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[Keith] Welcome to A Couple Of Admins Podcasting. I'm Keith Albright
[Rich] and I'm Rich Niemeier.
[Steve] and I'm Steve Murawski.
[Keith] This is Episode 33 recorded on January 7, 2008.
Chit-Chat - What's going on with you?
[Steve]
- Finally done with all the SQL work I had last week. It took us until Friday afternoon to get the procedure down correctly, and after we got that, it took us 36 minutes to update my live data. (kind of anti-climatic).
- On the plus side, I got to really use LinqPad?. I found that it is great for random querying, but when you're working in a team and sharing queries, and needing to do some heavy lifting, there is no replacement for SQL Server Management Studio.
[Rich]
[Keith]
Housekeeping Items
[Rich]
- Contest for new show Name [RICH]
- It has been suggested that the name of the show needs revamped as it may be considered confusing.
- Some think of Admin more representing and office administrator than a netowrk administrator.
- We are coming upon our 1 year anniversary, and it would be great to have a new name before then.
- Contest basically is you submit suggested titles to contest [at] acoupleofadmins.com email address
- we will consider and research the suggestions.
- I think we are looking for a title that reflexs the spirit and content of the show.
- The price is simple $25.00 cash. No runners up or anything, we are one show and we can only have one title
- The new title will be selected collectively by Keith, Steve, and myself. Hey Ted if your still out there you can have a say as well. What would you do with a brain if you had one?
-Conditions: Related domain name must be free and clear and readily available for us to register. Must not be close to any other names that would cause problems.
[Steve]
- Back on Episode 28, we talked with Brandon Shell and Dean Wells. Well, we would like to do a special topics show (yes, it's been a while) focused on Active Directory management. However, to make this show work, we need your questions and ideas for topics to cover. You can email your questions and ideas to feedback@acoupleofadmins.com, or you can leave an audio question/comment on our Skype line (a.couple.of.admins.podcasting).
[Keith]
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- Microsoft Removes Licensing Restrictions From Windows Server 2008 [STEVE]
-Microsoft has modified its Web server licensing terms for Windows Server 2008 in what looks like an attempt to compete more effectively with open source alternatives
-Basically, they removed the limitation of 50 users to the Web Server edition, provided that it is an internet facing server. They also removed some database limitations.
[KEITH] Some changes afoot for Terminal Services in Windows 2008 as well. Link: http://www.msterminalservices.org/articles/Changes-Windows-Server-2008-Terminal-Server-Licensing-Part1.html
- Microsoft Office legacy file formats [KEITH]
-According to David Leblanc's blog entry:
"In Office 2007, we changed the default to disable a number of older file formats where we saw very low usage and a high security risk in our code that loads these formats. From the security standpoint, this is the right thing to do. From the data we have on file opens, very few users open files in these formats, so we decided to modify the default behavior to this safer approach."
"Recently we released SP3? for Office 2003, and we took a number of the security improvements for Office 2007 and applied those to Office 2003 as well. Unfortunately, we make a couple of mistakes that we will correct immediately."
-Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and
CorelDRAW? documents affected.
-I understand where they are coming from, but they are breaking functionality at this point. As they admit, their data on 'File Opens' means very few are affected, but when they are.....
-Also, how exactly do they get this data on 'File Opens'? Is this why my Office2007 kept phoning home and bringing my PC to it's knees forcing me to black-hole the hosts it was hitting?
-Two ways around it. Create a 'Trusted Store' location that you can put the files in and let Office know it can open these file types ONLY if they are in this location. Or, use the .REG keys to restore the functionality by individual document type provided on his blog.
- Lawsuit: Apple has become a monopoly [RICH]
-
-
-I attended the January meeting of LOPSA-Madison, and was it cool. I felt like a noob, but it was great listening to the talk between various people.
-The topic was Application Buffer-Cache Management for Performance: Running the World's Largest MRTG
-Just a couple of high points from the talk:
->-By looking at the way the application was writing to files (and the OS was performing the requests), and by buffering those write requests in memory for a period of time, they were able to triple the effectiveness of the program.
->-"Our production MRTG system today monitors approximately 3,000 network devices with approximately 160,000 MRTG targets." "Without changing the RRD file read semantics, our fadvise RANDOM method allows us to scale to 320,000 target and files with acceptable performance on our system with 16 GB of memory. With slightly changed read semantics (because of the deferred RRD file updates), the
RRDCache? method scales higher"
- Secure/simple external DNS server needed [KEITH]
-Moving forward with switching from current ISP to Verizon. Old ISP had a bunch of ancillary services rolled-up like DNS. We have very limited needs.
-Looking for a basic OS/appliance I can build up to do external DNS. Don't need anything else, so I want to limit what else is on box. I'll obviously limit inbound to DNS specifically, but want something with as small attack surface as possible.
[Steve] Have you considered OpenBSD?. A base install exposes only OpenSSH?, I believe. Installing software is pretty easy via the ports collection, and the PF Firewall makes controlling network traffic very easy.
- Intel quits OLPC project over conflict of interest [RICH]
- Friday, January 4th
- electronista 01/04/2008, 9:00am, EST
-Supported by "Chamber of Commerce" style funding
-Script Repository, Blogs, Forums, and more... including a comprehensive, searchable, directory of cmdlets.
-
- Friday Night with the Dad's computers [KEITH]
-At father-in-laws on New Years Day and he had some problems w/PC. AVG causing problems, so I was un-installing. I went to download Spybot as well and found internet out. He'd had numerous problems w/Verizon
FiOS? connection. Reset router and found I could ping Google, but couldn't get out for any other services. Disabled Windows firewall, tried some other things, but no go. Getting late so we left and I told him to call Verizon (yet again).
-Friday night we stopped by and found he called Verizon and after 2 hours, they told him they had cut off his Internet service on Dec. 21. No reason could be found. TV and phone still on and they even dispatched a tech to check it. He indicated they usually turn off TV first if it is a billing related issue because it gets peoples attention. Works now and I was able to load
ClamAV? and Spybot, so he's set.
-Prior to that, I was at my dad's. He has an old iMac w/Excel spreadsheets I created for him that he uses. He bought a new PC and wanted them moved (it's been a year). Tried USB floppy and USB thumb drive - none worked on OS 8.6. Launched Windows95 on
VirtualPC? on iMac, used my Thinkgeek crossover adapter to new PC and tried to do a peer-to-peer network.....would not see each other. I couldn't ping even though I had a proper ARP entry in the table on the new PC, the Virtual PC couldn't respond. Finally I thought to go Mac-to-Mac and used the cross-over cable between iMac and my iBook. (not sure why it took me so long to think of that). Just enabled
AppleTalk? on iBook and iMac, shared the folder, and copied it over. Then put it on a USB stick and put it on PC.
-Purchased
CompUSA brand, website, and select assets.
-
CompUSA e-commerce site to continue operating under same name. Select retail stores to be acquired to expand
TigerDirect?'s fledgling retail store network.
-Believes brand-name still has value. I'd agree it has value to the computer geek, not your typical electronics geek. Much like a
RadioShack?.
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Listener Feedback
From listener....Jed Reynolds
Subject: Happy New Year!
Holy smokes guys! Have I been the beleaguredated Linux guy. I've been
wrestling with mysql replication, over heating drives and I'm looking
for another PHP programmer because I'm frakin' swampinated. Hope you
guys are keeping you heads above water!
Link: http://bitratchet.prweblogs.com/
Website Picks
Rich - http://
Steve - http://
Keith - http://
Last Call
Anyone....Anyone....Buehler.....Buehler....
Closing
All right, well that is it for the show. For listener feedback; you can email us at Feedback [at] acoupleofadmins.com or post a comment on the main site at ACoupleOfAdmins.com. If you use iTunes, you could write a review. If you just want to show us your listening, drop a pin on the Frappr map...there's a link on the show site.
Lastly, you can drop any show ideas or topic requests on the wiki. There is a link to the wiki on the main show site. If you would like to participate in the show; either through an interview, a segment contribution, or any other way, please let us know. We are also a member of the Techpodcast and the Blubrry networks. Check out some other great shows by going to Techpodcast.com and Blubrry.com....That's Blubrry without the E's
Thanks everyone.
