The Problem
Multimedia performance over RDP on WAN links is suboptimal. Users will complain of the painfully slow rendering of Flash-enabled websites. Internet Explorer will block, so that you can’t scroll the browser window while Flash images are being rendered.
If you’re the Fed and can print your own money, Citrix’s Speedscreen Multimedia Acceleration can help.
Provision Networks, [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Computers'
Flash Performance on Terminal Services RDP
October 14th, 2008 · Comments Off · Computers, Main
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Human-powered Mouse and Keyboard
September 24th, 2008 · Comments Off · Computers, Main
I saw in Popular Science today that someone (Logitech or Kensington?) has a wireless keyboard with a battery life of three years. Pretty good. And then I thought, why not just use the energy of the person pressing the keys — I’d think there’s enough force applied that it could keep a battery charged for [...]
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New Choco Version Released
September 17th, 2008 · Comments Off · Computers, Main
Choco 2.0 is out.  Open-source constraint satisfaction, written in Java, and business-friendly BSD-licensed.
It’s the Holy Grail of computing.
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Top Secret, Apparently
September 16th, 2008 · Comments Off · Computers
  MsRdpClient.AdvancedSettings2.BitmapCacheSize   = 48000
  MsRdpClient.AdvancedSettings2.BitmapVirtualCacheSize = 48
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Preload Your Cache
September 15th, 2008 · Comments Off · Computers, Main
Might as well use the cache — that’s what it’s there for. Like Vista’s Superfetch, or XP’s prefetch, or precompiling JSPs, or what have you.
For example, to load up your squid http proxy cache, just run:
 wget -r -nd -H –delete-after http://your.portal.company.local/
or
 wget -r -nd -H –delete-after -i some_file_with_URLs.html
wget’s –no-cache will force the proxy to download fresh [...]
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Errors in Spreadsheets
July 8th, 2008 · Comments Off · Computers, Main
The Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth’s Spreadsheet Engineering Research Project publishes some interesting research on errors in spreadsheets, including causes and financial impact (”Among the remaining 70 confirmed errors, the largest error was $100 million; however, 9 of the 25 spreadsheets tested had no errors at all.”). Collection of stories.
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Clean Up A Windows Print Server
May 19th, 2008 · Comments Off · Computers, Main
Do you have old print drivers hanging around?
Use the Print Migrator utility to back up your printer config:
printmig -b “server_name.cab”
And then remove the unused print drivers:
cd /d %systemroot%\system32
cscript prndrvr.vbs -x
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ZoomIt
May 16th, 2008 · Comments Off · Computers, Main
As mentioned in Mark Russinovich’s newest blog entry, here’s a quick introductory video on ZoomIt, the 44KB screen zoom and drawing utility that should be in every IT toolbox (along with everything else from Sysinternals).
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Document Format Conversion at the Gateway
May 15th, 2008 · Comments Off · Computers, Main
Corporate mail should be filtered for viruses and spam at the gateway — that’s just a given. It’s much more efficient to filter incoming email in one spot than to check it at 300 or 25000 desktops. Web browsers should go through a scanning, filtering proxy. Again, it’s much simpler to secure and maintain.
So, what [...]
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Detect and Fix Java Bugs
April 6th, 2008 · Comments Off · Computers, Main
Java developers and testers should use FindBugs to find and fix Java bugs. It’s free, and the FindBugs team has concentrated on having a high hit ratio, as developers won’t use lint’ing tools that spew out pedantic non-errors. FindBugs can run standalone or as an Eclipse plug-in. Watch the Google Labs video linked on the [...]
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Don’t Use Pie Charts
April 6th, 2008 · Comments Off · Computers, Main
Pie charts are worse than useless. Use a simple table or bar graph.
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Video Series on Energy Efficiency
April 6th, 2008 · Comments Off · Computers, Main
I encourage most everyone I talk to to view the online Stanford Energy Lectures given by Amory Lovins, of the Rocky Mountain Institute. There are five lectures of about an hour and a half per, and Amory is an interesting speaker. It’s great knowledge and pertains to efficiency in general, not just electrical.
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On PowerPoint
March 30th, 2008 · Comments Off · Computers, Main
PowerPoint presentations almost always suck. There’s a reason for that.
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Website Baseline Security Analysis
March 29th, 2008 · Comments Off · Computers, Main
A lot of junior Windows admins think that the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (MBSA) is sufficient to test the security of IIS websites.
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All Servers Belong in GMT?
March 10th, 2008 · Comments Off · Computers, Main
Server BIOS time should be set to GMT (Greenwich Mean Time). Doesn’t work with Windows, though, which is why a lot of people don’t bother. POSIX systems use GMT, so follow something like OpenBSD’s FAQ on the matter.
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Internet Reading
March 10th, 2008 · Comments Off · Computers, Main
I was searching for an old essay today and ran across this, so I’m tagging it for future perusal. Computer reading.
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More Free Software
March 4th, 2008 · Comments Off · Computers, Main
PCMag collection of free software
Noticeably lacking in the Finance list is Microsoft’s Accounting Express.
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Monochrome FujiBoink ?
March 2nd, 2008 · Comments Off · Computers, Main
Sacrilege!!!
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Free Fonts
February 22nd, 2008 · Comments Off · Computers, Main
Here are good sources of free TrueType/OpenType fonts.
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Sparklines
January 18th, 2008 · Comments Off · Computers, Main
I spend a good deal of time now working on effective, efficient communication. It is a sin to waste someone’s time. If you have to produce documentation, investigate sparklines (”Intense, Simple, Word-Sized Graphics”). Edward Tufte’s writing should be required reading for almost any profession I can think of.
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