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February 29, 2004

HDTV options in Toledo

At last night's party, a few folks were asking about HDTV in this area. They were a mix of satellite and cable subscribers, some with TiVos and some without. I thought I'd write up a summary to cover the bases, since I didn't want to bore them all with the details during the party.

So, if you want HDTV in Toledo, here are your choices.

For TiVo lovers, the picture is complicated by the fact that existing TiVos don't record HD, and that the only TiVo that will is a) also a DirecTV receiver and b) not actually shipping yet. Dish has an HD PVR, the 921, and VOOM has promised one for later in the year, but I want the genuine article. I don't watch that much HDTV because I'm no longer willing to set my schedule around when programs are on TV; it's really hard to go back once you've used a TiVo for a while. So, Garrett, if you want HD and TiVo, you need a new unit. You can always add a second box with HMO and copy shows from box to box, though; that way Tiffany can have her "reality TiVo" and you can have your own.

As for me, I think I'm going to take DirecTV up on their $99 offer for one DirecTiVo and two regular receivers. I'll put a receiver in my office, one TiVo in the bedroom, and one in the living room, and keep my OTA receiver. Iif I can wire it right, I might be able to put our existing TiVo in the basement and feed its signal to a couple of places; that way, we can distribute programs between boxes without a lot of hassle. When the HD-TiVo ships, I may or may not buy one, depending on how stable it is at first release. These guys can experiment, and I'll wait to see what they find out; when I do get one, I'll sell my OTA box since the HD-TiVo has a dual ATSC tuner in it too.

Posted by Paul at 02:53 PM

You oughta go see the Mardi Gras

Y'all might not be aware that Mormons, who don't observe Lent, do observe Mardi Gras. Last night we had a big ol' Mardi Gras party / surprise birthday bash. Arlene and I had been kicking around the idea of a large party for a few months, even though we're not really big entertainers. We decided on Mardi Gras as an appropriate occasion and started laying in supplies. Zatarain's and Tony's were prominently featured, along with a large bag of decorations and beads that Betty brought up when she came to babysit for our trip to Seattle earlier this year. Arlene spent all week in front of the stove, and Mom pitched in to help with the decorating, provisioning, and general preparation.

All I did was hang a few beads and boil 4 pounds of shrimp using an ancient family recipe (involving, of course, chemical weapons like this). Arlene made gumbo, red beans and rice, jambalaya, crawfish étouffée, and assorted fixings (salad, French bread). Everyone ate hugely, and we had a wonderful time-- I have pictures to prove it. The highlight of the evening was Matt's emergence from the basement (where he'd been lured by our bishop on the pretext of talking to him privately), at which point we all had our party hats on and the candles in the ice cream cake lit. Big fun! (Now, of course, Arlene's out of town, so I have a whole house full of Mardi Gras decorations to take down and store.)

Posted by Paul at 01:59 PM

February 27, 2004

A man's home is his castle

Except in Devin's case, where his castle is his castle. I sure hope my sons don't see these pictures, or I'm doomed to several hours of cardboard assembly. Worse still, if they see these shots of an elaborate Lego Star Wars diorama, I'll never hear the end of it.

Posted by Paul at 02:50 PM

TiVo to stream XM

According to this press release, TiVo will be offering an extension to their Home Media Option (HMO) service that allows you to stream XM Radio from an XM PCR, through your Tivo, over the network. This is cool, except that I probably won't have HMO when this feature releases: it doesn't run on my old faithful series-1 TiVo, and there's no HMO available for the DirecTiVo boxes (including the HD-TiVo, now only a month from release). Drat.

Posted by Paul at 06:28 AM

Hard Rain (Eisler)

I saw this book before its predecessor, and it looked intriguing enough that I wanted to read them in sequence-- I'm glad I did. Like Rain Fall, Hard Rain features the half-Japanese, half-American John Rain, a Vietnam veteran turned assassin-for-hire. As the novel opens, Rain is trying to determine what to do after having his identity-- and career-- exposed to the Japanese equivalent of the FBI and the CIA. Before he can get out of town, he's compelled to infiltrate a school for training assassins run, more or less, by an opposition political party. Mayhem ensues. All die. (Well, not all, but most). As with the first book, Rain is a somewhat unlikely protagonist: he is exceptionally ruthless, but that ruthlessness (which in a lesser book would be slathered with smart-mouth quips at every opportunity; cf. Robert Parker) is tempered by Eisler's ability to show us Rain as a human who loves jazz, knows where all the good whisky bars in Tokyo are, and can recognize the possibility of changing his life for the better. The descriptions of Tokyo are again outstanding, as are the descriptions of Rain's many fights with various mobsters, killers, and assorted undesirables. The book ends on an uncertain, yet hopeful, note that's left me eager to read the next installment. (The first chapter's posted at Eisler's web site, too). I'm inclined to like it even better since Eisler dropped by here the other day :)

Posted by Paul at 05:00 AM

February 26, 2004

Vonage on the way

I just signed up for Vonage's voice-over-IP service. Why? For $15 a month, I am now a local call to Redmond; I spend more than that on combined cell airtime and long distance service (not to mention the cost of having coworkers call me). Until I get the little box they use to do the VoIP conversion, I have my new number forwarded to my cell phone, but in a week or so I should be live. (And no, Mossberg's favorable column had nothing to do with it!)

Posted by Paul at 01:58 PM

Another cool Mac-themed blog

Rick Schaut, one of the developers in Microsoft's Mac Business Unit, has a blog.

Posted by Paul at 07:17 AM

Web part for generating SharePoint RSS

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.

Posted by Paul at 07:08 AM

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.

Posted by Paul at 06:53 AM

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.

Posted by Paul at 06:44 AM

February 25, 2004

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.

Posted by Paul at 07:09 AM

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. CERT, Microsoft, and SANS all recommend flattening a machine that you know or suspect has been compromised. Why? It's very difficult to be sure that it's clean even after you clean it. For a simple compromise like Blaster or Slammer, it's easy to remove the executable, but there are much more sophisticated tools that aren't easily removed (or detected, for that matter), thus the flattening recommendation. However, as soon as you erase the disk, guess what? You'll lose much of the forensic information that you might want to help identify the scope and source of the compromise. This is critical if you want to get help from law enforcement, since there are standards of evidence that must be maintained in order to successfully prosecute an attacker. That's why most forensic investigations begin by unplugging the suspect machine and cloning its data using a tool like Encase, which is approved as a method of gathering admissible evidence (Ghost, for example, works fine but its copies aren't generally accepted as "pure" evidence). However, if all you care about is quickly getting the compromised machine back in service, flattening it is obviously the way to go. Deb Shinder's excellent book Scene of the Cybercrimediscusses forensics in more detail, and I recommend it if you're interested in the field.

Posted by Paul at 07:01 AM

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 :)

Posted by Paul at 06:43 AM

February 24, 2004

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.

Posted by Paul at 03:04 PM

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: 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.

Posted by Paul at 05:39 AM

February 23, 2004

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.

Posted by Paul at 09:11 AM

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.

Posted by Paul at 06:30 AM

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.

Posted by Paul at 05:43 AM

February 21, 2004

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!

Posted by Paul at 07:52 AM

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!

Posted by Paul at 07:52 AM

February 19, 2004

Important new security update released

There's a major security vulnerability that affects practically every retail outlet in the US. See the description here.

Posted by Paul at 04:41 PM

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.

Posted by Paul at 04:17 PM

Test post with Ecto

I'm testing Ecto (née Kung-Log) to see how it works. So far, it's quite slick.

Posted by Paul at 02:03 PM

It must be winter

Arlene is sick. Thomas is sick. Matthew is sick. I don't feel well, although it's sort of a proto-sick state rather than full-blown winter ick. Thus, instead of teaching 300 people about Windows security in Redmond (like I was supposed to be today through Saturday), I'm hiding in my basement, popping Sudafed like Rush Limbaugh and trying valiantly to cut through the cloud of fuzz that seems to have enveloped me.

Posted by Paul at 11:44 AM

February 13, 2004

Sleep tight

According to the US Census Bureau, more Americans are injured by beds each year (466,464) than by skateboards, all-terrain vehicles, swimming pools, televisions, and power saws combined (a total of 389,128). Sleep well!

Posted by Paul at 02:11 PM

Pakistani nuclear surety links

Over at Instapundit, Glenn points to this story and wonders if it's true. I couldn't find anything recent, but a little Googling turned up some interesting tidbits.

My layman's understanding of the Non-Proliferation Treaty is that command-and-control assistance (e.g. systems for surveilling, communicating with, or controlling nuclear forces or weapons) would be prohibited, but surety assistance (e.g. making sure that weapons can't be detonated accidentally or without proper authorization) wouldn't necessarily be banned. In fact, it would seem like a good thing to give surety assistance to countries, like Pakistan, where the political conditions may make it more likely that someone will attempt to detonate a weapon without authorization. It's not clear if the Pakistanis want help with C-and-C or surety, and what (if any) help the US is offering.

So, on with the links. First, this NBC story from 2/8 is cited in the Telegraph story. NBC quotes unnamed sources as saying that the Pakistani warheads are more secure than India's and that India has almost a 2-1 warhead advantage (interesting, if true, since conventional wisdom says the opposite). However, the story goes on to claim that Pakistani weapons are insecure because of political instability (probably true) and that the US has "contingency teams" ready to secure the weapons; neither claim is attributed.

Another related report I can find (citing Sy Hersh in the New York Times) is dated 12/7/01 in the Asia Times. Hersh's original story claimed that an elite US military unit was training to sneak into Pakistan and steal or disable their weapons, if necessary, to prevent them from being used. (Of course, this report also says "Pakistan has kept its promise to the international community not to export, share, transfer or assist any country in nuclear technology", so take it with a grain of salt.) More interestingly, the article claims that the US turned down Pakistan's 2001 request for command-and-control upgrades, but it doesn't cite a source.

Sean Gregory has a February 2001 report here that points out the challenge of building reliable command-and-control in countries where communications and power infrastructures are unreliable.

The Center for Nonproliferation Studies has a report that assesses Pakistani surety as good, outlining some specific scenarios and explaining what measures Pakistan has taken (or is assumed to have taken) to prevent them. The biggest measure they appear to have taken is to separate the fissile warhead cores from the warheads and delivery systems. This would be like taking the buckshot out of your shotgun shells and storing shells, shot, and shotgun in three separate locations; it makes it much more difficult for unauthorized parties to assemble the weapon components, since they have to compromise more than one site; however, it also increases the amount of time required to generate a complete weapon for strategic response.

There's an interesting undated paper here that ends by saying "the safety and security measures are likely to remain primitive by Western standards". Yikes. The safety measures built into the weapons themselves can be quite complex; this draft USAF document outlines some of the standards that apply. Steve Bellovin has a fascinating document here that describes some of these safety measures in more detail.

Posted by Paul at 10:41 AM

February 10, 2004

Floral gift certificates

A friend of mine is selling 800-Flowers gift certificates for 65 cents on the dollar. How is this possible? He bought a ton of them during their end-of-the-year promotion, which gave 100 Delta frequent flyer miles for each $1 spent. He's legit. Contact him at andymo99 AT aol DOT com if you're interested.

Posted by Paul at 10:27 AM

With press like this...

Yow! TiVo got two stories on the front page of the Marketplace section in yesterday's Wall Street Journal. Neither of them were exactly favorable, although they did spell "TiVo" correctly :)

The first, by Nick Wingfield and Jennifer Saranow, points out that (gasp) TiVo gathers viewing data. There's a quote from Richard Smith (summary: TiVo is saying "you have to trust us", duh), and a counterbalancing quote from TiVo's chief privacy officer. The article points out that the satellite- and cable-based PVRs are capable of gathering this data, even though none of them currently do, and the closing paragraph summarizes my feelings exactly:


Some users, such as Jayne Spiegelman, 48 years old, say they're willing to put up with some monitoring because of the benefits they get out of the technology. "If it starts invading my privacy," the Atherton, Calif., technology executive says, "yeah I'll have a problem with it. But right now, I'm so infatuated with the TiVo service itself."

The other column is by Lee Gomes. Most longtime Mac users well remember his numerous (and wrong) "Apple is dying" columns from the early-to-late 90s, and this is pretty much in the same vein; he dismisses the filing as "somewhat cheeky" and doesn't present any real technical detail on the merits of TiVo's claim-- understandably, I guess, since the suit is still in its early stages. The patents are interesting reading, though.

Posted by Paul at 09:45 AM

Say what?

It's not often that I just can't parse an article in the Wall Street Journal. However, I was baffled by an article in yesterday's edition about a company named Culturecom. The article, by Evan Ramstad, claims that Culturecom has "found a way to put Asian characters in a position to command binary code... because instructions inside chips are written in English, Asian-language input and output must contain layers of translation". I'm not sure what Mr. Ramstad is getting at; from looking at Culturecom's page, it looks like Culturecom has an x86-compatible CPU that includes a Chinese-language character generator. Given Culturecom's previous announcements, this seems likely. While an impressive feat, this isn't the same as making the CPU start executing instructions in Pinyin or ideograms. I'd love to know if I've missed a detail, though; the article doesn't help, since it doesn't make any mention of whether Culturecom has also ported compilers, editors, debuggers, and so on to use the new CPU. I've asked Mr. Ramstad to comment; maybe he can shed some light on what's really up with this.

Posted by Paul at 09:31 AM

February 09, 2004

Exchange team weblog launches

The Exchange team now has a group blog: You Had Me at EHLO. Recommended reading.

Posted by Paul at 03:14 PM | TrackBack

A Marine's journal

Longtime readers may remember my post about Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, 23rd Marines. Now their most famous alumnus, Brian Taylor, has had part of his journal serialized in the Wall Street Journal. It makes for gripping reading, not least because Cpl Taylor has a real facility with the language. Here are parts 1, 2 ("Into Iraq"), and 3 ("The March to Baghdad"). Part 4's coming this Friday. I understand that he's working on a book, which I'm eager to read.

Posted by Paul at 11:43 AM

XM and lovin' it

I am totally infatuated with my new XM PCR-- a little XM radio receiver that plugs into the USB port on your computer. I've liked the idea of satellite radio since I first heard about it, but I spend very little time in the car, so there's not much point in buying a car unit. This, however, puts the music where I can listen to it: in my office.

There's a Mac control program called MacXM that lets you change channels, see a song list, and even set filters so you get alerts when selected songs are playing, no matter what channel you're on. (Plus, I now have the source code!) This might be a neat vehicle for me to brush up on my dormant programming skills, except that MacXM already does everything I want to do.

Audio quality is excellent, even though the antenna is looking out of my basement window. Since my Mac doesn't have a line-in port, I had to order a Griffin iMic; until it gets here, I can listen to the computer or the radio, but not both. I can also use AudioHijack to record an XM stream as an MP3 file; combine that with filters, and you've got an easy way to record songs or programs, even with a timer. That will probably come in handy.

The radio was only $49; at that price, I'm delighted! My only complaint is that XM doesn't seem to carry NPR, although Sirius has it on their service. On the other hand, Sirius doesn't sell a computer-controlled radio, so there you go.

Posted by Paul at 06:55 AM

Moving sale: cheap books

This is really an "I'm tired of moving" sale. When I signed to do Secure Messaging with Exchange 2000, I asked MS Press for 50 author copies-- 10 is normal. I figured that I'd have lots of copies to send out for review, give to customers, etc. However, I just cleaned up my office and found two boxes of books-- and any day now, UPS is going to bring me my author copies of the Exchange 2003 version. That means that the E2K versions must gooooo!

So, here's the deal: $20 buys you your own brand-new, signed copy; that's $15 less than Amazon. For $25, I won't sign it :) Email paul AT robichaux DOT net if you're interested. Remember, these make great gifts for Valentine's Day.

Posted by Paul at 06:46 AM

February 06, 2004

Fixing the 404

I'm trying to look at the Library page for the Domino Access for Microsoft Outlook product. Oddly, the feature comparison promised on the library page is 404. Hmmm. Not such a good selling tactic.

Because I have too much good sense to try fighting my way through 17 layers of IBM webmasters, I'll ping Ed Brill about this; I bet he can get it fixed.

Update: after a nice IM session with Ed, he's promised to look for the document, which indeed does seem to have disappeared from IBM's public site.

Posted by Paul at 03:02 PM

A fun game

Thanks to my friends at Lotus, I've discovered a fun diversion to while away the afternoon. Anyone can play! Here's how:


  1. Go to this page
  2. Sign up for a trial Domino Web Access account
  3. Try to send a message to an external SMTP user
  4. Get an error message
  5. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Update: This works properly now, and Domino Web Access is actually pretty impressive as a web client. I'd really like to see a neutral evaluation of DWA against OWA from the standpoint of an average user's ability to discover and use its features.

Posted by Paul at 02:23 PM

MS releases Allegiance source code

Very cool news: Microsoft is releasing the source code for Allegiance, their multi-player space combat game. The game is a few years old, but it's still cool, and it's exciting to imagine how the game might be extended.

Posted by Paul at 02:20 PM

MS releases guide to using recovery storage groups

Microsoft's Exchange user documentation team has done it again. they just released a 101-page document convering the details of how recovery storage groups work, what you can do with them, and how to use them to speed up disaster recovery. It's available here. The abstract:


Using the recovery storage group feature in Exchange Server 2003, you can mount a second copy of an Exchange mailbox database on the same server as the original database, or on any other Exchange server in the same Exchange administrative group. You can do this while the original database is still running and serving clients. The recovery storage group can also be useful in disaster recovery scenarios. This book provides information on how to determine if a recovery storage group is useful in your deployment, how to set up a recovery storage group, and how to troubleshoot common problems.

Even though this doesn't have anything overt to do with security, it has a lot to do with availability, and that's actually a component of security: security is about preserving your access to your data, and if you can't get that data because of a failure, it doesn't matter how secure it is.

Posted by Paul at 06:39 AM | Comments (1)

February 05, 2004

Well, I'm keeping mine

My friend Bob Thompson asks a reasonable question about TiVo:


Why would I buy a product that allows the manufacturer to keep track not just of what programs I watch, but the details about how I watch them?

My answer: why wouldn't you? Every system other than OTA broadcasting has the ability to track individual viewer usage. If you actually read TiVo's privacy policy, you'll see that TiVo can't pull any identifiable data on shows that you have watched, recorded, or rated unless you opt in. They can pull some anonymous data. Their policy says that

"This information allows TiVo to know that a TiVo service user from a particular ZIP code watched certain programming but we are unable to associate those viewing choices with you. If you use the TiVo Plus service, you may request that TiVo block the collection of Anonymous Viewing Information from your TiVo DVR."

I'm OK with that; in part, that anonymous data allows them to develop inferences about program relationships (e.g. if I record 24, I might also like MI-5 or Alias.) Since there's a way to opt out of having identifiable data sent to TiVo (and since that's off by default, IIRC), I am willing to allow the anonymous information to be collected. Hands down, the $600 ($340 for the unit, $250 for the lifetime service) we paid for our TiVo four years ago has been our best technology investment ever.

Posted by Paul at 02:52 PM

It's in pages!

Major milestone alert: the Exchange 2003 book is in pages. What that means is that the editors and page layout folks at MS Press have turned the original lightly-formatted Word files (and accompanying screen shots and napkin-drawn line art) into camera-ready pages. Barring any major mishaps, that means that the book's insides are ready to print. The cover's already been designed (see it on Amazon), so that means that with a little luck the book's ready to be printed!

And speaking of pages: I've set up Yet Another Blog, this one focused on the Exchange Cookbook I'm writing with Missy Koslosky and Devin Ganger. Check it out.

Posted by Paul at 12:08 PM

February 04, 2004

Catching up

I've been so busy with evaluating my second-least-favorite software product that I haven't had time to post here much. A few notes:

Posted by Paul at 11:13 AM