THE TIME IS RIGHT FOR A NEW CERTIFICATION

Hmmm, interesting thought.

By Emmett Dulaney

THE TIME IS RIGHT FOR A NEW CERTIFICATION If there's a need in the market for a new kind of certification, it would have to be for a Google certification.

Now, before you roll your eyes, let me explain my logic. The purpose of an IT certification is to authenticate the skills of an individual. The market thinking is that if the individual has these skills (and these skills have been validated by a third-party), then that individual is worth more than someone who doesn't have -- or hasn't proven they have -- those skills.

Given this line of reasoning, there are two certifications that make sense. The first is an end user certification for using Google. End user certifications exist for Microsoft Office products and a host of applications that people use frequently. What other frequently used tool has the ability to affect productivity more than Google? None.

In his book "The World Is Flat," Thomas Friedman describes an interview he did with Colin Powell while the latter was secretary of state. When Friedman asked Powell where he was when he realized the world had gone flat, Powell replied with only one word: "Google."

Not only is Google the "how" and "what," it's now also the "where" -- that's how ubiquitous it's become.

Why is a certification needed? Because there's enormous power in knowing how to use Google properly to find what you're looking for.
The goal isn't to have 81,600,000 results come back in 0.21 seconds; you'll never look past the first few pages returned. You'll just get frustrated and try the same search again. The goal is to have only a few results returned, but all of them relevant to what you're looking for.

How many users even notice the Advanced Search link and know the potential it holds? How many know that a tilde can be used to find synonyms, that a plus sign marks required entries, or that a colon limits the search to a specified domain? How much more productive could a user who knew all this be than one who didn't? If anything screams of the need for a certification, it's this.

The second certification that would make sense is an administrator-level certification for search engine optimizers. There are individuals who make their living by ensuring that your site will appear higher in Google results than sites that don't use their services. How well do these individuals know their trade? How well do they know what to avoid on pages, what to add, what to tag, etc.?
With more and more advertising revenue being diverted from traditional channels to Web sites, there's a real need for someone to prove they understand the channel.

TELNET ASCII Movie

Ok, i'm not that old in the tech industry, so this is kind of cool for me to see how the "old fogies" had their fun. :)

To watch the movie:

1. Go to Start > Run > type in Telnet
2. In Telnet type o and hit enter
3. Now type towel.blinkenlights.nl
4. Enjoy...

Windows XP SP3 boasts speed boost, testers claim

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=printArticleBasic&articleId=9048658

Keeping Your Job

Amen! :)

"These days it seems that the demand for IT workers is still growing, but there is no shortage of companies still looking to lay people off or get rid of employees that aren't performing up to some standard.

I saw an interesting article on how to better ensure IT job security and wanted to comment on a few of the items listed from the DBA perspective. I think that different groups of IT workers have different tendencies, but DBAs often are in a very strange position in a company and they need to ensure that their contributions are recognized as well as their work is valued and understood.

I remember in the dot-com boom days when "quirky" IT workers were tolerated and even valued. The strange people wearing flip flops and t-shirts could perform wonders with computers and their eccentricities were tolerated. Often when they were just competent at their jobs and no one really understood just how much or little they actually could do with systems.

The world has changed and expectations for most of our systems are higher than they were a decade ago. Management is more realistic in their view of their business, with most of our employers not expecting to get bought out by some large corporation and retire. Our job is to provide stability and long terms strategic value to our companies.

As a DBA, you have a varied job. You're in charge of data, need to technically manage the systems, but also work with business users to ensure their data is properly qualified, the meta data is understood (even if not explicitly written down) and you can help them ensure data quality and recognize the importance of the information that is being stored in databases.

This means that you need to better fit into the business as well as providing value. You should respect the dress codes and other habits of the rest of the company. You also need to learn to communicate effectively with others. Don't talk down to someone with technical acronyms and descriptions and make sure that you are trying to solve the business problems, not fit the solution into come cool piece of technology.

By trying to better fit in, you become an asset to the business as a whole. People should feel comfortable asking for your help and appreciate the work you do.
And they're likely to keep you around for the long term."

Steve Jones
https://www.sqlservercentral.com/Login?ReturnUrl=%2fForums%2fTopic425452-263-1.aspx

Free SQL Server tools that might make your life a little easier

http://weblogs.sqlteam.com/mladenp/archive/2007/11/20/Free-SQL-Server-tools-that-might-make-your-life-a.aspx

More Leopard Problems Plague Apple

It seems that Steve Jobs needs to add a phrase to his vocabulary - "Blue Screen of Death" :)

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/2007/11/22/more_leopard_problems_plague_apple/

What If Gmail Had Been Designed by Microsoft?

Ok, I found this rather amusing :)

http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-11-20-n35.html

VM Placement: Does the Guest OS Matter?

Here's a good article on VM's and Shared Memory.

TECH LINE: VM Placement: Does the Guest OS Matter?
Grouping VMs by OS and application on a physical host can improve memory performance.

By Chris Wolf

Chris: I've heard conflicting accounts from consultants on virtual machine placement. Some say to group VMs with like OSes and applications on the same physical hosts. Several others say it doesn't matter. I attended one of your seminars and remember you mentioning that there is a benefit to placing like applications and operating systems on the same host, but can't remember what that benefit is. Can you shed some light on this?
-- Kumar


Grouping VMs running like operating systems or applications is advantageous for organizations using a virtualization platform that supports memory sharing. Memory sharing is a feature of select virtualization platforms and is used by the virtualization engine to remove redundant memory pages.

Consider 10 VMs running on a system that run the exact same OS. In such a scenario, the guest OS in all 10 VMs would require the same read-only pages for OS data. Why load the same page into physical memory 10 times when only one instance is really needed? That is the logic behind memory sharing.

Memory sharing is a very useful server virtualization feature; however, the majority of server virtualization platforms do not support it. The varying levels of memory sharing support amongst platforms is likely what led Kumar to receive different perspectives from the consultants that he had spoken with.

Memory sharing is one of the "under the hood technologies" and in my experience remains relatively unknown. Two x86 virtualization platforms offer memory sharing today: VMware ESX Server and SWsoft Virtuozzo. Microsoft Virtual Server and Xen-based hypervisors (i.e.
Citrix XenServer, Xen 3.x on Novell SuSE Enterprise Server, Xen 3.x on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Virtual Iron) do not currently support memory sharing. Both Microsoft and XenSource claim performance as justification for not supporting memory sharing which, to a degree, is true.

The trick to an effective memory sharing architecture, however, is for the virtualization platform to scan for redundant memory pages when resource utilization is at a minimum, so the extra CPU cycles needed to locate redundant memory pages ultimately has no impact on VM performance. This is how memory sharing is managed on a VMware ESX Server. An ESX Server will only scan for redundant physical memory pages when resource utilization is at a minimum, oftentimes causing scans to only run at night during non-business hours.

Since system resources are only devoted to shared memory optimization during off-peak hours, it may take up to a week or longer before an ESX server realizes optimal memory consolidation.
The result is up to a 30 percent reduction in required physical memory. Get more information and resources on virtual machine memory sharing at my blog post, "Server Virtualization Memory Sharing -- Vendors Divided," at http://tinyurl.com/24etrp.

Comment: http://mcpmag.com/columns/article.asp?EditorialsID=2372#post

Chris Wolf, MCSE, MCT, CCNA, is a Microsoft MVP for Windows- Virtual Machine.

Top 10 Internet Security Trends for 2007

Top 10 Internet Security Trends for 2007

1. Data Breaches. Late last month, documents from an information-breach lawsuit against the TJX Corporation -- owners of TJ Maxx -- revealed that as many as 94 million customers using Visa and MasterCard were exposed to hackers. Further, in addition to Monster.com and Salesforce.com being hacked, there is also a report coming out next week that suggests half a million database servers are vulnerable. Turner says these events are what made data breaches the top concern among security experts this year.


2. Vista Introduction. More than a dozen security patches, perceived complexity and an ambivalent reception among tech media and some technologists have kept the much talked about OS in the news, making it a top issue of 2007.


3. Spam. The hair-growth pill promotions, penny stock tips, and promises of money from deposed African dictators won't stop hitting your e-mail inbox anytime soon. Moreover, spammers are increasingly taking more sophisticated approaches such as sending disguised PDF files, pretending to know you in e-mail subject lines and delivering Storm Worm malware through e-greeting cards.


4. Professional Attack Kits. Symantec believes that not only are hackers becoming more savvy but are also setting up a new revenue stream by selling hacker kits to peers. Such kits include MPack, which was popular this year and "phishing" toolkits pervade cyberspace as well.


5. Phishing. Phishing, a cousin of spoofing and masquerade hacking, gets its name from the way hackers use friendly or seemingly benign programs as bait. Symantec's Turner says criminals no longer have to hack in, as some users are coming to them.


6. Exploitation of Trusted Brands. By exploiting a trusted Website, hackers can trick someone into thinking they're getting on Bank of America's homepage by, for instance, sending them a link such as www.bofa.com@yourmoney.com. Someone may then key in information on a false interface. While most browsers nowadays are equipped with warning messages, "Phishermen" also take advantage of misspellings of popular Internet addresses.


7. Bots. Hacking by proxy is an increasingly common way for cyber criminals to maintain anonymity, and the use of "Bots", or Electronic Data Interchange translators, is one of the many malicious emissaries used to siphon protected information.


8. Web Plug-ins. ActiveX control modules, derived from Microsoft's Component Object Model and used to manage multimedia applications, comprised the majority of plug-in vulnerabilities in 2007, according to Symantec. These modules are usually downloaded from Web pages and used to make programs more compatible with others -- but they can also be used as attack vectors.


9. Vulnerabilities for Sale. This year the debate over the link between proof of concept exploits and "wild" exploits heated up after a decision in late September by Swiss tech upstart Wabi Sabi Labi Ltd., to create an eBay Inc.-style auction for unpatched, zero-day software vulnerabilities.


10. Virtualization Machine Security. Software and server virtualization, as evidenced by VMware's multi-billion-dollar IPO and new entries by Oracle, Sun, Microsoft and others, is definitely here to stay. If two file servers can do the work of ten, as some proponents attest, then a hacker can have a field day exploiting such technology.

http://redmondmag.com/news/article.asp?editorialsid=9253

Users complain new Gmail version slow, crashes browsers

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/111607-gmail.html

Is Apple Spying On iPhone Users?

Apparently so...

http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2007/11/is_apple_spying.html?print=true

http://www.hackint0sh.org/forum/showthread.php?t=16125

Editorial - TTYL

The issue of communication is a real issue in the IT world. I couldn't agree more with Steve Jones article below...

"OMG! The DB if FUBAR.

The sysop added an HDD and did a RAID rebuild OTF. AKAIK, the Vol with the MDFs got wiped for the CRM that runs 24/7.

I'm ROFLMAO. AWKFY? TTYL.

Can you imagine someone talking to you like that. I mean actually speaking with "words" like "T-T-Y-L?"

I saw this article about how most people are speaking English in business today, but with the globalization of many companies, it's easy to not only mis-communicate, but also offend. And that can be a big problem with not only co-workers, but also customers.

Whether we standardize on English or some other communication, I hope that we continue to keep the skills of our language alive. The new generation of workers, working in shorthands and their own slang, seem to be losing out on the ability to effectively communicate with others. Too often they want to bang something out on a keyboard rather than talking directly to someone.

I'm sure I sound like an old man, lamenting the good old days of paper, ink, and phones without voicemail. However it's not the shorthand or slang that bothers me as much as the lack of the ability to clearly articulate themselves that plagues many people in the IT world. When I started in this business, it was always an issue communicating because things were so highly technical and few people understood how computers worked. The geeks that could truly make a computer sing had trouble communicating with business users.

I think the same thing is true today with communication, despite the advances in making computer interations simpler, greater familiarity, and a comfort level with technology by many business users. For every step we've made in computing becoming more accepted by users in all aspects of society, we've gotten worse in our overall communication skills with acronym and shorthand overload. I almost shudder to think of the text-messaging generation entering the workforce.

Technical jargon is important. It helps us quickly, clearly, and easily communicate with other IT workers with very specific meanings, but it's not the way that we should communicate with those outside of IT. Even if you are never any type of analyst, designer, architect, it pays to be able to clearly and effectively communicate your ideas, thoughts, and concerns to others.

Save the shorthand and slang for those times when it's appropriate and be sure that you can communicate using clear and generally accepted English (or your native language) with everyone else you encounter in your career. "

Steve Jones
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/

Steve Jobs May Get a Raise

hmmm... does Steve think that Apple stock isn't going to keep movin' on up???

http://blog.wired.com/business/2007/11/steve-jobs-may.html

Disappearing Gmail messages baffle users

Gmail having issues??? Interesting to note that Microsoft's service (Windows Live Hotmail) has far fewer reports of such things. ;)

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=printArticleBasic&articleId=9047178

Apple Leopard Update Fixes More Than Two Dozen Bugs

Glad to see they are starting to take care of some of their issues ;)


Apple Leopard Update Fixes More Than Two Dozen Bugs

By Paul McDougall, InformationWeek
Nov. 15, 2007
URL: http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=203101060

Apple on Thursday released an update to its Leopard operating system that's meant to fix more than 24 bugs that have troubled users since the software debuted last month.

Mac OS X 10.5.1, as the Leopard update is officially known, addresses issues affecting passwords, alerts, and partitioning, among other things. It's available through Apple's automatic download service, called Software Update.

Among the fixes: password-protected accounts now show up in the Finder's shared sidebar; disk partitioning when multiple RAID sets are created on the same disk is improved; and an issue that produces alerts when disk images are created using the Disk Utility or Terminal has been resolved.

Also patched is a glitch in which files restored in Leopard's Time Machine backup utility were not archived to the correct folders; a bug that caused To-Do lists to disappear in Apple's Smart Mailboxes; and a flaw that caused custom paper feeds to reset to 'default' when printing.

Apple has a lot riding on Leopard. It's hoping that the slick new interface that the software brings to its PCs and laptops will help it cut into Microsoft's dominance of the computer operating system market.

To that end, Leopard features a number of graphical enhancements that redefine the way users interact with their Macs. For instance, a feature called Stacks arranges all the files in a folder into an appealing fan shape when the folder is clicked.

Leopard also borrows heavily from Apple's successful iPod interface. An enhanced Finder tool lets users leaf through icons representing their files the same way they can flip through music tracks on the digital music player.

Apple is also hoping that new productivity enhancements and security tools built into the 64-bit Leopard will push it deeper into the business computing world, where the company has largely been shut out by Microsoft.

VMware Server 2.0 Beta!

For those of you who are using VMWare on USB drives, upgrade now to get USB 2.0 support!

What's New:
New features and enhancements in the VMware Server Beta 1 release:

* Web-based management interface: A new Web-based user interface provides a simple, flexible, intuitive and productive way for you to manage your virtual machines.

* Expanded operating system support: VMware Server now supports Windows Vista Business Edition and Ultimate Edition (guest only), Windows Server 2008 (Longhorn Server Beta 3), Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and Ubuntu 7.1, among others.

* Greater scalability: Take full advantage of high-end hardware with support for up to 8GB of RAM per virtual machine, up to two virtual SMP (vSMP) processors and up to 64 virtual machines per host.

* 64-bit guest operating system support: Run high-performance operating systems in virtual machines with support for Intel EM64T VT-enabled processors and AMD64 processors with segmentation support.

* Support for VIX API 1.2: This feature provides a programming interface for automating virtual machine and guest operations.

* Support for Virtual Machine Interface (VMI): This feature enables transparent paravirtualization, in which a single binary version of the operating system can run either on native hardware or in paravirtualized mode.

* Support for USB 2.0 devices: Transfer data at faster data rates from USB 2.0 devices.

http://www.vmware.com/beta/server/

Researcher: Half million database servers have no firewall

Survey finds that more databases are exposed to hackers than ever before, putting corporate data at risk, and many of these unprotected databases are also unpatched

By Robert McMillan, IDG News Service

November 14, 2007

Think your database server is safe? You may want to double-check. According to security researcher David Litchfield, there are nearly half a million database servers exposed on the Internet, without firewall protection.

Litchfield took a look at more than 1 million randomly generated IP addresses, checking them to see if he could access them on the IP ports reserved for Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle's database. The results? He found 157 SQL servers and 53 Oracle servers. Litchfield then relied on known estimates of the number of systems on the Internet to arrive at his conclusion: "There are approximately 368,000 Microsoft SQL Servers... and about 124,000 Oracle database servers directly accessible on the Internet," he wrote in his report, due to be made public next week.

This is not the first time that Litchfield, managing director of NGSSoftware, has conducted this type of research. Two years ago, he released his first Database Exposure Survey, estimating that there were about 350,000 Microsoft and Oracle databases exposed.

This 2007 version of the Database Exposure Survey is set to be published Monday on Litchfield's Databasesecurity.com Web site. IDG News was given a preliminary copy of the findings.

With no firewall, databases are exposed to hackers, putting corporate data at risk. Litchfield said that, given the amount of press generated by corporate data breaches over the past two years, it's amazing to find that there are more databases exposed than ever before. "I think it's terrible," he said in an interview. "We all run around like headless chickens following these data breach headlines... organizations out there really don't care. Why are all these sites hanging out there without the protection of a firewall?"

This year's Oracle tally is actually down from Litchfield's 2005 estimate, which counted 140,000 Oracle systems. That same study placed the SQL server total at 210,000.

The security researcher wasn't sure why Oracle's numbers had declined while Microsoft's had risen. "Microsoft's technology is certainly easier to install. Maybe the increase in SQL server numbers is simply a function of that," he said.

In the 2005 survey, Litchfield found an even larger number of the open source MySQL databases outside of the firewall. The 2007 survey does not count MySQL, however.

There was one other disturbing finding in Litchfield's 2007 survey: Many of these unprotected databases are also unpatched. In fact, 4 percent of the SQL Server databases Litchfield found were still vulnerable to the flaw that was exploited by 2003's widespread SQL Slammer worm. "People aren't protecting themselves with firewalls, and the patch levels are atrocious," he said.

About 82 percent of the SQL Servers were running older SQL Server 2000 software, and less than half of those had the product's latest Service Pack updates installed. On the Oracle side, 13 percent of the servers were running older versions of the database that no longer receive patches. These Oracle 9.0 and earlier databases are known to have security vulnerabilities, Litchfield said.

Litchfield, who wrote the proof of concept code that was eventually used by Slammer, said that this many unsecured databases is enough to sustain another worm outbreak. "There's certainly potential there," he said. "So the question is what's the likelihood? [That's] much more difficult to answer."

http://www.infoworld.com/archives/emailPrint.jsp?R=printThis&A=/article/07/11/14/Half-million-database-servers-have-no-firewall_1.html

Top o' the day

QUESTION: How can I prevent Web sites from accessing the local clipboard on
my computer?

ANSWER:
If the security level for your Internet zones (Tools, Internet
Options, Security) in Internet Explorer 5.0 or later is set to
High, you're already preventing Web sites from accessing your
local clipboard.

However, if your security level isn't set to High and you still wish
to prevent IE's dynamic HTML from accessing your Web site, you should
disable the "Allow paste operations via script" option. Here's
the procedure:

1. Start Internet Explorer.
2. Go to Tools, Internet Options and click on the Security tab.
3. Select the Internet zone and click Custom Level.
4. Under the Scripting section, configure the "Allow paste operations
via script" option to Disable and then click OK. In IE 7.0, the
option is called "Allow Programmatic clipboard access."

Courtesy of: Zubair Alexander, MCSE, MCT, MCSA and Microsoft MVP

The Google Way

Here's an editorial from a newsletter that I receive. I thought it did a good job of contrasting Google and Microsoft in some ways...

"I've been working with Microsoft technologies for nearly two decades and I've admired how quickly the company has changed direction many times and how well they've brought new technologies to the masses. They didn't always innovate or invent the actual technology, but they have often made it cheap and available to large groups of people.

However I've also been annoyed sometimes by how quickly they've dismissed some good technologies and pushed others. Anyone remember Blackbird and their early dismissals of the Internet?

To a large extent, it seems that they're still doing that with Google. Despite the fact that both companies attract some incredible intelligent people, it seems that Microsoft continues plodding along in it's own direction while Google is constantly seeking to push the envelope and find new ways to grow and attack markets.

The Google phone is a good example. Not that Microsoft hasn't worked on phone and speech technologies, and they've done a good job improving Windows Mobile, but it seems that they lack the excitement and drive to really succeed. Google is looking to drive it's phone to the market in many ways, including grabbing spectrum on which to provide service. Microsoft seems content to deliver a platform and hope it gains large market share.

It's like Microsoft has become Sony with the Playstation 2, and Google is the new Microsoft with it's cool XBOX and the unification of online services through XBOX Live. They've innovated a new way of driving the business instead of trying to incrementally improve the old way.

And don't get me started on Search. I'm still amazed at exactly how bad Live Search can be. As I try their search product at times, I'm still amazed at just how bad it can be. I'm almost terrified of trying to use their Search Server Express, even in testing. Maybe they are trying to innovate here, and just not doing a better job. It just seems like they constantly give me less reasons to give it a chance.

It's almost like Google is playing offense and Microsoft is playing not to lose. Which is a sure way ensure Google will come out on top. "

Steve Jones

10 dirty little secrets you should know about working in IT

Unfortunately #1 is very prevalent in the IT industry.

1.) IT pros frequently use jargon to confuse nontechnical business managers and hide the fact that they screwed up

All IT pros - even the very best - screw things up once in a while. This is a profession where a lot is at stake and the systems that are being managed are complex and often difficult to integrate. However, not all IT pros are good at admitting when they make a mistake. Many of them take advantage of the fact that business managers (and even some high-level technical managers) don't have a good understanding of technology, and so the techies will use jargon to confuse them (and cover up the truth) when explaining why a problem or an outage occurred. For example, to tell a business manager why a financial application went down for three hours, the techie might say, "We had a blue screen of death on the SQL Server that runs that app. Damn Microsoft!" What the techie would fail to mention was that the BSOD was caused by a driver update he applied to the server without first testing it on a staging machine.

http://www.globalknowledge.com/training/generic.asp?pageid=1470&country=United+States

Weekly quickTIP - Building a Better Defragger

Weekly quickTIP: Building a Better Defragger The disk defrag tool gets better with every OS, it seems. Check out some of the improvements on hand this time around.

By Greg Shields

I remember defragging hard drives back in the days of Windows 2000.
As an administrator, it was a pain in the neck. You could start a drive defragmentation from the local machine, but there weren?t any tools to truly remotely script the process.

Windows 2000?s defragger was a cantankerous beast too. Starting it consumed all kinds of system resources, and stopping it took forever. Worst of all, you could run the defragger over and over on a particularly fragmented drive and never get it fully defragmented.

That cranky tool has gotten incrementally better with each release of the Windows operating system. Windows XP added remote scripting exposure and improvements to its core engine. Windows Vista adds a number of new and neat additional features as well.
Compliments of Microsoft KnowledgeBase Article 942092
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/942092 , some of its shiny, new improvements include:

* Partial defragmentation. By default, the defragger only
defragments files that are 64 MB and smaller. You?ll
need to use the -w switch to defragment large files
above that size.

* Cancellable defragmentation. Ever tried to cancel out
of the middle of a defragmentation process? Wait for it.
Wait for it. With Vista, the cancel process has been
improved to make stopping the process much quicker.

* Low priority defragmentation. Vista?s defragger now
runs as a Low Priority process, which means that it
behaves better when running alongside other tasks you?re
attempting to accomplish.

* Ability to defragment volumes with less free space.
Optimizations have been made in the defragger?s engine
that allows it to run with less required free space
than in previous versions.

* Faster defragmentation. Also refreshing are optimizations
that increase the total speed of defragmentation.
Microsoft says the process now runs up to two to three
times faster than with previous versions.

* Shadow-copy-aware defragmentation. The defragger is now
integrated with the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS).

* Master File Table defragmentation. Vista can now eliminate
fragmentation on a disk?s MFT.

What I find to be the most exciting about these new capabilities is simply the automatic scheduling of the defragger at system install. Every copy of Vista automatically sets up a defragmentation job to occur at 1 a.m. every Wednesday. If the computer happens to be powered down, the task is scheduled to run at the next idle opportunity. You can change this schedule by opening Task Scheduler and drilling down the tree to Task Scheduler Library \ Microsoft \ Windows \ Defrag.

Comment: http://mcpmag.com/columns/article.asp?editorialsid=2365

Greg Shields, MCSE: Security, CCEA, is a principal consultant for 3t Systems http://www.3tsystems.com/ in Denver, Colo.

10 IT career killers to avoid

1. Failing to have a life plan. "This is the No. 1 biggest mistake that I run into with my clients. I work with a number of clients in IT, many of whom are in C-level roles. A life plan is a business plan, in the same way that a company leader creates an annual business plan for what the future is going to bring from a corporate perspective. Three life aspects to focus on include one's career, personal and family, and financial goals. If someone has a good title and a satisfactory personal and family life but they're struggling to make monthly payments, then they're not going to be satisfied. They should look at those aspects for themselves. They should look at the competitive environment, the job marketplace and whether their skill set is current. If someone can replace them because they're cheaper, faster or better, it's no different than looking at your IT requirements. Most importantly, this plan should be written down. Only 14% of people do that. 86% are putting their futures in the hands of others. It's not a good place to be in."

2. Not keeping your skills current. "The business landscape is ever-changing and there is more demand for jobs than supply. Not staying on par with colleagues and those vying for your job will be a death knell. With individuals able to do the same work that someone is doing anywhere in the world today and the prospect that organizations will chase skill sets around the world, if you're not up to date with your skill sets in IT, you're significantly at risk of being replaced. This includes the need to stay up to date in technical skills, business skills and soft skills."

Click Here to read the rest...

IE Automatic Component Activation (Changes to IE ActiveX Update)

It's about time...

Back in April 2006, we made a change to how Internet Explorer handled embedded controls used on some webpages. Some sites required users to “click to activate” before they could interact with the control. Microsoft has now licensed the technologies from Eolas, removing the “click to activate” requirement in Internet Explorer. Because of this, we're removing the “click to activate” behavior from Internet Explorer!

Click Here to read more....

Microsoft Tries To Patent Conversational Closers

OK... somebody has too much time on their hands.


By Doug Caverly

Can’t be bothered to type “goodbye” at the end of IM conversation? That’s okay - Microsoft wants to do it for you. The real kicker, though, is that Microsoft also wants to patent this practice.

A U.S. patent application states, “a converser may be insulted when the user terminates a conversation without saying goodbye or may consider it to be rude to end a conversation abruptly without a communication that the conversation is ending.” Well, all right.

There’s no need to patent a tool that would automatically send goodbye messages, however. Aside from the sheer ridiculousness of the idea, Cade Metz notes, “You could argue that IRC clients have offered this sort of thing for years . . .”

So is it just me, or is Microsoft going increasingly loony? Steve Ballmer alone has generated several odd quotes in the past couple of months, and then there’s the $240-million-for-a-1.6-percent-stake-in-Facebook thing to consider.

With any luck, Patent Application 20070255800 will be killed. Without any luck, well . . . look for Microsoft to patent something related to round objects with spokes.

http://www.webpronews.com/node/41956/print

World’s First Image Taking of the Moon by HDTV

Check out the images... pretty cool stuff.

http://www.jaxa.jp/press/2007/11/20071107_kaguya_e.html

Rotten Apple: Leopard

Not to pile on, but these articles keep coming to me! They seem to be everywhere the past week...

Opinion: Apple's latest operating system release may be the most troublesome since Apple switched from its System operating system to the BSD Unix and Mach-based Mac OS X.

I have never heard so many complaints about a Mac OS upgrade. Back in 2000/2001 when Apple users were switching from its older System operating system to the BSD Unix-based Mac OS X, I also heard many a die-hard Mac user cursing at the changes. Then, however, everyone knew that there was going to be real trouble. After all, this wasn't just an upgrade—both the software and hardware were moving from one operating system to another.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2212976,00.asp

More sad stories of Leopard issues...

Poor chaps aren't exactly having the easiest time of things with the new OS. ;)

Leopard App Casualty List Grows
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2212576,00.asp

10 types of programmers you’ll encounter in the field

A funny read if you are a programmer (or work with them) :). Follow the link for the full descriptions...

#1: Gandalf
This programmer type looks like a short-list candidate to play Gandalf...
#2: The Martyr
In any other profession, The Martyr is simply a “workaholic.” But in the development field...
#3: Fanboy
Watch out for Fanboy. If he or she corners you, you’re in for a three-hour lecture about...
#4: Vince Neil
This 40-something is a throwback to 1984 in all of the wrong ways. Sporting big hair...
#5: The Ninja
The Ninja is your team’s MVP, and no one knows it. Like the legendary assassins....
#6: The Theoretician
The Theoretician knows everything there is to know about programming. He or she can...
#7: The Code Cowboy
The Code Cowboy is a force of nature that cannot be stopped. He or she is almost always...
#8: The Paratrooper
You know those movies where a sole commando is air-dropped deep behind enemy lines and...
#9: Mediocre Man
“Good enough” is the best you will ever get from Mediocre Man. Don’t let the name fool you...
#10: The Evangelist
No matter what kind of environment you have, The Evangelist insists that it can be improved...

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/10things/?p=262

Nice and Needed Vista and 2008 Disk Management Enhancements

The Incredible Shrinking Disk Windows 2008's nifty disk-manipulation features includes this cool disk-shrinking tool that has nothing to do with cold water.

by Greg Shields

Windows Vista comes with a boatload of nifty new features, but one that continues to excite me is its enhanced ability to manipulate disks. With previous versions of Windows, we could expand volumes with the DISKPART command or append new ones to create larger volumes. But at no point with the native tools were we ever able to make those volumes smaller.

If you’re like me, when you build a new computer you sometimes scratch your head when the option arrives asking for volume size. More often than not, I usually create a volume that’s as big as the disk itself. But sometimes I need to create multiple volumes on the same disk. Maybe I have a concern about log files filling up the system drive. Maybe I want to split apart my data drives from my system drive for easier recovery in case of a failure.

In either case, creating a volume at the wrong size usually meant extra work down the road to fix that size when it became apparent I’d made a mistake. With Vista and Windows Server 2008, however, those problems go away.

Right-click the Computer icon on any Vista or Windows Server 2008 computer and open Computer Management (for Vista) or Server Manager (for Windows 2008). Navigate down to Disk Management and right-click again on any available disk. You’ll see three new items in the context menu: Extend volume, shrink volume and delete volume.

By far the neatest of these is the ability to shrink a volume. Obviously the shrinkage of that volume will depend on how much data is on the disk, but what’s unbelievably cool about this new capability is that it can be done without impacting the OS. You can even shrink the system drive while the system is actively running on the drive. There are a few limitations:

* You can only shrink NTFS or unformatted partitions.
* Disks with too many bad clusters will not be allowed to shrink.
* Unmovable areas on the disk like the page file or shadow copy storage area can impact how far down the disk can be shrunk. If your disk cannot shrink to the size you want, consider removing these elements first.
* Only administrators can manipulate disks.

If you prefer the command line, the command-line tool DISKPART has similarly been augmented with these capabilities. The command you’ll want to look for is SHRINK DESIRED={Desired amount of size reduction} MINIMUM={Minimum amount of size reduction}. By including both the DESIRED and MINIMUM switches in the command, DISKPART will attempt to reduce the size by the DESIRED amount. If it can’t, it’ll at least attempt to reduce it by the MINIMUM amount.

http://mcpmag.com/columns/article.asp?editorialsid=2326

Greg Shields, MCSE: Security, CCEA, is an independent author, instructor, and consultant based in Denver, Colo. A contributing editor to Redmond magazine, MCPmag.com and a popular speaker at TechMentor events, Greg’s recent book "Windows Server 2008: What’s New/What’s Changed" is now available at www.sapienpress.com. You can contact Greg about "The Incredible Shrinking Disk" at gshields@redmondmag.com.

Google Dials Into the Cell Phone Market

Hmmm… ought to be interesting…

http://news.wired.com/dynamic/stories/G/GOOGLE_MOBILE?SITE=WIRE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2007-11-05-11-04-01

Microsoft's HD Photo to become JPEG XR Standard

Ahhh... Microsoft giving back to the community. :) Surprising though, because you would think with Apple on the imaging/video forefront that they would be the ones with the new image standard.

A new attempt to provide a higher-end sequel to the ubiquitous JPEG image standard is officially under way.

The multiple countries participating in the Joint Photographic Experts Group, which created the JPEG standard, have approved an effort to make Microsoft's HD Photo format a standard called JPEG XR, said Bill Crow, who has led Microsoft's HD Photo effort and who just took over the company's Microsoft Live Labs Seadragon imaging project. XR stands for "extended range," a reference to the format's ability to show a wider and finer range of tonal gradations and a richer color palette.

http://www.news.com/8301-13580_3-9810024-39.html

Cool Sysinternals tools - and they're free!

BGInfo v4.11 - Show system info on your desktop background

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/bginfo.mspx

Process Monitor v1.25 - Task Manager expanded

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/default.mspx?wt.svl=leftnav

Fortress Mac Is Gone

Well it appears that Mac's have now grown up enough to begin getting some attention by professional hacker's. Until now the Mac OS has been relatively secure (or so it was believed) - for the simply reason that there wasn't a large enough market for the hacker's to pay attention to. Appx 6% marketshare isn't exactly a goldrush for professional hacker's who are looking for money. However, with the recent surge in Mac users with OS X, I suppose someone finally decided it was time to unleash on the fanboys. :)

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2210900,00.asp

"It appears that the Mac is becoming popular enough that the "bad guys" think it is worth spending time and effort in developing malware for the Mac OS. If we see a rise in Mac malware, then we will have to assume that there are profits to be made in malware for Macs as well. Stay tuned."
http://www.symantec.com/enterprise/security_response/weblog/2007/11/the_double_attack_windows_atta.html

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/10/mac-users-get-a.html