Saturday, October 4, 2008

So it goes on...

So it goes on...
The saga of the Mobile Me debacle continues.

Now over 7 days since my wife had access to her mail. I would imagine that Apple could have totally replaced any servers affected many times over within seven days. The average corporate IT dept can fix things in 24 hrs - I am sure the problem is bigger, but then so are the resources Apple has available to deploy!

Worst of all is the fact that there just seems to be no comment coming from Apple about the nature of the issue and when they expect to have things up and running.

On top of that it has still barely stopped raining....!

We did go and see Dark Knight today. IMHO one of the better Batman films to date. The late Heath Ledger is, I think, an excellent Joker - a memorable Swansong performance from an actor who had much potential. If you like that kind of thing, it's a great film with lots of action. We are in danger of trying to explore 'the reason why' a bit too much though - Batman is because Batman is! We need not be troubled with his navel gazing when we have so many of our own issues to resolve, I feel.

Well, have a good weekend, Dear Reader!



HP invites to Software Business Technology Optmisation Tour in Wellington
Today I received an invitation that I am able to extend to you. HP is running the HP Software BTO Tour 2008 in Wellington, 2nd September 2008.

This half day event is ahppening at the Museum of New Zealand - Te Papa Tongarewa from 8:30am through 1:30pm.

There will be conference streams during the day, designed to give IT Professionals a more practical approach to IT Management.

I won't be attending the event though, because I will be in Auckland attending the Microsoft Tech Ed, and writing the Unofficial Tech Ed Blog while there...



Multiple Vendors Vulnerable to DNS Cache Poisoning
Multiple vendor DNS protocol implementations could allow a remote attacker to poison the DNS cache.  Patches that resolve the vulnerability on the DNS may be rendered ineffective if the DNS is behind a NAT device that does not randomize ports. Public exploit code was made available on July 24, 2008.  At the time of this update, neither X-Force nor IBM MSS has witness any active exploitation nor the integration of this exploit into any exploit toolkits.

Thanks Duncan from Orcon
I have a phone again, amazing! My internet has only failed 3 times today (it is of course only mid morning, but that's cool.

And in reply to the comment about how retro I am still having a phone line, think of it this way, it comes with the net and it means that relatives who are still more analogue don't have to pay me, but there's a thought, maybe the ones I don't care to hear from won't lol.Laughing



Microsoft goes further with software subscription model - Equipt
From the press release from earlier this month:

"Microsoft Equipt offers consumers Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007, giving them the latest versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote for their personal and school projects; Windows Live OneCare, the all-in-one security and PC management service; Windows Live tools, such as Windows Live Mail, Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Photo Gallery so they can connect and share with people they care about most; and Office Live Workspace, a new service from Microsoft that makes it easy to save documents to a dedicated online Workspace and share them with friends and classmates. Anytime a new version of Office or Windows Live OneCare is released, Microsoft Equipt customers will get the version upgrades as part of their subscriptions."

Cost is $US70 per year for up to 3 PCs. Pretty reasonable I think and improves the home user proposition versus Open Office and Google online services . . .



Wellington City Council: where the process dies...
On a rainy day I parked on Tory St, Wellington and used the convenience of paying my parking via SMS. That would be $4 for two hours, plus $.50 for the privilege of not having to carry coins. But instead of getting the little piece of paper with the ticket to put in my windshield, I got an error message:

"Transaction rejected"


Interesting. But I immediately got a SMS back from Telecom saying "thanks, we debited your account for $4.50".

Bummer. So instead I decided to use a credit card. Again I got an error message:

"Transaction rejected"


Hmmm. It looks like the machine may be out of paper, but the developer for this company decided to stupidly save some bytes instead of providing a meaningful message - and a transaction rollback.

So I walk to the next machine, pay and display the ticket in the windshield.

But I wouldn't be short of $9 today, right? I called the Wellington City Council, explained what happened, and was assured someone would call me back to arrange the refund.

You guessed right. No one ever called me back.

Like so many other New Zealand businesses, getting you off the phone is what they want to do. The Wellington City Council is quick to slap a fine on your car if you are over five minutes in the parking lot, but they don't want to move a finger to refund you money that they took without providing the service.

By the way I am looking at my credit card statement. This was on 17 June. More than enough time for the Wellington City Council to come back to me.

End of rant of the day.



SCIPP International Offering Signed Books by Security Expert Winn ... - MarketWatch

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