Remember when I posted this with the ridiculous TUCOWS wait time for free software submissions?  Well, it took a little less time (only 13 months, in fact), but here is what I got from them.

Dear author,

Thank you for submitting your software for distribution on www.tucows.com.
Unfortunately, we are unable to accept your program at this time for the
following reason(s):

1)  The download file URL was unavailable.

Please resubmit your program once this issue has been resolved.
Further information on our policies and review criteria can be
found in the Author Resource Center.

If you would like to provide a link to www.tucows.com from your Web site,
please use one of the images available in ARC. Below is the HTML code you will
need. Simply replace "IMAGE_NAME_HERE" with the name of the image you have
selected.  <a href="http://www.tucows.com"><img src="IMAGE_NAME_HERE"
border="0"></a>

Thank you for choosing Tucows.

Sincerely,
The Tucows Review Team

***** Internal Use Only ***** Do Not Delete *****
S.R.
*************************************************

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I was setting up a custom powershell script to do some remote monitoring on my servers.  For security purposes, I was not running as an admin, which is always good karma.  Locally, the script worked.  Remotely it did not.  The command I was executing was the following...

$colItems = get-wmiobject -class "DELL_System" -namespace "root\cimv2\dell" -computername "REMOTESERVER"

As you can see, I'm querying information from the Dell WMI namespace.  I made sure RemoteAccess permission was set up in the WMI configuration (among many other things), but nothing would work!

I finally found my solution with DCOM.  Now, I know you've read this before and you are thinking "BUT DCOM IS ALREADY RUNNING AND IT STILL DOESN'T WORK!" but I assure you, my solution is different than that very common newsgroup solution.

Check the COM Security tab under Properties for My Computer under Component Services.  Under "Launch and Activation Permissions" check "Edit Limits."  These limits are designed as a cap for the maximum security any DCOM server can grant.  So, even if permissions are set correctly in WMI and also in DCOM Windows Management and Instrumentation server, you still need to make adjustments here. 

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I'm a big fan of Japanese Anime.  I DVR pretty much anything (except the "kiddy" stuff like Pokemon) that comes on the few outlets we have here in the USA (basically Sci-Fi Channel and Adult Swim).  When Eureka Seven first aired on Adult Swim, I thought the first episode was sort of corny.  But by episode two, I was hooked!  I got to about episode 30 before my DVR skipped a few episodes (what a sad time).  So I set it up to record the second run on Adult Swim.  After two years of putting off rewatching the series due to not having time for whatever dumb reason, I started watching Eureka Seven again.  I just got through the final episode today and all I can say is WOW.  I highly recommend this series to anybody who even has just a passing interest in good anime, good scifi, good romance, or any sort of good story-telling (or, heck, even just random dance music scene references)!  I am not ashamed to admit I shed a tear or two at the wonderful sweet ending after 50 amazing episodes.  If only we could learn to get along like the Humans and Coralians finally did!

My wife and I found each other on eHarmony about two and a half years ago.  We have always recommended eHarmony to single friends.  Despite that, it always bothered us that eHarmony had no matching service for homosexual couples.  That is why I was delighted to read that eHarmony, under the terms of a law suit settlement, will be starting a new parallel website that will cater to same-sex couples.  It's too bad that it took a law suit for this to happen, but it is good that they chose to end their homosexual discriminatory practices.

The official excuse of why eHarmony didn't provide same-sex matching consisted primarily of two big points...

1. The matching algorithm developed for heterosexuals was never tested on homosexuals and may not work for same-sex couples.
2. Since marriage for homosexuals is not legal in all 50 states, eHarmony's match-to-marriage ratio would plummet and eHarmony would no longer be able to brag about "the most marriages," etc.

I'm not sure how much of their prior refusal was due to those reasons and how much of it was due simply to bigotry.  Despite that, I'm happy to see them change course and join the rest of us in the 21st century.

I'm a skeptic at heart.  A long time ago, while researching (aka googling) cold reading, I stumbled upon a wonderful site dedicated to debunking Sylvia Browne.  In case you don't know, Sylvia Browne is a "psychic" who is most popular for cheap Vegas acts and "communicating" with random people's dead relatives on Montel Williams' old show.  She is an awful human being who preys upon vulnerable people.

The owner of the StopSylvia site, Robert Lancaster, had a stroke  recently.  In the chaos that ensued afterwards to save his life and begin rehabilitation, he failed to renew his original domain name and a cybersquatter snatched it up (GRR!).  That is the primary reason I am posting this article.  I want to get the word out about his new site with a slightly different domain name (click on any link in this post)!  It's a great resource with a ton of very useful information on how Sylvia cons people into spending money so that she can tell them what they want to hear, all the way pretending to communicate with lost loved ones.  She is a despicable human being.  I'm very glad we have people like Robert Lancaster on our side.

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