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These tools should only be used for good, not evil! They should also be used within the confines of the law.
Seems like the Internet’s future could be under attack! Visit Hands off the Internet to learn the issues.
At the recent DDD3, Craig Murphy and John A Thomson of Roundtrip Solutions met Ed Gibson, head of IT Security at Microsoft UK.
From left to right: Craig Murphy, Ed Gibson & John Thomson
Ed captivated a group of developers for 30 minutes with an adhoc chat. The man has presence and stature. He doesn’t fail to impress anyone who meets him.
Hopefully we’ll meet again soon.
Are you left wondering if Windows Vista will run on your computer? Microsoft have released the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor beta that may answer just that question.
System Information for Windows is a freeware tool for finding out all kinds of system information. It also provides some limited capabilities to change system level parameters i.e. the MAC address of a network adaptor can be changed to whatever you wish.
Very powerful little application that doesn’t need to be installed! This could be used for good or evil so please be good.
An application for blocking known bad P2P hosts has been highlighted to us: “PeerGuardian”.
We hardly ever use P2P here at Roundtrip Solutions, hence we haven’t tested or used the software. Although we aren’t directly recommending people use the application, we’ve seen it being used and it does indeed seems like an interesting project worth further investigation by some heavy-weight P2P users. Please feedback your trials to us and other readers of this blog by leaving a comment here.
Documentation can be found on the project’s Wiki. The source code is also available to download from SourceForge.
NOTE: Use this product entirely at your own risk.
Windows 98, 98SE and ME: Information about Support Lifecycle and MS06-015 highlights the end of the line for Windows 98 & ME. They will official be at the end of life in July 2006. However, an important security fix has not be implemented this month on either 98 or ME so you may wish to consider them obsolete from TODAY.
Many of the older machines running Windows 98 or ME aren’t really suitable for an upgrade to Windows XP. In essence, the most cost effective solution would be the purchase of a new computer with Windows XP pre-installed. It is a really shame that support couldn’t be extended to the point where Vista was out and available to buy on new systems. Therein lies the dilemna: should 98 & ME customers go out and buy a PC with XP or wait around for Vista systems to become available in early 2007, in the meantime crossing their fingers that their vulnerable systems will not end up being exploited.
What is the easy solutions to all this:
Switch to Linux
Linux is now a serious competitor to Windows on the desktop. It will run on older and lesser spec’d system than its Windows cousins! Most distributions already have the common applications pre-installed that the majority of users require. The installers are now pretty sophisticated behind the scenes, making it a breeze for the uninitated to accept all the defaults and get a working Linux box by the end of the process.
We highly recommend Ubuntu or Kubuntu if your prefer a more Windows like user interface. Both are based on the Debian distro and the latest version was only released at the beginning of this month. Best of all it is 100% free to use, CDs can be ordered for free or CD images can be easily download, and access to the source code is unrestricted if you are that way inclined.
We’re all aware of the current trend to outsource call centre support to the emerging countries e.g. India. Unfortunately, the staff at these centres on a Saturday evening don’t have a clue about computer support except to follow the script on their screens.
Last night we spent about fifteen minutes, over three telephone calls talking to the support team at one of the largest ISPs in the UK. The nature of the calls was to resolve an authentication issue i.e. the user had the wrong username and password details and the ISP network wasn’t for letting the router connect. Even before making the first call we knew this was the issue through the errors being generated.
However, the support staff weren’t for having anything to do with the information we were presenting, instead they insisted on having us follow them through the script! We knew what we wanted checked but they had to see everything getting turned off and on, modems being switched over, etc. Eventually we spoke with someone with better English and they quickly identified that their customer service representative had incorrectly spelt the username during the customer sign-up a few weeks ago! What! The username was indeed wrong and what a surprise that was to all of us in Fife!!!
The experience was very much like this flash movie from ROFL.
[Please note: This isn't work safe and should only be viewed if you're not easily offended]
These outsourcing operators need to train their staff much better to think outside the script. Time will tell if they improve!
As a company, we always favour suppliers with UK call centres. The haemorrhage of UK jobs to low cost offshore call centres is a threat to all our jobs - remember this the next time you hear of more job losses in a UK company!
We’ve just posted details of the next Scottish Developers mini-conference to be held in Edinburgh on the 3rd August 2006.
See HERE for the full details.
