Diary of a Network Geek

No, not the key to install Microsoft Office!

One of the many features of Microsoft Office is the ability to password protect your files. It’s not very strong encryption, but, then again, how many people in your office are programmers who specialize in cryptographic algorithms? Right.
On the other hand, it sure is a pain in the butt when you lose the password for some super important file. Well, the Wired HowTo Wiki has a page titled Recover Your Password-Protected MS Office Docs that can help you out. I especially liked the idea of the e-mail service that let you preview part of the document before paying to have it unlocked. As an IT person, it’s nice to know if I’m paying to unlock the right files for someone at the office before I shell out the cash!

In this case, it’s a hard drive crusher.

Once upon a time, I was in charge of a networking department who’s responsibilities included backups and disposal of old tapes and drives. We had to do all kinds of crazy things to assure the Board of Directors that the data had been completely and safely removed from those drives before we could get rid of them. At one point, a tech was actually drilling through backup tapes with an electric drill to make sure they were destroyed.
The Hard Drive Crusher from EDR would have been an easy sell.

And, if we’d gotten it? Techs would have been fighting for the privilege to destroy old backups.

Oh, and don’t forget to vote in the poll!

OpenOffice lacks one thing that I’ve always liked: barcodes.

Specifically, back when I was a WordPerfect user, I used to love the ability to address envelopes with the United States Postal Service ZIP Code barcodes. I know that it made letters less likely to get lost and more likely to get to their destination quickly. Also, I’ve known a few people who work for the US Postal Service and, from what I understand, letters with the barcodes are less likely to actually be touched by people. Their machines just suck the letters along and just about sort them into carrier’s bags.
Unfortunately, OpenOffice has not been able to indulge me in this minor joy. Until now.

Now, there are macros available, for free, to let you insert USPS-approved barcodes into your OpenOffice documents. The company who makes this available to you is IDAutomation.com and they have a webpage that describes the process for using the macros and has a link to the macros themselves.
Yea!

Brian Rothenberg of Wilco Computer Products is my new hero.

So, I’ve been having this issue at work with a FAX machine and a phone network. We’ve been wrestling with this for about six weeks. The problem, in a nutshell, is that the FAX machine we have is not playing well with the phone network since we joined our two PRIs together with some network equipment to “steal” unused bandwidth from the phone network for the data network. Mostly, it worked great. Mostly.
The problem is our FAX machine hasn’t been properly negotiating the connection speed with some older FAX machines since we added the VOIP component to our data/phone network. The result? I get yelled at on a regular basis because I can’t make a miracle happen.

My service provider told me that the solution is to make the default receive baud rate 14,400 instead of 33,600. That’s great, but I searched for days to find instructions for how to do it to no avail. I even got the people who supplied the FAX machine to us out to try and figure it out, but they came up empty.
Enter Brian. Brian Rothenberg called me looking to sell me computer equipment or printer supplies or, yes, FAX supplies. But, it turns out, he sells the devices, too. What mattered more to me, though, was that he took the time to go hunt down the super-secret service hot-line phone number for the manufacturer of the FAX machine that was giving me issues. Then, he called them and got the procedure on how to make the change and e-mailed it to me. Problem solved.
The next time I need a printer serviced, I’m calling Brian.

So, you know what? If you need someone in the Greater Houston Area that sells office equipment and supplies and goes the proverbial extra mile? Go to http://www.wilcocomputerproducts.com/ and ask for Brian. Tell him I sent you.
Thanks, Brian.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"Aw, damnit, I left my spontaneous quips in my other pants."

What an interesting idea…

So, as many of my long-time readers know, I tend to straddle two worlds. By day, I’m a highly proficient, one-man, network-ninja death squad, but, by night, I’m a frustrated, hopeful writer who’s always looking for high-tech reasons to procrastinate. I think I may have found a project that bridges these two worlds in an article titled Subversion for Writers.

Subversion is a version control system which is primarily used by software developers to, well, track the version of their programming code. But, code is just specially formated text with very specific syntax and a really boring plot, so there’s no reason at all to not use it to track versions of a story or novel. And, in fact, that’s just what the author, Rachel Greenham, is proposing. I think it would be especially useful for novelists, since you could keep track of all the possible plot deviations and revert back to an earlier branch if things started to “go wrong”. In any case, it’s worth a look, even if you don’t use Linux or OS X, which is what she uses. (In fact, if you’d like to use Windows to do this, LifeHacker, who linked to her article, has a post with links to Windows clients for Subversion.)

Well, anyway, if you write a lot and are a geek like me and have some time to waste, it’s worth looking into, at the very least.

If you think Fedora is just a hat, the rest of this may not matter to you…

However, if you recognize that the Fedora Project is the free version of RedHat Linux, you might be interested in this. With the latest version of Fedora, there was a little something tucked away in the wiki about making a “live” version of Fedora on a USB key. You can download this little application and use it to totally automate getting a live, bootable version of the latest Fedora on the USB key of your choosing with hardly any work at all.
If you’ve ever had any interest in carrying Linux around in your pocket, grab this and try it out!

No, not really.

So, there’s obviously been quite a furor about this new law here in Texas that apparently requires anyone doing any kind of computer forensic work to get a Private Investigator’s License. Now, one of my favorite computer security bloggers, Security Monkey (aka The Chief) of A Day in the Life of an Information Security Investigator, has a blog entry about this. His sources in Texas have a different, more relaxed, take on this law. They seem to think that it’s only going to effect professionals doing investigative work for a third party. I think they’re wrong.
As at least one other commenter on A Day in the Life of a Computer Security Investigator pointed out, no matter what the lawyers think and say, only a judge sitting on a case can really interpret the law. And, only after that precedent is set can anyone say what the law covers and doesn’t.
Based on the Slashdot story about someone getting charged with a felony for using a fake name to sign up to MySpace, it seems like this is going to be an important step in the process. I mean, until that all important precedent is set, there’s no telling how people will try to use this new law.

As I wrote here the other day about this far-reaching law, I think it’s just another example of the sad state of our legal system. Laws like this have effects that are much, much further reaching than the bill’s author intended, and it’s ripe for abuse by our overly litigious society.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"Sanity is a one trick pony -- all you have is rational thought. But when you're good and loony, the sky's the limit!
   --from "The Tick"

The Houston Chronicle has an update on the law I mentioned the on Tuesday.

The Austin office of the Houston Chronicle did some more digging about the new law that would seem to require PC Techs in Texas to also become Private Investigators. According to the bill’s author, state Rep. Joe Driver, R-Garland, we’re all misinterpreting his new law. He claims that the law means “…anyone who retrieves data from a computer, analyzes it and makes a report to a third party must obtain a private investigator’s license.” To me, it’s almost the same thing.

As I read it, the law would require anyone performing computer security duties in *any* setting in Texas to get a PI License. That means that a corporate computer security officer, who’s job may include computer forensics, would be required to also be a PI.
Frankly, I’m torn between thinking that maybe this is a good thing and maybe it’s excessive. On the one hand, for someone who does independent security work, that background check and finger printing might be a good idea! On the other hand, it might make it impossible for someone in a small company to *legally* do their job.

I’ll give an example…
A small company may have a one or two person IT department who cover everything, like, for instance, me. If there’s a break-in to one of their systems, they would then have to be a licensed PI to investigate that, or they’d have to spend a similar amount of money on a consultant who was. In this case, I’d bet the law just would get ignored.

But, for the independent operator, who might not have any other controls or credentials which a consumer or consulting client can use as a measure of relative security, it might actually be a good thing. Again, I doubt that criminal background checks are being done on all independent computer security consultants right now and maybe they should be.

In any case, like many laws of this nature, they seem like a good idea on paper, but often have much further reach than their author intended.

So, now I need a Private Investigator’s license to work on PCs?

Yeah, according to articles at ExtremeTech and CW33, a recently passed law in Texas requires that ALL shops which include PC repair technicians have a PI license. Just so you know, a PI License isn’t for an individual, but, rather a business and all the employees would work under that umbrella license. Still, it would mean that at least one person go through the process of licensing, which has the following requirements:

• three years of investigative experience or a bachelors degree in criminal justice for investigations company license
• two consecutive years of legally acceptable experience in the guard company business
• successful completion of a two-hundred-question examination testing ability of the manager applicant to operate the guard company under the provisions of the statute regulating them
• criminal background check
• submitting fingerprints to have on file with the FBI
• ~$500 in registration fees, subscription fees, application fees, and fingerprint fees, payable yearly

(All that is from an article at Citronix Computer Techs. )

Now, it’s important to understand, too, that this is a brand new law, sponsored by a Private Investigation professional organization who are afraid of their profession becoming obsolete. Thankfully, there are also techs who have professional organizations, one of which is challenging the law, at least, according to KVUE.com.

Funny, I’ve always thought about getting a PI license and now I may be forced to do so! On the other hand, the $4000+ fines and possible jail-time are a great excuse for why I can’t help people at work with their private PCs!

TypePadfromIntel

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

The folks at WordPress better wake up and take notice.

So, you probably know by now that I run this blog via WordPress. And, in the past, I’ve recommended the free blogging service provided by WordPress.com. Well, while installing software on a new PC I’d put together at work today, I saw the screen to pictured here. If you click the link and take a closer look at the screen, you’ll see an option to install a three month TypePad account. TypePad, like WordPress.com, has both free and paid accounts. So, this would give someone three months of the paid TypePad service.

I don’t know what this cost the folks at SixApart, who own TypePad, but this is some damn clever marketing, in my opinion. If this is included with every Intel motherboard sold… Well, let’s just say that I think it would get a lot of people trying this service and starting a paid account. It’s like Microsoft giving schools huge rebates and offering student editions for cheap to make sure that their software is what the fresh crop of workers are trained to use. It’s good marketing. At least, it sure seems to have worked well for Microsoft.

WordPress, are you watching this?