Category Archives: Articles

Workgroup and Domain

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If you are working on a Windows environment you might get some simple questions about what are they ? Here I have listed some simple questions and the answers I found by exploring things by own and referring the Internet. Please make a comment in case if I’m wrong.

 

What is a Computer Name and the Full Computer Name in Windows OS ?

A computer name in Windows is just the name of the computer. It is something like you have a name. For example Thuru-PC.

A Full Computer name is also known as fully qualified domain name (FQDN), a full computer name includes the host (computer) name, the domain name, and all the higher-level domains. For example elixir\thuru-pc

 

What is the difference between Domain, Workgroup and a Home group ?

Domains, workgroups, and homegroups represent different methods for organizing computers in networks. The main difference among them is how the computers and other resources on the networks are managed.

Computers running Windows on a network must be part of a workgroup or a domain. Computers running Windows on home networks can also be part of a home group, but it’s not required.

Computers on home networks are usually part of a workgroup and possibly a home group, and computers on workplace networks are usually part of a domain.

 

In a Workgroup

  • All computers are peers; no computer has control over another computer.

  • Each computer has a set of user accounts. To log on to any computer in the workgroup, you must have an account on that computer.

  • There are typically no more than twenty computers.

  • A workgroup is not protected by a password.

  • All computers must be on the same local network or subnet.

In a Home group

  • Computers on a home network must belong to a workgroup, but they can also belong to a home group. A home group makes it easy to share pictures, music, videos, documents, and printers with other people on a home network.

  • A home group is protected with a password, but you only need to type the password once, when adding your computer to the home group.

 

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Note

Home groups aren’t available in Windows Server 2008 R2.

 

    In a domain

  • One or more computers are servers. Network administrators use servers to control the security and permissions for all computers on the domain. This makes it easy to make changes because the changes are automatically made to all computers. Domain users must provide a password or other credentials each time they access the domain.

  • If you have a user account on the domain, you can log on to any computer on the domain without needing an account on that computer.

  • You probably can make only limited changes to a computer’s settings because network administrators often want to ensure consistency among computers.

  • There can be thousands of computers in a domain.

  • The computers can be on different local networks.

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Cloud OS

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After a long interval I write this post in my blog. I’m very glad to write this because it came true what I predicted.

Google announced the Chrome OS soon after the Chrome browser. Most of the people simply thought it would be another OS. No body thought it will change the hardware as well. Some how I managed to predict like this.

Imagine a computing environment where we switch on a computer and it directly connects to some cloud service (cloud OS) and we do our work. The local hard disk would be a mere storage for files.

– Read the full article

First I asked this from Mr.Wellington Perera (Director DPE, Microsoft Sri Lanka) for fun.  I simply asked him; if some thing happen like this what would be the situation of Microsoft in terms of the OS market. (Personally I can say, he is an interesting person to talk to and who can patiently answer this kind of awkward questions)

He replied wisely that; a situation like that may come one day. But using a computer is not just what you do with that. It is an experience. It’s full of experience and feelings as yours. Providing that kind of an experience is challenging when considering the existing web technologies.

It’s true. I’m not marketing here. Think as you purchase a Windows 7 or you are an Open source techie and using a version of Linux. You simply install it and use it. You can say; it’s my Windows PC or Linux Machine or Mac book.

But with the Chrome OS I do not think you can get a feeling like this. Owning a house and renting one is totally different. Isn’t it?

I believe Cloud will totally change the things and it is the future. (It has already proved that).

But I’m reluctant to accept some thing called a Cloud OS.

Let’s now have a look on the Chrome OS – The First Look

Google announced a pilot program as it will offer us a note book and asked to test the Chrome OS. They offered a note book named Cr-48.

Chrome OS – http://www.google.com/chromeos/index.html

If wanna apply for the free Cr-48 note book to test the Chrome OS – https://services.google.com/fb/forms/cr48advanced/

(But you need a valid US mailing address). With some little greediness I did try to apply for it. but certainly I’m not going to get it. 😦

Images of Cr-48

 

Capture1Capture2

 

Screen shots of the Chrome OS

 

image image

 

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OK what if we can ask some real experiences from a person who did all these things and tested the Chrome OS yesterday. Then hit get into this blog. (Read below before click the link)

Currently Cr-48 bears no logos or brand names. Actually the hardware is not exposing who is its manufacturer. (But if somebody breaks the device and check the internal we can may get an answer :D).

It has plenty of differences from a normal note book we use. The above blog describes them in detail. It is only equipped with wireless Internet connection. No Ethernet  (Or you have to go for a USB to Ethernet connector)

I don’t know when I’m going to have my hands in Chrome OS.

Microsoft Vs. Adobe

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Hi, Yesterday I saw a post on the Facebook linking to a mashable.com post saying that MS has plans to acquire Adobe. The post continues on what will happen and all that. The news that the plans of MS on acquiring the Adobe is not official, but it was an interesting post to read.

In the IT filed the acquiring chain of the companies has been there from the very beginning, since it is vital to take the competitive advantage. Some companies operate and put their hands on very new technologies believing that big giants will acquire them one day. If we have a look on the history you cannot even believe the numbers.

So far Microsoft has acquired or merged 128 companies Surprised smile Yep, here’s the list http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Microsoft

And Google has acquired or merged 80 companies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Google

Apple has acquired more than 30 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Apple 

Adobe and the Oracle have also have their share in acquisition, with more than 30 companies each.

The chain grows and grows, last few months Apple was trying to acquire Adobe. Ultimately Apple banned the Adobe Flash in it’s iPad and iPhone. Users suffer lot, they can’t view the contents of the websites like YouTube and Hulu. Sad smile

That was a stupid move I guess. Annoyed

Now there are news spreading out that MS is trying to acquire the Adobe. Really MS is trying very hard to make a reasonable share on the mobile market through their Windows Phone 7. Really the previews and the promised features were amazing in WP7 and even the iPhone users are having a WoW on WP7. But when compared to the iPhone, Andriod and Blackberry WP7 has a very small market share.

And do not talk about MS Kin it was boom, only 750 people in the world are using it; and MS closed it immediately after one week of its release. But MS always want to have its own pie in the mobile market. Now they are in the right track with the WP7 which is powered by Silverlight.

But if MS acquires Adobe how this going to help them on knocking down their rapidly growing rivals Google and the Apple. (Of course they are not too much Rrrrr….. with Google). So how they can knock down the Apple.

They can quite the Adobe products to Mac. (but they are not going to do, since it is a billion dollar business and they do not want to loss that revenue in order to knock their enemy).

There is another issue on Silverlight and the Flash. Ooops this is real heck. I think what MS will do to the Flash is; it will simply ignore it. (it is a very good strategy to knock things down) A recent example is what Oracle did to mySQL after acquiring the Sun. (Really Oracle messed up the Sun)

Silverlight gain the popular and now it is one of the technologies that industry seeks. And we can do plenty of things in Silverlight that we cannot perform in Flash. The secret is the .NET platform. (a platform always beats an application). That’s why MS made the Silverlight as platform geared with the .NET. Now Silverlight is a platform for Web, Xbox, Zune and Windows Mobile. Why even to the desktop.

There are more Flash based websites but Silverlight is started to gain popularity and the market share.

So if MS acquires the Adobe it won’t help MS to get the share in the mobile market. (but they can do) But however they are adding a billions and billions of business to their venture. Think about MS Photoshop, MS SoundForge, MS After Effects …Smile

Smile Surprised smile Annoyed Secret telling smile All the expressions are possible.

Blogs Here and There

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Based some on going and some few past topics I write this entry here. I summarized some interesting topics that I read from here ant there in the cloud.

As we all know with the launch of Windows 7 (actually windows version 6.1) MS got the sensational hit again which it lost due to the Vista. (personally I don’t find that Vista sucked much but it is really a big fat OS) Another reason that why Vista was not accepted by the users was; MS thought the users are somewhat OK with high security controls in local networks. But really it was not the case. I remember when the launching of Windows 7 there was a blog post saying that Windows  7 will rock, because it is smarter and fool enough. I have another experience with an IT guy complained about the UAC system of Vista. It is really useful indeed and a good security protection. We have this in Windows 7 too, but some people still don’t want to have it. (here most of them complain because they do not know how to stop the UAC – but I recommend you to not to stop that)

Stepping away from the MS and you can see plenty of posts and news around the web about the Oracle’s acquisition of Sun and later part of the Java and mySQL. It was a moment that nobody thought that why Sun can’t stand alone. Of course Sun had the power and the strength to stand alone, but someone from the top rank decided to sell it. After Oracle acquired the Sun first all thought Oracle will bump on the mySQL and bang it. But it won’t happen. There are not any reasonable updates or new releases on any of the Sun’s products after the Oracle acquired Sun. What happened to JavaFX ? It was completely forgotten in the shadow of Silverlight. Now Oracle sue Google on Davlik (a JVM for Andriod). Where the patent rights go? What is the future of the open office ? But still Oracle keeps it competing bob – mySQL alive.

Java is an excellent platform which opened plenty of new trends in modern web standards. No body can deny this, but what is the future. I’m not against Java but the what does the Oracle buggers do? .NET needs a perfect competition.

Apache is funded by the MS in order to get the competition to IIS. (are you shocked ? but it is the truth Apache is funded by MS)

OAuth

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Social networks like Facebook and Twitter use a method of authentication known as OAuth to grant permissions to the applications to deal with our data. The permission grant is explicit. But we do not know what the permission we are giving to the application. Though the social networks boast lot about this OAuth as secured and more, really they are not much secured.

It similar to give your password and username to this applications

Let’s see that if you are supposed to take a quiz in the Facebook. You click on the application and you will see a similar dialog box as below.

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What we do in the curious of taking the quiz (even though we are not we do not read it Smile ). We just click the ‘Allow’ and jumped into the quiz or that particular app and do the stuff, publish the result in the wall (mostly) and exits. We do not care about the evil side of this.

Now take a close at the above declaration

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Now you can understand it is similar to giving your password to someone. The worst part we think that this permission grant is for those few minutes we use the application. But once you give the permission it will remain forever until you remove the permission. Yes you can remove the permission.

In Facebook Go to the Account –> Application Settings.

There you can see the list of applications authorized by you, in the Authorized category. Simply click the ‘x’ mark to remove the authorization. When I checked my list there were 354 applications that I have authorized. Sad part is most of them are mere quizzes that we only take once. But they still have the access to our data. Sad smile

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Creating your own app in Facebook using the OAuth is easy and you can get more details on the following page. http://developers.facebook.com/docs/guides/web

More on Facebook OAuth 2.0 : http://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/

Facebook OAuth 2.0 has some extended privilege options as well which gives full permission to our data.

Some applications and quizzes are more tempting so do them and delete the permission after you have done Open-mouthed smile

Cloud Computing

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What is cloud computing ? Before getting into the term what is cloud computing ask a question to yourself whether you have experiences working in the cloud. Every day we deal with cloud computing and use it. But the matter is we don’t know that is the cloud computing. The buzz cloud computing was a hot topic in 2007 and 2008. And still plenty of researches and business analyses are going in cloud computing.

Cloud computing is nothing other than using websites and web services for our use. Use in the sense it can be personal,business oriented or any thing else. Simply Facebook provides you a service of social networking. You save photos, videos and your notes in your accounts. You access them whenever you have an Internet connection. So the availability of the resources is high. Your share documents in the Skydrive, again whenever you have the access to Internet you have the access to your documents. And recently the Microsoft started the Office Web App. So the resources you saved and shared float above you like a cloud. Whenever you need them, you access it through the Internet. So cloud computing is not new to us and it is not other than the Internet computing and web services.

There are some buzz stories why we use the term cloud. One is most of the places and text books a cloud symbol is used to represent the Internet. So some say that’s the reason we call it cloud computing. Another story is the resources and the services you need, just float there and available every where like a cloud, and you can access it whenever you want it. Some say this is the reason how the word cloud came. But personally I prefer the 2nd one since it is more reasonable than the first one.

When it comes to cloud it has plenty of advantages

  • Hardware and Software independent. (You just need a machine with Internet connection)
  • High availability of the applications
  • The companies need not to worry about the Server farm requirements
  • Very cost effective
  • And much more..

Please do not get confused between the web hosting and the Cloud computing. Web hosting is getting a domain name from a hosting company and pay the company, then your site is up there in the Internet. Cloud is hosting of course but differs from the normal hosting. When it comes to cloud computing it is a platform and a development environment but a normal hosting doesn’t have those features.

Cloud application provides more scalability for the applications, managing, configuring and much more. Apart from that cloud does not include only web pages (web pages work as front end for the application / service).

Understanding the cloud computing is simple and easy. One simple googling on cloud computing will fetch you thousands of resources.