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[Keith] Welcome to A Couple Of Admins Podcasting. I'm Keith Albright
[Rich] and I'm Rich Niemeier.
[Steve] and Steve Murawski.
[Keith] This is Episode 14 recorded on August 28th, 2007.
Chit-Chat - What's going on with you?
[Rich]Why do people live along rivers? Where I live it has been either Hot!! or raining. The people down by the rivers have had a little bit of flooding. I think after the first time I got flooded out by rain from up stream that would be the last time I lived by a rive.
[Steve]
[Keith]
Housekeeping Items
[Rich]
[Steve]
[Keith]
- PONG to The PePe? show. Or, should I say "REPLY FROM WWW.ACOUPLEOFADMINS.COM time<=2 weeks TTL=1.....On Episode 29, Justo mentioned us and sent out a Ping. So, I'm just responding per ICMP protocol.
'[Rich] Truth be told PePe?, Justo I have listended to your show and it sounds exciting but I am just not into the musical realm.
- Podcamp Philly on September 7, 8, 9. I am looking to attend on at least Saturday. Sunday we are having dinner with friends, so I don't think it will work. I need to check with Ted to see if he wants to go, but if by chance you are in the area and attending...let me know and maybe we can have lunch.
Link: http://podcampphilly.pbwiki.com/
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Listener Feedback
From listener Cd-Man who posted a comment on Episode 12....
Just wanted to let you know that its still a great podcast and I’m enjoying it profoundly.
Frappr Map
Thanks for Joe M in Rutherford, NJ and Trevor in London, England for posting pins on the Frappr map. Joe is another former co-worker and will probably be on an upcoming special topics episode discussing thin clients.
News Items
Wireless hijacking under scrutiny
Jane Wakefield Technology reporter, BBC News website
-"There are a lot of implications and this could open the floodgates to many more such cases," said Phil Cracknell, chief technology officer of security firm
NetSurity?.
-The case is some way away from that of Brian Salcedo, who was sentenced to nine years in a US jail last year for the far more serious crime of siphoning credit card numbers over the wireless network of hardware store Lowes.
-"There have been incidences where paedophiles deliberately leave their wireless networks open so that, if caught, they can say that is wasn't them that used the network for illegal purposes," said
NetSurity?'s Mr Cracknell.
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[Keith]
- I've thought about the plausible deniability defense in the past (not in the context above), but for things like RIAA lawsuits. How can they prove it was me that downloaded the file? I'm not advocating this, I'm just thinking theoretically.
[Rich]
- I feel that people who don't exercise excepted minimium security levels have condoned free wireless access to their network. You can't drive a car until you learn to drive it. We I geuss that would exclude alot of people from using computers.
- I am however against accessing their PC or network devices to modify or exploit.
- Also, I have brought this particluar subject of who is responsible for the use of an unsecured network without even a disclaimer.
- How would you know what a persons feelings are some people think the internet should be free. What if we start to advocate to people that want their internet to be shared to use a particular SSID like maybe ifiwfree
[Steve]
- I've also considered the plausible deniability defense, and I see this similar to the requirements many municipalities have for fencing off a pool. If you have an item that is accessible and that other people will want to use, unless you would like to assume the liability for their actions, you need to take some steps to prevent unauthorized use.
- I think more people need to be educated as to why they need to protect their wireless network, as well as those who make the wireless routers/access points providing easy to use interfaces for their customers to set up wireless security.
- If your car was used as a getaway vehicle in a bank robbery, do you think the police are going to accept an excuse of "I just leave the door open and the keys in the car.. It's easier to use that way... so it could have been anyone." I don't think so.
- Wisconsin's Party to a Crime statute states if a person intentionally aids and abets... An argument could be made that leaving your wireless open could be construed as intentionally aiding others in breaking laws, whether downloading illegal music or child porn. http://www.legis.state.wi.us/statutes/Stat0939.pdf
Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4721723.stm
IT staffs challenged by tech-savvy employees, "consumerization" of IT
By Eric Bangeman | Published: August 06, 2007
-"A new report titled "Zen and the Art of Rogue Employee Management" from the Yankee Group sheds light on how enterprise IT should respond to to tech-savvy users."
-"As defined by the study, consumerization occurs when end users bring consumer tech—smartphones, applications, webmail, and other devices—into the office for a combination of personal and business use. "
-"One reason for this trend is that employees believe that a combination of IT-issued tools and their favorite applications and hardware make them more productive. 53.6 percent of the employees surveyed by the researchers claimed that they would be more productive at work if they had access to the same applications and devices they use at home. Another 49 percent said that their personal tech is more advanced than that of their employers."
-"The problem comes when those responsible for consumerization turn to IT departments for help. Helpdesk work is tough enough without some user calling in and asking how to sync her personal
BlackBerry? Pearl with Outlook or complaining that he can't connect to \AIM. But with the average employee using four different consumer technologies to get his or her job done, according to the study, an outright ban is unlikely to go over well."
[Keith]
-I talked about this on a previous show. Personal technologies driving adoption in the corporate environment. I saw the Blackberry evolve that way in my organization, etc.
-The most interesting fact I noted in there was that 49% feel their personal tech is higher than their employers. In Episode 13; Rich, Steve, and myself discussed th nbe abuse of IT resources by employees and I noted that I believed it was on the decline because of this. They have better PC's at home (Heck, they at least NOW have a PC), they have broadband, etc.
-NOTE: To see the full Yankee Group report, you need to register for an account. It's free, but I can't tell you if you'll receive junk mail yet since I just signed up last week.
[Rich]
[Steve]
-Not only do people feel that they have better resources at home, they can feel, "If my computer can do (insert activity of choice) at home, why can't I do it at work?" In some ways, I can agree with that feeling. The IT resources that I provide to my users should enable them to do better and more efficient work, not slow them down. If they are becoming more proficient computer users and more savvy computer users, I should work with that, providing additionl education and try to guide them towards responsible computing (also from the LOPSA Code of Ethics).
Link: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070806-it-staffs-challenged-by-tech-savvy-employees-consumerization-of-it.html
Link: http://yankeegroup.com/ResearchDocument.do?id=16465
Citrix to acquire virtualization company XenSource?
-$500 million
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Why does acquiring XenSource? make sense to Citrix right now? We see it as a key component of application delivery. Our whole vision at Citrix is about providing infrastructure to customers that can deliver any kind of applications in any kind of condition in a very dynamic and volatile world with great performance, great security and great cost savings.
-...the key thing that has to happen is that desktop virtualization has got to get easier and more economical.....If you take a desktop operating system and you put it on a virtual machine in a data center, you haven't solved any problem, because you haven't delivered it to a user......We think by driving these two together, integrating and combining the Xen technology with the Citrix Desktop Server product, which includes our operating-systems streaming and our virtual desktop system, will actually provide a great user experience.
[Keith]
-I think this is the first sign of the push to virtualize the desktop. I talked about this at some point regarding discussions with
VMWare and their concept of desktop virtualization. It will be interesting to see where this goes.
[Rich]
[Steve]
-While I enjoy watching what is developing in the desktop virtualization market, I think that these moves are definitely focused on larger environments than mine. I can see more benefit for the small to mid-size operation with server virtualization and getting the most value out of my existing infrastructure.
Link: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/081607-citrix-xensource-qa.html?nwwpkg=citrix_xens
Gunplay blamed for Internet slowdown
By Robert McMillan?, IDG News Service, 08/20/07
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ISPs? in the U.S. experienced a service slowdown Monday after fiber-optic cables near Cleveland were apparently sabotaged by gunfire.
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TeliaSonera?, which lost the northern leg of its U.S. network to the cut, said that the outage began around 7 p.m. Pacific Time on Sunday night. When technicians pulled up the affected cable, it appeared to have been shot. "Somebody had been shooting with a gun or a shotgun into the cable," said Anders Olausson, a
TeliaSonera? spokesman.
[Keith]
-I just want to clarify that this was not caused by Cisco testing their packet cannon.
-Updated reports indicate a saw was also used in the incident.
[Rich]
[Steve]
-Shouldn't these systems be more resilient than this? For those who are interested in maintaining high-availability, you need to look into what service provider your service providers are using.
Link: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/082107-gunplay-blamed-for-internet.html?t51hb
Windows Genuine Advantage Validation Servers Down
On Dvorak's Blog
''Thank you for your response.
I’m sorry to inform you that the Windows Genuine server might be down for few days. I have escalate the issue to our Genuine team, kindly try to validate again on Tuesday 28 Aug 2007.
Thank you for contacting Microsoft Technical Support.
Validation Issue Fix
We've been receiving reports on our forum and through customer service starting last night that Windows Vista validations have been failing on genuine systems. It looks now as though the issue has been resolved and validations are being processed successfully.
Customers who received an incorrect validation response can fix their system by revalidating on our site (http://www.microsoft.com/genuine). We encourage anyone who received a validation failure since Friday evening to do this now. After successfully revalidating any affected system should be rebooted to ensure the genuine-only features are restored.
Published Saturday, August 25, 2007 1:27 PM by alexkoc''
[Keith]
-I always thought about this if it would ever happen. It seems with Vista it really becomes a headache.
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[Rich]
[Steve]
-I work in a Windows shop, but I'm thinking my next computer at home will be a Mac.
Link: http://forums.microsoft.com/Genuine/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2053834&SiteID=25
Link: http://blogs.msdn.com/wga/archive/2007/08/25/validation-issue-fix.aspx
Taiwan's Acer to Acquire Gateway
By ANNIE HUANG, Associated Press Writer August 27,2007
- ACER and Gateway. I don't think they will be on my christmas list right away.
[Keith]
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[Rich]
-Only important to me because I am orginally from Sioux City, IA which is south of North Sioux City, NE.
-Keith didn't you just buy some of these? What do you think will be the effect.
[Steve]
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Link: http://www.physorg.com/news107437231.html
Hot IT jobs: Systems administrator
By Juan Carlos Perez, ComputerWorld?
[Keith]
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[Rich]
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[Steve]
-From the LOPSA Blogs
Here's an article from ComputerWorld?/IDG, talking about what SAs? are, and how companies should look for them. Not a very good article, as it undersells our value. Maybe someone can right a response to the author and get a better article published.
from spp's blog.
-It appears to be a very basic article about what a systems administrator does, why you need them in your organization, and what they are paid. Think they missed anything?
Link: http://lopsa.org/node/1509
Link: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9032818&source=NLT_AM&nlid=1
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Rich's Topics
-Author:
-Source:
-Date:August 17, 2007
-Exactly 25 years ago the world's first compact disc was produced at a Philips factory in Germany, sparking a global music revolution.
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-Link:
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Steve's Topics
-I've been using Slick Run from Bayden Systems for quite some time.
-Slick Run is a free floating command line utility. If you like using the keyboard to launch programs, this is a great little utility. You can create shortcuts to commonly (and uncommonly) used programs, you can pass command line parameters, and it also includes a little note-taking utility called Jot.
- Using Multiple Internet Connections
-I have a somewhat limited experience with various network devices and firewalls, primarily Cisco and Dell devices. I've been trying to find a way to most efficiently use multiple internet connections (multiple
ISPs?). In searching the web (thanks Google), I have been unable to find much helpful information other than that a Pix cannot do that, that some other mechanism needs to handle that.
-Open Source to the rescue! I have been a fan of the
OpenBSD? operating system for quite some time. I just like the philosophy of the project. Build it right and build it secure.
OpenBSD? has a solution for my problem. Ifstated is a network daemon which can monitor link states, run administrator defined tests, and based on the test results, apply configuration changes to the computer. For example, if I have two
ISPs?, I can monitor hosts via each external interface, monitor the interface state of each external interface, and then based on the status, adjust the routing table to accommodate the status.
OpenBSD?'s packet filter can also load balance between the two connections. Funny how a
free product handles this situation better than the expensive alternatives.
- Microsoft's Hacker's Blog
-Microsoft is launching a new blog, focused at shedding light at what their white hat hackers do for them.
-The blog was just launched on 08/25/07, so we'll see if any real information gets posted.
Keith's Topics
- IP Address Trick more or less a geek party trick
-SPAM I received with the octets of the IP address of the bogus eBay site in HEX.
-I knew you could do this with a single decimal number, but not a dotted hex notation.
-The IP you are familiar with is dotted decimal notation (192.168.1.1) This is actually a short hand for humans to remember instead of the long (32 bit) binary number.
-Try pinging www.google.com and you should get the following address: 64.233.169.103
-That same address in decimal is: 1089055079. If you type Ping 1089055079, you will see it ping the same address you got before.
-In Hex, the IP is: 40E9A967 Which would be 0x40.0xE9.0xA9.0x67 in dotted hex notation. Try pinging that and again you will see your PC ping that same address.
-Next time someone asks you your default gateway address, tell them it's 3232235777 (192.168.1.1)
-I actually built a little Excel spreadsheet that let's you put in the 4 octets in decimal and it gives you conversions.
-Windows Time = NTP
-Most managed network devices offer this function to synchronize to an NTP server
-Make sure you configure your offsets properly. e.g. GMT -5 for local time as it becomes very valuable in troubleshooting.
-I know some centralized IT shops that put all devices to one time for true correlation, but for me it was always easier to speak in relative terms with the local site. If I asked what time it went down, I want the logs to match that time.
- 3Com Offers Free IP PBX Software
-Looks pretty clean.
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-Link:
-Link:
-Creates a column you can add to your explorer window that calculates the folder size
-Very handy for troubleshooting what is chewing up disk space
-It will do the calculation on network shares as well. So, I can pull up a share on a server and see utilization without loading it on the server.
-It is a little slow since it is doing it on the fly. And, it doesn't cache sizes so if you navigate away then back it will re-calculate.
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Website Picks
Rich - http://www.boot-land.net/index.php?ind=gallery&op=foto_show&ida=2 Great forums and host of Winbuilder.
-What is Winbuilder? It is a utility to help you build bootable media.
2#http://bootdisk.com/ Just a website I have used in the past with some bootdisk that I have found useful for discontinued OS's.
Steve - http://hanselman.com/tools
-Though primarily a developer, Scott is a well-known blogger and podcaster who loves the little extra programs that make geek life possible.
Keith - http://1-click.jp/
I saw this one a while ago but then it was used on another podcast, so I hesitated in using it. But, I figured there may not be cross-over in listeners, so I'd throw it out there.
I also received another one from two former co-workers at the same time suggesting I put it out there. It stupid, inane, and funny and it is NSFW, I can't stress that enough.
http://www.moanmyip.com/
There are other ones out there like hearmyip.com so, I guess this has a legitimate use for the blind.
Last Call
Anyone....Anyone....Buehler.....Buehler....
Closing
All right, well that is it for the show.
For listener feedback; you can email us at RichandKeith? [at] gmail.com
If you have a comment that is specific to either one of us, use our individual accounts. Rich [at] acoupleofadmins.com or Keith [at] acoupleofadmins.com
Should you have something good to say. Write a short review with I-Tunes or anyother pod indexing service. Okay if you have negative feed back leave that to. We try and learn from that type of feedback.
Thanks everyone.
