2003-09-24 · 13:23

Orlando now, Vegas later

From this week’s Exchange UPDATE:

Attend Exchange Connections, Win a Free Vacation
Learn the latest tech tips and tricks from gurus like Tony Redmond, Sue Mosher, Paul Robichaux, and the Microsoft Exchange Team. Receive free access to concurrently running Windows & .NET Magazine Connections. Plus, you’ll have a chance to win a 5-day Las Vegas vacation with airfare for two. Register now online, or call 800-505-1201 or 203- 268-3204.

It should be a good show, and I look forward to meeting y’all there!

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Filed under General Stuff

2003-09-23 · 11:17

Number portability, Verizon-style

I’m happy with Verizon’s cell service; they have a robust and wide-ranging network, and I have only rarely had problems making or receiving calls (and most of those were in Alabama; go figure). I’m excited to see them accepting number portability, which is of great value to consumers but (probably) negative value to wireless phone companies. Now even more good news: VZW will provide number portability for landline numbers, too. According to this press release, Verizon customers will be able to take a Verizon landline number and turn it into a cell number. This is super cool, and I hope that Ameritech SBC offers a similar capability– I’d ditch my second landline, pass the number to my cell phone, and replace it with Vonage.

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2003-09-23 · 11:09

Gimme an H! Gimme a D! etc.

The installer from Digital Dish left a short while ago, after having hung a new dish pointed at the 61.5° satellite. This is hopefully temporary, until Dish starts shipping their “superdish” antenna. He also installed the 6000u receiver and we tested it to verify that I get the HD feed properly. It looks great, slightly crisper than the Buckeye DCT-5100.
I bought two antennas (more on that later) so I could find out which one worked best and looked least dorky, but I’ll have to wait a few days to hook them up; the installer didn’t have any of the 8VSB modules, so I still can’t get over-the-air HD. Dish is offering a free 8VSB module to any subscriber who owns a 6000, which is a great deal for those who haven’t already bought one yet– just call them and ask for one, preferably waiting until after mine’s shipped so they don’t run out. Hopefully mine will arrive in time for Thursday’s Threat Matrix, or at least in time for college football on Saturday.
The installer, alas, made one major faux pas: he forgot to reconnect the new receiver’s S-Video and audio out, so no one could watch standard TV. That would have caused some consternation, but luckily I caught it before anyone wanted to watch TV.

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2003-09-23 · 07:05

Book update

I haven’t been working on the book much lately. The first 9 chapters are done, leaving me with 13 more to either revise or write from scratch (plus one that’s being written by a Real Live Attorney). However, I’ve been so busy with work (including a really cool Exchange planning guide for the MSA series) that I haven’t had any spare time to work on it. If you doubt me, consider this: I haven’t even turned on the Xbox in two weeks, so you know I must be busy. It now looks like the book will ship sometime after the first of the new year, or about a year after the first version.

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Filed under General Stuff, Musings

2003-09-23 · 07:02

ISA vs DMZ

From a reader at a major whiskey maker (really!):

I purchased Secure Messaging with Microsoft Exchange Server 2000 at a Microsoft Windows 2003 conference in Cincinnati. The reason I purchased this book was for Chapter 14 Securing Outlook Web Access. I had been explaining to my boss that the traditional way of implementing Exchange 2000 (OWA) on a DMZ was not as secure as I would like, since you have to open several ports from the DMZ to the internal network. After explaining what I had found in your book and researching information on Microsoft’s website and others I convinced him and our corporate office this was the way to go. In June I implement your solution of Publishing OWA with ISA Server to secure our OWA server. This September we were audited by our internal auditors and they are telling us this is not as secure as the traditional way of placing Exchange 2000 (OWA) server on the DMZ. They could not give us a reason way, so I want to challenge them that this is more secure before I am force to change to the traditional way. I need information stating this method of securing Exchange OWA is more secure.

Tell your auditors to get off the glue. When you put an Exchange server of any stripe in the DMZ, you’ve created two problems. First, you’re putting a domain member in the DMZ, and if someone compromises it they may have a springboard to compromise other machines inside the perimeter. Second, to make Exchange work you’ve got to open a ton of ports. DMZ configurations can be made secure, but the whole point behind ISA is that it gives you strong security by reverse proxying so you don’t have to open anything in the DMZ.

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2003-09-23 · 06:49

Blade on blogs

In my “info” mailbox, I got a query from a Toledo Blade reporter working on a story about local blogs. I told her to call me any time. If any of you have comments for the Blade, feel free to leave ’em here 🙂

2 Comments

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2003-09-23 · 06:38

Buckeye Institute blog

This site is pretty neat: it’s subtitled “Up to the Minute Analysis of Ohio Public Policy”, and it delivers the goods. I haven’t read enough of the analysis to see if the author has any obvious biases, but I did note that searching for “concealed” (as in, “concealed carry”) turned up no hits. That tells me something right there; the ongoing CCW permit fight is certainly a public policy issue.

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2003-09-22 · 11:11

Delta relents, somewhat

There’s been a lot of complaining about Delta‘s decision to downgrade the benefits offered to their most frequent flyers. I voted with my feet at the beginning of this year and have accumulated almost enough miles on NW for their midtier elite program, which gives me unlimited free upgrades on any fare class.
Today I got some mail from Delta announcing changes to their Platinum Medallion benefits for next year. (See a summary of the changes here.) The resumption of unlimited upgrades is nice, but it’s limited to the most expensive (Y, B, and M-class) fares. No thanks.
On the other hand, with Continental’s recent decision to backstab their elites, can NW be far behind? One speculation is that CO and NW are aligning the details of their FF programs with Delta, which means that it may be in my best interest to spend a couple hundred bucks on a mileage run to Singapore or Tokyo to make sure I hit NW’s top tier– if CO and NW both slave their upgrades to DL’s program, I’ll be in trouble as a midtier member.

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Filed under Travel

2003-09-22 · 07:04

TiVo with rebate, now with 200% more hack

Tara points out that you can now get a $50 rebate on a Series2 TiVo. This is a pretty good deal, e.g. Amazon has ’em for $299 for the 80-hour unit (after rebate) or $199 for the 40-hour unit. Me, I’m waiting for the HDTiVo; in the meantime, I think I’m going to stuff another disk drive into mine to add some recording capacity. Interestingly, there are now 3 separate books on TiVo hacking: Krikorian’s TiVo Hacks (O’Reilly), von Hagen’s Hacking the TiVo (Premier Press; includes a bootable CD), and Keegan’s Hacking the TiVo (Wiley, not yet published).
The actual tools you need for the upgrade are freely available. In fact, I think I have a spare 40GB drive on the shelf over my head. Hmmm.

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Filed under General Tech Stuff

2003-09-20 · 16:23

The installer cometh

Arlene offered to buy me a gadget for my birthday (which isn’t actually until November). No fool I, I immediately took her up on it. On Tuesday, the Dish installer should arrive with a new Dish 6000u receiver that can receive over-the-air and satellite HDTV broadcasts. Dish has a promo: if you sign up for 12 months of their HD package ($9.99 for ESPN-HD, HDNet, HDNet Movies, and Discovery HD, plus HBO and Showtime HD if you get the SD versions), you can get the 6000u for $199. That’s less than half of what a new DirecTV receiver would cost– the best price I’ve seen is around $370 from one of the Google ads appearing on this very page 🙂 Best Buy had an open-box Samsung TS160 that was tempting me until I found out that a) it was $460 with no install and b) I’d lose the “superstation” package that Dish has.
So, by Tuesday night I should be all set to watch Alias, 24, et al in glorious HD.

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Filed under HDTV and Home Theater

2003-09-20 · 07:23

Rotary business

Yesterday I had the pleasure of addressing the Perrysburg Rotary. The topic, you ask? Computer security, of course. Just like usual, I ran about 15 minutes long (people who have been to my sessions at TechEd or the MEC can attest that I’ve gone longer), but it seemed to be well-received. The presentation itself is here.
I also got three raffle tickets for our annual auction. 250 tickets, at $50 each, makes a nice chunk of change for the Rotary Foundation’s local projects, including the new park near Ft. Meigs Elementary. The winning ticket nets some lucky person their choice of a Caribbean cruise to Cancun for 2, a ski trip to Colorado for 2, or some cash. Winner need not be present. If you want a ticket, let me know. (I know I have one or two Toledo-area readers… think of how nice a February cruise would be!)

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Filed under Friends & Family

2003-09-18 · 14:36

Speakeasy offers cheap WiFi

This is very cool: from Glenn’s WiFi News:

[Speakeasy’s] newest set of services includes a $49 deal that gets you all the Wi-Fi gear and support you need to get set up at home. For a short time a while back Speakeasy was giving away the gear for new customers, but that was a shortlived promotion. Speakeasy is also offering what it calls personal technology assistant which means you can talk to the same help desk person when you have a problem, instead of explaining your situation over and over to a new person each time you call.

This is especially cool because it covers new and existing customers. See, John, if you’d switched to Speakeasy when I told you to last year, you’d have an Xbox and WiFi now.

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Filed under General Tech Stuff

2003-09-18 · 10:29

Talk Like a Pirate Day redux

Tomorrow is Talk Like a Pirate Day (yes, again). I am seriously considering making my computer security presentation to the Rotary tomorrow in pirate talk. (btw, accordin’ to yon pirate name quiz, ye should be callin’ this old sea cur Black Sam Flint. Arrrr!)

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2003-09-18 · 06:57

What’s in the queue

My dear mother is worried that we’re not reading enough. In an effort to reassure her, I thought I’d share the contents of my current reading stack, in no particular order:

  • Bayou Farewell: Mike Tidwell’s account of the ecological destruction of the Louisiana marshlands and the way of life surrounding them
  • When the King Took Flight: overly earnest but still fascinating history of Louis XVI’s flight, capture, and execution during the French Revolution. (I’m about halfway through this now)
  • Empires of Light: fascinating account of the three-cornered battle between Edison, Westinghouse, and Tesla for economic and technological supremacy in the early electric industry. Jill Johnnes is a terrific storyteller. (Halfway through this one too).
  • Fistful of Rain: I’ll read anything by Greg Rucka.
  • Positively Fifth Street: journalist goes to Vegas to write about the World Series of Poker and ends up placing fifth. Absorbing. (I still count this as in the queue even though it’s returned ’cause I owe an overdue fine on it).

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2003-09-17 · 15:36

I’ll have the silver one

Continuing Car Week here at el rancho, I just had to reserve a car for an upcoming trip to Seattle. Hertz sent me an invitation to enroll in their special business discount program, so I did. That netted me a daily rate of $57 for a Taurus, or exactly $1 less than the normal non-discount rate. Interestingly, though, it also quoted me $58.99 for a much nicer car, so I’m happily paying the $2 extra. I love transparent pricing.

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