I have advocated running as a standard account and not as a administrator for quite some time and have over the last year switched all my families accounts (yes I am the single Pewitt family IT department more some other time) to run as standard user and I have a admin account on each box that I can login in to. That is good for them but what about me?

For a long time I figured I know what I am doing I don't need to worry about it and seeing that I am a developer it will be to hard to run as a user. Then last week I was schooled on why every one needs to run as users!

The current project I am on is at HP and they got send some e-mails to almost all of there accounts the e-mail looked official and had an apparent extension of .txt (I can't believe I am going to admit this) it was good enough to fool me "Mr. attachment paranoid" and I double clicked it. As soon as I did I knew something was wrong I immediately unplugged from the network and checked TaskManager for process that I did not recognize, I did not see anything then I ran Autoruns from www.sysinternals.com and sure enough there in my registry was a application that should not have been there! I cleaned it from the registry and deleted the file and all was good in the world again no damage done. Over the next few days HP was hammered by this many of there systems were affected, it was so bad they announced over the 1MC (Navy term for announcement system) that attachments should not be opened. Yes you guessed it each person here is a local admin.

I had started to rebuild a new system for myself in this time and I decided to bite the bullet! I am now living the pain of being a developer running as a user and so far it's not that bad. I have found this excellent blog by Aaron Margosis that is all about living as a user on your system. Would I suggest this for everyone? Not yet but if things keep going this well I will soon.

Have fun!

I have yet to read this article but it looks great Survival of the Fittest: Natural Selection with Windows Forms

http://www.plur.net/thisland.html

This is great! look at who they quote in this!

In an interview to CNet News.com Novell's VP of development, Miguel de Icaza, founder of Linux GNOME project, talks about resource efficiency when comparing ASP.NET with J2EE: "We did a study at Ximian when we were trying to find customers for Mono. We found that people said that it was 25% more efficient to build in ASP.Net, because they have to do all this academic crap (with J2EE). Microsoft later funded a similar study and they came up with 30%. We interviewed about 25 customers...

[Via IT Facts.biz]

Well the guys at Channel9 have been posting some great videos of late the one linked below is a great one about Team Services.

I still can't believe that MS lets Robert Scoble run around loose with a video camera and them post all of this stuff. Many may not know but Robert Scoble has been around the MS development community on and off from the VB 1.0 days on CompuServe forum days. He as gotten in trouble several times by talking about things that the Powers Above did not want disclosed at the time and it looks like he has found a place that is encouraging him to do that. Thanks Robert and the entire Channel9 team keep up the good work!

This is a different kind of video for Channel 9.

Watch the Video

[Via Channel9 Forums]

Here is a good consolidation of topics that I will be using when I rebuild my laptop... That is right I am drinking the kool aid and not going to make my normal local user account part or the Administrators group I will report on my success or failure.

It's painful! It is. And on top of that, it is painful! But the following resources do help:
- Developing Software in Visual Studio .NET with Non-Administrative Privileges
- How can I run Control Panel applets as another user (one with administrative privileges)? (See the additional links at the bottom)
- Run Using a Least-Privileged Account

[Via Microsoft community blog posts]

Christa points out a great article on MSDN on about hiring for ISVs I think most of this applies to solution providers like the one I work for InterKnowlogy some of the items pointed out in the article really hit home like "Know the Law" we let just about anyone conduct interviews and I have heard some inappropriate questions asked that if the person being interviewed wanted could have gone after us. Any way a good read if you are at all involved with the hiring process.

Just had a chance to read through Eric Sink's latest column, Hazards of Hiring. He gives a really insightful overview of the qualities and experience he looks for when hiring developers for his organization. Having worked in the small ISV space myself in the past, I have to say,”Read and learn.” When your entire company is 10 people or so, having 1 person who can't make a go of it (for whatever reason) is both obvious and painful. Hope those of you who work in similar environments find this useful next time an interview loop is on your schedule.

---

This Blog Hosted On: http://www.SqlJunkies.com/

[Via Microsoft community blog posts]

Microsoft is once again showing how it sucks (this is on a few beers) but they have locked up the links blow. Now I know more then most that the thinking goes that if you give away the content people will not show up for the MS love fest that is TechEd but I think MS needs to think that free = more eyes.

There were several posts on blogs.msdn.com about this content and since they decided to pull this they need to explain why they pulled free access to the content to this community that they are trying to foster.

All regular sessions that were given at TechEd in San Diego are available in video and power point slides from http://microsoft.sitestream.com/teched2004/. I have watched\listened to a few sessions so far the two are standouts:

• ASP.NET: Best Practices for Managing and Operating IIS 6.0 and ASP.NET Solutions
• .NET Framework: Exploring What's New in the CLR 2.0

I will post any more that I see that are standouts.

[Via Random .NET Ramblings]

I just found a great web site for samples of how to do .NET Crypto work. JavaScience Consulting

OK this is a bit cheesy but the information is good, MS has setup a site with a bunch of avi files of some quick walk throughs of how to do things in VB.NET. topics include Deployment, Web Development and many more. VB at the Movies Have fun.

This is one of the best music videos I have ever seen!

What do you get when Pat Helland is on vocals, Don Box is on guitar and David Chappell is on piano? 

You get a hilarious song direct from TechEd Europe. 

Pat sings his version of Don McClean's American Pie.  The lyrics were written by Pat with inspiration from Nicholas G Carr's book Does IT Matter?

Bye Bye Mr CIO Guy..

Watch the Video

[Via Channel9 Forums]