A List Apart No. 170. In the 170th issue of A List Apart, for people who make websites: EXPLORING FOOTERS – by Bobby van der Sluis. With old-school table layout methods, vertical positioning is a piece of cake. With CSS layout, it's a piece of something else. Regain control of footers and other vertically positioned layout elements. JAVASCRIPT IMAGE GALLERY – by Jeremy Keith. Making an online gallery of pictures should be a quick process. The gap between snapping some pictures and publishing them on the web ought to be a short one. Here's a quick and easy way to build a dynamic image gallery. Plus: talk to the W3C. [Jeffrey Zeldman Presents: The Daily Report]

I will have to review how I have positioned footers in the past. I remember I had to try several variations before it was right. Maybe he has a better idea.

I ran the cummlative upgrade for IE 6.1 and fixed the search problem in Windows Explorer on 2003. Search would pop up a couple of error messages before completing your search. I found a hotfix for it and it said to wait for the next IE update. Lo and behold, they were right.

I am pretty happy with Microsoft's Baseline Security program and have been using it get all of the computers current. It is particularly nice about pointing out problems with SQL, Exchange, and MSXML.

The upgrade to SBS2K3 should have been pretty simple. Things that got me were:

1. ISA problems with web proxy. You don't expect this when the version stays the same but it happened.
2. New profile on XP. I did not intend it but I did not re-use my existing profile. For some reason my profile ended up being whuber.wehubconsulti versus whuber. It broke a couple of things so I had to perform some quick copies and re-installs.
3. I had export .pst files of my mailbox, the public folders, and my rules. It took me a little while to set up the permissions to re-create the public folders. I tried to start up Exchange 2003 with the converted  version I had saved but Exchange puked. So I went to plan B.
4. I had to change my SMTP server settings. It wanted HELO versus EHELO.

I have been having problems getting the web proxy clients to work correctly through ISA. They work as firewall clients but not as web proxy clients. I kept getting site is forbidden for http sites even though it would work for https sites. Ping worked but POP3 did not. I tried many things but the got it to work as expected by changing the http redirector to not route the firewall connections to the web proxy(default setting) but to send them directly to the website. It doesn't make sense but I have to move on.

From my analysis of the event logs the install looks pretty clean.

It's been tough over the last couple of days. I have come down with the flu. I don't have a fever but my cough sounds nasty. I have canceled all of my outside activities. If that isn't a big enough problem, our plumbing has sprung a leak, our driveway has turned into a hockey rink, and my no brainer install of SBS2K3 has gone wrong. I seem to have a clean install of SBS2K3 but ISA is not allowing web proxy clients out. Radio and Quicken 2002 does not work for me with the regular firewall client.

I really like to lay down fresh copies of operating systems and re-install the programs. This has been the tried and true practice for fixing serious W98 problems. W2K and WinXP have minimized my need to install fresh copies so I decided to try and see if a SBS2K to SBS2K3 upgrade would work. As expected it kind of worked but is unacceptable. I believe I met all of the prerequisites so there must be something else going on. I worked on the problems yesterday and have decided to install a clean copy today. The problems I was not able to get around are:

1. Exchange failed tp complete during the upgrade. It had a problem with installing the DAV subcomponent which is related to registering exoledb.dll which is probably related to oledb32.dll not registered. I found a KB which suggested that I manually register several dll's including oledb32.dll. I got an error when I tried to register oledb32.dll.
2. I could not upgrade the server components. I kept getting authenticode errors claiming a parameter error. It finally ended in a loop I had to use task manager to end.
3. I was generally uncomfortable with the authenticode errors. The only time I expect to see them is when I am installing a third party hardware driver. These errors were popping up during the installation of microsoft software.

Why is Linux a winner when it comes to utility computing?

Nevatia: Utility computing makes hardware less relevant. It doesn't matter if it's proprietary, a mainframe or a commodity Intel box. The operating system doesn't matter either, and that makes Linux a winner. You don't care what you're running as long as you reach your service levels. Utility computing levels the playing field for Linux. Linux promotes commoditization, and it comes out a winner.

I think that Linux makes sense primarily from the licensing cost standpoint. Service levels seem to be very similar. Support issues still weigh in M$ favor. So the big difference is whether M$ will adjust their licensing to compete with Linux in utility computing. As Linux makes inroads and Linux support issues drop, M$ loses its monoply pricing and the easy money. Small businesses is M$ saving grace.