The KAUi Blog

When I'm Mobile...

2006-08-25T13:36:00.000-04:00

I do a lot of work from the field...almost literally the trenches. *grin* So the laptop I use has every possible connectivity option under the small G2 star we orbit around...even an antique 56K modem!

But the option to take the laptop with me is sometimes stymied by the destination or the abruptness of the "housecall" I have to make...so I have started placing copies of the important documents and such to a place where I can access them from anywhere on anything that professes to have a browser. My email is Gmail, I have a .Mac account to use their synchronization, shared calendaring, and hosted disk space services, and now I have begun to get familiar with the Google version of office productivity software - their spreadsheets in particular.

Look, pretty much we all know Excel, yes? So to have this ability through a browser makes the worry of which version is installed, which virus macros are going to delete my data, etc. non-existant. Security? Ha! Don't talk to me about security. If you are still in that fallacy, I could just point out all of the recent news articles on stolen laptops, purchased lists, and so forth. No, instead of security, your best defense is distribution...have your data anywhere you want it to be and if something gets stolen or compromised, you simply make the contents out of date or useless.

Yeah, Microsoft's twigging this whole thing slowly but surely...however, like their damnable Xbox-Live pseudo-ISP mockery, to use their products you will have to use their atrocious MSN services. I'd rather put up with Google ads than be pestered with a .Net key login and other proprietary muck. I want my YouTube to be Microsoft free, my itunes not married to a Windows Media player, and my spreadsheets so shackled to the latest rev of Excel that I can never really share them with others.

So when I'm mobile, I don't have to worry about forgetting my laptop, or having it in two places at once...and as far as data synchronization is concerned, there are dynamic links that work across the Internet...so there!

Quest for Small, Part 2: The Sublimely Ridiculous

2006-05-29T12:24:00.000-04:00

Okay, okay...I suppose I should watch my punnish use of titles and make sure I can reuse them properly. But you see, with the announcement of this week's goofiness, I just had to use the "Quest for Small" title again. Note the addendum.

So now: EGAD! I've heard of making products just to fulfill Microsoft's oddishness, but seriously - did anyone actually expect to get work done with one of these?

Now, I'm not a big fan of Windows-based PCs to being with, as recurring readers of this blog will know. But I must deal with them from time to time as they are attached to much of my lab equipment and what gets brought to the dig by my co-op students and visiting firemen. Still, I found one of these lying on a lab table the other day and messed with it a bit. Aside from making my eyes need bifocals before their time, it was peppy enough. Apparently, these things run a standard version of Windows XP, and you just have to get used to the pen or thumbwheel to get around. But now Microsoft has made these sorts of devices "official" and (like the Tablet PC) are using their massive 5K kilo gorilla mass to get us (the normally unsuspecting consumers of the world) to "buy" into it.

But wait! There's more!

Not to just let the idle concept of a hand-held, pocket-fitting PC for traveling suits be the goad, Microsoft now hoists the dreaded iPod killer approach to their own site. Don't just take these with you to do work, they cry, take them to watch this week's episodes of "Lost" through Apple's iTunes! Play proprietary encrypted MP3 software on our un-open Media Player (while we carp incessantly on Apple's approach to doing so and not on Real Media's)! Bring World of Warcraft with you on the fly and watch it tank before you even log in!

Plu-eeezeee.

Don't buy this eye-candy. You want a hand-held device that lets you work remotely, watch movies, play games, etc. from Sony? Spend one-tenth the cost of this Microsoft band-aid driven UX180P and get a PSP. It has WiFi. It plays movies. It plays music. It synchs with Outlook. And the form factor and ruggedness has been tested for three years. Want to do mobile music and video? Get an iPod. If you must REALLY have mobility computing, then ditch the Windows anchor and examine the existing or state-of-the-art solutions that don't fail on a whim. You know their names...you just didn't think they'd be useful enough? Give me a break. Vote with your usability, not your eye-candy brain. Blackberry, Palm, cellphones, etc. If your mobility requires the ability to hook up and do PowerPoint at the other end, Palms do that. Heck, iPods do that! Don't kill your eyes over this so-called "need"...work with your brain, not the Gen. 01 junk Microsoft creates just to get your cash, Nash.

'nuff said...now get back to work and do it on something that won't make corneal replacements a thing of your future!

Open Source-a-me!

2006-05-09T14:48:00.000-04:00

Many users have been poking into places that they shouldn't be, so to speak, without knowing the consequences. As with Ali Baba, open source has its forty thieves, ready to extract their revenge for the young adventurer daring to stray into their territory.

Let me explain the allegory.

In the original Thousand and One Nights, Schezerade told this tale of the lowly Ali, who happened to stumble across the lair of the forty thieves, heard the well-worn password, and discovered the Cave of Wonders - filled with the treasure of the thieves' years of stealing from others. Now, in a normal world, thieves try to pawn this loot for untraceable cash to fund their excessive ways, so Ali is literally stealing loot from thieves. Ali's morality was seen as heroic because those who would never see the excess of the thieves in their lifetimes would instead drain them of their loot. As usual, in Ali's tale, the listener backs the vagrant adventurer and roots for him to win - not the thieves, nor the original owners of that which was stolen.

Suppose you need a graphics editing program. As a business owner, you may see two options: Photoshop in its current form of $600 - $1300 (depending on if you need just the one app or the entire suite), or the Gimp, which is free. Both handle Photoshop formatted files, use Photoshop-API plug-ins, have roughly the same UI...but obviously, the Gimp is free and so you save the money. If everyone were to take this approach, Adobe would file for Chapter 11 within a year. Pundits of the open source movement would say, they deserved it, since they created software that was too expensive for people to buy - hence the reason for creating the free version. So the Gimp exists only because of the need for a Photoshop program, and so all of the work that was well-earned by Adobe will never be compensated.

Demand for open source versions of commercial applications abound. OpenOffice for Microsoft Office, Gimp for Photoshop, etc. Probably the same amount of man-hours was used by both the commercial and the free version to create the compatible application...yet more and more people are moving to the open source variant. Whole governments are doing this to retain document compatibility yet cut off the licensing and upgrade nightmare. But here is the caveat of Ali stealing from the thieves - if Microsoft's next version of Office contains a Office-only check to make sure only Office can use specific new features, will more reverse engineering by the open source programmers cross the line and become illegal?

My son is looking into a soprano saxophone, and after days of extensive websearch, I found two that stood the test of his teachers and parents alike. Most band members know of the Selmer brand...and at normal pricing, such a saxophone runs about $800. eBay has a few here and there slightly less. There's also a Bently brand out of the UK...unknown in the US, but praised over there. It, too, is under $800, which is about the limit we can afford for his experiment into this new instrument. But there's also the Sellmar and Sallmer brands...one-offs, we'd call them...for under $400 that are imitations preying on the name compatibility. Which do I buy? Where is the best investment? If I could pick up a free saxophone from a music store, would I trust it to play notes properly? To be compatible with replacement parts and proper tuning?

I'm not against the open source concept at all...but to me, the open source product should be oriented towards adding value instead of just replicating the commercial product. Graphic Converter is a spiffy shareware program that has all of the editing and conversion features I need from a Photoshop-like program...for $35. I use this, not Photoshop, nor Gimp. It has batch conversion and batch edit...something neither of the other two candidates have, plus a bunch of other features. I got a fresh approach on an old editing problem and the cost was low due to the fact that it's just one guy that has to be supported by sales...not a monoculture such as Redmond.

Let's hope the rest of open source and shareware moves in that direction...to take the advantage of being different and producing something truly wonderful. That way, it will be a vein of gold that Ali finds in the cave and not the labors of someone else that have been pilfered.

We Didn't Start the Firewall...

2006-04-26T12:19:00.000-04:00

The average number of stories on Microsoft Vista daily exceeds two dozen or so...but this one...

I had to check the calendar to make sure it wasn't April 1st again...this surely isn't true. Microsoft is intentionally crippling what passes for a firewall in their next version, state of the art operating system? In these days of malicious invasion by anything and everyone looking for kicks, this is being put down to "strong feedback from our customers". I don't buy that. The first thing I see when I go into a client are the holes in their technology...it's second nature to me now, since we deal with security consulting...and to introduce anything into a corporation that has holes would normally lose someone a job.

If this sort of statement is meant to scare us, it has. If it was meant to put us on alert for how to deploy this version, it did. If it was meant to caution us as to the negligence on their part, SSDD. About the only positive thing that came from this was an attempt at honesty as to the usability of a yet unreleased product. Mac OS X, Linux, and just about every other OS in commercial and enterprise use comes with firewalls ON and fully configured to keep things nice and clean. Color me confused as to why Microsoft wants to keep the outbound traffic lanes totally open...anything can come in through 80 these days, which is open if you want web browsing, so to let any invasion to spead outward...

Hopefully, before the actual Vista-leaden PC is out on the streets, they reconsider this...or at least from the home user's standpoint.

Quest for Small

2006-04-13T11:20:00.000-04:00

As an anthropologist, I am often appalled at the way other perceptions of our craft are misinterpreted. I suppose it's similar to how Hollywood slices and dices the psychiatric profession - we laugh at the Freudian image that is overused of stolid and Victorian-era dressed misanthrope sits and listens without producing meaningful results. In truth, today's psychiatrist or psychologist (the two genres are confused so often, but they are unique and independent approaches to analysis) are nowhere near that viewpoint...but that is the image that worked its way into the Western cultural matrix and so is used to convey the role without going into hideous amounts of backstory.

With respect to anthropology, we are seen as Indiana Jones...the adventurous individual that fights snakes, evil doers, etc. to find the Holy Grail. The image also associated with us, once we find the results, is of selling them to the highest bidder. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course. The modern anthropologist (and the mythos-associated paleo- or archaeologist...clad together in folks' minds like the Freudian Siamese twin) is more like the lab technician on the CSI shows. We search for the smallest of findings and extrapolate backwards from the trivia to its place in the whole of the culture we seek to model. And a model it is, as most ancient cultures did not have a fully digital matrix of cultural symbology as Western civilization does today for future of my kind to not have to guess at.

Mark and I were haggling at this idea the other day, and it was amazingly similar to his client's perception of what the concept of an IT "geek" is today...and I told him so. My perception of our culture's defined model of an IT geek is a pale-skinned, bespectacled youthful male with geek-speak t-shirt, dirty and unwashed hair and pants, eyes glued to the raw glow of the tube placed mentally in front of him. Again, the reality of this is far from the truth.

Now, I don't work for these folks...but I study them absent-mindedly as it is my chosen profession. I am not a sociologist, per se, but as a whole, an anthropologist frames the Way of Man as an artwork of evolution, and in this timeslice, the IT geek typifies the same role as the peak technologist of this era. In previous eras, we have shipbuilders, artisans, and hunters take that title.

As with most of my prodigious mental hypertexts, this rationale led me to flash upon what is perhaps the best cultural exposition of Man's early years at the dawn of true culture, brought to film, which is the last century's cultural recording media - a small and under-rated movie called "Quest for Fire". Hideously panned by the normal reviewers, thought of as "too aesthetic" by most, it paints a decided realistic timeslice of the timeframe at which humans began to work with altering its environment. The main character in fact learns how to use a small technological tool from a culture that has already mastered it, and in doing so, changes his tribe's way forever. While not histrionically or anthropologically 100% correct, it comes much closer than anything else about another mythologically-cast socio-image...the cave man. Hence the link.

All of these "typecast" roles in history...the psychologist, the anthropologist, the geek, and the cave man...can all be symbolized by the concept of an individual searching for the small. Not, as they are often plastered into imagery, the large. By looking at the small, we examine everything it is built upon, like looking at a single Lego brick and inferring the complete build. Unless you get it right, the whole concept goes wrong...and such is the danger of the observer changing the observed through just the simple process of observing.

So when you next look at the geek or the trench-digger or the shrink, stop and ask yourself why these non-appealing and deprecatory terms came to be, instead of honorable ones like "consultant", "technician", or "healer". Why force yourself into accepting the media-framed images of our kind, when you can simply look again and understand these folks' role in changing our culture by studying and working with the minutiae?

[Insert your "it will never happen" allegory here]

2006-04-10T12:50:00.000-04:00

Yes, all of them have been used in the past couple of days. Pigs are seeking ground clearance at SFO. Mr. Sympathy himself has added showshoes to his closet. All this because Apple has done something that changed a fundamental computing methodology -- that you aren't supposed to be ambidextrous. It has officially sanctioned the use of Windows XP on Apple hardware. Called Boot Camp, it lets you run WinXP and MacOS X on the same piece of hardware. So you no longer have an excuse to "why not buy a Mac". It runs native Windows software...faster than any other similar stalwart. Without emulation. Without damage.

Steve is smart. You never say something is impossible...everyone will work out a way to make it so. Instead, you do it right and then let the proverbial chips fall into appropriate locations. They aren't supporting Windows. They aren't writing Windows stuff (yet). They just made a good call on the availability of decent, fast processors and as a side-effect, gained the ability to boost hardware sales...and make loads of new friends in the process. I foresee the next step...the ability to run any application as a process under X...Mac apps, Java apps, UNIX apps, Windows apps. Install that copy of WinXP legally on the machine, and X will legally load the right DLLs and spawn the native Windows program as a process under X. Don't think that can happen? Remember Classic?

So what's going to happen is this: Apple makes significantly smooth products. Microsoft and other Windows vendors just got a whole new set of customers...Mac users who still needed a Windows-specific program that hadn't been ported. Dig the IT support geeks who stop a Mac from walking in now. The geek opens the latch and voila! Windows! So you get to sneak it in to work with.

Microsoft can't yell...each Mac will have to own a copy of WinXP. Microsoft should actually love it...it gets the Justice Department off its back. End users should love it...run Oblivion on a Mac, at the same time of getting mail via Entourage. Cool thing is that, as a separate process, if a Windows app crashes, no blue screen of death. Just a "the application -- has unexpectedly ended".

What's the long term result? Unknown. One can guess. From our perspective, we've been lugging a single laptop around for ages...I run Virtual PC and start any version of Windows to test things with. It will be nicer to have native speed, but it wasn't a major option for me.

Steve and the Cupertino Clan will continue to make insanely great stuff. Ever imagined Final Cut running native under windows? How about iLife? It may now happen, as they just released both to run under the Intel Macs. Windows users want the speed? Hey, how about putting the Intel version of X on your Dell? Still need to run Outlook...well...no problem!

By giving up the legacy of "classic" and the shackles of PPC, Apple is now poised to release software, operating systems, and hardware for everyone. Expect more soon, and hope your investment guy bought you apple when it was $25.

Slow down...you're moving too fast...

2006-03-26T10:57:00.000-05:00

The buzz last week was all about how Microsoft has announced a public delay to the next version of Windows, named "Vista". Everyone was crying...vendors for not being able to sell more hardware before Christmas (people will not buy new PCs unless it comes with bling-bling), software authors for not being able to ship their Vista-specific titles, developers for not being able to close their Vista-related projects, and Intel for griping in general.

But before the stock market plummets on this announcement, there are two points of view not heard from -- the IT gurus who will have to roll this 7-year itch out to the end users, and the end users who will have to go through yet another drastic change in their lives. For these two camps, there is nothing but joy at the delay...as this will postpone the drastic loss of productivity time until calendar and budget year 2007.

Let us digress into why they want no part of Vista until it is proverbially jammed down their throats by the media and forced migration gods.

True users care not for bling-bling...they want the machine to start, to work, and to be consistent. They buy cars that will last five years. They will always eat the same foodstuffs. It's not about snazz and glitter...it's about productivity. Managers want eight hours of work out of me per day, they think, so I don't want to be impeded by rebooting three to six times a day, having to constantly hide Office paperclips, worry about the lack of anti-virus updates, and so forth. If the vendors and manufacturers want to roll these sorts of changes out, why not in small, incremental and non-destructive steps? Why every two to three years are we forced to take giant steps and fall behind for three to six months?

There is somewhat of a slowing of this process...Gartner's reports on the overall percentage of Windows XP and Office 2003 non-adoption are significant. And XP is almost seven years old. We still support people with Windows 98 and Office 97 - ones who have no need for the bling-bling, and their problems are being forced to upgrade. Why is that an issue? Oh, many know this answer...in order for Microsoft to be profitable, the world has to buy in to every upgrade and force the issue of upgrading hardware and accessories. A similar process exists in what Detroit and Los Angeles feed the world, but since the IT industry moves at lightspeed, the tremors from this Vista upheaval are more like earthquakes.

Detroit has been forced to re-examine the vox populii as gas prices and usage trends change. Los Angeles is also reworking itself due to advances in Internet delivery methodologies. Perhaps Redmond should be working on more of a relaxed, revisionary approach instead of yearly Office upgrades and quantum-leap Windows versions. Worry more about getting it to work RIGHT instead of bling-bling.

Hacking the underbrush

2006-03-15T16:17:00.000-05:00

Grrrr! I hate when the commercial media picks up on something they think will sell more advertising dollars by dumb and dumber folks actually watching or reading the commercial crap sliced into it! Anything reasonable to report will be boring, I'm sure...but cough up on something that would fit just as easily on the cover of the National Enquirer (speaking of which...if you want an example of a BAD web site, go there...most of the material on the main page is selling their print editions...duh!), and you get that piece of data chewed up by nonsense editors (who are also instructed to make it sound worse intentionally) and then clipped until it is primo sensationalism.

What's got me riled this time, you ask? The Daily Hack a Mac bleed, of course!

Okay. Okay. I use one. I don't want the adware, spyware, BSOD, or perpetual troika of reboots. I don't want the reinstallation of Windows monthly. I do want to be able to work in a standard document format, so I don't use Brand U 'nixes and OpenOffice. Macs are fine with me, and I hate to see folks looking for ways to slice Steve and the Cupertino Gang down. (Another side note: you never see Steve spin doctoring these tabloids, do ya? Learn it, Ballmer!)

So a week or so ago some nimrod in Sweden boasts that he hacked a Mac in less than 30 minutes. BIG tabloid exploitations!!! Almost as big as Tom Cruise gets!!!! Film at eleven!!! Ah...but read the fine print...and the next day we hear that this guy got in because (1) the Mac was intentionally left open for rlogin and (2) the fool was given a local account ID and password. But NO WAY can you tell the tabloid media nebbishes THIS factoid. It doesn't SING. It doesn't sell Preparation-H or Depends.

So last week I have a friend come over and hang out. I was fired up with my WoW character, slicing and dicing when he walks in.

"Dru! You still using a MAC???? Girl, they got hacked!!!"

I glower and complete the quest before replying. "Did you read the rest of the story?"

"There was a rest?"

"Yeah. But if you want, we'll let you try and smite mine." (The boy thinks he's a hacker...Univeristy of Idaho regents, take note: no danger from this one as you will see...) He brings over his Toshiba that is running Fedora 4 and is supposedly radioactive with hack tools and such. I connect him to my network, give him my local ip address, and start playing WoW. "Free pizza for you if you do it in under 30 minutes," I say before he presses a key.

"Solid! It's mine!"

30 minutes go by. "Any luck yet?" I ask, busily flying into Silithus. I see no interruptions.

"Uh..."

"Didn't think so. Prize is now a free Coke if you do it in under an hour."

Another hour goes by. I've managed to increase my rep with the Cenarion Circle folks by 1000 points. "Well?"

No reply.

"Dude, your credibility as a closet hacker is on the line," I say. No reply. "Prize is now I DON'T tell your boyz about this," I warned him.

"Aw, Dru!"

"Hey! You said it was easy...show me."

"Well, the press..."

"Ah-ha!!" I stand up and point skyward. "There's your first mistake, monkey-boy. You believe in THE PRESS?" I close up show in Azeroth and walk over to his PC. How far did you get? Maybe I'll give you partial credit."

"I can ping it..."

"Amazing! So can the rest of the world. Did you get in? Any way, shape, or form of same?"

"Uh..."

"I thought not," I grinned, rankling him more. "Go back and re-read the article. When you have the machine in its normal mode, with all of the current updates, basic security stuff turned on, and DON'T give out a login ID, you are Fort Knox on this baby. I wouldn't use it otherwise."

Exit another fallen warrior. This is why I get rankled. None of these media dweebs...these n00bs of the Internet RSS feeds (notice none of the real news folks on the web would ever give out a PARTIAL story)...none of them ever try it themselves. What ever happened to the concept of "freedom of speech" and protecting the "free press" by being RIGHT? Gone the way of Redford and Hoffman, I suppose.

Windows and UNIX users take note: yeah, yeah, properly secured your boxes will resist kryptonite. But they DON'T come out of the box that way, do they...?

Got a machete handy, anyone?

If you want something done right...

2006-03-07T15:33:00.000-05:00

My friend Professor Joplin would say that we are in an era of evolutionary flux, both biologically and culturally. My use of this statement will no doubt bring her to attack the context of my usage of it in this blog (and I certainly hope she uses this forum to do so), but her paradigm illustrates the world in general...I seek its usage as an explanation of why the IT industry today is also in a flux of a similar nature.

At the end of the previous century, with the emotional world in a state of hesitant dread of what the zeroes would do to our collective psyche, the IT industry was doubled over with a certain two-digit doom that most companies knew about when they coded it ten to twenty years earlier and yet waited until the last moment before even admitting it was an issue -- let alone actually taking hard-fought budget dollars to correct it. I speak, of course, of the Y2K debacle. At the time, I was working with a couple of Fortune 500 corporations in their effort to slay this proverbial dragon before he breathed fire on January 1st, 2000, and what should have been an easy walk in the allegorical park turned into a dark, revealing nightmare of hardware and software replacement that far outstripped their budgeted IT dollars. But the day came and went without the world ending, and computers went on to keep printing social security and accounts payable checks. Life went on.

Into the void left by this sudden collective exhalation went the Dot.com investment bubble that popped shortly thereafter when the IT dollars that had been under-budgeted failed to reappear. In a lot of analysts' minds, it never will be as "fluid" of an IT budget as it was for Y2K...and I tend to agree. There will never again be the sort of protracted effort and funding that was the Apollo Program, either -- but that didn't stop the space effort. Just changed it into fetching gorgeous images from the surface of Titan and Mars rovers who are working a year past their supposed "mean time to fail" that are proving the world once had flowing water. A similar evolutionary change (hence my borrowing of the good doctor's phrase) in IT is happening now. And it is tending to be more of the result of the old adage, "if you want something done right, do it yourself".

Now, since our company specializes in consulting and training, one might think such a change means our death. Quite the contrary. Instead, it means companies will want to bring full IT facilities in-house to avoid repetitive costs, and therefore must turn to facilitators like us to teach them how to do so, or consult with us on the ways and means. In fact, this approach is a sound one financially for the company, since its result is that you have more control over how quickly "bleeding edge" technologies are adopted -- or if they are even looked at -- and how essential the migrations to newer methodologies are. Cost effective notions, as well as proper planning that can easily fit into budget forecasting.

So if you are a business or an individual that hears the constant barrage of "bigger, better, faster, more" from vendors or the IT community as a whole, think twice. You have control of the IT evolution that represents your niche. It doesn't mean you will reach "extinction" because you aren't keeping up...it means your evolution will be a gradual and longer lasting adoption of the critical IT elements and technologies, since you ARE managing them. And the role of the consultant or trainer is one of assisting that evolution...not hastening it towards the realm of the dodo.

Going through security...

2006-03-01T18:55:00.000-05:00

"Just a song before I go..." begins a song from a legacy band of the late 60s - Crosby, Stills, and Nash. The song is of a transit time we all face in leaving a loved one for a voyage and its apprehension. At the time this song was written, 9/11/01 was ten or so years into the future, so the ability for the singer to hold his loved one while going through security can no longer happen.

"Going through security
I held her for so long
She finally looked at me in love
And she was gone"

Today I was on the phone to a client calming them down about their PCs being "invaded" by the plethora of nasties out and about. They are an all Windows shop, and pretty much had what they thought was sufficient lines of defense -- exterior firewall, interior DMZ, router using NATs, individual PCs coated with Norton Internet Security and AntiVirus, Webroot's Spy Sweeper, XP SP 2 and its firewall turned on, etc. Took me all of three minutes to go past it all and freely read files on all of their machines using openly-posted tools built by hackers just for that purpose -- and I'm sure there are those out there that could have done it in less time with less steps...but the point was that I COULD get in past all of their "security" and reach their mother lode.

In desparation, they felt worse than better...but I reassured them in the fact that, by finding out their weaknesses, I could show them how to close these gaps and be wary of others. The Discovery Channel has a program that "stole" its title from a 1960's TV show, "It Takes a Thief" to legally rip people off in the hopes they will learn how to handle it...nifty premise, but far too expensive for a normal homeowner to use.

When it comes to PC security, Rule One is that NO operating system is 100% foolproof. Rule Two is that if ANYONE wants to get in and knows ALL of the tricks, they WILL get in. You mission, Jim, should you decide to accept it, is to judge what to do with your belongings, not how to put your PC into total uselessness by overloading it with security shells. What does this mean? Well, if you encrypt your sensitive documents, if you block your PCs outbound network sharing, if you change your passwords regularly or use a biometric key, then no matter how they get in, what they find is next to useless. Do they have time to decrypt documents? Break internal VPN passwords? Hack around the biometrics?

I'm not saying you throw down all of the defenses...you just make their approaches meaningless. Folks want to hack to FIND something...not to do it and just brag that they did. If they don't have proof (by modifying web pages, stealing personal info, etc), then no one believes it.

There are many tools to encrypt files and information that use the strongest methodologies known to mankind. Trying to decrypt this with programs even would require twenty years of compute time...and then the information inside them would be useless. There's a UK group that announced they finally decrypted a sixty-plus year old Enigma message that WASN'T created by a computer, but a machine with human-movable parts. They offer a downloadable applet to use your "free" computer time to help decrypt the rest of these messages. For what purpose? To say it could be done? To add a historical footnote?

Your choice of security methodologies needs to be more than the thickness and armor around the outside of the city. The right catapult will smash your armies to death within the walls without having to use a battering ram -- the defense approach you thought would be needed. Look into the encryption techniques...the configuration for the internals of the system...and you will find the mentality of the hacker will change and start to leave you alone.

Passing from the acceptable...

2006-02-22T15:26:00.000-05:00

Augh! Will they ever end? These telcos and cablecos that insist that the only way to keep customers is to always charge them more! To paraphrase the infamous cartoon sailer, "I've had all I can stands...and I can't stands no more!"

Here's the scenarios:

I don't use phones much in my business. Not too many times I need to call someone from inside a dig, and once I get back to my apartment, it's usually too late to call anybody. When I do use one, it's usually a cellphone that has been loaned to me by one of the folks with me, and usually to call 911 or for pizza. But I decided last year to get a cellphone since I hate imposing too many times before my next foray into the ground. Picking a cell provider...a plan...a phone...the options...egad! It's frustrating, and not easy for folks like me who don't need massive amounts of time, no gmaes, no camera phone...nothing but the equivaent of the ground=based phone line, right? WRONG! THIS OPTION IS NOT AVAILABLE!!!! It is all of these "extras" that makes the cost of the phone close to free (if not free), and it is the minimum duration of the "plans" they offer that recovers their costs.

Let's work it out. Sample plan: 500 daytime minutes/month, 5000 weekend/night munites per month = $40/month. Minimum of two years. 24 * 40 = $960. But wait, there's more! You are allowed ONLY to have a state-of-the-art Internet and photo cellphone to get this offer...and to use the Internet, that's an additional $5/month to have any access, then $1 per megabyte transferred, etc. So your monthly gets to be $60/month, or $1440. Feel stiffed yet? Now go into the usualy side-issue of exceeding the 500/month daytime minutes. If you are a business person, you will use those in two weeks. Overage cost per minute of exceeded usage, $2/min?????? Yes, that is indeed it for some telcos. So you can end up with a SINGLE month's phone bill of over $1000...and originally you only wanted to talk to people!

Try tracphones, some say. Prepaid cost, no option phones. Fixed cost to set up, fixed usage that you can control. Problem is, exceed here and you will have to find a place that sells the cards or wait for the extension to come in the mail.

So instead of signing up for either, I began to use Skype on my laptop, and voila! No hassles! Fixed cost for non-Skype usage (to a ground/cell phone number), regardless of location. Free Skype to Skype anywhere. Some folks say I sound odd when they hear me, but I just wanted a mobile phone, dammit! Check it out, and nix the telcos "free offers". Oh, but you're using Vonage - voice over IP. And...you had to increase your Internet costs to broadband to handle that one, yes? But you have a physical phone that works. Except you can't do 911, and they gave you all these nifty options...

Okay, so I finish the rant on the telco...what about the cableco? *rubbing hands briskly* Ha! Even worse. I don't need Mr. Springsteen's song in my head everytime I sit down at the tube ("57 channels and nothin' on..."). I don't watch HBO, Starz, Showtime, ESPN...NONE OF THEM. I want the weather, some local news, the occasional decent show, and maybe HD quality. None of this other garbage. BUT I CAN'T GET IT MY WAY!!!! What if the power company said they would have to charge more if you didn't use Sears 'fridges? The water company if you didn't use American Standard toilets? EGAD!

This telco and cableco business is getting out of hand. I can only hope Steve Jobs is working on iVideos so I can pick and choose the shows and movies I want to watch...and the iPhone, VoIP through WiFi. Hey, he pulled two rabbits out of the collective hat that already shook up the entire Universe...why not two more? I did the cost breakdown. My current cable bill is $60 a month for the "bare essentials" (from their perspective). I watch two, maybe three movies and only one weekly show. At Steve's pricing, that would come to $10 (3*$2/movie, 4*$1/TV show), and I can use the other $50 for my meals. VoIP on WiFi? Excellent! It's just a device, right? Like an iPod. So it's only the cost of the WiFi provider, which at the Starbucks is $20/month. Primo! I'm already liking it! Get it out there, Stevie-boy! I want that "just one more thing" now!

It wasn't always this way...and I don't have to go to my parents to get there "when I was your age" mantra. It was normal before cellphones and cable TV. It is the massive profit taking that these companies want to take that caused this mess...and it's time for us consumers to slice and dice that opinion. We forced the deregulation of everything else, right?

So when you get the option to remove these guys from your life, TAKE IT. I will...and you will certainly hear from me here when it happens!

Migrations Out of Season

2006-02-20T15:57:00.000-05:00

Right now, it's about the freezing point out my office window...and as it is heading towards dusk, that little bit of sheen I see from today's drizzling could possibly turn into black ice. So I check to make sure my cell is fully charged, my iPod has Mr. King's latest (Cell), and the appropriate amount of geekish snacks are in my PowerBook's heavy-duty sporran. Those in the know will know why I do this...those that do not haven't been in Atlantean rush hour traffic in its simulation of winter weather of questionable nature.

But as I look outside, I notice a cardinal on the early-budding dogwood, rapidly picking away at the miniscule buds forming, in search of his form of data farming. Neither the budding dogwood nor its data miner are supposed to be in this state at this time of year...yet they are there...and I am about to face the same environment with the high possibility of extraneous time loss. Who is the more foolish...me or the cardinal?

Into this semi-Zen state of reflection, a phone call comes from one of our customers who wonders which version of Microsoft Windows 2003 Server is right for their particular set of circumstances, so that they can order it and have us come for the migration of virtuals swallows to Redmond. The solution of a Win2K3 server is solid for their particular circumstance...they need users to connect remotely and use Microsoft Office, QuickBooks, et al...as well as provide shared web and file services. They are a 100% Windows client shop, and to migrate them over to a non-Windows environment at this point is about as hopeless as the cardinal's current data mining -- as well as more expensive, since they would have to relearn everything they already know, cutting into their time tens times as much as the drive home today will mine.

Consulting, too, is a seasonal environment, in that the solutions are dictated more by the client's current IT schema rather than the optimal one. Walk into a business that has no solution already in place for their request, it will go one way...walk into a legacy- or budget-bound circumstance, and you will be forced to use another. Evolution, in the biological sense, means the adaptive species must be able to weather all of the seasons...so, too, must the adaptive consultant. To survive, the consultant must be ready to adapt...and to have their client to adapt...to not only the current "seasonal" IT issues, but the future ranges of "weather" as well -- or else, it was not a good consulting solution. It is foolhardy to try and reason with the cardinal at this point...or even worse to try reasoning with the dogwood. The cardinal nips at the buds to live...the dogwood plans to flower regardless of the cardinal's attempts to "over mine" its data.

A good consultant will know as much as possible about everything possible. While the seasons of IT flux and flow, the patterns are cyclic and thus map to our Zennish allegory of environmental change. Who is the consultant that the cardinal will speak with before the bud-nipping proves to be not only futile, but life threatening? Who will suggest the migration of the dogwood into safer climes that do not adversely trigger its data loss prior to the planned time?

If you are (in the Zennish sense) either the cardinal or the dogwood, don't fear the consultant. But do be ready to use their services in full...not in part. If you have committed yourself to the budnipping without listening to the weather advisory and recommendation of waiting for the dogwoods to bloom, do not blame the consultant for your resultant maladies. The information he or she has provided, if well-thought and researched, could save your business not only money, but its future. If you are the dogwood and wonder why each year the flowers bloom at the wrong time, speak to the consultant and have him or her transplant your business into a more beneficial environment before the buds no longer form at all.

Pundits at the Gates of Troy

2006-02-17T15:25:00.000-05:00

*shaking head sadly* You know, it's always interesting to see the IT pundits try to slice and dice non-Windows platforms...

Yesterday and today, there are zillions of news articles proudly proclaiming "see I told you so!" with respect to the "Mac is secure against viruses" cry of the Cupertino faithful. As with the infamous headlines of the National Enquirer, these overglossing articles fail to point out the pure facts of the information.

Since MacOS X's delivery five years ago, there have been three "confirmed" trojan horse applications created...only one of which was actually released into the field and the other two were "concept" programs created to show that under the right set of circumstances, it could be a threat. In the same time period, over 35,000 new Windows-based viruses, trojans, spyware, and worms have been released straight into the world to wreak havoc.

Before any Mac user goes and cowers, there are three things that MUST happen before any of the three in question succeed in doing harm to your Mac. (1) You must allow it to happen by accepting a file from another person who has it, (2) You must then allow the infection to complete the process of getting into the operating system by entering your administration password to permit it to do so, and (3) you must be completely out of your mind.

UNIX as an operating system rarely gets these issues, but they do occur...usually the exploit of a process or portion of the operating system that communicates with the outside world, such as a web server, ftp server, or file server. By running any of these and using them, you allow folks to try and get in to begin with, right? So these services must allow a general "okay you're there, what can I do for you" kind of feel to them. But with the open source nature of things in the UNIX world, it allows for quick fixes that are immediately placed into the channel, and anyone who wishes to can get these integrated into their OS right away. There is no Norton AntiVirus for UNIX...meaning the danger isn't there enough to make a market demand.

So now we come to the three (count them, three) MacOS X "trojans". Each one is designed to take advantage of a specific flaw found in an underlying technology that was in the UNIX history to begin with...or an associated I/O technology, like Bluetooth. With the Bluetooth one, for example, you'd have to infect within 30 feet of your target, and that the "allow me to be discovered" option be on. No spreading across the Internet. No inclusion in an email. Another requires a file transfer through iChat. So if you don't use that program, no spreading...and if you do, the person at the other end has to accept a file from the infected machine, allow it to be expanded from a compressed format, and allow the OS to execute it.

Frankly, this is akin to saying, if I stand in the driveway, and someone opens the garage door, and they get into the car without seeing me standing behind them, and they back out without looking, and I don't move, I will get hit by a car. Sure, it's possible. But to continue the allegory, in the Windows world, I can be sleeping in my bed behind locked doors and a security system, and STILL get rolled over by a steam roller. It's a difference in the programming environment, the operating system, the security ideology, and the nature of the desire by Microsoft to have applications be "friendly" with each other. This is why there are over 100,000 viruses/trojans/worms, over 65,000 spyware/adware, and over 30 different protection programs in the Windows world.

Another recent article said that a "protected" Mac was hacked and changed, suprising its owner. Oh, yeah...he forgot to mention in the first report that his web services were on, file sharing was on, and he did not turn on a few other secure features that are provided to thwart "intentional' hacks. Heck, I can walk into any company, sit down at their computers, see everything, and do anything. What was the point of these articles? The only thing I can think of is to prevent people from thinking different (as the old Apple ads used to say), and trying a non-Windows approach. But isn't this the concept of competition, of free enterprise?

As Sgt. Joe Friday used to say, "Just the facts, m'am." These writers should do that: stick to the facts, and make sure ALL of them get printed. Or else we'll start expecting to see headlines like, "Giant Server Footprint Seen in Central Park!" next. I'm not a Windows-basher...but I hate when the news is slanted, biased, filtered, spun, or blocked. Peer past the Gates of Troy in Life and suspect that funky-looking wooden horse that was supposed to be a "gift" from your enemies. No reason to get that durned thing as a trophy...you won the battle, right?

Try this before your buy...

2006-02-16T16:26:00.000-05:00

We are pretty much in a time of a purchasing paradox.

Buy a personal computer today and you have loads of hardware choices -- desktops, laptops, server, Tablet PC, Media PC, custom -- but up until recently, once you have bought the hardware of your dreams...or the one your Aunt Mary is using...you became stuck with the costs of running it.

But why did you buy the computer in the first place?

Gartner does polls. CNN does polls. CNet does polls. Everyone can find a published poll that says this or that about the primary reason for an individual to buy a computer. If you are working in IT, your business is pretty much dead without one, so you can't ask us. So I asked my Mom, who is a retired RN, and didn't touch a computer until about three years ago. She knew she was going to go into scrapbooking and all of her circle of 'scrappers' had email addresses and passed along their tips and links to on-line images of their work that way.

So she bought a WebTV box (before it was purchased by Microsoft and became MSNTV). No PCs in her house. Just her TV and a keyboard. Heck, these days you can buy a PS3 or an Xbox 360 to surf and mail. So why are computers still selling?

All of the above mentioned polls on computer purchases place the Internet at #1. Yet the Internet brings the viruses, the spam, the pop-ups, the porn...all of what is bad along with all that is good. All of this unasked for information comes courtesy of hackers plunging directly into your computers via the open invitations left that are not totally secured. You can surf the web from your TV and avoid that issue, as Mom has found out. Or from your PSP, as my eldest does. So we can remove the reason for actually buying a personal computer just for the Internet by pointing out much more cost effective and secure hardware exists...even your cellphone can surf the web, right? And get mail?

#2 for most of the polls is gaming. Ah. I see. We have the computer, $500 and up to $1500 yearly in maintenance/repair fees, versus the $99 Playstation 2 with no repair/maintenance fees. Games for the PC at $30 - $50 versus same games $15 - $30 for the PS2. There are few games that you play solo that aren't also available for one of the gaming boxes. The online ones that require a PC are for its processing speed (both CPU and graphics) that should be addressed by newer boxes, I suppose. But the PS2 I have at home browses the web, gets email, and plays online games quite well.

#3 is compatiblity with work. You have to use Microsoft Office at work, so you spend $1000 ($500 PC, $275 Office, $225 printer and peripherals) to work 1 - 2 hours at home. Is that daily work from home? Oh, you telecommute. Good. Accessing the work machine from home can be done on the TV or anything else that supports a web browser. Didn't know that one, eh? You do now. See me after class for the details. But your employer doesn't offer that capability? Okay, open a Word or Excel document with 100% compatibility with OpenOffice 2.0 which is free. Cut your costs back down to the $500.

Better yet, why not take that old laptop or desktop out of the garage or attic, download a UNIX variant, and do everything on the above reasoning list for free...and have the side-effect of being virus/spam/pop-up free. Yeah, you've heard that one before. No games for UNIX, you say. No Office for UNIX. *buzz* Wrong. Games for UNIX ARE there (if you'll admit to actually justifying the new machine purchase just for the gaming), and OpenOffice IS compatible with Microsoft Office.

I'm not saying you pitch everything you have and start anew. I suggest that your future purchasing is always being forced into the realm of BBFM (bigger, better, faster, more) by the behemoth that is the Marketing Machine. So you purchase an entire set of Craftsman tools when all you need is a single Phillips screwdriver? Do you buy a Cusinart when you want to make chocolate milk from a mix?

Try it on that old machine. Download and burn the CD images from Ubuntu or RedHat's Fedora and see what the whole UNIX buzz is about. You'll be surprised. Got that PSP for your kids last Christmas? Enable the WiFi, download the latest system updates, and connect to your work PC to be amazed. Check into the minor details that change your PS2 or Xbox into a fully-functional web device. Exhaust the new and proven technology advances that can not only save on your budget, but also prevent the spread of the BBFM virus.

I am not a geek...

2006-02-15T16:04:00.000-05:00

Ha! Chief Underwood of the KAUi Tribe says that I am to "...be the one ranting and raving about its short comings..." Okay, if that's the way he wants IT, so be IT. Oh, I won't pass on the puns in this blog, believe me.

I'm Drusilla Joplin...Dru for short. I'm not...nor have I ever been...a KAUi employee. Mark and I do know each other, that's true. He has been over to break bread with me, and I with him and his eclectic family. We agree to disagree on just about everything, which he says is a very excellent use of his relaxation time. I am, I suppose, the Yin to his cerebral Yang. So what am I doing here?

When Mark first approached me about the idea of providing a sort of editorial content in this blog about the pitfalls and pratfalls of information technology, I'm sure it was because of my excessive and required overuse of same. While I am not a geek, I do use computers...all sorts...in the labs and in the field of my work, which is anthropology. I have a cellphone, a PDA, a laptop, and other flat-out geek paraphenalia. Most of it has been "loaned" to me by the educational and corporate sponsors of my work, and as such, I have lots to complain about. Mark and I spar over the dearth of proper IT support infrastructure all the time. My biggest gripe can be summarized in this statement: we use half-baked technical equipment against a half-baked communications methodology and expect to get 100% accurate and useful results. Ha!

Devil's Advocate? Hardly. I do not want to be a Luddite...I have too much to rely on with respect to electronic and computer-driven sensing and analysis equipment. Anti-Microsoft? Nope. I must turn in all of my papers in Word format, process all my grants in Excel, and display the presentations in PowerPoint. Yet from my years of studying the hows and whys of cultural and paleo-anthropology, viewing the evolutionary cycles of both physical form and communication form of function, I can give you better historical and biological examples than this muck we call "IT". Heck, half the time of my lab analysis is spend in validating the equipment and gathering methodologies so that the results, while never exact, can be trusted to be within acceptable tolerances. I like the Feynman approach to things...which echoes von Clausewitz and Sir William of Occam. If this technology is to be useful, it MUST be simplistic and broad-usage ready. As of yet, I do not see a proper evolution towards that goal...instead, I see too many mutations that are allowed to live and not "reproduce" properly in order for their lineage to die off permanently via natural selection.

I am reminded of a show my parents saw and told me about on television: Point/Cointerpoint. Designed to cover political issues of the day, it was never allowed to gestate fully either, and died once it got too boring. Buckley and Vidal would have made better hosts, but then the dialog would have been too cerebral for most folks to comprehend...just like the "spin doctoring" that goes on now from Redmond and the Valley on why we should immediately rush out to purchase/upgrade continuously. Fingers in the dike, eh? So I shall provide the "other" view of Mark's corporate philosophy on IT, or just my gripes in general about same. He says that I will be unedited, that I can say my say...well, we shall see. Otherwise, the next time he comes over for my killer quesidillas, I will add extra habenaro sauce!

Until the next post, brush it clean my friends. Only them will you see all of the relic.

Modern Corporate Virtual Retreats

2006-02-15T15:40:00.000-05:00

You are REALLY not in touch with IT if you have NOT heard of Blizzard's immensely successful MMORPG, "Worlds of Warcraft". If this IS new to you, go ask your kids (or your younger siblings if you have none of those), and be ready to register the proper embarrassment. It is indeed a sign of the times that C*Net is just NOW getting the idea that any sufficiently large online gathering area will breed its use into corporate camaraderie. Gone are the days of the Company Soccer (or other physical sport) Team. If you want to impress your friends, provide a proper smoozing environment without wondering how to lose poundage and fit into the aghasting weave-ware, and generally take all of your company frustrations out by destroying things in a productive way, this is it.

KAUi has their own WoW Guild (on the Horde side, of course...anyone can be a night elf) and we meet weekly to tackle one of the major instances of Azeroth, make a run through one of the battlefields and squash the enemy, or bring a planned RP event into being. Even though I am the Guild leader, I will rotate the leadership or planning of these events to one of the others each week, and as such, get to see first hand what my employee's strengths are with respect to planning and working under pressure. Rather I find that out here than have a client tell me about it...and rather the tech find out here before they get into trouble on-site. The company even picks up the monthly WoW fee (as well as the broadband connection -- most of our folks work from home or on the road) so they aren't out of pocket for this "workout". Plus, it puts all of the employees on an even starting field...no problems with physical limits or disabilities.

Megaplusses all around, and there's even possible dueling with the "Chief" to let them take their frustrations out on me!

Please allow me to introduce myself...

2006-02-14T16:53:00.000-05:00

Every company has a founder -- a chief cook and bottle washer, if you will. That's me: Mark Underwood. I have been in IT for over 20 years and still wonder at the directions it fragments and coalesces into daily. With respect to Internet speeds, I have been working with this mess for over seven generations' worth of geek kitsch.

Yes, I once operated an IBM 029 card punch to author PL/1 programs and draw architectural diagrams on a Calcomp plotter. Retained the copyright on that one, but it's way outdated. :-) Messed with UNIX quite a bit when it was young and only on Digital Equipment Corporation's VAX and DEC-10 monstrosities. No, I did not know Ms. Hopper...I'm not THAT old. But I have traced the evolution of the stuff for quite some time. My first personal computer was the 1984 Macintosh (yes I saw THAT Superbowl commercial), and I'm writing on a PowerBook with MacOS X 10.4 now.

To say that I have been exposed and have had to deal with just about every variety of OS, language, API, GUI, etc. that has been created and used since 1974 is quite close to the truth. Like a cultural anthropologist, I can reconstruct the multitudinous filligreed family tree that stretches back to ENIAC (who just had his 60th birthday) -- and still look at the current state of things to decide where this tree will grow next.

In this blog, I will provide the "musings" and projections of IT -- I won't be the one ranting and raving about its short comings...I'll leave that to a good friend of mine, Drusilla Joplin. I'm more the science fiction dreamer, anyway. The brave new world that springs eternally each day in IT is so exciting and deep that I cannot fault it's misgivings. Again, like evolution, those technologies that live on are the ones that work...and the cycle is so fast that it seems almost viral in intensity.

You'll get loads of refs from literature, music, and cultural sources in my articles...so break out the Trivia Pursuit cheat sheets and score yourself on how many are in this one alone. HINT: the title is one of them. :-)

Getting Started - Better Late?

2006-02-14T15:49:00.000-05:00

Greetings from KAUi!

Well, blogging isn't new -- heck, even the Oxford English Dictionary has the word in its lexicon -- but the concept of "blogging" or just posting the inner thoughts of a company is a process that has its pros and cons.

We are a technogeek consulting and training company...we walk around with our eyes almost eternally glued to a flat LCD display...our ears connected to a iPod(tm)...our fingers rapidly converting all that is IT into something a bit more palatable to our customers and potential clients. If there was Internet-based "Smell-o-vision" or "Taste-o-vision", we'd be rigged into those as well. Too much information? Never. Digesting it's a big pain in the rear for most folks, but it is the proverbial sourdough and thousand island dressing that constitutes our sandwich.

So there are things that we can and can't talk about, as you might guess. And with that factor a somewhat limiting one (with respect to baring the compary's "soul"), you might think that it contradicts the whole purpose of the "blog", which is supposed to the be modern-day equivalent of the personal diary. Many folks indeed have barred their souls in this medium, and many more will use it to convey to others their personal thoughts, ideas, visions, and life.

But we'd like some of our corporate "blogmata" to bleed into the Internet...hence this blog. It's going to have the musings of our folk on the current state of IT...barring our souls, if you will...but will not be the place for us to comment on our clients at all. So if you were looking for that sort of thing, shame on you! We're neck-deep into technology...so you will see loads of our thoughts on that. You will see reviews of geek idolatry, experiences on using IT, and even the frustrations and anxieties of holding tight to the bleeding edge of IT...something we must do to keep ahead of the game (and our competition).

Every once and awhile, we'll let you add your tuppence to the musings...but remember, a lot of this is our viewpoint and as such it would not be kosher to let you be viewed by others as if you were employed or spoke for our image. Our corporate website has its own copyrights and disclaimers...and this one will, too.

So here it is: Views, musings, metadata, and anything else that manages to survive long enough to become part of these bloggish pages ARE indeed held responsible by KAUi Software, Inc. and its employees. Reproduction of what you read or see in here is not permitted without express permission...but you can link to it, if you think it's worthwhile. Ya-da, ya-da.

Sit back...and enjoy the ride we might be sharing with you on this wickedly fast and hideously mutating creation of mankind called Information Technologies!

-- Mark Underwood, KAUi Chief of Everything