As Adam and I mentioned before, Monad is now available in very public beta via the WinFX installer. As Adam mentions in his post, “It’s not installed by default (due to a last-minute setup integration problem), so you have to go to the Start menu, choose `“All Programs`”, then `“Microsoft Windows SDK`”, then `“Install Windows Command Shell`”. That runs our standard installer (the same one you get from betaplace).” [Those back-ticks are my first Monad inside joke!

One of the shames about our team is that not all of the brilliant members have blogs. One could also argue that none of the brilliant members have blogs :) In any case, we’re looking to fix that – as we now have a Monad Team blog, where other folks from Monad will have a chance to contribute. You’ll recognize many of the names from our BetaPlace newsgroups – Jeff and Marcel have already posted a few articles.

This is one of the lamer things I’ve done as a computer geek, and that’s saying a lot. However, any self-respecting person does not compromise on their values. One of my computer values happens to be “Run with Least Privilege.” What’s a geek to do, then, when a cherished application fails to run under a non-admin account? Often, the solution is more of a negotiation between your security goals, and the software reality.

On Saturday, I finally got the chance to do something I’ve long waited for – Sky Diving. That’s right. Climbing well past the height where airplanes allow you to remove your seatbelts. Jumping from said perfectly good airplane. Throwing myself to the ground at 120 mph. As soon as we landed, all I could think about was doing it again. We picked http://www.skydivekapowsin.com as our drop zone, as they offer the best rates, the highest jumps, and a great view.

KBCafe recently posted an entry, “Desparately seeking C#.” I’ve gotta say, there’s a desparate shortage of technical jobs in Toronto, let alone C# jobs. Let’s not forget about salaries – the job market in Toronto pays a LOT less than jobs in the US. Even taking into account crazy cost of living in some US cities. In July of 2002, I graduated from the University of Toronto with a specialist (Hons.

In an earlier post, I wrote a brief overview of Monad’s three main security features: Not allowing users to double-click on Monad scripts by default Requiring that all scripts be signed by a trusted publisher Requiring that users explicitly invoke scripts in the current directory The discussion was helpful, but a little abstract. How do the security features of Monad compare to those of other shells? How exactly do Monad’s security features prevent a scripting virus attack?

Well, Scott and Omar have been busy again, and have just released DasBlog 1.8. It’s added a few helpful new features, and plenty of themes. The upgrade went painlessly as far as I can tell – be sure to let me know if you see any issues! I’ve set “BlogXP” as my theme – it sure is beautiful. My pet peeve of the old “Discreet Blog Blue” was that the sidebar would float all around, and generally mess with layout.

Just as a reminder, the second Monad technet webcast is happening right now (9:30am PST to 11:00 am PST): http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032277852&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US. I posted more about the Technet Webcasts here. [Edit: Monad has now been renamed to Windows PowerShell. This script or discussion may require slight adjustments before it applies directly to newer builds.]

If you’ve read Adam’s post ("Preparing for Slashdot",) you probably read how we worked to inform the Slashdot crowd via early entries in the discussion. Luckily, they were moderated up fairly quickly, and people were able to continue commenting with quite a bit more basis in fact than the original article provided. Often, this is called “Astroturfing,” alluding to “fake grass” in a grass-roots movement. Scoble brought it up, as have some internal discussions over the past few days.

F-Secure has reported on some recent work by Second Part To Hell on a Monad scripting virus ("First Vista Virus Found"). It’s a misleading title, as it’s an issue that affects any vehicle for any executable code on any operating system. There’s an excellent treatment of shell script viruses on Virus Bulletin that covers this issue, but predates it by 2 years: Unix Shell Scripting Malware. The fact that MSH is used as the execution vehicle is really a side-note, as it does not exploit any vulnerabilities in Monad.