Beth Humphreys' Blog Site

Hooked on Google

I was just forwarded an interesting blog post written by Abhijeet Mukherjee, of Jeet Blog:

Go ahead, read it. Read the comments too...

After reading through the comments, here are some of my thoughts about it.

I think that to have all of the killer apps is not the be all end all, in fact, I think that it eventually implodes on itself. There is no such thing as an unbeatable killer app either. The innovation and competition out there makes that impossible. Just look at Microsoft's Office Suite, and how there are open-source applications that are targeting that market share.

I think that interop is key to the cloud. While you may have stuff stored in one place, or even in multiple, I would prefer to have multiple tools, best of breed from whichever vendor, or whatever I find that fits how I work, to access that data.

It is impossible to have one vendor to rule them all, and in my opinion, would not be a place I would want my business. I thought the post about Google taking over the world was funny, because I truly think it is impossible to do. Would you not think that is a form of benevolent dictatorship? Our regulatory organizations globally frown upon that business practice. Microsoft is definitely a case in point.

Remember, people are fickle, and opinions change on a dime.

There were a lot of differing opinions out there that went from loving the ability to access their applications/data from anywhere to those who liked the mix of having desktop applications to reach into the cloud. This is one of the tenets of Microsoft's vision of Software + Services (S+S), having that flexibility of putting everything online at one end of the spectrum, to having rich client applications reaching into the cloud at the other.

Just my opinions on the opinions!

PDC 2008, LEGO®, and Women in Technology

It is official, we have launched our Professional Developers Conference (PDC) 2008 registration site, so it is a GO!

Everyone knows what LEGO's® are...at least I hope they do. I can remember my brother playing with them, creating huge battle saga's that spanned our family room floor. And my mom, forever vacuuming them up (I can still hear the horrible rattling sound as they met their end), and everyone in my family stepping on them...

Well who knew that you would actually be able to PLAY with them again, at WORK no less. Check this out...

I wanted to point out to everyone a really cool workshop being held at PDC called WomenBuild: Inspiring Career Paths in Technology. This is going to be a tremendous workshop, where Microsoft and the LEGO® Serious Play Program (LSP) have teamed up to use a rich, interactive way of modeling real-life business challenges using LEGO® Bricks.

This is such a neat way of using models in a collaborative and visual way to stimulate creative thinking. The challenge: becoming thought leaders in the technical world, and inspiring other women in the technical industry. The payoff: creating long lasting relationships with other women in the technology industry, learning to think creatively and applying that to reality, and most importantly NETWORKING.

I encourage anyone who is interested to register for this workshop! Hope to see you there!

{iGive=y}; @ Mix '08 and FSDevCon!!

Hi everyone!

One of the things that I am particularly passionate about is getting young women more interested in the technology industry. If you look back to a post I did a long time ago, you will see that women in tech never have to wait in line for the restrooms at technical conferences and such ;0

In honor of National Women’s History Month Microsoft is supporting the YWCA with the iGive program.  YWCA organization’s mission is to eliminate racism and empower women. The YWCA  helps build strong women leaders and serves as an advocate for women's rights and civil rights in Congress. 

So if you are at MIX '08 in Las Vegas on March 7th or are going to the Financial Services Developers Conference in New York City on March 12th & 13th, check this out! You can give these wonderful, limited edition T-shirts to your daughters or significant others. Men are welcome to wear the ladies shirts, just as we always do with men’s shirts :).

Look for the team roaming around, help a GREAT cause, and get a COOL T-shirt!

Read on for the details...

If you are at MIX, on March 7^th, come collect a shirt by sending off the Code Trip team on their adventures. The bus will be leaving from the Sands Expo loading area which is part of the Venetian conference centers.  Simply go to the first floor of the convention room areas (instead of heading up the escalator to MIX, head down) and follow the signs to the Sands Expo area.

If you want to participate, follow these 5 easy steps:

Step1. Donate to the YWCA.

Step2. Print out your receipt (if you don't have access to a printer, find one of the Developer & Platform Evangelism Team members for alternatives)

Step3. Attend MIX08 or the FSDevCon. Mix 08 on March 7 & 8^th in Las Vegas or FSDevCon March 12 & 13^th in New York City.

Step4. Find a member of Microsoft’s Developer Platform & Evangelism group at either event.

Step 5. Make the trade. Swap your receipt for a limited edition Swarovski crystal studded iGive serialized shirt. One serial shirt per person (2 in series : Vegas & NYC).

Funny PowerShell Video

Just ran across this video while reading the PowerShell King's blog (David Aiken

). This is hilarious (and kinda scary too)!

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=MWWzrp3xkYY

Even my MOM can do a PodCast!!

OK my mom is a registered nurse, and a teacher, and a student. Busy lady.

She just recently published THREE PodCasts on Arizona State University's site (WAY TO GO MOM!). This is amazing to me.Why? Because we always hear so much about "yeah, but can my GRANDMOTHER do it?"

Well my mom is a grandmother, and YES SHE CAN DO IT and indeed she did. I think that this is indicative of how our digital world is evolving and is bleeding across generational lines. I can remember teachning my mom how to use a mouse by playing solitare. Now she is doing podcasts, uses powerpoint like a pro, and has her OWN laptop. She is just about as obsessed as I am about looking at email.

Our digital world is growing, and is getting easier and easier to use. We are seeing more blogs, social podcasts, community growth on a viral level...from an enterprise perspective, we are seeing more companies plugging into these trends. I just got done checking out ShopLocal.com, and they have community links, a shopping guru blogger...Very cool.

So for all of you out there who sit and think about whether things are easy enough for your mom, or grandmother to use, don't underestimate that generation.

A Rolling Stone Gathers no MOSS...

Hi everyone

I have been slowly picking up Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (affectionately known as MOSS 2007) over the past year. I just got done doing a crash course in authentication and federation using Alternate Access Mappings and using ADFS with it. Whew that was interesting! I will blog on that experience later...

For those out there that are in the Chicago area, there is going to be a MOSS Camp held by Clarity Consulting, Sogeti, The Revere Group, and Microsoft.

Larry Clarkin, fellow Architect Evangelist on my team, has a blog post that tells you ALL about it.

Or you can go to the MOSSCamp site for all the details and to register.

Hope to see you there! I will most likely be one of the only female Infrastructure Architects there (just call me Server Girl). Just look for the girl struggling with Visual Studio and cursing :)

Hope there are marshmallows for making S'mores...mmmmm gooey.....

Windows Server 2008 is Almost Here! You Can Help Improve it Before it Releases!

The biggest release for Microsoft that is at the forefront of just about everybody's mind is the Windows Server 2008 launch early next year. We are gearing up bigtime for this release, and it is very exciting!

Did you know that you can help improve upon what we already have? MICROSOFT WANTS TO HEAR FROM YOU. You can send feedback right to the people who are working on its development!

Grab the beta bits here. Load it up, kick the tires!

Don't have a spare machine? That's OK, use one of our Virtual Labs or grab one of the Virtual Hard Drives to use with Virtual Server 2005 R2.

Then go and VOTE and GIVE FEEDBACK on the best scenarios, get some How-To's, learn about the capabilities!

Here Kitty Kitty Kitty!

OK. I don't know about you, but my blog comments gets more traffic from spammers than it does from real comments.

It also seems that I have been hearing an awful lot about Captcha's. In truth, i learned about these two weeks ago when I attended a conference for women bloggers called BlogHer. Interesting conference to say the least. Pretty Google and FireFox centric, but that is a topic for another post.

So one of the discussions that I heard during one of the sessions was about Captcha's, and how one should really consider incorporating that into their sites. I did a bit more reading and chatting about these (yes, another Arm Chair Discussion with my man after he listened to a podcast on this very subject) , and it is a very interesting technique for determining if you are a human being.

<from the movie The Fifth Element during random police raid>

Police: Are you classified as human?
Korben Dallas: Negative, I am a meat popsicle.

</end>

I find it very funny that we, as humans, develop programs to automate things, and then develop programs to determine if something is automated and block it. Just a random thought, kinda funny, I digress...

So Captcha (an acronym for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart), is exactly what the acronym describes, and is trademarked by Carnegie Mellon University. It is to help with many things, from helping to prevent email spam, and blog comment spam. You can read more about what this is all about on wikipedia on Captcha's. These are those wierd distorted letters you see thatyou have to verify by typing in so that you can get access to something (like sigining up for a new service such as an email account).

Well we humans, being smart, clever, devious things, are getting better at programming around the standard psychedelic letters. So the other side of the is trying to outsmart the computers (or is it ourselves, wierd) by finding other ways to determine if you are human. This was an interesting article that was posted up on InfoWorld last week about using pictures and having people identify what is in the picture. It goes on to note, that instead of identifying a person (like who is the hottie in this group of photos), they are switching to using animals, like kitties.

Pretty cool stuff I must say. Go check it out here.

Microsoft OS's Come up as the MOST SECURE

Well this is a nice change indeed!

 Symantec, in its latest research report (Internet Security Threat Report), has found that overall, Microsoft's OS is the most secure, and leads its competitors (such as RedHatLinux, Sun Solaris, and HP-UX, etc.).

 http://www.internetnews.com/security/article.php/3667201

Brian Valentine stopped all development and forced all product groups to focus only on security. He made security the priority at Microsoft. This has resulted in Microsoft rising to the challenge of being one of the biigest targets for vulnerabilities. The battle continues, and Microsoft (like any vendor) needs to always work diligently to keep up and ahead of the curve.

And the hard work continues on Windows Server Code-Named "Longhorn" as well as recently released Windows Vista.

What does this mean? Because the OS is getting more secure, then the next area for exploiters to target is the third party applications that are running on the OS. It will be more important than ever for organizations to have strong software development practices that have serious security focus in their design, coding, and reviews, as well as the tools that their developers use (such as Visual Studio).

So keep on fighting the good fight Microsoft!  

Finally! A scripting language that dummies can understand: Windows PowerShell

Hi All

So I have belatedly discovered something that Microsoft has recently released: Windows PowerShell.

 So cool, this is a scripting language that you can use to manage your infrastructure with. Remember writing and debugging those monstrous wscripts? That was one thing that I tried hard to avoid while I wore my admin hat back in Server Girl days. The advantage of PowerShell is that it is very intuitive. For example, commands such as get-service, stop-process. So much better than net start, blah blah.

 It has this really cool utility where you can test your script before you run it, called WhatIf. So if you are about to stop a service, it will show you what other services will be stopped/affected by that action.

And it has this cool ability to do graceful error handling, where if you are running a script, and one thing in it fails, the whole script doesn't fail.

AND you can still use it with your existing scripts.

 Microsoft has put a lot of thought into this, you can tell, because even the laziest of admins (like me) can adopt it fast.

They have even used it for the exclusive management tool for Exchange 2007 (yep, you can wrap a GUI over the commandlets!).

So go check it out if you HATE to SCRIPT.

Here is the PowerShell site on Microsoft.com

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technologies/management/powershell/default.mspx

PowerGadgets website:

http://www.powergadgets.com/

PowerShell Download:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technologies/management/powershell/download.mspx

PowerShell SDK:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms714469.aspx

Channel 9 Video: Managing IIS7 with PowerShell

http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=256994

Script Repository for PowerShell:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/scripts/msh/default.mspx?mfr=true

Scott Hanselman’s blog has all kinds of neat stuff about PowerShell (click on the PowerShell category)…

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/default.aspx

It's a WASH: Linux vs MS TCO is about the SAME (according to some studies)

I came across this interesting article today about companies that are migrating from Unix to Linux or Microsoft are tending to choose Microsoft over Linux because the TCO is lower.

Read here to find out what the studies showed: http://www.betanews.com/article/Study_Linux_and_Windows_Costs_Equal/1159218430

This ties into a similar conversation I had with a colleague about a project being proposed for replacing Unix servers, and the curiousity of what advantages they had for wanting to migrate them to Linux. Was it the hope to reduce costs? Did they have the staff who could support it? Were these things being taken into account?

This can quickly lead to the question of whether TCO is something that matters as much to decision makers...but that is a discussion to have another day...

It is interesting to go down the path of measuring the impacts to the ecosystem that is the infrastructure when you make sweeping assumptions to make decisions. Most often, capturing the impacts into hard numbers is tricky. If you want to get some perspective  on that, visit my esteemed colleague Lewis Curtis' blog site  forhis thoughts about that.

Arm Chair Discussion: Is Open Source like Communism?

So we were sitting in our arm chairs, watching some show on Discovery (probably Dirty Jobs, which is hysterically funny and makes me grateful for the fairly safe job I have. Although sometime later I will tell you about the time I tried to electrocute and crush myself in my Adventures of Server Girl).

He speaks up during a commercial, "you know, I think that Open Source is like Communism."

I am shaken from my TV haze..."Huh?"

"Yeah, there is no real way that Open Source will be able to sustain itself long-term, look at what happened in Russia."

And so the conversation starts...

Let's first look at the definition of communism:

classless political system: the political theory or system in which all property and wealth is owned in a classless society by all the members of that society (MSN Encarta)

Hmm interesting...now let's look at the definition of Open Source:

Open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's sources. (WikiPedia).

In technology, WikiPedia goes on to describe open source as "...software whose source code is published and made available to the public, enabling anyone to copy, modify and redistribute the source code without paying royalties or fees. Open source code evolves through community cooperation."

OK so communism and open source, by loose definition, sound similar. So there are several questions that I would like to explore with discussion that are interesting. Can there be true innovation using Open Source from a technology perspective? Can Open source be truly sustainable or will it fall apart like communism has?

Let's look at the innovation question first. Yes, I think that you can be truly innovative using Open Source, it is after all, open for everyone to see and contribute to. Sounds like a developer's utopia. A couple thoughts here: If it is open for all to see and contribute to (like the community farm), no one gets paid for the innovation they put into it. All that innovation goes into the collective. Sure, it feeds your creative beast, but it doesn't feed your family. Eventually, one takes priority over the other (hopefully the family!), and innovation begins to decline.

Why? In my opinion, it is because there are a lot of hidden costs to supporting an open source platform. If it is free, the deal looks great on paper. Do more with less! But supporting something like this is problematic, and very expensive. Large organizations have grown their business around supporting open source platforms (think IBM). Or you have that group of people within your org that are solely dedicated to supporting all of the updates, bugs, etc. of the platform, and then get all of those changes back out to the collective, because your org doesn't truly own the code.

So where is the time to innovate? It shrinks, because you have a business to run.

Is it sustainable? Will large enterprise companies truly bet their mission critical systems on open source? In my opinion, probably not. What's in it for your org? Let's face it, your CxO isn't out to contribute to the collective, they are out to keep their business running and making a profit, remaining competitive (which means, my edge isn't free for all to see and copy).

I think that open source will continue to exist, but in niche spaces, like small business solutions. Developers and technologists will continue to contribute to open source as enthusiasts, but will have a day job to keep the food on the table and a roof over their heads. Large businesses will not use it for mission critical enterprise class apps because it hinders their competitive edge and profitability.

So what do you think?

Introducing: The Arm Chair Discussions

Hi everyone

I am introducing a series called the Arm Chair Discussions. This is something that started when my boyfriend and I (both techies) had to move upstairs while we tore up our entire downstairs. We moved both of our arm chairs in front of the TV in our room, and that became our living room.

I noticed that since I started working for a technical company, we began having several technically philosophical discusssions, sitting side-by-side in our arm chairs (like an old couple, only missing the pipe and knitting needles :), and no, my boyfriend's name is not Archie Bunker).

Because these discussions were so thought provoking, I thought that I would bring them to my blog, to provoke discussion, get your brains brewing, see what opinions and views are out there.

So stay tuned for the first installment!

SSO Isn't Worth it!?

Hi All

Well it is officially done. I have participated in my first podcast. Check it out here:

http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=193478

I did this podcast just prior to a roundtable session at the Microsoft National Architect Forum in Vail Colorado in April 2006. We discussed the challenges of Identity.

One person had some very interesting feedback during that roundtable while discussion Single Sign On. She noted that why have it, when it is more of a convenience. Efforts should be focused on Identity Management.

In another rag that I read a couple of weeks later, they stated that SSO is a bad term, and should be looked at as reduced sign on. Getting to SSO is a rather unrealistic goal.

All very interesting to me. Could we be in search of the Holy Grail? Is it worth it to focus on SSO?

What do you all think?