Yesterday was a tough day for all of us -- at least all of us that have a heart. Ten years ago that day I was in the Atlanta Convention Center right across from CNN. I was judging the Best of Interop awards when we heard a blow-by-blow over the Internet of what happened in New York.
Two towers were struck, and planes were still in the air. CNN, I reckoned, was a pretty good possible target in and of itself, and there were a good ten thousand people already at the convention. I wasn't terrified, but did think it was a decent idea to move our now meaningless deliberations to another location. (By the way, I don't believe in the word 'terrorist.' It assumes they are scaring the bejeepers out of all of us and that gives these creeps, losers and criminals power they don't deserve.)
Two days later, around midnight in a rented van, I passed by New York and could see the smoke still rising.
I'm not sure there is a really a high-tech angle in all of this except that this set of acts crushed our economy, wiping out stock valuations and killing off jobs -- monetary tragedies we live with today.
The human side is more brutal, and we shouldn't and won't ever forget. One of the best things to honor the 9/11 victims and heroes is the Denis Leary show "Rescue Me," which just wrapped. If you are not yet a fan, take my advice and catch it on re-runs or streaming on Netflix.
Did 9/11 change your job? How so? Send your experiences and "Rescue Me" reviews to [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 09/11/2011 at 1:18 PM2 comments
Lately there have been a heckuva lot of cloud and Web services failures, and this week is no exception. Microsoft's SkyDrive, Hotmail, Live services, Office 365 and MSN.com all went down to some extent. Most of these are sideline services. I know very few that use Hotmail as their core business e-mail.
My services are so far uninterrupted as most of the problems were in Asia and Europe.
It looks like most, if not all of the services are now back up.
One of the cool things that Amazon did was publicly dissect the cause of its two latest outages. I hope Redmond does the same.
Posted by Doug Barney on 09/09/2011 at 1:18 PM3 comments
Windows Server 2008 will come with Hyper-V, so why not Windows 8? Why not indeed. Microsoft says it will incorporate Hyper-V as a client virtualization tool, which will open up a range of possibilities.
One is security. If you run your browsing and e-mail sessions in a VM, they are isolated from your core apps and data. This is the theory behind VMware Player. Theoretically you can say goodbye to most malware.
Also, you can run older and newer apps on the same machine -- they will just operate on different VMs.
All sounds great, eh? But here's the rub: If you want to turn your Windows 8 machine into multiple computers, you'll have to buy multiple operating systems.
I think Microsoft really has to come to grips with this. If we are running VMs because surfing is insecure or because older apps don't run natively on a new OS, shouldn't Microsoft take some responsibility? Cut us some slack!
What is your experience with virtualization licensing? It is as rough as I make it out to be? Educate me at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 09/09/2011 at 1:18 PM1 comments
You may not want to take next Tuesday entirely off, but you shouldn't be exactly overwhelmed with patch work either.
There are zero critical items, and five deemed as important. As usual, Office, Windows Server and Windows itself get the lion's share of fixes, though it seemed that IE ducked out of this round.
How long does it take you to install patches and do you prioritize based on criticality? Send your hopefully best practices to [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 09/09/2011 at 1:18 PM1 comments
Software vendors always want you on their latest and greatest, this is called insuring their revenue stream. Customers aren't usually so anxious to spend hard-earned corporate dollars on new software when the old stuff works just fine.
The carrot is the promise of cool new features. The vendor stick is ending support, in particular stopping security updates and patches.
Help Doug out with a future feature by writing to him about the unsupported hardware and software you still use. Send your thoughts to [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 09/08/2011 at 1:18 PM12 comments
Doug is working on a story on how many may not want to take the plunge into the cloud due to slow WAN connections.
Is your current WAN setup in your area holding you back from making the move? And how do you see the overall infrastructure changing to facilitate more applications and clients in the cloud? Share your thoughts with Doug at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 09/08/2011 at 1:18 PM1 comments
It is rare that Microsoft, the Mozilla Foundation and Google agree on anything. But all three believe that DigiNotar, a digital cert vendor from Holland, is bad news. The trio revoked the company's offerings -- first because of fraudulent certs (which came from a hacker, not the vendor), and second because DigiNotar responded so poorly to the incident.
The Dutch government also gave the company a vote of no confidence.
I checked out the DigiNotar Web site, and the company is offering an olive branch to the Dutch government in hopes to resolve all issues. We'll see. But in the meantime, it seems best to steer clear of these certs.
Posted by Doug Barney on 09/07/2011 at 1:18 PM0 comments
As Rod Blagojevich, whose family nickname is apparently Milorad, knows there is nothing like a good bribe.
While I don't think Microsoft is breaking any federal laws, it is offering monetary incentives to move you from Salesforce.com and other CRM products to Dynamics CRM Online. The honchos in Redmond will give you a cool one hundred and fifty smackers for every user that makes the move. And you have until this March to decide.
The catch is you have to sign up for a two-year deal -- something I imagine goes for well more than $150. In fact, the cost per user for 24 months is $1,056, if my high school math skills have remained intact.
Still, if you are inclined to move to Dynamics CRM, that dough can help with training, migrations or a bunch of office lunches.
Posted by Doug Barney on 09/07/2011 at 1:18 PM3 comments
Are you as confused as I am about HP's smart phone and tablet strategy? Or is it a case of the company simply not having one? First word leaked that this whole business was being disbanded. Then there was a fire sale on HP tablets using webOS (which it bought from Palm). I think HP was selling a $500 unit for a cool hundred bucks.
That generated some excitement so HP is rethinking its whole plan. Now it seems that webOS will live on and will be part of HP's hardware group. It will also be included in its software division.
Meanwhile HP isn't offering any clarity on these issues. For such a huge company, you'd think it would have at least someone who knows the basics of corporate communications.
Posted by Doug Barney on 09/07/2011 at 1:18 PM3 comments
Readers share their thoughts on applying Windows updates:
I test all patches. The testing is geared to getting a feel for what might break. Other patches we test for two weeks. The only 'updates' that do not get installed at release are application dumb stuff like IE upgrades. In general, our view is that security patches are released for a reason.
-Anonymous
Here are my brief thoughts on Microsoft patching -- as a Microsoft partner and VAR -- for most of our customers (but not all) that do not have their own in-house IT staff. In 95 percent of circumstances we install and configure WSUS 3.0 to automatically download, approve and install the updates. We have been doing this strategy for about three years -- ever since WSUS 3.0 came out.
That means as long as a computer is on it gets updates. Here are the results:
- Randomly some older Server 2003 servers hang at 'Windows is shutting down,' but not most
- Only time we've been burned was an update that killed Exchange 2007 OWA on Server 2003 x64
Otherwise, I run on the assumption that the updates do more good than harm.
-Doug
Our practice is to apply all new patches to I/T workstations and a few non-production servers, and let them run for a day or two.
If no problems occur, we have a small set of 'regular users' that get all patches (one or two from each office) for a day or two.
If no problems there, then all patches are pushed out to remaining computers.
Probably takes a week to ten days to get everything patched -- 350 PCs and 40 servers.
-Jim
Share your thoughts with the editors of this newsletter! Write to [email protected]. Letters printed in this newsletter may be edited for length and clarity, and will be credited by first name only (we do NOT print last names or e-mail addresses).
Posted by Doug Barney on 08/31/2011 at 1:18 PM0 comments
"Morto" is the weird name of a recently discovered worm that runs across Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). The worm is installed through a rogue Windows DLL, traverses RDP and tries to figure out your password and login.
It is not the most powerful password cracker -- if you have a complex password, you should be set. But those dummies with simple passwords such as admin could be in trouble, as Morto tries to break in using around 30 of the most common passwords.
If the worm gets in, the slimy creature shuts off your security software. F-Secure is the firm that found the worm and it believes the aim of Morto is to ultimately launch denial-of-service (DoS) attacks.
Posted by Doug Barney on 08/31/2011 at 1:18 PM0 comments
The Ribbon has been out since Office 2007, and legions of users still hate the darn thing. Microsoft, however, loves it and plans to use it in Windows 8, specifically to manage files. You can say goodbye to the old Windows Explore, and hello to a whole new interface.
The new Ribbon-based Windows Explorer will have a File tab, as well as View, Share and Home. The Ribbon is customizable and offers shortcuts for Windows Explorer commands.
Posted by Doug Barney on 08/31/2011 at 1:18 PM15 comments