When playing around with Windows Server 2008 I discovered how good Linux is. Even that I have to use Terminal (which I like anyway), dealing with Linux configuration is easier than dealing with Windows.

My primary area of interest is the Internet and all about it (web sites, databases, programming, servers). I really like open source (from operating system to programming languages), but occasionally I also check on the alternatives (Microsoft’s world, to be precise).

And in the previous week I checked a bit of how stuff works in Windows (DNS, IIS, MS SQL, ASP.Net). On the first look, it seemed a lot easier to work with it because of the GUI, but it soon became clear that I was terribly wrong.

Internet Information Server … great thing, a lot of options and dialogs but there are still stuff that needs to be configured manually. After setting up a few test web sites, I ran into few problems. The biggest was about caching static content on visitor’s computers. I partially configured it by Googling about it.

MS SQL

Again, everything seemed very easy. Creating a database takes few clicks, creating a user takes another few clicks and we have everything we want. Tables can be migrated from MySQL by using ODBC and that’s it. Until…I wanted to access this data from a web application.

Only thing I can get from my web application (just a simple thing for testing some of the MS SQL features and comparing performance to MySQL) was a simple error, that selected user cannot access selected database.

I was confused at first, but then I opened another instance of MS SQL Management Studio, connected to the server using this user, and I was not allowed to access anything. I guessed MS SQL has a unique way of managing rights and so I googled for tutorials and help. As I found out, there is a lot less Internet literature on this topic (MS SQL) than on alternatives.

After reading 30 articles, 400 clicks on buttons, 100 closed dialogs and 2 hours of work, I finally found a solution for this problem. It was pretty simple and I described it on Tech Site & Blog: http://techsiteblog.com/ms-sql-add-user/

PayPal is great. You can pay on the Internet without revealing your credit card information. I use it almost everywhere.

I just don't understand why the heck not every online shop supports it? Maybe they are worried about frauds? However, AFAIK PayPal can tell them if you are verified user or not. At least that's the case when using PayPal at GoDaddy.com.

With credit card, they get at least one information by which they can identify you ... and PayPal account can be opened by anyone. But on the other hand, one can easily steal credit card number, CCV and expiration date. So, it's PayPal really that insecure or is there actually no difference between those two?

BTW what's up with GoDaddy's $500 month limit?

Google usually makes good stuff, but I only had problems with it so far.

If I understand right, this is how it goes:

- I own a site or domain

- I add site to my Dashboard

- I verify site by uploading a file to the server or add A record in domain's DNS server

- I can do a lot of things with my domain, see search queries, who is linking me, etc.

Everything is simple to point, where I don't want a "disk space wasting" file. I just want everything tidy and clean, so I always delete unnecessary data/code/files. But if I delete this thing, then Google says that my website isn't verified. WTF??

Can't Google remember, that it had verified my site already? Cause I don't want to go trough all of these steps to verify my site again, every time I use webmaster tools.

Apart from this, Webmaster Tools have other problems too. For example, you cannot use "Change of address" feature with .eu domains. What's wrong with this TLD, Google?

Why the heck do I need to verify www and non-www address? Isn't that the same thing? I know that you can have different content on those two subdomains, but still ... who uses that? The best practice is to redirect it to one or another, this is good for SEO too.

Today I decided to postpone my project (RC car controlled by laptop) for a while.

I lost interest in this. It something that I often do and then get back to the project in a month or two.

Now I will have more time to figure out what to do with RFM12 transceivers that I have lying around somewhere in my room. After quick research I found out that it is a real pain in the ass. Anyway, I hope I'll learn how to use it because they weren't cheap enough to throw it away.