Practical Technology

for practical people.

June 7, 2011
by sjvn01
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If you don’t use it, lose it.

After decades in the technology business I can still make dumb mistakes. In my recent mis-step, I received a message from a Yahoo Group with a name that looked like someone had dropped a cat on a keyboard. What the heck?

My mistake wasn’t that someone had added me to a Yahoo group , or rather that wasn’t my real mistake. I discovered, much to my surprise, that the default on Yahoo accounts is to allow Yahoo groups administrators to add you to their groups without your permission.

To get rid of this problem, head to Yahoo Group E-Mail Preferences and switch “Allow Direct Adds” to “No.” It’s not just Yahoo though; Google Groups does the same thing. The default option is “Allow group managers to directly add me to their groups.” I don’t think so! To change this, go to Google Groups Manage your Membership and click the box for “Do not allow group managers to directly add me to their groups.”

Now back to my real mistake. I went to the Yahoo Group site to unsubscribe from it. Guess what happened? That’s right: It grabbed my password and all my friends in my Yahoo Mail address list started getting spam.

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June 7, 2011
by sjvn01
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Understanding Wireless Connectivity Options for Businesses

It used to be so easy. You either connected with Wi-Fi, or you looked for a place to plug in an Ethernet cable. That was then. This is now.

Today, your laptop, netbook, smartphone, or tablet may give you as many as four different wireless choices. What’s a user to do? Let’s take a look at the different technologies and what they bring to you.

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June 6, 2011
by sjvn01
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Do Security Right and Tick Off your Customers

LastPass had a fine idea. Like other security companies, such as 1Password and RoboForm, they’d enable users stuck with dozens, if not hundreds, of passwords to use one master password to rule them all.

OK, so that is putting all your password power in one ring and that, as Sauron found out in The Lord of the Rings can be a mistake. But, if you guard that one password with a lot of encryption—or keep it surrounded by orcs and a balrog—it should be fine. Right? Right??

Alas, a while back, LastPass’ system administrators noticed something odd going on on one of their servers. They were afraid that hackers might have cracked their system and be on their way to grab master passwords.

That wouldn’t do, so they shut down the one suspect server. That was a good idea. They then let everyone know that there had been a possible security breech by a blog message. That wasn’t such a bright idea. So, they decided on what sounded like a great idea: Now that the one server was off-line they would have everyone reset their passwords. Whoops.

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June 6, 2011
by sjvn01
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Likewise moves into storage networks with Active Directory

It used to be so easy. They’d ask you, “Where’s my data?” And, you could point to the servers. Then along came multiple storage virtual storage layers, then Storage Area Networks (SAN)s and Network Attached Storage (NAS) and more recently the cloud. What’s a network administrator to do? Likewise Software has a plan.

Likewise, which has long supported multi-platform-Linux, Unix, and Windows-file and print systems with Active Directory (AD). I’ve used their products myself and they work well. Now, they’re launching a new service, Likewise Storage Services, which brings Network File System (NFS) support to their Common Internet File System (CIFS) that’s commonly used on Windows networks.

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June 6, 2011
by sjvn01
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Syria’s Internet is back up… for now

On June 3, 2011, Syria turned off its people’s Internet connectivity. Syria’s dictatorship had had enough of its citizens’ self-reporting on the government’s attacks on them. But, then Syria turned the Internet back on. What happened?

As Renesys, an Internet analytics firm, reported, only those sites that belonged to the Syrian government, and not all of them, were still on the net after the shutdown hit on Friday. In particular, “The networks that are not reachable include, substantially, all of the prefixes reserved for SyriaTel’s 3G mobile data networks, and smaller downstream ISPs including Sawa, INET, and Runnet.” In short, the people’s Internet was blocked.

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June 3, 2011
by sjvn01
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Syria shuts down the Internet

What is with Arab dictatorships and their thinking that cutting their people off from the Internet is a good idea? First, it was Egypt. Then, it was Bahrain, and finally Libya gave it a try How’s that working out for you guys? Egypt’s government was overthrown; Bahrain’s ruling family is hanging on thanks to outside support and mercenaries; and Libya’s in the middle of a bloody civil war. All-in-all, trying to cut the people’s communications’ life lines just angers the protesters even more and draws the world’s disapproving attention.

The state-run Syria News site reported earlier today, June 3, 2011, that “The Syrian government has cut off Internet service (3G, DSL, Dial-up) all across the country (Arabic link), including government institutions.” Later the same site reported that the Internet is available across parts of Syria [but that the] “Internet was ‘broken’ in Damascus, Syria’s capital, and Aleppo, and the provinces.”

This sounds to me like the officials are making up their story on the fly. This, in turn, suggests that Syria’s dictatorship hadn’t really thought out the ramifications of turning off the Internet.

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