Simple really.

For a long time I have championed the “reverse” date format approach. This is for a number of reasons, but mostly for the fact it is vastly superior when used for “sorting” in computerised environments.

The two dominant date format systems in use today are DD/MM/YYYY & MM/DD/YYYY.

Both of these are severely flawed when dealing with sorting objects by date (03-04-2010 is listed before 04-03-1990 when sorted in ascending order in these traditional systems) , and whilst the first method seems, at first, to make sense; days, then months, then years, the second method does not even flow logically; months, then days, then years?! I don’t understand. (There are, of course, reasons for this format’s popularity, but they are deprecated and historic, rather than logical today).

Let us take a very similar example and consider how we sort time as opposed to date. Do we write, for instance; Seconds, Minutes & Hours? No. Do we write perhaps; Minutes, Seconds & Hours?  No that’s just silly. No we write Hours, Minutes & Seconds. In other words the larger unit goes first. This is internationally accepted as the correct way of communicating time.

We are long overdue such an “internationalisation” of dates and this should follow the same logical flow, for sorting, organisational and clarity reasons. Year, Month, Day.

One could argue, that we should simply use Year & Day Number, as this would save us a variable and avoid ANY confusion resulting from collisions in month & day number ranges, ie, in the old date format systems if a date reads 03/04/2010 is it referring to the 3rd of April or the 4th of March?

The major problem with day numbering is that we foolishly, in retrospect, did  not put our “leap day” in as an extra day at the very end of the year. This means that leap years damage the consistency of the system. So 2010/362 will not be the same day of the month as 2012/362 (as 2012 is a leap year).

One advantage of the “new” YYYY/MM/DD system is that it is rare enough still that if seen, people are likely to apply logic and assume it is Year, Month & Day. So it suffers less from the range collision issue.

So there you have it YYYY/MM/DD is clearly the best universal date format system that is actually practical at this time. Thus, I will continue to champion it for at least a further 7989 years. At which point a further, rather urgent, date related debate will, of course, be required.

These two products / product ranges are the ONLY two which satisfy the minimum criteria I would require of an anti-virus product at this time.

1. Highest available, independently tested, rating for both “pro-active” & “on-demand” virus detection & removal, with lowest available “false-positives”.
2. Solid, reliable, company with assets to support it long term.
3. An intuitive & practical set of deployment & maintenace tools.
4. Industry leading price point across client, server & management tool licensing.

So it really is that easy! If you are not using one of these products in your corporate environment then you should be asking questions. These are the two clear “best” options, for enterprise anti-virus, world-wide.

Before we start we should be clear that the “i” moniker, followed by it’s relevant number should be understood as a “category” of processor, rather than necessarily indicating performace level.

To try and quantify all this naughtiness I’ve taken all Intel’s public data and done some VERY simple analysis on it (Only because I couldn’t find it anywhere else!)

My (highly subjective) results can be viewed in: PDF, XLS, XLSX or ODS format.

And are summarised in the image below (Click on it for the full size copy);

Intel i Series CPUs Table, Inc. Performance

Also see the following useful links / resources;

Intel’s own tool to help you choose which processor to buy / specify!

Setup Virtual PC / Machine & XP Mode in Windows 7

Copying Windows 7 Virtual Machines

Disk Differencing in Virtual PC

Networking Summary for Virtual PC;
You only have a couple of options for giving your Virtual Machine access to networks, to configure these, fully shut down your Virtual Machine and then right click on it from the Virtual PC window, select “Settings”, and then click on “Networking” and select as required;
1. Not connected: No connection to any network allowed.
2. Internal network: Can only network with other Virtual Machines on the same host.
3. Shared networking:  Will NAT behind your own machine (i.e. will be on it’s own subnet)
4. Adapter List: Select the adapter you would like to piggy back. (i.e. it will access networks in exactly the same way \ at the same level as the host does with that networking device / driver).

Running other OSes in Windows 7
Virtual PC is excellent for running any flavour of Microsoft OS, desktop or server, however it is not as good for running non-Microsoft OSes. One of the best ways of doing this is to grab VirtualBox. It’s Open Source, so no cost regardless of role or level, and it’s got a solid community supporting it.

For more details of mythological gods see:

- http://www.pantheon.org
- http://www.purplehell.com/riddletools/g-list.htm
- http://messagenetcommresearch.com/myths/names.html

For some excellent diagrams see;

- Greek Gods “Family Tree”
- Greek Gods “Family Tree” (Alternative)
- Roman Gods “Family Tree”

Other Resources;

- Animated World Myths

http://intelloware.com

NOTE: If you do want to use it in Windows 7, make sure you run the application as administrator!

Developers & Maintainers (OGC)

Official Site

Official Certification Body (APMG)

Summary Process Map (Best Printed on A3) (Requires Personal Information)

Best UK Residential Course!