joeware - never stop exploring... :)

I am finally done reviewing Active Directory 4th Edition and Active Directory Cookbook 3rd Edition. It is nice to get those off my plate so I can get some other stuff done – like cleaning the house.

One of the first things I will try to clean up is the ~4000 unread messages in my email inbox. If you have something in there and you have been waiting for me to respond, I do apologize. If not, well if you send something and I don’t respond for a bit, you know why. 😉

I have to say one good thing about reviewing the books is that I came up with a whole ton of new stuff to look into adding into admod and adfind and a whole bunch of eagerness to get to adding it. So hopefully I will be releasing a new version of the tools in the next couple of months. We shall see. I am going to be moving to the latest Borland/Code Gear compiler at the same time which usually means having to rework some stuff due to new standards, etc being employed. But it also usually means faster and smaller binaries which is always nice. We shall see, we shall see.

http://consumerist.com/5043831/mythbusters-gagged-credit-card-companies-kill-episode-exposing-rfid-security-flaws

 

Credit card companies successfully nixed a Mythbusters segment exposing RFID’s security flaws, according to Arbiter of Truth and Mythbusters co-host, Adam Savage.

I have been buying Western Digital drives for years and years. That has stopped now. I just had the fourth drive in less than a year fail on me. Three computers, four failed drives. All drives between two and four years old. I have never had so many drives fail on me. This one was in my media center and took out about 500GB of media files. Thankfully I recently backed them up so I didn’t lose them permanently but putting in a new Segate 1TB drive and restoring the files isn’t how I wanted to spend time on this weekend.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUKN0241925420080903

 

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – A Hewlett-Packard Co (HPQ.N: Quote, Profile, Research) notebook computer that’s packaged in a recycled bag rather than a box has won a challenge by retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N: Quote, Profile, Research) for less wasteful packaging.

HP’s Pavilion dv6929, which Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club stores are selling for $798, was singled out for a design that reduces packaging by 97 percent and requires a fourth fewer trucks to deliver to stores, given its smaller size when packaged, Wal-Mart said in a statement.

Top 4 show…

David Cook didn’t sound so good in his first song – actually he sounded kind of flat. Babba O’Riley was ok, not great. You need to bang that song out, he didn’t, he shouted it.

Don’t agree with Simon on Syesha’s performance of Proud Mary, I thought it was pretty good. Not amazing but pretty good. Beat out David Cook. And I liked the little hippy hippy shake during Proud Mary.

Jason… Oi those were not good versions of I Shot the Sheriff and Mr. Tamborine Man. Ugh. He is really good but he didn’t do well in this show. But I think the show wanted him off anyway.

David A… Great voice again. No one can touch him on the show. In a class by himself. But you know, I am not thinking he is the American Idol anymore, I think his singing is too good for being an American Idol and his performance is not good enough. And his singing style isn’t really pop style, it is just really really really good singing. He croons with purity… He reminds me of Josh Groban, someone else who wouldn’t be a good American Idol.

 

Jason was the right one to go…

 

Top 3 Show…

David A… Paula’s song choice shows she thinks he is a crooner too. Second song was ok, not as good as previous stuff. And the producers feel David is a crooner too… David is a crooner folks.

Syesha – Good song choice from Randy for her, she sang it well. Fever… Very good Syesha Woo. Perfect song choice for her despite what the judges said.  The last song wasn’t so good but she danced well.

David C – Odd song choice from Simon but David did very well. Actually think he could release that as a single and it would sell well. It shows he can sing very well and is not just an entertainer. That expect that song will put him in the final 2. Second song, shoot I just saw it and don’t recall it already…. Last song, very very good.

 

Syesha obviously was the right one to go… Interestingly, if you noticed at the end of her swan song, it looks like  she lip synced the song because her voice kept going in the last note while she had her mouth closed into a smile.

 

 

Final Two Show

David C –

First song: He has a good voice but something about it, it doesn’t seem to have depth. It goes about 3 inches down and then suddenly stops. It wasn’t good of him to sing a Bono song because Bono has depth. Lots of confidence and showmenship though.

Second song: Very good. I could see that song out there as a hit for him.

Third song: Good energy, good performance, sung well for him but he just doesn’t have depth in his voice.

 

Dave A…

First song: Polar opposite of Dave C. Great depth and purity but you could tell he was as nervous as a 3-tailed cat in a boot factory. He is just too young for this. But wow on the Elton John song – amazing.

Second song: Amazing. But again he is a crooner.

Third song: Wow.

 

Wrap up, David A blew David C out of the water. If this show is judged on singing, he will win.

 

 

Final Show…

I admit it, fast forwarded through most everything, BORING. David C won of course, you all probably knew that already. Can’t say I am thrilled by it nor surprised by it. Dave A is by far the better singer, but he is a bit young and not the entertainer that David C is.

 

Now onto So You Think You Can Dance… I see that Philip Chbeeb is back YEAH! The way he moves gives you chills. I recall I didn’t see him the first time it was on TV the night he was on but it was recorded. One of my best friends told me the next day and was like “he was amazing! you have to watch”. So I watched and rewatched and rewatched as I couldn’t see how someone could move like that.

 

So anyway… Congratulations David C, you are a very good entertainer. Congratulations David A… You can wail. 🙂

One day a scorpion arrived at the bank of a river he wanted to cross, but there was no bridge. He asked a frog that was sitting nearby if he would take him across the river on his back. The frog refused and said, “I will not, because you will sting me.”

The scorpion replied, “It would be foolish for me to sting you because then we would both drown.”

The frog saw the logic in the scorpion’s words, and agreed to carry the scorpion across. But, when they were halfway across the river the scorpion stung the frog. The stunned frog asked, “Why did you sting me? Now we will both die!”

The scorpion replied, “Because, I am a scorpion. It is my nature.“

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/08/british-bank-ba.html

Here is a snippet

A customer of the British bank Lloyds TSB discovered the bank had changed his account password because someone on staff apparently couldn’t take a joke.

Steve Jetley had created the password “Lloyds is pants” after he had a dispute with the bank over free travel insurance that was supposed to come with the account.

But when he tried to access his account over the phone, a call center representative told him the password didn’t match what was in his file. The password had been changed to “no it’s not.”

I am not upset that some support wanker at the bank couldn’t take a joke… You run into that all the time, lots of dumb people out there that can’t appreciate good humour when it bites them… But the very fact that Lloyds lets an employee see a clear text password? WTF WTF WTF WTF WTF WTF???? A clear text password shouldn’t exist ANYWHERE on their systems. Have they not heard of one way hashes? Its a unique concept, you encode the password in such a way that you can’t unencode it unless you brute force try every password possible and compare the resulting hashes to what you are generating. If they need help, just use Active Directory for the backend authentication source, it doesn’t store clear text passwords.

 

If any Senior people in charge of innovation or security or anything like that at Lloyds reads this blog, I hope they make it a point to mention how silly it is too have clear text passwords. Obviously I am not a London resident and don’t use Lloyds but if I had any clue that my bank had clear text passwords available to its employees, at the very least they could expect me to close out my internet access to my account… And well… knowing me the way I know me, if I can’t get to my bank account over the internet, I am going to be using a new bank in the very short term… And if I can’t find one that can do account security properly, well I have no problem with burying mason jars somewhere on my 12 acres of property.

I am sure all of us at some level or point can agree with some of Mr. Exum’s comments.

http://www.chattanoogan.com/articles/article_133893.asp

 

Excerpt (lots more good stuff to read, go to the link)

Finally I get “Sonny” in your repair shop. He’s as nice and kind as anyone I ever talked to. But soon “Sonny” became “Sunny” because, it turns out, he was in southern India – not southern Indiana. He tried every way he could to help me – Lordy, we talked for well over two hours – and, say, the next time you wander through the label department tell the girls to make the serial numbers and the product numbers bigger because having the customer use a microscope to read them doesn’t help sales.