Scoble asks if there’s a web part for generating RSS feeds from SharePoint. The comments to his post mention Harry Pierson’s part, but my pal Sig Weberhas web parts to display RSS in SharePoint and a component to produce it.
Web part for generating SharePoint RSS
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Filed under General Tech Stuff
Private Sector (Haig)
Brian Haig has quickly become one of my favorite thriller authors. His books, featuring an incorrigible smart-mouth Army JAG officer named Drummond, are quickly paced, witty, and suspenseful; this latest, in which Drummond is seconded to a white-shoe law firm, where he quickly makes himself unwelcome after a close friend is murdered by what appears to be a serial killer. Haig keeps the plot moving briskly, with plenty of amusing asides about the world of corporate law. A good read; recommended.
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Filed under Reviews
Land of the Radioactive Midnight Sun (Flynn)
How could I resist a book with a giant moose on the cover? Flynn’s book is an entertaining chronicle of his year in Alaska as an Air Force officer. He has a pleasant writing style, and the book is really a collection of short essays or columns, so it goes by pretty fast. If you’re looking for deep social thought or self-examination, look elsewhere– this is cotton candy, but nonetheless entertaining.
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E2K3 Security Guide not mentioned
When you’re writing a book about a new product, it’s difficult to get everything right. In this case, chapter 6 of the Exchange 2003 book omits any serious mention of the Exchange 2003 security hardening guide. At the time I wrote the chapter, it was unclear whether MS was going to produce it or not; I based the material in the chapter on a draft version that was circulating. After a cursory review, I don’t see anything explicit missing from the chapter except details on the security templates that are included; I’ll update this post after I’ve had a chance to do a more thorough reading.
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Filed under FAIL
DoJ computer forensics guide
The US Department of Justice has an interesting guide to computer forensics, titled
Electronic Crime Scene Investigation: A Guide for First Responders. From the abstract:
Computers and other electronic devices are being used increasingly to commit, enable, or support crimes against persons, organizations, or property. This NIJ Guide (NCJ 187736) is intended for use by law enforcement and other responders who have the responsibility for protecting an electronic crime scene and for the recognition, collection, and preservation of electronic evidence.
For experienced admins, there’s not much new here, but it’s a good overview of different classes of devices and some of the forensic concerns surrounding them. One question I’m often asked when I teach is whether forensic recovery is important. The answer is a little surprising.
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Filed under General Stuff, Security
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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Filed under General Stuff, Musings
News flash: Pentagon hires futurists to figure out future
After I saw this item on BoingBoing, I couldn’t hold back:
The Pentagon issued a secret report to Bush warning him that catastrophic climate changes in the next 15 years are a bigger threat than terrorism, and will lead to massive riots and nuclear war.
Actually, this is bogus, so I sent Mark Frauenfelder a note (which I’ve made HTML-friendly here):
Mark, I saw your item about the Office of Net Assessment report today. A few things become clear if you read the original Fortune article in which the report was mentioned.
First, the Pentagon is a building, so it didn’t issue the report itself. The report you cite was commissioned by Department of Defense’s Office of Net Assessment (ONA). Andy Marshall is the director of ONA; see this article for background.
Marshall’s job, which he’s had since about 1973, is to think of radical scenarios and assess which ones the Department of Defense should be preparing for. This has a long tradition, dating back at least to the Navy’s “Plan Orange” for fighting Japan in the 30s. . In the more immediate past, this forward thinking has led to a renewed focus on ballistic missile defense and a variety of interesting ARPA projects (including the recent “Metabolic Dominance” project, which personally I think is very cool).
Radical scenarios, and potential consequences thereof, is exactly what they got with this report: ONA hired Peter Schwartz (who is famous for helping Royal Dutch Shell prepare for an oil market where prices *dropped* instead of monotonically increasing) and his Global Business Network firm (see here for more on GBN). GBN’s mission was to prepare a menu of *possibilities*, which, if you read the Fortune story, is exactly what they did.
I haven’t read the report, but some of the scenarios that Forbes cites as possibilities from the report (water wars between Canada joining the US in an alliance, à la Fred Pohl’s “Foodies” in JEM) are familiar to futurists and sci-fi readers. The more interesting question is whether Marshall’s influence, coupled with the clear scientific evidence that there are tipping points at which dramatic climate changes happen *quickly*, will prompt any changes in US policy. (for one example, see this NOAA page).
Unfortunately, the interesting aspects of this project have been buried under an avalanche of bogosity, like the Guardian article that breathlessly labeled the *speculative* “secret report” as an official Pentagon *prediction*. It’s not.
Update: the report itself is available from Greenpeace. Interesting reading.
Filed under Smackdown!
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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Filed under Musings
Make your own 404 page
Ever wonder how to make your own custom “page not found” page appear? Dave Taylor has a tutorial that gives some examples, some of which are pretty funny.
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Filed under General Tech Stuff
Rain Fall (Eisler)
If you’ve never heard of Barry Eisler, and you like thrillers, you’re missing out. His first book, Rain Fall is the story of John Rain, a half-American/half-Japanese assassin living in Tokyo. The plot details, although interesting, are secondary to Eisler’s outstanding scene descriptions, characterizations, and dialogue. His descriptions of Tokyo by night are superbly evocative, right up there with James Lee Burke’s descriptions of bayou thunderstorms. Rain is a complicated character; it was initially tempting to write him off as a cardboard killer-with-a-heart-of-gold, but as the novel develops, his character is more fully revealed. Highly recommended; if you’re not convinced, Eisler’s web site has the first chapter available– a move which I heartily applaud.
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Filed under Reviews
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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Filed under General Stuff, Musings
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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Filed under Friends & Family
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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Filed under General Stuff, Musings
Important new security update released
There’s a major security vulnerability that affects practically every retail outlet in the US. See the description here.
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Filed under Security
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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Filed under General Stuff, Musings
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