By Brandon W. Yuille

Whether you are constantly being annoyed by Outlook 2007's password dialog for you to enter your password or you simply cannot install SQL Server 2005, the problem is actually one in the same.

Outlook 2007 symptoms are that it simply will not save your password no matter how many times you check “Remember Password”. This problem alone almost made me uninstall Office 2007 and get my money back. Imagine you are working hard on something and a dialog box pops up to steal your input right as you are in the middle of a sentence or line of code… Yes excruciating pain indeed.

SQL Server 2005 seems to have a bigger problem, not quite as annoying though. When attempting to install, you get a message box right away alerting you to the fact that the installation has failed and there is a log of the install and what went wrong in: "%Program Files%\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Setup Bootstrap\LOG\Summary.txt". The Summary.txt file won’t tell you much, but if you move into the Files directory you will see a detailed log. Once open, the error you see looks like the following:

…
Error: Action "ParseBootstrapOptionsAction" failed during execution.  Error information reported during run:
Could not parse command line due to datastore exception.
  Source File Name: utillib\persisthelpers.cpp
Compiler Timestamp: Fri Jul 29 01:13:55 2005
     Function Name: writeEncryptedString
Source Line Number: 124
…

It turns out the answer to all this pain and suffering is by adding a simple registry key: "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders\AppData". AppData is of type REG_EXPAND_SZ and should contain the value: "%userprofile%\Application Data".

AppData was for some reason non-existent on my computer, so if you are having problems like those above please check to make sure you have this registry key. If you don’t know how to add a registry key, make a post here and I’ll update you.

Good luck!

By Brandon W. Yuille

I recently read this post by Peter Fleischer on Google's blog, informing of new privacy policies to protect their users:

The Privacy Post From Google

"When you search on Google, we collect information about your search, such as the query itself, IP addresses and cookie details. Previously, we kept this data for as long as it was useful. Today we're pleased to report a change in our privacy policy: Unless we're legally required to retain log data for longer, we will anonymize our server logs after a limited period of time. When we implement this policy change in the coming months, we will continue to keep server log data (so that we can improve Google's services and protect them from security and other abuses)—but will make this data much more anonymous, so that it can no longer be identified with individual users, after 18-24 months.

Just as we continuously work to improve our products, we also work toward having the best privacy practices for our users. This includes designing privacy protections into our products (like Google Talk's “off the record” feature or Google Desktop’s “pause” and “lock search” controls). This also means providing clear, easy to understand privacy policies that help you make informed decisions about using our services.

After talking with leading privacy stakeholders in Europe and the U.S., we're pleased to be taking this important step toward protecting your privacy. By anonymizing our server logs after 18-24 months, we think we’re striking the right balance between two goals: continuing to improve Google’s services for you, while providing more transparency and certainty about our retention practices. In the future, it's possible that data retention laws will obligate us to retain logs for longer periods. Of course, you can always choose to have us retain this data for more personalized services like Search History. But that's up to you.

Our engineers are already busy working out the technical details, and we hope to implement this new data policy over the coming months (and within a year's time). We’ll communicate more as we work out these details, but for now, we wanted you to know that we’re working on this additional step to strengthen your privacy."
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/taking-steps-to-further-improve-our.html

My Thoughts

After reading this I realized that there was more that needed to be said to Google, yet from what I can tell no way to say it. Google needs to understand that because they are the largest search engine on the internet the US government is surly devising ways to monitor its use.

As we have already seen in the telecom and ISP industry, the FCC has ruled that CALEA (Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act) must be adopted by every phone and internet provider. They have extended the hunt for terrorism to our own vehicles, places of work, and homes.

The interest and curiosity of Americans for free information is now being closely watched and monitored. This poses an extremely large threat as the Patriot Act has removed the right to not be simply labeled a terrorist and taken from your daily freedoms.

The Bells or SBC or AT&T as they are now called are in very much cooperation with the government in this anti-freedom of information push. From their angle, the incentive is to please and in return the FCC will allow them to regulate the content that is transferred over the internet. If AT&T is able to charge whatever they feel reasonable for say VoIP traffic there will be no competitors left to attack this monopoly.

Google is the last hope to keep the internet free. There have been rumors of Google creating their own internet to compete against AT&T, as Google has been giving them very large amounts of money to support their high bandwidth needs.

For Google to fight for a free internet, I feel it is imperative that they first start by making their search engine and other tools completely anonymous. Google's current attempt at making "this data much more anonymous" by only holding this data for "18-24 months" is not enough, as it will still drive government subpoenas for release of user data and search habits.

Freedom of information is fading (among others) and all of our hopes are in the hands of Google.

By Brandon W. Yuille

I would like to give everyone a quick update about what has been going on around here (major development).

Here's a quick break down of all the Photon products:

Call Capture

We have a lot of great ideas about the future of this product, yet not enough time to implement them all before the official release (no date is set for now). I can tell you, with the new servers installed in a high bandwidth location things are looking great. We're still working on some compatibility issues with Vista, but those should be cleared up soon.

At the moment we're working on implementing as many reporting features as possible (some of them are going to be unbelievable). Once completed we will implement the new advanced search engine to help you easily search through contacts, tasks, documents, and Call Capture extensions.

Double Slit Application Installer

We're still working on this one as this is the installer used by all of our products. The DS Project Builder is currently on its way to being available for beta testers. Get ready for some advanced installation techniques!

WhiteRook Privacy Guard

Development for WhiteRook is moving slowly while Call Capture is still priority. We have begun work on performing advanced shredding and encryption operations yet neither are at a release point. I'll keep you updated.

By Brandon W. Yuille

This article reminded me of why I did not go work for Google: Google’s goal to organise your daily life.