I just received the following email, which came across smelling quite phishy. Having recently aced the McAfee Phishing Quiz (the link seems to be down now), I clicked on the link to look for the telltale signs of a phishing site. (The first clue, by the way, is the fact that I do not have an account with WSECU...)
I am so used to the phishing filter in IE 7 flagging phishing sites that I was surprised when the site came up with no problems. It also looks (by checking out the URL), that this site is actually hosted on the WSECU servers...
Pulled the site up in Firefox, and again, it did not get flagged as suspicious:
So... I typed in a username and password of "123", which pulled up the VERY obvious phishing page...
It was only then that I noticed how they got on the WSECU servers... Turns out they weren't. They managed to register WSENCU.ORG (which looks a heck of a lot like WSECU.ORG). I have since reported this site to the Firefox and IE Phishing filters, which you do as follows:
IE: Tools --> Phishing Filter --> Report this website
Firefox: Help --> Report Web Forgery
Lessons learned:
1) Just because it is not flagged as a phishing site does not mean that it is not. It just means that the filtering companies have not come across this site yet.
2) Be smart. Your bank will never "lose" your personal information and require you to insert your social security number, credit card number, and account number on a web page.
3) Phishers are getting better and better at building VERY convincing sites (this site even ran the spell-checker!)
I was taking a look at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention page (OSCON is underway this week), and noticed that Microsoft is a Diamond sponsor (apparently that is the level above Platinum, which is better than Gold. I suppose that Palladium comes next ;)
That would probably relate to the fact that we announced a new site today that covers our efforts as they pertain to Open Source. The URL is easy to remember...http://www.microsoft.com/opensource/
I am glad to see our efforts of interfacing with the Open Source community continuing to grow stronger. For perspective on how far we have come, I point you to the following posting by Eric S. Raymond (open source luminary and author of The Cathedral and the Bazaar) in 2004 (http://esr.ibiblio.org/index.php?p=208)
FURTHER UPDATE: I had my serious, constructive converstation [sic] with Microsoft last year, when a midlevel exec named Steven Walli took me out to dinner at OSCON 2004 and asked, in so many words, “How can we not be evil?” And I told him — open up your file formats (including Word and multimedia), support open technical standards instead of sabotaging them, license your patents under royalty-free, paperwork-free terms.
Opening up our file formats?
Supporting open standards?
Supporting:
Working with competitors to increase interoperability?
Supporting Linux distributions on our Virtualization Platform?
So... how are we doing? Are we less evil yet? :)
Other OSS at Microsoft links:
I am in the midst of TechReady, an internal event that is simultaneously the coolest event at Microsoft, and the most frustrating. Similar to TechEd (but only for blue-badgers), thousands of Microsofties descend upon the Washington State Convention Center for 5 days of technical events. The mornings start with keynotes from the executives (yesterday was Kevin Turner, today was Bill Gates), and then it is off to session after technical session with folks from the product teams.
There are more sessions available then minutes to attend them all, and the frustration comes in two forms: 1) Picking between two (or more) awesome sessions (Do I want to learn about Windows Server 2008 Kernel Advances from Mark Russinovich, or learn about Implementing Highly Available SQL Server 2005 and Microsoft SharePoint Server Solutions?), and 2) I cannot blog about the vast majority of the information presented, as product teams are demoing features that have not yet been announced.
<sigh...>
That having been said, this is also a great opportunity for the worldwide technical folks within Microsoft (whether consultants, technical sales, architects, evangelists, etc.) to interface directly with the Product teams. If there is any feature that is missing in a product, a pain we are hearing from customers, or communications that are lacking in the field... there is NO-ONE that is shy about sharing (oftentimes quite vocally!) that feedback with the product teams. Believe it or not, Microsoft employees can be some of the most critical and vocal proponents of improving Microsoft software (which is a good thing ;).
By the way... I've already met one of my favorite bloggers (CC Hameed from the Ask Perf blog, and a regular contributor to the internal discussion lists), and if I'm lucky, I'll run into my other favorite blogger (Keith Combs) at the blogger gathering tomorrow. Woohoo!
If you have ever expanded out your system tray in Windows Vista, you may notice that there is a tiny gap between some of the icons. What is this gap? Is there a half-sized invisible icon in there? Is it a bug?
Nope... that is an intentional gap that separates built-in System icons on the right (clock, volume, network, and power), from notification icons.
You can of course customize this area (although the only way to make the gap disappear is to hide all system icons or all notification items. Right-click on your Taskbar and choose properties, and click on the "Notification Area" tab, and you can uncheck any of the system icons you do not want to display.
You can also hit the "customize" button and choose which of the notification items show up, and how they show up (Hide when inactive, Hide, or Show).
No... not Harry Potter. Judging by my trip to Costco today, every living human being on the planet has already bought a copy ;)
If you run (or plan to run) Microsoft Operations Manager, there are two books you must have in your library:
I have met John Joyner (Senior Architect with ClearPointe Technology, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner), and have nothing but the utmost respect for him.
He is a top notch Windows and MOM Guru, and was actually responsible for designing and implementing one of the first Naval Ship-based LAN/WANs in the early 90's so that the sailors could communicate back home with spare bandwidth from the Satellite uplink. John has been working closely with the Operations Manager and System Center Essentials teams throughout their Betas, and I am glad to see that you can now pre-order the update to MOM 2005 Unleashed, called...
wait for it...
Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed. Pete says it will be ready by January 2008, but Amazon has a release date of October 21st... In any case, it's not to early to get in line ;)
I finally signed up for Facebook to see what all they hype was... It's kind of cool, but what surprised me was the HUGE number of Microsoft employees on Facebook. If I recall correctly (and this is off the top of my head), there are approximately 70,000 MS employees worldwide.
How many of them are on FaceBook?
Nearly a quarter of them...
Bill Gates is there, Steve Ballmer is (with an anemic profile), Chris Capossela and Michael Howard are there, and Ray Ozzie has a great picture of himself...
Ray's list of friends is a who's who of big names, but I guess that's understandable when you are the Chief Software Architect of Microsoft...
All right… I'm going to go all market-y on you here. I know there is not a ton of information out there on the new System Center Remote Operations Manager offering for Managed Services Providers (MSP's), but the marketing team is hard at work on that. The best place to keep your eye on is Dustin's blog, and I will try to post as I have time.
That having been said, the Rapid Deployment Program will be kicking off next month, and if you would like to participate, the nomination information is below. For you… you will get a 2-3 month headstart in managing your customer's sites using Remote Operations Manager. For us, we get case studies to share how successful you were with Remote Operations Manager J
Official invitation follows:
-------------------------------
What is System Center Remote Operations Manager 2007?
Microsoft® System Center Remote Operations Manager 2007 is a new remote management solution for IT service providers with mid-market customers that enables end-to-end management of distributed infrastructures while simplifying management of Microsoft Windows®-based systems and applications. Unlike platforms that superficially address a broad set of functions aimed at service providers, Remote Operations Manager:
What is a Rapid Deployment Program?
The Microsoft rapid deployment program (RDP) is designed to allow customers to explore a product before it goes public and to allow Microsoft to collect evidence on the product in a customer environment. The customers enrolled in the System Center Remote Operations Manager 2007 Rapid Deployment program will be deploying System Center Remote Operations Manager 2007 in their own environments and System Center Essentials Evaluation Edition at the managed customer site.
Benefits and Requirements of System Center Remote Operations Manager RDP:
Benefits
Requirements
Head Start in the deployment of Microsoft's next generation Remote Operations Management software. We will be deploying the final product release of the product for this program, which will not be generally available until fall 2007.
Have TAP Agreement, Software License Terms, and Program Description signed.
Regularly scheduled conference calls with a member of the Remote Operations Manager marketing team and other participating customers.
Provide resources for the duration of the program
Access to connect.microsoft.com for information access and downloads.
Upgrade to Remote Operations Manager RTM within 5 days of program acceptance.
RDP Program Participants will have two levels of support available.
Partner Advisory Services (PAS). Participants are incented to subscribe to this level of service where they will have access to a single point of contact for all incidents experienced in the use of the software and its implementation. Immediate telephone access is available to these subscribers where PAS will provide direct advisory services or escalate product problems to the appropriate Microsoft support team.
Standard Product Support. All participants will have the ability log product issues through an established process and receive support from the appropriate product team.
Must participate in marketing and public relations activities which may include but shall not necessarily be limited to Press Briefings, Analyst Briefings, Customer Testimonials, Events, Case Studies, Videos, Press Releases, White Papers and/or Advertisements.
For those who opt to sign a Partner Advisory Services agreement we will provide 60 hours of Partner Advisory Services for the price of a 40 hour package, delivery beginning at package purchase and lasting an extra 90 days beyond the traditional 1 year expiration. Partner Advisory Services offer consultative guidance, design reviews, and best practice recommendations for products including Operations Manager, System Center Essentials, Exchange, SharePoint, Active Directory, Security, and Dynamics CRM. For more information on Partner Advisory Services, see the following link: https://partner.microsoft.com/us/40029756
PAS subscribers must sign Microsoft's Partner Advisory Services agreement.
Participants will receive one copy of System Center Essentials Evaluation Edition to be used for the duration of the program. This is to be installed on the participating end customer site.
Service Providers must have at least one customer and Master Hosters must have a downstream Service Provider that has at least one customer.
Partner finder referrals
Copy of Microsoft Management Summit DVD containing presentation and technical materials from the April 2007 event.
To join the System Center Remote Operations Manager RDP
Click on the following link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=3WJo383eibM0iYNbAv5VKA_3d_3d to fill out the Nomination Survey. Qualified applicants will be contacted by a program representative with further instructions. If you have any questions regarding this survey or the RDP, please use the Contact Me link in my blog and I'll forward you to the right person.
I know... everyone else has already covered this...
These two posters, originally published in the July 2007 issue of TechNet Magazine, provide a strong visual tool to aide in the understanding of various features and components of Windows Server 2008. One poster focuses exclusively on powerful new Active Directory technologies, while the other provides a technical look at a variety of new features available in Windows Server 2008 (such as Server Core, Network Access Protection, and more).
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c2b9e44e-0bbd-47cb-bc09-b3d48be7f867&DisplayLang=en
If you have a CAD department at your company... sweet talk someone into letting you print these out on the plotter ;) I am attaching screenshots (that do not begin to do the posters justice). they have a TON of detail...
Nearly 10 years ago, I went to Marine Corps Boot Camp at MCRD San Diego. Those were good times...
A few weeks ago, I went back to Boot Camp, this time loading up Windows Vista on my new MacBook Pro. The process by-and-large is quite simple, and is documented in many places on the intarwebs.
I did run into two interesting problems, and thought I would share them with you.
1st... The oldest Windows OS that you can install on Boot Camp is Windows XP SP2. Soon after Boot Camp was released a year ago, I tried loading up Windows XP RTM (and later SP1) on my wife's MacBook (ignoring the "unsupported" notices throughout the documentation). I figured that once I hit the desktop, I could update to SP2, and all would be fine in the land of Sean. I was wrong. I can tell you with MUCH certainty that Windows XP RTM and SP1 DO NOT WORK with Boot Camp. I had blue screens, hangs, lockups... It just doesn't work. Once I tried a slipstreamed XP SP2 CD, everything worked flawlessly.
The easiest way I have found to create an installation CD for Windows with SP2 is via NLite. You can even make a CD that integrates your product key, hotfixes, and the works. (NOT a Microsoft utility BTW, so use common sense, your mileage may vary... it may eat all the cookies in your house, kick your dog, or erase your term paper on the last day of school for all I know). It worked fine for me :)
But... back to my new computer and Windows Vista.
When I went to partition my hard drive to add an NTFS partition (using the Boot Camp Assistant), I got a strange error message:
The disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved.
Back up the disk and use Disk Utility to format it as a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume. Restore your information to the disk and try using Boot Camp Assistant again.
?!?!?! I tried rebooting and re-running the Boot Camp Assistant, but ran into the same problem. At this point, the tool is attempting to move all my files to the beginning of my disk so that it can create the new Windows partition. For some reason, some files could not be moved. Apple could theoretically allow me to create a bootable DVD that could do the file move(s) while booting to external media. Unfortunately, rebooting did not solve the problem, and Boot Camp is not currently integrated into Apple's Disk Utility on the installation media.
I was not about to do a backup of my hard-drive and re-install OS X, so I went searching for the solution. Found it here. It turns out that if you have some large files on your hard drive (I had several multi-gigabyte movie files and some DV video of the kiddoes), Boot Camp will time out (then error out) while moving the files.
How best to find these ginormous files? (Hey... it's officially a word in the dictionary ;) On the Windows side, WinDirStat is a great (free) utility that shows you graphically what is on your hard drive. It works really well for finding the large files. There is a Mac version of this utility (Disk Inventory X), and I was able to quickly find those large files and move them.
Move them where? Windows Home Server works GREAT. OS X can connect to the shares on WHS with NO tweaks needed at all. I'll cover the ins-and outs in an upcoming post.
Once I moved the large files off my laptop hard drive (probably not the best place to keep them in the first place), the Boot Camp assistant was able to successfully repartition my hard drive, and Vista installed like a charm. The Windows key maps to the Apple/Command key, performance is snappy, and I am able to use the best applications on both platforms (iLife on OS X, and Office 2007 & Windows Live Writer on Windows Vista).
In my next post, I'll cover my Boot Camp experience on my MacBook Pro. But in order to do so, I wanted to take some screenshots. Unfortunately, the MacBook Pro does not have a Print Screen button on the keyboard, which makes it difficult to take a screenshot.
There are a couple of workarounds...
In Vista, you can use Start --> All Programs --> Accessories --> Snipping Tool.
This works just fine. You can choose from Free-form snip, Rectangular snip, Window snip, and Full-screen snip. The tool defaults to Rectangular snip, so hit the drop-down next to "new" to choose your option.
You will want to go into the Snipping Tool Options and deselect "Show selection ink after snips are captured", otherwise your resulting screenshot will have an annoying red border around it.
From Ian's Blog, you can do the following:
Under the Start menu, select All Programs, then Accessories, then Accessibility (Ease of Access in Vista - ED), and then On-Screen Keyboard. When you do this the Windows XP on-screen keyboard will appear on your screen. This on-screen utility includes the PrintScreen button (labelled psc in the same position as where the F13 key should be located. That’s it. If you want to take a screen shot of only the active window (using the Alt+psc command), make sure that the on-screen keyboard isn’t in the area of the active window, otherwise it will be included in the screen shot.
Under the Start menu, select All Programs, then Accessories, then Accessibility (Ease of Access in Vista - ED), and then On-Screen Keyboard. When you do this the Windows XP on-screen keyboard will appear on your screen. This on-screen utility includes the PrintScreen button (labelled psc in the same position as where the F13 key should be located. That’s it.
If you want to take a screen shot of only the active window (using the Alt+psc command), make sure that the on-screen keyboard isn’t in the area of the active window, otherwise it will be included in the screen shot.
Fairly cumbersome, but it works... Make sure the keyboard is not covering the area you are trying to screenshot (as you can see above)
As of Boot Camp 1.3, however, there is a simpler way:
Fn + F11 now maps to print screen, and you can print only the active window with Option + Fn + F11.
If you are planning on running Windows Vista on a MacBook Pro... I just picked one of the new ones up, and Vista is VERY snappy on it...
Windows Experience for the MBP with the following hardware:
The bottlenecks are actually the memory (while the Santa Rosa chipset supports an 800MHz Front Side Bus, Apple is just using 667MHz DDR2 memory), and the hard drive (I didn't spring for the 7200RPM drive). Other than that, this is a FAAAAST machine :)
There is nothing like coming in in the morning, checking the news, and finding out that your home VOIP Telephone provider went out of business with NO NOTICE AT ALL.
Grrrrr.
I signed up for SunRocket last April, at the killer price of $199 for 2 years (a little over $8/month). The service has worked great over that time, and I convinced most of my family members and my co-worker to sign up. The phone has been acting a bit finicky over the last few days, and then I come in to see CNN reporting:
SunRocket appears to shut Net phones
No. 2 supplier of Internet phone services said to close its business without providing advance notice to its 200,000-plus customers.
Also covered on Gigaom, NY Times, and on this former employee's blog.
With Vonage being sued by Verizon, I don't want to get involved with another mess, so I called up Comcast and added phone service to my existing Internet and TV service. It will end up costing me $2 more a month, and will work with the actual phone jacks in my house. I was fortunately able to get an appointment for (free) installation on Thursday morning, and I would have to imagine that there will be a deluge of such requests as more and more people find out that their service provider went out of business WITH NO WARNING.
I'll leave you with the message I received when calling SunRocket up this morning...
“We are no longer taking customer support or sales calls. Goodbye.”
Parental Controls on Windows Vista are a great way to take charge of how your kiddoes use the computer. You can restrict time limitations, the ratings of games they are allowed to play, block or allow specific programs, block or allow specific websites, and get activity reports on what they have been up to. While it might be nice to watch over their shoulder at all times, it is nice to allow Vista to help enforce some of the rules you have laid out. There is a great write-up on the capabilities at the UAC Blog.
You may have noticed, however, that Parental Controls might be missing from the Control Panel where it lives:
Windows Vista Parental Controls are a consumer-oriented technology, so if you are running Windows Vista Enterprise or Business, this is expected behavior. If you are using Windows Vista Ultimate, however, you will also encounter this behavior if your computer is joined to a domain.
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms711294.aspx
Windows Vista Parental Controls is a Consumer-Only Technology
Windows Vista Parental Controls are not intended to be used with domain accounts. As a consumer technology, Parental Controls is not deployed in business SKUs of Windows Vista. If a machine is joined to a domain, the Family Safety user interface links will be suppressed.
A mechanism will be provided to expose the functionality for the domain-joined case, but only non-domain user accounts may be configured with Parental Controls.
To enable Parental Controls on a domain-joined Windows Vista Ultimate installation:
Start --> gpedit.msc
Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Parental Controls
“Make Parental Controls control panel visible on a Domain”