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Page last edited: Wednesday August 06, 2008
Here are a few advertisements for good books on computing, the best utilities people, and, would you believe it, but Microsoft software is not the worst material to work with. You wouldn't be using computers were it not for the arrival of the Windows 3.0 (admittedly inadequate) Operating System, that enabled home computing to take off.

IT News and related stuff
2002/05/06 Bad bosses and how to deal with them: sounds like Taima/Convergys, what? And the mention in this article about spineless jellyfish is particularly appropriate, since these "humans" are seemingly common everywhere! For other information on this subject, I have been developing pages here.
2002/05/07 AOL Time Warner dot.com nightmare
2002/05/14 Oh, how the employers will like this: work them to death, what? It won't just stay in BC, will it?
2002/05/15 Now, this does relate to IT, since the reasons for this drop relate to big business in North America. For instance, see Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser. And, Eric at Salon. Note this Cow-fired power source, which would solve a major problem made centre stage in Schlosser's work. Not IT? Cubicle grunts are installed everywhere, badly treated. And badly paid. And ill.
Hackers stealing from the pirates, what? December, 2003
Another short-sighted decision by MS: fear and loathing department.
February, 2004 in US election year: and here we have the Economist arguing for dynamic job creation in the US, and a response, in effect, from Chaos Manor, aka Jerry Pournelle.
February, 2004: Surreal stuff, boyo, as if posing was not an art. Neither CEO, of either company, looks real. It's not as if it's the normal place to take a photograph, is it, with all those lovely cables?
March, 2006: The Enigma still in the news. Google needs a nuclear power station. Article here.
Power meters coming to a house near you. Water meters in the UK. Crunch time.
2007/06/15: Outlook is giving me problems, just like it gives others that have administrative privileges and the Grand Nanny at Microsoft prevents one from helping oneself or, indeed, others.

WinPE and ImageX:
The introduction of Vista is in fact an aid for those who wish to clone disks without the use of sector control programmes. The making of a WinPE CD and then using the added executables enables one to replace hard drives with larger ones, something that should have been possible ages ago. This is one of the good reasons for having a subscription for the free Mark Minasi's Windows Networking Tech Page.

There are links here to a few Mark Minasi newsletters that show one how to make a WinPE CD, and how to use it to create a WIM file and why, and to follow up, if you are a real techie, with SysPrep.

Note for anyone: the use of the WinPE CD and ImageX will enable anyone to backup their whole boot drive, preferably to another drive, internal or external, or to burn a wim ISO to a CD/DVD. One can then use the WinPE CD to renew the boot drive should anything go wrong. And it will, as I have discovered innumerable times.

The procedure is good for Vista, obviously, but also good for computers running XP, Win2003 and Win2k. Note that the wim ISO can be updated at any time, should you have installed updates or any other programmes. All of this is explained either in the linked Mark Minasi pages, or on the summary page I have created.

The first page (http://www.minasi.com/newsletters/nws0701.htm) has a Tech Section showing how to download, install and configure WinPE. Note that there are two caveats: one must first download the BDD (Business Desktop Development) tool and install it on X:\BDD. That is, on any drive, but _not_ in Program Files, which is the source of pain when writing  command lines. There is no WAIK download: that has been halted.

Furthermore there is the matter of using unattended scripts and WAIK/WSIM, basically for use with Vista, for which see here: http://www.minasi.com/newsletters/nws0701a.htm. This can be used in relation to the 0702a newsletter referred to below.

Note, for the second caveat, that when one finds oneself at the ISO creation stage do not place a space between the b and the X in -bX:\ part of the line that is actually written, as shown in the article,  oscdimg -n -h -bc:\etfsboot.com c:\winpe\iso c:\winpe\winpe.iso. To prove that, go to http://technet.microsoft.com and search for Oscdimg, where the command line operators (this link might work) are described. Or, check the right hand image below, where there is proof of an actual example.

Secondly, this page (http://www.minasi.com/newsletters/nws0702.htm) delineates why and how to use a Wim file and how to replace, fix or clone your XP, 2000 or Vista installation. Forget DOS sector based programmes: that's why it wasn't possible to clone NTFS file systems and why expansion is easy now that one is simply replacing folders with folders from a Wim file.

For those too idle to register and grasp a user name and password at Microsoft, as is required on this BDD download page, here is the actual file for use with an X86 XP SP2 system. Right click and download, or simply install directly to an XP box. Note that if you have an X64 or something similar, use this file.

Note that more pages will arrive from Mark Minasi to expand on what he has already expounded. There is much more that one can do but, primarily, it enables one to replace any small, registered XP based hard drive with another, maybe with a large SATA or PATA hard drive and be able, subsequently, to successfully run all of one's installed programmes too. After, that is, the use of WinPE for a simple file and folder placing, of the WIM file, onto an easily available hard drive which can be on a USB link, or another drive in the computer, or on a share.

Test before doing anything else. The first link above shows how to include network drivers should you need to do so.

For your assistance, here are two jpegs showing the folders on Monmouth, an XP Pro SP2 X86 box, and the ISO creation using the WinPE command line. Click to enlarge, and if the large image is unclear, download it and open with an image viewer, or obtain a larger monitor:
      
The first image shows the file system and the BDD Deployment Workbench: the latter appears after one starts the programme and after it creates this workbench for itself. It will advise you to download and install certain executables, especially the WAIK. The WAIK is notably large, and one needs a fast connection. Note also that one has to have NET 2.0 previously installed as well as MSXML 6.0 (although the latter is included with the download). Note that the programmes have been installed on Dora, the D: drive. One should be able to see D:\BDD for the Business Desktop Development, D:\WAIK for the Windows Automated Installation Kit which can only be installed via this work bench. There is a similar folder for the WinPE files. The process is semi-automatic, since the necessary path is appended so that it is easy to use the command line.
For your information, I created an ISO for WinPE usage: it was reasonably easy to do. Much more so after I had checked the -b moderator setting.

The page mentioned on the second of Minasi's emails is this one: http://www.minasi.com/newsletters/nws0702a.htm which is concerned with SysPrep, a follow-up to the WinPE discussion. All four newsletters referred to are required reading if one is to be competent in cloning and dispersing OS images to any number of computers.

Now, I know that one shouldn't need to, but to improve clarity, as far as I am able, here is a page that includes the substantive part of all of the above about WinPE and ImageX but probably not SysPrep.

Thursday, March 20th., 2008: Given all of that above, one wonders whether it's worth it. I have managed to use several machines, running constantly, to ensure all data I wish to retain is kept in at least three places. That I now have a Microsoft TechNet subscription means that I can forget the worries about running whatever OS decides to die away. The ease by which one can maintain one's machines at optimal condition is now simple. I think, therefore, that the Win PE plus information is simply a method for use when one has data that is singular, or an application that needs that particular piece of hardware.

Odd problems
The need for clean code. A problem still turns up using FireFox on a newspaper site.

Do you still run Windows 2000 Server or Advanced Server?
Whenever you reinstall, or simply want to include the latest DST settings, you need to run these three items, to update the time zones and Daylight Savings Time limits:
TZedit, (the new limits are the second Sunday in March and first Sunday in November) and here is its help file; and then run TZupdate and refresh TZinfo. Click to run, or save to your computer and run from there. All of this is taken from a Microsoft page, namely http://support.microsoft.com/kb/914387/en-us. All of my networked computers now run on the correct date algorithms, although of course the XP Pro SP2 boxes updated themselves. To clarify, Windows 2000 is unsupported, sort of.

IT/Networking & Security
Canadian High Speed Internet comparison of the not so recent past, useful for an historical view.
Internet speeds: comparative rates for different technologies.
DSL Reports
Gibson's Shield's Up
SmartWHOis
Netcraft Web Site search
Network Diagnosis
Network Ice
Here can be found the Postal Code lookup to verify feasibility of access in Canada.
SANS/FBI Twenty Most Critical Internet Security Vulnerabilities: General, Windows and Unix/Linux.
Sygate
UNIRAS UK web site that showed TCP to be vulnerable, April 2004, especially for certain routers in general use.
Vicomsoft; includes Intergate
Visual Trace Route
VLAN at 3COM
ZoneAlarm
DHCP insecurity, and a discussion that will never end: Windows v Mac!! Note that this page has been edited for legibility and spelling. The links on the page will lead you to the source of the argument.

And A Few Magazines
Byte (which needs a subscription) and typical pages from Jerry Pournelle and another that mentions creeping loss of security. Direct link: Jerry Pournelle (ex-Byte, always at Chaos Manor).  The email pages on his home site contain many themes, politics especially and are not always about computing, as is clear from my criticism of one of the polemics that was posted.
Computer Paper
Dr Dobb's Journal and a recent, important editorial, referring to corruption and lobbying
HotWired
Linux Journal
SysAdmin
Windows .NET Magazine the name may change, yet again, but the contents maintain their excellence.  It's now called Windows ITPro whatever.

Publishers, Instructors, Training, Courseware
Sean Daily, senior consulting editor of Windows2000 Magazine, is CEO of Realtimepublishers.com
Ken Spencer of 32x.com for Courseware/Training/Software Development
Mark Minasi NT/Win2k/Linux author/guru/speaker & Senior Contributing Editor, Windows .NET or IT Pro or whatever Magazine
Michael Moncur: Nutshell books on MCSE, the common O'Reilly Books series. And, JavaScript and other stuff through
Sams. Something like twenty books published, generally well-written and accurate.
Daniel Petri site: has given me lots of excellent information. Good forums, too.
Warriors of the Net, the visual Internet cartoon.
Cathy Shea: Californian Internet guru: Fullfont
@Stake (security firm, tools, education, etc) 
RCFOC (weekly news on computing trends, by Jeffrey Harrow, who has left his position at Compaq)
Jon Udell (Groupware guru)
Stan Kelly-Bootle @ UnixReview.com or Sar Chek (acid humour and linguistics)
Donald Knuth (Programming Arch Wizard: author of the "Art of Computer Programming" vols I-III published; awaiting IV-VI+, although I doubt that he'll ever complete his masterpiece)
John Dvorak for maximum tech links.