Chortle Loudly, Roll on the Floor Until Tears of Laughter Stream Down My Face: Active Directory

I've been a fan of LDAP technology for years.  I even shipped an LDAP enabled commercial product back in 1997.  So when Microsoft introduced that bastard half breed Active Directory junk, I was very, very frustrated.  After all "almost but not quite compatible" is a classic Microsoft trick for corrupting standards.  So when I ran across this today in Eweek I had the reaction above:

Almost 3 years old, Active Directory is a product based on the priorities of a different time.

Microsoft Corp. developed AD mainly as a corporate directory, designed to manage users and groups within large (and Windows 2000-only) organizations.

Although Microsoft based AD partially on LDAP, it fell short of complete support for the directory standard—for example, requiring API development to perform external application integration that a pure LDAP server would handle by default. Other weaknesses in AD include limited schema support within directory structures.

In a new world of Web services and XML-based integration—where directories need to be accessible to and by a wide variety of systems, clients and applications—it's not a good thing to be a semiproprietary, corporate- network-focused system.

It seems that even Microsoft agrees, as it has announced plans to release early next year a product called Active Directory in Application Mode—essentially an LDAP-only implementation of AD. [ Go ]

They even point out at the end that you can go with an Open Source option, Open LDAP. [ Go ]

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Need to Index an FTP Server My Friend?

I just heard from my buddy Apokalyptik that someone put together a full install package for the Windows version of his FTP indexer.  You just have to love Open Source, don't you?  Here someone took the time to write an installer for an OS project that they found useful.  [ Go ]

Note: This is a very full featured FTP spider and indexer which has been tested beyond 500,000 files being indexed (if my memory serves me correctly).  If it's larger or I'm wrong, I suspect checking the comments for this entry will give you the answer (he reads this blog).

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Drupal News Aggregator Tutorial

My recent flurry of Drupalish activity made me scratch my head and think "Didn't I write a short tutorial for the Drupal News Aggregator?  Just a walk through?".  After thinking and wondering and then pestering a friend for help with find, I found it.  When I was at that hustle and bustle of true geekiness this summer, the O'Reilly OS CON, I put this together to show Jeremy.  And then I don't think I ever did anything with it.  So here it is.  [ Go ]

Note: It's not a perfect tutorial by any stretch of even a poor imagination but it does capture all the screens from the Drupal aggregator (I think) and show them.  I wrote it to give people a feel for the aggregator which is just one feature within Drupal.

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Cool ... Good "Buzz" on ActiveWords

I've mentioned ActiveWords before, a very cool and useful utility, which is available for Windows.  Now Paul Andrews has given it a thumbs up too.  Recommended.  [ Go ]

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I've Been Taught to Fish...

Know that old homily "Give a man a fish and you feed him for today; Teach a man to fish and you feed him for life"?  I've been taught to fish.  After making comments about marketing for Drupal, Dries, one of the project leads, created a better web based tool for writing up the features in Drupal and then granted me access to it.  So rather than my writing offline, emailing them to him and waiting to see the results, I can do them myself.  And you know what?  I just rewrote virtually every one of the feature descriptions and added a bunch more.  And you know the only bad part?  There are a lot more features to add.  I mean a lot.  Sigh.  But it's just too funny.  [ Go ]

NOTE: This is a great way for Open Source projects to thrive and flourish -- if it's easier to contribute well then people will contribute well. 

Thanks Dries.

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Here's an interesting article on SharePoint document indexing.  Nothing earthshaking but good, practical advice on designing your document profile fields (don't use too many!).  [ Go ]
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Interesting ... I see from Tony that there was a credit card error of 10x on guests at economy hotels.  [ Go ]   I'm not sure what card was used but I'll bet it wasn't American Express.  People always ask me why I still use American Express, don't even have a Visa / MasterCard and the answer is always the same "Customer Service".  When I recently leased my new place I put my realty agent payment on my Amex on a Saturday afternoon and sometime after that, before Monday evenining their analysis routines must have figured out "Hmm.... That's an odd type of charge for this person.  Maybe we should call him and see if it's right".  And I got a call by mid day Monday asking me if that charge was valid.  I know some people might find that intrusive but for me it's just plain outstanding. 

Note: In case you're not aware, if you need to defer payments on an American Express card just like a Visa / Mastercard, simply call them and they'll let you push any charge that isn't with them (like your annual card payment) into a future month.  You can carry a balance if you want.

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11 More Signs You Need A De-Geeking Intervention

And just as I hit post, a few more occurred to me, so ...

35. When your significant other says "It's spring cleaning time, your mind starts thinking of files you can delete".
36. Your staff calls you on vacation with a technical problem and you give them the fix by telling them to use Debug and patch these 7 addresses (Note -- I used to have someone on my staff who actually did this.  Brilliant but strange.).
37. You reject out of hand potential dates when you find they run Windows.
38. You immediately accept a date when someone when they mention using a rootless window manager under OS X.
39. You blow off a date because you'd rather configure your new WIFI network.
40. When your signficant other mentions "Honey we need to decorate X", your mind wanders off to a world of new and exciting Window managers.
41. You can't understand why your significant other doesn't want to watch DVDs in the computer room sitting in an office chair.
42. The newest episode of Buffy is immediately followed by a blog entry discussing where Joss got it right / wrong.
43. You ask someone in Klingon if they'd like to go out.  They respond with HISlaH and you understand. [ Go ]
44. Your Google preferences are set to use Interlingua, Klingon or Bork-Bork as the display language. [ Go ]
45. You find articles on factoring large prime numbers to have a beauty all their own.  And you find the practical implications of said articles intriguing to say the least.  Of course you would never, ever do anything with that knowledge, right ?
    
    Bonus ones:
    
46. The nicknames for your two sons Devon and Patrick are "Dev" and "Packet".
47. There's a penguin on your mantlepiece and no one you know has a) thought you should remove it b) even asked what it symbolizes.

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I Seem to Have Started a Trend

When you're feeling, well, "life challenged" and you start to think about a potential de-geeking of yourself, it's nice to know that you're not alone.  My de-geeking article has sparked two sequels, one from Kasia and one from "Frankly Not".  For people coming in late, here's the whole evolution:

1. Me
2. Kasia
3. Frankly Not.

Humor in the latest is (of course) in a familiar Unix vein.  I particularly liked:

Your wife tells you you need a 12-step program for computers. You respond, "Oh, no, honey. I can quit anytime I want ..."

You set the alarm for 4:07 am to catch the cron job running your latest weblog stats.

Too funny!  Thanks guys.  Who's next ?  We could have a small book when I think of the number of life challenged folk I know

Note: Life Challenged is NOT an insult.  It's more of a statement of preference. 

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