IT professional

Just buy an exchange server already …

There are times when I want to yell at my client’s to just bite the bullet and invest in their own mail server vs using POP mail through their ISP, their are so many tangible benefits but I would have to say that the breaking point for me is when ISP pop mail is used in conjunction with a MFP scan to email functionality.

I love the functionality of most MFP’s scan to email ability. Pop in your doc, hit scan, and when you get back to your desk there is an email sitting in your mailbox with a new crisp PDF file of your document. Lot’s of other people love this functionality too and yet drawing the correlation between “why  I can’t scan 10 pages of diagrams” and “you have a pop email account through your ISP what restricts your outgoing mail size” seems not to register with many. What is so hard to understand here? This doesn’t function by magic, it’s an attachment in an email and governed by the same rules. Yet when I explain this I am constantly beset by blank stares. Sigh.

Security flaw in IE7

 Take a look at this:

 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/15/…

I am truly shocked, not because they found a new flaw in a microsoft product that is pretty much par for the course. I am shocked that there are still apparently people who use IE! With so many much better alternatives out there some people still continue to use Internet Explorer. Boggles the mind.

RIM hostile takeover of Certicom

In IT news, RIM is attempting a hostile takeover of Certicom. Certicom makes encryption software including those that are currently in use by Blackberries. Even though RIM posted unfavourable  news lately they clearly feel that there would be some good ROI on this acquision. Reports indicate that they attempted to speak to Certicom about a friendly acquision but never receieved a response. The cost on this is as of so far 66 million USD.

Windows 7 beta being released in January

So despite the absolutely stupid Vista commercials that Microsoft has been pumping out lately it looks like they are still charging full speed ahead on releasing Windows 7.

 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/03/…

Hmmm Microsoft rushing through a product release, how can that go wrong? Once again MS misses the boat on the importance of release a quality product.

Known issue with Service Watch on Watchguard Core’s WSM

I encountered an problem in Watchguard System Manager with service watch. The connection’s graph works fine but the bandwith graph does not. Watchguard has confirmed this is a known issue to be resolved in a future release.

Update on Fortigate issue

So I posted a couple days ago about a problem with Fortigate causing traffic to be dropped. Fortigate support has been entirely unhelpful on this suggesting that perhaps it was a DNS issue or a HTTP profile issue. They tell me this after I explan that when I tracert the IP address the packets drop. Maybe this makes sense to them but how can tracert (ICMP) by IP address be either a DNS or HTTP issue? So we are “resolving” the issue be replacing the Fortigate. Congrats Fortigate on your excellent business model  of having unexplainable problems with your product and  hiring idiot’s in your tech support. Mazel Tov!

Computer virus quarantines London Hospital for second day

nbsp;http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/19/…

Three hospitals have been effected by this and do you know who is sufferring here? The patients, not to mention the staff who are likely running themselves ragged trying to keep up with this. People with potentially life threatening conditions may not be getting the attention they need because of some angst filled teen with too much time on his hands and parents that are no where to be seen. Even if the hospital itself wasn’t targetted it is still being affected. I hope they catch this kid and charge him with X number of counts of attempted murder. It’s no less than they deserve for such reckless action.

Server will not boot due to USB HDD

So maybe this is a coincidence but I encountered an issue where a server would not boot. It froze right before hitting the windows splash screen, no errors, nothing. Wouldn’t boot with “Last Known Good” or in Safe mode. As soon as the USB HDD was unplugged though it boot fine. I have never heard of this issue before.

Blocking internet access for a single user

First off let me just say that it is in my experience that it is never a good idea to try to use technology to police employee’s. If your employee wastes to much of their day surfing the internet instead of doing work then just fire them. Instead we have so many products trying to force them not to surf or to surf properly and their are always loop holes. In the worst of scenario’s you have the request “This user has been surfing inappropriately, prevent them from surfing the internet”, talk about bludgeoning the issue with a rock, I would think a little finesse here in order. That being said if you are in this situation there is a quick easy way to accomplish this without the need of a lot of effort or expensive software.

1) Get the MAC address of the computer
2) Use DHCP to create a reservation for that MAC so that it always gets the same IP
3) Create a firewall rule blocking port 80 traffic coming from that IP

Bingo!

Windows 7 inspired by OS X

So here is an interesting article.

 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/28/…

I will give Microsoft credit, they figured out they were going in the wrong direction, better late then never i guess.  Being successful these days is difficult and really requires sticking to your strength’s. Microsoft has accepted that they need a return to their fundamentals, ripping off other people’s ideas and stop trying to have original ones of their own. I foresee a bright future for Windows 7.