Jason Filley – SnakeLegs

ReconnAct has been updated, and now “adds support for all Windows client and server operating systems from Windows XP/2003 and up.”  ReconnAct allows you to script events on remote desktop logon, disconnect, and reconnect, which is handy for things like remapping printers when a user reconnects to a session from a different location.

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, owned by Quest, has an RDP optimization pack forthcoming.

Microsoft acquired Calista Technologies in January ’08.  Calista’s technology looks impressive and should dramatically improve multimedia performance.  With Virtualization all the rage these days, if you can’t display a training video or browse websites, it’s pretty useless, whether you’re using Terminal Services or just XP/Vista via VDI.  I myself prefer Terminal Services with Softgrid/App-V, which abstracts everything.

Citrix and Provision Networks price their products like this is 1998, instead of 2008 — they’re priced way out of their range.

Having the Calista technology delivered by Microsoft is what’s preferred, but there are no public details or roadmap.

Cheap Solution

So, the cheap, sure-fire way to improve browser performance for Flash-enabled websites is [as many individual web browsers have done]: just block Flash.  It’s all crap anyway.  Annoying.  Zero-content.  Distracting.  Even if they’re on business-related websites, they’re mostly useless.

Set your browsers to use a Squid cache, as a general rule.

Then use AdZapper with Squid, to block egregious ads, including Flash.  When a .swf file matches a given regex, a blank .swf is substituted for it, showing just a white box.  AdZapper is ridiculously easy to install, being a Perl script with a few content items (fake images, Flash, mp3).

Then, if you’re using Internet Explorer, load IE7Pro to block the remainders and let the user selectively enable them.  Firefox users can use FlashBlock.

This solution is quick and cheap.

Choco 2.0 is out.   Open-source constraint satisfaction, written in Java, and business-friendly BSD-licensed.

It’s the Holy Grail of computing.

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 copies, too.  Try loading popular pages.

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

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 if you have a corporate standard document format and don’t want the cascading issues with users receiving and opening/converting/saving non-standard files?  Wouldn’t it make sense to convert the document on the way in?

A rules-based system makes sense.

Consider a resumes@example.com address that receives resume submissions for HR.  You do not want HR bugging you about weird documents.  I’d set a rule that any attachment (Microsoft Word .doc, Microsoft Works document .wps, RTF, OpenDocument, etc.,) gets automatically converted to PDF — they’re resumes to be read or printed, and should be read-only.  Email gets scanned, attachments are analyzed and extracted, attachments are converted and reinserted, a note is added that it was automatically converted and the archive document is at such and such for so long if there are problems, and thank you.

Rules wouldn’t be terribly complicated, either.  Off the top of my head:

• All Postscript (*.ps) convert to PDF.  Simple.
• Pass all compressed (*.zip, *.gz, *.bz2, etc) unmodified.
• Convert to Open Office XML all (*.doc, *.wps, *.rtf, WordPerfect, and other text formats).
• Same goes for Lotus 1-2-3 docs and kin.
• Image formats convert to PNG.  Example, with rule that the Graphics department is exempt.
• And so forth….

I haven’t checked the Microsoft Office license, but I’m pretty sure you’d only need one licensed copy for the gateway, so I’ll check.  Image conversion is simple enough, using ImageMagick, NConvert, and others.

Pie charts are worse than useless. Use a simple table or bar graph. Continue reading »

PowerPoint presentations almost always suck.  There’s a reason for that.

Continue reading »

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.

Sacrilege!!!