I received an email today from someone at Penton Media to let me know that I could buy reprints of an article they published in the August 2006 Windows IT Pro Magazine about one of my free tools. It was 500 reprints for $1,508.00 and a PDF for $1495.00….
I thought Windows IT Pro was overpriced before… Goodness….
It was nice to at least be told they were featuring my website or tools or one of the tools. I certainly wish whomever wrote whatever contacted me first so I could verify what they wrote. I will do it for free, I just want to make sure people understand what they are writing about if it is going to get such a large audience. I had a bad case where someone wrote and published something once and they dorked up the parameters/switches and said something else incorrect and instead of me just fixing it in that one spot, I got to fix it on hundreds of emails as people sent me questions. I am not saying that will happen here, I have no clue what was written about at all. I stopped by the book stores today on lunch to see if I could find the magazine and look at the article and also look at what kind of books they had available on LCS[1] and unfortunately either the book stores didn’t carry Windows IT Pro or it didn’t get it in yet or it already sold out.
If anyone here is a subscriber to the magazine, it appears whatever is written about whatever I wrote is on or about page 66, I would certainly love to see a scanned image of what was written if it isn’t too much trouble.
Certainly I am honored that folks like the tools enough to write about them. I just want to make sure the stuff is accurate as correcting it after the fact takes more of my resources than it is worth.
 thanks, joe
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[1] I am hearing more and more requests to look at what LCS is doing with Active Directory and the stuff I have heard is pretty much all bad. It kind of scares me because I know it is the same people who did Exchange and my personal opinion of Exchange is that it is a great example of how not to write an AD aware app. Certainly it has gotten better but it never should have been as bad as it was to start. Now it sounds like LCS is just as bad as Exchange was back in the beginning with stupid assumptions and really stupid ACLing.
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I get WinIT Pro and saw your tool, OldCmp, mentioned. I will attempt to reproduce it in PDF or some other way and send it to you today.
Hey joe-
I’m not sure how ended up on their mailing list, but I had the current issue shrinkwrapped on my desk for the last week or so. The article is a quick plug for OldCmp as Fred mentioned. Basically says “it rocks” but doesn’t give any syntax or examples. It shouldn’t cause you any support nightmares…
Hunter
Identify Inactive Computers in Your Domain
joeware.net’s OldCmp
Doug Adams of Columbus, Ohio, manages an IT infrastructure that allows individuals to add—but not delete—PCs to the domain. This situation left Adams with an abundant supply of computer accounts on the domain that were no longer active. While looking for a tool to help identify dormant accounts, Adams found OldCmp from joeware.net. OldCmp is a command-line Active Directory (AD) query tool used to find computer accounts that haven’t been used in a specified amount of time. With OldCmp, Adams could locate old computer accounts by specifying the length of time since the account’s password had been changed. “Within a very short time, we had all our dormant accounts identified, disabled, and deleted,” says Adams. “OldCmp also works with user accounts, and we now use it as part of our quarterly clean-up process.”
OldCmp is also a reporting tool. After you run the product, it reports the results in delimited-text, HTML, or Dynamic HTML (DHTML) format. “This tool is an incredible time-saver and a musthave for anyone looking to identify inactive computers or user accounts. And best of all, it’s free!” says Adams.
Reader
Doug Adams Columbus, Ohio
Joe, the only book I’ve found on LCS so far is “Professional LCS”. See http://www.robichaux.net/blog/2006/07/new_live_communications_server_book.php.
All: Thanks to everyone who forwarded me copies of the article, both text and scans, very helpful!
I love the guys name who posted… You think Douglas Adams didn’t die but instead moved to Ohio (which to an Englishman probably would be death…).
Paul: Thanks for the link, I will check it out.
You feel that way now, but of course, if Microsoft or some other big-corp puts “please check with us for corrections before you publish some crap about us”, the whole world screams “censorship!”
FWIW, I’m with you – I’ve had too many people write crap about me, simply because they couldn’t be bothered to drop me an email and ask.
Alun:
I understand. I don’t require people to contact me or else I could completely change how I distribute the tools. Certainly I wouldn’t tell someone they couldn’t write something bad about me, I am perfectly fine with it. The things I have “corrected” for folks has all been along the lines of use of the tool or sometimes in their understanding of how things work.
What I really need to learn to do is if someone screws something up in what they wrote, not cover for them, document on my website that they screwed up and point people at it or back to the original author.
joe