We all know that you should have good secure passwords and you can enforce this in Active Directory, but it is the other applications on the network that might raise a concern.
I got a helpdesk ticket saying that the password for a Peachtree database was not the normal one….the password that was the same as the company name! After trying password, no password I then discovered that a google search for Peachtree password removers comes up with tons of hits but no free ones. The shareware ones were about 60 bucks for a corporate licence but about $30 for personal use. However, one of them would demonstrate that it could actually break the password by revealing the first two characters of the password. I thought this might give me and the user a clue as to what the password could be. When the first two characters were revealed to be 12 it didn’t take the user long to realise what the password was and they got it on the first attempt.
Sometimes it is really hard to demonstrate the reasons that passwords should be used and you would have thought that the importance of security and a good password for company financial data would be recognised…
I wonder what will happen if at the next Board meeting I do a demonstration of insecurity with LIVE data…..
It’s rather ironic when the laptop Blue Screens as I start to install the debug symbols in order to debug a blue screen on a server. I think the pc is having one of those days – much like my past two weeks (I think I’m still trying to catch up on having 4 days vacation in October – and yet I’ve got two more days off at the end of this week – can’t wait!)
Update Annoyingly, the pc reboots after the blue screen appears for about 2 seconds. I have turned off the restart on system failure option in My Computer properties. It occurs whenever I double click one of the symbol.exe files across the network.
Update2 After extracting the symbol files from a local version I was able to analyze the dump file and it told me that the problem was in ip_fw.sys – which at first glance looks like a firewall driver. Sure enough, a google search told me that it was from the wipfw openbsd firewall implementation on Windows. Removing the software means I can run the exe with no crashes. The strange thing is that I’ve never heard of wipfw before and I certainly didn’t install it (by itself) as I log all the programs that I install and that wasn’t one of them. I wouldn’t be surprised if it came with another program such as wireshark or bidiblah or something along those lines…more investigation to come.
Anyone recommend a good Exchange 2007 book, of particular relevance will be upgrading servers (from Exchange 5.5 no less!)
A while back I managed to loose the quick release clip for the camera to attach it to my tripod which meant that I couldn’t use the tripod. Seeing as though I will be having some indoor photo sessions in the near future with Christmas and the Columbus Flickr trip to the theatre, I decided to get it working again. I was debating getting a new tripod and the Opteka Tripod looked pretty good and cheap, but after a search on Google I tracked down a store that sold replacement quick release clips, so I’ve purchased one from Adorama. Hopefully the service will be good and the part is the right one!
A couple of people commented on my post about no ads with NBC on the web site stating that they got ads. I did a bit of testing tonight and with the NoScript firefox extension enabled, which should be used for safe browsing anyway, and doubleclick.net disabled, which should also be disabled for privacy reasons, then the adverts do not get displayed.
I know this is going to be doing the rounds, Kristen got it in a text message about 30 minutes after the game finished, but she couldn’t forward it. I found it at MotorCityBuckeyes
Evernote is available for free today. This is a pretty good note taker program that has been around for ages. If you are familiar with OneNote, then you will be fairly familiar with how this application works. If not, then go take a look at the main Evernote homepage
I’m now able to get Windows Photo Gallery working on the home pc – I no longer get the cryptic error message when I try to run the program. It is pretty similar to Picassa and I must admit I prefer the Picassa interface for most things. The one thing that I love in WPG though is the Panorama feature. All you have to do is select your photos and choose Make – Create panorama. The software then intelligently stitches all the photos together and saves you a very large file on your disk. Unfortunately the upload facility to Windows spaces only uploads a thumbnail, you don’t get the full benefit of the files. I’ve uploaded three panoramas to my spaces account. The best way to see them is to select the Full view icon on the right of the page, then click the gear icon at the bottom and then select pan and zoom. This gives a really good display of the Niagara Falls and the Scioto River panorama that I took fairly recently. However to see the full size, original photo you will have to go to my Panorama pictures on Zooomr and then click on the All sizes button.
I missed The Office last week so I checked out nbc.com to see how the video online would be. Due to the fact that it uses a flash player I thought it would be a good idea to use Internet Explorer for the browser. All went well until after the second (annoying) advert break. I don’t mind sitting through adverts, but when it is the same advert played at every break it gets really annoying. So after the 2 break IE refused to carry on and play chapter 3 and more. I switched over to firefox to see if that would work and was surprised to see that it would actually play. The real bonus is that for some reason firefox skips the adverts so I can watch the whole thing without them – somehow I don’t think that is what NBC had in mind 🙂
I just created the Computers, Management and Electronics facebook group to assist in keeping up to date with people who graduated or taught the university course that I graduated from in 1994 at Salford University, 13 years ago!
This is my first group management in Facebook – hope it works out ok.