More Java Problems for APC

Posted: 8:51 am
March 20, 2006
Security
2 Comments

It seems like problems with APC are going to come back to the masses yet again. Remember last year? Well, it looks like strange things are afoot at the Java ranch again. Patch away. This kind of goes a long way toward showing you that appliances are not bullet proof. Sure they may not suffer from the same problems Microsoft operating systems do but they are still written by underpaid programmers and they still need to be managed. Patch away 🙂 APC Security Advisory for PowerChute Business Edition 7.x & PowerChute Network Shutdown 2.2.x Java Runtime Environment Unsigned Applet Privilege EscalationA problem exists with multiple versions of Sun's Java Runtime Environment (JRE) that may allow an unsigned applet to escalate its privileges. PowerChute Business Edition and PowerChute Network Shutdown may install a vulnerable JRE. For PowerChute Business Edition 7.x Users: Download and apply the JRE update patch to all machines running the PCBEagent or server. Official Announcement

MobilizeSMB Hits the Road

Posted: 1:47 am
March 20, 2006
Events
7 Comments

Amy Luby's roadshow, MobilizeSMB, is hitting the road. Best site, ever mostly because Amy is a client and its hosted here at own 🙂 Amy, Chad and Steve were on the SBS Show #15 (will air tomorrow) and they blew the roof off the thing. Solid two hours of recording the material. Amy is very popular for being very straight forward about what she does and if you like the SBS Show you will like this event. I give you my word. Mobilize SMB©: Taking the SMB Community to the Next Level Coming to a city near you! This half day workshop will provide the information and support you need as an SMB IT solution provider to help you build a solid SMB Managed Services Business Model. What are the pitfalls to avoid? How do I pay my technicians under this model? How do I know how many technicians I need in this new model? What are the stages in moving into a Managed Service Model? How will this affect my vendor relationships? How do I measure, and why does it matter what my technician utilization rates are? How do I sell managed services? How do I construct my service level agreements? Who wants these services? What or who is my competition and how are they doing managed services? Are there any vendors out there that understand my business? What tools are available? What skills do I need? June 5 Chicago, IL To register click here June 7 Detroit, MI To register click here June 9 Cincinnati, OH To register click here June 12 Louisville, KY To register click here June 14 Atlanta, GA To register click here June 20 Tampa, FL To register click here I will of course be at the one in Tampa. Look forward to seeing you out at this event!

SMB BS Epiphany

Posted: 3:21 pm
March 19, 2006
IT Culture, SMB
36 Comments

Yup, straight out of the IBM commercial. I was speaking with Bob Belon and Beatrice Mulzer around 1 AM last night (all three of us were working at the time on a Saturday night) and my Jimminy Cricket came on to give me a long deserved three-way bitchslap about trying to preach to ignorant people why they should be more professional as engineers and businessmen. Point taken, I'm done. As much as I believe that deep down inside everyone strives to be better and have a long-term philosophy for both their business and their customers that is simply not the case. I've been seriously depressed by the outright ignorance of many SMB IT consultants but until yesterday I just figured they were just never pointed in the right direction. Here are the idiotic quotes that piss me off to no end:

"I don't have time to read books, I'm too busy with real work!" "I'm on my way to the client, can you brief me on the basics?" "I've been in this business for a long time, nobody ever threatens me." "My customers will not buy that, they value me too much." "My customers are my friends, they even have a table set for me." "I am a high level strategic advisor, not a support monkey." "Dell/Microsoft/Google are not a threat, their support blows." "I don't want to call PSS, I'm probably just missing something easy so I'll spend next 12 hours to fix it myself." "I never want to be more than a single proprietor" "My customers do not see me as a vendor, I'm a trusted advisor"

Mind you these are the same folks that light a torch on fire the moment their freebies get even remotely stepped on by Microsoft. They are the first ones to storm the gates, migrate to Linux, recommend OpenOffice.org and vote with their feet. Meanwhile I'm the guy training these folks, I'm sponsoring community projects out of my own pocket and I'm pissing off my friends at Microsoft by representing the problems of this bunch? Chris is right, I am insane. No more. From this day forward I am done with the lowest common denominator of IT unemployment. I have my own monkeys to wrangle and train and I'd rather speak to real IT professionals and serious business owners than the supposed IT strategists that can't see the future past the stuff that is slamming them in the face.

More Exchange solutions on Vladville Wiki

Posted: 10:37 am
March 18, 2006
Exchange, Vladville
3 Comments

I've added a few more articles for commonly answered questions in the Microsoft Exchange 2003 newsgroup. They are linked in. How do I change how my name appears on messages I send out through Exchange? How do I deliver Exchange email to an external mail account? How can I customize the size of my OWA Scratch pad? SMTP Protocol / IMF Event Error 7514 with error code 0x800004002 Which features do I get with Windows Mobile 5 MSFP? How do I configure Outlook 2003 & Exchange 2003 for password protected SMTP relay? As a side note, William Lefkovics has a link to a few E12 webcasts that have aired so far. They are extensive (1:30 each) so if you're in the mood check them out.

E12 Virgin Install, Plunge method

Posted: 7:47 pm
March 17, 2006
E12
7 Comments

WARNING: This is my initial plunge into E12 Beta 1. This is not a final product, this is not a review of E12 and all of this is a lie. While pretty much everyone is out getting drunk, yours truly, the Exchange MVP remained home on a Friday afternoon working on the internal E12 deployment. Oooooh my god is this thing f'n awesome. For the first deployment I wanted to be as close to what an average "Exchange" system administrator does so I plowed through the install program without reading any documentation, release notes or prompts it threw back at me. I just kept on hitting next and OK to install. While this is not a very true representation of an average environment Exchange admins have (in that my Active Directory was properly configured and stable) I think I have gone far enough to the point of even getting into OWA. I have to say (sip of Koolade) that the Exchange 12 team did an incredible job. I say this with absolutely no sarcasm implied or intended: Illiterate and semi-literate admins will only be able to hurt themselves. By default Beta1 does not create any connectors or bindings whatsoever. In order to recieve email you have to drop to the new Exchange Management Shell (cute name for Monad/MSH) and create it by yourself. Documentation is awesome. Not only does it link back and forth in a relevant way but it also includes code examples, snippets, ability to search and send feedback. As for the features… wow. I am not allowed to comment on specific stuff due to the beta and the NDA but suffice to say it looks unreal. The marketing is interesting too, it ties into the new scheme you may see on live.com or Windows Mobile or at least that is my impression.

Bad Employee Treatment at Microsoft

Posted: 8:33 pm
March 16, 2006
IT Business, Microsoft
2 Comments

This one is for all my friends at Microsoft that haven't killed me (yet): The bitchslap of the week award goes to Bill Gates commenting on the $100 computer:

""If you are going to go have people share the computer, get a broadband connection and have somebody there who can help support the user, geez, get a decent computer where you can actually read the text and you're not sitting there cranking the thing while you're trying to type" Gates said."

Cranking the computer while you type? Talk about dissing your employee of the month!

Oh sweet RSS Irony

Posted: 7:50 pm
March 16, 2006
Open Source
2 Comments

So I'm going through my local Linux user group mailing list and a thread with the subject "[GoLugTech] Is this do-able in linux?" pops up. Alright, I'm intrigued if something can be done with Linux, what do you need? Are you curious too? Is that awesome or what?

Microsoft Small Business Summit a Failure?

Posted: 9:02 am
March 16, 2006
Events, Microsoft, SMB
9 Comments

There is a lot of public bashing about Microsoft Small Business Summit being a failure. From webcasts crashing to the poor application design all the way to the following line mentioned in the newsgroups:

"This has got to be the cheesiest setup ran by MS that I've seen and certainly would not make a small biz owner confident in going MS." – James Barrett

Ouch. Most of the fault here should go to the incompetent web developer Microsoft hired to put this thing together for them. I mean, when you're designing a nationwide campaign that will have broad appeal and require massive bandwidth do you trust your webmaster that can't figure out his way out of FrontPage/Dreamweaver or do you put it in the hands of people that run porn sites? No really, who do you think is more competent? Art school dropout or someone that needs to push thousands of simultaneous streams of Jenna Jameson without a nanosecond buffering pause? Nuff said. But lets stop bashing for a moment and consider what a success this has been for Microsoft and for small business everywhere. As someone that heavily promotes Microsoft SST presentations (TS2, Connections, Technet) I can tell you that the hardest thing to do is get a busy small business entrepreneur to take four hours away from their business in the middle of the day. It is down right impossible. Every single event I go to has roughly 400 invitations sent out to customers and potential customers — roughly 10-20 actually show up. Why? Time is money, and time from 8:00am – 5:00pm is even more money! I think that the idea of reaching these people over the web is absolutely brilliant. Really, I do. And despite engineering failures the site is pretty straight forward – watch the show, get the kit, find a local shop to help you with your small business technology. It looks good. Also keep in mind that this is the very first try by Microsoft to do something of this scale. Yes they have tons of LiveMeeting presentations every day but the attendance on those is dreadful – most of them have less than 30 people and the biggest one I've ever been on had just a touch over 100. They knew they could not pull this off in house, they just prospected their vendor poorly. We have all done that. Let's just try to be thankful that this event actually happened and that future ones are better. We are all trying to make small business aware of their need for stable managed networks and software and any effort on that part, no matter how poorly executed, is an A+ in my book.

Why become a Microsoft partner?

Posted: 10:20 pm
March 15, 2006
IT Business, Microsoft
Comments Off on Why become a Microsoft partner?

I was playing an interesting game with a friend called "who is the real Microsoft partner" among registered Microsoft partners. But what, oh what, could these guys find in the Microsoft Partner Program if their primary (or secondary or tertiary) business is not software or hardware solutions? I'm sure they are all just looking for industry analyst reports… yeah, thats gotta be it! I did my little localized search for Orlando and found roughly 300+ partners, several dozen of them not even real companies. But those that are will just shock you. Please tell me what are these businesses doing in the Partner program?: bank, NBA team, health & environmental consulting services, title company, used car salesman, A/C repair shop, hotel chain, sport promoter and even a kid toy marketing firm. But don't take my word for it, take a look at these local businesses and guess why they are partners?

ORLANDO FEDERAL CREDIT UNION http://www.orlandofcu.org Orlando Magic NBA Basketball franchise. Orlando Magic, Ltd. OHC Environmental Engineering, Inc. http://www.ohcnet.com OHC is a leading Florida-based corporation dedicated to providing comprehensive Occupational Health and environmental Consulting services. Teri Isner Orlando Real Estate and Real Estate Investments in Central Florida ATTORNEYS TITLE INSURANCE Real Estate Title Insurance for Attorneys www.thefund.com best used auto parts we sale parts and buy cars Efficient Air Systems, Inc. http://www.easiac.com air conditioner installations Superior Group LLC Our company is a hotel/resort community with major growth between now and 2007. The Ewings Group Sports sponsorships and Event marketing Conculting World's Fair for Kids World's Fair for Kids in an entertainment/marketing company designed to generate interest in youth-oriented products

Judge for yourself what Microsoft is doing to its legitimate partners by allowing these organizations in the partner program. Is it fair to criticise Microsoft for apparent lack of filtering? Absolutely. They are the gatekeeper and doing a lousy job. But they are not the only guilty party here. Rest assured that businesses did not just wake up one day and try to find a cheaper way – they were guided into it by their computer guy. If you recommend action pack to your clients you are no better than a pirate.

Commercial Office Space

Posted: 3:24 pm
March 15, 2006
IT Business, Misc
2 Comments

Ok, so this is a little off-topic from what is usually on my mind but I think it would be helpful to a lot of you. Following piece was written by Dana Epp, fellow Security MVP, on the subject of commercial office space and leasing. Don't you just love it when experts are not just one-dimensional drones? Here we go: — But I would like to comment on your lease negotiations. I have had success with a few of my companies now where I used a 'step-lease' to grow my business. It works like this. You sign a short term contract (say 1 year) where you ask for a step-lease, in which you have periods of time in which the payments grow. Maybe you start out at $500/month in Q1, then $575/month for Q2, $650 for Q3 and $725 for Q4. This gives your business time to adjust for the expenses and allows the property manager to have an expected cashflow. Don't be fooled… Their job is to try to get long term tenants in the building. They will typically work with you if you have achievable goals. Give yourself an out clause. I would typically negotiate a 3 month window. This would mean at any one time, I would have to pay 3 months rent if I decided to close down operations. And if you can, get an option for a second year at the original accepted lease agreement (in your case $750). In this way, they can't hold you hostage when your 1 year term ends. I have heard horror stories of tenants coming up to their last month on a lease and being held hostage by the property manager. You don't want to be in that uncomfortable position… Worrying if you have to move your office, get new letterhead/phone numbers etc. I'd also ask the property manager if you can get the triple-net fees broken down and in writing. It isn't uncommon for "common property" rate hikes (like gas prices rising)… And you can eliminate this risk by ensuring its all in writing. You can't afford to have unknown expenses hit you when you make sure a large overhead investment. As a final note, I would suggest NOT taking on sublet tenants. You have your own business to worry about… Fretting about real estate shouldn't be one of them. You don't want to have to source tenants, collect rent and worry about extra insurance and security to deal with it. If you can't afford this space on your own… find other space. I don't see why you can't find 300sq/ft to meet your needs for a lot less than that. Of course, I don't live in your area to be able to make a judgment call on that one. Get space that works FOR you. Don't become a SLAVE to it. — How's that for some good advice??