Vista Activation Loophole

Back in the day, In the "Old Country," Microsoft would trust us to purchase the correct number of licenses we needed. All we needed to do was enter a CD-Key that was located on the CD sleeve during installation.. If we had a key, we must have bought it; Right?

Well, it seems as though Microsoft caught on to us. We were giving the CD's and their keys to friends, family, coworkers and strangers on the street. Some people even went as far as to zip the CD and put it and the key on an FTP site that we could download it from.. So they created this nifty little "activation" process.

The problem with this "activation" process was that IT professionals were not given enough time test new releases with their network, hardware and software. We had 30 days before we needed to activate our copy. Then the software could not be installed to any other machine at any time, unless you called Microsoft and begged them...

Microsoft's answer to this problem was to create their Open License with Windows XP, but all of the "Bad Apple" IT pros started giving these away too...

Here is an article by Joel Hruska which outlines how to extend the activation period for Vista, in some cases, for up to a year.

Daylight Saving Time - 2007

Daylight Saving Time 2007

Beginning this year (2007), as some of you may or may not know by now, Daylight Saving Time begins 3 weeks earlier and ends a week later. This change is due to the Energy Policy Act of 2005. It is expected that the US will save approximately 10,000 Barrels of oil each day.

I beleive that Bill Gates had something to do with this.. It seems as though this year happens to be the year that mainstream support for Windows 2000 Server and Professional has ended.. So, this means no patch for all those Windows 2000 machines out there... UNLESS... You pay $4000 to extend that support... Or upgrade.... Or hire a techie, like me, to fix it for you.. Either way, if you are small business with Several 2000 machines still in production, your paying for this change in Daylight Saving Time..

There is hope, however. Microsoft did release a utility that makes it easy to change the DST settings on your PC. You can download the TZEDIT utility and read the instructions on it's use. This utility works on Windows NT 4.0 as well.

For everyone else using Windows XP or later, just run windows update and consider yourself patched....

Microsft Exchange, SQL, SMS and other server software needs to be patched as well.. Don't forget about fax machine, Blackberry's, Windows Mobile and other little electronic gadgets that display the date and time...

Just remember, all this work is for the good of the country.. :-)

My First Attempt

This is my first attempt at blogging. I'm not sure that I will be very good at it, but if you've read some of the blogs that I have, then it may just be right on the money...

I will use this area to post information on new and existing technologies, some unusual observances, and whatever else comes to mind at the time. This is my blog, so I'll do what I want on it... If you don't like it, get your own blog... :)

So keep reading, I'll try to keep it up to date and post at least once a week, if not more..

Thanks

TechGuruJeff