Paul's Down-Home Page

Now I’ve heard everything: this article describes (with a straight face, I’m sure) how to set up a Linux box running VMware to use Postfix as the SMTP front-end and Exchange 5.5 as the mailbox store. Why you’d want to do this is beyond me. For an encore, I hear the author’s going to write an article on how to run Lotus Notes 4.0 on a PlayStation Portable.

John Denker has written a superb essay on why ID “theft” shouldn’t be a problem, and how we already have all the tools to prevent it from being one. Excerpt:

it shouldn’t matter if somebody knows who I am. Suppose somebody can describe me — so what? Suppose somebody knows my date of birth, social security number, and great-great-grandmother’s maiden name — so what?
It’s only a problem if somebody uses that identifying information to spoof the authorization for some transaction.
And that is precisely where the problem lies. Any system that lets identifying information serve as authorization is so nonsensical that it is hardly worth discussing. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

He goes on to draw the distinction between entity authenticaiton and transaction authentication, and goes on to propose a couple of schemes for breaking these into two separate mechanisms instead of the conflated mess we now have. Well worth a read for anyone interested in security.

Ironically, my last two UPDATE columns have been on mobility topics– and now I’m somewhere with no mobile access!
So here I am in Farmerville, Louisiana. What’s there? Not much (rimshot). Seriously, I’m here with my family visiting the beautiful Lake D’Arbonne State Park for our annual family reunion-style get-together. Whoever the State of Louisiana hired to build this place did a terrific job; the scenery is beautiful, the cabins are clean, spacious, and comfortable, and the wildlife is abundant. One thing’s missing, though: connectivity. Ideally, I wouldn’t have to work this week, but I do, so I’ve been arranging my schedule to work when everyone else is asleep. The problem is getting information to and from the people I work with.
Last year, we stayed in the same place, and I noticed that my Verizon cellphone worked fine. I figured that my aircard would give me data service. Problem #1: Alltel is actually the local network provider, as I found when I noticed the “Extended Roaming” indicator on my Treo. No aircard, and no data service on the Treo. The local public library has a few Internet terminals, but they’re a) unstable b) locked down and c) on a network that won’t allow me to plug in my laptop. Last year, I was able to cadge a few minutes from the nice lady who owns the local Radio Shack franchise, but that clearly wasn’t a scalable solution. I didn’t think she’d welcome seeing me twice a day every day, no matter how many batteries I bought.
The solution came from an unexpected quarter. I asked the lifeguards at the park pool, the folks at the public library, and the staff at the Radio Shack whether there were any public Internet points or cafes nearby. No one had a clue. While racking my brain to think of local businesses from which I could beg bandwidth, I remembered the McDonald’s at the corner of La-2 and Bernice Highway– a mere five miles from the park. A quick call to Devin netted me the information I sought: the local McD’s did in fact have Wayport WiFi. Last night I rolled in, opened the laptop, and downloaded the 400+ messages that accumulated since I got here on Saturday. Today I made a grocery store run and stopped off for a Quarter Pounder and some email; I’ll be heading back later tonight for another delivery.
I guess that means that I have to officially retract all the crap I gave McDonald’s about their food. It’s still not my favorite, but I’m willing to put up with a lot for the ability to keep my customers happy by delivering my work on time. It says a lot about their franchise consistency that even a small town like Farmerville rates WiFi in the store.

Microsoft today released version 2.0 of the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer. Among its many other new features, it can scan for Office security updates (among other products), it works with WSUS, and it presents more data on potential vulnerabilities. Go get it now.

From this morning’s Wall Street Journal: Microsoft settles their antitrust dispute with IBM by paying them $775 million; in addition, MS is giving IBM “credit” of $75 million towards deployment of MS software at IBM. This essentially resolves all of IBM’s claims of harm to OS/2 and the SmartSuite products, but it still leaves open potential claims by IBM for harm to their server software. It does set the clock for claiming damages forward, though, to June 30, 2002. Interesting…

I’ve decided to take the plunge into podcasting with a new series of podcasts for Windows IT Pro. The idea was hatched more or less out of the blue while I was sitting at TechEd with Karen Forster and Amy Eisenberg, so I offered to do a trial run of podcasts to see what kind of reader, er, listener reaction we got. I’m trying to do one ‘cast a week on average from now until September, at which point we’ll see what kind of listener numbers I can post. (In a transparent attempt to raise those numbers, I registered my podcast feed at Apple’s new podcast directory; maybe that’ll help).