methods adopted by the green camp weren’t so bad after all.

Firstly Nehalem will arrive in Q208 and is being designed from the ground up on the 45nm process. Intel has confirmed it will contain a variant of Hyper-Threading technology previously seen on the Pentium 4 CPUs, although it won’t be a hacked on addition in response to expected poor IPC and long pipeline, like it was in the Netburst days. SMT (Simultaneous Multithreading) is being optimised to make use of the many cores and shared cache in a way that “intelligently” uses the available resources.

Intel is aiming to have a scalable performance and core structure including 8+ cores with 16+ threads running. What gets very interesting is that Intel describes Nehalem as having a Multi-Level shared cache architecture, without specifically denouncing something along the lines of the L3-shared cache that AMD’s next generation Barcelona will have.

Integrated memory controller... on an Intel?

Say goodbye to the northbridge, because Nehalem will integrate the memory controller into the CPU core. Intel is finally ready to do what AMD has been doing for years with the K8 architecture - incorporate an on-die memory controller, to lower memory access latencies, reduce power consumption of the whole platform and make designing future motherboards far easier.

This could be be a marketing nightmare for Intel’s PR and the green camp is going to be rolling around the floor in fits of glee at this news, but respect to Intel for ultimately biting the bullet and making the right choice. That said, Intel was in a similar situation when it created the Pentium M and had to convince the market the MHz wasn’t the only performance rating that mattered after years of preaching the contrary – and that turned out to be one of the most successful moves for Intel in recent history.

By combining the architectural power of Core with an incredibly low latency memory controller and some super bandwidth DDR3 we should see massive gains in multi-core applications that are now suddenly freed of the northbridge front side bus (FSB) limitation.

Traditionally, Intel CPUs in a multi-core scenario had to queue and wait for the northbridge to serve commands to the memory, with the scenario getting progressively worse as the latency increases in every CPU you add.

A hacker managed to break into a Mac and win a $10,000 prize as part of a contest started at the CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver.

In winning the contest, he exposed a hole in Safari, Apple Inc.s browser. "Currently, every copy of OS X out there now is vulnerable to this," said Sean Comeau, one of the organizers of CanSecWest.

The conference organizers decided to offer the contest in part to draw attention to possible security shortcomings in Macs. "You see a lot of people running OS X saying it's so secure and frankly Microsoft is putting more work into security than Apple has," said Dragos Ruiu, the principal organizer of security conferences including CanSecWest.

Initially, contestants were invited to try to access one of two Macs through a wireless access point while the Macs had no programs running. No attackers managed to do so, and so conference organizers allowed participants to try to get in through the browser by sending URLs via e-mail.

Dino Di Zovie, who lives in New York, sent along a URL that exposed the hole. Since the contest was only open to attendees in Vancouver, he sent it to a friend who was at the conference and forwarded it on.

The URL opened a blank page but exposed a vulnerability in input handling in Safari, Comeau said. An attacker could use the vulnerability in a number of ways, but Di Zovie used it to open a back door that gave him access to anything on the computer, Comeau said. The vulnerability won't be published. 3Com Corp.'s TippingPoint division, which put up the cash prize, will handle disclosing it to Apple.

The prize for the contest was originally one of the Macs. But on Thursday evening, TippingPoint put up the cash award, which may have spurred a wider interest in the contest.

One reason Macs haven't been much of a target for hackers is that there are fewer to attack, said Terri Forslof, manager of security response for TippingPoint. "It's an incentive issue. The Mac is not as widely deployed of a platform as say Windows," she said. In this case, the cash may have provided motivation.

Vertical Computer Systems Inc. is suing Microsoft Corp. for patent infringement related to Microsoft's .Net framework for building Windows-based software.

Vertical filed suit April 18 in a U.S. District Court in Texas alleging that Microsoft has infringed on its Patent No. 6,826,744, for a "system and method for generating web sites in an arbitrary object framework."

The patent is for Vertical's SiteFlash technology, which utilizes XML (Extensible Markup Language) to create a component-based structure to build and efficiently operate Web sites, according to the company's Web site. A Vertical spokesman could not be reached for comment.

The complaint says Microsoft is still infringing on the patent despite Vertical having put Microsoft on notice about it on Feb. 7. Vertical is asking for a jury trial.

Vertical, based in Fort Worth, Texas, describes itself as a global Web services provider. It went public in 2000 but is not listed on a major stock exchange.

The Social Security numbers of 63,000 people who received Agriculture Department grants have been posted on a government Web site since 1996, but they were taken down last week. Free credit monitoring is being offered to those affected.

The Agriculture data that included Social Security numbers were removed from the Web on April 13 and similar data from 32 other agencies were taken down April 17 as a precaution, said Agriculture spokeswoman Terri Teuber.

A review has determined that none of the other 32 agencies had a similar problem, said Sean Kevelighan, spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget.

"There is no evidence that this information has been misused," Teuber added. "However, due to the potential that this information was downloaded prior to being removed, USDA will provide the additional monitoring service."

The breach was discovered by Marsha Bergmeier, president of Mohr Family Farms in Fairmount, Ill. "I was Googling my farm name at 11 p.m. when I couldn't sleep," she said in a telephone interview, and details of her land loan came up in the second listing of the Google search, a private Web site that reposted the government data.

The next morning, April 13, she contacted the Agriculture Department, her congressman, Rep. Tim Johnson, the private Web site and the Census Bureau and was surprised by how quickly they removed the personal information.

"If somebody downloaded it, it's still out there in the world," she said. "That will never be a private number again."

We recently spent quite a long time before deciding on our filtering solution. We required a number of things that it appears the big boys do not seem to understand.  Like the biggest and simpliest we have stated time and time again. If your email solution does not offer you a method of white-listing just leave!  We have stated this many times with AOL! Comcast and now even ATT have joined the list of "LAME" ISP's who simply do not understand the importance of this simple requirement for their users.

Anyone who seeks a new provider should ask! Do you use BrightMail or GoodMail? You should ask if they can offer another alternative? These propreitary applications have some issues which ComCast has reported as a glitch, give me a break, this is simply not the problem.

Server response to MAIL FROM:

550-64.4.207.8 blocked by ldap:ou=rblmx,dc=comcast,dc=net 550 Blocked for abuse. Please send blacklist removal requests to blacklist_comcastnet@cable.comcast.com - Be sure to include your mail server IP ADDRESS.

Great Article and Frustating ISP comments about ComCast.

Have some Fun here.

The point here is simple when big companies throw large dollars at a solution without alternative methods of adjustment for their clients, they are making a serious blunder.