Posts by Paul S. Gazo

Sysadmin shock as Windows Server 2025 installs itself after update labeling error

Flawless code is hard. Humans are humans.

And that's why the Recall feature should never be permitted to exist.

Samsung releases 24Gb GDDR7 DRAM for testing in beefy AI systems

Mild OCD

After three decades in IT, seeing a memory module that isn't marketed in a power of two makes me a little uncomfortable.

Guys... could you just wait until you can pull off a 32G module please?

Veeam debuts its Proxmox backup tool – and reveals outfit using it to quit VMware

Re: Proxmox Backup Server...

With only having Proxmox's web page to go by...

VBR has robust immutable support and Proxmox' page doesn't say anything about that. Also, VBR handles multiple source environments including physical workloads in the same management system, so you can back up physical servers plus VMs (from multiple hypervisors if need be) into the same storage system. Those are two off-the-top-of-my-head thoughts, but I'm sure there are more. VBR is a very rich and mature product and almost anything you might ask for it has... as long as you can cope with it being a Windows product itself, so you need at least a Win10 box/VM to run it. Yes, that's right... you can run it on a Win10 desktop. Oh, and VBR can integrate with Veeam for Azure, so if you happen to VMs or Azure Files or Azure Managed SQL instances, VBR can talk to all that as well.

Microsoft decides it's a good time for bad UI to die

The could call it HKEY_CURRENT_USER, store it in NTUSER.DAT, and send it back to 1993, when it was invented.

Admittedly the issue is that there's so much GUID-specific stuff in there that importing it into a different user is problematic without third-party tools, but the concept has been around literally as long as the registry.

No, really, please ban Chinese DJI drones from America's skies, senators are urged

Re: Drone enthusiasts...

"The level of Gun ownership in Canada is also quite high..."

The devil is in the details. Guns in Canada are almost all hunting rifles and shotguns and the like. Private ownership of handguns and assault rifles is rare and mostly isolated to a} people who just like to practice marksmanship on the range as a hobby and b} nutjobs. Culturally we don't have a gun fetish. The weapons that exist aren't for protection from other apes. They're for warding off coyotes near the barn. City dwellers basically don't do guns, mostly.

A tale of 2 casino ransomware attacks: One paid out, one did not

In reality, there's almost no such thing as software that requires admin rights.

Oh, sure, there's hunk-of-crap software that puts some critical .INI file in c:\windows\system32 and there's plenty of trashware that expects to write to c:\progra~1\trashware because that's where it put its database. There's also more than enough badly-written code that wants to modify registry keys it put in HKLM when it should've been HKCU. Granted.

Spend a half-hour with something like Process Monitor and identify those oddball dependencies and grant the user(s) perms on those specific files and/or keys.

But wait... how about those pesky programs that just fire up a UAC prompt when you run them Just Because? Almost all of those you can make an application shim for that turns on the RunAsInvoker compatibility flag. Just because the horrible developer turned on the "you need admin rights" checkmark when compiling their code doesn't mean it's actually required. It very, very rarely is.

Learn these two things and earn your pay as an IT professional. In nearly three decades of doing corporate IT as an MSP before MSP was a thing, I've encountered maybe one program that couldn't be handled by scoped permissions.

It CAN'T be harder on Linux.

Thousands of Sophos firewalls still vulnerable out there to hijacking

Since this is making the rounds as if it's meaningful, I'll just repeat myself from somewhere else.

he devil's in the details.

XG 19.0.1 has a hotfix, which is applied automatically unless you deliberately disable that.

XG 19.0.0 has a hotfix, which is applied automatically unless you deliberately disable that.

The last five releases of 18.5 have a hotfix, which is applied automatically unless you deliberately disable that.

The last four releases of 18.0 have a hotfix, which is applied automatically unless you deliberately disable that.

The last six releases of 17.5 have a hotfix, which is applied automatically unless you deliberately disable that.

The last release of 17.0 has a hotfix, which is applied automatically unless you deliberately disable that.

17.5 has been EOL since November 2021, just to give an idea how available patches are.

But here's the kicker... the official, in-the-OS non-hotfix release? Was released in December and Sophos soft-releases firmware in stages. Only a small percentage of firewalls will see the 19.5 firmware as available right now. Most of the ones I manage haven't seen it. Yes, you can go out of your way to download the code form a portal and manually install it, but for most firewalls when you log on it doesn't tell you there's an update, and if you query for updates it - again - says there aren't any.

So to say 99% of eligible firewalls aren't running the fixed code is... deeply misleading. Almost all of them have hotfixed. And the non-hotfix patch requires hoops to be jumped through.

Yes, a proper admin should be aware that firmwares are available, but it's rarely good to be on the bleeding edge, and when you've got a hotfix... why rush to expose your customer to potential initial-release bugs?

This study and what it implies about Sophos or people who admin them are deeply pointless and misleading.

RAD Basic – the Visual Basic 7 that never was – releases third alpha

Re: A little bit confused...

Okay, so what I'm getting from that is that there IS a (significant) syntactical difference. That makes some more sense.

My use case (write a simple widget every few years) has me looking up syntax regardless, so I didn't see that change.

And - off-topic - PowerShell GUI. Man. I can do it, up to and including multi-threading but what an obtuse mess that is. I'd love a proper "Visual PowerShell" where the GUI code is just handled and the meat & potatoes is PowerShell. My needs are things like "make a convenient front-end for helpdesk techs for off-board ex-employees consistently." Just ask for a username, scan (Azure) AD, confirm it's the right user, ask for a manager, check licenses, check groups, record the data, extract files and e-mail history, shove that into a Sharepoint site, nuke the user, grant the manager perms... it's all of a hundred lines of real-world code, but speeding up the process by adding clickable lists of users so you can just search by first/last name... worth the results but takes way too much time to code in PowerShell. End of rant. <Grin>

Re: A little bit confused...

Thanks for trying, but that didn't help.

I mean, I remember the days of having to have the VB6 runtime installed to run its code. Today we need the .NET runtime. I understand these are completely different. But in terms of "I type BASIC code into an IDE, hit compile, and have an EXE", they're the same.

So my question remains... how are these meaningfully different from a "OMG, I totally can't use Visual Studio because X, Y, Z" standpoint? Still writing code for Win95?

A little bit confused...

I'm a sysadmin, not a developer, but I occasionally dabble in creating tools to make my life simpler. From VBScript to PowerShell to Kixtart... whatever gets the job done.

My confusion stems from that I know I've written code, recently, in Visual Studio, and it was in BASIC. So... um... what's the excitement here? As far as I can tell, Visual Basic isn't even remotely dead. What am I missing?

Windows 11 will roll out from October 5 as Microsoft hypes new hardware

Re: How do I opt users out of this "upgrade" ?

Nice anecdote. I've got one too.

All of the businesses I consult for run MS-something. From insurance brokerages to tool & mold shops to non-profits that teach... they've all got something that requires Windows. Sure, some of what they do has FOSS equivalents. But with my customer base there's always that one thing that interfaces with a milling machine, or tracks donations, or does EDI to the national secure network for their industry.

Can some industries do without Windows? Absolutely. Content-production being a huge category of them. Advertising firms, video production firms, billboard designers, music studios, newspapers. Sure. But the other guys? The smaller but more numerous guys? No. Because the software the auto-makers provide body-shop repair companies to look up panel parts and paint codes and industry-standard billing estimates... Windows first.

Understand... I absolutely do not guide my customers' purchases. I don't push Windows. They tell me what milling machine they just ordered from Germany and what the installer wants for a controller PC. They tell me what heating & cooling system they bought for their new gallery and what the manufacturer's software requires. They tell me what cargo truck scheduling and routing software their customers demand them to use. They tell me what the performance tracking software for the treadmills they bought for their gym uses for their patrons. Windows, Windows, and more Windows.

Sorry, but in the small & medium business segment there are plenty of markets that are mandatory Windows ones. The folks suggesting "just install Linux and LibreOffice" are missing the point that it's all the other stuff that integrates with Office that invalidates that idea.

Microsoft slips out Windows Server 2022 with extended support for 10 years

Re: Control Panel

Agreed.

One of my biggest gripes aside from the poor navigation is that Settings is a single-instanced app. The number of times I've deliberately left one Control Panel window open after making a temporary change in a second Control Panel window is uncountable. That workflow isn't possible in Settings. Go to your Network Settings, change something, navigate to Updates do something, navigate back to Network Settings and undo the change. Why are we forced to re-navigate? Because the UI designers have no experience actually working with the things they're designing.

Revealed: Why Windows Task Manager took a cuddlier approach to (process) death and destruction

Re: meh

The command you're looking for is TASKKILL, which is absolutely included with Windows.

Lego's Space Shuttle Discovery: No trouble with Hubble, but the stickers will drive a grown man to insanity

Yeah, that's (repeatedly) overstated. I mean, yeah, a 9-year-old might not have the patience but I got it done flawlessly without water, or tools, or even particular trouble. They were rigid enough that one end could be aligned at the back, then they could just be laid down.

That said, the rest of the article is pretty much spot-on. I've even ordered 3,000+ bricks to build a booster/tank set to go with it.

Microsoft lines its UserVoice forums up against the wall, readies firing squad of '1st party solutions'

I'm afraid not. Microsoft keeps putting crap in there, so you can't get it.

Have Apple users e-mailing your Windows users HEIC files? No worries, Windows 10 has a filter for that... only it's distributed via the Microsoft Store.

Want to deploy Windows PCs en-mass via new Azure inTune deployment? No worries. Windows 10 has an app (Windows Configuration Designer) to make a glorified XML file for you... only it's distributed via the Microsoft Store.

Calculator stopped working? No worries. Windows 10 will let you just download it from the Microsoft Store.

That's acceptable, I guess. When it works. But I seem to find about one in ten computers just don't work right. One of my two work computers just doesn't have Microsoft Store visible at all. No worries. There are PowerShell commands that will reinstall modern apps. Lots of them. Take your pick. I got bored before I found one that worked on my particular machine.

Remember when you could just download an EXE and it just worked? Yeah, Microsoft's not interested in that reliability anymore. The freaking Start Menu is a modern app that can be broken now, as opposed to just a few library functions Explorer.exe can call on demand.

So yeah, the MS Store still exists. Wish it didn't.

What happens when cancel culture meets Adolf Hitler pareidolia? Amazon decides it needs a new app icon

And they still don't do anything about the obvious...

That arrow has always resembled a cartoon/icon penis.

Microsoft's underwhelming, underpowered dual-screen Surface Duo phone arrives in the UK this month for £1,349

Re: How much whelm depends on the user.

Sorry for the delay in replying.

That's not my use case. I don't want to put the phone down. I don't want some other object I need to take out when I want to use it. With the Duo, I can just hold the phone the way I want to. When I'm at the grocery store and my wife asks me something that requires a lengthy reply, I can do it more comfortably.

To be clear, the down-sides most people point out are not down-sides to me. I like the size, I don't mind the weight and so on.

Again, this isn't the phone for everyone, but it makes me happy.

Re: How much whelm depends on the user.

My main reason for buying the thing was to use it in the physical shape of a laptop.

I use "Hacker's Keyboard", which is a full QWERTY keyboard with number keys on the top and Shift and Alt, so I can Shift-3 to get a number sign. None of this "press a key to go into symbol mode" stuff. Only that makes the keys very small since there's so many of them. For any lengthy data-input, I just rotate and the keyboard's on the bottom while whatever I'm typing into is on the top. Even with two thumb input, it's fast.

At the time I got mine, the only software update was the day-1 release from Microsoft, so it's been able to do this since product release.

The "giant" vertical gap isn't giant. But yes, if you were to just span software not Duo-aware, there's a 20 or 30 pixel strip missing in the middle. For video, it'd be annoying, but I can't stand the bubbly creases of the Samsung ZFold either. If I go landscape and web browse, the missing pixels don't matter as I scroll since whatever's there shows up above or below easily.

I wouldn't expect the gap to go away. It actually makes more sense to have it. If you take a two-monitor computer and span a video program over the two displays, the bezels and space between monitors make things look weird. I know "missing stuff" sounds like it makes no sense, but... the offset some of the image by a quarter inch or so actually makes less sense. An option wouldn't suck, but I wouldn't expect it.

In-hand, as a productivity device, I'm really not displeased with my purchase. I wanted this form-factor and the features it has. I knew what I was buying and it's what I wanted. That said, I absolutely know it's not for everyone, or most people.

Nope. If you do some digging, you'll find that's a common expectation with the Duo but turns out to not be accurate. The battery is reasonably sized for the unit's normal draw.

How much whelm depends on the user.

There's certainly a press echo-chamber, where various web sites repeat one another and only a handful of actual reviews.

For instance, early on there were widely reported "issues with the hinge" and widespread cracking of the plastic around the USB port. Turns out those were basically two people reporting in on a forum. Months later, there's no sign of these issues being common.

Bottom line, I'm plenty whelmed by mine. I'm Canadian and paid to have it imported a few weeks after release. The camera is definitely meh, but not something I really use. Other than that, this is the coolest phone I've had.

The Duo isn't for everyone and it's not perfect. But if you're interested in the physical attributes, from the dual screens to the aspect ratio... it's actually a really good device.

FYI: NASA appears to have scooped dirt from an asteroid 200 million miles away and plans to bring it back home

Re: To boldly go where Japan has been ten years ago?

That's entirely possible. I used to really like Far Side as a kid, and the I did imagine Larson drawing the scene, so maybe I am remembering something from 30 years ago.

Re: To boldly go where Japan has been ten years ago?

There's a horrible, whimsical but cynical part of me that imagines two NASA scientists completing analysis of the sample, and one turns to the other and just says "yup, it's dirt."

The take-home, really, is that it's amazing what insight is extracted - daily - by experts from what to non-experts is meaningless triviality. Great respects to the educated in all fields of study.

Windows 10 October 2020 Update arrives: Nothing that will drop your jaw, but we've had enough of 2020's fun surprises anyway

Re: Update blocking info

If you run "winver", it tells you what build you're on. I'd recommend checking before doing a reinstall.

Microsoft's cmd.exe deposed by PowerShell in Windows 10 preview

Re: Yet another Windows 10 annoyance

"it does what _I_ want. And I could type in 'cmd' and rapidly create a desktop icon for it, or run it from the start (what used to be) menu EASILY. So what do you type in for 'power-hell' now?"

Relax. Per the article, you type in "CMD". I know, I know, change is bad, but you'll get used to it.

"It's just like MICROSHAFT to JAM A CHANGE FOR THE SAKE OF CHANGE into our orifices, just because they *FEEL*."

I doubt this has anything to do with *FEELING* anything. I expect it's that PowerShell has a (massive) superset of capability. I too have been lazy and spent most of my time in CMD (well, actually, like so many others here I've been using TCC), but this isn't for change's sake. Changing Outlook's icon from orange to blue was change for change's sake. Changing the default shell from a less capable one to a more capable one is a net increase in capability. Which strikes me as a pretty good justification for the change.

"The reason they're jamming POWER-HELL up our collective backsides is because it SUPPORTS ALL OF THAT '.NUT' CRAP. They've got ".NUT" on the brain, and it's made them ".NUTTY"."

You know, when you start playing derogatory word-games, it undermines the impact of your argument, right? Throw some "Micros$oft" and "Windoze" into the mix and maybe your point will be conveyed better, right?

PowerShell and .NET don't have a direct relationship. .NET is a runtime that various programs can rely on. PowerShell is a command interpreter which was designed to be able to call far, far more APIs than CMD can. It's about having syntax to create, start, stop, or live-migrate a Hyper-V virtual machine. It's about having syntax to administer Exchange mailboxes. It's about having syntax to manipulate ActiveDirectory data, or Storage Spaces disk volumes, or system devices. It's pretty much got nothing to do with .NET

So... relax. As far as changes go, this is actually a good one. This, coming from someone whose shell of choice hasn't been PowerShell. Maybe now I'll get off my lazy butt and learn more of it, and be a better IT guy because of it.

We're all really excited about new smartphones, laptops, tablets – said no one ever

When good enough is good enough, enough.

When microwave ovens first became affordable, they sold very well as households jumped at the new technology. Then the market was saturated and the rush died. Permanently.

That's where we are at with many technologies. Existing laptop is good enough. Existing TV is good enough. Existing cell phone is good enough. Adding four side-facing cameras, fingerprint readers for all four fingers simultaneous, and making it one micron thick while reducing battery life by 50% doesn't entice us to buy a new one.

The point with the IoT "revolution" is that it's almost all incremental improvement. Nest and the like aren't fresh enough, conceptually, to cause an iPad-rush of purchasing.

Market personal anti-insect nanoclouds or clothing that safely administers stimulants/medication/intoxicants by suffusion through the skin and you'll get mega-rich.

Sherlock because I figured this all out in my mind-palace while on a 7% solution of cocaine, tripping out in the 1800s.

Doctor Who: Even the TARDIS key can't unpick the chronolock in Face the Raven

Re: Bring back Clara!

Similar continuity issue with Ashildr's tattoo. During the first execution, she allows her tattoo to move to the raven. While it's chasing its victim (supposedly a cyberman), the camera occasionally comes back to the watchers, and in one shot, the tattoo is back on Ashildr's yes please.

Apple, Google should give FBI every last drop of user information, says ex-HP CEO and wannabe US prez Carly Fiorina

Fair is fair...

This might not be utterly, completely, ludicrously absurd if in turn Apple, Google, et al were to release any and all information regarding government officials TO THE PUBLIC when the public suspects them of wrong-doing. Incidentally, I suspect them all of wrong-doing.

Our governments can know what we're doing when we know what they're doing.

SynoLocker Trojan crime gang: We QUIT this gig

Re: put your hand in your pocket, synology

Yeah, no. It's not Synology's fault. The patch for this has existed for eight months.

Samsung's thumb-achingly ENORMO Galaxy Note Pro 12.2

Actually, the size was the primary reason I bought mine. I do RPG gaming (Pathfinder, if anyone cares) and have a huge library of books in PDF format that I wanted to make portable. The physical books are great at home, where they reside in the library shelves, but when out and about, it's nice to be able to occasionally whip the NotePro out and look up some detail.

With this, when you zoom in to the text columns (ignoring the margins), it's exactly the same size as the physical books. Perfect.

I got a nice leather sleeve and carrying it around isn't any sort of hardship. All in all, this was the product I've been waiting for all this time, and ended my non-tablet-owning streak.

Microsoft: Let's be clear, WE won't read your email – but the cops will

I see that this isn't going to be a popular view but I'm not sure I see where the problem is.

A Microsoft employee used a Microsoft-owned mail service to leak Microsoft-owned IP. Microsoft later found out this now ex-Microsoft employee had done this, so they reached into the Microsoft-owned mail storage to obtain evidence of the leak. Once Microsoft had isolated the mails stored in the Microsoft-owned mail service, they handed them over to law-enforcement for laws to be enforced.

I don't see any need to complicate things here. An employee acting in violation of their employer's policies who uses their employer's resources to do so shouldn't have any expectation that the employer won't use every resource they have ownership of to deal with them.

This isn't about your e-mails to your grandmother. This isn't about you at all. This isn't even about privacy. It's about a moron who used a VoIP-provider's VoIP service to phone in death-threats to his boss. Even if he was paying for said VoIP service, if his boss recognizes his voice, he should expect the logs to be pulled and (if such a thing were done) recordings to be listened-to.

No, pesky lawyers, particle colliders WON'T destroy the Earth

Actually, that brings up an excellent point.

"In fact the LHC is more likely to blow up the earth before somebody finds proof that God exists."

I'd think that if God exists, He's massively more likely to blow up the Earth on a whim than is a hypothetical particle reacting in a way that doesn't fit any non-discredited theories. Thus, God is the clear and present danger and we should perhaps divert more of our funds from less-urgent tasks such as killing ourselves, towards the location and neutralization of God.

Perhaps investing more strenuously in particle physics might be a reasonable start.

Bill Gates to pull a Steve Jobs and SAVE MICROSOFT – report

What to do?

Thing is as a company that primarily makes and OS and an office app, there's limited room for innovation anymore.

In the beginning, the desktop OS was functionally limited by artificial hardware legacy. Now with x64 that's gone.

In the beginning, the desktop OS was hard to configure and hardware didn't work well with it. Now with plug & play and Internet access for automatic driver pulls, that's gone.

In the beginning, the desktop OS was an island, designed for unconnected environments. Now with the NT kernel it's got networking, domains, security and such by default, so that's gone.

Bottom line is that WinXP frankly did ENOUGH to make anything after it a difficult sell. There's nothing killer in Vista/7/8 that folks must have. There's no feature that evolves the whole concept of a desktop OS to a new level of baseline. It's just... incremental updates basically.

But when the art of the OS is essentially "almost everything you could ask for", what is the maker to do? THAT's the struggle.

Maybe where there's still room is reliability.

Imagine an OS that's malware-proof because it recognizes obnoxious behaviour and self-heals. Every boot it says "hey, did some jackass window you don't want pop up, blocking everything else and breaking your browser? 'Cuz I think one did. And I can just roll back that stupid thing." How about an OS that properly tracks the origin of changes to its config and lets you fix things at a granular level? System started hanging occasionally? Hey, turns out that installing XYZ application changed some random DLL that's also in use by the print driver and that's why... here, let's fix it.

Just a thought. But beyond that, I don't know what the hell else MS could introduce that folks actually WANT.

Apple's secret 12.9-inch MONSTER needs a good fondle, say biz sources

Re: What's the target audience/use case?

@FrankAlphaXII

This is the device that gets me to buy a tablet. Better would be an Android device. The market segment I'm in isn't the "sit on the couch and play Angry Birds" while watching sitcoms market. It's not the market that leaves a tablet laying around in case the urge to watch some YouTube arises.

What I want is a tablet the size of a hardcover book (though thinner if possible) that I can throw PDFs of real books on and use the in full-colour at full-size. Specifically RPG gaming but I could see doing this with textbooks as highly applicable as well. I'd enjoy having my entire library of RPG books stuffed into this device. Four or five shelves of reference material at my fingertips - in its original format. Not just a text rip, not a black & white e-book format, not HTML, and not some reconstituted app. The books. So I can treat one tablet just like whichever of a hundred or so books I want at the moment.

Ban Samsung sales in the US? Sorry, Apple: Tech titans say 'No'

Re: Google a "friend of the court"?

"Trollbait -> backup account for somebody. Three posts since 2010."

That may very well be but it doesn't change the nature of the relationship. It's in Google's best interests that nobody restrict sales of any Android-based phones. As for SAP and the rest, they basically have nothing to do with the subject. It's like McDonalds get in on the fray and saying "we use electricity to cook our food, and Samsung's phones use electricity, so we're qualified to weigh in on this."

Now, if other handset manufacturers were coming out and signing in on this, that'd speak loudly. "Even though Samsung is our competitor, this whole patent war is bullshit and we want it to go away." That would speak loudly. But they're not. Evidently the only competitor (Nokia) says "nuke 'em from orbit".

There's the message, sadly.

Disclosure: I don't own any iDevices, don't want to, and dislike Apple's tactics. Oh, and I own a Samsung "superphone".

Latest Symantec CEO's 'revolution' could axe 1,000 jobs

Friend, BE2012 isn't usable for anyone INSIDE Enterprise level IT. In fact, the loss of multi-server selection-lists impacts larger companies the most. While there were some really neat improvements in things like DeDupe, the fundamental functionality of the product is seriously degraded.

Good news: Symantec has a Beta out for the next release of BE.

Bad news: the beta is a refresh to include Server 2012 and Exchange 2013. It explicitly won't return Job Monitor or multi-server selection lists. For that... we continue to wait.

This, after the debacle that was SEP11's gold release. SEP is pretty decent now, but after the elegance of SAV, the 11.0 release was horrendous.

My advise to Symantec: stop worrying about "solutions" and "channels" and such. Just make your products better than everyone else does and you'll rake in money.

Assange takes refuge in Ecuadorian embassy

> Is this the actions of an 'innocent' man?

Sure. If I believed I was going to get screwed over and potentially end up dead by allowing myself to be extradited for something of which I was innocent, in a heartbeat I'd run. Not everyone is a martyr.

I'm not saying he's innocent. I have no way to judge that. But avoiding extradition when you think you're being persecuted doesn't indicate guilt. If anything, this radical a step supports his claim that he thinks he's in serious danger here. Again, he might be thinking wrong. I have no way to judge that. But your question implies all kinds of things that aren't reasonable.

Microsoft accused of leaking RDP attack code

Re: RDP in the open

A few points for you.

You're placing faith that there will never be an exploit discovered in whatever VPN client/server/protocol you've decided to use. That's exactly as reasonable as placing faith in RDP - which is an encrypted protocol - only moving the vulnerability to some other software stack.

Second, RDP has been available since Windows Server 2000, released February 2000. Twelve years for this vulnerability to be discovered. Yes, it's been there the whole time, but again... there could be an undiscovered issue that's been lurking in whatever VPN solution you've been advocating for the last decade.

Third, RDP is used for Terminal Servers which have the most utility when exposed to the Internet for access. Doing so is no more unreasonable than exposing a web server or mail server. Yes, a Terminal Server will generally have access to internal resources and yes there are ways to have public-facing web servers in a DMZ but ultimately we're still talking about software that is most useful if not behind a VPN.

Am I supposed to keep my IIS sites with Outlook Web Access behind a VPN? That'll be great... all my users with phones relying on that site for ActiveSync just... can't get e-mail. Anyone who wants to check their e-mail via OWA at a kiosk in a hotel just... can't because they can't install the VPN client I force them to use.

There's a difference between best-practices and practical-for-this-application.

Finally let's not forget the Small & Medium Business market. There's a whole whack of real-life reasons in that market that make it impractical sometimes to add layers of complexity. Sometimes Good Enough is the difference between losing a client and keeping one. And I point out again... twelve years we've had no meaningful discoveries in this technology.

As for internal LANs, there's another great point. Someone brings an infected laptop into the network where we DO have exposed RDP for maintenance purposes and wham... the entire building starts executing arbitrary code. Including the domain controllers. Yay.

So hopefully you understand that there are reasons to expose protocols other than SSH to the Internet from time to time, and that regardless... everyone* needs to patch NOW.

*Everyone = those who have RDP enabled.

PlayStation hacker defiantly posts 'bible' following police raid

Neither do I but:

It would've been interesting to demand all of Sony's computer were remanded into custody of a 3rd party while they were searched for evidence supporting that class-action suit.

Dell dumps RIM, saves fortune

Not as of eight months ago.

BESX 5 (Exchange released in March, Domino a couple days ago) doesn't require CALs and is good for up to 3,000 users per install/database. Depending on how you cluster things on your Exchange server, you may be able to run more than one BESX per enterprise. Not sure.

You're thinking about BPS 4, which had a user cap and you had to pay for CALs.

Anonymous plants pirate flag on MPAA website

What I don't understand...

Is why sites like this one even exist. Who is the target audience who'd be visiting copyprotected.com? I mean, it's a site "that reports violations of the copy protection controls on DVDs and Blu-ray discs". Is someone at Universal or Sony or Paramount seriously browsing to this place every day to find out if the DRM has been cracked? Who - in a nutshell - gives a rat's ass enough to visit any site associated with the MPAA or RIAA except to find stuff to laugh at?

Paris because it's evident why someone might visit her.

Wikileaks founder blasts reopening of rape probe

Off-the-cuff proposal for a new rule to the game of life.

Is Assange guilty? Don't know. Don't really care either. But I do encounter entirely too many articles informing me that So-And-So has been accused of Horrible Act.

This kind of news benefits me not at all. You know what... time to stop the gossip-mongering. From now on, the accused is allowed to tell whoever he or she chooses, to prevent people "disappearing" into the legal system. Next-of-kin may also request information when arrests are made. Other than that, zip it. Shut up. The press shouldn't be permitted to spread the news.

I realize that's dangerous in itself, but too many lives are being destroyed because some pouty little pea-brain girl decides "he touched me" is a great way to get back at her Geography teacher for a bad grade.

I don't claim this is perfect, but it's food for thought.

.XXX domain deal stripped bare

The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

How does that work? I mean, sure... you keep your kids from visiting Humpty-Dumpty.xxx I don't dispute that. But what about Dirty-Crotch-Lickers.com?

Or are you somehow implying that you think that pornography will just... suddenly stop being available on any other TLD? Sorry, but dream on.

And stop worrying so much about your kids learning that sex is fun. You figured it out and they will to, no matter what you do. I'm not advocating deliberately exposing them to porn or sexuality, but there's a sliding scale of what is sensible to pretend doesn't exist. Five-year-olds won't CARE because they're hormonally disinterested. Ten-year-olds much the same. At fifteen... well, I've got news for you. Not very long ago in human history people would be married off and be at it like bunnies by fifteen.

Porn and pirates hide Android's money maker

Minimum pricing because customers are paying more on another platform?

Please bite me. It's a free market and it's about time the various overpriced fart apps were discounted. Most mobile apps are widgets at best and should be priced to reflect that. Artificial price control to inflate income is just wrong.

Paris because she gives it away for free.

Apple eyes kill switch for jailbroken iPhones

I have an idea for a new patent.

"A System for Keeping the Intrusive Manufacturer of the Device I Have Paid For The Fuck Away From My Data".

Let's see how it works. A law is passed mandating the inclusion in all electronic devices a big indicator that lights up to tell the user the manufacturer has attempted to access device data. If the user has not requested this intrusion, they then press a button and the CEO of the manufacturer has his testicles electrocuted.

Seriously, if you want to build "security" features into your OS, fine. But when you're going and patenting systems for being a prying, spying, paranoid control-freak, you need to have your ego checked at the door.

Paris because maybe we could get something useful out of remotely activating her camera and turning on geotagging.

Microsoft hits stubborn volume licensing site with more updates

VLSC is a total arse-pain.

I work for a small IT shop that does outsourced IT for small & medium businesses. We manage everything for our customers. Now I have to jump through hoops to process volume license purchases for customers.

The biggest hurdle is that now the e-mail address of the end-user MUST be used to initially place a license into VLSC.

Great. I love it when customers have used their business addresses for personal MSN use. Customers will gladly give me passwords for the domain administrator, for their accounting software, and for anything else. But personal Live accounts get changed frequently Just Because. It's annoying.

Microsoft has the customer's money. Resellers should be able to process on behalf of, without jumping through hoops.

ICANN delays decision on pornography domain

You named the group incorrectly.

They're not the moral majority. Amongst the developed world, they're the hypocritical majority and the moral minority. Most people like porn. Most people like sex. Most people just aren't willing to publicly admit it for fear of being ostracized as perverts.

Behind closed doors when nobody's looking, the guys proposing strict anti-porn regulation are busy taking a strap-on up the arse from a dominatrix in leather.

Don't be fooled. It's just about appearances. It's trendy to seem prudish, at least amongst the U.S.

Paris because at least she wasn't afraid of doing something that felt good.

Street View pulls Canadian murder scene

I'm a local

I live in Windsor. I don't get it. The killing happened. The investigation happened. Why having imagery surrounding the investigation is "tasteless" or even "distressing", I don't know. If I were related to the victim, I wouldn't be using Street View to check out the strip club where it happened. Otherwise, who is this footage bothering?

I'd be more disturbed by the fact that when Google imaged our city we were embroiled in a historically unprecedented THREE MONTHS. No garbage pick-up, no maintenance of public parks - our city which does a lot of tourist traffic - looked like hell. That our city is recorded "permanently" as very unattractive is far more disturbing than that one of our average two murders a year happened moments before Google showed up.

Near-ready Firefox 3.6 gets second RC sausage

High and mighty still means you're high.

I am in IT and I've got two things to say to you:

One... given today's penchant for everything being a fat-ass web portal instead of lean local code, upgrading to speed up a browser is quite valid. I had to log onto Oracle's customer support site today, which is a Flash-based monstrosity that knocked my work PC onto it's knees, begging for help.

Two... my home PC is a 5.5-year-old P4 2.8Ghz single-core box and I'm strangely able to tell the difference between Firefox being slow and plug-ins being slow. Actual investigation reveals an interesting truth: FF is just fine. Maybe FF is just slower on the planet you don't share with Near-ready and I.

No third service pack for Windows Server 2003

Interesting progression.

WinNT 4 got a total of 6 service packs.

Win2k got a total of 4 service packs.

Win2k3 gets a total of 2 service packs.

Win2k8 has a total of 1 service pack so far. (While it's called SP2 the RTM code is Vista SP1.)

Either product quality is going up or MS hates us all.

ContactPoint goes live despite security fears

Truly disgusting

If a social-worker has any business knowing any of this information they have the means and authority to collect it. Also, if police have some mysterious need to know what school Child X attends, doesn't it follow that the same need to know adults' place of employment exists? This is a blatant money-wasting make-work project.

We'll also be reading about a copy of this database being stored on a laptop that gets stolen off the seat of someone's car... probably in about 12 months.

Paris because she knows all about getting screwed.