October 2005 Archives

My hosting provider reports that their hosts-- or, more precisely, my blogs-- have been under a comment spamming attack. They've disabled my comments executable until further notice; I'll probably have to either rename it or figure out some way to prevent drive-by comment spams before they're willing to turn it back on.

Update: we've applied some prophylactic changes that will hopefully tamp down the spammers. Comments are now back on.

My hosting provider reports that their hosts-- or, more precisely, my blogs-- have been under a comment spamming attack. They've disabled my comments executable until further notice; I'll probably have to either rename it or figure out some way to prevent drive-by comment spams before they're willing to turn it back on.

Update: we've applied some prophylactic changes that will hopefully tamp down the spammers. Comments are now back on.

Devin and I are trying to get Workplace IM to work. I can log on with IE for Windows, but not Firefox for Windows or Mac or Safari for Mac-- clicking the "Log me in to instant messaging" link doesn't do anything. He can log on with Firefox or IE for Windows. After several logout/login cycles, he and I were able to see each other-- giving us a plain-text IM window reminiscent of BBS chat in 1982. It's a far cry from Communicator Web Access, that's for sure (much less a rich client like the desktop version of Communicator or iChat).

Wow, this is interesting! Apple has a new product named Aperture that's targeted at professional photographers-- and squarely at Adobe's Photoshop. Arlene has been hitting some of the limitations of iPhoto, like its inability to work with RAW files. She doesn't need Photoshop, but something like this might be the perfect workflow solution for her. There's a comparison of Photoshop and Aperture here-- it definitely bears looking into.

Yawn. Yet Another Vietnam Memoir, this time by someone who commanded a radio intelligence detachment-- and not very well at that. Kidder's previous work, including the seminal Soul of a New Machine, was so good that I was willing to take a flyer on this book. Unfortunately, it's a dull book that primarily succeeds in painting a picture of Kidder as a self-involved son of the privileged classes who doesn't have the faintest clue, or even interest, in leading his men. He's opposed to the war and brags to his anti-war friends back home about what a tough hombre he is; meanwhile, he's cowed by the men he's ostensibly commanding. Kidder writes with humor and a seemingly authentic voice, but he surely doesn't paint a flattering or engaging picture of himself. Not recommended.

I got a reader question asking whether you can install Exchange 2003 SP2 on Small Business Server 2003. On first reflection, I couldn't see why not; a quick query to Susan Bradley (SBS MVP and mistress of all SBS knowledge) netted a link to this article by Vlad Mazek, which explains the installation procedure in great detail.

It's live! Exchange 2003 Service Pack 2 is now available for download. This is great news, because SP2 adds some very welcome message hygiene, mobility, and management features. I'm working on an article on the mobility features now, and as soon as that's done I've got plans for a lengthy post exploring Sender ID support.

Update: here's a list of the bugs that are fixed.

I'm finally able to take some time to dig into IBM's Workplace product line. Long-time readers will remember that I wrote about buying licenses last year, but I'm just now getting around to working with the product (currently at version 2.5.1).

So far, here's what I've learned. Bear in mind that I'm working with the full Workplace product, not Workplace Services Express.

First, when IBM recommends 4GB of RAM, they mean it. I tried running a single-server Workplace install in a VM with 1.5GB, and it was page-faulting like a madman-- it took more than 15 minutes just to get a logon page. On a single-CPU machine with 2GB, performance is more acceptable but still not great. (I remember complaining that betas of Exchange 2000 on a single-CPU machine were slow with less than 384MB of RAM... technology marches on!)

Second, if you don't already know what you're doing, too bad; there's no "getting started" documentation that I can find. There's a redbook called "Deploying IBM Workplace Collaboration Services on the IBM eServer iSeries Server" that purports to explain some of the getting-started stuff, but it's a draft, and there's a lot of missing content (like, say, the index). For example, chapter 4 (on directory services) has a note that says "new drafts will be published at least weekly", but it was last updated 13 July 2005. Oops. The DeveloperWorks site has a ton of Workplace-specific information, but it's focused (as you'd expect) on developing and customizing apps, not on basic administrative tasks.

This is problematic because it's not obvious (or even discoverable) how to perform many common tasks. How do you add a user? Well, it depends. If you've set up Workplace to use an external LDAP directory, you add users using your normal directory service and Workplace provisions them for you... but the default install uses WebSphere Member Manager vice an external directory, which is (AFAICT) completely invisible in the Workplace management tools. (For fun, try searching for "member manager" on the WebSphere Portal technical library... completely worthless.) In fact, as near as I can tell, WMM is always used as a lookaside DB to store Workplace-specific properties that may not be supported by the underlying LDAP directory. However, I can't find a list of these properties, so it's not clear whether other applications could make use of them. Users can self-provision (a nice touch) from the Workplace logon page, but that doesn't scale well.

Interestingly, the install instructions for a single-server demo deployment say you should use the default Cloudscape DBMS. However, the planning guide says that Cloudscape isn't robust enough for production use, so I guess you also have to buy a license for either DB2, Oracle, or SQL Server.

Finally, as far as I can tell, ordinary mortals still can't buy the rich client. It's reportedly available from IBM's PartnerWorld, so I guess I'd better sign up as an IBM partner if I want to test it. Sheesh.

This year, we finally said "enough" and told the boys that we wouldn't be participating in any fundraisers at school. This has been quite liberating, especially given the number of fundraising events in the Perrysburg elementary schools. There's Market Day, and the Scholastic book sales, and Sally Foster, and the American Heart Association... and the quarterly fundraisers at Wendy's and McDonald's... and probably some other ones, the memories of which I'm repressing.

I don't mean to sound stingy, but we pay hefty property and city income taxes already, and the notion that I have to let my kids pimp wrapping paper, candy, or anything else to buy "extras" rankles. It's made worse by the fact that many of these fundraisers offer ticky-tack prizes for the kids; that just raises the noise level, and in the end the schools don't get much of the money anyway. So, we just said "no". This Detroit News story outlines a third option: some parent-teacher organizations are just asking parents to write checks if they want to opt out of the fundraisers. I'd be happy to do that.

It's live! Exchange 2003 Service Pack 2 is now available for download. This is great news, because SP2 adds some very welcome message hygiene, mobility, and management features. I'm working on an article on the mobility features now, and as soon as that's done I've got plans for a lengthy post exploring Sender ID support.

I remember the first time I started reading a book and then just couldn't make myself finish it-- I was in fourth grade. It seemed sacreligious to start a book but not finish it, but the book in question (whose title I mercifully forget) was just too bad to keep reading. So with Oltion's Anywhere but Here, a not-very-thinly disguised attack on The Evil American Empire and That Idiot In the White House. Oltion's characters are amiable enough, but despite the effort he takes to portray them as (somewhat bumptious) ordinary home folks, they come off as sock puppets. The initial third of the book is sloppily paced and just flat not very interesting. Perhaps the rest of the book's better; I wouldn't know because that's the point where I abandoned it. Very disappointing.

Exchange Connections is only a couple of weeks away, so I thought I'd post my final speaking schedule. Because Donald Livengood from HP has had to cancel, I've picked up his three sessions, leaving me a total of five:

• Tuesday @ 2:15p: Deploying Rights Management Server with Lessons Learned


• Wednesday @ 10a: Exchange Security: Tips and Tricks


• Wednesday @ 2:15p: Multi-Forest Deployments


• Wednesday @ 4p: Layered Anti-Spam with Exchange


• Thursday @ 11:45a: Fun With Global Settings, Message Limits, Recipient Policies, and Connectors

Thursday at 2pm, I'll be busy collapsing from exhaustion.

(A shout out to Jim McBee, who graciously agreed to take my place on the Exchange 5.5 migration panel with Kieran McCorry and Missy Koslosky; it's scheduled at the same time as Don's RMS session.)

OK, I admit it; I'm jonesin'.

I've been holding off replacing my 3G 15GB iPod with a newer model. I want more storage space so I can pull pictures from Arlene's camera without having to carry my laptop around (important for our Hawaii trip), and I want to be able to watch and output video. There are Windows Media devices that do this, but so what. Accordingly, I've been waiting to see what Apple's had up its sleeve. The new iPods look good, but it's not clear whether you can transcode video for playback on the iPod yet. Warren Stone reported being able to use Forty-Two DVD-VXPlus to get content into iTunes, but no word on whether that content will work with an iPod.

The other question is whether iTunes itself will transcode, as WMP 10 does. I've heard that the videos and shows for sale on the iTunes Music Store are full-res, but I can't seem to order one at the moment to test it.

Update: this post seems to indicate that the TV episodes for sale are 320x240, and this guy links to a description of how to transcode ReplayTV video to iTunes. There's a similar thread here for TiVos but there's nothing in it so far.

Update: Mark Pilgrim has two guides: one on ripping legally purchased DVDs to the iPod, and one for, er, other content.

Update: Dennis points out that the new iPods don't accept Apple's iPod remote. I use the remote all the time on airplanes and when running, so this is a major flaw IMHO.

Clever, scary novel with a great premise: what if vampires are really people infected with a parasite? There's a lot of icky detail about various other kinds of parasites, which makes the book remarkably educational. It was fun to read a spec-fic novel that didn't have any lasers, robots, or aliens. A fun, quick read.

David Litchfield delivers some very strong medicine to Oracle in his open letter, "Complete failure of Oracle security response and utter neglect of their responsibility to their customers". I wrote about Oracle's bad attitude a few months ago, and it doesn't seem to be getting better. His conclusion:

What is apparent is that Oracle has no decent bug discovery/fix/response process; no QA, no understanding of the threats; no proactive program of finding and fixing flaws. Is anyone in control over at Oracle HQ?

A good CSO needs to more than just a mouthpiece. They need to be able to deliver and execute an effective security strategy that actually deals with problems rather than sweeping them under the carpet or waste time by blaming others for their own failings. Oracle's CSO has had five years to make improvements to the security of their products and their security response but in this time I have seen none. It is my belief that the CSO has categorically failed. Oracle security has stagnated under her leadership and it's time for change.

I urge Oracle customers to get on the phone, send a email, demand a better security response; demand to see an improvement in quality. It's important that Oracle get it right. Our national security depends on it; our companies depend on it; and we all, as individuals depend on it.

It's official-- from a Microsoft press release:

Today Microsoft also announced plans to release Microsoft Antigen anti-virus and anti-spam security software for messaging and collaboration servers based on the technology from recently acquired Sybari Software Inc. Adding to the defense-in-depth strategy inherent in Microsoft Antigen, Microsoft will add its own anti-virus scan engine. When it is available, customers of the Microsoft Sybari product line will benefit from the addition of the Microsoft anti-virus scan engine at no additional charge throughout the length of their contracts. In addition, Microsoft Antigen for Exchange recently completed Microsoft’s Security Development Lifecycle review process, which has been shown to achieve measurably improved levels of security for numerous Microsoft software solutions. Microsoft Antigen for Exchange is scheduled to be available in beta to customers in the first half of 2006.

Another cool MS white paper, this one is an overview of site resilience solutions. The paper discusses inter-site replication, stretched clusters, and some other goodies, citing their pros and cons. (It also links to Microsoft's guidelines for deploying inter-site replication-- well worth reading too.)

Wow, this is great-- a new Microsoft white paper on the recommended best practices for using the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) with Exchange 2003. This is long overdue. VSS is a terrific backup mechanism when properly implemented. If you're at all interested in VSS, check it out. (Hat tip: Ross Smith)

Kyle Mills is usually an unorthodox writer. His books are usually thought-provoking-- for example, Smoke Screen posed the question of what might happen if a major tobacco company said "to heck with it" and shut its doors. However, Fade is a straightforward action novel, and IMHO not a particularly good one. The main character is a former Navy SEAL who is forced to retire after being wounded. He's bitter, understandably enough, because there's a bullet lodged near his spine that will inevitably paralyze him, and the government refused to help him get surgery while the problem was still fixable. Now the Department of Homeland Security is trying to recruit Fade to come back, and he doesn't want to. What follows is a pretty stock tale, uplifted by Mills' gift for witty dialogue. In the second half of the book, the characters suddenly develop; that's a weird way to put it, but it's almost like seeing a flat 2-D drawing morph into a fully rendered 3-D representation. That's not enough to save the book, though. The ending is predictable, and this just isn't up to Mills' usual standards.

Fun time-travel romp. The best part: Varley doesn't even try to explain how the time machine works, which saves a lot of tedious handwaving. Instead, we get extended descriptions of how a very focused (not to say monomaniacal) multi-billionaire locates a frozen mammoth that he wants to clone. He ends up with rather more than that, namely a live juvenile mammoth named Fuzzy, plus some adults. That's where the story really takes off. Were it not for an excess of bad language, this would be a great young adult book. As it is, this is a fun, if light, read even for non-SF fans.

Sometimes when I read a book that's part of a series, I get the feeling that I'm dropping into a long-running relationship between the author and his previous readers. For example, I don't think many people who pick up Reynolds' Absolution Gap will find that it's a satisfying read absent the knowledge of what happened in the first two books in that series.

Fortunately, Chuck Logan doesn't have that problem. In After the Rain, he continues the relationship between his two primary characters from other books. Nina Pryce is a US Army officer and a member of SFOD-Delta (that's just "Delta" to civilians), and her sometimes-estranged husband, Phil Broker, is an undercover cop. There's a lot of history between them, or so we understand from their interplay in this book (I haven't read any of Logan's earlier books). Pryce is trying to penetrate what appears to be a terrorist plot in-- get ready-- North Dakota, and when she uses their 7-year-old daughter as an actress, Broker comes to town to pick her up. Of course, Broker ends up involved in the plot, which is reasonably twisty and turny. In the end, the bad guys fail, although not without cost to the good guys.

Logan's strength in this book is its characterizations. Both Nina and Phil come off as real, multi-dimensional people: parents, lovers, and sheepdogs. Both of them have strengths and flaws in about equal measure, and the tumultuous nature of their relationships makes for some interesting interplay between them. I didn't think the primary villain was nearly as well-defined, though-- he was much more a cardboard bad guy from the psycho-killer bin at Characters-R-Us. The descriptions of the weather and terrain of a North Dakota summer are quite good, too, although not quite on a par with the lyricism of James Lee Burke or the noir of Barry Eisler.

Put it this way: I've already reserved Logan's earlier Nina-and-Phil books from the library. I may or may not read them all, but I'm willing to give them a try.

For some reason, my review of the Audiovox SMT5600 is one of the most popular items on this blog (according both to page views and my referer log). In that vein, Buy.com's running a sale on the SMT5600: pay $224.99, then get $225 of mail-in rebates; when you activate it, you can also get a Jabra Bluetooth headset for free.