I've fought with this before, and am getting it again on a fresh SBS R2 install in monitoring reports (and the Event Viewer/System log):

The application-specific permission settings do not grant Local Activation permission for the COM Server application with CLSID {E579AB5F-1CC4-44B4-BED9-DE0991FF0623} to the user NT AUTHORITY/NETWORK SERVICE SID (S-1-5-20). This security permission can be modified using the Component Services administrative tool.

It took a long time to track down/fix the first time.  It was faster this time, but I'm documenting it now for future reference.  I underlined the important bits above.

First connect the dots:

1. Looked up that CLSID with regedit in HKCR\CLSDID\{E579AB5F-1CC4-44B4-BED9-DE0991FF0623}
2. Looked up its AppID there: {56BE716B-2F76-4dfa-8702-67AE10044F0B}
3. Open Component Services: Start > Run > dcomcnfg
4. (Guess that it's VSS related since SBS often has VSS errors, and) open My Computer > DCOM Config > Volume Shadow Copy Service > properties dialog.
5. Confirm Volume Shadow Copy Service has that Application ID: {56BE716B-2F76-4dfa-8702-67AE10044F0B}

Then actually make the fix:

1. Open Security tab > Launch and Activation Permissions > [Edit] button
2. [Add] Network Service,  [OK]
3. Allow Local Activation permissions to Network Service,  [OK], [OK]

My opinion: connecting the dots shouldn't be so nearly much more involved than making the fix.

(Credit to this article for documenting the basic troubleshooting process.)

I won't say it's "finally" coming, because it might be one of Internet Explorer's fastest major upgrades.  But IE8 is coming, and better yet, I think it is "finally" catching up with the competition.

The news is all over the place, and this time I won't dig into the tech like I did with the IE7 beta.  I have installed the developer beta for a little testing, and it looks pretty similar to IE7.  Since the UI isn't changing much, I think it's a comparatively developer-heavy release (yum!). 

Here are some good official links:

• IE8 home page
• IE8 Readiness Toolkit
• IE8 Developer Highlights
• IE8 Release Notes

And the interesting progress & commentary:

• IE8 passes Acid2 test (Acid2 is a CSS Rendering test)
• IE Team says IE8 will have to opt-in to its own new standards-support, and then changes their minds (hooray!)
• Ajaxian on IE 8: Better Ajax, CSS, DOM, and new features
• John Resig (JQuery) applauds IE8's great Javascript (and other) progress

My own/other thoughts:

New Direction: A lot of the most interesting new stuff is neither UI/security improvements nor core web technology improvements, but Web 2.0-type stuff like Activities and WebSlices which seem to be targeting easier mashups and 3rd-party browser extensions.

Bad Chrome: A later IE7 release added back the Classic file menu.  Now they've added the crap links bar back in, sacrificing that much more viewport to the biggest waste of browser chrome.  Those plus the infobar warning I got right away doubles the 3 rows it should be, meaning if it goes live this way, my various inattentive relatives are gonna be scrolling way too much:

Developer's Browser Ecosystem: IE7 usage is still roughly even with IE6, and seems to have leveled off.  It's frustrating that IE6 is still hanging on so much.  Let's get IE8 in and IE6 gone!

Microsoft just published an interesting Windows Vista One Year Vulnerability Report

I especially like this graph:
 

I mentioned a few days ago that Vista seems to have picked up at XP's current level of stability.  From this it looks like it's done the same with security. 

I think what's remarkable is that they've accomplished this while increasing the amount of Windows code (because of new features).  Normally more code creates more ways for it to fail and to get hacked, but the Vista team has done the opposite.  That's impressive.

For bonus points, read through the report's comments (pretty fun on its own) and then read this response on the MS Software Development Lifecycle team blog.

• Byrds - Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is A Season)
• Kool and the Gang - 16 Spirit Of The Boogie
• King's X - Pretend
• The Commodores - Still
• Spock's Beard - 4 O' Clock
• Lit - Miserable
• Journey - Any Way You Want It
• Van Halen II - D.O.A.
• They Might Be Giants - Clap Your Hands
• Mike Helm - Meet My New Friend
  

A comment I just posted at http://datamining.typepad.com/data_mining/attensa/ :

I've been using intraVnews for several years, liking Outlook's sorting power to manage info, but I'm not at one machine long enough lately to keep current. So I went shopping for an online reader, and found your post and the RSS Reader Survey .

Based on those, I tried (or at least looked at) Bloglines, Rojo, NetNewsWire and Great News. I mostly didn't like the UIs (too weak or clunky compared to Outlook), and most just didn't work on my Windows Mobile phone' Pocket IE.

I ended up using Google Reader instead -- sure it's not as powerful as intraVnews/Outlook (no search folders, no deactivating feeds), but I don't think I need that power since the "reading flow" is so smooth (aka "UX", or User Experience in Microsoft's new lingo). I don't Need to filter out the "junk" since it's easy to just ignore it.

Granted, it's only been 2 weeks, but I've been successfully keeping up on 296 feeds pretty easily.

I should mention I was actually looking for an Outlook/online combo.  Apparently Newsgator and Attensa both do this, but Newsgator ain't free (and I'm a tightwad), and I couldn't find Attensa's supposed free service...  I've tried the Outlook addins for both in the past, tho, and they're fine (since it's Outlook).

Hm, should I post my 296 feed OPML?  ..or I guess Google Reader has a sharing feature -- maybe that's something to try out.

For those in a similar tight place...

Alright, I shouldn't have experimented with the BIOS settings so flippantly, but all my other current hardware either has an internal "reset" jumper, or it automatically detects problems and resets itself, so I assumedI was safe...

Well imagine my surprise that powering on gave me an utterly blank screen, and no combination of keys would fix it.  Opening the case showed no reset mechanism either.  And Sager's website showed no support options except an RMA form...

Fortunately I found (elsewhere) an email address for support: websupport@sagernotebook.com.  I emailed and got a response within 24 hours asking for a serial number.  Knowing it was out of warranty (and expecting a "sorry about your luck" response), I gritted my teeth & answered.

Glory be, 12 hours later I received these instructions from Daniel on how to reset the BIOS to factory settings:

Bob,

If you feel comfortable, Try this, 1st unplug all the power remove the AC Adapter and the Battery. And open the bottom cover(see attachment picture) and unplug the Cmos-Battery’s wire(red&black crop by Green Color) for like 15sec. Then reconnect it back the wire then everything ACA and the Big Battery. See that will help.

*** We don't hold any responsibility ***

Daniel
Sager computer
18005 Cortney Ct
City of Industry, CA 91748
Tel# 1-800-741-2219 626 964 4849
Fax# 626-964-2381

Despite Bob-ifying me, it made enough sense that I was booting normally in 5 minutes (and mostly time for the tiny screws).

It's good info, Sager just needs to share it more easily.  I wrote back to thank Daniel, and suggested they put this kind of info in a public knowledgebase.

IE7 now requires the same trick to be like so:
SELECT {
min-width:11em;
_width:expression(this.currentStyle.getAttribute('minWidth'));
}

Unfortunately, forking logic inside CSS expressions is a bit of a pain.  That, combined with the limitations of this technique (IE6 treats width as min-widthonly when the contained elements can't be wrapped), prompted me to write a solution script.  Here it is:

It uses a shim technique to fix it only for IE (other browsers don't support currentStyle).  The remaining limitation here is that it only works on elements which canHaveChildren, so it does not work on childless elements,like form INPUTs or SELECTs.  Any suggestions for this case are welcome!

To use it, just call fixMinWidthForIE() in the window.onload, or better yet when the DOM has loaded, and you're set.

2006-11-20: I updated the script for better standards-mode compatibility (it was causing extra blank lines).  I had missed the doctype switch in my current project.  The good news is that IE7 in standards mode does do min-width.  (I wish I'd noticed that sooner!)  However, I still have a lot of IE6 miles to go before I can put it to sleep...

Guess I'm not the only one who was baffled by the new W3C XMLHTTPRequest spec credits.

From Dare Obasanjo:

Interesting. A W3C specification that documents a proprietary Microsoft API which not only does not include a Microsoft employee as a spec author but doesn't even reference any of the IXMLHttpRequest documentation on MSDN. I'm sure there's a lesson in there somewhere. ;)

And then finally from Anne van Kesteren (one of the spec's authors):

Hereby my apologies to everyone who had to waste his time by writing a rant... The current draft reads: "Special thanks also to the Microsoft employees who first implemented the XMLHttpRequest interface, which was first widely deployed by the Windows Internet Explorer browser."

It's great that XMLHttpRequest is finally becoming an official standard.  It's better though, that the "other" browsers didn't wait for this before implementing it.  Real progress has happened as a result, in particular the recent popularity (& naming) of the AJAX technique, and the somewhat-related "Web 2.0" phenomenon.

The news also makes me smile at the anti-Microsoft folks who have thrown stones at Internet Explorer's standards support -- once again the IE team innovated (*overused word through gritted teeth*) a proprietary extension, and it was such a good thing that the competition swiped the idea, thus making it a de-facto standard.

I'd rather have a good de-facto standard now, than an official one too-late. End result: Developers and Users win (and they already are winning).

Footnote: Anyone else think it's strange that the standard's authors list seems to represent every browser except for XMLHttpRequest's inventor?

Yuck! ...It even says "everything you need, nothing you don't" -- very much unlike this Flashturbation.

I'd guess the Flash designer hasn't seen Microsoft's (great) parody of its own bad design habits, The Microsoft Ipod:

In this blog's 1.25yrs alive: It's received 193 legit posts and comments, and 1388 comment spams. (And that's with a basic spam filter in place to catch the obvious 80%!)

It seems like the breeeport experiment might've accelerated it. It didn't seem to affect overall visits tho.

...Man, I gotta finish switching over to dasBlog soon.

Observations as a user:

• Address bar: I'm not sure I like it being locked to the title bar.  Any other toolbars go below -- that's weird.  Interestingly, I can drag the whole window from the chrome near it, so I think it may actually be part of the titlebar under the hood.
• "Star"/start menu: Opens the sidebar containing Faves, History, and Feeds. I think I like this, an idea borrowed from live.com.  It'll still take some getting used to, tho.
• bug?: Backspacing/deleting characters in this MSHTML-enabled (contenteditable) area of .Text doesn't work right.  Possibly machine-specific, but I haven't noticed it before.
• Tabs: I reeeally want to move the tabs to the bottom of the screen, as I do with Firefox (and like Excel worksheets).  I also want to be able to double-click to close tabs, but I'm happy that middle-clicks are “Open in a New Tab”.
• New tab thing: The small “blank tab” for creating new tabs is Mystery Meat, and especially confusing since there's a “plus” icon nearby.  I know MS is going for “uncluttered UI”, but this breaks usability in favor of pretty.  Just show a #8220;new document” icon the whole time, and it'll be much clearer. 
• Stop loading icon: The “X” icon also very confusing.  “X” means Delete, a “Stop Sign” icon means stop. 
• Reload icon: OTOH, I like the color reversal here, the green in the background makes it stand out more.
• Faster: address bar responsiveness.
• Slow, like rendering of the new Quick Tabs, Classic toolbar and Google's toolbar.

Observations as a developer:

• CSS Visual Transitions: are these gone?!?  Strange, b/c CSS Visual Filters still work.
• Modal/Modeless dialogs: IE6sp2 forced the status bar onto these.  IE7 now forces an address bar too, creating problems for web apps with sized dialogs.  Slowly but surely those dialogs are becoming just windows, EXCEPT that...
• Modal/Modeless dialogs are still very buggy in IE7b2!
• SELECT elements: As expected, much better now!

Yeehaw it's out!  I'm downloading now and am actually excited to testdrive it.  Already noteworthy to me is the functionality changes section in the release notes:

Scriptlets—Internet Explorer 7 disables Dynamic HTML (DHTML) scriptlets, by default. (Scriptlets were deprecated in Internet Explorer 5). They can be reenabled by system administrators, changing URLActions with the Internet Control Panel (INetCPl.) The INetCPL text should read "Allow Scriptlets." If your programs rely on scriptlets, we recommend that you use DHTML behaviors which are more efficient. Disabling scriptlets is part of our continued work to ensure that unsupported technology is deemphasized in Internet Explorer.

I'm very happy about this.  It sounds like Microsoft listened (!) to my request to not remove Scriptlets after all, but to instead just disable them by default (which is certainly a good thing for security).  I have several good old IE components written as DHTML Scriptlets, and I need some option to keep using them in existing web apps.

• ActiveX controls--ActiveX controls are disabled by default in Internet Explorer Version 7. The ActiveX Input TYPE=FILE control no longer submits a fully-qualified path; it now submits only a filename. The ActiveX control for XEnroll certificate enrollment was removed from Windows Vista and replaced with a new control.

This is a big big deal, and again a good one.  But does this include disabling the built-in ActiveX Controls too, like DSOs and XMLHTTPRequest??  (if so, then ouch!)  Good idea on the file input, but it sounds like it'll cause some rewrites.

• Channel Definition Format (CDF)--All CDF support was removed from Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview.

This surprises me.  It may be old tech, but it was big (remember all the "push" hulabaloo? man, those were the [something-] old days), and I do still see sites using it.  Not sure from that statement whether it'll come back in a later beta or RC, tho...

• DirectAnimation--All DLLs to support the Internet Explorer DirectAnimation component were removed in Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Update.

Another big change.  So what's the replacement it, native SVG finally??

• XBM--Support for XBM, an imaging format designed for X-based systems, was deleted.
• SSL--Support for weak SSL ciphers was removed from Windows Vista and support for SSLv2 was disabled for all Internet Explorer 7 platforms

Good and better.

• Windowed Select--The Windowed Select Element was removed from Internet Explorer 7 because IE7 is not using the Windows API. This results in some cosmetic changes in padding. The animation associated with the popup is gone as well, and the popup simply pops up.

Simply marvelous!

• BASE Element--Internet Explorer 7 strictly enforces the BASE element rule, as documented in the HTML 4.01 standard. We no longer allow BASE tags outside of the HEAD of the document. The standard specifies that the base element must appear within the head of the document, before any elements that refer to an external source.
• window.opener and window.close--Internet Explorer 7 no longer allows the window.opener trick to bypass the window.close prompt. Browser windows can't close themselves unless the windows were created in script. This security enhancement no longer allows browsing to a random site when the main browser window closes unexpectedly.

Ah, lovely bug fixes.  More please!
(actually, I wish I had known about that window.opener trick a long time ago.  Darn!)

• WWW-Auth--Internet Explorer 7 changes the precedence rules for WWW-Auth. Previous releases of Internet Explorer used the first header encountered. Internet Explorer 7 uses the first header except when the header is Basic. We use Basic auth if no other authentication mechanism is present.
• HTTPOnly Cookies--HTTPOnly cookies can no longer be overwritten from scripts.
• _SEARCH--The _SEARCH sidebar is no longer supported in Internet Explorer 7. It can be reenabled using a URLAction.

All sounds good to me.  I'll be a little sad about _search, tho, but only a little.

• View Source--The view-source protocol no longer works in Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Update.

It actually stopped working back in IE6sp2, which was a pain for me.  It was a Netscape standard, albeit de facto, but it was still quite handy for sharing code (and non-abusable, that I know).

• Gopher Protocol--Support for the Gopher protocol was removed at the WinINET level. (Gopher support was turned off by default in Internet Explorer 6.)
• windowexternalImportExportFavorites--windowexternalImportExportFavorites has been removed in Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview.
• Telnet--The telnet protocol handler is no longer supported in Internet Explorer.

Gopher, sure -- I haven't touched that in 10yrs. 
The Favorites method -- eh, not a big fan, but I've seen some very cool specific uses (uploading to bookmark sites, in particular). 
But why no telnet://?  All that ever did was open the default telnet client.  This'll definitely be a pain for some sites. 

• SysImage URL Scheme--The SysImage URL Scheme has been removed from Internet Explorer.

I actually have no idea what this is, which is unusual with IE.  Anyone wanna enlighten my ignorance?

• Status Bar Scripting--Script will no longer be able to set the status bar text through the window.status and window.defaultStatus methods by default in the Internet and Restricted Zones. This small step helps prevent attackers from leveraging those methods to spoof the status bar. To revert to previous behavior (allowing script to set the status bar through window.status and window.defaultStatus) select the “Security” tab from “Internet Options” in the Control Panel. Select “Custom level…” for the Internet (or Restricted sites) zone. Find “Allow status bar updates via script” and change the setting to “Enable”.

I wont miss this one much.  When I've used it, it's been more a toy or bandaid for ugly URLs.  Much more often I've seen it abused, so all good here.

I'll post more if I find my test-drive interesting.

There's more good discussion about it over on the IEBlog.

Or SELECTed wisely... (ok, so the quote doesn't quite work).

Considering my frustrations with IE's buggy SELECT element (dropdown list), or my workarounds for those problems, it should be no surprise that I'm quite excited about IEblog's news about SELECT element fixes in IE7: For the SELECT few....

z-index fixed, styles fixed, title fixed. Finally! (But no mention of scripting bugs... hopefully they get those too!)

---------------------------
Windows Product Activation
---------------------------
Since Windows was first activated on this computer, the hardware on the computer has changed significantly. Due to these changes, Windows must be reactivated within 3 days.
Do you want to reactivate Windows now?

---------------------------
Yes No
---------------------------

Very strange. Any ideas?

(Tip: you can capture the text of many Windows dialogs into the clipboard by pressing Control-C while viewing them. The above example came that way. Couldn't use printscreen while logging in, tho, or I'd've shown the dialog too.)

Nope, I still haven't seen it, but I can't wait.

And now I think I gotta go see it in style, though...

(Dunno what's with the You Tube videos that keep coming my way, but it's cool that they encourage hotlinking.)