Google To Acquire Motorola Mobility

In some very interesting news (after all, as an Amiga fan, I am a fan of the Motorola 68000 series of CPUs, as well as some of their other offerings), Google has announced its intention to acquire Motorola Mobility for US$12.5 billion.

In Feb, 2010, Motorola announced its intention to split the company into Motorola Mobility - mobile devices and home businesses, and Motorola Solutions - business and mission critical communications products.  On Jan 4th, 2011 this split was finalised.


Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

This Week In Social Media

It has been a bad week for Social Media and Privacy.  First, LinkedIn decided that they'd emulate Facebook's utter disregard for their members' privacy by enabling anyone you're associated with to use your images and details in their advertising.

To disable this reduction in your privacy and copyright, in LinkedIn, click on your name and go to Settings, then click on the Account option on the left and then Manage Social Advertising.  Uncheck the "LinkedIn may use my name, photo in social advertising" box that LinkeIn has checked for you by default when they introduced this feature.

Now, as if Facebook could allow some other social media site to invade your privacy without having an invasion of their own!  So, Facebook decided to one-up LinkedIn and make available to others the phone numbers of all of your friends, whether they are on Facebook or not.  I don't recall them asking me if this was what I wanted...

To disable this invasion of your friends and colleagues privacy, you need to click on Account, Edit Friends, then Contacts over on the left.  Now, click on the "this page" link over on the right and click the "Remove" button.  Also, on your iPhone, in Facebook's main menu, click the Friends icon, then click the Sync icon (arrow in a box) and then "Sync Contacts".  From here you can set syncing to on or off and can also remove any synced data.

Now, I have no issue with people HAVING the choice as to whether they use these features or not, however I DO have an issue with these privacy invading features being introduced and enabled by default, especially when their introduction isn't made well known to all their members.


Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Cloud Down Due To Lightning

Ironic as it may seem, a good portion of Microsoft and Amazon's cloud offerings available from Dublin, Ireland were taken offline recently due to a lightning strike.

Have a read of this article for more info.

Now, if you had data on these servers, your business would be offline until they got it restored.  Was this your office, we could restore a backup onto a temporary server in around an hour or two and have you up and running from an alternate location.

So, it's your call - cloud services that you have no control over or locally hosted servers that we can restore from backups relatively easily?

**Update** According to a TechEye article, lightning didn't take out the transformer in question, however there is currently no explanation as to why the transformer caused the issues.  Amazon was out for less than a second whilst Microsoft was out for a number of hours.  (Thanks to Robert Crane for bringing this additional article to my attention.)

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

It Seems The Jews Hate Paedophile Laws, Too

Along with the Catholic Church and Ratzinger's protection of the paedopholes instead of the children, it seems that the Jewish faith has also just taken a stance on the wrong side of morality over this issue.

Rabbi Yosef Feldman seems to have told the Australian Jewish News that he seens no reason that when something as serious as child molestation is reported, it is necessary for their church to take this to the "secular authorities" (otherwise known as the Law - the same Law for everyone in this country, that is).  Have a read of The Age for more on this vile story.

Now, before anyone gets all hot and bothered that I'm being anti-semitic, realise that this is your children these guys don't want to protect.  The same as Ratzinger's doing.  And I'd be equally as outraged if I found out any secular organization was promoting the rights of the paedophole over the rights of the child.


Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Charlie 1 - Fred 0

If you've not read this, then you simply should.


Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Thoughts on the Upcoming 2012 Atheist Conference

There's a lot we have in common, and likely a lot we don't have in common, which should make the conference quite interesting.


Religion is probably the largest purveyor of hatred and fear mongering that man has invented to date, and what's worse is that it parades this as a message of love. It is disgusting. One good thing about being an Atheist is that I am not being taught that people who eat pigs, or who wear garments made of two different materials, or eat shellfish, or don't believe in my particular imaginary friend, or have sex with someone in a manner in which my particular friend doesn't like, or who draws an image of an imaginary friend, or drinks tea or coffee, any other arbitrary thing is going to hell and if I can't convince them that my imaginary friend knows best, I may as well kill them now, in love.

Atheism has no need to hate anyone as there simply are no imaginary friends, no mythical sky fairies, no other metaphysical planes of existence. We have no need to make up planes of existence that we then claim are too "spiritual" for us to comprehend so we can find a place for our imaginary friend (or friends) to live.

Atheists can look at the real world in which we live, our vision not tainted by a belief in one particular myth or other, and appreciate the beauty in our lives, our planet, our universe for what it is. We have an opportunity to make positive changes without our particular mythical-based lessons in who to abhor tainting the reality in which we all live.

I'm looking forward to the 2012 Atheist Conference in Melbourne next April - sure there will be some sessions on looking at various religions and the different and conflicting myths they believe in, but I am looking forward most to learning about others experiences in the real world in which we live and how they are making changes for the better in it so we can learn more how we can all make real changes to give us all a better future.
Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

End of an Era

Whilst it is most definitely true that I'm sad to see the Shuttle program end - I've been an avid fan and follower, watching the majority of launches, landings, dockings, undockings, deployments, EVAs and other points of interest since STS-1 launched on 12 April, 1981 with Shuttle Columbia and its 2 man crew (Commander John W Young and Pilot Robert L Crippen) - this is the end of a much more significant era.

When the Mercury program ended in 1963, there was already the Gemini program snapping at its heels, which then started in 1965 and ended in 1966.  Gemini was followed by the Apollo program in 1967 which continued through until 1972 and delivered 12 men onto the moon - the only time in our history that we've set foot on another celestial body, which was and still is quite an achievement.  The final 3 Apollo missions (18 through 20) were cancelled to funnel money into the upcoming Shuttle program that first launched in 1981 and ended just a few minutes ago, at 05:57:54 AM US EDT on 21 July, 2011.

The Shuttle program was supposed to be followed by the Constellation Program, however President Obama announced on 1 Feb, 2010 that he was canning it, which became all but official on 11 October, 2010.  His new Space Program has relatively vague guidelines of a heavy-lift launch vehicle being designed by 2015 and construction to commence some time after this as well as a US-crewed orbital Mars mission by the mid 2030s - with no other definite goals and ideas.  Basically, in my opinion, Obama just canned the Human Space Flight Programs of NASA and the US for the foreseeable future.

So, this is not really simply the end of an era for the Shuttle Program, it is the end of an era for US Human Space Flight and exploration, and this is truly what's sad about today.  Yesterday we celebrated the anniversary of the first moon landing in 1969 and today NASA's human space flight is over.  At least for my lifetime.  And that's really, really disappointing.

The money that's spent on wars and military conflicts and the death and destruction of humanity far exceeds that spent on human exploration.  I find that this is a sad comment on humanity.  Humankind has 2 main characteristics - the need and will to explore and the need and will to kill each other - I still hold hope for our future, that we will eventually realise that we need to all work together to make this planet a better (and nicer) place to live and that we *will* need to find another place to spread our wings to.  I still hold hope that we will do this before we wipe ourselves out.

The end of the US-based Human Space Flight most certainly doesn't spell the end of Human Space Flight - but it sure opens a wide gap between the Shuttle program and the next stepping stone.  I just hope someone can step up to make that leap and continue our exploration of the universe and our expansion of human knowledge.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Destroyed

I had to ensure a client's hard drive data was unrecoverable - I think I succeeded, no?

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Deals Direct Scam

Wow - I didn't realise that Deals Direct would be willing to push scams on their site, such as the GO4GREEN Energy Smart Plug-In Unit.  This unit is a scam - it will not improve your home's energy consumption.  Information on this scam can be found here.


Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Free Speech Speech

Admittedly I missed the first part of this (the initial comment and backlash that Johann Hari started), but after having had it brought to my attention, and seeing this link posted by @StephenFry, I have to say that I admire the guy for sticking to his beliefs in Free Speech - and that he's no doubt a better and stronger person for his recent experience.

This is an impressive speech promoting Free Speech.  Props to you @JohannHari


Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Microsoft Office 2010 SP1 Is Out

If you've been wanting to do some testing again, then you're in luck - Microsoft has just released Office 2010 SP1 for download.  http://www.techspot.com/news/44454-microsoft-releases-office-2010-sp1.html gives some more information and direct download links are below:

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=26622 (x86)

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=26617 (x64)

Thanks to Peter Hale for giving me the heads up on this.


Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

BPOS Down Again?

OK, so while we're talking about Cloud services with their security and stability issues, Microsoft looks like they wanted to get a mention again, so here we go! BPOS was down again earlier this week - their North American offering was down yesterday (Wednesday) for 3 hours from 11:00AM US Eastern Time - right in the middle of the work day.

The Cloud has promise, sure, but if you can't affort outages where you have no real control over the recovery, sometimes keeping your infrastructure in-house makes a lot more sense.  Microsoft seems to have some way to go before they put these network infrastructure issues behind them and can offer a truly redundant cloud solution.


Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Online Storage, Syncing & Backup

Up until recently, there was an application that I used and recommended called Dropbox that was used for online storage - you could run the app on multiple computers, your iPhone, iPad, Android or even Blackberry device and sync the data. OK, on mobility devices you won't get the whole size syncing, but you can choose a file and access it once it downloads (sane usage of expensive 3G/HSPA bandwidth).

Then Dropbox went and changed its T&Cs to let the US Government "hands on" department have access to my data if and when they chose. OK, as I don't store anything illegal nor compromising up there, I didn't care. Then they changed things so that any of their employees could access my data, which isn't good. And then, to top things off, they went and released an update that results in open slather access by anyone to anyone's data and that was the straw that broke this camel's back.

Sure, this latest issue was a poor coding, poor internal procedures, poor quality control issue, but it was also a massive security issue following on after Sony, Acer, Sega, Nintendo and other high profile companies had their confidential customer data breached.  This chasm has since been closed, however I don't like how easy it was for their internal checks and balances to be utterly defeated by the poor coding skills of one programmer.

Dropbox should have a) known and b) done better.

So, as the major failure of Dropbox is in the security (sic) of your data being applied at their server end, not at your client end, I've looked around for an alternative to Dropbox where I have some control over the security - SpiderOak seems to offer this.

SpiderOak lets you choose whether you want to back data up to the cloud using locally-applied encryption or whether you want to sync a folder on multiple machines that you've signed into using SpiderOak, again using locally-applied encryption - at no point is unencrypted data being stored on the SpiderOak servers.  You can also create a "ShareRoom" which allows you to share files with people who you choose, using a "RoomKey" password.

All up, this operates similarly to Dropbox and utilizes real security.  Dropbox has dropped the ball in a big way.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

How Nuts Is The Jewish Faith

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-13819764


Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Outlook: "The name of the security certificate is invalid or does not match the name of the site"

When an SBS 2008 or SBS 2008 R2 (aka SBS 2011) site is configured, sometimes you will find the local (internal) users who use Outlook 2007 or Outlook 2010 (and possibly/probably also Outlook 2003) will receive an error message when first opening Outlook that will report:

Tick - The security certificate is from a trusted certifying authority.
Tick - The security certificate date is valid.
Cross - The name on the security certificate is invalid or does not match the name of the site.

If you press "Proceed", everything runs as normal.  This is an annoying message that is caused by some improperly configured Exchange settings (normally caused by initially using a self-signed cert, then later replacing it with a purchased one), all of which are easily rectified after following KB940726, however below I've included the modified instructions for this to apply to an SBS installation.

In the following instructions, "CAS_Server_Name" should be replaced with your internal SBS name, such as "SBS2008" and "office.example.com" should be replaced with the URL you use to gain access to the SBS from the Internet. Also, all lines beginning with [PS] are single lines - everything in bold is the one command and there are no spaces between the minus signs (-) and the property names immediately after them.

1. Start the Exchange Management Shell.
2. To check the current settings of the ClientAccessServer property, enter the following command:
   [PS] Get-ClientAccessServer | FL
   If AutoDiscoverServiceInternalUri is not set to your external Uri (such as https://office.example.com/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml), then
   
   1. Modify the Autodiscover URL in the Service Connection Point. The Service Connection Point is stored in the Active Directory directory service. To modify this URL, enter the following command:
      [PS] Set-ClientAccessServer -Identity "CAS_Server_Name" -AutodiscoverServiceInternalUri https://office.example.com/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml
3. To check the current setting of the WebServicesVirtualDirectory property, enter the following command:
   [PS] Get-WebServicesVirtualDirectory
   If the InternalUrl of EWS (SBS Web Applications) is not set to your external Uri (such as https://office.example.com/ews/exchange.asmx), then
   1. Modify the InternalUrl attribute of the EWS. To do this, enter the following command:
      [PS] Set-WebServicesVirtualDirectory -Identity "CAS_Server_Name\EWS (SBS Web Applications)" -InternalUrl https://office.example.com/ews/exchange.asmx
4. To check the current setting of the OABVirtualDirectory property, enter the following command:
   [PS] Get-OABVirtualDirectory
   If the InternalUrl is not set to your external Uri (such as https://office.example.com/oab), then
   
   1. Modify the InternalUrl attribute for Web-based Offline Address Book distribution. To do this, enter the following command:
      [PS] Set-OABVirtualDirectory -Identity "CAS_Server_name\oab (SBS Web Applications)" -InternalUrl https://office.example.com/oab
5. To check the current setting of the UMVirtualDirectory property, enter the following command:
   [PS] Get-UMVirtualDirectory
   If the InternalUrl of UnifiedMessaging (SBS Web Applications) is not set to your external Uri (such as https://office.example.com/unifiedmessaging/service.asmx), then
   
   1. Modify the InternalUrl attribute of the UM Web service. To do this, enter the following command:
      [PS] Set-UMVirtualDirectory -Identity "CAS_Server_Name\unifiedmessaging (SBS Web Applications)" -InternalUrl https://office.example.com/unifiedmessaging/service.asmx
      Note This command is required only in an Exchange 2007 (SBS 2008) environment. This command no longer exists in an Exchange 2010 (SBS 2011) environment. Instead, the WebServices URL is used for this purpose.
6. Open IIS Manager, expand the local computer, and then in Application Pools, right-click MSExchangeAutodiscoverAppPool and click Recycle.

Next time anyone on the LAN opens Outlook and connects to your Exchange Server, the error message will not appear as we've configured the settings in Exchange Server correctly.

Update: Mark Wilton mentioned the following links to me also regarding this same issue:
A script to fix this issue from VirtualBarryMartin.me
Some PowerShell commands to fix the issue from Daniel Kenyon-Smith

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie