Other OS info

Preferably one that can work with Office Communications Server 2007 R2.

Unfortunately, as of the most recent Communicator client for Mac, there isn't true SIP phone/PBX support. I know someone out there has had to tackle this problem before, so I am curious if anyone has some recommendations?

You might run into this with a QIP-based DHCP as a backend with XP SP3 clients: Some DHCP Options are not recognized on a Windows XP SP3-based client computer when the DHCP server offer includes option 43. Install KB 953761.

Long story, short: Due to the addition of vendor specific options of the XP SP3 DHCP client request, relating to NAP, the code expects DHCP options to be returned in a certain order. When paired with a MS-based DHCP server, correct behavior is observed. If used with a different DHCP server that might reorder the DHCP reply, the original XP SP3 DHCP client code might not correctly set all DHCP settings.

There is a two page thread on the TechNet forums about this issue here.

You might be wondering why a Linux-centric post is doing here, but it could be helpful for others out there trying out Ubuntu 8.10 Beta with systems that have Intel gigabit Ethernet adapters in them.

Only newer Intel chipsets seem to be affected by this bug in the earlier Linux 2.6.27-RC builds, but there is a potential of NVRAM wiping if certain (rare) situations occur. For this reason, by default, Ubuntu 8.10 Beta has the affected PCI IDs blacklisted.

However, if you update your kernel to the latest kernel release for Ubuntu Intrepid, using Update Manager or other methods (apt-get or synaptic). As of today, the package version is 2.6.27-4.6.

If you want to read more about the blacklisting and the bug fix involved, read the article here, and here.

The only other bummer I have run into so far with this new version of Ubuntu is that the newest ATI binary drivers do not support X.org 7.4 (yet) so if you want 3D goodness *right now* you have to downgrade to the old Hardy 7.3 libraries. I don't want to go through that hassle and will just wait for ATI/AMD to play catch up.

Info on ATI getting the binary drivers to work on Ubuntu 8.10 here.

Other than that, everything works out of the box after you un-blacklist the wired interface.

Bluetooth, wireless, everything, fired right up. I can't say that about prior versions of Ubuntu with my Thinkpad T60.

Thankfully wireless was working with WPA2 so that I could get on my home network and upgrade the kernel or else I would have been sneakernetting the upgrade files.

iTunes 8 is a neat application but I still get frustrated every time I upgrade or install a new version. I have alternative means of watching for program updates, namely FileHippo.com's Update Checker, so I don't need Apple's update program clogging my StartUp registry key. I don't have any Apple mobile devices, so that is another group of programs I don't need installed. I also don't need 'iTunesHelper', 'QuickTime Task', or 'AppleSyncNotifier' loading on startup.

The biggest offender, however, is the Outlook plug-in. Whenever someone is complaining that their Outlook is crashing quite a bit, or will not shutdown in a timely manner, the first thing I ask is if they have iTunes installed on their machine.

Even though you can uninstall the Apple Mobile Device Support, the iTunes Outlook Add-in will stick around, which means you have to go into the 'Trust Center' of Outlook 2007 to disable or delete the COM Add-in. I like to keep my Outlook Add-in-less as much as possible due to potential memory leaks and strange problems can creep in without warning. Outlook does a good enough job by itself for that.

Honestly, I just want an 'Advanced' install option so I can deselect the items I don't want installed by default. I wish it was a required item for all programs in order to get the 'Certified for...' label.

Keep in mind, I'm only picking on iTunes right now because I upgraded my previously rock solid 7.7.x 64-bit install to 8 and the curse of the Outlook plug-in crash happened on my system. Plenty of other programs out there will add unwanted or unneeded 'features' without permission. Microsoft is just as guilty.

Other COM Addin offenders that I disable:
Streets and Trips add-in for email communication, MapPoint Office Add-In, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server Colleague Import Add-in, Microsoft Outlook Mobile Service, Microsoft VBA for Outlook Addin, Send to Bluetooth.

Note: I'm not affiliated with FileHippo.com, but I use their update program quite a bit.

I have a few OCS related posts in the wings but I've been tied up with travel, work and home activities, so they are currently stuck in Draft mode. I'm still behind on many items I need to complete before I can even think of finishing off those articles.

With that said though, this announcement from MS is worth an entry because it will make my life in the upcoming months that much easier. I've been doing a lot of Cisco/MS integration work this year, and there have always been many interesting gotchas.

Cisco Unified Communications Manager (aka CallManager) versions 4.2, 5.1 and 6.1 are now certified for Direct SIP connectivity with Office Communications Server.

Direct SIP allows connectivity between the OCS mediation server and the Cisco IP-PBX without the need for a gateway, meaning that Office Communicator users can be enabled for Enterprise Voice (i.e. Office Communicator is a full soft-phone, not just click-to-call or RCC) without significant upgrades or hardware replacements.

Read more about it here.

Short and sweet:

If you are looking for Greasemonkey functionality in Chrome, check this site out here.
If you are looking for an easy auto-updater for Chromium, check this site out here and check out the release directory here.

If you think your Chrome install updated over the weekend, it most likely did. The original version released was build 1583, and the build out now is 1798.

I'm sure buried in the EULA somewhere is that it can update behind your back without any notification too.

If you want to be riding the bleeding edge, download the newer snapshots from here.

As of a few hours ago, the Chromium build number is up to 0.2.152.0, whereas the current installed version of Chrome on my system seems to be version 0.2.149.29.

Much like the Firefox trunk builds, Chromium installs into a different directory than Chrome, so you can run them side by side if you wish.

Google Chrome came out today and the most impressive feature (to me) is the task manager.
Yep, task manager. In a web browser.

It also looks to be a cross-combination of WebKit, Safari and Google code. Interesting.
Countdown to 0-day exploit? I'm sure people are already looking.

This is a bit of a blast from the past but in the 90s, I liked to hack on the Linux kernel code and keep an eye on the development versions as they were released. Due to being a college student, my systems were rather cobbled together and not necessarily the fastest, so I was always looking for ways to make them run faster.

Based on a Slashdot article that mentioned an open-source code search engine, I decided to check to see how many of my 'code hacks' were still out there.

A few patches dealt with the Linux kernel TGA framebuffer, specifically on the DEC Alpha Multia, which at one point was my primary workstation. It was 64-bit before all the cool kids were doing it! I think I still have one in storage that runs the Digital Alpha version of Windows NT 4.0, and an early beta of Windows 2000 before the Alpha support was canned. Hopefully the hard drive still spins up but I suspect the power regulator on the motherboard is probably shot, which happened quite a bit on those systems.

The one patch I am most proud of made it officially into the TTY console layer of the Linux kernel in the 1.3 or 2.0 kernel era. I mention it from time to time to people, and due to how much Microsoft and other non-Linux 'stuff' I do these days, they tend to react as if I am making it up.

Thankfully, this is the proof that it really happened.

At one point I had a very temperamental Sound Blaster CD-ROM which had a custom interface card that plugged into the ISA port of my system. Due to some of the "interesting" code changes I made to the Sound Blaster CD driver, I was able to make the kernel driver about half the size and also make my CD-ROM spin up correctly 100% of the time. The standard kernel driver used to fall over when it received some of the error codes my hardware was throwing at it. Almost all of those original Sound Blaster CD-ROM drives had a defect that would eventually make them fail completely and no longer read any CD inserted into the caddy.

So, basically, I'm taking a little trip down code memory lane with this search engine.

It is good to see that Silverlight is going to be cross platform. It is a bit unfair to call it Microsoft's version of Flash, but there are quite a few similarities. Once again, I'll be curious to see how the dust settles in the next year or so.

Found this very handy post on the VMWare forums which helped me out quite a bit with my experimental Fedora Rawhide/"FC 8 Test" virtual machines.

Steps involved:
1. Download the latest kernel sources from kernel.org
2. Download and apply the VMWare any any 113+ patch.
3. Extract the kernel sources.
4. (64-bit only) Apply the patch from the message post to revert a commit that broke 64-bit systems.

Anthony Bailey tipped me off to this earlier today.

Changelog for "Codename Moviestar" from previous Flash 9 versions

Support for H.264 video and HE-AAC audio codecs (new Aug. 21).

Enhancements to full-screen mode to use hardware scaling for improved video performance and quality on systems running Windows 2000 and newer or Mac OS X 10.2 and newer.

Faster rendering of vector graphics on multi-core CPUs.

Higher quality and performance for downscaling large bitmaps (SWF 9 only).

Support for caching common platform components, such as the Flex framework, to reduce average application sizes.

Support for full-screen mode on Linux.

Recursive calling to and from JavaScript via the ExternalInterface API is now permitted (not available in Opera or Netscape).

Runtime errors can now be thrown from JavaScript to ActionScript via the External Interface API.

HTTP requests from the Flash Player ActiveX Control in some versions of Internet Explorer did not include the Accept-Language header. The ActiveX Control now always inserts this header.

Support for Microsoft Active Accessibility (MSAA) in the Windows plug-in.

As always, you will want to uninstall the previous version of the player before installing the new release.

If you are looking for a downloadable version of the Internet Explorer ActiveX Flash component, you can download it from here.

Novell Netware client for Vista 32-bit and 64-bit has been released here.

Highlights

Support for Novell Open Enterprise Server (OES) 1, OES 2, NetWare 5.1, NetWare 6.0, and NetWare 6.5
File system integration with NSS and non-NSS volumes via NCP
Login script processing
Notification area (Red N) options
Integrated login with Windows Vista (single username and password)
NMAS client integration
Forgotten password recovery options
LDAP contextless login support
DFS junctions
Support for 802.1x wireless authentication
DHCP options
OpenSLP support
Shell extensions for Windows Vista file browser
File caching/shared open mode support
Auto-reconnect
Cluster failover support
Property pages, NCIMAN, and updating Client settings

For some reason, there seems to be a band of zombie compromised systems out on the internet that keep trying to exploit an old s9y (the blogging software used here) bug that has been patched/fixed for years. I realize there can be really old copies of s9y around, but this isn't one of them.

So, if the site seems slow, it is probably due to all the bogus requests coming into comment.php. I've been doing some .htaccess magic to punt 99% of them off the server, but of course, they always add more and different IPs into the mix as time goes on.

I don't like disabling comments and I don't like enabling CAPTCHAs, and so far, my efforts have blocked 99.99% of the trackback and comment spam without the need of other measures. I would say one comment every other month slips by the automated system and gets flagged as a 'needs moderation' comment.

Considering that this site seems to get numerous comment spams per second, that is a pretty good track record.

I always love projects like these. A coworker tipped me off to this project a few weeks ago and I have been watching it from afar ever since. To a certain extent, you could think of it like a 'Heathkit' for a cell phone. Everything associated with it is very barebones and developer-kit like, but that is part of the charm of it all.

I am almost afraid of looking into it more, because knowing the way I am with 'fun projects', I will end up with a developer's kit and will be hacking away at the code to help make it more usable.

Must resist the temptation.