I haven’t updated the project page on this site, but I have updated the code and created a new release on the DevHawk Wiki GDN Workspace. New features include:

• Support for multiple wiki page versions in SampleWiki. Now, when you update a page, the old one is copied to an archive directory rather than overwritten. Also able to view version history by page.
• Support for Header tags in WikiRenderer (! to start a line == h1, !! == h2, etc)
• Removed support for local:// tags in WikiRenderer (not sure what I was thinking on this one)

Emjoy

I finally got my mailbox over to my new office building. One of the things that had collected dust before the switch: a retractable modem cable with a Microsoft product logo on it. I assume they sent it to people in the field to raise awareness of their product. But a modem cable? In the past year, I can count the number of times I’ve used my laptop’s modem on one hand. Besides, I have a dozen of these stupid things.

Our group has GREAT giveaways. At an event last year, we gave away USB phone chargers. They’re more common now, but I had never seen one before at the time. We’ve also given away USB lamps and portable USB webcams.

Every once in a while, I think about just yanking the Wired feed from my aggregator. I don’t usually read the articles. With Scoble posting so much, who has time to read both? 😄 However, today I actually read two. One very interesting and one that I thought was pretty stupid.

Spies Attack White House Secrecy points out that document classifications are up 400% from 10 years ago. On the surface, post 9-11, that may sound like a good idea. But look at the examples they give:

The Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, prepared a report last year for firefighters and other so-called “first responders” on how to react to a chemical weapons attack. But when the paper was completed, the Defense Department classified it, CSIS analyst Jim Lewis noted. Now, the firefighters will never get the benefit of that information.

In July, a George Mason University graduate student mapped out in his dissertation (registration required) the details of the country’s fiber optic network. Using information publicly available online, he spotted vulnerable spots where terrorists might strike. The paper could have been used to shore up weak links in the country’s infrastructure. Instead, the government immediately suppressed it.

I particularly liked this quote from the article: “To counter far-reaching, stealthy terrorist cabals, the country needs more openness, not less.” Sounds like Scoble’s stance on corporate transparency.

Then there is Windows: More Flawed Than Ever. While I may be a biased b0rg, I think this article offers little in the way of unbiased “news”. Yes, we released four critical and one important updates for Windows yesterday. I’m not sure what’s “particularly embarrassing” about them. ALL security bugs are embarrassing. That’s why we work with the security community and get the stuff patched in a timely fashion, usually before anyone knows it’s a problem.

One of the cool things about using VPC to host my dev environment(s) is that I can easily dogfood and experiment. For example, I can run my VPC in “undo” mode so that when I shut down, I can choose to merge, keep or throw away all the changes I made to that VPC. This is a great safety net when dogfooding a bunch of different stuff. I’ve got a VPC with Whidbey and Indigo. Instead of creating a separate VPC for Yukon, I can install it into the Whidbey/Indigo VPC and see how well they play together. It does mean I have a long merge cycle when I shut down (assuming I don’t want to rollback the changes) and the VPC is runs slightly slower. But it’s a heck of a lot easier than finding out after the fact that build of this doesn’t work with this build of that.

Even for my “production” dev environments (I have two – client and server), I can make a back up of the entire system as easily as copying the multi-GB virtual hard drive file to a safe location. Of course, it helps that I have 1GB of RAM and nearly 85GB of HD space in my laptop.

The only downside is that actually dogfooding Virtual PC is a bit of a pain. We have prebuilt XP and WS03 images available internally. But since I’m on a later build of VPC, the additions aren’t always compatible with my build. Our website lists “late in calendar year 2004″ for the availability of Virtual PC 2004. So I guess there’s a light at the end of that dogfood tunnel.

I see my illustrious colleague Pat Helland is tearing it up on the gong show @ HPTS. He showed me some stuff he was working on for Band on the Runtime. It’s going to be a fun PDC.