2007 August

Reliability is the most critical aspect of a business phone system. IP telephony systems will deliver differing service levels because their architecture is fundamentally different. Ironically, optimal architecture and design does not only deliver high reliability, but also produces a system that is easy to use and manage.
This white paper, Building Reliable IP Telephony Systems [...]

As you may remember back on the 17th of August, I had asked for some ‘beta testers’ for a self-contained Firefox/Evolution data back-up utility I created out of some crazy little bash scripts. It did not take some of you very long to realize that perhaps this is not so crazy after all. One [...]

Today, Tom asks:
I thought XP errors were annoying! Matt, I cannot seem to get around this error on Vista no matter what I try. The error is this. STOP: c000021a (Fatal System Error). Can you help me with this blue screen? I am about ready to take you up on the suggestion of a System76 [...]

There are some distinct differences in the way you share folders and files in Windows Vista than in Windows XP. One such difference is the permission levels. When you share a folder or file in Windows Vista from the File Sharing window, you will notice there are three permission levels that are not available in [...]

In all honesty, I really do not use BitTorrent for anything short of Linux distro downloads and select video content from podcasting sources. Yet reading stories like this, be it something I have not been able to verify to my own satisfaction, leave a mixed taste in my mouth.
I am a paying Comcast customer. For [...]

A friend pointed out to me that the dice puzzle of last week is very similar to one posted here. However, the variation posted there (#50) is more complex. Still, it is easily solved with the simple tools of probability.
Again we throw a handful of dice, but instead of asking how many dice we would [...]

Visible Ops is a practical methodology for implementing the best practices found in the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL). It provides a clear path to a more comprehensive IT change management program.
Get your free white paper!
[tags]visible ops, itil, information technology infrastructure library[/tags]

Far be it for me to say that I know more about PC marketing than the great Michael Dell, but obviously something had better change and it had better change fast. Because whether Dell cares to admit it or not, Apple is obviously offering something that Dell is not. Therefore, may I be so bold [...]

Knowing how sick and tired people are with trying to stay one step ahead of spam these days, I thought I might take a moment to put together some of my recommended applications for dealing with. They each range from free to paid, but all of them are good enough to help make a significant [...]

One of the ways that you can make files available to other users is through the Public folder. By placing a file in the Public folder, it becomes accessible to everyone who logs onto your computer and depending on how you configure Public folder sharing, can be accessible to others on your network.
One of [...]

As businesses have instituted internal, industry and government mandated regulatory compliance, the need for audit data to provide conformity has also become a necessity. However, traditional change management and configuration management tools do not comprehensively address all aspects of the vast configuration details inherent in complex IT infrastructures. Configuration audit and control provides the tools [...]

I hear the argument everyday. That somehow, any open source project must not be very good because it does not cost anything to use it. Well, allow me to poke some holes into that theory, generally made by people who have yet to ween themselves from closed source dependency. First off, not everything in the [...]

And I don’t mean that in a good way. I am so very fortunate that I have choices and that I’m not stuck with it as my primary OS. My philosophy on operating systems can be summed up in this statement: “an OS should enable you to do your work, go about your business, and [...]

Now that you know how auditing works, the first question that you should ask yourself is what really needs to be audited? As I mentioned, I always recommend auditing domain controllers, and if the situation applies, member servers and stand-alone servers. But what should you audit on those servers? I recommend that you audit the [...]

In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, congress passed, and the president signed, the E-Government Act, which formally recognized the importance of information security to the United States’ economic and national security interests. Title III of that act, the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), requires federal agencies to develop, document, and implement agency-wide information [...]

I have been watching with great interest, as people struggle with using the command shell to execute copy and paste lines of code, especially when trying to safely back up data. I was at once time, fairly happy with the SBackup utility, but became rather disillusioned with it once I tried to transfer my data [...]

The process of enabling auditing is similar for domain controllers and non-domain controllers. The biggest difference is that you use Active Directory Users and Computers on domain controllers and the local security policy on non-domain controllers.
To set up an audit policy for your domain controllers:

Open the Active Directory Users And Computers console.

Right-click Domain Controllers [...]

I just ran across Microsoft.com’s strong password checker, which is a little Web-based app that lets you type a password or passphrase and it tells you its relative strength. It’s pretty nice and worth bookmarking.
Why is a strong password important? Simple - because the simpler it is, the easier it is for someone to “brute-force” attack. [...]

You can’t see it. You can’t smell it. But it can be deadly, and may be in your IT organizations’ basement, silently killing your company. It’s called unplanned work, and CIOs and CISOs are losing jobs because of it.
Unplanned work by definition is any activity in an IT organization that cannot be mapped to an [...]

I have had my old Nokia E70 since it was first released overseas. Through a little bribery, I managed to get an unlocked model early and have been feeling mixed about it ever since. It had some very cool features overall, but I was quickly turned off by the clumsy UI and poor appearance of [...]