Entries for manickernel

What we do everyday! [What we do everyday!]

manickernel — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 14:21:05 GMT

http://blueballfixed.ytmnd.com/

Do you talk on your cell phone while driving? [Do you talk on your cell phone while driving?]

manickernel — Wed, 07 Dec 2005 23:46:41 GMT

We had a local woman 'distracted' on her cell phone that ran off the road and killed a cyclist. Story here

EDIT: Oh, by the way this did not happen at night, it happened in the middle of the day. The newspaper account 'misspoke'.

Then she actually made comments in the local paper that are, shall we say, lacking in remorse.

Thread here (She is 1barber)

I know this isn't a typical topic for C9, but with 'Funny Cats' and the 'Air Marshal' story... this is what I have been keeping up with.

By the way, absolute stupidity is not grounds for a charge of 'Vehicular Homicide'

She will only get 2 points on her license for driving too fast for conditions.

in reply to Do you talk on your cell phone while driving?

Has Ballmer outlived his usefulness? [Has Ballmer outlived his usefulness?]

manickernel — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 15:31:19 GMT

Don't get me wrong, I admire S. Ballmer...kinda like I admire the beauty and stealth of a Mako shark... but perhaps his approach to dominance in software markets has outlived it's usefullness. Historically Microsoft has attempted to crush their competitors, and done quite well at doing so. I believe one of his favorite words is 'annihilate'. Maybe a better approach would be that of Cisco's John Chambers in buying and incorporating competitors and others that are best in their field.

My point is that the perception that Microsoft prefers to steal technology from and then destroy competitors has led to more ill-will in the market than could ever be offset by profits. Time for a kinder, gentler Microsoft.

in reply to Has Ballmer outlived his usefulness?

Anyone want to buy a cool company? [Anyone want to buy a cool company?]

manickernel — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 04:32:32 GMT

www.novalistech.com

Don't 'cha hate it when one of your major vendors goes into receivership?

in reply to Anyone want to buy a cool company?

Microsoft Shared Computer Toolkit [Microsoft Shared Computer Toolkit]

manickernel — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 18:19:32 GMT

Shared Computer Toolkit for XP

This is a really neat product that Microsoft has rolled out. I have used the PAC Computing tool that spun off from the original Gates Foundation project for libraries, and it was great in it's day, but this is a fantastic development for those of us that support public computers.

I only found this after revisting the paccomputing site and finding they had discontinued that program. Seems that there is so much product volume at Microsoft that it is hard to keep up with what is available.

Jamie, you might want to put this on the family computers. Really!

:D

in reply to Microsoft Shared Computer Toolkit

Suggestions for search indexing of document repository needed [Suggestions for search indexing of document repository needed]

manickernel — Thu, 25 Aug 2005 04:25:10 GMT

I am hoping you C9 gurus can help me here. I am a sysadmin for a small county government. The particular issue I have here is the need to search through a large dump of pdf files of archived issues of local newspapers for our library. Essentially "google" the back issues for relevant terms. I am looking at WSS with the adobe Ifilter as one possibility, but wanted to know what other options were available. This will probably expand to other document formats in the future.

Essentially this seems not to be too much different from current "desktop search" but obviously on a larger scale depending on an indexed database.

On a side note. While the technology for digitizing documents and making them widely available has been around for some time, (We use Legato and some custom integrated stuff in some departments) it seems that the demand for this to be available publicly has taken off exponentially in government now.

So what's going on out there? What's good? I am not averse to using a Linux/OSS or Windows solution. I just like what works.

in reply to Suggestions for search indexing of document repository needed

. [.]

manickernel — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 22:38:06 GMT

CNN is reporting that it hit both them and NYT pretty hard. Banner headlines.

http://www.cnn.com/

Edit:..and ABC and Caterpillar

http://money.cnn.com/2005/08/16/technology/computer_outages/index.htm?cnn=yes

in reply to .

Bill Hilf was long overdue at Microsoft.. [Bill Hilf was long overdue at Microsoft..]

manickernel — Mon, 15 Aug 2005 20:41:13 GMT

"As a policy, I don't run anything that competes with Microsoft," Microsoft CIO Ron Markezich said in a December interview with CNET News.com. "My goal is to make sure Microsoft products are the best products in the world. It's an easy choice for me, in that sense, to run Microsoft technology. We don't run Unix. We don't run Linux. We don't run Oracle. We're 100 percent Windows, SQL Server."

Article

Now that's just dumb... but better late than never that you have someone good to do more than just pay lip service to "interoperability".

Good video too.

in reply to Bill Hilf was long overdue at Microsoft..

Effective Spam mitigation method [Effective Spam mitigation method]

manickernel — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 17:42:21 GMT

http://www.securityfocus.com/news/11256

Now that's what I call canspam.

in reply to Effective Spam mitigation method

New IE exploit [New IE exploit]

manickernel — Sat, 02 Jul 2005 16:04:40 GMT

From SANS:

New IE Exploit PoC

On Thursday, Microsoft released a security advisory describing a new unpatched vulnerability in javaprxy.dll. FrSIRT also released a bulletin yesterday. Microsoft updated their bulletin last night with some additional workarounds including requiring prompting for all ActiveX controls and/or disabling the javaprxy entirely. For those of you who must continue to use IE as a browser, we highly recommend that you look at these workarounds. This morning our friends at FrSIRT released a proof-of-concept that results in a shell open on a high TCP port, so we expect active exploitation attemtpts in the very near future.

-----------------------
Jim Clausing, gro.snas.csi@gnisualcj

Funny how these things seem to occur over the holiday weekends.

EDIT: Oh, In the US we are of course celebrating our independance from tea.

in reply to New IE exploit

Microsoft attitude towards users security [Microsoft attitude towards users security]

manickernel — Fri, 24 Jun 2005 02:50:02 GMT

Ok, another jscript vulnerabilty and it affects all browsers.
ARTICLE

But whereas other browsers are patching, Microsoft say's that informed users will know better.

"Microsoft confirmed that IE was vulnerable, but said it has no plans to distribute a fix. "Customers who already follow our general guidance about avoiding spoofing and phishing attacks are at reduced risk of being affected by this issue," Microsoft stated in an advisory."

Informed users? Who do they think they are dealing with? I have sent out dozens of emails warning our users of phishing scams, and for kicks and giggles when new ones come out I watch our network to see how many actually click and try to access the site, guess what...I always get a few.

Get a clue Microsoft, 'cause users never will.

in reply to Microsoft attitude towards users security

Top down or Bottom up? [Top down or Bottom up?]

manickernel — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 03:05:52 GMT

One of the things I am grateful to C9 for is that it introduced me to the many blogs by individual MS employees. I really did not realize they were around until some of the threads and links in the Wiki took me there. I tend to gravitate towards those with hard information like Ellen Brown's, but once on one you go to others and anyhow... Now today I was following the little spat between FC and Scoble and some of the comments about blogging in general and Microsoft's somewhat unique and open attitude towards it, especially for such a large company. and wondered if it might be changing the management model just a teensy weensy bit. Though I don't claim to know much about internal management style at MS, I imagine like most large companies it is pretty much top down. Managers only have to answer (despite feel-good initiatives) to their superiors, but maybe the blogs are changing this. Maybe it is becoming more bottom-up. Hmmm.

in reply to Top down or Bottom up?

MONAD misses Longhorn [MONAD misses Longhorn]

manickernel — Sat, 11 Jun 2005 02:12:39 GMT

I was really looking foward to this. Sad to see another feature dropped.
Article

Oh well, probably be 2010 before the feature set makes it worthwhile..

EDIT: I loved this comment of at /. (yes..I have to confess sometimes I read it :-0 )

 It goes without saying that Miguel Icaza will have a
reference implementation of Monad written in C#, running under Mono and
incorporated into the GNOME environment by 1Q2006.In
a reflection of it's GPL nature, it will be called Gonad, and the boot
splash will proclaim: "Gonad: Doesn't Microsoft wish they had one?"

in reply to MONAD misses Longhorn

Google Maps uses in-house databases... [Google Maps uses in-house databases...]

manickernel — Thu, 09 Jun 2005 02:55:30 GMT

Ran across this article on Yahoo about integrating Google maps and local crime statistics. Wondering if any implementation will be possible with MSN mapping.

Check out this for demo.

http://www.floridasexualpredator.com/

in reply to Google Maps uses in-house databases...

Do this on Linux.. [Do this on Linux..]

manickernel — Sat, 21 May 2005 02:46:42 GMT

Find about 100 workstations out of 1000 that have a particular software program installed. Uninstall the old software, take a broken Wise package that the developer delivered..(Hey, it worked on his laptop!) Then hack together a WSH script to get it installed and get home to watch Battlestar Galactica. Yes I know there are nice things like Altiris and ZenWorks, but we are just a bunch of dumb rednecks down here in South Carolina that all voted for Bush.

;)

in reply to Do this on Linux..

Outlook Express and Marketing 101 [Outlook Express and Marketing 101]

manickernel — Tue, 03 May 2005 01:51:37 GMT

This is an amusing article by J. Dvorak on the condition of Outlook Express. It does show how one product has suffered due to the lack of progress or interest in it's parent, i.e., IE.

If Microsoft bases product development solely on "market opportunity" such that some markets/products they have dominated are ignored, then ultimately the result is that Microsoft is seen as technically inferior.

in reply to Outlook Express and Marketing 101

Symantec releases Enterprise Antivirus/Anti-Spyware v10 [Symantec releases Enterprise Antivirus/Anti-Spyware v10]

manickernel — Sat, 30 Apr 2005 22:03:24 GMT

Haven't seen it in the news yet. But Symantec's Enterprise support now lists Corporate AV10 and I called and got the new license number for download Friday. Will install Monday and start testing. They are mailing out the new licenses to all thier Enterprise customers.

in reply to Symantec releases Enterprise Antivirus/Anti-Spyware v10

What we take for granted.. [What we take for granted..]

manickernel — Sun, 17 Apr 2005 05:38:31 GMT

I guess this combines tech and politics. So perhaps it is OK for here. I am amazed that so much effort would go into blocking information, and wonder if the 'blockers' might ultimately be the ones that change.

China Internet Filtering

in reply to What we take for granted..

Spoofing internal email addresses in Outlook [Spoofing internal email addresses in Outlook]

manickernel — Sat, 09 Apr 2005 17:08:32 GMT

I find this somewhat disturbing even though it would be limited in damage in my environment, but the possibilities in some large corporate networks is a real threat.

http://seclists.org/lists/bugtraq/2005/Apr/0126.html

..and MS says wait for a 'Service Pack'?

in reply to Spoofing internal email addresses in Outlook

Brain Control (It's just a matter of time) [Brain Control (It's just a matter of time)]

manickernel — Fri, 08 Apr 2005 12:32:27 GMT

Get out the tinfoil hats (or laser blocking glasses)

http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/050407_fly_control.html

;)

in reply to Brain Control (It's just a matter of time)

C9 evolution [C9 evolution]

manickernel — Fri, 21 Jan 2005 03:18:46 GMT

Watching this site over the last 9 months has been interesting. It certainly got off to a rocky start. But today it has turned into something great. Watching Coffehouse evolve into an open forum of dissenting ideas, with respect for all involved is something rare on our "net". Most of the posts are way over the head of this simple sysadmin, but I do learn from each of them. Most importantly, the community that has evolved here, that really includes all, is something that has long been needed with Microsoft. I only hope the ripples from here can spread throughout Redmond.

in reply to C9 evolution

I-Frame worm released [I-Frame worm released]

manickernel — Tue, 09 Nov 2004 17:57:41 GMT

Link to story in Eweek HERE

Not much threat at this point to enterprise or protected home users. But just a matter of time (hours) 'til it gets repackaged.

in reply to I-Frame worm released

US Secret Service [US Secret Service]

manickernel — Sat, 06 Nov 2004 02:56:33 GMT

Ok, maybe old news, but still cool.

ShadowCrew

CONTACT YOUR LOCAL UNITED STATES SECRET SERVICE FIELD OFFICE....BEFORE WE CONTACT YOU!!

in reply to US Secret Service

Happy Halloween! [Happy Halloween!]

manickernel — Fri, 29 Oct 2004 20:11:46 GMT

Our Hero

in reply to Happy Halloween!

User Education [User Education]

manickernel — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 02:33:31 GMT

For some time my organization has been attempting to educate users on the problems of spyware/virus, downloading junk, ad nauseum... Our internal network is pretty well protected. This weekend I was looking at our gateway antivirus and the hundreds of spam Netsky's coming in off the locally infected cable ISP's. These are mostly employees home machines that have many of our email addresses on their machines. And then I ran across an article on Dell's site that says that more than 60% of broadband users do not have current antivirus. So I sent out another "Tech-Tip" to our users (about 1000) with the following:

In other words, if your anti-virus is not current and up-to-date YOU are a
Typhoid Mary, and are contributing to the vast majority of spam emails.
Guess what? You don't even have a clue it is happening. Nothing makes it
evident on your computer, other than it seems to run a bit slower, or a lot
slower.

Installing Antivirus after the fact does little good. Once infected you have
to follow proper removal techniques, which are a little beyond the average
user. So just take your PC out back and throw it in the trash, and do the
rest of us on the 'net a favor.

I think the line about throwing their computers away kinda pissed off the powers that be, and I kinda sorta had to issue another email as an apology... but hey, at least I got their attention. Now if I still have a job....

in reply to User Education