SBS 2008 Released to Manufacturing

For those of you, like The Quintessential Geek, that are fans of Microsoft's Small Business Server, you should know that the SBS 2008 was officially released to manufacturing today.

I have been playing with SBS 2008 for the past month or so and have been very pleased with its performance, functionality and stability. This is a product that I will definitely be recommending to my clients!

You can read some details on the Microsoft SBS blog at http://blogs.technet.com/sbs/archive/2008/08/21/sbs-2008-released-to-manufacturing.aspx.

-TQG

Does M'Soft want admins doing online shopping from servers?

This may be small in the grand scheme of things, but why is it that Microsoft continues to install its default Favorites with the browser? Microsoft has been doing this since the days of Internet Explorer 4.

Microsoft claims (rightly so) that administrators should not be Web surfing on a server, yet I fire up any IE installation on a server and I see that the browser is still pre-loaded with Favorites such as MSN Entertainment and MSN Sports.

It's always chewed away at my gut that browsers insist on installing default Favorites, or for that matter that ANY software installation installs Favorites, icons at the root of the Start menu, in the Quick Launch toolbar, etc. I always end up deleting them so that I have only the ones that I want, but it's just another annoying tweak that I need to make.

Be gone, o hideous, default Favorites!

-TQG

The Need for Security Education in the Community

It's been three weeks since my last post. I guess the warm weather and long work days have helped suppress motivation lately. But since that time, some interesting changes have occurred at the National Information Security Group (NAISG). We started 5+ years ago as a Boston-based user group. Since then, we have taken on a national, online role; and then expanded on that to include a handful of US-based chapters which include Connecticut River Valley, New York City, Washington, D.C. and Seattle, Washington.

In addition to this, we also maintain a LinkedIn "group." This group has grown much quicker than expected. (As of today, we have ~1,200 members from around the world.) So three weeks ago, I sent an email blast to all of our LinkedIn members, thanking them for joining the list, encouraging them to visit our Web site and asking them about general interest for user groups in their communities.

As a result of that email, two things happened:

1> I received one email from an upset individual asking why the heck he would want to join yet another security group. After all, he asked, isn't it adequate having ISSA, CIPS and ISACA? "Why did I feel it was necessary to fragment the security community?," he argued.

2> I received a number of other emails from individuals expressing their desire to form chapters, indicating the need to have the groups and the education they provide. In addition, many of these individuals expressed their frustrations with organizations such as ISSA, which charge membership and frequently provide just vendor-focused presentations. (In contrast, NAISG's operations dictate to prospective presenters that the discussions must be issue-focused and not product-focused.)

So, the positive response I received from these many individuals helped me to mentally squash the negative one. And as a result, we have since opened chapters in Atlanta, Georgia; Dallas, Texas; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; London, England and Bangalore, India!

In addition, we have plans for chapters in Chicago, Illinois; Austin, Texas; Jacksonville, Florida; Detroit, Michigan; Red Deer, Alberta, Canada; Athens, Greece; Bucharest, Romania; Delhi, India; Istanbul, Turkey and Oxford, England.

So much for fragmenting the security community!!!!

-TQG

3rd-Party SSL Certs on SBS

Today I experienced the wonder and amazement (sarcasm intended) of installing a 3rd-party SSL certificate onto our Small Business Server 2003 so that users would no longer be annoyed with warning messages when connecting to Outlook Web Access or Remote Web Workplace, and so that it would be significantly easier to configure Outlook-over-HTTPS.

Although the certificate worked like a charm for its intended purpose, I was not-so-pleasantly surprised when I found that I could no longer administrate public folders in Exchange System Manager. I've already spent more than a few hours trying to resolve this with no luck. I've also discovered by a search through Google Groups that I am by no means the only person to experience this pain. Unfortunately, the solution for most people (disable the SSL requirement on the ExAdmin virtual directory in IIS) does not seem to work for me.

I've written a nice support message to the issuing CA in the hopes that they can assist, but methinks that I may need to remove this particular cert and revert to the self-signed certificate that SBS conveniently generates.

Ugh...

-TQG

XP SP3 breaks ActiveX in IE 7

A client recently contacted me to report that he lost the ability to use the Remote Web Workplace feature of Small Business Server 2003 after having installed SP3 for Windows XP. It took a while of troubleshooting and some digging into Google Groups, but I soon found reports that SP3 will disable the Remote Desktop add-on of Internet Explorer 7 (perhaps also IE 6, but unsure at this time).

To fix this problem, go into IE's Tools > Internet Options > Programs > Manage Add-Ons and locate the Remote Desktop add-on. If it is set to Disabled, then enable it and your problem should be cured.

-TQG

Norton Internet Security 2008 - Time for Another Look?

I have never been a big fan of past versions of Norton (Symantec) Internet Security products, but I recently had a presentation from the product manager of the product, who discussed the newest version and how it's changed over its predecessors.

Any IT administrator can tell you that previous versions of this product had two HUGE drawbacks:

1. Resource Usage - The product would use up huge amounts of RAM and CPU.
2. Uninstallation failures - Chances are that uninstallation would cause even more problems for your system than you had prior to installing it.

It's my understanding that the core of the latest version (2008) has been totally rewritten, minimizing the resource usage, correcting the uninstaller bugs and adding many new and important features to properly protect a home/consumer system.

I certainly hope that this is the case. I plan to evaluate this version, and hopefully it will pass muster. If so, I would look forward to recommending it to my clients who want to deploy it.

-TQG

Raiders + Star Wars = Movie Heaven!

Being a purebred geek, I have always loved movies from both George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. And this spring and summer two of my favorite series are out with new releases: "Indiana Jones: Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" and "Star Wars: The Clone Wars."

I have never been able to get enough of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Even now, I still think it's a fantastic movie. OK, Indy's not exactly the model archaeologist, but how can you not love the adventure and the humor in that movie? The second movie in the Jones series, The Temple of Doom, I can do without. I think it was a bit too silly, even for me. But the third movie, The Last Crusade, returns to the wonderful, wry humor that was so prevalent in Raiders. Harrison Ford and Sean Connery made a fantastic team, thanks especially to the script writing.

I have also always loved the Star Wars movies, though I will admit that even being The Quintessential Geek, I did not see the original 35 times when it first came to theaters. However, I now watch it regularly with my 7-year-old son, as he has developed a fascination with all things Star Wars. I look to the new movie with a bit of skepticism, as it will be computer-generated rather than using real-life actors, but it should be fun none the less.

So, come opening day for these movies, you'll know where to find me. And to corrupt a line from Field of Dreams (another of TQG's favorites): Is this heaven? No, it's the movie theater.

-TQG