wole's blog

I have evolved over the years with windows. I have used every single windows implementation ever built from windows 3.1 through Vista. Yeah, even Windows Millennium (! yuck), so I know about windows faults, every one of them.

I have also used (worked with etcetera) quite a number of UNIX derivatives including all major (as at 2005) Linux distros, several BSD distros (including FreeBSD which is my personal favorite), HP UX, AIX etcetera.

But two weeks ago, I picked up an Apple MacBook and I wondered; "why all the hoopla?".

The Virginia Tech shooting in April has turned into a big boom for emergency notification vendors across th nation.  Like all tragedies, this one has spurred the enterprenural spirit of the society and people of all ilks have found ways to cash in. From domain-namer prospecting to charitable solicitation and more importantly nipping the notification problem in the bud.

Educause, under the guidance of Rodney Pettersen organized a well thought out webiner a week ago and many Universities have either implemented or are already implementing some notification system. Some example notification systems being deployed are :

1. E2Campus
2. Connect ED
3. RSIX

The E2Campus is a simple web enabled notification system currently deployed by many of the Universities in the Baltimore-Washington corridor. The system is compatible with most text-enabled communication system including cellular phones, emails, pagers etcetera. The system is easy to deploy (it took our team less than 30 minutes to spruce a decent site together) and easy to use. The E2Campus cost model is also very attractive at approximately $1 per user per year for unlimited notifications.

RSIX is a comprehensive solution based on two ownership models; a CPE or a Hosted Solution with a one time cost ($40,000 for up to 10000 users and annual maintenance). Unlike the E2Campus option, the RSIX system requires some installing and could require some managing.  According to representatives of the RSIX, the system does not anticipate any extra per-use cost except in the unlikely scenario where the customer exceeds approved usage limits (quite ambiguous).  The RSIX also promises integration with various first-responder network by leveraging its installation base with many first-responder system. RSIX is currently deployed by the city of Rockville where it is used extensively for various emergency and non-emergency notification. Another advantage of the RSIX is the ability to send voice  and even signals to satellite radio.

Connect ED is one several offerings from NTI Group (formerly Notification Technologies Inc.). This service was highlighted by Mark Katsouros of The University of Iowa in his May 3rd Webiner .  Similar to RSIX in its offerings, the Connect ED promises unlimited messages for a fixed per user cost. I do not at this time have pricing information from Connect ED, but  NTI seems to have a decent customer support system, maybe not a great sales team.

Other Options: There are several other options in the market for mass notification. Many of the vendors are now changing or re-branding their product to position themselves for the huge sales expected from higher ed in the coming months. One of these vendors is Verizon. Verizon has partnered with Dialogic to deliver a unified notification system. The verizon pricing model is similar to RSIX but more expensive. It however promises tighter integration with existing telephony infrastructure, support for reverse 911 and GIS capabilities. The current cost from Verizon is $9600 for the first 1000 users per annum and $2 per additional user in the same period. For a School with 10,000 potential subscribers, this will cost about $27,600 per year or about $138,000 in 5 years. While the system supports unlimited messages per year to unlimited number of devices per users with the only caveat being international calls, the option remains by far the most expensive I have so far identified.

PBX equipment vendors (Cisco , NEC, Nortel, etc) also have various add-on options that provide the same capabilities, and it may be worth a review for Universities to look at what options may provide them the best bang for their buck as they look to meet the new demand for instant notification in light of recent events and current legislative push to mandate some notification measure.

It is also worth noting that while University administrators may feel the urgent need to provision some quick fix today, they will have to bear in mind the long term cost of any solution as well as develop robust incidence response protocols to ensure that they do not create more problems while trying to solve some.

A well thought out emergency notification procedure, appropriate constituency training and awareness programs, common sense best practices (such as provisioning a comprehensive physical security measures) and others will help improve the security pasture of our University, even when nothing will ever fully prepare us for a repeat of another tragedy.

We all must determine the best cost of a response, not only to our purse, but also to our social existence.

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Several blog and news sites (including this one http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/4134/937/) are writing of the brewing war of the browsers.

The concern they are alluding to, Microsoft making Windows Live Search the default search engine in IE 7 is one of the most laughable and silly arguement I have ever read.

For over a year now, Google has been working hard, and spending lots of investor's cash, wooing various vendors and even paying folks for spreading the adoption of googlized firefox. These firefox versions have google-serach engine as the default. No one complained. No one complained that google pays for fire-fox adoption or that google had to pay Dell and Toshiba and many other hardware vendors to bundle google tool bar with google as default search engine in their IE versions.

Some people even argued that Google is Paying Hard cash to get the favor! Are they implyig that the huge Microsoft Marketing overtures and huge OEM discounts offered to vendors to lure them to do its bidding isn't hard cash?

I have installed IE 7 (as you can see from previous blogs) and the least of my worries is IE 7 search default. As a matter of fact, since the Google Search engine still outperforms Microsoft's in many departments of interest to me, I simply go to google's home page when I need to search for anything. Then I discovered that Microsoft has adopted Google's search engine add techniques. Now you can add as many search engines as has been written to IE and choose anyone of them as youyr default. If you have used this feature before in googlized-firefox, you need learn nothing more with IE 7.

 The likelihood of a Microsoft intentional ploy to discourage users from installing Google Desktop Search engine on the same computer that has IE 7 installed is suddenly coming home to roost.

 Knowing that IE 7 is going to lay a major role in the enterprise, as IE 6 and its predecessors have for the last almost one decade (even now Microsoft still has a domineering 84% market share and an even near ubiquitous installation base, thanks to the tight coupling of their OS to the browser), I have refused to just walk away from what initially seems like a careless bug.

 I have IE 7 installed and working well on another machine, with similar configuration to the one described in 'IE 7, Dead on arrival'. Adding Search engines, customizing the options, tab browsing, etc all seems to work with reasonable ease. Although some web-pages now look squeaky (virizonwireless my account being one of them) with IE 7, but that was a reasonable price to pay for a beta2 version.

 I had Microsoft desktop search installed and working well as long side several other software products. An then I installed Google Desktop Search and bam! IE 7 breaks again.

 Since Google Desktop has been here before IE 7, Google could not have done this.  Also since Google Desktop was also installed on the other machine where an IE 7 upgrade went dead on arrival, I decided to uninstall Google Desktop (after several hours of testing IE7 with Google Desktop Search installed) and Walla! IE 7 now worked as before.

 Of course one of the original gimmicks Microsoft had used in the past to stifle competition was to make third party vendor software difficult to use on the ubiquitous windows platform. Is Microsoft in the same game again?

 I read that Microsoft has been reported by Google for the ease of installing Google search engine in IE 7. Well the news for Google is that this is no more difficult for users than installing Google search engine and other third party engines with Firefox. As a matter of fact the processes are the same (maybe Google should worry about ideas being copied). But the overriding concern which they have not seemed to latch on to is the likelihood that Microsoft is intentionally limiting users’ options to Desktop Search!!!

 That will really make the day of the EC and the Justice Department! That will really cause more than a minor annoyance at Wall Street (whatever that means these days!).

 So guys look out for these and more information on what

Vista and IE 7 will mean for your enterprise,

The Pentagon over the weekend announced a network break in (aka intrusion) resulting in the potential compromise of the personal data of more than fourteen thousand (14000) people. Given that the pentagon is arguably one of the largest employers in the United States, nay the world, the question that comes to mind is "is this limited to just the advertised number" And if the number is right, what is the cost of this incidence to the Pentagon?

What if this were an Health Insurance Company or even an Hospital ?

What does the word compromise in this report mean? Access to the information (which can be used for to commit Identity Theft), or changes to the data (which could potentially result in death...)

So what is the value, nay cost of a breach?

Expectedly, a the pentagon will try to solve this recent incidence by a mix of Technology, Policy and maybe even People changes, but one question that is not likely to be answered by them, (and one that is yet to be fully answered by any organization that has been hit by any of these breaches in the past) is 'What is the Cost of this incidence?'

I read the news of Microsoft’s public release of Internet Explorer 7 beta 2 and rushed to download the software and install it. Now, I'm running a Toshiba satellite with Intel centrino Duo 1.8GHz  with IGB of RAM.

As soon as I started the new IE browser (after a reboot etc of course), I had a weird feeling this wasn't right! The User interface is really nothing impressive (I've been using firefox forever) and the tab browsing was HORRIBLE!!!.

Once I try to tab browse, even before entering the new URL, the browser crashed.

Being me, I kept on,  only to  realize the futility of my effort after many tries.

Then I simply fell back to the usual one page per browser instance (the old IE way), but even this doesn't seem well thought out. Every time I try to load a none-msn url, the browser simply crashes.

I tried google.com and several other pages, all with the same result. The camel that broke my back was when i noticed the cpu state when the browser crashed : 100% !!! Memory usage 83%. What a hog!

Well, I am hoping there's a simple way to uninstall this new beast from my windows xp media center edition, or I may simply have to forget IE on this computer. Period!

Microsoft advices beta installers not to install this version on a production server. Yeah right! Betas have seen better delivery in the past.

I think Microsoft should imply pull the plug on this experiment and wait until the have a usable product before leaking it to the public , even as a beta version.

If on the other hand they don't , then my guess is that firefox market share will simply grow on the strength of this Microsoft misstep.

Whatever happened to the impressive tab-browsing capability in IE 6 that you get when you install the MSN toolbar? Were the product developers so far apart, they couldn't share ideas or best practices?

All the features and functionalities being touted in IE 7 are already in play as add-on to IE 6 for a while now, its really amazing how the Redmond folks couldn't repeat their successful feats from their own previous work.

Anyway, if you're planning to download and install IE 7 beta 2. My advice is "JUST LET IT GO!" Its not worth the hassle.

Maybe when they release beta 10?

If you must see for your self though, please, please, and please make sure you install only on a machine that is purely for experimental purpose. Since Firefox is still squeaky with some website and you may have to fall back to IE in those instances, you do not want to install IE 7 on a computer you use for any useful purpose. It simply does not work!

Google has refused to play catchup in the emessaging arena by introducing solutions aimed at redefining the entire messaging landscape.

In 2004, Google started by introducing the first ever free 2GB space email solution. At that time, this was more than 500 (yes five hundred) times what hotmail was offering for free and more than 200 times yahoo's 5MB. This woke the free email 'giants' up from their slumber and they quickly responded by increasing their spaces...

While Yahoo increased email space (quota) to 2GB in response, it continued to charge customers for additional space and some 'premium' service. Well google beats that by implementing a new revolution... UNLIMITED EMAIL STORAGE!!!

Well, you'll think the guys at google will stop there, haven implemented the most attracted email storage system in the market, at the best price to the consumer (FREE), but the didn't.

In 2005, Google introduced Google talk, an instant-messaging package with voice, that threaten to eliminate the business base of skype and the voice over IP base of other instant messaging vendors.

And now, Google has introduced (or better yet, integrated) Google Chat. Its a nice little trick that allows you to chat within your email box.

Micrsoft is playing catchup with google and yahoo ...

Microsoft in the last few months have been doing what it knows to do best: Play Catch Up. In the Search space, in email, in blog and now in microsoft image...

You'll have to give it to them though, the images are crisp and provide an amazing view

Check out the microsoft image here

Caveat: Sorry you can't view it firefox!!

Identity Management is gaining ground as a buzz word in the information security community, and rightfully so, but a seminar I attended today brings up the question. What is Identity Management?

The speaker, like many so called experts on the topic seem to miss the point here. He articulated ID Management as the tracking and monitoring of user identity during their sourjorn in the enterprise (not his exact words). He also emphasized that this is only about people. I stromgly dissagree.

The question is what is identity?

The webster dictonary online describes identity. One of the definitions is " sameness in all that constitutes the objective reality of a thing".

Answers.com has the following definition : " The collective aspect of the set of characteristics by which a thing is definitively recognizable or known", amongst others.

Going by what we know of today's information system, not only people have identities in our network. Even on computers, several non person, system or application users exists. Just like a user account can be compromised and or hijacked, so also can system or application accounts.

Yahoo News
U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to intervene in a dispute between the University of Texas and an online dating service upset that the school blocked thousands of unsolicited e-mails......

This is another victory for University administrators in their effort to better manage their network utilization in the face of growing external and internal security threats.

Many have used the first amendment as a cover to claim all sorts of rights on campuses, including the rights to visit porn sites and display such. Many even argue that since higher educational campuses are centers of research and excellence, it is difficult to say, what constitute illegal content in such environment.

Well, we all know the disruptive consequences of spams, viruses and other malwares on our campus networks. If spammers are willing to pay for their spam, say pay the university for bandwidth consumed (just like snail mail spammers have to pay the postal services for spams they love to send), the relationship may be reviewed.

Although this rulling bodes well for the industry, caution is still required by higher ed IT departments. Effective policies and proceedures still need to be put in place for the institution's arguement to carry any weight in the event of litigation(s).