Secure Messaging with Exchange Server 2003 is now in stock at Amazon. It doesn’t look like anyone’s actually bought it yet, but hey, you can’t have everything.
Category Archives: Musings
MS announces NAS & iSCSI support for Exchange
In a press release today, Microsoft announced that they’ll be supporting iSCSI and NAS devices for Exchange. The PR doesn’t mention any specific devices or vendors, merely that devices that are logo-qualified for the Designed for Windows logo will be supported. We’ll have to wait and see what “supported” means in this context.
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Exchange Edge Services
Last week, my column was on the forthcoming Exchange Edge Services product. Microsoft hasn’t said much about it publicly yet, but it’s pretty clear that they have two goals: provide a hardened subset of Exchange functionality for use on the edge, and displace Sendmail/postfix/qmail in shops that have Exchange at the core but not at the edge. Whether they succeed or not will have a lot to do with how they position Edge’s capabilities. Personally, I’m really excited about the prospect of being able to build my own services using managed .NET code– that approach offers a lot of potential over the current event sink model.
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New developments in church
First there was Bedside Baptist, where my sainted Aunt Betty attends regularly. Now Mike reports that there’s iChurch, brought to you by those wacky folks at the Diocese of Oxford, Church of England. Their mission statement sounds good (“One of the key purposes of i-church is to provide a community for those who do not find participant membership of a local church easy, and it will therefore reflect an inclusive attitude to Christian faith and discipleship.”).
In another church-y development, at least one church now has WiFi in the chapel. James Tallent reports that his church has added WiFi, then he blogged this Sunday’s sermon while it was happening. An earlier post of his has this to say:
Beyond these use cases, SMS addiction is already a reality and IP-related addiction is not far behind. Some would say that churches should shun accommodation of such addictions and require everyone to be somber, disconnected, and reflective in church, but that will frankly be just as silly in the future as it would be now to say that free coffee and coke machines are encouraging caffeine addiction.
Put me squarely in that camp. The whole point behind going to church is to be reflective. If you’re sitting there checking your email, IMing your friends, or (heaven forbid) working, it seems to me that you’re missing out on an opportunity to put things of the world aside and focus– just for a little while– on spiritual things. Don’t get me wrong; I do think it’s incredibly progressive to provide this service– but is it progressive in a positive direction?
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Your tax dollars at work
Public service announcement: if you have any mercury thermometers in your house, dispose of them properly now. If you don’t, one of them might break, causing a spill and necessitating visits from the Wood County Health Department, the Ohio EPA, and a (really expensive) environmental cleanup posse from EQ. Mercury vapors are toxic, and the stuff vaporizes at 55°F, so one of the things they’ll bring is a sniffer that will tell you whether your house is fit for habitation or not. You’ll also get an Ohio EPA incident number, which is sort of like a scarlet letter except that it’s not scarlet.
Update: the posse is here, using their special mercury vacuum. They are very thorough and quite pleasant.
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The Game
Wow. The Game:
It’s 4am. In the past twenty hours you’ve done everything you could ever have imagined – assassinated terrorists, climbed mountains, broken the land-speed record for a mini-van, been scared out of your wits, agonized over the inadequate size of your cranium, rescued hostages, jumped for joy, and told your best friend off. Everything but sleep. You won’t get to do that for at least another 8 hours.
How did you get here? To this abandoned house on the side of a road it seems no one has driven down in years. To the back of the house where you find a long dried-up well containing a pair of fuzzy dice and three packs of matches. To the point where you decide this is just a cruel trick with no solution. (You haven’t yet discovered that the dice are rigged to roll only sevens and the match tips are colored in a pattern suspiciously similar to the carpet at the Bellagio Resort.)
How did you get here? It’s all part of The Game.
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A real squeaker
According to the Wood County board of elections, Mark Wasylyshyn won the Republican primary for Wood County sheriff… by a whopping 55 votes, or about 0.5% of the total votes cast. Individual votes really do count. Congratulations, Mark!
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Don’t forget to vote!
I voted this morning. You should too.
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Exchange 2003 Security Operations Guide
Microsoft’s released the Exchange 2003 Security Hardening Guide, which is basically the Exchange 2003 remix of the well-received Exchange 2000 Security Operations Guide. Like its predecessor, it’s meant to be used in conjunction with the Windows 2000 or Windows Server 2003 hardening guides. The Exchange guides provide a set of security templates that can be applied to automatically harden Exchange 2003 servers; it also provides prescriptive guidance on protecting against viruses, spam, and DoS attacks. Of course, it’s no substitute for a good book on security 🙂
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Medicine time
So, all five of us went to the doctor yesterday. Actually, Arlene went to our new family doctor on my behalf, this after I woke him up at 0730 on the day he returned from a long trip to New Zealand– oops! Here’s the verdict:
- Paul & Arlene: upper respiratory tract junk. Allegra-D for congestion, Combivent to open the lungs, Flonase for the sinuses, and antibiotics for the actual germs. Of course, each one of these has to be taken on a different schedule. I’m going to need one of those little boxes like Aunt B. (However, I must say that Allegra-D works great— one pill == twelve hours of easy breathing.)
- Thomas: two ear infections. The doc said his eardrums were the color of his red Spiderman shirt. This, of course, is after a four-day course of vitamin Z, so now he’s on something stronger. Remarkably, he hasn’t complained of pain, and he’s been well-behaved, but he’s got a profound hearing loss, so we knew something was wrong.
- Matt: one ear infection. This was obvious given the volume of gunk that was draining from his left ear, so now he’s got the same antibiotic as Thomas.
- David: probably has what the rest of us have, but he’s still at a very early stage, so no medicine for him.
After one day of medicine, I feel about 2000% percent better; let’s hope that keeps up. More importantly, Matt slept through the night last night for the first time in a week, which is good for everybody.
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Exchange and Software Assurance
[meta-note: there’s no real security tie-in, but I’ve decided to post links to the weekly column I write for Windows & .NET Magazine. That at least guarantees fresh content here every Monday!]
This week’s column focuses on Microsoft’s Software Assurance (SA) licensing, how it works, and why Microsoft is (currently) making the Exchange Intelligent Message Filter available only to SA subscribers.
Late last week, Microsoft made an announcement that has many Exchange Server administrators fuming. The new Exchange Intelligent Message Filter, expected to ship later this year, will be available only to customers enrolled in Microsoft’s Software Assurance (SA) program. On the face of it, this decision might seem shortsighted on Microsoft’s part; after all, wouldn’t the company want to sell its products to anyone who wants to buy them? However, from a long-term strategic point, the decision makes good sense for customers and for Microsoft.
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Sig Weber’s blog
Sigfried Weber (Exchange MVP, developer par excellence, and gracious host) finally has his own blog. For his most recent trick, he’s made SharePoint emit properly formed RSS. Drop by his site and say hello!
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A little housekeeping
In honor of the March 17 release date for Secure Messaging with Exchange Server 2003, I’ve done a little housecleaning. The Exchange 2000 version is still available, so I’ve tried to update the links in the right column so that they correctly point to the appropriate book. I’ll be posting sample chapters as soon as I can get MS Press to send them to me; ditto the TOC and index.
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It must be winter
Arlene is sick. Thomas is sick. Matthew is sick. I don’t feel well, although it’s sort of a proto-sick state rather than full-blown winter ick. Thus, instead of teaching 300 people about Windows security in Redmond (like I was supposed to be today through Saturday), I’m hiding in my basement, popping Sudafed like Rush Limbaugh and trying valiantly to cut through the cloud of fuzz that seems to have enveloped me.
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Sleep tight
According to the US Census Bureau, more Americans are injured by beds each year (466,464) than by skateboards, all-terrain vehicles, swimming pools, televisions, and power saws combined (a total of 389,128). Sleep well!
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