Alex Scoble's IT Notes - An Information Technology Blog

I finally got someone to blog!

Excerpted in toto from my Computerworld blog cuz Chris is da mayor of MonsterTech.

I've finally done it. Sort of. Gotten someone to blog.

Well OK, what I did was get my brother to get them to blog, but if A>B>C, then conversely, I got them to blog.

Talking about my best friend Chris Greene. Phenominal graphics design guy, uber-crazy mountain biker (he does 24 hour races and does them well to boot), consumer electronics guru (he's the reason why I'm completely sold on THX and will never go back) and amateur Looney Tunes voice guy (performs a mean Marvin The Martian if you are lucky enough to ever hear it).

Now he's working as an associate product category manager at Monster Cable. Whatever that title means, I don't think it comes close to conveying his area of responsibilities.

At any rate, at his request I got him and Robert Scoble (my brother) together to schedule Robert to speak about corporate blogging to Monster Cable.

Can't say yet whether the rest of the company will get on board, but Chris has started blogging and wrote this interesting piece on how the one of the two HDDVD camps (Blue Ray and HD-DVD) could run away with the game by simply offering their technology to companies with an open source license.

I don't see Sony or Toshiba doing this as they would lose all that licensing revenue. Plus they make a decent business out of selling the base parts for equipment such as CD and DVD players, although if they are able to manufacture the fundamental mechanisms for new HDDVD players at a better value than anyone else, they will still make profit doing it.

While you are checking that piece out you can also read my other piece from tonight: "Millions: What it can cost if you don't properly vet vendors".

Blogging jumped the shark? Blogs used as butt of joke on TV

OK, it's happened. A sitcom has used blogs as joke fodder.

On "How I met your mother", Neal Patrick Harris's (of Doogie Howser fame) character tells the Alyson Hannigan character about his silver and shiny shirt, "the similarity between women and fish is that both are attracted to shiny objects...Don't you read my blog?"

So it's happened...blogs have entered into prime-time TV in a joke.

At least it was a good one...or seemed so at the time.

On Computerworld: New search, more relevant results

Looking for a search engine that gives more relevant results to your complex searches?

Retailer and other noise is certainly making it harder to find what you are looking for on Google, Yahoo and others.

Go to my Computerworld blog to read about Exalead, a newer search engine that, at least for the moment, returns more relevant results than other engines.

Exchange 2003 Service Pack 2 released

Microsoft has released Exchange 2003 SP2 today.

You can get it at http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/D/A/2DA38F90-A580-46F7-8812-63DCEC999FE5/E3SP2ENG.EXE

There's also a plethora of info on the service pack on the Exchange Team blog, "You Had Me at EHLO", as well as links to many of the Microsoft pages detailing what's new with SP2 on The Lazy Admin.

As always, it's a good idea to test the service pack in a lab setting if possible.

From Computerworld blog: Possible bug in Windows patch 902400

The following is excerpted completely from my Computerworld blog. Normally, I'd just give the highlights, but felt this was sufficiently important to give the full scoop on either blog.

A week ago, Microsoft released fix under KB article 902400 for security bulletin MS05-051. The patch is to fix a known vulnerability with the COM+ and Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordination (MSDTC) subsystems in Windows.

Unfortunately, as many have found out, in certain circumstances the patch can break various network applications and prevent some tools from working properly.

A fix for some problems that may arise out of installation of the patch is detailed in MS KB article 909444.

There is also some information on turning on Transaction Internet Protocol (TIP) in Win 2000 machines after the patch in KB article 908620. TIP was disabled by default on XP and 2003 machines, so the article is probably not relevant for most XP or 2003 machines unless the administrator turned on TIP.

I think I have also stumbled onto an as yet undocumented problem related to this patch. I can no longer use Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) to connect to the console session of the two servers that received the patch. So I'm using UltraVNC for these servers for the time being until I can fix the problem.

As good as UltraVNC is versus other flavors of VNC, it's still not as good performance wise as RDP.

Anyhow, so far I haven't found a solution to the problem. And Server 2003 isn't logging any information on why RDP can't connect to console in Event Viewer either.

The only errors that I have seen are on pop-ups that appear after the attempt to connect fails. I get either "Error [7051]: The requested session is not configured to allow Remote   Control." if I try connecting from Terminal Services Manager, or if I attempt to connect using RDP "Error connecting to existing session for <username> (Id 0). The operation completed successfully." pops up.

All the fixes I've found on Microsoft or on Google (there's that search problem rearing it's ugly head again) to date, haven't resolved the issue.

Oh, and the fact that this latest round of updates requires a restart is further validation that Windows has room to improve in this area with the next version.

If anyone has any ideas, let me know.

On Computerworld: Things I'd like to see fixed in Windows Vista

First off, yes, I've broken down and started calling Vista by it's proposed release name, Windows Vista (blech). Although I still don't like it and will refer to it as Windows Mountain View as much as possible. Why? I just like that name better.

Anyhow, I posted last night 4 things that Microsoft better fix in Vista if they want me to deploy it anywhere.

And actually, I have some more things to be fixed that are more relevant to servers that I will probably post tonight, so stay tuned.

Good info on Cisco VPN client

Another example of the power of blogs. Based on conversations Greg Hughes and I have had on issues from each other's blogs, we have been talking on IM as well.

Yesterday, we started talking about VPN solutions. Problems we have had with Netscreen Remote, what Greg's company uses and why, etc.

The big thing that I learned was that Cisco's VPN client allows you to reroute IPSEC traffic over multiple ports as you see fit. This is important as a lot of places now block the methods that IPSEC usually uses to create a tunnel. However, these same places don't block port 80 (HTTP - how systems connect to web sites & web apps) and port 443 (HTTPS - used to communicate with secure web sites & apps). So a VPN client that can reroute IPSEC traffic over port 80 or 443 has a great advantage over those that can't.

You can read more on Greg's blog here or on my Computerworld blog here.