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Don Jones

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Don Jones avatar

Don Jones

370 articles  •  5 podcast episodes

6 min read

PowerShell Summit City Selection Criteria

As you may know, we’re in the process of putting together a PowerShell Summit Europe for Fall 2014. It’s a big task, with a lot of financial risks, so we try to get it right. Folks have been helpful on Twitter in offering city selection ideas… but there’s a bit more involved …

2 min read

PowerShell Great Debate: Piping in a Script

Take a look at this: `# version 1 Get-Content computers.txt | ForEach-Object { $os = Get-WmiObject Win32_OperatingSystem -comp $_ $bios = Get-WmiObject Win32_BIOS -comp $_ $props = @{computername=$_; osversion=$os.version; biosserial=$bios.serialnumber} New-Object PSObject -Prop $props } version 2 …

2 min read

PowerShell Summit… EUROPE?!?!?

I have received a lot of interest in a PowerShell Summit Europe, and we are starting to look at doing one in 2014. I know that’s a long way off, but it takes time to put these together when everyone’s volunteering that time! I have put together a very short survey to see if there is any …

2 min read

PowerShell Great Debate: Backticks

Here’s an age-old debate that we can finally, perhaps, put an end to: The backtick character for line continuation. The basic concept looks like this: Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_BIOS -ComputerName whatever -Filter "something='else'"This trick relies on the fact that the backtick …

2 min read

Would you contribute enterprise software reviews? [OFFTOPIC]

I’ve been working with a couple of folks lately who’ve been trying to review and pilot Active Directory auditing solutions. Both bemoaned the fact that, unlike consumer products of nearly any kind, IT products (specifically, enterprise software in this instance), don’t really get …

4 min read

How Cloud-First Design Affects You

Today, Brad Anderson (Corporate VP in the Windows Server/System Center unit) posted the first in what should be a series of “What’s New in 2012 R2” articles. In it, Anderson focuses on how Microsoft squeezed so many features into the 2012R2 release in such a short period of time. …

1 min read

It's Safe to Run Update-Help – and you should!

I’m informed that sometime today Microsoft will be posting fixed core cmdlet help files for your downloading pleasure - so it’s safe to run Update-Help again, and you should definitely do so. There are likely a lot of fixes and improvements to the help text, and you won’t be …

1 min read

PowerShell Great Debate: Formatting Constructs

Here’s an easy, low-stakes debate: How do you like to format your scripting constructs? And, more importantly, why do you like your method? For example, I tend to do this: `If ($this -eq $that) { do this } else { do this } `I do so out of long habit with C-like syntax, and because when …

1 min read

Seeking Editor for PowerShell.org TechLetter

The PowerShell.org TechLetter goes out once a month, and we’re looking for an editor to take over the task of building each monthly issue. You’ll need some basic HTML knowledge, and ideally will have a decent HTML editor. Not FrontPage. You’ll be given articles in both HTML and …