technical solutions and commentary

With the new Mac computers being changed to the x86 architecture from the RISC based processors, it has enabled Apple computers to dual-boot between Mac OS X and Windows XP. Apple fully supports this configuration with the release of its “Apple Bootcamp” software.

This gives Apple an advantage over traditional Windows OEM’s, since Apple does not license the Mac OS apart from its own proprietary hardware. Almost 10 years ago now, Apple did license Mac OS to OEM’s and allowed ‘Mac Clones’ to be built and sold by licensed OEM’s. Shortly after Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, license agreements with OEM where not renewed. With Windows still being the dominent platform, and being used nearly exclusively in businesses, Apple as created the ability for IT deparments and individual users to consider buying new Apple hardware with Mac OS and Windows XP. That opens a new market for Apple and new possibilities for end users.

Using “Bootcamp” new users can explore the Mac OS and apples simplisitic applications and not give up the investment they have already made in Windows based applications. This also eliminates having to have two physical computers, one Mac and one Windows. This also a win for Microsoft in that they may potentially sell more Windows licenses and get Mac users for comfortable wit the idea of using Windows and Windows applications.

For those Mac users on the older hardware that cannot dualboot between Mac and Windows, or do not want to dualboot with Windows, there is another possiblity of running Windows applications right in the Mac OS. Virtualization software called “WINE” is in development as an Open Source project, and provides the ability to run actual Windows based applications right in the Mac OS X. Being an Open Source project, this application can be downloaded and installed free of charge. However, getting it installed and  operational my require the skills of an advanced Mac user. Another draw back in open source is the limited support of projects such as WINE. There is no support phone number you can call if you run into troubles.

WINE also runs on Linux Operating Systems, of which the WINE project was origionaly created for. This application still seems somewhat “experimental” so be cautious about using it on any production or critical computer platforms which you can not risk data loss.

To find out more about the WINE project, and download the application you can go to the projects website directly at http://www.winehq.com/

I recently finished the book ‘The Art of Deception’ by world famous hacker Kevin Mitnick. The book was excellent and really opens your eyes to tactics of social engineers. Going through the CISSP training increases your awareness of people, especially employees, being your biggest security risk. This book is a great supplement to CISSP training and really hits home on HOW employees can be a security risk by disclosing seemingly innocent information, or even information that may be thought of as public information or common information.

There are many examples of how social engineers can take this information and use it to sound like an authoritative company employee, business partner, or just a fellow employee from another office or department that needs help.

This book is really a collection of true short stories. Each true story is setup and it’s scenario is walked through. Then the motivation and the steps to complete the attack are explained. Kevin explains how this type of attack can be avoided and how you can train your employees to protect the company. He book also contains “The Mitnick Message” which is a brief tip, moral, or “take-away” point from the story.

Part way through the book you find yourself starting to try and guess how the attacks where planned and executed by the social engineer. You also begin thinking of ways the attacks could have been prevented. I was continually trying to figure out how the attack was setup by the social engineer and how it could have been stopped before I got to the explanation.

At the end of the book, an employee awareness training program is outlined and discussed. There is also a sample of a basic company security policy which can be useful. The lessons in this book drive home the point that no matter how much you spend on technology to “protect” your company’s information assets, it’s really of limited value unless you train your people to protect the information they hold or can access.

Great read and recommended. Now I have “The Art of Intrusion” to read.  

When buying a new PC, the average person can be overwhelmed with the options and choices they need to make. When I have been in electronic stores I have often overheard people ask a PC sales person about the difference between a Celeron (or an AMD Sempron) and a regular Pentium (or AMD Athlon). Each time I have heard this question asked, I have over heard the sales rep give different answers. I supposed the answer at the ime depends on what they are supposed to push that week.

If you know someone looking for a PC, help them decide if they need a standard Pentium processor (or AMD Athlon) or can get away with getting a lesser priced Celeron (or AMD Sempron), there are only a few things you need to ask them.

1. Are you going to play any newer computer games? (Playing simple web games, or games like solitare on the PC don’t count.)

2. Are you going to be doing anything with multi-media, such as editing audio, video, etc? (Watching videos or listeing to audio on the PC don’t count.)

3. Are you going to be doing anything with graphics like a lot of photo editing in a program like Adobe Photoshop, or creating graphics using something like Adobe Illustrator? (Viewing photos and on the PC don’y count.)

If the answer is NO to all three of these questions, it would probably be fine to go  with a celeron (or Sempron) processor. If the answer is YES to any of the above questions, it’s better to spend the extra money and by a non-celeron processor like a standard Pentium or an AMD Atholon.

Has anyone seen “The 9″ on Yahoo? http://9.yahoo.com Interesting.

The problem with most “free” PDF creators I have tried is that they place a watermark, banner, or secondary page to the document you covert with some sort of branding or notice. This has been extremely annoying in the past. I had to purchase the Adobe Acrobat Writer to load on my business notebook in order to have a covertor that worked well and wouldn’t watermark my documents. This software has a lot of features (which you pay Adobe for), but for basic creation of PDF files, they are typically not needed.

Since Microsoft was planning on having PDF creation abilities in Office 2007, before Adobe sued them over it, I was going to wait to get a PDF writer from my home machine. Since Microsoft has to remove that feature in the release version of Office, I decided to search once again for a free PDF writer I could use on my home machine. After installing and testing several, I finnlay found one that worked well, was simple, and didn’t put branding in my documents… CutePDF. The program installs a simple print driver module in Windows, which you can select to print to a PDF file. Easy, simple, small install. It’s a great if all you need to do is create basic PDF files.

There are actually two files you need to download and install from the CutePDF web site. The “converter” and the “CuteWriter” programs. It doesn’t matter what oerder you install them in. You can download them directly from the CutePDF website. There are some more avanced products there as well for creating and managaing PDF files.

A new project from China, makes it possible to watch broadcast Television stremed over the Internet. The service is currently in beta. According to TVU Networks, once the service officially launches it will provide high qaulity video streams comparable to satellite for digital cable. The company is looking to recruit broadcasters interested in having their programs streamed over the internet and states that the content will be protected using DRM on the network.

In order to use the service you need to download a free player application which is a download slightly over 5MB, which expands to 13MB when installed. The services uses technology based upon P2P, which uses seeding to stream high quality content to viewers.

I downloaded the beta player and tested the service with good success on a 3MB cable broadband connection. The player shows a streaming rate of 1MB. The quality is good, however the player windows can not be resized to make the video full screen. Since the project is in beta, and based in China, there are several China based television sources. However, there are also many sources from other countries as well such as the US, Britian, and others.

You can donload the free player direclty from TVU Networks.

This week CA (formerly Computer Associates) aquired XOsoft, a data replication and disaster recovery software maker, as a wholely owned subsidiary. XOsoft has a solid software line up with it biggest competitor on the street being Double-Take (formerly NSI Software). This may provide opportunities to CA Partner Resellers in reselling such a solid and proven DR solution and opportunities for CA to expand and integrate the XOsoft technology solution into their other product lines.

It will be interesting to see what will come of this aquisition in the next few months.

Use the code “geek5″ at checkout and get 15% off order of $20+. This is the best code I have found so far for Go Daddy discounts. Courtesy of the Geek News Central podcast.

If you are only registering a few domain names you can use the code “chris3″ and get domains for $6.95. Courtesy of The Chris Pirillo Show.

I am testing the ‘Flash Filter Plus’ Plug-in for WordPress. It allows you to insert a mp3 file into a post and use an embedded flash player to play the file.

This plug-in has a very simple installation of copying a couple of files in a folder ot the plugins firectory then activating it through the plug-ins management console. It uses brackets [ around the path of the mp3 in a post to specify the file to use.

[http://www.itedge.net/blog/sounds/mssound.mp3]
You can get the plug-in for your wordpress site here.

There’s a name… “Windows Live Mail Desktop”. I don’t understand who at Microsoft picks the names for there products. I understand rebranding all of the MSN and online consumer serivces “Windows Live” whatever… such as Windows Live Mail. That name is fine. However “Windows Live Mail Desktop”? Ask a consumer what desktop means in reference to a PC and I but half can’t tell you. I think people are going to have a hard time undrstanding what this type of product/service really is. Will the average computer user actually understand that Windows Live Mail is different from Windows Live Mail Desktop? I guess time will tell. But I think this will cause brand confusion. Explaining to someone that “Windows” and “Windows Live” are something completely different from each other is hard enough.

Microsoft needs to consider the using of the “Windows Live” designation as “online services, applications, portals, sites” only. I can see then getting away with using Windows Live Messenger because you need to be online to use it. But Windows Live Mail Desktop is really a cross between Outlook Express and Windows Live Mail. It should be able to be used online or offline to read and compase mail like Outlook Express does. I really think the name needs to be revisted.

As far as the interface of Windows Live Mail Desktop Beta, here are a couple screen shots.

 
As far as the skyscraper ad which the Windows Live Mail team took out of the browser based version, they stuck it into the Windows Live Mail Desktop.

This add is REALLY distracting and annoying. It takes up way to much screen space. They need to consider moving to the same ad placement of the Windows Live Mail application.

I do like the login interface and the fact that you can log into your Windows Live account and other third-party mail accounts. An ability they took out of Outlook Express unless you upgraded to the MSN Hotmail Premium account. But I don’t have a premium since I don’t fell like paying for a service where 85% of the mail in my inbox is spam that slips through. So I am stuck using two application Otllok Express and a browser for my email. Windows Live Mail Desktop eliminated that restriction and supports the service though ad placement… which is fine if it wasn’t so intrusive. What do you think?