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Today was a good day
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18955115/.
Apparently they are permitting him access to the criminal justice system. Too bad. Guantanamo would probably have been more appropriate, or I have some even better ideas...
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Access Control Lists in Windows Vista
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TechNet Magazine just published the first of several articles with excerpts from the Windows Vista Security Book. "New ACLs Improve Security in Windows Vista" is what they called the first of two excerpts from the Access Control chapter. The same issue of the magazine also has an interesting article on UAC by Mark Russinovich, along with articles by Byron Hynes, Steve Riley, and others.
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WSUS 3.0 Is Still A Memory Hog
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This evening I brought my WSUS server up to WSUS 3.0. Mostly I wanted to see if it still was as big a memory hog as 2.0. After the 90-minute-or-so installation was finished, here is what I had:
wsusservice: 50 MB
IIS worker process: 100 MB
SQL 2005 instance: 400 MB
That's over half a gig! For a single service! In SBS land it has been standard practice to throttle SQL Server down a bit as there are other things running on the servers, so I decided to try it.
There is just one snag: WSUS ships with the "Windows Internal Database", i.e. SQL Server 2005 extremely lite. There are only three binaries in it, including exactly zero management tools. There is nothing you can use to run the commands to throttle it.
Fortunately, I had an installation of SQL Server 2000 SP4 still on this server. That install came with OSQL.EXE, the command-line SQL query/adminstration tool. It works against SQL 2005 too. The following command seems to do the trick. It remains to be seen how well it works:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\80\Tools\Binn>osql -E -S <server name>\MICROSOFT##SSEE
1> sp_configure 'show advanced options', 1;
2> reconfigure;
3> go
Configuration option 'show advanced options' changed from 0 to 1. Run the RECONFIGURE statement to install.
1> sp_configure 'max server memory', 256;
2> reconfigure;
3> go
Configuration option 'max server memory (MB)' changed from 2147483647 to 256. Run the RECONFIGURE statement to install.
1> exit
If you want to return the server to the default run the same command, but specify 2147483647 for the "max server memory" instead of 256. If you want a different maximum memory size than 256 change it. The value is specified in megabytes.
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I've Hit F12 For the Last Time
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OK, so whose bright idea was it to put the F12 key so close to the Delete key on the keyboard? And whose bright idea was it to map F12 to "Save As..." in every MS Office application? And, whose bright idea was it to default the Save As... option to the users home directory, even if that directory is redirected to a network share, and it will take up to 30 seconds to list that directory, with the net result that every time you fat-finger the Delete key the computer hangs for 30 seconds while it tries to list the home directory so you can Save As... a document that you don't want to save as?
Maybe it is Vista that is sluggish in figuring out whether offline files are really available or not, but I roam with my laptop all the time. Much of the time I am on a network where my home directory is not available. Yet, Vista/Office 12 tries to list my home directory each time I fatfinger the Delete key. Each time it takes between 5 and 30 seconds for me to get control back of my computer. I got tired of it, so I used the information in this article about the Scan Code Mapper to disable the F12 key altogether. Even my dog could count on one hand (yes, I know dogs don't have hands; that's the point) the number of times in 14 years of using Windows that I have used the F12 key on purpose. I figure I probably won't miss it.
If you want to do the same, run this command from an elevated command prompt:
reg add "hklm\system\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout" /v "Scancode Map" /t REG_BINARY /d 0000000000000000020000000000580000000000
Then reboot. If you want to undo the operation, run this command:
reg delete "hklm\system\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout" /v "Scancode Map" /f
And then reboot.
If you want to remap other keyboard keys you can do so using the same key. You just modify the binary value that I entered to include additional mappings. The syntax for the Scancode Map key is in the article I linked earlier. The actual key codes you need are in this Word doc: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/input/Scancode.mspx.