Peter Gutmann’s done it again; he’s produced a wonderful paper for crypto implementers. It posits questions like “Consider whether your design can be implemented on a system with a total of 1kB of memory, or alternatively whether it can process a 1GB data block in a machine with 128MB of memory” and offers pithy comments like “No matter how cool/interesting/useful/mandated in standards a new design is, it won’t be used if it requires redeployment of all existing hardware and
software for little apparent gain.”
The crypto gardening guide
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A little early Christmas shopping
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Two new Microsoft webcasts
Microsoft has two upcoming webcasts that may be of interest to all you Titanium-watchers out there.
The first one, on 2/12 at 1000 PST, covers Exchange 2003 deployment methodologies. The second, on 2/20 at 1000 PST, covers Exchange security. The TechNet chat summary page lets you get reminders, add the chats to your Outlook calendar, or spam your friends with reminders. See you there!
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OfficeMax to Paul: mea culpa
After my strong letter to OfficeMax, I wasn’t really expecting a response. I was upstairs stealing some of Arlene’s candy getting a snack and I noticed that the fax machine was humming. It was a letter from OfficeMax’s CEO, apologizing and promising that I’d hear from their director of customer service. What a deal! (I’ll post it when I have more time, which will probably be in 2009 sometime.)
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Website for sensory integration
My friends Tyler and Rima have a daughter with sensory integration dysfunction. I’d never heard of it, but they’ve launched a pretty comprehensive website that explains it and provides a wealth of educational and teaching resources. Check it out.
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XP SP1 “phone home” paper moved
I just got an IM from John Matteson informing me that my link to the whitepaper on how Windows XP SP1 uses the Internet is broken. The paper is now here. It’ll probably move again at some point in the future, as MS is wont to do.
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Bachelor diary, day 2
It’s hard to adequately describe how good the boys were yesterday. Everyone got up and ate breakfast without major incident; the boys got dressed without complaint and watched the cartoon version of “Elijah” while Matt and I showered, then it was off to church. Unfortunately, Matt had a bad case of the wiggles, so he and I spent most of sacrament meeting out in the hall. To make things worse, I had the effrontery to try sneaking out of the nursery, and he didn’t like that one little bit.
Once we got home, it was time for lunch. When Arlene’s out of town, I try to eat as much stuff that she doesn’t like as possible, so for lunch we had fresh-made (bread machine, alas) sourdough bread and Seabear salmon chowder. The boys fell upon it like they hadn’t eaten in weeks; everyone had seconds. Matt napped while the boys watched a video and I made ice cream (cookies and cream, another Arlene not-favorite.)
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Bachelor diary, day 1
A friend of ours from Alabama is deathly ill, and another friend is undergoing chemo after a dual radical mastectomy. Arlene had been planning a visit for a while, but friend #1’s health was deteriorating quickly, so we decided she should go sooner rather than later. With David’s birthday coming up on Tuesday, “sooner” meant “0530 Saturday morning”. She packed Friday night, got up early and drove to the airport Saturday morning, and was in Huntsville by 0945. In the meantime, I was here with three small, noisy, active boys. Here’s what we did.
0715: Matt got up, so I brought him back to my bed for some cuddle time.
0745: Tom got up; the first words out of his mouth were “Where’s Mom?” followed closely by “Can you scramble some eggs for breakfast?”
0810: woke up David.
0820: Dad called to invite us to McDonald’s for breakfast. Too late; the eggs were already in the skillet. We plan to meet at 0900 to go see some model trains at a local hardware store.
0840: Cycle all three boys and myself through the two showers. This happens in a surprisingly orderly manner. Everyone ends up bathed and dressed in about 25 minutes.
0910: Pick up Dad and Tim and drive to the train place.
0940: Observe expressions of stupefaction and wonder on faces of all three boys. This lasts until one of the hardware store guys comes over and actually turns on one of the trains, at which point Matt starts to cry.
0942-1015: Try to convince Matt that he likes trains, at which I fail miserably. Dad compensates by giving him some circus peanuts.
1020: I buy some spacers for the kitchen and we set off for the barbershop.
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Why Southerners make good Marines
Dear Pa & Ma,
Am well, Hope you are to. Tell brother Walt and brother Elmer the Marine Corps beats working for old man Minch by a mile. Tell them to join up quick before all of the places are filled. I was restless at first because you got to stay in bed till nearly 6 a.m., but am getting so I like to sleep late. Tell Walt & Elmer all you do before breakfast is smooth your cot and shine some things. No hogs to slop, feed to pitch, mash to mix, wood to split, fire to lay. Practically nothing.
Men got to shave but it is not so bad, they git warm water. Breakfast is strong on trimmings. Like fruit juice, cereal, eggs, bacon, etc…, but kind of weak on chops, potatoes, ham, steak, fried eggplant, pie, and other regular food. But tell Walt & Elmer you can always sit between two city boys that live on coffee. Their food plus yours holds you till noon, when you get fed again.
It’s no wonder these city boys can’t walk much.. We go on “route” marches with the Platoon Sergeant who says they’re long walks to harden us. If he thinks so, it is not my place to tell him different. A “route march” is about as far as to our mailbox at home. Then the city guys get sore
feet and we all ride back in trucks. The country is nice, but awful flat.
The Sergeant is like a schoolteacher. He nags some. The Capt. is like the
school board. Majors and Colonels just ride around & frown. They don’t bother you none.
This next will kill Walt & Elmer with laughing. I keep getting medals for shooting. I don’t know why. The bulls-eye is near as big as a chipmunk and don’t move. And it ain’t shooting at you, like the Higgett boys at home. All you got to do is lie there all comfortable and hit it. You don’t even load your own cartridges. They come in boxes.
Be sure to tell Walt & Elmer to hurry & join before other fellers get onto this setup & come stampeding in.
Your loving daughter,
Gail
Original author unknown; I got it from my mom, who got it from a friend, etc.
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The seven seals
The US Navy has helpfully posted a guide to tamper-resistant seals. What does this have to do with Exchange? Basically nothing. However, it’s still cool, and it offers some interesting insight into how high-value assets can be physically protected against tampering. In particular, chapter 2 (“The Theory of Effective Sealing”) has a lot of good attitudinal information that’s worth reading if you’re a computer security person.
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Sample chapters finally arrive
At long last, the book’s sample chapters finally arrived. If you’re interested in security for Exchange Server, go check ’em out. (And if you’re not interested but still have $35 to spare, buy the book anyway!)
Filed under General Tech Stuff
Sample chapters, TOC, and introduction
MS Press still doesn’t have the book’s page completely put together, but so what: now I have my own samples. You can see them in the nav bar on the right-hand side of this page, or you can get them here:
- Table of contents: this gives a very detailed look at what’s in each chapter.
- Introduction: if you’re not table-driven (sorry, programmer humor), check out this more readable and condensed explanation of what’s in the book
- Chapter 3: Windows and Exchange Security Architecture: this chapter explains the fundamentals of Exchange’s security architecture, including what it uses Windows services for.
- Chapter 4: Risk and Threat Assessment: read this chapter for a new perspective on risks and threats (oddly, it’s the perspective that professional risk assessors use…)
- Chapter 8: SMTP Relaying and Spam Control
: read this chapter to learn how to control SMTP relaying and how to restrict spam on your servers (hint: buy a third-party product. just kidding, Microsoft.)
All of the files are PDFs. Please feel free to tell your friends about them; however, I’d appreciate it if you tell them to come here instead of just sending them copies. My children are rapidly approaching college age, y’know.
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Book page
Microsoft Press finally has the book’s page up! There’s supposed to be a sample chapter, but it’s not up yet.
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Caution: falling productivity
Don’t plan on getting much else done once you go here.
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Spam and affiliate marketing
People will do what you incent them to do. This is a basic rule of human behavior that has, sadly, often been misapplied. For some examples, ask anyone who’s involved in sales and marketing about whether their compensation plan rewards desirable behavior.
Affiliate marketing programs, like the one offered by Amazon.com, seem like a great idea: corporations can get others to do their marketing work for them. The only problem is, these programs typically incent affiliates purely by sales numbers, so guess what? Unscrupulous affiliates will do all sorts of things to get their volumes up.
Take Vonage, for instance. They offer a flat $50 commission for each new subscriber. It’s not surprising, then, that I got spam this morning from a Vonage affiliate. Sure, the spam violates the affiliate terms of service, but so what? That violation is meaningless unless Vonage kicks the offender out without paying them. I’ve already called Vonage to complain; we’ll see what happens. My suspicion is that Vonage won’t care, as long as they’re getting the new customers.
Ever wonder why you’re getting so much spam for Symantec products like Norton Internet Security? Symantec says that it’s because people are selling pirated version of their software. I remember them having an affiliate program in the past, but I can’t find any details– perhaps the lazy web can help out here.
Amazon’s another example. If you google for any of a wide range of product names, you’re likely to find sponsored links from Amazon affiliates. Click the link, and you’re redirected to Amazon’s page via the affiliate, so they get credit if you buy anything. I don’t remember ever getting spam from Amazon affiliates, and since the affiliates have to pay for their Google text ads I don’t mind this approach as much.
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