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Information about joeware mixed with wild and crazy opinions...

5/8/2013

Correction on USENET AD Group Posting from March 2007…

by @ 6:58 pm. Filed under tech

I responded to a USENET AD Group post back in March 2007 and unfortunately someone pinged me on it and said the command line I specified didn’t work. I looked at it and immediately saw that I had made a mistake.

The post can be found here: http://help.lockergnome.com/windows2/enforce-password-required–ftopict483580.html

The AdFind query is supposed to find all user objects that are set such that the password is not required. The query I wrote won’t find anything like that unless you happen to have a user with a sAMAccountName of 805306368 and it has the flag set. Highly unlikely I expect… πŸ˜‰

 

This is the incorrect command string:

adfind -gcb -bit -f "&(samaccountname=805306368)(useraccountcontrol:AND:=32)" useraccountcontrol -adcsv | admod useraccountcontrol::{{.:CLR:32}} -unsafe

 

The is what the command string should have been

adfind -gcb -bit -f "&(samaccounttype=805306368)(useraccountcontrol:AND:=32)" useraccountcontrol -adcsv | admod useraccountcontrol::{{.:CLR:32}} -unsafe

Rating 3.00 out of 5

5/2/2013

Best Practices for Securing Active Directory – Published April 26, 2013

by @ 12:57 pm. Filed under tech

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=38785

(I am only a little miffed I wasn’t invited to review this… thanks Laura…)

Protecting Domain Controllers

Domain controllers should be treated as critical infrastructure components, secured more stringently and configured more rigidly than file, print, and application servers. Domain controllers should not run any software that is not required for the domain controller to function or doesn’t protect the domain controller against attacks. Domain controllers should not be permitted to access the Internet, and security settings should be configured and enforced by Group Policy Objects (GPOs). Detailed recommendations for the secure installation, configuration, and management of domain controllers are provided in the Securing Domain Controllers Against Attack section of this document.

Rating 3.00 out of 5

4/26/2013

Where the <bleep> is the virtual DC Poll info?

by @ 6:01 pm. Filed under tech

I am working on it. I learned a things with that poll…

1. That software wasn’t designed to host a poll with multiple questions

2. I need to write better questions, some people seemed confused with the answers they gave.

3. Some people like to stuff the ballot box (didn’t think I would look at the IP addresses did ya!)

 

Very quickly though, I was overwhelming wrong in the 25,000 users or less space[1] about how much virtualization of DCs is going on. Most (~93%) of that space, according to the folks (or person) who voted, is using virtual DCs in some way shape or form. I am still processing the numbers for >25000 users. I hope they are all following the guidelines… πŸ™‚

There were four responses that they didn’t have money for a lab yet in every one they were all using virtual DCs (at least one said all of their DCs were virtual) so I don’t quite understand that.

RODCs do not seem to be all that popular with the respondents. Of the responses, only 25% had at least one RODC. Though I find that number even a bit surprising based on what I have seen and heard about professionally and through joeware assistance.

Anyway, I hope to have some nice pretty graphs up here in the next week or so. The real job has been challenging lately with masses of FRS/SYSVOL issues and a real PITA ADI DNS[2] issue. All I can say is that so many people are running around thinking AD is a commodity and there is nothing to running it and then they hit an issue and I get called in and start looking and have to show them just how poorly things have been done and that contrary to popular belief, AD doesn’t just run itself….. forever anyway.

    joe

 

 

[1] That accounted for about ~60% of the overall respondents. I was a little surprised by that as well. I am glad that my utilities and blog are useful to more than just the largish enterprise customers. Actually ~8% of the respondents were from orgs with less than 500 users, that really shocked me.

[2] Anyone that has spoken with me knows I much prefer DNS outside of AD. If they set it up to run on ADAM/ADLDS I would probably be ok with that though I would still prefer BIND based DNS. If anyone from a MSFT DNS team is reading this… How long ago did I ask for VIEW functionality? How long? Seriously.

Rating 4.00 out of 5

4/1/2013

Definition of Infinite Loop

by @ 11:35 am. Filed under general

https://twitter.com/joewaredotnet/status/318748605664088066

Rating 4.50 out of 5

The Cloud… A Public Service Announcement

by @ 11:11 am. Filed under humour

Cloud: a visible mass of particles of condensed vapor (as water or ice) suspended in the atmosphere of a planet (as the earth) or moon.

Think back a few short years ago, that simple word brought wonderful visions of beautiful light airy vapor floating aimlessly across the sky.

Visualize it, if you can… Whole afternoons spent laying in a hammock, grinning happily, sipping at a lemonade, the beautiful melody from a blue bird, the smell of fresh cut grass, bumblebees buzzing from flower to flower, in the distance the light chirp of frogs in the pond and perhaps the gentle hum of a cicada, a day of the sun beating down upon you with its life giving warmth, a cool breeze gently wafts over you while you play eye games watching the clouds drift lazily drifting across the azure[1] blue sky…

20_fluffy_clouds

 

 

Fairly recently that beautiful simple word, cloud, was hijacked and redefined to mean something not so simple nor beautiful. The word has been abused and overused and purposely meant to confuse and now the first, original definition of the word isn’t the first, or even 30th, to pop up in Google… or even, usually, unfortunately, the first that comes to mind. Instead of the concept of "cloud" floating lazily along kissing the edges of your brain, "The Cloud" slams headlong into your prefrontal cortex not entirely unlike the impact of a hurricane…

Cloud: something that has a dark, lowering, or threatening aspect

dustcloud

 

Due to the rape and consequent pillage and synergistically over-used nature of the re-purposed version of the word "Cloud", I would like to propose that Public Cloud Services, aka "The Cloud", be renamed to something closer to reality – Public Internet System Services

If you want to run your system services from the public internet, why can’t we just use a name that says that basic information directly instead of confusing everyone with "The Cloud". That way normal people don’t stand around asking what the hell "The Cloud" means or as it is more often heard in general use – "The Cloud??? WTF is that?". Also this would help slow down statements from the functionally illiterate like , ‘I am perfectly safe, I have everything saved in "The Cloud".’

The Public Internet System Services should immediately and permanently be associated with the underlying systems they rely on… Super Highavailability Infrastructure Technology. All of this is to support the function of Application System Services. The Application System Services layer supports the platform that people will use to actually produce their offerings that they spread throughout the world… The Customized Redundant Application Platform[2]

With those renames in place, we can once again go back to a world in which "The Cloud" means something good and hopeful and healthy and happy.

hammock 

 

     joe

 

P.S. Happy April first.

 

[1] Azure, if you weren’t aware… IS A COLOR!

[2] Thanks to my good friend WSN who let me know what that new name was for the application platform . I usually try to stay away from the end user application layer… It is too messy generally. That is why in general I produce utilities or tools and not solutions.

Rating 4.80 out of 5

3/26/2013

Need to be Online but Offline in Lync?

by @ 10:35 am. Filed under general

Using you favorite Registry editor go to \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Communicator, then add a DWORD called EnableAppearOffline (32bit) and give it a value of 1. Restart Lync and the status should be there.

image

Rating 4.00 out of 5

3/22/2013

Don’t be afraid…

by @ 4:29 pm. Filed under quotes

Eventually everyone and everything will be forgotten. So what does that mean? Don’t be afraid to make mistakes, in the end it doesn’t matter and no one will remember.

Rating 4.40 out of 5

3/18/2013

Humans 100% inaccurate in understanding Ground Hog Weather Prediction

by @ 7:22 pm. Filed under humour

So according to http://earthsky.org/earth/groundhog-day-2013-how-accurate-is-punxsutawney-phil our favorite ground hog, Punxsutawney Phil is only accurate 39% of the time.

Is this just the weather people trying to feel better about themselves? What if it isn’t Phil’s accuracy that is poor, with 61% of the time incorrectly predicting weather… What if in fact it is humans reading the results wrong 100% of the time?

If you simply assume that Phil can’t tell humans, "Hey dumbasses, you have it backwards, if I don’t see my shadow that means early spring…" and flip the results you get a pretty good accuracy, in the world of weather of Phil being correct 61% of the time.

I don’t get why us humans have to be so negative.

Great job Punxsutawney Phil!

 

    joe

Rating 4.50 out of 5

3/14/2013

Designing reliable and secure cloud solutions

by @ 2:20 pm. Filed under tech

http://blogs.technet.com/b/trustworthycomputing/archive/2013/01/03/designing-reliable-and-secure-cloud-solutions.aspx

 

at a basic level there are three main causes of cloud services failure:

1. Device and infrastructure failures
2. Software vulnerabilities
3. Human errors
If we anticipate these failures will invariably happen – that indeed they are a constant threat – we need to design cloud services so that when something does go wrong, the impact to customers is avoided or minimized.

 

Note it doesn’t say, this won’t happen or this or that component won’t break or process will be perfect and no one will make a mistake or anything like that… Instead… anticipate that the failures WILL INVARIABLY happen.

Plan accordingly. Just like you do for everything in IT.

   joe

Rating 4.00 out of 5

3/13/2013

I don’t hate…

by @ 7:28 pm. Filed under tech

Rating 4.50 out of 5

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