breednet

I have VMs of just about every version of Windows, and also have a VM running DOS 6.22 and Windows for Workgroups 3.11, with the TCP/IP-32 driver. Tony’s VMware site is a great link for all the drivers you will need to get WFW 3.11 running under VMware, including sound, video, and even a link to old 16-bit Netscape browsers. Enjoy.

The Windows XP setupp.ini file controls how the installation media behaves. Is the install source an OEM version or retail copy of WIndows XP? First, locate the setupp.ini file in the \i386 directory on your Windows XP CD. Open in a text editor, and the contents will look something like this:

ExtraData=707A667567736F696F697911AE7E05
Pid=55034000

The Pid value is what we’re interested in. What’s there now looks like a standard default. There are special numbers that determine if it’s a retail, OEM, or volume license edition. First, we break down that number into two parts.

The first five digits determines how the CD will behave. Is the CD a retail CD that will allow either a clean install or upgrade, or an OEM CD that only allows a clean install?

The last three digits determines what CD key it will accept. You are able to mix and match these values. For example, you could make a Windows XP CD that acted like a retail CD, yet accepted OEM keys.

Now, for the actual values. Remember the first and last values are interchangeable, but usually you’d keep them as a pair:

Retail = 51882 335
Volume License = 51883 270
OEM = 82503 OEM

So if you wanted a retail CD that took retail keys, the last line of your setupp.ini file would read:

Pid=51882335

And if you wanted a retail CD that accepts OEM keys, you’d use:

Pid=51882OEM

Note that this does NOT get rid of Windows XP activation. Changing the Pid to a Volume License will not bypass activation. You must have a volume license (corporate) key to do so.

I will soon post a guide for how to slipstream all of the WIndows XP SP3+Updates into a new ISO image. Stay tuned.

Our household has recently (within the last 2 years) replaced a Windows Desktop and Laptop with a 20″ iMac and 15″ MacBook Pro. My oldest daughter has gotten very familiar with the Mac User Experience, and I had a spare Dell D610 laptop that I gave her. I went round and round with OSX86, but I really wanted to get something stable that she could rely on that was actually supported, so I settled on Ubuntu.

There are two very good guides available here and here for turning Ubuntu Hardy and Intrepid into Mac OS X (thanks to maketecheasier.com). This transformation is largely done through the use of the Mac4Lin GNOME theme. I mostly followed the Intrepid guide for Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope), but I made one key exception. I had some difficulty in getting the splashy Debian package to install, so when you get to that point, run the following command:

sudo dpkg –force-overwrite –install splashy_0.3.13-3ubuntu1_i386.deb

I also found some very cool Microsoft Office for Mac icons that I put in the Home directory under .icons/scalable directory, and used them on my dock. I also updated the Update Manager with the Apple Software Update icon as well, which is part of the Mac4Lin Icons theme.

The end result will hopefully look something like this:

Google Adsense is the current leader in content-sensitive web-based marketing. However, Google is not unlike a “black hole” when it comes to how they determine who can join their program, how their program really works (i.e. pays you for hosting their ads) or why you may get your account suspended. Searching around the Internet, a lot of bloggers and webmasters are beginning to rebel against the Google “Wizard of Oz” strategy and look for alternatives. There are tons of stories of people who just cross a certain dollar amount (usually, $10 or $20 USD) and get their accounts suspended. Unfortunately, I see Google making many of the same philosophical mistakes of Microsoft 15-20 years ago. History repeats itself.

I recently had my Google Adsense account suspended (which is why this site went ad-free for the last 7-8 days), and received the following email:

Hello,

The Google AdSense Team

So, in a nutshell, too many visitors clicked on my ads and Google Adsense didn’t want to write a check. BTW, my Adsense account was active for about 30 days and was at about $11.60 or so. I have searched and read up on Google Adsense shutting down accounts as they cross the $10 barrier, as to not pay small site blogs, etc. (like this one). All of this being said, I went on a quest to find an alternative to Google Adsense.

What I found first was a great site at http://www.rosswalker.co.uk/adsense_top10/ that lays out the top 10 alternatives to Google Adsense. There is also a link to top alternatives to Google Adwords too. I ended up researching Adbrite, Clicksor and Bitvertiser and settled on Adbrite.

Adbrite is incredibly easy to use (just as easy as Adsense, maybe easier) and I like the fact that advertisers get to bid on your adspace. When I copied up the 3 ad zone code snippets, it took less than 24 hours for an advertiser to begin advertising on my site. I also like the inline text-based rollover search and plan to integrate that soon as well.

I had a need to build a quick and simple shell script to quickly gather all of the user email addresses and descriptions from a MS Active Directory Domain Controller, so I could cross-reference with some user security rights and user identity tracking I was doing for a customer.

First, I had a CentOS 5.3 server that I need to get the ldapsearch binary installed. To do this, all you need to do is install the openldap-clients RPM package by running yum install openldap-clients from a command line.

Once this finishes, create a new file (vi newfile.sh) and add the following (change the bolded areas to suit your needs):

#!/bin/sh

ldapsearch -x -LLL -E pr=200/noprompt -h 1.2.3.4 -D “administrator@subdomain.somedomain.com” -w somepassword -b “ou=Some Users, dc=subdomain, dc=somedomain, dc=com” -s sub “(cn=*)” cn mail description

Escape then :wq! to save in vi. Be sure to chmod +x newfile.sh to make executable.

The output of this script will spit out full CN path, email address and the description field within MS Active Directory, which administrators often use as a free-text field for job title or description.