Books
I've just finished the Dune 3-part series: Dune, Dune Messiah and Children of Dune. What a slog! The series starts out well. I felt that Dune Messiah was a bit tedious, and Children of Dune not entirely consistent with the previous novels.
What I enjoyed about the Dune series was the philosophy: What would it be like to be able to see into the future? What if memories were inheritable or even transmittable?
I also found the addictive, life-prolonging and vision-imparting drug "spice" to be an interesting allegory for oil, especially in these days of $4/gallon gas. Herbert's view on the impact of a difficult existence on a culture is interesting too. Was Herbert trying to say something about desert cultures and conflict? Probably.
So after completing the Dune series, I've now turned to Sidhartha, Herbert Hesse's transformational novel. Like many I read this as a teenager. It's interesting to re-read it now. Much of the novel has a different message now that I'm older. I wonder if a Sidhartha movie was made? I'll have to take a look...
Web Services
I've found that it's possible to access web services from within Office 2003 applications without much effort. The benefit here is clear: Users often want to link spreadsheets to live data sources. In the past, I've cringed at such requests as I regard end users interacting directly with a sql server as 1) difficult to control, 2) a performance problem waiting to happen, and 3) very difficult to support when they don't work.
Web services I think will change this. Instead of pointing directly at a database, users can point their spreadsheets at web services. Access to the web service can be controlled with NT folder security and there's no need for the users even to know that they're connecting to a sql server, much less have login rights to it.
Briefly, to connect Office 2003 applications to web services, , a free Microsoft add-on must be first downloaded and installed. The add-on, the Microsoft Office 2003 Web Services Toolkit 2.01, can be downloaded from this URL:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=fa36018a-e1cf-48a3-9b35-169d819ecf18&displaylang=en
Microsoft-provided documentation for using the web services toolkit in a variety of scenarios is available here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa140260(office.10).aspx
Windows 2008 and the Hypervisor
I've also been experimenting lately with Windows 2008 and the hypervisor. Most important observation? It's much, much faster than Virtual Server on the same machine. I liked the management tools that accompany Virtual Server, but the hypervisor offers snapshots which Virtual Server does not.
The hypervisor runs only on 64-bit Windows 2008, and then on machines that include certain hardware extensions. I'm working with a Dell Optiplex 775 and it took a bit of fiddling to determine the exact BIOS configuration necessary to get the hypervisor to start up.
If you're also working with a Dell and can't get the hypervisor to work, try these BIOS settings:
Security - Execute Disable = on
Performance - Virtualization = on
VT for direct I/O = on
Trusted Execution = off
I've just finished the Dune 3-part series: Dune, Dune Messiah and Children of Dune. What a slog! The series starts out well. I felt that Dune Messiah was a bit tedious, and Children of Dune not entirely consistent with the previous novels.
What I enjoyed about the Dune series was the philosophy: What would it be like to be able to see into the future? What if memories were inheritable or even transmittable?
I also found the addictive, life-prolonging and vision-imparting drug "spice" to be an interesting allegory for oil, especially in these days of $4/gallon gas. Herbert's view on the impact of a difficult existence on a culture is interesting too. Was Herbert trying to say something about desert cultures and conflict? Probably.
So after completing the Dune series, I've now turned to Sidhartha, Herbert Hesse's transformational novel. Like many I read this as a teenager. It's interesting to re-read it now. Much of the novel has a different message now that I'm older. I wonder if a Sidhartha movie was made? I'll have to take a look...
Web Services
I've found that it's possible to access web services from within Office 2003 applications without much effort. The benefit here is clear: Users often want to link spreadsheets to live data sources. In the past, I've cringed at such requests as I regard end users interacting directly with a sql server as 1) difficult to control, 2) a performance problem waiting to happen, and 3) very difficult to support when they don't work.
Web services I think will change this. Instead of pointing directly at a database, users can point their spreadsheets at web services. Access to the web service can be controlled with NT folder security and there's no need for the users even to know that they're connecting to a sql server, much less have login rights to it.
Briefly, to connect Office 2003 applications to web services, , a free Microsoft add-on must be first downloaded and installed. The add-on, the Microsoft Office 2003 Web Services Toolkit 2.01, can be downloaded from this URL:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=fa36018a-e1cf-48a3-9b35-169d819ecf18&displaylang=en
Microsoft-provided documentation for using the web services toolkit in a variety of scenarios is available here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa140260(office.10).aspx
Windows 2008 and the Hypervisor
I've also been experimenting lately with Windows 2008 and the hypervisor. Most important observation? It's much, much faster than Virtual Server on the same machine. I liked the management tools that accompany Virtual Server, but the hypervisor offers snapshots which Virtual Server does not.
The hypervisor runs only on 64-bit Windows 2008, and then on machines that include certain hardware extensions. I'm working with a Dell Optiplex 775 and it took a bit of fiddling to determine the exact BIOS configuration necessary to get the hypervisor to start up.
If you're also working with a Dell and can't get the hypervisor to work, try these BIOS settings:
Security - Execute Disable = on
Performance - Virtualization = on
VT for direct I/O = on
Trusted Execution = off