I’ve been hit by the coding bug recently. I don’t know, but summer seems to be the time when me and programming re-ignite our love affair with each other. While coding, I get a lot of time to think. To think about fun items. To think about projects, life, etc… And while coding my project today, I started to think back to a webcast that an Altiris Consulting company put on a week or two ago. They were touting a third party product for doing Hardware Independent Imaging. During the course of their presentation, they mentioned that they would soon have support for Vista. That got me to thinking. Once Vista hit the main stream, how much would HII really benefit enterprise clients? Currently, this is a huge item for enterprise customers to do, as it allows them to have one image to deploy across multiple hardware platforms. Thats good for XP which has a HAL which is specific to the hardware. But Vista is a different beast! At the core of it all, Vista is Hardware Independent when rolling out the image. Wait. What? Vista(when deployed with their method–have to try with Altiris sometime soon…hmmm…I’ll get back to you all on that one….) is by nature hardware independent. No longer do you have to worry about if you have a uniprocessor hal, a multiprocessor hal, a hal for a hyperthreading desktop, a hal for a non-hyperthreading desktop. Its all the same.
So with this little “advent” that Microsoft has brought to the imaging world, where does that leave HII? It leaves it at driver deployment. If you do HII as suggested by Altiris in their white paper, you will get a fully functional computer. You won’t get(however) all the little specifics and customizations that you would want to do for all the images. For example. When installing Nvidia drivers, the drivers install perfectly with no problem. The situation arises when the client wants to use the Nvidia control panel. Well, depending on if the drivers were signed or not, you may or may not have the panel. Also, the panel would not be added to the right click context menu for clients. I know not many people use it, but those one or two that do…… You also wouldn’t get any of the registry keys entered under startup for any helper processes the drivers rely on when the computer starts…so you’ll have to manually(read: WITH A SCRIPT) install those registry keys for the client.(otherwise the drivers won’t work properly)

Another problem with the white paper is the lack of customization as far as applications go. Sure, you can run the installer after the HII is done with an Altiris job, but it fails to mention a small bug in Altiris where either

1. Altiris looses track of what process is running on what computer, and unable to detect when that process is done and to move on to the next one.
2. Altiris sometimes forgets to wait for data to fully finish downloading before it tries to run executables, which results in “corrupt” installs of the software

Those are kinda annoying, and can bring the whole process to a grinding stop. (as an FYI, I’m doing a thing on HII at http://www.armentpau.comon how to make HII super customized and more than just a driver delivery method, and how to deliver drivers in such a way that you don’t miss any of the extras that the driver installs) So with HII being a driver delivery method(in the near future), I can forsee a lot of companies getting mad that they have started to invest a lot of money into HII images. For a company(corporation) they can afford to have one image across all computers(read: same software load) wheres where I am currently employeed, we have different software loads based on the location of the computer as well as the role(student versus administration images) that the computer will be used for. Current white paper specfications leave little to nothing for the customization of these situations. They provide for the drivers and let you do the software afterward(or have all the software already installed for EVERYONE).
Because of this, I predict that we will start to see a major shift in what HII means. The focus will move more towards application deployment with the deployment of (initially) on the network driver, with the rest of the drivers being installed along with the applications. This process might be rough at first, but I predict it moving along and eventually being done seamlessly while using one base image across all computers in such a manor that it is streamlined as well as efficient(again, Vista being HII at heart makes that part easy(again—I will check whether it holds true when Ghosted or Altirised). Ok. Enough ranting from the old man who loves HII. I should get going. I got some things in TIMS to figure out how/what to do with.

Categories: Technology
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I’m a fan of Linux. Its a nice operating system that I don’t get to spend enough time in. But one thing that has come about recently(and its mostly from people who try to say they are in the Linux community) that has tarnished it is the people that have made a big issue over the HD-DVD key. Someone found a way to crack and find that key, ok. I’m glad that their skills are good enough to find that. And you know, what, there needs to be people that are able to find that key. You know why? To help the industry that made it further their encryption and protection methods. Oh wait, did I just say that?


I’m not a fan of DRM at all, I think its one of the worst things to do in the world. But while intentionally find ways to break encryption for hopes of watching a dvd are admirable, it doesn’t take a genius to realize why people are throwing a fit about the HD-DVD key. The reason isn’t so much that they want to watch a movie, but the real reality is that the HD-DVD and Blueray keys have prevented these movies from being leaked onto file sharing programs. Sure the size of them will(for a while) limit their ability to be transfered, but as network speeds continue to increase, this probably won’t take long until it gets to that time. Of course, transfer via HDD is always something that will be available. So yeah, as people continue to make a big fuss over the key and it being removed, its not because they actually want it(most likely) for legit reasons. There are those out there who do wish to just watch the video in Linux, and for them, I say kudos and I’m glad that they can read the DVD now. But for those that keep trying to illegally trade dvd movies.

Its funny to watch the uproar on the key. People have been digging articles that have the key to the top of digg’s list because they think that it will stick it to the man if they do. They put in their article to digg it so that it will teach the RIAA(first off–wrong organization people) what the power of people can do. I think that its good that Digg and other places have removed those articles from its index regarding the HD-DVD key. I actually hope that Google and other search engines will do the correct thing and remove the key from their index. Its been funny as people have been writing news paper articles about how this is a “revolt” of the people. Let me ask though, how is this really a revolt? Its really just a bunch of morons trying to keep the same piece of information in the web. Its no revolt.

So yes. I hate DRM, I hate DRM companies, but I support them still because they somehow need to protect their intellectual property and prevent people from stealing it. Is there something better than DRM to do that and allow for better fair use, I’m sure that there is. What is it? I’m snot sure what it is honestly. But I know that until that time, we should support DRM and try to make the best of it. As we crack it and break it and distribute it and talk about cracking it, the tighter the DRM companies will continue to wrap their hands around the media. So in a way…..we have done it to ourselves……….and we need to live with the consequences…….but still…….DRM = bad.

Categories: Technology, Thoughts
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Two creative young individuals approached me requesting hosting space. I agreed and soon there will be coming to the web a new media production crew. It will be interesting to see what they produce, and once they are up and running, look here for links back to them

Categories: General
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So there is a “rapper”(and I use the term loosly) on YouTube thats been getting a lot of attention recently. Their videos are posted multiple times, and the girls just think that he is the cutest thing. Can you guess who he is? Take a moment and think really hard here.

Thinking still?

How bout now?

Give up yet?

Do the intials BG mean anything to you?

Well the “rapper” in question is just barely out of his diapers, and goes by the name of Bentley Green. When I say just barely out of his diapers, I mean this. The kid is six years old. Take a moment to re-read that. Yes. Six!

Im all up for kids having a dream and all, but some things just don’t mesh right. First off, the sound of that kids voice makes me want to bang my head against a table while drilling out my ear drums. The banging of the head is to dull the pain, and the drilling out of the ear drums is so that I will never have to hear that disgraceful thing that they try to pass off as music again. What I find funny about it is how people are like “OH HE’S SO CUTE!” Wait. What? Ok, so maybe the kid is a “cute kid” or whatever, but that doesn’t automatically gain him entrance as a good performer or singer. I think right now that people accept the horrible screech that is called music because the kid is only 6 years old. People have this tendency that if a kid does something that they think(for whatever reason) is kinda cute, then they don’t say anything about the quality of it, they just go on, and let the kid live their lives and say it was the best thing ever. They are doing more harm than good to that poor kid. They need to tell him one thing, his voice is awful. Its nails across a chalkboard awful. People also need to stop encouraging this sort of behavior where little kids stop having childhoods and start acting like “adults” the kid probably doesn’t even know what he’s doing yet!

But that is one man’s opinion. My opinion to be exact.

Oh yeah. Forgot to mention! I’m graduating! This Saturday! YEAH!

Categories: Thoughts
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