Someone I know came to me the other day about a consulting project that may or may not happen.   What essentially he wants done is an overhaul of IT infrastructure.   They want more automation to their operation and they deal with physical goods.  So from receiving to shipping, to everything in between they are looking to streamline.    They want to do more with less, less equipment if possible, less people if possible, less stress if possible.   In other words they want what every other company in the world wants.

Currently they have a software package that does some of this, but it doesn’t do everything they want it to be able to do.   I don’t have implicit knowledge of the package, other then I’ve created firewall rules when I was consulting with Symantec to pass the traffic.   So my first question is the scope of the project.   The person I was talking to didn’t exactly no what I meant by that.   They were more worried about the big picture ideal instead of what a consultant would need to work with.  A vision of the end goal is great, but without specific tasks to get there it definitely puts an implementer at a disadvantage.   He stated that we would have to do a sit down and discuss the issue and layout of the business process.   This is a good step, but part of why I’m writing this is to help others know the answer they should have when going into something of this magnitude.

Easy, Hard and Correct

The first question is why do you want to do this?  There are easy answers, there are hard answers, and there is correct answers to this question.    Some of the easy answers include – I want everything to work together better, we want to build to the future, and I have to spend my budget before the end of the fiscal cycle and want to try out this product.    Hard answers include we want something more manageable for our IT staff, we want it to run faster in our environment, we want something we can understand.

There are reasons that these are the easy answers and hard answers.  The first and foremost thought is to remember to sit down with a consultant or someone who understands the technology thoroughly enough before ever sitting down with a salesperson.   To sales people, these are all easy and correct answers.   They will tell you your toast can be used to transport computer network traffic with the right purchase, they are there to get your money.  It’s the one reason I can never be a salesperson.  I like people using the correct solution, not necessarily the solution that I am selling.   Even when I worked at Symantec, I knew Symantec products were not the best products for all customers.   Some customers only changed products because they had money to spend and ended up worse off for it.    Salespeople are tricky creatures that guard their bonuses like Disney guards it’s copyrights.

Easy answers are normally very vague,  they tell a salesperson of consultant that you haven’t really though to much about the problem.  You have a basic idea of what you want, but you don’t know any specifics.  The problem with the easy answers is that they are also the most expensive answers – this allows those that are implementing something to sell you what they think is best, regardless of how it will fit into your business six months down the road when they are gone.  You will have to make some decisions on your own, and this should not be listening to the best sales pitch from two competing vendors.  The best sales pitch does not necessarily equate into the best product.

Why are the hard answers difficult?  What that’s because everything is relative.   Going back to my examples can show you this.  We want something more manageable by our IT staff, well how trained is your IT staff?   Do your employees know alternative operating systems?  Does your staff only run Microsoft products?  Is this faster for your environment?  What about a year down the road and the nightmare efficient system breaks because of infrastructure changes you were forced to make?  Everything comes down to you knowing your environment and your plans for the future.   A consultant only gets a glimpse of time into your configuration and is not going to be the full time employee running this stuff.   They won’t know how your future plans could be effected if you don’t tell them your future plans.

The correct answer?  That include being as specific as possible.  Let’s say this is to implement an Exchange Server migrating from a Lotus Notes architecture.   Why would I want to do this?   Lotus Notes has been long in the process of being a headache for us.   The administrator that runs it is retiring in six months and we have other employees that could scale up quicker to learn  Exchange then Lotus Notes.   The collaborative features in exchange work in Outlook, which our company already loads on all the desktop since we have a full Microsoft Office License on all of the desktops.  About 30% of our users already use outlook to retrieve their e-mail, even though they all have the Notes client installed on their desktops also.   Being able to consolidate this would save us thousands a year since we would no longer need a support contract or license fees paid to IBM to support the old Lotus infrastructure.    The more complete and specific the answer, the better the consultant can answer your questions.

Do You Listen To Alternatives?

Even in the Exchange scenario seems complete.  How rigid are you to suggestions?  What if the consultant offers up other alternatives such as a web based e-mail solution that would still allow Exchange to connect and retrieve e-mail? While a Linux/Apache approach may be cheaper, you could also implement it on top of IIS.   Building with some other technologies you could gain all the collaborative powers of Exchange for thousands of dollars less.   Those who didn’t want to use Outlook could use a browser.  If you combine this with a secure remote access solution this would allow for a possible quicker and less bandwidth connection for telecommuters if that is where your company is going.

Knowing what your plans and how rigid they need to be help a consultant decide what avenues may be the best approach for you.  While I offered up a free solution, another consultant may offer ways to augment your current Notes infrastructure to fit your needs.  The best consultants will offer alternatives to your current line of thinking.   You do not have to listen to them, you can stay focused, but hearing how open you are is important.

Timeline

A timeline is something you should have in mind sitting down with the consultant.  He needs to know deadlines and what your expectations are.   Does this need to be done in a week or a year?  How are your current employees going to ramp up on the new solution?  While a consultant may reset your timelines to something more realistic, knowing what type of time frame you are trying to achieve is important to the success of the project.   It also tells the consultant if they are going ot need to bring in more outside help.

Breakdown of Tasks

Have you compartmentalized your tasks?  The person that contacted me was looking for a complete end to end solution, is this what best?   In a solution like that how are you going to handle the transition time?   You don’t want to migrate the whole solution at the touch of a button, since any big architecture change can effect your business continuity.  For some businesses any downtime at all is lost revenue.   A consultant wants to make this impact as minimal as possible.   Even when you do the best planning and compartmentalizing sometimes you will get stuck on a twenty-three hour conference call working through the issues of down time.   When this happens I can tell you it’s not fun.  That was also with a staged migration.

What segments of your business can be down for hours at a time?   When you can answer that you can start staging your tasks.  The tasks that can be down the longest generally should be the first ones migrated, since they should give you expectations for later tasks, and allow you to plan accordingly.   Do not re-architect the design so the whole system (no matter how small) to be done in one night if there are multiple groups effected in the transition.   Design the impact to be as small as possible.   Yes, this may increase time – which in turn increases expense, but without proper planning it may cost you more in the long run.

Cost

The question that no likes asking or giving, what is your budget for this task.  You can wait for the consultant to make a cost estimate pitch first if you like – but at some point in the conversation cost is going to come up.   Do your homework ahead of time to see how much you expect it to cost and budget accordingly.   What are you going to do if things go over budget?  If your three quarters way through a project and haev no more money to finish it, how is that going to impact you?

In Closing

This may seem like a list of things that I want as a consultant.   These are however fairly common truths on what a consultant needs to start a project properly instead of spinning their wheels.   In the next week or so I’m going to follow this up with how to spot a good consultant versus a bad one.

]]> http://creeva.com/2009/02/10/things-you-should-be-able-before-to-answer-contacting-a-consultant/feed/ 3 http://creeva.com/2008/12/10/linux-isnt-free-or-so-says-a-school-teacher/ http://creeva.com/2008/12/10/linux-isnt-free-or-so-says-a-school-teacher/#comments Wed, 10 Dec 2008 20:10:18 +0000 Creeva http://creeva.com/?p=3771

I ran across this article by way of Slashdot.  A teacher had punished a student for handing out live linux distrubution discs, for those that aren’t familar with a liveCD, it allows you to boot your computer off of CD and test drive linux without modifying your hard drive.  You can remove the CD and reboot and be back to using windows or whatever in no time. This teacher wrote the head of this particular linux group and stated:

I am sure you strongly believe in what you are doing but I cannot either support your efforts or allow them to happen in my classroom. At this point, I am not sure what you are doing is legal. No software is free and spreading that misconception is harmful. These children look up to adults for guidance and discipline. I will research this as time allows and I want to assure you, if you are doing anything illegal, I will pursue charges as the law allows.

and also:

This is a world where Windows runs on virtually every computer and putting on a carnival show for an operating system is not helping these children at all. I am sure if you contacted Microsoft, they would be more than happy to supply you with copies of an older verison of Windows and that way, your computers would actually be of service to those receiving them..

Now the person at the Helios distribution had some key things in response (these are snippets):

First off, if there was even the slightest chance that I was doing something illegal, it would not have been done. To think that I would involve my kids in my “illegal” activities is an insult far beyond outrage.

linux is superior to MS windows in so many ways, they are too numerous to mention here…I am weary of enumerating them. Unlike Microsoft who meters their “improvements” and then shovels them to you every five years or so for purchase; Linux releases their improvements upon their completion. We receive the newest and the best of the system when it is tested to be usable and stable

The most disturbing part of this resides in the fact that the AISD purchases millions of dollars of Microsoft Software in a year’s time when that money could be better spent on educating our children. A dedicated School Teacher would recognize that fact and lobby for the change to Free Open Source Software and let the money formally spent on MS bindware be used on our kids.

Now I do recommend you read the original article, but I do think this shows the ignorance of the teachers in our systems. Some people try to tell me when my child arrives that home schooling is a worse option then sending the kid to public or private schools.   I know I went through similar issues like this with my teachers, sometimes it was on english, other times it was on history.   Teachers won’t admit they are wrong and will continue to spew the same crap to students year after year.  They feel they must be the ones in the right otherwise they wouldn’t be the teacher.

I’m stopping now before I bust into a complete rant – read the original article and let me know what you think.

Picture from here

I have a profound fascination with cloud computing, internet computing, bamboozled processing (whatever you want to call it).  The problem when you start using these terms in the IT world it becomes “Software as a Service” (SaS) in some attempt to legitimatize the business model.   There is a distinct difference, however.   That difference is money.

“Cloud Computing” is still one of the ephemeral terms that no one is quite sure what it means.   It’s akin to the “Network Computer” model pushed out by Oracle in the mid 90′s – it’s all as hard to explain, ridiculed, ahead of it’s time, and understandable as the Network Computer was.  The idea of cloud computing means why you process your data locally through some window (Browser, Local PC) into the cloud (Internet), your data is stored in the cloud and accessible from anywhere.  Terms like Webmail have become keeping your email in the clouds – I like the concept but we are bringing back the 90′s terms about “thinking outside the box” with this type of labeling.   Social networks such as Myspace and Facebook are also considered to be cloud platforms, I assume this means because you can annoy your friends anywhere with applications invites – even if you’ve never met them in meat space.

Current definition essentially is if you are doing anything online except reading a static web page (library interaction in the clouds?) – is considered cloud computing.   Some people are referring to any of this same type of activity as SaS whe nit is in the IT realm.  It’s not, please change your wordings, understand what you are talking about, respect both the IT world and the non-IT world.  You are confusing people with concepts that are also completley non-explainable already.

SaS is much similar to cloud computing, much like a cheetah (SaS) is similar to a bobcat (cloud computing).  Both of the latter animals are members of the feline family and have similar body makeup, but we can also recognize that they are not the same and have vastly different feature sets.   A bobcat is also more common.  First I’ll say it, most SaS is boring.  It’s the kind of stuff you do at work.  Whether it’s Peachtree’s online application,  it’s the remote backup service and outsourced server monitoring your company purchases.   These are software packages your company can buy and manage but they’ve moved them off site and out of their direct control over the hardware.  It’s on the network and that’s all that matters.

SaS products come with service level agreements that guarantee up time and will compensate you for excessive (which is sometimes 15 minutes) of downtime.   I have yet to see a check from Twitter or Myspace, and I’m sure some users can show actual cause and effect of damage to their online businesses if their is an outage.   SaS is normally pretty niche, costs money, and replicates things you already do.

I pay for Flickr?  Does that mean it’s an SaS?  No it doesn’t, the Flickr “application” is free, what I am paying for is storage space and a small number of features – not the application.  The same goes with Google Apps and Smugmug.  If it’s a consumer grade product it’s still a cloud computing application.  When we move into things like Microsoft offering remote hosted MS Exchange packages, we are entering into SaS.

It’s been a long time since I’ve beeen excited about a new browser.  Theoretically I’ve never been excited about a new browser that was announced.   I remember being excited when AOL resurrected Netscape – but that turned into a flaming pile of poo and Netscape lost dominance being THE browser to use.   Like many users at that time frame I used Internet Explorer 5 and at the time it was best of breed, then a new challenger arose.

The Mozilla foundation announced they were taking the open source bits of the Netscape browser and making a new slimmer browser called Firebird.  Because of issues of legal and copyright, Firebird was renamed to Firefox.   I’ve been using this browser since Firebird and I have had no reason to move to a different primary browser.   I’ve tried Flock and Safari, there hasn’t been a sticky reason to keep using those over Firefox.   I was excited, kind of, of the release of Firefox version 3.   But that wasn’t a new and different browser, it was more of the same.

With last nights announcement of Google’s New Chrome Browser, but they put up a nice little web comic that explains the features it offers.   The security, privacy, performance enhancements alone make this a must watch for browser.  WHen it is actually released later today, we’ll see how I feel then.

UPDATE:

Found a site that has some Chrome screenshots you may enjoy.

Picture from here

Previously I railed against Google Docs and my issues with them there, now it’s the Google Calendar‘s Team that I’m having issues with.   I want to love Gcal.  I really truly and deeply do.   I do love it more then Microsoft Outlook‘s Calendar, but that is still an issue since it doesn’t have complete integration with Microsoft Exchange.  I have however recently configure my Outlook calendar to sync with Gcal with a nifty tool Google released.  For that I bless them.  No more hacks or work arounds, or siphoning data through Plaxo to get this going.   I still use Plaxo, but I don’t need a desktop client for it anymore, it replicates the back end internet data now.

Now I’ve said everything (well not really but I spoke nice about them) that I like about Gcal.  Let’s look at some of the things I want.  The first thing that I have always wanted was the ability to import RSS feeds into to Gcal.  I’m not talking news feeds that I want to read, but personal lifestreaming data that I can track about myself.  I should be able to use Google Calendar as a personal diary of events, but this leads to a lot of back tracking because of the manual work this would cause.

Another option that would allow me to deal with the fact that I can not import RSS feeds would be allow us to send in events via E-mail.  You allows us to send in events via SMS (which I don’t use since i don’t pay for  an SMS plan) – yet not e-mail?  It’s not really a bandwidth thing since most of your users are probably using Gmail anyways.   I don’t get it.

Final thing I would like, the ability to attach a file (which in reality could be stored in Google Docs) to an event.  Whether it would be a picture (ok this would be Picasaweb for storage) or a presentation, this would lead to a more organized life for business users making a transition.

Give us some killer apps, you have us as users, now keep us.   Show us some love.

I’ve been working diligently like a good Google zealot and have slowly over the last couple months started migrating over to Google Docs.   The one thing that keeps tripping me up is the space they offer each document.  The space given is as follows:

So far I’m not hitting a barrier issue with Spreadsheets or Presentations (though I see hitting the presentation limit very soon) what I do have an issue with is the documents size and the PDF size.

The PDF support has just been added so I’ll give them a little slack on that, I think a good size in this web era would be 50 MB for PDF’s this should get you most any PDF around into your Google Docs size.  I have a couple PDF’s on my desktop that are close to 30 MB and being able to store them here would be a god send.   Until they do this won’t be my central PDF repository.

The document size though is really killing me, I have a ton of documents that are over 500k.  I have one detailing my home network that is almost 6 MB.   I think the documents need to be upped to 10MB.   that way the crazy bastards like me who use graphics and diagrams in their documents won’t have to worry about hitting this cap.

While we are on the subject though of Google Docs, why can’t there be better integration with G-Mail.  Theoretically it should be able to search through all my e-mail during a search and prompt me if I want to import this or that document into my Google Docs cache.

While Google has been great at adding new products over the years.  Even the ones that take off are nor properly maintained nor are they integrated with other related service soon enough.  Some of these products are around for years before proper integration takes place, when are they going ot be moving a little more away from 20% time for projects and focus whole teams on the integration side of the coin.

Anyways – /rant off.

]]> http://creeva.com/2008/06/19/google-docs-needs-to-up-the-size-limits/feed/ 7 http://creeva.com/2008/06/11/living-in-the-clouds-part-2-e-mail/ http://creeva.com/2008/06/11/living-in-the-clouds-part-2-e-mail/#comments Wed, 11 Jun 2008 18:56:34 +0000 Creeva http://creeva.com/?p=2838

Picture taken from here

Introduction

Picture from here

E-mail in the clouds.   Essentially back in 1996 when Hotmail was first released (in the pre-purchased by Microsoft era) the dawn of popular cloud computing for e-mail began.   The main issue was storage space.  I believe that Hotmail launched with 5 megs of storage space for all of your e-mail.   It is frustrating to know all the e-mail that’s been lost over the years due to inadequate storage space.   I now have single pictures in my email archive that are larger then 5 megs.   Times change and space get’s cheap.

Picture from here

When Google released Gmail into the wild it was a game changer.  By offering 1GB of storage space it made it seem that you literally could keep your e-mail forever.   Other providers such as Hotmail and Yahoo were maxing out at 25 MB at the time, this seemed ridiculous in comparison.

Currently Gmail supports almost 7 GB of storage space and Hotmail and Yahoo went to “unlimited”.  I consolidate almost all of my e-mail to Gmail.

Data Types

To utilize e-mail storage you can attach any (supported) file and keep it in your mailbox.

Data Security

While you have to rely on a username and password to access your e-mail as the security barrier entry, if you want true protection from snooping it is suggested that you either get a web plugin that allows you to do encryption with Gmail, or keep your private messages encrypted and use them with an offline client.

Data Redundancy

Since you can forward e-mail from Gmail, I have it configured to forward all incoming mail to both my Yahoo Mail account and my Hotmail account.  If for some reason GMail loses my data or in the unlikely event Google goes out of business I’ll still be able to access my e-mail messages.

It is recommended that you keep an offline backup of your mail messages so they can be accessible while being off the grid.

Data Accessibility

With Gmail offering accessing via a rich web interface, a basic web interface, a mobile web interface, POP3, SMTP, and IMAP; it seems unlikely that you are going to find an Internet device that can not access it in some way or fashion.

Conclusion

This is the e-mail scenario that works for me.  Since encryption really isn’t ubiquitous across the board I don’t use it like I should.   Beyond that this scenario is highly redundant and should allow you operate from anywhere with a network connection without worrying about losing your data.

Previous entries in the Living in the Clouds Series:

Living In The Clouds Part 1 – Introduction To Cloud Computing

]]> http://creeva.com/2008/06/11/living-in-the-clouds-part-2-e-mail/feed/ 0 http://creeva.com/2008/05/09/2792/ http://creeva.com/2008/05/09/2792/#comments Fri, 09 May 2008 13:42:32 +0000 Creeva http://creeva.com/?p=2792

So last night was a work in progress/real world scenario time.   I was going to be out with a few hours to kill, and I didn’t take my Mac Book with me.   During my hour commute to work I listened to a couple episodes of “Cranky Geeks” with John Dvorak.   In the afternoon I had to go onto the lab and do some testing with users.  While waiting for the users to show up I decided to take my N810 onto the guest wifi.   While doing that I installed Vim and the GPE suite.   I’m going to be working on getting GPE calender to sync with Google Calender.   I should have realized that vim was a command line only utility since it was a port.  I don’t think I’m going to stay usingit though, I know vim is the more friendly vi, but I have a severe hatred of vi.   I think it’s the difference of growing up with the extremely easy to use Microsoft Edit in DOS that vi seems so hackneyed to me.

One thing that was an issue for me yesterday was I installed the “Camera” application from the repositories.   I installed and saw how a picture would look, then I clicked the folderesque button on the lower right hand side and that locked up my N810.  I tried to hold the power button down that didn’t do anything, after about 5 minutes of waiting I yanked the battery.   In that 5 minutes I went from 75% of my battery to 25%, so whatever happened taxed the hell out of the CPU and storage space.   Needless to say that application is not staying around.

I then went up to Vermilion and met with my sisters and had some pizza, after that I wandered to the local library and decided I was going to attempt to get some work done.   I managed to login to my work’s exchange webmail, I wrote a full blog using maemo-wordpy, and used it happily as an MP3 player listening to my podcasts.   Writing a longer length blog post took some time compared to what it would take with a normal keyboard.   However, I managed to get it done and my typing skills are definetly improving on the N810 keyboard as a whole.

The annoying things I found out yesterday.

• The Vermilion Public Library’s Public Wifi doesn’t allow IMAP – grrrr no Gmail via Claws for me at that time
• Canola won’t “save” songs to scrobble at a later time, if it doesn’t have a network connection you are SOL – grrrr – does anyone know if maemo scrobbler will save before submittal?

Going further into my reviews of kiosk systems we acquired the Surferquest system here at work.   Unlike my piece on SteadyState I’m not going to have a bunch of screen shots to show you this time.   However I will give you my analysis and what I’ve found out.

The Surferquest system is an off the shelf software with minimal customization.  We ordered an evaluation unit and I was tasked to try it out.   I can say for our needs as a company that requires centralized management and control of machines in our environment that the Surferquest system was not quite a correct fit for us.

In our environment we don’t normally place a machine on our network until it is fully tested and verified secure, but this product is pretty much useless until it has a network connection.   I had to contact support and they gave me an unlock code that would allow me to make changes to installed software.  The unlock code lasted only 24 hours, but they sent me a utility later on that would allow me generate unlock codes for myself.

Almost all of the customization that can be done is performed remotely by Surferquest.  This means if there is a major application change that needs to be completed you need to contact them.   Do you wish to customization your login screen?  You must contact them or upload the images to their server.    You can not perform these changes locally on the box or locally within your environment.  Wish to change the active desktop they used?  Same steps apply as changing the login screen.

Restrictions applied to the software:

Disable Windows Updates
Remove from Start Menu:
My Music
My Pictures
Favorites
Recent Documents
Frequently Used Programs
Recent Network Docs
Network Places
Help
Run
My Documents
Configure Programs
Disable Windows Keys
Lock Taskbar
Disable Control Panel
Disable Balloon Tips
Remove OEM Link
Disable Task Manager
Disable Registry
Disable Find Files with F3 in Explorer
Prevents Control Panel, Printers, and Network and Dial-up Connections from running, and removes the corresponding menu items.
Removes Shut Down from the Start menu and disables the Shut Down button in the Windows Security dialog box.
Disable System Restore
Clears Recent Documents on Exit
Disable access to Recent Network Documents
CTRL key disabled

As you can see, though they use a different product to achieve the same goal, it has similar technology to the Microsoft Steadystate product I reviewed in part 3.

You can put the software within you domain, but the software will still be phoning home to the Surferquest company. While I’m positive that there is nothing sensitive being pushed across, like any company that you would have do remote assistance make sure you trust them in case of any possible data leakage.  The official answer is that it only sends out IP address information and the last time connected.  You can view this information on the stat web page they provide you

If the drive in the unit should fail or there is a hardware issue in need of support, no software is supplied.   You must receive new hardware from the vendor and return your old unit.  They state that turn around time is usually 24 hours.   Any remote management or patching must be performed by the vendor and is done via remote monitoring software that they have access to.    The software is caused Netsupport and it sneaks out your firewall on port 22 – now all you admins that left it open for SSH can feel silly (actually that’s how the firewall support team snuck out the corporate firewall there and back to their home computers when I worked at Symantec on that team).

Quick Notes

• Idle timeouts can be configured, but they default at 10 minutes.
• They use the Deep Freeze product to maintain their disk image
• When we received the unit PXE booting was enabled (and we didn’t have a BIOS password – they stated this was a mistake)
• The unit we received had PowerDVD installed, ironically no DVD drive (another oversight they admit)
• Unlock Steadystate there is no method for restricting USB drive usage

Box the unit shipped in

Front of the unit

Top of the unit

Rear of the unit

If you deploying this in your environment you need to make certain you can accept the security and loss of control you have over this unit compared to other machine in your environment.   I see this fitting more in the public space kiosk scenarios suchs as libraries or hotels.   Because they do lack the centralized control that you would normally deploy in corporate environments I say give this one a pass or at least look hard at what you are trying to accomplish.   For the public space this is a great product, extremely low maintenance, the ability to monetize but charging a fee (customized through the stat page),  and extremely well versed and fast techinical support.   If you want to deploy an Internet Cafe in your area this is the product for you.

The Kiosk Series:

The Kiosk Series – Part One – Choices For Your Environment

The Kiosk Series – Part Two – Management Considerations For Your Environment

The Kiosk Series – Part Three – Microsoft SteadyState vs Group Policies

Sometimes things aren’t obvious for being obsolete in the world of computers.  If you a Windows user it’s compeltely obvious that you are using an older version of windows immediately when you start using it.   Whether the signs are when you sit down and see Windows 98 striped across the start menu or the older version of Internet Explorer 5.0 that starts up, you catch these things and it is noticeable.  The same thing also holds true for Linux, but this is more of aesthetic issues that become apparent, usually graphic issues that are sorted out on newer versions you catch on the older ones.

But what about OS X?

My sister has been having a problem with her ipod nano she got for christmas.   Itunes wouldn’t recognize it, she would have to upgrade itunes.  Fair enough.   Well itunes won’t load on her Operating System, which was OS X 10.3.2.   Ironically the latest version of Itunes works on windows 98 and will work with the Nano.    10.3.2 is newer then Windows 98, but yet still is forcing the upgrade on the OS X users.  Normally I wouldn’t really have a problem with this, I’m also not a nuanced Mac user.   I can’t however tell graphically an immediate difference (once the machine is booted) between my sisters 10.3.2 desktop and my 10.5.1 desktop on my Mac Air.

Do people just one day stop writing code that should graphically look the same from OSX desktop to the OSX desktop?

I’m just confused I guess.   Mac is supposed to just work, then please just work.

I’m upgrading my sister’s computer to 10.4, then she should be able to the load the proper itunes and be able to sync her ipod.    It’s just annoying.    I’m not scared of other operating systems, I fixed a networking problem she had for months that my “computer genius” step-father had tried to correct but couldn’t do anything “because it’s a mac”.   I knew there was a reason I don’t talk to that side of the family.   Currently my “regular” computing devices include – XP Desktop for work, Mac Air Book 10.5 for work, Hardy Heron Laptop for myself,  XP desktop for home games and movies, Windows 2k3 server for home.    My micro OS’s include Maemo on my soon to be delivered n810 and Palm OS and my TX.

At work I’m a main person to say that Mac is not built for the enterprise, they have poorly designed business software when it comes to managing a mixed environment.    Now the argument back is that Microsoft should make tools to manage Macs, I believe for acceptance in the full enterprise that needs to be reversed.   Apple needs to roll over backwards fitting itself in, I mean I have an easier time working with Linux in an enterprise environment then Mac.    The ironic thing is I never heard anyone ever say “Linux just works”.

For my stepfather that is scared of alternative Operating Systems, like the big scary Mac.  It took my wife and I a total of 15 minutes in which she used her N810 tethered via bluetooth to her phone to google the questions I asked her.  She fed me back the information after she filtered it and bang – working networking.

If your not willing to work out of your comfort zone and approach new things, you will never grow.   This means no matter how you look on the outside and what your resume says about you, like sitting down at the 10.3.2 desktop and not noticing anything different, you still need to be upgraded or replaced.   At this point you are no longer truly useful except for some obscure things and can not compete in modern thought.

One of the programs that management wants us to look at for our kiosk implementation is Microsoft Steadystate which is Microsoft‘s all in one wizard create a kiosk solution.

I’m not entirely convinced on the scenario that there is things in which you can do with this, that active directory is not more suited for.   So while we work through this document we’ll be exploring the options of SteadyState and comparing it to group policies that you can push down to a computer or user account from a central location.

This is the start page of Microsoft SteadyState from here there are 6 things you can do:

1. Set Computer Restrictions

2. Schedule Software Updates

3. Protect the Hard Disk

4. Add a New User

5. Export a User

6. Import a User

This is the “Set Computer Restrictions” page.  This is broken down to different sections and show you how limiting the computer settings are in group polices that can be applied to this state.   While there are still further windows computer policies you can apply to the machine especially if you wish to conform to your companies security plan, we’ll stick with Microsoft’s options for now.

Privacy Settings:

1. Do not display user names in the Log On to Windows dialog box

Group Policy equivalent:

Computer Configuration\Windows Settings\Security Settings\Local Policies\Security Options\Do Not Display last user name in login screen

2. Prevent locked or roaming profiles that cannot be found on the computer from logging on

Group Policy Equivalent:

Disable interactive logon for all accounts except the approved accounts for use with the kiosk machine

Registry Equivalent:

“Computer Configuration\User Settings\Administrative Templates\System\User Profiles\Log users off when roaming profile fails”

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\System\ProfileErrorAction]

3. Do not cache copies of locked or roaming profiles for users who have previously logged on to this computer -

Group Policy Equivalent:

Disable interactive logon for all accounts except the approved accounts for use with the kiosk machine

Registry Equivalent:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\System\DeleteRoamingCache]

Security Settings:

1. Remove the Administrator user name from the Welcome Screen

Group Policy Equivalent:

The XP Welcome screen is automatically changed to the classic logon screen after a computer is joined to a domain – no policy change is needed unless this has been adjusted.

Registry equivalent:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\SpecialAccounts\UserList\Administrator]

2. Remove the Shut Down and Turn Off options from the Log On to Windows and the Welcome Screen

Group Policy Equivalent:

Policy:Disable Logoff on the Start Menu
Description:Removes the "Logoff" button from the Start menu and prevents
users from adding the Logoff button to the Start menu.
Registry Value:"StartMenuLogoff"

Policy:Disable and remove the Turn Off Computer button
Description:Removes the "Turn Off Computer" button from the Start Menu and
prevents shutting down Windows using the standard shutdown user interface.
Registry Value:"NoClose"

3. Do not allow Windows to compute and store passwords using LAN Manager Hash values

Group Policy Equivalent:

Computer Configuration\Windows Settings\Security Settings\Local Policies\Security Options\Network Security: Do not store LAN Manager hash value on next password change

4. Do not store user names or passwords used to log on to Windows Live ID or the domain

Group Policy Equivalent:

Computer Configuration\Windows Settings\Security Settings\Local Policies\Security Options\Network access: Do not allow storage of credentials or .NET Passports for network Authentication

By disabling interactive logins for all users accept the kiosk user acount – this isn’t an issue

5. Prevent users from creating folders and files on the drive c:\

Security configured on the drive to give the kiosk only read access to information it needs should handle this.

6. Prevent users from opening Microsoft Office documents from within Internet Explorer

Registry Equivalents:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Excel.Sheet.5\BrowserFlags]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Excel.Sheet.8\BrowserFlags]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\MSProject.Project.8\BrowserFlags]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\PowerPoint.Show.8\BrowserFlags]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Word.Document.6\BrowserFlags]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Word.Document.8\BrowserFlags]

7. Prevent write access to USB storage devices

Registry Equivalent:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\StorageDevicePolicies\WriteProtect]

Other Settings:

1. Turn off the Welcome Screen

Group Policy Equivalent:

The XP Welcome screen is automatically changed to the classic logon screen after a computer is joined to a domain – no policy change is needed unless this has been adjusted.

If you notice the Microsoft does have some understanding of using machines with this configuration applied to them in a Domain environment since they provide the not “In a Domain managed environment the Domain Group Policy supersedes any settings made here.”

This is the Schedule Software updates screen.  From you can configure the interval in which you update the Windows Operatings and auxillary programs.  For updating windows a SteadyState computer supports Microsoft Update, Windows update or WindowServer Update Services.

The supported security program updates are limited the only programs that have native support are Computer Associates eTrust 7.0, McAfee VirusScan, and TrendMicro 7.0.  You have the option of creating a custom script to handle any other program updates you may need.   In a domain environment this can easily be handled by central update servers such as SMS and AV servers.

Windows disk protection allows the user to install any programs they want or download whatever they wish, but the hard drive will just wipe out the data.  I can’t seem to find a registry or policy equivalent that allows this, so it seems that this is one main benefit of steady state.

The “Add a New User” screen only allows you to create local users which doesn’t really help you in a secure domain based enviroment.   It will however check you domain’s password policy’s that you may have pushed down to the machine via group policy.  If you do use this wizard to create accounts be aware that user policies from the domain can not be applied.

The first screen of User Settings is the “General” tab.   Here we get into some more unique settings to the SteadyState product.   While it has the function to prevent the user from making permanent changes the most interesting thing is the log off options,  The ability to add a maximum amount of use time or an idle time is done by the use of two helper applications that are installed with SteadyState.   Being able to always display the session countdown allows the user to see how much time they have left before the log off procedure is invoked.   Restart computer after log off allows the Windows Disk Protection to kick in and reset the machine back to a clean state.   While this is nice, the same option could be invoked by creating a log-off script.

The User Settings \ Windows Restrictions tab allows you to hide drives, set default restriction levels and takes the start menu restrictions straight out of the security policy.  This is simple to replicate with a domain group policy.

Screen 2 of Windows Restrictions

Screen 3 of Windows Restrictions

Screen 4 of Windows Restrictions

Feature restrictions are more policies that have been taken straight out of the local security policy (domain policy manager).

Screen 2 of Feature Restrictions

Screen 3 of Feature Restrictions

Screen 4 of Feature Restrictions

While SteadyState allows you to block certain programs, locally installed antivirus can normally do this.  Normally you wouldn’t want this in a kiosk environment.  A better scenario is using group policies to allow only the programs you specify to run.  Using the SteadyState scenario if someone ran a rogue application off their USB drive (if you’ve given them access) or renamed an EXE that was blocked that doesn’t need registry access, well I doubt that SteadyState could do anything to stop this.

Importing users is done via a normal windows save/open dialogue box.   It loads files done with a supported *.ssu extenstion.

Exporting is done in a proprietary *.ssu file extension once again using the standard windows open / save dialogue box.

Can I recommend SteadyState?

For 90% of what it does I wouldn’t use SteadyState at all but would personally rely on centrally controlled and maintained group policies within a domain environement.   What does shine though is the Windows Drive Protection and the helper utilities that handle logoff  timers – though with the idle time out I would more likely just use a script I controlled which could be invoked by the screensaver kicking in.

I didn’t go through each of the group policies under the user restrictions since it’s almost verbatim down the list under the policy management.  If you have any questions on a setting to restrict without using the SteadyState feel free to ask.   The biggest disadvantage to SteadyState is the fact that it uses local accounts that can’t be managed remotely with ease.   Being at a company where everything is done to avoid using local accounts I can say this is bad mojo.

I may use the the drive protection and timeout applications, we’ll see when this project is truly finished.

Reference Links:

Windows SteadyState Worldwide page

Windows SteadyState Readme File

Windows SteadyState Technical FAQ

Windows SteadyState Handbook

The Desktop Files: Shared Computing with Windows SteadyState

The Kiosk Series:

The Kiosk Series – Part One – Choices For Your Environment

The Kiosk Series – Part Two – Management Considerations For Your Environment

Kiosk System Management Strategy

There are multiple issues involved with managing a “kiosk system”.   We have to look at the problems we will face whether they are considered to be internal or external.  From a security and management scope of this document we are going to assume they are located on the company guest network.  If the machines are located within the internal network the current maintenance procedures will apply.

While this is still in the design period the final abilities of both the kiosk system and the where it falls have not been decided upon.   Until another strategy is decided upon we are going to assume that these systems will be a member of the domain.

Hotfixing and Patching: Within the internal network we currently use a mixture of WSUS, SMS, and Antivirus servers to keep computers up to date.   Something similar would have to be replicated either on the guest or DMZ network.   If it is located on the DMZ network controls would have to be in place that the communication is pushed to the client for updates instead of the client pulling the information.  If the information absolutely must be pulled, this will be addressed in the section below titled “Securing Connections”.

Break/Fix Issues: Next to the computer there will have to be a phone located so users can report any issues that a kiosk should have.   Upon receiving the call and logging it, normal break/fix procedures would apply.

Remote Desktop: Going from the DMZ to the guest network we should be able to RDP into the kiosk unit.

Remote Monitoring: For the best security standpoint all of these units should include full auditing.   The audit trail could be maintained locally with a remote server from the DMZ pulling in the logs via either a script or an off the shelf utility designed for pulling log files off of the machine.

Utilization Report: Similar to the Audit log we can get a utility that monitors the utilization with these units and pull them into the internal network.  This can be done after tracking down a third party program that allows for utilization monitoring or by parsing the audit log and turning that into a utilization report.

Seat Type: A new seat type would have to be established to accommodate the additional costs incurred from the environment set up and maintenance of these units including but not limited the additional costs possibly incurred by having a phone nearby to inform the help desk of any issues.

Security Plan: A new security plan would have to be established since there will configuration settings that do not fit into the current security plans that the company has established.  While these will fall under a site security plan, none of our existing would not be able to fit these systems under their configuration options.

Privacy Controls: Depending on the kiosk solution we go with – whether it be a login based solution where they have a full application suite or a web kiosk something must be done to maintain user privacy.   After an inactivity time (amount to be specified later) which would either clear the process from memory or log the user out of the kiosk completely depending on which kiosk method we are using in a couple methods. One would be an off the shelf software product to this, at this point I would assume we would use all of their privacy and utilization reports. Another option would be to setup a script to kill the process or automatically log out the user and utilize the screensaver in the kiosk to run this functionality and monitor idle time.

Securing Connections: If the machines must pull information from the machines in the DMZ, then the best method would be to utilize IPSEC.  This would limit the amount of ports needed and allow us to lockdown communication to only the specific server that the kiosk would need to talk to.

The article does make good points though he wrote it poorly and pulled out data out of thin air.  I don’t argue with some of what he is saying but let’s break it down by his bullet points.

1. Broadband Speed – his assumption that you would buy it anywhere online – in the immediate future as this scales there are two options other then the most obvious update the broadband infrastructure in this country.  The first being it is more likely that major media distributors will have a distribution within your ISP (as long as you use a major one) – since it would be within it’s own network and there would be no connection fees associated with routing traffic over another ISP – all of that ISP’s user would be able to get full speed other then crossing and routing across a partners internet link (which is the real reason ISP throttle you down) – The second is IP multicast which if implemented woudl take most the strain of the ISP – it would take the same amount of bandwidth for hte ISP to send the data to all users on a given subnet/ IP range as it would to a single user – a combination of the two is where this is going.   He also seems to avoid the fact that whenever you watch an “on demand” movie on your cable that it is digital distribution – just on pipes you can’t normally route traffic through.   That works fine for most americans.

He also add that it can take an hour to download a movie – Most movies are 2 hours in length – which means under his assumption that I can watch it streamed no problem – the movie doesn’t have to finish downloading to start watching it (author of the article MUST be using bit torrent instead of a good streaming mechanism so we’ll forgive him).

2. Tiered Download Capacity – addressed this by having distribution points within your home ISP – having this would cost the ISP nothing to give you traffic that stays within their network – it’s when you cross the router that exits their network which costs them fees.  Most logical is that you will see “features” offered from your ISP which state you can do all this within the walled garden (aol style) and the tiered pricing kicks in when you leave the garden.

3.  Media Cost – it’s all dependent on if you want to own something – here is the crux – if you “rent movies” but can get them anytime or anywhere for 3.00 -5.00 dollars a viewing this means you need to watch and pay for it 4-7 times before it actually costs you more then owning it.   He pointed out that it would take 12k to replace his movie collection in blu-ray and stated he could do a trade in – well the trade in would give him 2-3.00 per DVD he traded in – so this would give me at the most 1800.00 – I’m sorry that’s not a large enough dent.   If you do “buy” a digital movie which you can, it does cost about the same as a physical copy – but yet less then current Blu Ray titles – so this really is where you need to decide if you would spend 12k on replacing all your DVDs to Blu Ray.  He also added the full albums cost more if you buy them online versus the store – well radiohead and NIN are both turning that theory on it’s head.   But also how often is it that you want every single song on an album.

4.  Storage Costs – he qouted a number of 8.4 TB that would take to store of all of his data – having ripped enough DVD’s myself I’ll say that 99% of the 200+ dvds I own are single layer – so they max out at 4.3 GB and most don’t even take up all the space on the disk – so 2.5 TB would store all of his DVDs nicely – Ironically I have about 2 TBs at home and it didn’t cost me the 1800.00 he qouted.   I have drives that have lasted for years and yes the storage space is spread out all over the home network – but my server does have over 1 TB.

5. Adoption – a couple things he missed here is that the XBOX 360 and PS3 as well as computers all support streaming media – most blu-ray players are rumored to be able to support it in the next specification lock – so that is something to take note of before he qoutes the 1k media computer.   Actually since home servers are coming to be more common the computer hooked up to your TV can be add for under 300.00.

He is right about how the distribution is going to happen and hte problems it faces.   The recession if anything is going to help spur this.  One friend because of my arguement is getting netflix and dropping his cable – his cable costs 800.00 a year on top of his internet.  Streaming will replace cable before it will replace straight purchased movies – but once the public becomes comfortabel with one the other will follow.

Also don’t forget one thing – Sony is betting on both Blu-Ray and streaming.   They realize that it’s a good thing to hedge their bets.

SWG, what a long strange journey it’s been.

So I’m here finally quitting Star Wars Galaxies for the last time.   I don’t play anymore and the latest CSR announcement about accepting AFK game play as the norm was the straw that broke the camels back.   One person said I need help if this is the reason I quit.  I retorted that since I don’t play and have continued to pay as token support for SWG and Intrepid’s survival that I’m more mental for continuing a subscription.

The long journey with Star Wars Galaxies began almost 5 years ago.  I purchased that game at launch and dealing with the launch day crashing I managed to create a character on Gorath.  My wife played with me and we ooed and ahhed at the online world.   It was the first MMO for both of us and we loved it.

Two days later Gorath was down and I wanted to get in and explore some more.  Originally I wanted to be a smuggler ala Han Solo, but I decided for a laugh I was going to create an Entertainer.  Intrepid was the server that was available and chose to land there.  Choosing my planet and destination I landed on Talus.   I wanted to Tyrena since that was where I hung out for a day on Gorath and I was familiar with it.   After earning enough money on Talus I moved to Tyrena and never looked back.

The first day in Tyrena was an experience.  I hooked up with other entertainers; of course they were all ATK since AFKing didn’t exist yet.  The pseudo leader of the cantina at the time was Kathryn, who more or less had business ideas galore.  She had us running advertisements around the shuttle port for a tailor named Bifein.  There were many of us there in Tyrena, and while I’m sure I’ll leave some important people I’ll give out some of the names.  The entertainer crowd was formed by Agaar, Neena-Marie, Silentbob, Xie ‘lanthia, Candyce, Punasti, Moya’, Alich, Kathryn, and Lanfear.  Most notable customers were Astrolite (Sliced the first Light Saber in SWG), Blood (founder of EIS), Shinjo (Intrepid’s Original Bad Boy), Nemo (Intrepid’s First Master Architect), and Davinci (arguably the best Weapon smith and quest master that Intrepid ever saw).

The group of Tyrena Entertainers formed Star Dragon Entertainment, I was the spokesman and comedian of the group, Xie more or less controlled the dancers and organization of the groups. She also named the band. Star Dragon entertainment folded into SCO which became SGO. Some members like NeenaMarie stayed with them until the NGE hit. SCO was Intrepid’s first guild ever built by Nemo.   I was asked to be head of the entertainers but I declined I wanted a guild of my own.

Back when we had to pay for training all the entertainers would pool money together to get a new skill, since the person getting the skill could then train others for free.   We were very communal and worked together to get things done.  Xie and I mastered Entertainer and decided to go out in the big huge world.   We visited Mos Eisley, the busiest and most bustling area of activity in the galaxy; there were 4-5 full groups of 20 players playing in groups at the same time in the Eisley Cantina.  It was insane and fun but definitely too busy for me.   We journeyed to Naboo, where the people there acted like they had a pikeman’s lance shoved up to you know where, but almost as busy as Eisley.   Finally we wandered to Coronet where we met the second group of people that we would forever refer to as friends, Imcus Vree, En-chi Lada, and Chon Wang.  We performed together and called ourselves the Def Stars.

Around this time Period a tailor out side of Coronet had just mastered a certain box of field wear that allowed him to craft gunmen’s duster.   The place was insane with shoppers and Mokilok was the king of tailoring on Intrepid for a time because of it.   I still own the Mokilok Duster I purchased that day.   When I managed to visit once to get a custom order he had built himself a throne surrounded by torches and to say the least he was a unique individual.   A weapon smith outside of the Coronet was close to mastering and was known for making the best guns at the time.  His name was Idunno Udunno.   While I know I won’t remember all of them, Idunno, Zarina, and Mokilok were pivotal in creating the group that was known galaxy wide as the Corellian Mafia.

During this time I made money traveling from Cantina to Cantina across the galaxy selling instruments.  I made a healthy profit off of it.   Though one time I got stuck on Rori for a few hours until Davinci could wire me enough credits so I could fly back to Naboo. I was known for crafting instruments and was one of the main sellers in the Galaxy.  So much that Moya’ made everyone promise not mention that he was selling instruments and cutting into my sales.   I do know that Neill who still posts on the Entertainer forums made a special request for me to fly all the way to some out of the way Cantina to deliver him a special crafted instrument.  Thankfully just as prices were starting to kick up I managed to start buying weapon power ups off the bazaar in Coronet and taking them to Tyrena Bazaar and sealing them for a profit.   I made a pretty penny (for this time period) and then one day I was tipped 276521 credits – still an important figure for me.   All my friends at the time thought I was rich, and I thought for the longest time that it was credits gotten through an exploit (that should tell some of you how bad inflation is today).

One day Xie and I being master entertainers were invited to a “Masters Ball” since there were so few masters of any profession at that time it was an honor and a select few.  We wanted to take friends to share in the event as we were allowed to bring any guest we may like.   Xie took along Moya’ and I took along Alich.   They were both still working up in the entertainer profession and thought it would be nice to have them mingle along with us.   Little did I know that the two wookiees thought that these were traditional dates.   This became apparent when Xie lost her life and Moya’ mourned the loss, I had to explain to Alich that my lekkus don’t swing that way.  Though I still heard about it from Moya’ for years.  I just mention that Moya’ managed to watch his date murdered and didn’t do anything to stop it.

Moya’ did manage to get me back.  Talking in the Tyrena cantina with En-chi Lada, Moya’, Candyce, and  Xie I believe; I was complaining that the cantina didn’t have any restrooms and as far as I could decipher I couldn’t find any public restrooms at all.

Moya’ then told En-Chi and myself that he had seen a restroom over in the Tyrena hotel. The Tyrena Hotel? Why that was just across the street. I had been holding my bodily functions for so long and salvation was so close? Why had the Galactic gods tormented me so by having a restroom so close by.

En-chi and I rushed over to the hotel in hope of relieving ourselves.  We searched that hotel from top to bottom (ok it’s only one floor but there was another argument with Moya’ over elevators). We started screaming at Moya’ . Moya’ came over and started trying to find this infamous restroom. It seems the wookiee thought a decorative alcove was a restroom – it seems that you should never tell a wookiee how to get to the indoor restroom – always walk them there.  On a side note because of this incident I finally built a restroom in my house and that toilet got a lot of use.

I parlayed my money into more buying and reselling and eventually got the credits over 1 million after a couple weeks.   Around this time period Davinci sent me a tell while I was performing in the Tyrena Cantina, he told me “Ding, I did it”- after clarifying he had made the highest damage laser rifles in the galaxy.   He named them the widow maker – there was another customer so Davinci held a number guessing contest to choose the buyers.  Since I was buying two I got two guesses.  All said and done I managed to get both the highest DPS rifle on the server (I still own it) and the lowest mind cost rifle on the server (Xie still owns hers).

Going back to the funny incidents there was a player named Clark Griswold on the Intrepid who managed to loose the waypoint to his house.   A server wide search north of Theed went on to looking for his house.   Out of a joke En-Chi and I managed to buy and identically styled house and place it down.  Naming it Clark‘s house.   The next day cheers were going on that someone had found Clark‘s house.   En-chi and I were rolling over this.  Clark went to the waypoint and tried to get in but didn’t manage to get through the door.   He then figured out the ruse and realized it wasn’t his house.   A big outrage started from certain people on the forum and En-Chi and I owned up to it instead of slinking away.  Afterwards it was quite a joke and everyone laughed.

I worked in starting the first museums on the Intrepid server, trying catalogue and save every little thing I could find.   Padre helped me in my hunt on collecting anything and everything rare.  I never sold a donation and every donation I received when I closed the museums later was donated to other people, or I still have them.   It was never for me, I never made a dime off it.  I did it for the server community and that’s where I spent most of my money.   Unfortunately two days before my public opening someone else opened a museum.  I can say I started the first museum on Intrepid, but mine was the second opened to the public.   Mine was made of 4 medium Naboo buildings filled to the brim.  I was quite proud of that.

A new person came onto the scene at this time.  His name was Keltrien.   He had big ideas and bigger ambitions.   After working through some starter thoughts on the message boards for a few weeks he decided he was going to run a server wide festival.  He pulled it off with Xie and I gathering entertainers to perform and his working the money makers on the server for donations.   Groovefest was born and Keltrien said it was good.

Keltrien went on to run many more Groovefest and whether it was from direct help or indirect (renting vendor space) I helped him whenever I could.  I can say the other festivals the server has seen since have never been as big as the one’s Keltrien threw.   This was an atmosphere with hundreds of people milling about, shopping, and having a good time.   Keltrien managed to start a city on Tatooine just to hold Groovefest events in.   Keltrien went on to start a regular weekly speeder bike competition and a droid fighting competition.  Keltrien did a lot for Intrepid’s community and he shouldn’t be forgotten for that.

Keltrien however didn’t own a monopoly on large scale events.  Another event started was a music performance competition and it was arranged by Jerik.  Jerik started the IJB (Intrepid Jam Bonanza) competition.   Most the Def Stars had stopped being entertainers, but Xie and I thought we would enter one last competition as the Def Stars.  There were only two of us and we needed a third.  We recruited Moya’.  We rehearsed and polished our macros for the competition.  The day of the competition we managed to get our guild hall.  We showed up at the competition with the DEF guild tag above our heads.   Ironically you would have thought this was a normal music competition, by today’s standards it was but then it was something different.   They wanted to know who wanted to go when, we fought for and won the right to go last place.  The entire competition went on and then we were on.  Everyone thought that it was going to be the same song arrangement.  For the entertainers in the group that can audilize it, we played Starwars1 – with 2 mandoviol’s and an omnibox.  So we had a true rock and roll sound.  Not only that we sung lyrics.  Singing lyrics was unheard of in the cantina or in competition.  None of the other competitors sang, some think we demeaned the competition.  But to every other non entrant there it blew them away and we won.   Ironically for all those on Intrepid that have to endure all the entertainers singing in the cantina now, you’re welcome.

Here are the lyrics as performed at the IJB by the Def Stars

The AFK Entertainer

I’m the afk entertainer
And I know just where to stand
Another AFKer
Another macro band
Today I am your healer
I may have won your creds
But I know the game
You’ll forget my name
And I won’t be here for a jawa beer
If I don’t stay on the star charts

Chorus:
Oh yeah, macro baby macro
Oh yeah, macro baby macro

I’m the afk entertainer
And I’ve had to pay my price
The things I did not know at first
I got free training, NICE!
Ah but still it comes to haunt me
My tailor I need to pay
So I’ve learned to dance
With a macro and hot pants
I rub their neck and give my macro a check
As they tip because their BF goes way

Chorus:
Oh yeah, macro baby macro
Oh yeah, macro baby macro

I’m the afk entertainer
Been all around the worlds
I’ve said “tip me” in every cantina
And I’ve spammed with my dancer girl
I can’t remember faces
I don’t remember names
Ah but what the heck
I give my macro one last check
‘Cause after a while and a thousand galactic miles
The grind is still the same

Chorus:
Oh yeah, macro baby macro
Oh yeah, macro baby macro
Oh yeah, macro baby macro
TIP ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now we won a million credits and to put it into Intrepid’s current inflation terms – that would between 150-200 million.  That’s how much purchasing power that bought.  I wanted to use the money to start a city – “New Tyrena”.  We purchased our city hall and were ready to go, I was going to be mayor and Imcus was going to be the city planner.  Well the city planner profession was scrapped, but Imcus was still the designer.  We spent weeks looking for a spot and finally found one.   We were ready, the City patch came, and we were too slow.   The planet was already capped.   A week or two later SOE decided to raise the planetary caps and we managed to get our city down.   Symphonia was born and it still stands there today.

We spent a couple nights packing up and moving all the museums from their current location to Symphonia, these building became the back wall of Symphonia’s main quad.   We grew and flourished and focused on DEF being an entertainer only guild and Symphonia a city dedicated to the arts.   Then because of personal reasons I had to quit the game suddenly without telling anyone except I sent a message to Moya’ .  I gave Moya’ access to my accounts to move things around but I wasn’t logging in.   They held a funeral for the character Creeva in Symphonia, and it was SWG’s first as far as anyone could tell (this was Jan 2004).  Looking at screenshots I’ve seen of that day it seems at least 50 people showed up.  This was to a funeral in a video game.   Imcus and Moya’ wrote a song called Sgt. Creeva’s Band.   I was touched even being outside the game.   The museums were saved and life would go on.

After a month or two I managed to get things straightened out so I could log back in.   At this time I was welcomed with joy.  Imcus had taken over as mayor and still is to this day.   The museums grew and life went on.   Well I’m sure there are some significant issues that happened around this time, more Groovefest and such.  A dark peril started circling the galaxy the AFK entertainer and the hologrind.   The AFKing had been growing for months but grew to a peak when Monika unlocked the first Jedi Akinom on the Intrepid server.   I was there in Coronet the first night the first Jedi was wandering SWG.  It was awe inspiring.  My RL friend Astrolite managed to slice her light saber, getting the no trade item across via droid storage compartment – now that’s a true smuggler.   The appearance of the Jedi showed that unlocking professions was the path – this lead to the hologrind.

The hologrind was a way of life the cantina were piled full of AFKers just trying to master the profession so they could move on to the next one.  What made matters worse in SOE’s attempt to encourage this they gave everyone holocron’s for x-mas.  Some people received two since there was a bug where some players never received the first one.    This further increased the use of holocrons to discover what profession you needed next to finish your path onto Jedi.     I can say that I never opened my holocrons and it is still on display at the Entertainer Museum in Symphonia.   The golden age of SWG was over and a new dawn was coming.   I was a strong anti-afk advocate but in the minority the ATK entertainers were overwhelmed. 

There were good times and bad times during this stage, DEF had added more members over time.  Amber and Siri being the most notable.  Outside of Moya’ and Imcus, Amber has been the longest member of DEF.  Siri was the largest cross server superstar (out side ourselves of course :P) to join the guild.   The guild however wasn’t growing and disagreements on who to bring and who not to lead slowly to a partial dissolution.   Xie had wanted more of a consensus instead of taking weeks to guild a member and she wanted to step down from being the decision maker of the guild, she was mostly the decision make since she was the tie maker or breaker and was kind of the unofficial leader because of it.   Moya’ and I were doing the museum thing, especially with starting the Wookiee Cultural Center in Symphonia.  Imcus was busy chasing his Jedi dream (no holocrons were used as far as I know) so Xie was kind of left holding the back. Things had come to a point and the SWG combat upgrade hit us smack in the face.  

Xie and forced the issue with the guild on two fronts.  Because of the combat upgrade I was going to leave the guild for awhile, I was respeccing out of entertainer and I didn’t think I should be in a guild called the Dedicated Entertainment Foundation without being an entertainer.   Xie wanted more cantina time for the guild and thought that while DEF should remain, if they weren’t going to be in the cantina’s and actively working as entertainers that we should take entertainment out of the guild name.   Ironically Siri left Intrepid forever to get away from the fame and because DEF never really supported her in the guild.   Things were quickly creeping up.

SOE finally decided to give entertainers a little bit of love and brought out a new song and dance via a theater quest and at this time Jerik decided it was time to do another IJB.   There had been IJB’s since the first but DEF resisted entering them but this one was rumored to be the last one.  DEF had members enter in the other band’s to perform in the IJB but we didn’t compete as a group.   For the last IJB we came together again (except Xie who sat it out), since Xie wasn’t there we weren’t going to use the Def Star name.  So we came up with the Def Spurs.    The Def Spurs came in second, there was some controversy over this since the winning band had gotten a do-over because they screwed up.   I still think that comes with territory.  I stilled performed a lot at this time and with the big credit duping scandal there was massive in game protests.  Xie relayed news to me at work and a fledging Intrepid organization came into being.  The INN – the Intrepid News Network.   Ironically their news coverage made it to the major gaming blogs and they were an Intrepid staple for some time to come.  

Whichever Groovefest it was at this time – I did my own protest song.  Which caught on quite a bit:

Soe Idiot

Don’t want to be an SOE idiot.
Don’t want a galaxy that under the new regiment.
And can you hear the sound of hysteria?
The SOE mods tried silent it.

Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the Intrepid nation.
Everything isn’t meant to be okay.
More nerfs and bans coming tomorrow.
We’re not the ones who’re meant to follow.
Well that’s enough to argue.

Well maybe I’m the sad little boardy.
but I’m not a part of a duper minority.
Now everybody do the propaganda.
And sing along in the age of paranoia.

Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the Intrepid nation.
Everything isn’t meant to be okay.
More nerfs and bans coming tomorrow.
We’re not the ones who’re meant to follow.
Well that’s enough to argue.

Don’t want to be an SOE idiot.
Giving bans to 11 year old innocents.
Merchants are all in hysteria.
It’s going out to idiot developers.

Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the Intrepid nation.
Everything isn’t meant to be okay.
More nerfs and bans coming tomorrow.
We’re not the ones who’re meant to follow.
Well that’s enough to argue.

Everything building up and Xie and I took the guild aside and explained our concerns on what had been happening and our thoughts.   Because of a continual lack of consensus and everyone wanting not to hurt anyone else’s feelings, Xie and I left the guild.  Her for lack of entertainer focus and not changing the guild name to reflect it, myself for leaving entertainer.   From my understanding the members left behind in DEF feel we betrayed them and had a united front against them in our leaving.   Xie and I each had our own reasons just the timing happened the same day.  

I stayed a member of Symphonia, maintained my museums and my vendors.   My vendors were pulling in millions a week, that’s saying a lot for a player who only bought low and sold low.  I would say I only crafted less then 1% of everything I’ve sold.   For this sake of argument I will also include gathering resources as crafting since I never had lots for harvesters.   I kept all my resources regardless of quality at identical pricing and maintained some of the best prices on the server with the largest variety.  For my rarities, I would buy out other vendors and then make my prices the cheapest in the galaxy.  I made huge profits on quantity instead of price gouging.

The combat upgrade was in full effect and the silver age of Star Wars galaxies had come to a halt. 

I could discuss the village and other grinds and stories that go along in this time, but I still have more to tell and this tale is already quite lengthy.  We fast forward to the NGE, ironically because I was moving across country and internet service would be spotty I quit SWG for awhile.  Xie had quit a few months before me.  

After settling into a new house that I bought I decided it was time to check out SWG again.  I conned Xie into coming back with me.   We both wanted to be in an Entertainer guild again, but knew DEF was not focused that was anymore.  SO we started STARS – the story of STARS is here: http://creeva.com/2006/08/08/the-story-of-star/  we resurrected at the time the idea of an Intrepid news source at http://stars-of-intrepid.blogspot.com and the biggest hit was the Intrepid History quiz: http://stars-of-intrepid.blogspot.com/2007/01/ips-intrepid-quiz-how-many-can-you.html

We did fall into the same stagnation as we did with DEF though and it fell it apart.  It just proves that no matter how passionate or dedicated you are that no true entertainer guild that promotes ATK survives on Intrepid.   We also managed to start a new city called Pirates Retreat on Rori, it started falling apart after the housing cleanup.  That’s fine, I never really wanted a shuttle, but many residents did.   So all in all I founded two cities dedicated to entertainment and two guilds dedicated to the same.

For my in game tales I’ll leave it at that.  I’ve been an active member since launch in the Intrepid and Entertainer forums.  I was in the running for being the first musician correspondent.    I wrote many tipping, etiquette and performance guides for entertainers on the forums.   I did what I could to promote ATK entertainer all the time.   I started the infamous IPS on the Intrepid forums and it lives on today in its fifth generation.  I will miss it.   I will keep posting until I can’t anymore, but my account runs out March 1st. 2008.  Ant with that I’ll be gone from in game so I’m posting this now while I still can.

Some of you are going to deride this tale that I’ve relayed.  That’s fine, you are not the ones I’m trying to reach.  SWG has been a place for friends and communities.  Friendships crafted here transcend the game and forge real life bonds.  I may not be an entertaining superstar in real life, but I am now playing in two real life community bands.   The friendships I have there are not as strong as the ones I’ve made here.   I’ve spent 1/6 of my life on Intrepid.   It has been a good journey.  I’ve made friends I email daily. I’m working on a real life business venture with Keltrien.  I have had dinner on the coast with Moya’.  These are real thing and real people.

Some people think this is just a game.  It never was met to be.   It was a community.  A community you can’t find anywhere else, I’ve looked.   You can’t get both sides together and socialize and have fun.  Either the social side is terrible or they keep factions apart.   For those of you that understand what I’m saying and have that, hang on to it.   Literally 99% of the people I counted closest to me are gone.  It is my time to join them.  SOE not policing any AFKing for any professions was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

No you can’t have my stuff.  I will be logging in tonight though.   I do make one last promise to Intrepid and then I will be silent on what I can offer.  I promise as long as there is at least a few days notice, I will be back the final month of the game.   The final day I will be performing in the Tyrena cantina, I will perform there that day, until the servers go black never again to alight.

To end on a corny note, May the force be with you, always.

 I’ve been using Gmail and thought you might like to try it out. Here’s
an invitation to create an account.

——————————

—————————————–

(If clicking the URLs in this message does not work, copy and paste them
into the address bar of your browser).

Now you can say – so what?  What is wrong with this picture?  The first thing I can notice is that google forgot to update the email space counter in their e-mail.  While theoretically this shouldn’t matter if someone is comparing mail storage space from Google with Yahoo or or Microsofts offerings (granted they may become one in the same soon) the random joe blow won’t realize the true amount of space Google offers.  This could easily be corrected if the email just auto-generated this value based on what the current size limit was for gmail when the invite was sent out.

They also fail to trumpet service integration with gmail.   We’ll leave out the full Google suite and concentrate on the two things you are most likely to use with gmail.   Google Calender and Gtalk, both of these are trivially to access within the gmail interface.

Google, get on the ball and promote yourself correctly.   It’s the little things that make the difference.

You don’t know how to go about it and you need to implement it now?

I have a solution for you and best of all it’s free. This solution however is not supported by me, there will be no bug fixes by me, and any damages you cause to your own servers is your own fault. That is my one sentence disclaimer to tell you that you truly are on your own.

For this solution or temporary fix (depending on your organization) you are going to need the following helper programs:

Info-zip – we’ll use this to compress down files and save space specifically we need the zip.exe file

MD5SUMS – this allows us to generate MD5 checksums to verify if any file tampering has taken place after the fact. Specifically we need the md5sums.exe file.

Dump Event Log (Dumpel.exe) – this is a tool offered by Microsoft to dump your event logs to a text file. Though this link is part of the Windows 2000 Resource Kit I have tested and it does work with the Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 log files.

We take these 3 programs and wrap them to work together via a batch file. All 3 of these programs MUST be in the same directory as the batch file for it to work as designed. Here is the batch file:

@echo off
REM Sets date variables for file name
for /F “tokens=1,2″ %%d in (‘date /T’) do set day=%%d & set date=%%e
set yyyy=%DATE:~6,4%
set dd=%DATE:~3,2%
set mm=%DATE:~0,2%
set startDate=%yyyy%-%mm%-%dd%
REM Adds Computer to prefix the date
set outputname=%computername%-%startdate%
REM Cleans out previous zip files from a bad run
del %outputname%.zip
REM Dumps each of the log files going back for 2 days
REM allowing for overlaps we may miss due to time changes
dumpel -f %outputname%.sec -l security -d 2
dumpel -f %outputname%.app -l application -d 2
dumpel -f %outputname%.sys -l system -d 2
REM creates an MD5 hash for verification checking
md5sums %outputname%.sec >%outputname%.md5
md5sums %outputname%.app >>%outputname%.md5
md5sums %outputname%.sys >>%outputname%.md5
REM Compresses the 4 files
zip %outputname%.zip %outputname%.*
REM Cleans up the unneeded files to save
del %outputname%.sec
del %outputname%.app
del %outputname%.sys
del %outputname%.md5

I’ve included my comments in the batch file – but let’s go through it a section at a time so you can fully understand it.

@echo off

If you don’t know @echo off supresses everything from your screen in a batch, I wouldn’t suggest modifying my script since this is batch file programming 101.

for /F “tokens=1,2″ %%d in (‘date /T’) do set day=%%d & set date=%%e
set yyyy=%DATE:~6,4%
set dd=%DATE:~3,2%
set mm=%DATE:~0,2%
set startDate=%yyyy%-%mm%-%dd%
REM Adds Computer to prefix the date
set outputname=%computername%-%startdate%

This section adds the prefix to the files we are going to be using on all of your files – these allows us to work with files that include the computer’s name you are running this on and the date on which it was run.

del %outputname%.zip

This verify actually cleans up the zip file if this script has already been run during the current day. Mine is modified to delete the zip file completely since at the end of my script I move my files to a remote location and don’t need archived logs filling up my hard drive quickly.

dumpel -f %outputname%.sec -l security -d 2
dumpel -f %outputname%.app -l application -d 2
dumpel -f %outputname%.sys -l system -d 2

This area does the physical dumping of the logfile. Dumpel is the command. The -f switch allows us to specify a file name. If you notice I used the %outputname% as the first part of the file with the file type of which log file it is as the suffix. The -l switch let’s us specify which logfile we are dumping from the event log (security, application, or system). the -d switch allows us to specify how many days we wish to save. I chose 2 days to allow some overlap on the log files which is good for security reasons since we shouldn’t miss any events if you change the time of the day the script is run. It also give us two more logfiles to verify the authenticity of the log data we are looking at.

When this section is done running you should have three files. If your computer’s name was BOB-SERVER and the date you ran this was one January 3, 2007 the file names would read like this; BOB-SERVER-2007-01-03.sec for your security log, BOB-SERVER-2007-01-03.app for your application log, and BOB-SERVER-2007-01-03.sys for your system log.

md5sums %outputname%.sec >%outputname%.md5
md5sums %outputname%.app >>%outputname%.md5
md5sums %outputname%.sys >>%outputname%.md5

This section generates an MD5 Hash of the logfile data allows you to see if the data was tampered from when it was originally generated. It is next to impossible to edit a file and maintain the same hash data. This allows you some security that your log files are authentic. For those wondering “well can’t I just rerun the md5 program and generate a new hash and save that after modification?” – I have your answer. I didn’t include how to store these files after they are generated and we will touch upon that question under “What do you do now?” at the bottom. The command outputs your three BOB-SERVER-2007-01-03 files and output it to a single BOB-SERVER-2007-01-03.md5 file that includes a section with each of the above files. I decided personally that I didn’t need an md5 file for each of them – feel free to modify this if your needs differ.

zip %outputname%.zip %outputname%.*

This compresses the dumped events logs down to a manageable size. I managed to get a 60 MB log file that I generated during varying testing phases down to just over 6 MB. I also manged to get 480 KB of log files down to 14kb. At this point you should have a BOB-SERVER-2007-01-03.zip file which includes your three event logs and you md5 file.

del %outputname%.sec
del %outputname%.app
del %outputname%.sys
del %outputname%.md5

This section cleans up the files outside of the zip. I manage t0 get these files down 90% in size I don’t need these to eat up extra space.

What do you do now?

From here I would add in a line at the end to move the logs to another server where you can store them for length your organization deems necessary. To help combat the MD5 re-engineering I mentioned above I would copy the compressed archived to two locations on your network. This will help make having an MD5 meaningful. Another option is adding a script that e-mails you the MD5 hash so you have it saved for reference. Having the MD5 and collecting 2 days of information from the logs and would mean an attacker may have to edit 2-4 archives and regenerate md5′s for them – double that if you store a second set of archives in another location.
While this may fulfill your needs for log file capturing and an easy way to store them, it does not address the fact of easy log file auditing and tracking down events. There are all in one solutions out there for you to use and I don’t say in any terms this a solution to those. You need to address your own needs and decide what works for you. This is to give you sometime until your decide what you are going to do.

So reading my RSS feed I came across an article from Mashable – the article was a poll that asked what was your first web browser. While many people are mourning the loss of Netscape, which AOL announced today would be discontinued, it was not my first web browser.

My first internet connection I could use regulary was at college and the connection was a shell connection not a PPP connection. For those that haven’t guessed yet, my first browser was lynx. The browser that originally powered the web back in 1994 when I first actually made it onto the Internet. I did previously have access to a local BBS that offered to be an e-mail relay so my Internet e-mail addressing days actually predates my Internet exposure by almost a full year.

The odd thing was that the 1994/1995 school year was the first time there ever was Internet publicly available to the students (great time to be a freshman) , it was also the year that there was the largest amount of students that flunked out in the school history as legend tells it. Who knew Internet addiction started so quickly. I can say that I don’t see college girls today hanging out in Talkers, MOO’s, MUSH’s, or MUDs, – but they did back then. Almost everyone student understood telnet.

I was still at college (didn’t understand PPP or what it was) and installed OS/2 warp since it came with Mosaic web browser that gave you a graphical Internet. Mind you I had a 368 DX40 and OS/2 literally took 28 minutes to boot – but graphical Internet would have been worth it. Alas since I only had shell access I couldn’t use the funky picture browser so I went back to windows/dos fired up telix and dialed into my shell account back to lynx.

Following year I had an account with delphi I believe – it was a shell account so more lynx for me at 9.95 an hour for dialup (after the first 10 hours for 14.99). I wasn’t go to go the AOL route even if it meant foregoing graphics. I then managed to get a PPP connection but i never actually managed to get Mosaic working on windows with it. More specifically I couldn’t get the PPP drivers to work.

Finally a few months later after I got my first computer tech job I managed to get a computer working on a 14.4 baud modem with Netscape Navigator 2.(something) and the world was graphical. I remember Internet Explorer coming out and being inferior to Netscape and laughing at the idea Netscape could be dethroned. A few years later when Netscape Navigator 5.x came out I jumped ship to Microsoft.

I stayed with Internet Explorer for a few years complaining about the problems and security issues with the product. I came to find something my Linux friends had latched onto. It was a new browser called Firebird, had some of the feel of the old Navigator browser without the problems of Internet Explorer. Sure I used Internet Explorer occasionally then (like I do now but less often) because some web sites didn’t support it. Firebird got sued over teh name and became Firefox.

The two web browsers I use most today are Firefox and Flock, both Mozilla derivatives. For those whipper snappers that are ignorant and don’t know though. Netscape eventually was purchased by AOL for 4.2 billion dollars in 1998. AOL knew the community was bothered by this so as good PR it gave the right to give part of the Navigator source code to the open source movement. The open source organization that went forward and was the main force behind the Netscape open source software was the Mozilla foundation. If you are interested in the exact licensing and history of this movement please visit Mozilla’s Website to find out more.

So if you are using Firefox or any other Mozilla derivative on your computer please a take a minute and mourn for your browsers biological grandfather has past away. It is a sad day and a long strange journey. Netscape you have inspired many of us and made the web as mainstream as it is today. You were a visionary of a company and a browser. You will be missed.