Tuesday, January 06, 2009

Where's Ollie?

OK, this is not an optical illusion, this is real. See if you can pick which one is Ollie and which is Fuzzy (a hint - they are not always on the same side). :)



Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Some People Truly Are Sad!

In an effort to show how shortsighted and closed-minded some people can be, have a read of this blog entry. The Helios project aims to bring computers to disadvantaged kids and uses the Linux OS to make their task a little easier.

It appears that Karen Unnamed needs to pull her head out of the back of her throat (it seems to be rather firmly implanted up her own arse), wake up and smell the roses. Microsoft is *one* player in this game - Apple's OS-X is another, as is Linux/BSD and soon we'll have Google Android.

Monopolies are only *ever* good for the monopoly, not the people. I'm not saying that we need to level the playing field artificially, but people need to realise that there are multiple players in this game!

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Apple MacBook Wheel

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/apple_introduces_revolutionary

"I'll buy almost anything if it's shiny and made by Apple." Brilliant.

This didn't cost US$30 million to produce, get canned halfway through the series, use a has-been comedian who was paid US$10m for doing nothing except help Bill Gates give a great example of how out of touch Microsoft is with the man in the street, and manages to show the Church of Apple for what it really is. :)

This is comedy gold! :)

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Sunday, January 04, 2009

Now, That Is A Party

How did we miss this announcement? :)

OK, now taking things seriously, we need a Party in Australia who can use reality and common sense to look at issues for what they are. We don't need an Internet filter that's forced on us like the filter forced by the Communist Government in China on its citizens - all this will do is limit things that a Government cronie committee wants banned (and not have to release the list nor the reasoning behind their decisions) and increase the cost of providing Internet connectivity to Australians, not to mention reducing our own freedom of choice and ability to teach our children the morals we wish them to take to heart and live by.

Can you imagine surfing the Internet and finding a Child Porn site that's open for all and sundry? Nope, nor can I. That's because they don't exist. The filth and scum who deal in this disgusting material know they are doing something morally and legally corrupt, so they hide behind closed doors to ensure people don't find out what they are doing. They make it hard for the police to infiltrate their society, so how can a member of the general population stumble across this kind of filth - they can't. These sites are carefully hidden away and known to the sick members of that sick society.

Will the Internet Filter make the Internet "safer"? No. Will it make it a nicer place for our kids? No. Should the Government be making moral decisions like this and changing them into a legally enforceable policy that's made, itself, behind closed doors with no-one to answer to? No. Should we have the right to choose whether we wish to filter the Internet for our own usage and that of our kids? Yes.

So, when a Party like this comes along that actually seems to have a clue, well, maybe we need to support them - or at least honestly investigate what they are actually standing up for and see if this is the sort of thing we need to encourage. We *know* that the main Parties are not really doing much in the general best interest of Australians - what infrastructure does Australia own now - no ports, no airports, no electricity, no telecommunications, and the list goes on. How many other stupid things are we allowing to happen by voting with the major Parties? Should we be looking at a rational, sensible minority Party that can hold the Government accountable?

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

This Hash Is Stale

The MD5 algorithm has been considered cryptographically weak since around 1996. There were also known collisions (where two different "initialization vectors" - such as X.509 certificates - result in the same hash) in 1993, which shows that the MD5 algorithm had issues even back then. Another public announcement in October, 2006 mentioned that they made a Certificate/CA pair that collided (the pair was made in March 2005). The fact that it is now becoming "news" is a bit of an issue. Sort of like Microsoft taking over 7 years to release a Critical patch (like they did recently - see http://hiltont.blogspot.com/2008/11/pretty-sure-this-holds-record.html).

Vlastimil Klima, on 18 March, 2006, even published an algorithm (based on his previous efforts) that allowed a collision between two different X.509 Certificates to be found in about a minute on a single notebook. A month later he revised the paper with new algorithms that reduces this minute to 31 seconds. On a 3.2 GHz Pentium4 based computer, the average time is only 17 seconds. This algorithm is far from being hard to crack!

Out of interest, Firefox users have the ability, through the use of http://www.codefromthe70s.org/sslblacklist.aspx, to be able to see if a certificate chain is still using MD5, therefore possibly not to be trusted. IE users are, right now, need to view the Details tab of the Certificate to see the signing and hashing algorithms used.

Verisign, probably the (or one of the) world's largest certificate issuers, has finally, because of this recent exploit, stopped issuing MD5 certificates. That's appalling - using a known weak security algorithm in a certificate when you're a big "security" company like this.

Lax security companies concern me greatly - they sell security, but don't practice it. :(

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Sunday, December 28, 2008

VMWare Discount

Friends and colleagues,

In the spirit of the holidays, the VMware online store and hosted desktop team (Fusion and Workstation) are running a Friends and Family holiday promotion, making VMware Fusion and VMware Workstation (both Linux and Windows-based) available for 50% off list price in the VMware online store (see attached flyer).

Please spread the word about this limited time offer to your friends, family and followers!

What youre buying: The promotion is for 50% off of standard, current VMware Fusion and VMware Workstation products, available in the online store. The product is download-only (we dont sell boxes through the VMware store).

How to redeem:

At the VMware store, start at: http://www.vmware.com/vmwarestore/buyfusion.html and add VMware Fusion to the shopping cart. Once you reach the shopping cart, enter the coupon code VMWHAPPYHOLIDAYS in the Promo Code section in the shopping cart screen, and click Apply. The discount will then be reflected in the price and you can checkout. There is a limit to 3 licenses at this rate per customer.

How long: This promotion will be good through 11:59PM PT on 1/15/09.

(Thanks to Chris Knight for the heads up on this one.)

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Vodafone Mobile Connect replacement

With the continual issues that the rather poorly written Vodafoner Mobile Connect software seems to suffer from (and therefore we as users of Vodafone also suffer from), I decided I'd had enough and it was time to look around. MWConn was I looked at (after David Houston let me know he was running the Mobilink software up in Irelend on his Toshiba M700 tablet PC).

MWConn is a nice, little freeware app that, well, just works. Little as in about 0.25 MB and tiny system resource consumption. Nice as in it doesn't break networking like the VMC client does. Freeware as in freeware.

As I already had the E220 Huawei drivers loaded, I just installed MWConn, set the APN to "vfinternet.au" saved the config and ran the UMTSGPRS.exe file that found my USB device, connected to Vodafone and worked.

Markus B. Weber, the author, asks for a donation if you like this app. Well, I'll play a little more and if it is stable and functional, then I'll definitely donate.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Is Steve Ballmer a Complete Idiot?

I've said before that Microsoft, under Steve Ballmer's leadership, appears like a rudderless ship on a stormy ocean. They are directionless - at least to those of us not being paid by Microsoft.

Now, to add to this the complete clusterfeck that is "Microsoft wants Yahoo, no they don't, yes they do, no they don't". Directionless and without real leadership.

And now, Steve Ballmer in an interview with the WSJ, is still leaving the Yahoo acquisition - one of the worst marketing disasters at Microsoft (aside from Vista, that is) - on the table. Has this guy totally lost the plot?

OK, as I've said before, the stupidest thing from a public perception point that Microsoft has done in a while (since, say, November/December 2006) has been to try and buy Yahoo. No, actually the second stupidest thing. The stupidest thing was half-heartedly trying to buy Yahoo. The stupidest thing that the Board at Yahoo has done, probably in their entire existence, was to reject the offer.

Now it appears as though Ballmer hasn't learned any lesson from this - he's said he wants Yahoo and Yahoo he will have, though he may not win this in the end. He's like a dog with a bone - don't try to take it off him as he'll growl and snap at you, but if you're careful, you may get that bone from the dog. Getting this stupid idea from Ballmer and squashing it is what the Board at Microsoft needs to do - they can ill afford more marketing disasters right now. (As an aside, why do you think they are renaming "Windows Vista R2" as "Windows 7"?)

Maybe squashing the cause of these bad ideas is a better thing - that way no more will take their place.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Saturday, December 20, 2008

WM 6.1 - Queensland Does Not Have DST

I’ve finally worked out how to fix this stupidity. The issue is that MS has decided that, unlike our State Government, they’d support DST in Queensland on Windows Mobile 6.1 devices. That’s what you get with a benevolent dictator – shit just gets done. :)

1. Go to http://www.phm.lu/Products/PocketPC/RegEdit/ and download the PHM Regedit installer. Install it onto your PC. Now, as it won’t push to the PDA, copy the “regedit.Mrln_ARM.CAB” file from the installed folder to another location and uninstall PHM Regedit from your PC. Now copy the .cab file to the PDA and run it.

2. If you want or need to geek out, here's some geeky information. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms145276(SQL.90).aspx lists the Microsoft Timezone codes. Since Brisbane is E. Australia Time, the timezone ID is 260 and therefore the TZI data that corresponds with this is a8 fd ff ff 00 00 00 00 c4 ff ff ff 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00. You’d have been able to guess that data, I’m sure! You can also confirm this data from your Windows XP or Vista desktop by looking at HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Time Zones.

3. Now, go to the PDA and run PHM RegEdit. Go to HKLM,SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Timezones\so we can edit the timezone on the PDA.

4. Create a new key using the name “260” and then create a Binary value under this called TZI and insert the data above (including the spaces) into this value.

5. Save this value and then just to make sure, edit the value and check this is correct. As I mentioned, you need the spaces.

6. Quit PHM RegEdit as we’re now done with it.

7. On your PDA, open up Settings => Clock & Alarms and Change your timezone to any other timezone that is NOT Brisbane. I suggest Alaska as Sarah Palin needs all the support she can get right now. Whilst we’re there we can give Ted Stevens a good clip over the ear, too!

8. Reset your phone, then change your timezone back to Brisbane. Now your DST settings should be the same as those on your computer(s) (ie, non-existent).

This information was gleaned from http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=2872627 after a post to the SMB IT Pro - Brisbane group list by Ben Dampney of Digit IT.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Microsoft Internet Explorer Critical Update

Microsoft released a Security Update today, December 18th, to protect customers from a new Internet Explorer vulnerability. Microsoft advises users to enable automatic updates on their PC, or check online for the update. To keep up to date with the latest news from Microsoft on this issue, please refer to the Microsoft Security Response Centre blog.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

SBSC PAL December 2008

The Silly Season is upon us once again, so don’t expect this to be too serious. Besides, I’ve had enough “serious” lately that I am due some “silly”. :)

First up, D-Link is bringing their VoiceCenter product (built on Microsoft Response Point) into Australia as of early next year. You will need to complete the D-Link training before you can resell this specialist product, which consists of a course (the cost of which includes a VoiceCenter system) that will be run at locations around Australia from February, 2008. D-Link has chosen Ingram Micro as their distribution partner. Microsoft Response Point is an IP-based phone system designed for SMBs. It features many of the features of bigger phone systems at a decent price point and features voice recognition technology to make driving the phone system a lot easier. I’ve heard that a 2009 D-Link and Robbie roadshow is on the cards – that should be worth looking forward to.

If anyone is wondering what to put on their Xmas list, then have a look at this personal jet aircraft. Have a look at Yves’ site for some more on this. Google “FusionMan” for some more interesting stuff and there’s also a fair bit more on YouTube.

Are you going to be doing the same things in 2009 as you did in 2008, but expecting different results? That’s the first sign of business insanity. Although we’re quite busy right now, we are taking some time off over the holiday break to think about where we can improve next year. We’ve already got some ideas and some plans on how we can deliver better service to our clients but are going to be thinking about some more. Are you taking time off from working at your business to work on your business and thinking about how you can deliver better service to your clients? In these tough times, we need to ensure we treat our clients right, target our products and services right and therefore deliver more than our clients expect. Delivering what they expect is what a lot of our competitors can do. Is setting our sights on the soaring heights of mediocrity what we really want to aim for? The whole idea of the SBSC program is to differentiate ourselves from the “crowd” and show that we have the product knowledge, training, education and the experience to deliver the right solution to our clients.

While you’re taking this time to look at your business, take some time to look at your family and those dear to you. Do you really know them well enough? Do you spend enough time with them? Do you spend so much time working to afford to keep them that you are thinking about selling them off and relaxing a little? :) Oops, I meant spending so much time working that you don’t get enough time for the things that really matter? We all need to remember that the important things in life aren’t found on a laptop screen, but on the faces of our loved ones.

And while we’re thinking about family, how about suggesting that if they really love you, they’ll talk to Yves and start negotiations on getting you your own jet wing!

So, with a new year ahead and a swag of new products available, let’s all look at ways we can deliver these products to our clients to help them run their businesses better and enable them to also spend time doing the things that really matter. If we do this right, they’ll help us do the things we really want to do.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Thursday, December 11, 2008

ANZ-ResponsePoint Yahoo Group Now Established

With the imminent release of D-Link's VoiceCenter product in Australia and New Zealand, I've established the ANZ-ResponsePoint Yahoo! Group for community support and discussion.

Membership to this list is moderated to keep spammers out, posting is unmoderated.

The list is for discussions of and around Microsoft ResponsePoint solutions. Comparisons to other products and discussion of competing solutions is welcome as we can all learn a lot from those around us who have experience with other products.

Feel free to join this list if you want to discuss Microsoft ResponsePoint solutions as applicable to Australian and New Zealand solutions.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

In The Cloud Office Applications

I don't know how many people have seen the Zoho suite of cloud-based office applications, but they have quite a few online and they offer free versions for home and evaluation usage.

Adding the Zoho suite to Google Apps and the planned Yahoo! offering, there seems to be an increasing number of cloud-based offerings available to choose from.

Competition is always good for the consumer.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Sunday, December 07, 2008

Serious Boy Toy

Now, this is a must have boy toy: http://www.flixxy.com/jet-man.htm

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Untangle 6.0 Released

Untangle, the rather nice Linux-based firewall with Active Directory integration that will be able to fit the spot that's been vacated by ISA (now that it has been dropped from SBS 2008) has been updated to version 6.0 which brings not only a new interface written in HTML 2.0 (replacing the old Java-based interface) and also added the eSoft Web Filter to the subscription options.

The Untangle Gateway Platform is the perfect fit for managed service providers, and the company is excited to announce the availability of Untangle 6.0 (standalone) for download at www.untangle.com/download. This release includes new applications and a number of enhancements that will make Untangle easier to sell and manage.

The Windows version based on Re-Router technology is still at version 5.4.2 and will be upgraded to 6.0 in the near future.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie