This Computerworld story (and the related MS press release) announce the arrival of a new Windows product: the Data Protection Server (DPS). DPS is basically a distributed tool that puts agents on the file servers you want to protect; the agents then run scheduled disk-to-disk backups. Depending on how this is implemented, this might be a significant improvement over the kind of ad-hoc disk-to-disk backup schemes most small and medium organizations use. DPS combines replication and point-in-time copies, which places it squarely into competition with products from Legato and Veritas (among others).
MS announces Data Protection Server
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Filed under General Stuff, Musings
Microsoft releases Exchange Best Practices Analyzer tool
This is very, very cool: the Exchange Best Practices Analyzer is a new tool from Microsoft that checks your Exchange infrastructure for good design practices. To be more specific, the tool investigates various parameters (including some from AD, a few perfmon counters, the IIS metabase, and your DNS) to see how well your operational configuration conforms to generally accepted best practices.
Filed under General Stuff, Musings
Request a library book with one click
Jon Udell has a very, very cool bookmarklet: click a button while visiting Amazon (or any other page that contains an ISBN in its URL) and automatically request the book from your local public library. (Way Public Library uses iPac as their catalog system, so that’s the button to pick on Jon’s page). What a great piece of work!
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Filed under General Tech Stuff
Plaxo: I told you so?
Thanks to alert cow-orker Tom Meunier, we see that my earlier prediction about Plaxo has indeed come true, sort of.
Filed under General Stuff
Another SURBL-compatible Exchange filter
The newest version of XWall supports SURBL.
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Filed under General Stuff
Controlling Always-Up-To-Date timing
I’ve been fiddling with Exchange ActiveSync lately, and I’m actually pretty impressed with it– it’s a neat feature. If you’re not familiar with it, it basically sends periodic notifications of new mail to your Windows Mobile device; when the device receives the AUTD message, it wakes up and pulls new messages from your Exchange server. This gives you more-or-less continuous access to the contents of your mailbox.
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Filed under General Stuff, Musings
Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 98 Threat Mitigation Guide released
At long last, Microsoft’s released a document that describes what you can do to mitigate threats to your network from Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0 machines: the Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 98 Threat Mitigation Guide.
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Filed under General Stuff, Musings
Another Exchange SURBL filter
I just got a note from Martijn Jongen mentioning that he has a SURBL filter for Exchange.
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Filed under General Stuff, Musings
Save Betamax
Congress is considering legislation called the INDUCE Act. It would, not to put too fine a point on it, outlaw many of the common devices found in your house. This might seem drastic, but the basic point is pretty clear. From SaveBetamax.com:
The Betamax VCR died more than 15 years ago, but the Supreme Court decision that made the Betamax and all other VCRs legal lived on. In Sony vs. Universal (known as the Betamax decision) the Court ruled that because VCRs have legitimate uses, the technology is legal—even if some people use it to copy movies. Of course, the movie industry was lucky it lost the case against VCRs, because home video soon became Hollywood’s largest source of revenue. And the freedom to use and develop new technology that was protected by the Betamax decision set the stage for the incredible growth in computer technology we’ve seen in the last few decades.
The INDUCE Act would overturn the precedent set in Sony v Universal, creating huge financial liabilities for any company that makes technology that might be used to copy copyrighted material. Goodbye, TiVo. Goodbye, iPod. Goodbye, home DVD burner. Etc. The SaveBetamax folks are asking people to sign up to call their Congressional reps at a preset time; by scheduling calls, they hope to produce a steady flow of calls during the day. I signed up, and (IMNSHO) you should too. Don’t take my word for it, though; even Mr. Rogers (God rest his soul) agreed with the Betamax decision.
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Filed under HDTV and Home Theater
I’m proud of my dad
I missed something important at this past Friday’s Rotary luncheon: a chance to tell my dad how proud I am of him. He has been instrumental in helping the Perrysburg Christians United food bank get a new building. He was instrumental in persuading his employer, Rudolph Libbe, to sponsor the construction efforts as part of its 50th anniversary celebration. This is a big deal, since PCU has been wanting a building for, oh, ten years or so. As much as I give him propos for his role in getting this done, I am more proud of him for the quiet and sustained nature of his generosity. He is not flashy or showy about the good works that he gets done: he just gets his hands dirty and does ’em. He is always quick to volunteer his time and talents to worthy causes, and he’s diligent about encouraging others to support worthy and charitable causes. By doing so, he’s making Perrysburg a better place, setting a terrific example of selflessness and service for his fellow Rotarians and– more importantly– for my young sons. Thanks, Dad.
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Filed under Spiritual Nourishment
New IMF hotfix for 15-character names
This is a pretty rare problem, but still: if you’re running the Exchange IMF on a machine with a 15-character NetBIOS name, the IMF won’t actually filter the inbound messages. This is kind of a silly bug.
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Filed under General Stuff, Musings
Preset the language for OMA users
Imagine that you have a bunch of OMA users who don’t use English as their native language. Wouldn’t it be nice to set the default OMA language that they see when they log on, without making them learn enough English to navigate OMA’s interface and set it themselves?
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Filed under General Stuff, Musings
Configuring per-server IMF gateway settings
I hate it when this happens! I just sent off a Troubleshooter column question for the December issue on how to create separate settings on separate IMF servers. My answer involved multiple forests and was fairly ugly. I then decided to relax and do a little blog surfing. Lo and behold, It turns out that (courtesy of Evan’s blog) there’s a much more elegant solution to this problem.
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Filed under General Stuff, Musings
Rain Storm (Eisler)
I really enjoyed the first two John Rain novels (reviews here and here), so I had high expectations for Rain Storm, the third Barry Eisler book featuring John Rain. In this book, we find Rain in Macau, where he’s trying to kill an arms dealer on behalf of the CIA. Of course, the backstory is that Rain left Japan on the run and moved to Brazil, the better to live longer. His new identity is compromised, though, and so he takes on what he hopes will be one last job. Without giving away too many of the details, let’s just say that the best-laid plans gang aft agley.
Eisler does a superb job of setting locales here, perhaps more so than the preceding two books. The descriptions of Rio, Macau, and even suburban Virginia all gave me a strong and immediate feeling of being there, something that I didn’t get from the Tokyo scenes in this book. There’s less of the jazz-and-single-malt navel-gazing, which I found welcome (since I don’t drink and don’t know anything about jazz). This is not to say that there’s less introspection on Rain’s part; there’s more, and that’s one of the most charming features of the book. Despite what he does for a living, Rain is likable! This might seem odd, since assassins aren’t generally seen as sympathetic or likable in most contexts. However, like several of my friends with Special Forces experience (Todd and Ned immediately come to mind), once you get to know him, he’s a more sympathetic guy. Eisler gives Rain a great deal of emotional depth that I found quite resonant. Sure, the action scenes are great, and the weapons and gadgets are impressive. There are beautiful women, casinos, and all the other trappings we expect. What ultimately made this book work for me, though, were the scenes in which Rain evaluated who he was and what he wanted to be: a depth that’s missing from other thrillers.
I can’t wait for the next Rain book, due next summer. In the meantime, this one is highly recommended. (Bonus: don’t miss the FAQ at Eisler’s site). And, since I know he occasionally Googles for reviews: Barry, if you ever want to send Rain to south Louisiana or Ohio, let me know and I’ll hook you up!
Filed under Reviews
The Return of the Ken
The new season of Jeopardy starts Monday, and you know what that means: Ken is coming back. I’m prepared for another wave of comments on my previous post. In the meantime, check out this wiki, which has more than you probably ever wanted to know about his run so far.
