WSUS

Microsoft has a Windows Server Update Service (WSUS) utility that we can use to download updates and get them installed within the network. It can download updates for different versions Microsoft Windows Operating System. The domain clients have to be setup via Group Policy. For workgroup clients, you would have to make registry changes; see:
http://msmvps.com/blogs/athif/archive/2005/09/14/Manually_Configure_WUA.aspx

To manually search and download Windows updates, you can also use the Microsoft Windows Update Catalog via your browser. Unfortunately, it doesn't list available updates so you can't browse - all it's got is a search box where you can type the update that you're looking for.

Intel vPro

Intel's vPro is a hardware based management solutions for systems. The benefit of using a hardware based approach is that you do not require the PC to be running and don't even require the Operating System to be started up.

The Altaris Console Management is probably more popular among the vPro-based tools for administration, but you'll find more tools shipped from Avocent, BMC Software, CA, Farstone, Kingsoft, HP OpenView, LANDesk, Medialand, Microsoft SMS, StarSoftComm, and SyAM.

You can also get the Intel AMT developer tools from:
http://softwarecommunity.intel.com/articles/eng/1034.htm

For details from an Altaris Console Management demo, go to:
http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/hardware/vpro.ars/2

VS2008 and .NET 3.5 released on 19 Nov 07

Visual Studio 2008 was released on 19th November 2007. The Express editions are available as a free download. .NET 3.5 brings a lot of updates to C# and VB.NET as languages. LINQ is probably the most awaited feature.

For newbies, having Windows Presentation Foundation, Workflow Foundation and Communication Foundation integrated in the IDE is probably the best part.

Google BAdSense

Google AdSense is buggy. I've tried signing up using my existing GMail account and it replies with "a user with the specified email address already exists". Of course it does exist, what do you think an existing Google account means?

Anyway, I'm as interested in placing ads on my site yet since I don't receive a lot of traffic. Perhaps when I get the traffic to make something on the side to help pay for Internet connectivity costs.

Downgrading from Windows Vista to XP

The firm I work at just ordered 10 new desktop PCs pre-installed with Windows XP to replace the PCs running Windows Vista. I guess this one is a first - replacing a newer version of an Operating System with an older version.

Top 'n' SQL Query

The Top 'n' SQL Query is a common interview question and I've asked it a couple of times to fresh graduates who couldn't answer it - some didn't even know about the existence of the MAX group function.

I'm pretty sure everyone is familiar with the Oracle-specific statement:
SELECT sal FROM (
SELECT sal FROM mytable ORDER BY sal DESC
) WHERE ROWNUM < 10;

MySQL (and PostgreSQL) is pretty similar where you use a:
SELECT sal FROM mytable LIMIT 10;

With Microsoft SQL Server, you can use the SET ROWCOUNT 10 (Sybase supports this too) before executing a query to return ordered rows and this approach is similar to the MySQL approach. You can also use the TOP keyword (Firebird uses the FIRST keyword instead of the TOP keyword) as follows:
SELECT TOP 10 sal FROM mytable;
The TOP keyword also support the PERCENT keyword after the number, making it more flexible.

Also, with Microsoft SQL Server, you can use a ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY column_name) to provide something similar to the ROWNUM pseudocolumn in Oracle. RANK is used similar to ROW_NUMBER, except that RANK supports the use of PARTITION BY (optional) in addition to ORDER BY.

I think an ANSI compliant statement that works across all databases would be something like this:
SELECT sal FROM mytable a WHERE 10 > (
SELECT COUNT(1) FROM mytable b
where b.sal > a.sal
)
ORDER BY sal DESC;

I think a more challenging question for a beginner would be to return the next highest after the Top 'n'. I think I'll save that for the time I'm interviewing experienced job applicants.

New PHP, No IMAP

I got PHP 5.2.5 compiled on my system with a new shiny Apache too. I started off with an old version of CURL so it didn't work. I then got the new version of CURL and it worked! I decided to get IMAP working by trying both the 2006 and the earlier versions, but neither work - the compilation stops due to a variable name conflict. I'm not sure if the 2007 release is stable, but I'll give it a shot.

Anyway, I'll probably just have to go without IMAP till someone decides to work on the source code and come up with a new release.