Lieberman Software, a mainstay in the Windows marketplace, has a
new
rev of Service Account Manager. The software, as its name indicates, automates
the management of Windows services.
Version 5.04 of the tool "allows Windows administrators to change service
dependencies and set service security permissions and auditing settings, providing
greater oversight and control of users' activities and access to services,"
the company said.
Posted by Doug Barney on March 05, 20070 comments
Sometimes, when a person dies, some good comes of it -- lessons learned, the
world made better. In the case of a 330-pound Chinese man who played video games
for a week straight,
and
then keeled over, the lesson is simple: If you weigh 330 pounds, don't play
video games for a week straight!
Posted by Doug Barney on March 05, 20070 comments
This letter from a reader was so well-done, I figured I'd run it verbatim rather
than making it worse by rewriting:
"I am an IT manager working for a medium-size law firm in downtown Seattle,
Wash. This last weekend, I installed several new patches on our servers and
was quite surprised to find Microsoft's Exchange Server DST patch broke our
BlackBerrys. Perhaps you could make others aware of this issue?
Microsoft
Exchange DST patch 926666, released Feb. 13, 2007, bundles two previous
patches, 912918 and 907434,
apparently because all make modifications to Exchange's store.exe file. However,
I had deliberately not installed the 907434 patch because it breaks the ability
for BlackBerrys to send e-mail, due to the removal of the Send As permission.
After spending all day on the phone with Cingular and RIM, and coming to
no resolution, RIM finally said I would need to contact Microsoft for a resolution.
At the behest of our president (currently outside the office and very unhappy),
I instead began removing patches that I had installed over the weekend, until
the issue was resolved at approximately 12:30 this morning.
As stated above, patch 926666, 'Update for daylight saving time changes in
2007 for Exchange 2003 Service Pack 2,' was the culprit, and once removed,
allowed our BlackBerrys to send e-mails again.
According to RIM, the resolution should have been to give BESadmin (our internal
BlackBerry Exchange Server administration account) rights to Send As for non-administrator-permission
users (e.g., domain users) in Active Directory. However, each time I did this,
within an hour the permissions were automatically removed. Per Microsoft's
knowledge base article on the 907434
patch, this is expected behavior and their resolution is as follows:
If you do this, you must prevent the AdminSDHolder from overwriting
permissions that are granted to a BlackBerry Services account on protected
groups. To do this, use the following command line with DSACLS:
dsacls "cn=adminsdholder,cn=system,dc=mydomain,dc=com"
/G BlackBerrySA:CA;Send As"
Note: In this command, BlackBerrySA is a placeholder for
the name of the BlackBerry Service account. Also, make sure that you do
not add a space between BlackBerrySA and ":CA".
Alternatively, we recommend that you do not use accounts that are members
of protected groups for e-mail purposes. If you must have the rights that
are given to a protected group, we recommend that you have two Active Directory
user accounts. These Active Directory accounts include one user account
that is added to a protected group, and one user account that is used for
e-mail purposes and at all other times.
I haven't attempted the above repair as of yet, due to time constraints,
but I would be interested if you knew whether it would resolve the issue or
were aware of another resolution.
-Rann"
Do you have another solution for Rann's problem? Let us know at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on March 05, 20070 comments
I spent years covering databases for
InfoWorld and
Computerworld,
and perhaps the liveliest market of all was FoxPro. Originally a dBase clone,
it grew to outshine the Ashton-Tate tool and was eventually bought by Microsoft.
I even spent a week in Orlando at a FoxPro user group, and boy, those folks
were hardcore. Some looked like they hadn't left their keyboard in a decade!
Microsoft tried to kill off FoxPro in favor of both Access and SQL Server,
but users never let 'em.
So what is Microsoft to do? Build a
brand-new version that's .NET 2.0-compliant and works with Visual Studio.
With this kind of tweaking, I'd give FoxPro another 10 years, at least!
Posted by Doug Barney on March 01, 20070 comments
Exchange Server 2007 is far from being a year old but is
already
ready for its first service pack. The update, due for testing next month,
boasts new replication features, including Clustered Continuous Replication
and Standby Continuous Replication. I have no idea how these things work, but
I do know you'd better start buying bigger disks!
Posted by Doug Barney on March 01, 20070 comments
Radio frequency identification devices (RFID) are amazing if you're Wal-Mart
trying to keep track of thousands of pairs of Wrangler cargo pants, cheap TVs
and copies of the National Enquirer.
But with RFID devices getting smaller and smaller, there is also the potential
for abuse. Previously small enough to embed under one's skin, Hitachi now has
RFID
tags so small you can barely seem 'em. While this may prompt fears of RFID
tags stuck secretly in your hair, skin, or on your clothes, the antenna needed
to make it work is a monster -- over a sixth of an inch!
Posted by Doug Barney on March 01, 20070 comments
Ray Ozzie told Wall Street this week that
Google's
success is forcing Microsoft to respond, and respond fast! But while Google
rakes in billions from online advertising, Microsoft won't simply copy the Google
plan and go 100 percent Web.
Instead, Microsoft plans to complement existing hard drive-based tools like
Office with Web services, a model Ray calls "Software Plus Service."
If anybody else were driving this strategy, I'd be skeptical. But since Ray
is about a billion times smarter than me, I think it might just work.
Posted by Doug Barney on March 01, 20070 comments
Google has been nibbling around the edges of Microsoft's huge Office market
with free, low-end, Web-based software. Now, the online giant is kicking into
high gear, with
software
that is actually worth money.
For $50 per person, per year, you can get an Office equivalent (or at the least
the same basic range of apps) along with calendaring. And you get 10 gigs of
Google storage. Whadda you think? Have you used earlier Google apps? Does this
model make sense for corporate America? Let me know at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on February 28, 20070 comments
Before going gaga over Google's goods, keep in mind that Google has security
holes like everyone else. Just last week,
Google
announced it had to fix a major hole in its Desktop Search tool (which I
can't live without).
If left unpatched, the hole could let hackers see your files, like the password.doc
file that holds all your passwords!
As for the Google productivity suite, I would be concerned about having my
files stored remotely. If I'm going to lose all my work, I want it to be my
fault!
Posted by Doug Barney on February 28, 20070 comments
French company Alcatel is now about a billion Euros richer,
having
won $1.5 billion in a lawsuit against Microsoft. The court decided that
the way Windows converts sound files into MP3s violated patents Alcatel gained
when it bought Lucent.
How worried was Wall Street? It drove Microsoft stock down all of 3 cents!
Posted by Doug Barney on February 27, 20070 comments
The
list
of "Certified for Vista" applications is now over 100, which sounds
impressive until you think about how many apps exploit Vista versus how many
are merely compatible. Our analysis is that it's going to take many months and
perhaps several years before we see a groundswell of software that truly taps
the power of Microsoft's latest desktop OS. Check out
Redmond editor
Ed Scannell's take on this issue
here.
Meanwhile, Microsoft updated a whole host of tools to help you migrate to Vista.
Check out the deets here.
Posted by Doug Barney on February 27, 20070 comments