Hashemian Blog Web Tools, Financial Markets, Technology Thursday, August 27, 2009 Oracle and Bing  Oracle has already bagged the U.S. regulatory approval to acquire Sun. If the Europeans go along as well, Sun will become a part of Oracle by September. That means Oracle will also own Java, the popular open source programming language used widely on the Web. Today while installing a Java upgrade I was presented with an option to install the Bing toolbar. As you know Bing is the much hyped search engine by Microsoft. As you also know, Oracle and Microsoft are rivals in several industries, the biggest one being the database industry. That will just get bigger when Oracle takes control of MySQL (also owned by Sun.) I wonder if Java users will still be given the Bing option after Oracle acquires Sun. Then again Sun and Microsoft were themselves pretty big rivals until a few years ago. Passage of time makes strange bedfellows. bing,java,microsoft,sun,oracle,mysql Labels: business, Microsoft <Oracle and Bing> // posted by rh 0 comments Monday, June 08, 2009 Google or Bing  Microsoft is nothing if not persistent. Last week the company unveiled the latest incarnation of its search engine called Bing. I don't know, but this is probably the 5th iteration of the company's attempt to force itself onto the psyche of the net searchers. You've got to give Microsoft credit for trying. Squeezed by the champion, Google, on one side and the runner-up, Yahoo, on the other, Microsoft keeps on trying and trying and trying. So far they have yet to chip away at the search market share in a meaningful way and this latest salvo, as far as I can tell, is far from impressive. Bing looks sleek for sure but it's so obvious that the underlying engine is the same old algorithm as before. Adding a nice graphic and a bunch of bells and whistles is well and good, but winning converts is another story. To be fair, I tried Bing for a little while, only to slide right back into Google's arms. Don't blame me for being faithful to Google. You did it too. But it's not blind faith. Google still produces much more relevant results without the Web 2.0 trickery, and at the end of day the one that produces higher quality at the same price wins the eyeballs. What really surprised me was when I plugged the terms "search engine" into Google. Google's own site was nowhere to be found in the results page. The top 3 results were AltaVista, Dogpile, and Ask.com. Does anyone really use these search engines anymore? Over on the right-hand side where Google displays sponsored ads, Bing was at the top of the list. It appears that even Google is excited about Microsoft's new search engine, if only to charge them a premium for a top sponsorship spot. It's almost like Google is saying, "who, me worry?" google,microsoft,bing,search engines,yahoo Labels: google, Microsoft, web <Google or Bing> // posted by rh 0 comments Friday, June 05, 2009 Robocopy Slow on Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008  A few years ago when I needed to synchronize large collection of files for a number of Windows Server 2003 hosts I stumbled upon a Windows Resource Kit utility named Robocopy. This is a great file synchronization tool with lots of switches that can quickly copy entire folders from one Windows host to another along with their NTFS data such as dates and security details, yielding exact duplicates. There are a number of tools on the market that can do the job, but Robocopy is free, fast, and easy to use. I had a number of hosts auto-synchronized using Robocopy in scheduled tasks and they worked admirably without any hassles. It's one of those set-it-and-forget-it utilities that once configured, it doesn't need any further attention. Apparently Robocopy was such a useful tool that Microsoft decided to bundle it with Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. There's even a GUI interface for it for those less inclined to run it from a command prompt. The newer bundled version may have a few extra switches but is otherwise almost identical to the previous versions that were part of the Resource Kit. There's also one more difference that is perhaps less noticeable. It runs substantially slower that the past versions. I discovered the performance issue today while doing a routine check on the scheduled tasks I had configured for our newer Windows Server 2008 hosts. It appeared that the Robocopy tasks I had set up on the new servers were taking considerably longer time to finish than comparable tasks configured on Windows Server 2003 hosts. The copy operations were still being performed flawlessly but the completion times were drastically longer, specially for servers with large numbers of folders and files. I spent a number of hours investigating this issue on multiple servers. I took various measurements, tweaked networking parameters, and used various Robocopy switches and values, but no matter what I did the performance issue kept persisting. The Solution Out of options and with no solutions at hand, I made one final attempt that I hadn't thought of before. I copied an older version of Robocopy (a version that came with the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit) to one of the Windows Server 2008 hosts and proceeded to synchronize folders using that version. To my amazement, the copy operation completed as fast as it used to do under Windows Server 2003. We're not talking a small improvement here. The job ran over 40 times faster than it had using the newer bundled copy of Robocopy. Incredulous, I tested this multiple times on multiple servers and the results were the same. The older version of Robocopy dramatically outperformed the newer version even when executed on Windows Server 2008. There you have it. If you are not happy with the speed of Robocopy on Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008, give the older version, included with Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit, a try and see if it does the same for you as it did for me. There are a couple of caveats here you should be aware of. First, I checked and rechecked my results quite extensively but I wouldn't claim that to be exhaustive. Do your own detailed verification before you let the old Robocopy loose on your hosts. Second, I ran the old version of Robocopy (a 32-bit image) on 64-bit Windows Server 2008 hosts and as mentioned, I had great results. But that version of Robocopy is not even supported on 64-bit Windows Server 2003, let alone Windows Server 2008. So I suppose there is a slight inherent risk of malfunction. For me, that risk is worth the performance gain, but your risk tolerance may be lower. robocopy,windows,windows server,microsoft,windows resource kit,vista Labels: computers, Microsoft <Robocopy Slow on Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008> // posted by rh 0 comments Monday, November 03, 2008 ASP.NET Denial of Service  How to send your IIS server into a frenzy with one line of HTML code? I didn't think it was possible until a few days ago we were stung with a persistent denial of service at work. This is what the event log showed on every instance of outage: Event Type: Warning Event Source: W3SVC-WP Event Category: None Event ID: 2262 Date: 10/23/2008 Time: 8:32:51 PM User: N/A Computer: WEB Description: ISAPI 'C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v2.0.50727\aspnet_isapi.dll' reported itself as unhealthy for the following reason: 'Deadlock detected'. I have always been frustrated with IIS event logs and there's one proof of that. OK, I know there was a problem, but can this be more specific? which process? which application pool? Which page? This is hardly helpful. I believe new Failed Request Tracing feature in IIS7 was designed to help with just that. Countless debugging hours would be saved if one could quickly identify a misbehaving page. Googling this entry lead me to the http://support.microsoft.com/kb/821268 KB article and that sent me on a wrong path for some time before realizing that I was on a fruitless chase. Finally, After 6 hours of struggling with the server (Window Server 2003, IIS6, CLR 2, FCL 3.5) and slicing and dicing and moving various applications to different pools, I found the offending ASPX pages. It didn't take long for my colleagues to discover an HTML anomaly in those files. And here it is in a generic format: <p param1="" param2="" param3="" param4="" param5="" param6="" param7="" param8="" param9="" param10="" param11="" param12="" param13="" param14="" param15="" param16="" param17="" param18="" param19="" param20="" param21="" param22="" param23="" param24="" param25.="" /> Notice that last parameter with a trailing period (.)? that's the culprit right there, an HTML tag with a long list of attributes and a punctuation mark in one or more of the ending parameters. It had crept into our pages via a poorly made web editing product. To test for yourself, just drop the line into an ASPX file and browse to the page and watch the CPU crank up and eventually the server refuse to serve pages. Remove the period or reduce the parameters and the page will display fine. I know, seems hard to believe. I didn't believe it either at first. But the results were the same on IIS6 and IIS7 on various platforms. My hunch is that this tag throws the ASP.NET engine into a regular expressions frenzy as it tries to construct the page elements and compile the page into a DLL application. Now this HTML syntax might look weird but I don't think it's illegal and it certainly shouldn't cause a denial of service. Certainly IIS or browsers have no issue with HTML files containing such tags. While at first I had feared serious security risks, this issue has a limited risk factor. In order for an attacker to exploit this issue, he would need access to the page sources. It's not something that can be injected in or remotely scripted into the page. Of course someone with a shared hosting service, could potentially take down the entire server and all the sites along with it. So if you run into such a problem on your IIS web site, you might want to check your source files for these types of HTML tags. And by the way, Microsoft has already been advised of this issue and they have indicated a fix will be incorporated in the next ASP.NET release. asp.net,denial of service,aspx,dos,ddos,iis,html,microsoft Labels: Microsoft, web <ASP.NET Denial of Service> // posted by rh 0 comments Wednesday, October 15, 2008 For Update, Update to Update  Recently after installing Windows Server 2008 on a new server at work, I noticed this interesting message from Windows Update. I'm not sure, but I think it had something to do with update :) windows,microsoft,windows update Labels: Microsoft <For Update, Update to Update> // posted by rh 0 comments Saturday, September 13, 2008 Windows XP Service Pack 3 Error  Last week I stumbled upon this Gmail Blog post mentioning that IE6 (Internet Explorer version 6) now supports some of the GUI enhancements offered by Gmail. But in order to exploit these enhancements, one had to apply a critical update to IE6 from Microsoft. An interesting point cited by this post was that Google and Microsoft developers had worked together to address the issue. I didn't think these guys even talked to each other, let alone cooperate to release an update for the IE6 browser. I had always wondered why Gmail appeared less fancy in IE6 than in other browser like IE7 or Firefox, and this post finally resolved that mystery. Now I'm not the type to jump on a patch or a service pack as soon as Microsoft releases them. I still use IE6 on Windows XP at work and at home alongside Firefox 3, and I have no desire to upgrade to Windows Vista or IE7. The prospect of better Gmail experience however was tempting enough for me to pay a visit to the Windows Update site and apply the IE6 patch. I have automatic updates disabled on my machine and apparently I was missing a lot of them as I was suddenly greeted with a long list of security and critical patches once I got the process rolling. Among the list were two notable items, IE7 and Windows XP Service Pack 3. I promptly opted out of IE7, but decided to give SP3 a green light. Little did I know that I'd be wasting the next 3 hours of my life over this inane service pack. The process started our smooth enough. a number of patches were applied, followed by the obligatory reboot. Then came the SP3 update from hell. The sluggish process would run almost to the end at which time an error dialog box would pop up with a simple message: "Service Pack 3 setup error. Access is denied." Huh? Access to what is denied? Acknowledging the message would commence a rollback process as sluggish as the installation itself, followed by an automatic reboot. Not acceding defeat, I ran a Web search on the error and found this KB article from Microsoft Support. Apparently I wasn't the first person having this issue. Following the advice of the article, I exited my antivirus program (AVG) and tried once more, but again I got the same error. Perhaps Windows Defender was the culprit, but stopping that process didn't help either. After a few more tries shutting down various programs like Diskeeper and Symantec's Backup agent, I was still getting nowhere. Finally I fired up Process Explorer and slaughtered every process in sight until only the basic ones remained. And yet, SP3 defiantly refused to be installed. It was the same old snail-pace install-error-rollback-reboot that I was getting well acquainted with. There comes a time when a person must cut his losses and move on and my time was then. Most likely the trouble was a registry permission issue which is also mentioned in the KB article and a solution is offered. But by then my patience had already run out and by that final reboot I decided that SP2 was good enough for me. In the end it turns out that SP3 doesn't really offer anything substantial over SP2. A few security fixes and optimizations but nothing so crucial that’s worth this kind of hassle. Happily, the IE6 update had been applied (possibly among the first set of patches) and that wiped away any modicum of temptation I might have had to give SP3 one more shot. The computer is working as before (even after the multiple upgrade onslaught), Gmail enhancements now appear fine on IE6, and my only regret is not stopping after the first SP3 update attempt went awry. Sorry SP3, we just weren't meant to be together. windows xp,gmail,windows service pack,internet explorer,firefox,microsoft,google Labels: google, Microsoft <Windows XP Service Pack 3 Error> // posted by rh 0 comments Sunday, May 04, 2008 Yahoo's Fate After Microsoft  While many are preparing for a dark day for Yahoo's share when the market opens on Monday, I don't think the shares will get battered too roughly, although there will be volatility. Microsoft's withdrawing of its offer isn't good news to many, but speculation on what Yahoo may have up its sleeve might keep the stock from slipping too far. It's possible that Yahoo overplayed its hand, but it's also possible that Yahoo may have had other plans, yet to be revealed. The plans could involve Google, or private equity, or even something far-fetched like Oracle. And in the end, nothing says they can't get back to negotiating with Microsoft. Only this time, they would probably keep it quiet, until a final deal is stuck. Yahoo,microsoft,google,oracle,finance Labels: business-finance, google, Microsoft, yahoo <Yahoo's Fate After Microsoft> // posted by rh 0 comments Tuesday, April 22, 2008 Yahoo Beats, Microsoft Next  As I had expected, Yahoo reported good earnings, but nothing spectacular. The stock has received a slight dent in after-hours, most likely the effect of selling into the good news. Chances are, barring any big news, it'll stay relatively flat tomorrow. The question still is whether Yahoo can maintain the earnings going forward. I believe most people don't have much faith in that. One quarter is hardly an indication of a trend. The bigger question, however, is the status of Microsoft's offer. A better indication might arrive on Thursday when Microsoft reports its own quarterly earnings. Even with Vista's slow uptake, my feeling is that it will show healthy earnings. Microsoft has a long history of under-promising and over-delivering on earnings. The weak dollar will probably help its bottom-line considerably as well. Many U.S. companies have gotten a boost from the weak dollar, offsetting their weaker domestic intake with higher overseas revenues. While many believe that Microsoft's acquisition of Yahoo is inevitable, there is still plenty of twists and turns left in this saga, including piercing the defenses of some heavy-weights such as Google, News Corp., and Time Warner, who would want to see this takeover derailed. microsoft,yahoo,google,earnings,weak dollar,vista Labels: financial, google, Microsoft, yahoo <Yahoo Beats, Microsoft Next> // posted by rh 0 comments Monday, April 21, 2008 Yahoo's Earnings  Yahoo is slated to report its earning tomorrow after the market close. If it can pull off what Google did last week, the stock should rise to about $35. Then again, that was Google and there was plenty of pent-up demand from buyers. The stock had been pounded so bad that there was nowhere for it to go but up. The good earnings news only gave it the additional momentum it needed to explode way up. Yahoo's stock probably won't see a 20% rise on Wednesday no matter how good its earnings. Given Yahoo's snobby attitude towards Microsoft's advances, one has to surmise that it's feeling pretty comfortable with its earnings. A good report will validate its position in resisting Microsoft and holding out for a higher offer while giving it much bigger bargaining power. On the flip side, if the earnings are dowdy, little doubt will remain that Microsoft would prevail in its takeover efforts. It's ironic, but I'm sure Google is rooting for Yahoo to report stellar earnings and fend off Microsoft. I've already seen Yahoo ads on Google's network and Yahoo is probably getting a good deal on these. If early indications have any value, my bet is on Yahoo reporting decent earnings. If nothing, that would be another signal of strength in the Internet market. Of course, if I were so sure, I would have picked up a few call options myself, which I haven't. The May 08, $30 call strikes saw plenty of activity today. No doubt, more of the same tomorrow. Then again a lot of it could be from traders protecting short stock positions. stocks,options,yahoo,google,microsoft,earnings Labels: business-finance, google, Microsoft, yahoo <Yahoo's Earnings> // posted by rh 0 comments Sunday, February 03, 2008 Microsoft + Yahoo > Google?  For those of us who might have thought that Microsoft's acquisition of Yahoo was an ace in the hole, this blog post from a Google bigwig might give a pause. Could Google be joining the likes of IBM, SUN, RealNetworks, Borland, Novell and Netscape who've lodged anti-trust complaints in various regulatory bodies around the world against Microsoft? Alright, no tears for Microsoft here. We all know this company is predatory and brutal when it wants to subjugate competitors. But can Google with a 75% share in their market (online search) really have a valid complaint here? Apparently so, and I'm actually surprised that Google has even addressed this acquisition rather than giving its characteristic aloof response. With Google's market value markedly below its 52-week high and facing slowdown or saturation in some of its markets, I can understand why the giant is suddenly feeling worried about its prospects. Can this acquisition finally give Microsoft the needed ammunition to meaningfully challenge Google? Only time will tell, but the fact that Google is feeling uneasy about it promises some interesting jousting and parrying ahead. Whatever the case, I hope Google doesn't lose its grip and mire itself in a long battle with Microsoft. Instead it should just stick to its guns, do no evil, and continue to innovate around Microsoft. In the end Google may still get run over by the behemoth, but I really hope Microsoft doesn't win this match, with or without yahoo. It will be a dark day on the Internet if Microsoft strips Google of its status just by its monopolistic tactics. google,microsoft,yahoo,search engines,anti-trust,acquisition,hostile takeover Labels: business-finance, google, Microsoft, web, yahoo <Microsoft + Yahoo > Google?> // posted by rh 0 comments Saturday, February 02, 2008 Face Cream Gimmick  Microsoft's $45 billion offer to buy Yahoo has certainly intensified the online advertising scrutiny. No doubt the entire advertising industry is going through turbulent times. At $20 billion per year, online advertising is still a small fraction of the entire advertising market, but that figure is estimated to rise sharply as more people turn to the Internet for their news, entertainment, and other personal and business matters. Indeed the cyberspace is no more immune to false advertising than other traditional methods. There are plenty of these online gimmicks around, many appearing on even reputable sites. From cars, to mortgages, to medical and beauty products, they make claims that are nothing short of miracles. And I suppose they sell well, because they seem to be everywhere. For example, this is a before and after shot of a woman's face on an ad banner touting some miracle cream to recapture youth. I keep seeing this over and over on msnbc.com. Is this an instance of false advertising? You decide. face cream,online advertising,banners,yahoo,microsoft Labels: advertising, health, Microsoft, web, yahoo <Face Cream Gimmick> // posted by rh 3 comments Thursday, May 03, 2007 Microsoft's bCentral LinkExchange Banner Network Shuts Down  I Received the inevitable email from Microsoft today. It was inevitable because in the face of all the acquisitions, consolidations, and new technologies to deliver ads on the web, it was a miracle that LinkExchange even lasted as long as it did. LinkExchange opened its operations in 1996. It created a banner exchange marketplace where sites could get their banner ads displayed on other members' sites in exchange for participating in the program and displaying banners from others. The company made money by selling a percentage of the banner placements to paid advertisers. In 1998 (fortuitously before the dotcom implosion) Microsoft acquired LinkExchange for $265 million and rolled it into its small business services initiative, dubbed bCentral. Eventually newer players (read Google) and newer technologies made the old boring banner exchanges obsolete but LinkExchange soldiered on, until now. Now that Microsoft is shifting its bCentral operations to live.com and adCenter has been positioned to compete with google's AdWords and Yahoo's Panama, it was time to decommission the old banner exchange. Microsoft stopped taking new LinkExchange applications on Nov. 15th, 2006 and as of June 4th, 2007 will stop serving banners. So as LinkExchange takes its final bow, scroll to the bottom of this page to say your farewells. Soon there will be an empty spot in its place. Microsoft,LinkExchange,banners,advertising,bCentral,banner network Labels: advertising, Microsoft, web <Microsoft's bCentral LinkExchange Banner Network Shuts Down> // posted by rh 0 comments

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