Alexander’s Blog

Everyone is guessing what the new name for Longhorn server will be. Microsoft has said that it won’t be Vista Server and that the official name will be announced at the time of Beta 3, which is expected in the first half of 2007.

Windows Server 2007 could be an obvious choice, but knowing Microsoft, if it is so obvious that people can guess it, they won’t like it. Microsoft’s marketing department likes things that are different. Actually, they prefer things to be dynamic. Their strategy has been to change their product names and logos as often as humanly possible. MCP logo is a perfect example. At one time they were changing the logo just about every year so no one (even the MCPs) could figure out which logo to use. And you can rest assured that the current MCP logos will change, just like the names for Microsoft certifications. And what about the Windows naming convention? Windows 2000 Server but Windows Server 2003? Okay, let’s not go there.

Based on the past history, one thing is for sure. Microsoft will drop the name “Windows” from its operating systems in the future. Obviously, Microsoft’s marketing folks are very smart. You don’t find Apple’s OS X on 90% of the computers in the world, do you? Needless to say, Microsoft’s marketing is good. I often like to say this about Microsoft’s marketing: “They can sell you dirt and not only will you buy it, you will like it.” Now that’s marketing!

A classic science-fiction scene shows a person wearing a metal skullcap with electrodes sticking out to detect the person’s thoughts. Another sci-fi movie standard depicts robots doing humans’ bidding. Now the two are combined, and in real life: University of Washington (UW) researchers in Seattle, WA can control the movement of a humanoid robot with signals from a human brain.

Rajesh Rao, associate professor of computer science and engineering, and his students have demonstrated that an individual can “order” a robot to move to specific locations and pick up specific objects merely by generating the proper brain waves that reflect the individual’s instructions. The results were presented recently at the Current Trends in Brain-Computer Interfacing meeting in Whistler, B.C.

“This is really a proof-of-concept demonstration,” Rao says. “It suggests that one day we might be able to use semi-autonomous robots for such jobs as helping disabled people or performing routine tasks in a person’s home.”

The controlling individual — in this case a graduate student in Rao’s lab — wears a cap dotted with 32 electrodes. The electrodes pick up brain signals from the scalp based on a technique called electroencephalography. The person watches the robot’s movements on a computer screen via two cameras, one mounted on the robot and another above it.

Right now, the “thought commands” are limited to a few basic instructions. A person can instruct the robot to move forward, choose one of two available objects, pick it up, and bring it to one of two locations. Preliminary results show 94 percent accuracy in choosing the correct object.

Objects available to be picked up are seen by the robot’s camera and conveyed to the user’s computer screen. Each object lights up randomly. When the person looks at the object that he or she wants to pick up and sees it suddenly brighten, the brain registers surprise. The computer detects this characteristic surprised pattern of brain activity and conveys the choice back to the robot, which then proceeds to pick up the selected object. A similar procedure is used to determine the user’s choice of a destination once the object has been picked up.

Click here for the entire story.

Windows Vista has a ReadyBoost feature that can improve the performance of your Windows Vista computer. ReadyBoost has certain requirements so not all USB flash devices can be used for Windows ReadyBoost. Here’s a method that you can try to force ReadyBoost on a USB flash drive. I am not sure if it has any adverse effect so use it at your own risk.

1. Plug in your USB flash drive in Windows Vista.

2. In the AutoPlay window, click on the “Speed up my system” option. You may see the following on your screen which indicates that your USB device doesn’t support ReadyBoost.

If you don’t see the AutoPlay window, go to My Computer, right-click the USB drive, click on Properties, then click the ReadyBoost tab.

3. Uncheck the box “Stop retesting this device when I plug it in.”, click OK and then remove the USB drive.

4. Start the registry editor and go to the following location: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\EMDMgmt.

5. Look for the folder that starts with {”_??_” as shown in the following screen shot.

6. Set the values of ReadSpeedKBs and the WriteSpeedKBs to 1000 (decimal).

7. Plug in the USB device again and you should be able to use ReadyBoost.

This method may not work on every USB flash drive and you should know that you are modifying the registry at your own risk. However, I don’t use the same drive that I am using for ReadyBoost for storing my data so I am not worried about losing any data on the USB flash drive.

The California assembly committee recently passed a bill which will affect all companies doing business in California. Among other businesses, it will have a serious impact on credit card companies, banks, and financial institutions who handle users’ personal data. The bill will move to the Assembly Business and Professions Committee for a hearing on April 24. According to

The Data Breach Notification Bill, Assembly Bill 779, was approved Tuesday by the state Assembly Judiciary Committee with an 8-2 vote. The bill, authored by committee chairman Assemblyman Dave Jones (D-Sacramento), seeks to improve data security by requiring accountability and reimbursement of affected parties if a data breach occurs. [Source: BizJournals]

It’s interesting that the California Credit Union League supports the bill, while California Bankers Association, California Mortgage Bankers Association, and the state’s financial services, grocers, retailers and restaurant associations all oppose the bill. Of course, these businesses don’t want to be held responsible for their lack of security and would prefer to continue to do business the way they have been doing for decades.

Here’s a portion of the Assembly Bill (AB 779).

Any person or business that conducts business in California, and that owns or licenses computerized data that includes personal information, shall disclose any breach of the security of the system following discovery or notification of the breach in the security of the data to any resident of California whose unencrypted personal information was, or is reasonably believed to have been, acquired by an unauthorized person.

You can read the entire bill here.

Active Directory Group Policies refresh every 90 minutes on a client (with a plus/minus 30 minute offset). If you want to force a refresh remotely on computers, you can use a utility called psExec from Sysinternals. psExec allows you to execute programs on a remote system interactively.

Download psExec and at the command prompt execute the following command:

psexec \\computer cmd

where computer is the IP address or name of the remote computer

Assuming you have the proper access to the remote computer, you will be able to execute the commands you want remotely. For example, to force a Group Policy refresh type gpupdate /force. The command will be executed on the remote computer instead of the local machine.

Another option is to use RGPrefresh.exe from GPOguy.com. This is a free command-line tool which requires .NET Framework 1.1. Click here for more info.

And yet another option is to use a free add-on to Active Directory from the Special Operations Software called Gpupdate. This tool will let you remotely and graphically refresh Group Policies as a right-click option in the user interface.