The following Visual Studio ALM Rangers solutions have been developed for the ALM community:
While I usually keep ALM Ranger stuff for RadioTFS this was just too awesome a resource to not share here too. Seeing all this on one page really shows the level of cool that are the ALM Rangers and their work... I mean, like, wow...
Ever jump on a machine to connect to a SQL Server and find out… whoops! No tools. For some reason, the client machine doesn’t have SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) installed. Now I’m not talking about not having the SSMS installed on the server, but on the local workstation that you need to connect to the server with.
No tools has happened to me many times and, in fact, happened to me this past week. In the past, this would mean running around trying to get find the client’s SQL Server installation media. Maybe downloading a 4+ GB ISO of the entire SQL Server installation from TechNet. Or, hopefully, making sure the client had USB ports open on their machines and that I had my installation media backup drive with me. A lot of things that were more work than one would like.
With the release of SQL Server 2012 Service Pack 1, there is a new option on the table. Instead of downloading everything, you can download just the management tools through the Microsoft® SQL Server® 2012 Service Pack 1 (SP1) Express download page....
This came in real handy today. Came in and got a question about how to get just the SSMS for 2012. Got to love the inter-tubes!
BTW, don't let the "Express" through you. As far as I can tell, it's the full thing...
simple-talk - SQL Server Performance-The Crib Sheet
Contents
- Introduction
- Overview
- Measuring Performance
- Perfmon
- Perfmon Counter Set
- Using perfmon
- Evaluating perfmon data
- Server health
- Memory
- Memory Grants Pending
- Lock Requests/Sec
- Deadlock/Sec
- Extended Events
- Dynamic Management Objects
- Third Party Tools
- Tuning Performance
- Server Performance
- Database Performance
- Indexing
- Files and FileGroups
- Normalization
- Data Types
- Other Issues
- T-SQL Performance
- Client Access
- Testing Performance
- Suggested Reading
...
How much performance is enough? Where do you start tuning? When do you stop tuning? Each application being developed will answer these questions in a different way. The important thing is not to establish a single mechanism for answering them. Your goal is to establish best practices and guidelines that will lead to the answers in the right way for the application under consideration.
First, and most important, the SQL Server system itself needs to be configured correctly. It also needs to be running on a correctly configured Windows server. This is the foundation on which the databases will be built. These same requirements do not exist when dealing with an Azure SQL Database. After the server is configured, you need to design and build the database to perform optimally. That's assuming you're building a new database. If you're trying to tune an inherited database, then you'll want to know what a good database looks like. Appropriately designing the database is even more important in Azure. Once the server and database are out of the way, you need to be concerned with the code running against it. This means the views, triggers, functions and, on local copies of SQL Server, the CLR code. It doesn't stop there because you need to be sure that the development staff is accessing the database correctly either in their general use of the database and it's code, or in their own use of ADO or whatever other client they might be using to access the system
In order to address all these concerns you need to understand how to measure and test performance. Once you've measured the performance and found it wanting, you'll need to know what to do about it. After addressing structural changes to the database or changes to the server or refactoring the T-SQL code, you'll need to have a mechanism in place to test the results in order to be sure your work is accurate
After all this, you should have a correctly functioning system that performs and scales well.
...
..."
Should be enough to get you stared at least in looking into your DB performance "issues".
Quora - Blue Screen of Death: Who designed the original Windows Blue Screen of Death?
John Vert, ex-Windows NT kernel guyex-Windows NT kernel guy
Back in 1991 I wrote the original code for Windows NT 3.1 that put the video screen back into text mode and the routines to put text on it (and a truly gnarly bit of code it was!). I used the white on blue colors for two reasons.
- The MIPS workstations we were using for the MIPS port had firmware that presented a boot option screen in white on blue, so it made sense that the bugcheck screen would match.
- I (and many others) were using SlickEdit as our text editor and at the time its default color scheme was also white on blue.
I believe Mark Lucovsky wrote the original code that dumped a bunch of text to the screen. This was a bugcode and a stack dump, resulting in a bunch of useless hex numbers which product support would occasionally dutifully transcribe from the customers and include in the bug report.
...
Thought this was an interesting bit of trivia... I love how we dev's make decisions sometimes. "What color?" "Oh heck, I don't know, but we're looking at SlickEdit all day, so lets make it look like that" "Works for me..."
(via Looking For The Spike... - Who wrote the original BSOD (and why white-on-blue)?)
In a previous post, we’ve seen that dotPeek supports creating and loading plugins. The NuGet plugin for dotPeek is a good example to demonstrate how to get started creating plugins for dotPeek. Sources for this plugin are available on GitHub. But let’s create a plugin of our own!
Before we start: dotPeek does not have a formal SDK yet. However it shares a lot of commonalities with ReSharper. In fact: dotPeek is built on the same platform as ReSharper reusing the project model, PSI, navigation and so on. Which is good news: we can use the ReSharper SDK (see the downloads page) to create plugins for dotPeek. Another option is to start from a class library project and work with a small NuGet package I’ve created to help you get started.
Creating a new plugin
To create a plugin for dotPeek, we can make use of the instructions provided with the ReSharper SDK. This involves a lot of project modifications so we’ll take the easy way out: we can create a dotPeek plugin by installing a NuGet package.
In Visual Studio, we can start out with a new Class Library project, making use of .NET 3.5 or up. Next, we can install the JetBrains.DotPeek.PluginDevelopment NuGet package into the project. This NuGet package will convert the class library we have into a dotPeek plugin by adding assembly references and several attributes. Note that the NuGet package will target the latest version of dotPeek that is installed on your system (which also means we have to have a copy of dotPeek installed).
That’s everything we have to do: by running our project, dotPeek will launch with our fresh plugin loaded:
..."
I love products that let me extend them. Will I? Rarely, but it's the fact that I can is what draws me in...
Related Past Post XRef:
And there were three free RTW'd .Net Decompilers ... dotPeek v1 Released
Another decompiler comes online - dotPeek from JetBrains
If you have ever tried to create a Windows Store application using the MVVM pattern then you will probably have found that the Visual Studio project and item templates are a bit cumbersome. I often find myself adding a new page to my projects using one of the default templates, only to need to rewrite it to follow the MVVM pattern before I can even start adding application specific logic. What if there was a way to take advantage of the selection of project and page templates provided by Visual Studio, but have them produce fully MVVM compliant code?
Well today I’d like to announce the release of a free extension for Visual Studio 2012 (including the Express editions for Windows 8) that provides just that. It is based upon the open source Okra App Framework, and provides almost all of the Visual Studio Windows Store templates in an MVVM friendly manner.
...
What Templates are Provided?
There are two types of template included, project templates and item templates. The project templates are designed to get you started with a new application and provide exactly the same behaviour as the default Visual Studio templates (but written following the MVVM pattern).
- Okra Basic App - A single-page Okra App Framework project with no predefined controls or layout.
- Okra Grid App - A three-page Okra App Framework project that navigates among grouped items arranged in a grid. Dedicated pages display group and item details.
- Okra Split App - A two-page Okra App Framework project that navigates among grouped items. The first page allows group selection while the second displays an item list alongside details for the selected item.
Also included are a number of item templates that allow you to add new pages to any existing Okra App Framework based application, whether created using the project templates or not.
- Basic Page (MVVM)
- Split Page (MVVM)
- Items Page (MVVM)
- Item Detail Page (MVVM)
- Grouped Items Page (MVVM)
- Group Detail Page (MVVM)
- Search Contract (MVVM)
- Share Target Contract (MVVM)
- Settings Pane (MVVM)
...
Summary
As I have discussed the new “Windows Store MVVM Templates for the Okra App Framework” make it quick and easy to implement pages following the MVVM pattern for use in Windows Store applications. The behaviour of all the templates has been designed to be identical to the default Visual Studio templates, with the added benefit of clean separation of code, unit testability and design-time data
Thanks for the heads up on this Andy (and nice work!). I think you're right, that my readers might find this useful. And heck, if they don't I DO! :)
Related Past Post XRef:
Cloud providers and other data center operators use geo-distributed data centers. But these data centers largely continue to employ the same designs as were appropriate for single data centers. These designs are wasteful because they do not take full advantage of geo-redundancy. Geo-redundancy can reduce other redundancy at multiple intermediate layers in individual data centers and decrease costs. We discuss options for changing infrastructure design to realize such savings. Our proposal opens up an exciting and novel area of investigation into the design of software that can effectively leverage such platforms.
...
We claim that geo-redundancy at the data center level can reduce or obviate other redundancy within individual data centers; much like app-layer replication via distributed file systems has obviated the need for highly reliable RAID arrays, allowing individual storage servers to use JBOD in data centers. We denote a group of reduced availability data centers that collectively deliver high availability as a Geo-distributed Bunch of Data centers (GBoD). We quantify the reduction in individual data center availability that becomes possible when a geo-distributed collection of data centers acts in concert using fault tolerance mechanisms. We discuss how an individual data center’s infrastructural design can be changed to reduce its availability, such as through eliminating diesel generators, and quantify corresponding cost savings. We call attention to new research questions in configuring geo-redundant data centers to optimally manage excess compute capacity, networking costs, and correlation among their failures.
GBoD moves complexity from the underlying hardware to software layers....
This title caught my eye today and I thought it some interesting research. Useful in my day-today grind? No, but interesting non-the-less
In a race to optimize everything, developers often go to extremes to build software that performs routine tasks. MissionControl is a system that allows users to program a control center that stores interfaces with attached hardware sensors, allowing the users to control any other devices that can be activated via the underlying protocol. For demo purposes, the MissionControl build at this point is compatible with the Phidgets IR hybrid sensor.
The system has two core components:
- A server application, which is a Win32 console application that handles incoming queries and returns data to the connected clients. This application runs on the desktop machine with the connected sensor.
- The Windows Phone application that sends requests to the target server and can trigger a variety of pre-programmed commands.
The Basics
Hardware and Communication Infrastructure
One of the most important parts of the project is the signal capture and replication hardware. For the purposes of this project, I decided to use a dual-mode Phidgets IR sensor. It supports both IR code capture and subsequent replication. From a user’s perspective, this device also eliminates a substantial code-learning overhead as well as the potential error rate. Instead of searching for a device-specific hexadecimal sequence that later has to be transformed in a working IR code, the user simply has to point his remote control at the sensor and press the button that he wants accessible from a mobile device. Given that the capturing software is running on the target machine, once the sensor detects that a code can be repeated within an acceptable precision range, it will be automatically captured and stored, with all required transformations worked out in the backend using the free Phidgets SDK.
...
The book, errr, I mean, article, from Clint and Den is done and now out...
Related Past Post XRef:
Mission Control to Major...C4F - Coding4Fun Mission Control project
Let everyone know when your builds fail by playing fart sounds. You can select which fart to play from the many different styles. You'll find the right fart for any situation. Farticus is great for presentations, team environments and when you're coding all alone.
Farticus is open source on GitHub and pull (my finger) requests are accepted.
Using Farticus
Farticus adds 2 important features to Visual Studio:
1. Play Random Fart
From the Standard toolbar in Visual Studio, you can easily play a random fart by clicking the Farticus buttton.
...
2. Play Fart when builds fail
No one likes it when builds fail. Farticus makes failed builds more fun by playing one of the wonderful farts. You can disable the builds failed auto-fart in the Tools -> Options dialog.
...
"Sounds like a case of the..."
Anyway, this is so wrong, it's, well still wrong. But what dev-boy doesn't like a good IDE integrated fart app!
The fact that they released the source too, well that's just [air]fresh[ener]
The National Security Agency has declassified a version of an in-house training manual used to teach NSA members how to best utilize the internet for research purposes. Untangling the Web: An Introduction to Internet Research was written by Robyn Winder and Charlie Speight and published by the NSA's Center for Digital Content back in 2007. It's been declassified and made available now following a Freedom of Information Act requested lodged by MuckRock back in April.
The document weighs in at over 600 pages, and tends to be geared towards an audience that may not necessarily be familiar with or see the value of the internet in research (then again, it's important to remember that the book was published six years ago). While chapters like "Search Fundamentals" and "Why Do I Need Help?" paint a basic picture, it also dives a bit deeper with sections like "Google Hacking," which focuses on "using publicly available search engines to access publicly available information that almost certainly was not intended for public distribution." Confidential company data, secret government information, and financial data are all listed as the types of data such searches could uncover.
..."
While a few years old, still some real interesting reading... One thing to note, this is a scanned document. So you'll need to let Acrobat OCR it before you can search it, etc.
NOTE: This is the version for VS 2012. If you are looking for a VS 2010 compatible version, here it is.
An App Store for Visual Studio!
With access to free and paid extensions. Easily browse and purchase extensions online with a few clicks, just from within the Extension Manager:
As you can note above, there is also a Roaming tab, where you can have control of your previous downloads and purchases, from both, the Visual Studio Gallery and the DevStore. We use this a lot to easily sync between home and work laptops and setting up VPCs...
And of course we do also have a nice web where you can access the DevStore: www.devstore.com
Are you a developer or shop offering extensions for Visual Studio? Please visit www.devstore.com and register as a Developer to start selling your extensions today!
DevStore helps you supercharge your Visual Studio by providing access to free and paid extensions. You can now buy extensions without leaving Visual Studio. And publish and sell your own extensions too.
Yes, it's App Store time for Visual Studio!
I love the roaming concept. While I like free, free isn't free and sometimes it's even better to pitch in a few pennies to help support a given project. The DevStore looks like just that. And currently there doesn't look like "store" ISV prices for stuff, instead "App Store" like prices. $1.99, $2.99, etc. Now if only there as a RSS feed so I could easily see new stuff as its added to the DevStore...Still it's in beta, so there's still hope :)
Den Delimarsky and the C4F team are doing it again (and again I'm probably posting this a little early as I just happened to catch it in the CodePlex RSS stream... ;)Coding4Fun Mission Control is a flexible framework that allows developers to easily create an API to control a variety of devices through an extensible network communication platform. For end-users, a companion Windows Phone application is available, that communicates with the controller server through a well-defined set of short-codes.
With a simple command-based interaction mechanism, it is possible to establish an "always-on" communications channel and invoke commands on the attached device from any location with an active network connection.
The sample solution includes a server (Win32 console application) and a Windows Phone 8 application that interact through an open TCP channel to control a USB-based Phidget IR dual-mode sensor.
Today, as he heads to Austin, Texas, for a Middle Class Jobs and Opportunity Tour, President Obama signed an Executive Order directing historic steps to make government-held data more accessible to the public and to entrepreneurs and others as fuel for innovation and economic growth. The Executive Order declares that information is a valuable resource and strategic asset for the Nation. We couldn’t agree more.
Under the terms of the Executive Order and a new Open Data Policy released today by the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Office of Management and Budget, all newly generated government data will be required to be made available in open, machine-readable formats, greatly enhancing their accessibility and usefulness, while ensuring privacy and security.
...
More information:
- Read the Executive Order (EO) on open data
- Read the new Open Data Policy
- Watch a 2-minute video about the new EO and Policy
- Learn more about the Administration’s open data efforts
- Follow the conversation on Twitter using #opendata
- Visit a new Project Open Data website
Hi, all --
Earlier today, President Obama signed an Executive Order directing his administration to take historic steps to make government-held data more accessible to the public and to entrepreneurs and others as fuel for innovation and economic growth.
Here's what you need to know:
- The Executive Order declares that information is a valuable resource and strategic asset for the nation.
- Newly generated government data will be required to be made available in open, machine-readable format by default -- enhancing their accessibility and usefulness, and ensuring privacy and security.
- These executive actions will allow entrepreneurs and companies to take advantage of this information -- fueling economic growth in communities across the Nation.
Data, data, data! I love me some data!
Now, to turn it into information, knowledge and maybe even wisdom, that's the hard part.
I am pleased to announce a new tool from Xamarin: Objective Sharpie, a very powerful binding definition generator for third party Objective C libraries to help provide APIs matching the .NET idioms and ensure delightful APIs.
Objective Sharpie takes much of the manual work of translating Objective C APIs into binding definitions that are consumed by Xamarin’s binding tools. Download your third party library, point Objective Sharpie to its header files, and off you go.
It does this using Clang and the SDKs installed in Xcode to extract all the API metadata needed to produce a binding: selector names, argument and return types, enums, and so on.
...
While I'm not an iOS/Xcode/Apple guy, I just loved this name... :)
Largest collection of Metro- style icons
Syncfusion Metro Studio is a collection of over 2500 Metro-style icon templates that can be easily customized to create thousands of unique Metro icons.
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FAQ
Where can these icons be used?
Metro is a design language so it can be applied to any platform or technology. At Syncfusion we have used these icons in everything from PowerPoint presentations to applications written in all .NET platforms including WPF, Silverlight, Windows Phone, Windows Forms, ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, and WinRT.
Can these icons be used in commercial applications?
Yes, the icons are available royalty-free and can be used in commercial applications. Icons can also be used in open source projects and hosted on sites including but not limited to CodePlex, GitHub, BitBucket etc.
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2,500 free('ish) icons is officially cool in my book. Downloaded and installed. Make sure you click through to Bruno's post on this as he provides many more screenshots of the app in action...
[Found via El Bruno - [#METRO] Metro Studio 2.0 of the friends of SyncFusion]
TFS source control history visualization (Visual Studio 2012 extension), dynamic & interactive.
Looks like a fascinating creation of a new galaxies in space.
Available on Visual Studio Gallery: http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/6a8e7330-8395-4915-935f-941dc3bde29cHow to use:
- Install this extension.
- Open TFS "Source Control Explorer" window.
- Select source control folder (or file) and click Right button.
- Select in pop-up menu item "Visualize History (using Gource)".
- Enjoy the history visualization :)
...
Now not only is the Gource source still available (http://code.google.com/p/gource/), but the extension's source itself is now available too (and we get a version bump to v1.3 too)...
Related Past Post XRef:
Visualizing TFS Source History with the free TFS Source Control History Visualization extension (with source)
Till recently, I was under the impression that GO statement’s sole purpose is to convey to the SQL Server the end of a batch of T-SQL Statements. But recently while searching for some SQL feature details, I landed on to the MSDN page for the GO statement. And to my surprise, I observed that GO statement also has an integer optional parameter, this parameter value signals SQL Server to execute the batch of T-SQL Statement prior to the GO statement to be executed for the specified number of times.
...
I always forget about this feature of the T-SQL GO statement...
With May 8, 2013 recognized as National Animal Disaster Preparedness Day, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Deputy Administrator Richard Serino joins the Los Angeles Fire Department in reminding you to plan for disasters with pets, horses and livestock in mind:
...
There are three simple steps you can take today!
For more information on preparing pets for disaster, visit:
- Ensure your pet is wearing a collar with your current contact information. Because you may be mobile in a crisis, be sure to include your cell phone number on your pet's identification tag.
- Create a basic disaster kit with enough dry food and water for each animal to last at least five days. Medications and medical records stored in a waterproof container will prove helpful, as will garbage bags to collect pet waste.
- Have sturdy leashes, harnesses and carriers you can use to transport animals safely in an emergency.
You're all working on your personal and family disaster and emergency preparedness, right? A little each month, building your supplies, making your house safe, etc? Well don't forget those who can't prepare, your pets! What would you do about your pets if you had to leave your house NOW for an extended period, and where you were uncertain your house was going to be there when you got back? Or maybe just that you couldn't buy supplies for them for a 7-14+ day period?
No need to worry, just think and prepare, it's MUCH less stressful if you do it now than in that last moment...
Just think P4YP ("PAP"), Prep For Your Pooch... (because they can't)
Some days ago I have published a free library with chart controls which can be used in client applications. The library can be used in WPF desktop applications, in Windows Store apps and in Silverlight applications.
Download the binaries, source code and some test applications: http://modernuicharts.codeplex.com/
Or directly try them in the Silverlight application: http://www.spalmblogger.de/charts/
...
This project provides a small library to display charts in Modern UI Style (formerly known as Metro) in WPF, Silverlight and Windows 8 applications. You can check the charts with the Silverlight test application here: http://www.tetracon.de/charts
Available Charts
- ColumnChart (ClusteredColumnChart, StackedColumnChart, StackedColumnChart100Percent)
- PieChart (PieChart and Dognut)
- BarChart (ClusteredBarChart, StackedBarChart, StackedBarChart100Percent)
- Doughnut Chart
- Radial Gauge Chart
News
- 2013-05-05: Release of BETA version with several bug fixes and new charts (Doughnut, Radial Gauge, improved test applications and many more)
- 2013-05-04: Availability of Silverlight test application via http://www.tetracon.de/charts
Screenshots
Default Layout
I love that the source for these are available. Also that they are cross XAML platform...
I attended TechReady15 and took part in a session from Mark Russinovich, the creator of Process Monitor and many if not all of the System Internals tools. He mentioned that there is no problem which Process Monitor cannot be used to help resolve. I put that to the test when I received the error message, Figure 1, from DebugDiag while trying to analyze a memory dump.
Figure 1, DebugDiag error, ShellExecute failed to display the report. The returned code was 2.
I started up Process Monitor and reproduced the issue. In the amount of time it took to reproduce the error, Process Monitor had logged 100,000s of events. No problem, this is where the filtering comes in handy. Figure 2 illustrates the filter I used to reduce the events to just those used by the DebugDiag process. You can get to the filter window by clicking on the filter icon, circled in red in Figure 2, selecting Filter -> Filter… or by pressing CTRL + L.
...
Not bad, I have been able to reduce the number of events from half a million to 17. By default, User Name is not added to the column list. Right-click on the column and I can see which credentials are being used and are receiving the ACCESS DENIED error. I was using my own credentials which did not have the required rights to create the required files.
Solution
I opened DebugDiag as an administrator as shown in Figure 5 and the issue did not happen anymore.
Figure 4, DebugDiag, Run as administrator
I recommend adding Process Monitor to your skill set as you can troubleshoot and resolve a lot of problems with it…even on your own machine…
Nice kind of recursive example of using Processing Monitor to debug a debug tool...
Related Past Post XRef:
The “Windows Sysinternals Primer: Process Explorer, Process Monitor, and More” from TechEd 2010 North America
Sysinternals 101 – “Notes from the field,” a quick intro to a few Sysinternals utilities (Process Explorer, TCPView, Process Monitor, VMMap)
Hands On Learning How to Use the Sysinternals Process Monitor Utility
Use the Sysinternals Utilities? The EULA bug dialog you? Then try this…
Sysinternals Update Day – Including new major release of Process Monitor (think PM + Network Monitoring = v2)
It’s a new Sysinternals Tool Day! RAMMap v1.0 released
New Sysinternals utility released today, Disk2vhd v1.0 – Yes, creating a VHD from a physical hard drive, even an online one, is now a couple clicks away…
The latest Sysinternals utilities are just a URL away, Live.Sysinternals.com
A handy PowerShell script to keep your Sysinternals Suite up to date
It's a sweet suite! Windows Sysinternals Suite gets a summer refresh [August 3, 2012]...
Sysinternals Suite 2010 Refreshed - All the latest versions, one 12.4MB zip…
Sysinternals Suite Refreshed – All the latest Sysinternals Utilities, one tiny zip (well 10MB zip…)
Sysinternals Suite (8MB of Complete Sysinternals Goodness)
Even for the most tech-savvy users, Windows 8 presents a bit of a learning curve. Just figuring out something as simple as shutting down your PC can be challenging.
Sure, you can read all the great Windows 8-related tutorials and how-to guides here at PC World, or even take a free online course. But sometimes your best bet is a cheat-sheet—something you can keep right beside your keyboard for at-a-glance information.
The folks at TradePub have just the thing: the Microsoft Windows 8 Quick Reference Card. It's a colorful two-page guide to Windows 8's most commonly used areas. And if you don't mind sharing a bit of personal information, it's free.
All you do is supply your contact info and some clues about your company and job role. (Not wild about including your phone number? Sign up for and use your Google Voice number, which is perfect for such occasions.) You'll need to include a valid email address so you can receive a download link for the card, which is provided as a PDF.
...
If you know someone new to Windows 8, this might come in handy. Beyond the card, there's the mentioned PC World resources too...
With Team Foundation Server 2012 the licensing became way easier, in order to have a clearer path of adoption for the involved features. One big example of that is the new Web Access.
The new Team Web Access now features three levels of information access, dependent on the CAL you have:
These three levels exposes a different set of information to the user.
A user acceding the Web Access with a Limited Access level is roughly the same as the old Work Item Only View in Team System Web Access, so the user can access to what belongs to him without the need of a CAL.
The Standard level is for who has access to Visual Studio 2012 Professional...
The Full level is for who has access to Visual Studio 2012 Premium and above, it enables every feature of the Web Access...
I really liked Matt's, short, sweet and yet topic covering post and didn't want to wait for the next RadioTFS (though I'll likely mention this again there ;)
It is a startling revelation when you learn that a dataset that has been public for years and contains over 7,500 instances of unredacted social security numbers, credit card numbers, dates of birth, home addresses and phone numbers. But that is precisely the claim of John Martin, the CEO and founder of BeyondRecognition.
The EDRM Enron Email Data Set v2 (EDRM Data) is a collection of documents originally gathered by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) as part of its investigation of Enron's energy trading practices and then made public by FERC. The EDRM data is a reworked version of the original documents which was available for download over an extended period of time at EDRM's website - it has since been transferred to Amazon Web Services for downloading, though there is a link from EDRM to the download site.
Why have so many people/teams worked with the data for years without discovering all the personally identifiable information (PII)? EDRM teams worked with it. The NIST-sponsored Text Retrieval Conference (TREC) Legal Track for 2010 and 2011 used that data set. Teams from around the world used it.
...
Putting motivation to one side, it is a real issue that publication of this data set necessarily meant that a data breach had taken place and it is astonishing that no one ever checked for PII. EDRM, in an e-mail I have seen, acknowledges that it is aware of the PII content and is working with an EDRM partner to make "a PII clean" version of the data available via EDRM.
...
Background. The Electronic Discovery Reference Model (“EDRM”) is an e-discovery industry standards setting group, and the EDRM Enron Email Data Set v2 (“EDRM Data”) is a collection of documents originally gathered by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC”) as part of its investigation of Enron’s energy trading practices and then made public by it. EDRM Data is a reworked version of the original documents, with a label added to each email that reads,
“EDRM Enron Email Data Set has been produced in EML, PST and NSF format by ZL Technologies, Inc. This Data Set is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/>. To provide attribution, please cite to ZL Technologies, Inc. (http://www.zlti.com/).”
EDRM served as a direct download point for the EDRM Data for a period of time and later moved it to Amazon Web Services for downloading.
Breach Discovery. While working with the EDRM Data that we downloaded from the EDRM website, BeyondRecognition discovered that there were over 7,500 instances of unredacted social security numbers, credit card numbers, dates of birth, home addresses and phone numbers – a startling breach of privacy. Most of the data breach victims were Enron employees, but the victims also included spouses or children of the employees as well as third party contractors.
LESSONS
...
I've blogged about this data set a number of times. Many, many people in the LitSupport,eDiscovery industry use it (like about everyone), it's be available for almost a decade, and now this is found? Wow. I'd bet it's been seen before, but everyone assumed it was okay because the data was "public?" Anyway, if you use this data and you have a local copy, you need think long and hard about this finding.
Like I said... ouch
Related Past Post XRef:
And even more Enron (PST’s that is) We’re talking 107GB, compressed, of data…
EDRM Enron Reference Data v2 now available
Need a ton of email data (10’s of gig’s)? Need it in PST form? Need it to be public data? Want to look behind the curtain into Enron? The EDRM Data Set Project is for you…
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Enron Email Document Database
I’m excited to announce the release of WebMatrix 3. WebMatrix is a free, lightweight web development tool we first introduced in 2010, and which provides a great, focused web development experience for ASP.NET, PHP, and Node.js.
Today’s release includes a ton of great new features. You can easily get started by downloading it, and watching an introduction video:
Some of the highlights of today’s release include deep Windows Azure integration, source control tooling for Git and TFS, and a new remote editing experience.
Windows Azure Integration
With WebMatrix 3, we are making it really easy to move to the cloud.
The first time you launch WebMatrix 3, there’s an option to sign into Windows Azure. You can sign in using the same credentials you use with the Windows Azure Management Portal:
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The end result is a simple, fast and super effective way to edit your sites locally and host and manage them in Windows Azure.
Watch this great video as Eric build a site with WebMatrix 3 and deploys it to Windows Azure.
Source Control with Git and TFS
One of the most requested features in WebMatrix 2 was support for version control. WebMatrix 3 now supports both Git and TFS. The source control experience is extensible, and we’ve worked with several partners to include rich support for Team Foundation Service, CodePlex and GitHub:
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The TFS experience is focused on making common source control tasks easy. It matches up well with Team Foundation Service, our hosted TFS solution that provides free private Git and TFS repositories.
Watch these great videos of Justin giving a tour of the Git and TFS integration in WebMatrix 3
Remote Editing
In WebMatrix 2, we added the ability to open your Web Site directly from the Windows Azure Management Portal. With WebMatrix 3, we’ve rounded out that experience by providing an amazing developer experience for live remote editing of your sites. The new My Sites gallery now allows you to open existing web sites on your local machine, or to remotely edit sites that are hosted in Windows Azure:
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Watch this video of Thao showing you how to edit your live site on Windows Azure using WebMatrix 3
Summary
WebMatrix 3 includes a seamless experience for working with sites in Windows Azure, source control support for working with Git and TFS, and a vastly improved remote editing experience. These are just a few of the hundreds of improvements throughout the application, including an extension for PHP validation and Typescript support.
You can easily get started with WebMatrix by downloading it for free, and watching an introduction video about it:
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If you're jumping in the web or the cloud, this free tool is a great starting point. If you're already there, then it's STILL a great tool... :)
Norton Ghost has moved on to the next life after Symantec pulled the plug on the software. Symantec has discontinued selling Norton Ghost as of yesterday. Support for the product, however, will continue until June 30, 2014 via chat and the online knowledge base.
Symantec had the announcement posted to the Norton Ghost webpage. I used Ghost previously as Symantec Ghost. It certainly had a wide variety of uses but as time went on the problems and bugs encountered seemed to increase while its usefulness ...
An important update regarding Norton Ghost™
We’d like to share some important information with you, our valued Norton customer. As of April 30, 2013, Symantec will discontinue sales of Norton Ghost, but will continue to provide support via
chat and knowledge base through June 30, 2014.
This makes me a little sad. I've used Ghost since the late 90's and it has a special place in my heart that only a "save your butt" utility can have. Later versions were only so so and pretty diluted, but still... So long Ghost.
Are you virtualizing your servers? Yes, of course!
Are you spending less time managing your servers as a result? Hmm … No!
Server Virtualization is Great, But …
Server virtualization has been a great set of technologies to reduce our capital expenses and some operating expenses by consolidating a larger number of virtualized server workloads in a smaller footprint of physical rack space. As a result, we’ve been able to purchase less data center hardware and likely have lower power and cooling costs in running our data center.
However, most IT Pros are not seeing a reduction in the amount of time they spend with day-to-day management of server operating systems and applications. Let face it … whether you have 100 physical servers or 100 virtual servers, you still have 100 server operating system instances to administer, configure, monitor, patch and update. In fact, because of reduced capital costs when using server virtualization, many IT Pros report that they are now faced with managing a much larger ( and growing ) number of operating system instances and applications – these days, it seems like everyone in the company wants their own VMs! As a result, IT Pros are forced to spend most of their day managing VMs and applications, and often don’t have enough time to spend on improving their IT environments.
Private Cloud … To The Rescue!
Well, Private Cloud is the answer! Private Cloud is not a product, but rather an approach for designing, implementing and managing your servers, applications and data center resources by reducing complexity, increasing standardization and automation, and provide elasticity – the ability to easily scale your data center up, down, in or out – to support evolving business and technical requirements.
Private Cloud applies the same principles used for scaling and managing the world’s largest public clouds to your private data center environment. Now, you can have your very own cloud!
Build Your Private Cloud – The Series
My fellow Technical Evangelists and I have authored a content series that steps through building your very own Private Cloud by leveraging Windows Server 2012, our FREE Hyper-V Server 2012, Windows Azure Infrastructure Services ( IaaS ) and System Center 2012 Service Pack 1.
Week-by-week, we walk through the steps to envision, plan and implement your very own Private Cloud to take your existing data center to the next level and give you the tools and time back in your day for improving IT services and being able to change and shift with your business / IT needs.
Below is the weekly breakdown of each topic that we’ve written in this series to help you build your own Private Cloud. Be sure to bookmark this page and check back daily to progress through building your Private Cloud this month!.
WEEK 0 – Get ready to follow along!
WEEK 1 – Build Your Private Cloud Foundation with Windows Server 2012
WEEK 2 – Building Your Private Cloud Fabric with System Center 2012 SP1
WEEK 3 – Configuring and Optimizing Your Private Cloud with System Center 2012 SP1
WEEK 4 – Deploying and Servicing Applications in Your Private Cloud with System Center 2012 SP1
WEEK 5 – Extending and Protecting Your Private Cloud
WEEK 6+: Study and Get Certified on Private Cloud
I want this... a Private Cloud... Matter of fact, fired off an email this morning to kick off the internal thinking about something like this... ;)
I’m working with Git now for about two years but only for my personal projects and those I have on GitHub. At work we still use TFS and SVN (as of now). Recently Paolo Perrotta came to our company to hold a course about Agile planning and since Git was quite new to most of my mates, he also quickly explained Git in the context of refactoring. I really liked his approach of explaining it and that’s why I’d like to replicate his explanation here.
Just before we start..
How is Git different from other VCS (Version Control Systems)? Probably the most obvious difference is that Git is distributed (unlike SVN or TFS for instance). This means, you’ll have a local repository which lives inside a special folder named
.gitand you’ll normally (but not necessarily) have a remote, central repository where different collaborators may contribute their code. Note that each of those contributors has an exact clone of the repository on their local workstation.Git itself can be imagined as something that sits on top of your file system and manipulates files. Even better, you can imagine Git as a tree structure where each commit creates a new node in that tree. Nearly all Git commands actually serve to navigate on this tree and to manipulate it accordingly. Git is just as legitimate in the enterprise as any other VCS.
As such in this tutorial I’d like to take a look at how Git works by viewing a Git repository from the point of view of the tree it constructs. To do so I walk through some common use cases like
- adding/modifying a new file
- creating and merging a branch with and without merge conflicts
- Viewing the history/changelog
- Performing a rollback to a certain commit
- Sharing/synching your code to a remote/central repository
Terminology
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Great introduction to Git for those who want to grok it and it's original command line usage...
The driver and firmware pack for Surface Pro, including all updates currently available for the device over Windows Update as of April 9th, is now live on the Microsoft Download Center.
The usage scenario for this would be to create your own custom deployment installation/image of Windows 8 for Surface Pro, enabling easier management – including Professional & Enterprise editions of Windows 8.
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[GD: Click through for the direct download link]
I've seen a number of requests for this, so thought it would be good to amplify Kurt's post...
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