Diary of a Network Geek

Well, it’s clever, I’ll give them that!
Spammimic is a web-based application for doing some really low-level e-mail encryption. In fact, they even tell you right off that they use old, weak encryption. So, why am I mentioning them on my website? Simple. It’s a clever idea. In their explanation of what Spammimic does and how it works, they tell us that, basically, the idea behind hiding e-mail in spam is that spam has become so ubiquitous that it’s virtually invisible. So, in essence, they’re hiding in plain sight. The perfect social engineering hack on an enourmas scale. Very clever, I think, though I wouldn’t want to use it on anything concerning national security, if you catch my drift.
This site has been around for quite some time, actually, but I somehow neglected to write about
them. Well, I have now. Go have fun!

No, not here!
But, apparently, coming soon in the form of assorted free Office suite packages. According to this article on eWeek, all the happy-go-lucky Mac users out there who are looking for a free replacement for Microsoft Office will have alternatives shortly. Um, actually, I thought there was one already… (*cough* “OpenOffice” *cough*)
Okay, actually, the article admits that there is such an animal, but apparently the average Mac user doesn’t want to install XWindows to run a free office suite. Not sure why, since that should be free, too, but, then I’ve never gotten a good “picture to reality” chart for the Mac interface. Oh, and it won’t be quite “free” either. It’ll be $49, which is practically free compared to the cost of a full, non-upgrade copy of MS Office for Mac.
Or, you could just learn how to install XWindows and OpenOffice.

Well, I’m off to Louisiana! Be good while I’m gone!

Hmm, I’m wondering who has the real advantage here…
Well, if you read Slashdot, you’ve already seen this story about a Linux guy using wine to update a WGA game successfully. Apparently, he’d been running this game on wine quite well for a while, but it needed some kind of update. So, he used the update feature from within the game, while on Linux running the wine Windows emulator, and he was prompted for his Windows Genuine Advantage code. He put it in and the Microsoft website proceeded to tell him he was running “Genuine Windows” and update his game. So, what was that advantage again?

Oh, and it looks like I’ll be on the road tomorrow, just for the day. Off to Bellechasse, Louisiana to install a couple of desktops. Three, actually, in one day and transfer data and settings on two. It’s going to be a long, long day. At least the boss will be flying me, so I won’t have to hassle with airports! (Don’t worry Diary of a Network Geek junkies! I’ll post something before I leave.)

Oh, how sweet is this!?
So, I was looking around the other day for a PERL script that would send me an SMTP mail notification from a Windows 2000 server at a remote location, so that I’d know what their IP address had been changed to after a reboot. (It’s a long story, but it involves a VNC server, a cable-router, and a bad power grid.) And, whenever I search for this kind of thing, I go to my backup/long-term memory archive, Google, and do a search. Guess what I found? A whole set of web pages at Microsoft dedicated to Windows-centric system admin and monitoring PERL scripts. Oh, I think I’m in heaven!
I’ve been looking for this kind of thing for ages and ages. I have no idea why I never found it until now, but, well, here it is! Now, I can develop that massive, PERL-based auditing system that I’ve always dreamed of having! YEA!

The only thing I hate worse than spammers are stupid spammers.
Does anyone test their code besides me anymore? I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve gotten what are obvious spam e-mails filled with variables that were never correctly processed. It’s ridiculous!
On another note, I would like to take a moment to send the blog comment spammers the following message:
Yes, I like my site design, too. I’m glad it helped you with your homework, but I can’t imagine what you’d be studying that anything I’ve written could possibly have helped you with. I will keep posting similar information, not because you like it, but because, well, it’s part of what I do for hobbies. I’m glad you liked it so much you’ll tell all your friends, but, if you don’t mind, let’s not include the spammers. And, while I’m very happy that you find my site “a refreshing change” from the majority of sites you have visited, not to mention how excited you are by the “potential of the internet as a resource” and, presumably, my site in particular, I’m almost sorry that I have restored your enthusiasm. I mean, as a spammer, I don’t think I want you to be enthusiastic. But, you are welcome and I’m glad you think my “efforts to share insights” will “help the world become a better place.”

Sometime, I’ll have to take the same time to thank all the nice folks who send me unsolicited e-mail, too. Though, I have to admit, I’m not sure how I feel about them offering me discounts on breast augmentation…

That’s Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 for the acronym impaired.
Well, I’m evaluating flavors of Linux to replace our antique Windows NT server, in my copious spare time, at work. Of course, my first choice was to go to Novell’s site and download the free demo of SLES 9. It took the better part of a day and night to download the ISOs and burn them, but, again, I did that in the background.
First of all, the install was quite simple and found even the junky, old hardware that I scrounged together for a test machine. Though, I have to admit that I found it rather annoying that I only used three of the six CDs I burned to do the install. And, I only used the third of those because I was installing a SAMBA server to minimize my client-side changes. (Yes, I know to block all SAMBA traffic out to the ‘net. Thanks for worrying about me though.) If I get the time, I’ll go back and try to figure out what was on those last three disks. I figure it was documenation and source-code, mainly, but that’s only a slightly educated guess.
Now, I’ve never actually used SUSE before, so it was a little new to me. Bascially, it’s standard Linux and X-Windows, but what’s installed by default and the assorted management programs are a little different than what I’ve gotten used to on RedHat. But, once I got the hang of YaST, it wasn’t a problem. In fact, reconfiguring the server via YaST was how I got the SAMBA server installed, configured and running. I should point out that I did this all without the benefit of reading any documenation and it still only took me about five minutes. Very easy to use, even for a relativel newbie.
Mostly, it’s what I’ve come to expect from the modern distributions of Linux. It was easy to install, simple to configure, and pretty to look at while doing both. Oh, and on the old PII with 512Meg of RAM, it ran really well. Nice and smooth. I was able to connect to the SAMBA server, map a drive and copy a file without any issues or having to set it up as a PDC or BDC (that’s Primary Domain Controller and Backup Domain Controller, again for the acronym impaired). I haven’t done any security testing against it, but it’s tucked safely behind our new firewall, so I’m not too worried.
The one thing I noticed that I really liked was the fact that you had to enter a password to reboot the machine. In RedHat, at least the RedHat AS 2.1 I used, anyone who had physical access to the server could simply click the reboot button and it would. With SLES 9, after clicking that button, I was prompted for a password. Only after I supplied the root password did the machine actually reboot. Nice feature, that.

So, over all, nothing spectacular, but a good, solid offering from the newest Novell group, SUSE.

ten year old can do it!
Get Microsoft certified, that is. At least, according to this story on SeattlePI.com, that’s all the life experience you’ll need to get certified. Arfa Karim Randhawa from Pakistan is the youngest Microsoft Certified Professional, so far, and she recently composed a poem honoring Bill Gates and his life achievements, which even I have to admit are admirable. Apparently, little Arfa is a very promising programmer, Microsoft certification not withstanding, and had some interesting ideas about self-navigating cars that some of the Microsoft top brass were interested in hearing. And, of course, all the nice publicity of Gates meeting the youngest member of the collective.
Anyway, I’m not sure if this is a statement about how easy it is to get Microsoft certified, just how smart 10-year-old girls are, or how slow the average Windows IT professional is, but it tickled my funny-bone. And, I would like to note that the youngest Novell Certified professional wass 12 when he got certified. Much more challenging.

I never trust Microsoft.
According to this news story, brought to us by BoingBoing, Microsoft has not only purchased a spyware company but defaulted their AntiSpyware program to Ignore said spyware. Can you guess who they used to be? Gator, the most notorious and prolific of the bottom-feeding spyware companies. (Actually, the company is Claria but they’re known for their spyware product, Gator.)
Now you know why I didn’t bother to install this.

Address unknown!
Not only is that a great Elvis tune, but also the new plan that Microsoft is trying to force down our throats. At least, according to this article on CNet News.com. And, when I say “force”, I do mean force. According to the article, not only is Microsoft’s Sender ID a not fully adopted “standard”, but it’s also not quite ready for prime time. Seems that there are some issues with it and that’s one of the reason it hasn’t been adopted as readily as Redmond would like. Also, according to the article “Sometime around November, Hotmail and MSN will flag as potential spam those messages that do not have the tag to verify the sender”. So, it’s not catastrophic, but it has the potential for trouble. I mean, do we really need Microsoft, the company most notoriously bad at security in the entire computer software industry, setting an e-mail security standard? I don’t think so.
Well, let’s hope this one withers on the vine. But, if it doesn’t, be sure to check those “spam” e-mails before deleting them. Some may be ones you want to keep!

Today is the birthday of UNIVAC.
According to Writer’s Almanac, it was on this day in 1951 the world’s first commercially produced computer was unveiled. UNIVAC, as it was known, weighed eight tons, used 5,000 vacuum tubes, and cost a quarter million dollars. But it could perform a thousand calculations per second, the fastest rate in the world at the time. The first one was bought by the U.S. Census Bureau. Not a big surprise, I guess, considering that no one else at the time had any idea what to use a computer for, besides quickly tabulating large numbers.
I remember a Troop Leader in Boy Scouts who worked on computers like this. He talked about the first “portable” calulators which were the size of laptops today, were filled with vacuum tubes, and could only add, subtract, multipy and divide. We’ve come a long way, baby! Now, we’ve got pretty graphics, free operating systems, and giant multi-national corporations all focused on selling us the next machine and suite of applications to go with it. It’s a multi-billion dollar industry and has almost generated a whole new economy. Heck, it’s what makes it possible for you to even read this.
I wonder what the next fifty years will bring in the computer world?