Apache killer - potential disaster for websites and routers

Many may have already heard of apache killer which came out a couple of days ago - actually this is a vulnerability revealed by a google coder back in 2007, but just this week, Kingcope released a perl script that can take down any apache website in seconds.

A very simple perl script can be run from any remote machine - they need only plug your web server ip into the script = sudden death!

It gets worse - many routers do not run apache for their web server - but they DO run lighthttpd (such as Pfsense!!!) - which just happens to share the same vulnerable module that apache runs. So you better not have your management interface open to the public.

What can you do? Apache is due to release a patch shortly - within 96 hours as said HERE. which will most likely require a source compile, or wait further for pre-compiled packages for your platform.

Another rather pathetic alternative is to employ mod_security - which causes the web server process to fork in to several unique processes, so if you get attacked it will only kill the process serving that user - typically apache will run 8 or more unique processes (your config may vary) - which is helpful, but eventually they can still kill you. Here is a guide on setting up mod_security if you dont already have it.

An office spin-off, or a whole new playing field?

Last year Orcale bought out Sun - the makers of OpenOffice, and it has since been the source of much controversy - an open source stratedgist now owned by a commercial giant - dollars are the word of the day.

Well last September some OpenOffice developers got tired of the path traveled, and forked off with LibreOffice - thus far it looks and feels much like OpenOffice, but they are moving in great leaps.

LibreOffice is sponsored by Google, RedHat, Novel, and Canonical - big names in case you didnt know!

90% of LibreOffice is a direct dirivitive from OpenOffice, but they have streamlined a few areas, added more language support, better font support, better Excel formula support and most importantly an Office 2007-2010 import/export feature (completely lacking in OpenOffice).

Their inspiration looks genuine, and their openness even more, I am going to give it a whirl!

FCC planning telco funerals, or another excuse to fleece the public??

Was reading the latest FCC advisories for the funeral of the conventional telco network aka PSTN (thanks to Matt):
http://blog.tomevslin.com/2011/07/tac-to-fcc-set-a-date-certain-for-the-end-of-the-pstn.html

They are actually coming up with a plan to actively shut down the PSTN in the next 7 years, because they say VoIP is causing obsolescence and telcos are loosing money.

WHAT A BUNCH OF LIES - revenue/infrastructure has in no way decreased since the 1980s - when there was no such thing as monthly ISP fees or monthly cellular subscriptions and SMS - 1985-1995 was a windfall of revenue growth for communications providers - and these days with smart phone data plans - another windfall.

From a time when every household had 1 land line, to now being every human being having a cellular phone (sometimes 2) and households having broadband, and even personal broadband subscriptions for every person, they have driven revenues up %1000 minimum.

They talk like general nationwide copper connectivity was only achieved in the last decade - another exaggeration - the same locations that used copper for dialtone 20 years ago, are now using copper for data connectivity, and often times in residential settings at a higher cost.

VoIP networks are being implemented to *simulate* POTS (Plain old telephone service), not be an *incompatible* competition.

- When steam trains got replaced by diesel trains did the track owners deny steam operators from getting on the track 7 years later?? - obviously the train industry has nearly died because of poor steam management.

- copper lines are still a necessity since it provides the best performing broadband connection method at the lowest cost, and with fiber coming in at much higher monthly fees, they are more than paying for their network, and will continue to.

They talk about USF fees drying up because of VoIP - WHAT A JOKE and UTTER LIE!!!! I run a VoIP business, in 2006 the FCC mandated USF collections upon all VoIP providers as well, some users slide past this, but the greater majority are paying the fee.

The argument of maintenance costs - WEAK - obviously telco networks dont run themselves, but -get real- the telcos have implemented a high rate of automation, especially to automate failover, and besides that, class 5 equipment is built to have a much longer life span - its not like a PC and you have to get a new one every 3 years. Their biggest cost is more than likely billing disputes - not maintenance! Building the network to bring on new customers and new features is an obvious cost - and if they want to build more revenue, they will do this.

There has been talk of rebuilding the whole nations infrastructure to replace the PSTN - this is NOT a requirement - they should simply take the USF fees which keep going up, and use it to build up / enhance those so called back country telcos that have been subsidized all these years to bring them up to current standards to provide either voice or data and let customers choose - data services are typically at a premium to customers, obviously the costs are being taken care of so far.

They talk about PSTN dieing in the next 7 years - they should really just let it go naturally of its own accord, and get the small minority of deficient telcos prepared for the migration - sadly grannies with land lines will give them up when they die, which will not be in the next 7 years - the next 15-20 years might be more realistic - at which time a better technology will probably be available at a far lower expense.

So far there is no true acceptance of peer-to-peer free communication - even though we are completely capable of it, so far the world at large is being fleeced by marketing pigs saying that we need "Enterprise VoIP", and that we need to pay big money for it, just because it has "Enterprise" in front of it. Skype is a poor excuse of peer to peer communication.

Today I have a small customer of 12 users paying $1200/month for a so called Enterprise VoIP solution over T1 - a technology created almost 40 years ago (someone does have wool in their eyes) - and these people say they can change this in a mere 7 years?? People wont get their heads out of marketing's dark @$$ long enough to see what VoIP really is.

This all sounds more like another way to let the sharks bleed us while our government herds us in for slaughter - ie a premium to talk to the rest of the world that has not standardized on government VoIP, or taxes on our packets - or like the DTV conversion - many tried to scare people into spending money.

Why Sonicwall cant do one size fits all

You should notice all the features in the sections on the right that say "Licensed" - this thing sounds like (guess thats where "sonic" comes in) a pretty feature rich appliance, but look under the arrow...

WELL that is like saying a Ford Pinto with power windows and AC is a high performance vehicle! -Sonicwall does not put the motor or framework in there to handle all these features properly - otherwise a network with 8 whole users on it should not max out the CPU on this "enterprise firewall" that could potentially be used by "unlimited" users if they upgraded the license.

You will see in the picture above that it has a 299mhz CPU and 128 mb of RAM - and it is performing all these tasks poorly:

• Firewalling and Routing
• Web Content filtering
• Intrusion Prevention System (IPS/IDS)
• Antivirus filtering
• Spam filtering (woops its not even on)
  
• Spyware blocking
• VPN
• Advanced logging and reporting
• Proxy server
• Network load balancing or DMZ
  

With all that going, it just does not have the horsepower to keep up with 8 users.

I would say our base Smpl-Route router does not even have the horse power to keep up with all that, and it has a 500mhz CPU, 256 mb RAM, and a dedicated VPN encryption accelerator - nearly double the capacity of the Sonicwall; yet at this size, we only enable 2-3 of the above features - if more are needed, we use the properly sized hardware for the task, and provide all of the above and more with no licensing fees.

And besides that - while our firewall might be capable of something we wont shuv it down your throat, when something else may do it better - for instance if you want spam filtering for your Exchange server - get the best, get ORF, its cheap and far more capable at this simple task - and there's still no annual fee.

So while the hardware sometimes (rarely) costs more than a Sonicwall, the annual fee is much less at $0, and it is the proper vehicle for your network's demands - rather than some spiffed out Pinto with a sweet dealer program - we don't get a cruise to the Bahamas for selling 50 SmplRoutes.

Open Source auto maker opens in Arizona

I had the privilege to actually see LMRF0002 on Interstate 10 this weekend - the USA's answer to the Ariel Atom (UK):
Funny - I read an article about Local Motors about 3 weeks ago, an Open Source manufacturer opening "micro factories" (goes well with micro brew), across the US. They make community designed vehicles to spec that meet DOT and other regulations for legal highway or offroad driving. For instance their Rally Fighter is SCORE legal to race in the Baja 1000, and 50 state emission legal. They currently have 5 major models in design.

You can purchase a Rally Fighter for under $60k, and you are then invited to not only customize it to your liking, but also actually come and build it with your own "personal mechanic trainer" to get you into shape if your wrenches are rusty.
The Rally Fighter is available with a BMW 3.0 liter turbo "clean diesel" cranking out 425 ft/lb of torque (capable of 30-35mpg), or a 6.2 liter 430 hp gas V8. It seems to come in 2 basic flavors, a kind of sports car model that is off road ready but really performs well on the highway, and a slightly higher slung model to really catch some air and blow mud.

The Rally Fighter styling was designed by community member Sangho Kim, a 2010 graduate of Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, and overall design and engineering was completed by over 160 community members - pretty impressive example of "power of the people". This vehicle may sound expensive, but you have to imagine- it uses cutting edge technology, and is nearly bullet proof, if it was made by a leading auto maker it would probably cost in excess of $100k. And while its not a trophy truck, it could probably keep good pace with a trophy truck which will often cost $200-400k.

To make an example of its capabilities - LM pinned the Rally Fighter against a Ford F-150 Raptor which is intended to be a factory "race ready" (not really) off road truck with a 6.2 liter 411 horsepower V8, long travel Fox Racing off road shocks and 4x4. The 2 vehicles took the dirt path from Pheonix to Flagstaff, it took the Ford 8 hours to arrive at the top of the mountain, while the Rally Fighter had been resting at the bar in Flagstaff for nearly 5 hours waiting for the Ford to arrive - obviously the Ford is not as well equipped, but who would have thought it would take more than double the time to complete the same course.

Local Motors is really innovating design, using things like carbon fiber, full roll cages, and no paint - they found out vinyl is stronger/lighter than paint- saved 12 lb on the car's weight, and its easier to customize and repair. Designs are freely downloadable on their site, so anyone can easily contribute and improve upon it.

Here is a great video showing how the car can seemingly float across nasty terrain over which I would normally drive my truck at no more than 10 mph:


If you are ever in Pheonix - LM has a monthly "show-off" bar-b-q event every 2nd Tuesday of the month - more on the car here. More on Open Source auto here.

100 mpg available to the government

- wonder if/when it will hit the public? Achates (a San Diego company) has created a revolutionary new/old engine design - 2 pistons per cylinder that is estimated to be capable of 100 mpg!!! In the 1930s some aircraft engines used this design, but they disappeared. Now they are back using diesel and 2 stroke technology. The 2 cylinders collide into each other, and at the very last moment the fuel fires and pushes the 2 cylinders back apart.

Instead of conventional intake/exhaust valve technology, they are using 2 stroke technology which is simple port holes cut into the cylinder walls, as the piston slides up/down, certain ports are uncovered allowing air to pass thru the port - this greatly reduces moving parts and mass (theres no cylinder head), and increases the amount of power output per cylinder movement using a much smaller lighter engine.

See the video here: http://www.achatespower.com/opposedpiston.php

Now - by doubling up the pistons per cylinder with 2 stroke technology we achieve 4 times the power per firing sequence of a conventional engine.

I wonder if/when this will hit the public, or do they call it "classified" - Achates' A40 prototype has been used by the government since 2009, they have built a vehicle using the 1 cylinder 2 piston motor, probably one of those un-manned recon-rovers, and still we hear very little about it.

Here is a detailed document on the A40:
www.achatespower.com/pdf/2011_SRM_Winter2011.pdf

MS pulls the Skype right out of the open

sores that is... funny - microsoft buys skype, skype gets closed - hmmm, does someone think they will compete with google voice - that would be a dream rather than a thought. - from one of my favorite sites

How an antivirus SHOULD look

Like real men wear pink (not sure where that came from) - real antivirus dont need to use 30% of your ram! This is Vipre in a FULL scan - less than 15mb ram!!!

This is amazing compared to MS Security Essentials' 200mb @ idle (dont even start to scan).

Vipre - 7mb ram @ idle

Mac iVirus

Yes - you too can get viruses for dummies! And its so simple, anyone that can use iPhoto, can get iVirus!!

Good thing these people arent smart - any mac user will notice the illegitimacy of the new fraudulent antivirus for macs right off - they forgot to put an "i" in front of the product name - that would have made it far more convincing.

Well...if you use a mac, you better get familiar with these:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4650

MS Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit

Thats EMET - a new security tool for windows, designed to reduce the foot print of potential vulnerabilities, and prevent viral infections (as if that worked in TJ;).

Sounds pretty interesting, one if these days soon I will try it out. Read more about it here:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/srd/archive/2011/05/18/new-version-of-emet-is-now-available.aspx

MS Security Essentials - down the tube

Looks like msse has pushed a new update to tax your resources - nearly 200mb of ram at idle - a reason i abandoned Symantec long ago. -click to enlarge:


Looks like Vipre it is.

Non microsoft users now targeted for malware

Alternative browsers are no longer the answer to viral avoidance - as shown here

And further - alternative operating systems are not either.

Thunderbolt finally here?

doubt it - but Lacie now has a 500gb striped SSD box that uses Thunderbolt - although this could be a mirage in the dessert as its not listed in their online store, or any other store for that matter.

Whats thunderbut? Its the new video/storage/plug-in-anything interface designed by Intel and Apple. It has a speed of 10GB/s and has 2 full speed bidirectional channels - this would mean like 40GB/s of combined bandwidth (thats how wifi is measured). It allows daisy chaining, so 1 port can go a long way.

Backing up Exchange 2007 - FREE

In an effort to sell MS Data Protection Manager (which is pretty cool) - MS no longer includes a built in backup utility on Server 2008.

Welllll... - there is a way to get the old ntbackup utility (from 2003), to work in server 2008 using VSS:

http://cs.thefoleyhouse.co.uk/blogs/karl/archive/2008/02/10/how-to-backup-exchange-2007-on-server-2008.aspx

I have a copy of these files on my ftp, if I know you, you can have it.

REMINDER - be sure to launch ntbackup with "Run as Admin", or it will not be able to make a system state, or access info store.

Update on that - MS has "officially" released a compatible ntbackup for RESTORE ONLY on 2008/7 - get it here - there are also instructions on getting the RSM service working.

Windows copy/archive utilities

I have played with a number of apps like Syncback and Robocopy for moving large file sets as backup or sync tools, and recently had some file corruption on a large file copy.

Robocopy does not do verification checksums (at least i didnt see the option).

If you are glued to command prompts, here is a good comparison of Robocopy and XXCopy which seems to show pros/cons, but xxcopy has verification:

http://www.xxcopy.com/xxcopy30.htm

One thing I like about xxcopy from the start (and its pointed out in the link) - they have 10 times the documentation of MS Robocopy.

OR also - Teracopy does do verifications - free and paid:

http://www.codesector.com/teracopy.php

or syncback - free and paid:

http://www.2brightsparks.com/syncback/sbse-features.html

GPT + EFI

WTF - all 3 letter acronyms... If you expect to use new 3TB+ drives, or a new motherboard read on...

EFI (and UEFI), is a new (not really - created 1998, and 2005 for UEFI) replacement for the BIOS - basic input/output system. Some say this is a new type of BIOS - NO - that is like saying planes are a new type of car.

Enhanced Firmware Interface (+ Unified EFI), is the REPLACEMENT for BIOS, some may have heard of Redboot, or you could also think of it as being similar to a Linux boot loader with extensive hardware detection, EFI is a shell based system with a command shell very similar to a Linux command shell, with boot directives and dozens of other commands like LS. It has the capacity to boot an OS - where as a conventional OS will have its own boot loader, think of EFI as being a possible replacement for GRUB, LILO, or ntldr. EFI was initially developed by Intel - so guess who probably wont have very much EFI.

Early Intel macs should have EFI 1.10 in 32 bit mode, and ones made sometime after 2007/08 should have UEFI with 64 bit support, neither of which is supported by Windows - it needs UEFI 2.0 to boot natively, Bootcamp is the only option on Macs until they update the spec.
...

Why EFI? - well GPT - WTF???

GPT - GUID Partition Table - is the ONLY way you can format a drive bigger than 2TB, smaller drives can use the standard MBR partition scheme.

And...Most importantly, the ONLY way to BOOT from a GPT drive is by using an EFI "firmware" on your motherboard (instead of BIOS), otherwise, a GPT drive can only be used as a data storage drive - not an OS drive.

Some motherboards (mostly 2nd gen i7 based boards made after Jan/2011) these days are loaded with a hybrid BIOS + EFI firmware, you can load a standard BIOS menu and enable/disable EFI and the EFI boot shell. If the system has both, windows may get confused, and detect "BIOS" and load a BIOS based boot loader with the installer, while it should have an EFI based loader, normally found in an EFI folder on the windows 7 64 DVD. Oh ya - ONLY a 64 bit OS can see drives larger than 2TB. Most newer servers over the last couple years made with Intel junk in the trunk will have an EFI bios.

Unfortunately - EFI is an advancement like moving from driving a car, to driving a jumbo jet, and while the feature set is a step forward, it is definitely not the leap that some report it to be (plus learning how to steer a fricken jumbo jet), EFI provides a much more detailed communication level between the underlying hardware/firmware and the pre-boot environment as well as much better memory support in the pre-boot environment, BUT, It does not solve any of BIOS's long standing problems of requiring two different drivers - one for the firmware and one for the operating system, when it was so close to being a "Unified Firmwware Interface" that could directly translate between the hardwares' firmware and the OS. And besides all that BS (2 letter acronym), fricken EFI requires its own partition on your harddrive - so your drive will probably look like this (if you run m$):

GPT disk:
- 200 mb EFI System partition (ESP incase you werent clairvoyant) (hidden)
- 128 mb MSR partition (MS Reserved - similar to mbr) - required on all GPT disks (hidden)
- 100 mb windows boot partition (hidden)
- 2.7 TB OS partition (assuming you have a 3tb drive)

With all the cheapness of flash these days - I just dont see why a $400-500 motherboard cant have a 512mb flash partition for firmware loaders - or why not an even gig.

There are several after market loaders for EFI http://refit.sourceforge.net/ or the popular Chameleon for MACs.
My Intel dual Xeon workstation came with a "BIOS like" utility called APTIO by American Megatrends - you press F2 to access it at boot, and you wouldnt know the difference from a normal BIOS.

----------------------------OK - so on to something helpful - installing windows on EFI, some helpful links, then the quick n dirty:
http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/server/sb/CS-031158.htm
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd744321(WS.10).aspx

If EFI detects your CD/DVD - it should list all the detected devices when the Shell prompt opens, you will most likely do something like this:

switch to the CD/DVD (adjust this based on the output of detected devices):
fs0:
load the EFI boot loader (from Win 7 64):
/EFI/boot/BootX64.efi

You should then see a windows prompt to press the "any key" to boot from CD/DVD.

I should note - software raid is probably NOT going to be supported on any EFI board (for EFI booting), you would need a TRUE hardware raid card - more than likely it would be one you install in a PCI slot - never an onboard.

EFI shell documentation (not very helpful):
http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/server/sb/CS-028743.htm

Creating an EFI only Windows boot DVD:
http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?s=&showtopic=184349&view=findpost&p=1261601

Another pitfall of all this is the 4kb sector size of "Advanced Format" drives - but i digress and divulge too much, and i think we already got into that...

FF4 - wow

yes - i had to try it out, everybody is ranting... so on to see if it gets any better...

- wow - its almost an exact copy of Opera - the menu styles, slimness, icons, sliding, better interface, but still lacking -now they even say "use it on your phone" - except Opera has been the primary browser (tho not branded) on several phones for over a decade now - including the new iphone 3.9g (in favor of slugfari).

interesting that opera has had 98% of the features that firefox and chromezilla only just now get for a couple years now, i hear they have all these "extensions" - i guess thats what you need when you're "too short", while Opera is more than sufficient out of the box, it has a large set of addons, and supports native java "scripting", so many addons are simple scripts in java that are kind of open source (as in you can read them), unlike so called mozilla source.

I do find humor in that ff4 runs gmail faster than chromepig.

hmm... that was a learning experience (for them) back to using Opera.

Talk about not respecting system resources

Was messing around on a clients network (that they maintain) - Symantec Backup Exec{ute} was on the server, I remember when this used to go by the acronym BENT (i still call it that cause thats what it can get).

BENT runs a total of 12 processes on this server, and at idle - it uses exactly 495.1mb of RAM - lets just call it 1/2 gig - i hate to see it actually "in action".

In years past I have always relied very well on ntbackup - it even includes bare metal restore capability. It has been replaced in 2008, but I have heard you can still steal the exe from another system (as is the case with XP Home which lacks ntbackup).

Its a little known fact that ntbackup was actually created by Veritas (original creators of BENT) for Micros0ft, and while its not the ipad of backups - it DOES the job, and without a lot of unneeded attitude - who needs pretty icons and unneeded baggage?

Go away antivirus pigs!!!! (come on Vipre)

A client has Vipre on their network, was looking it over, the client is DAM slim - 7 mb of ram usage (between 2 services), and during scheduled scans it is running about 50 mb.

The managed server portion runs on a sql db (which most sbs servers already have), and it seems to take up about 140mb on the server.

Was reading some reviews - it comes in first on boot up scans (hate that on NOD/Symantec).
http://www.pcantivirusreviews.com/reviews/vipre_antivirus_software.html

theres a 30 day trial of the Enterprise, and 15 day trial of the home version, and its cheap (compared to u-no-who).

home users:
$29.95 for a single user license ($19 on some sites),
$39.95 for a three-user license, or...
$49.95 to license all the computers in your house

Oh - and for you Mac users (yes there are viruses for you) - Vipre Enterprise does support OSX.

Couple of nice reviews for you:
http://www.windowsecurity.com/articles/Product-Review-VIPRE-Enterprise.html
http://retrohack.com/gfi-vipre-enterprise/

So far for a runner up, I really like MS Security Essentials, but am not at all hot on Forefront (the corp version of MSSE), tho... there is not even one that is perfect, at least I can get on with my life without having an imperfect antivirus slaughter my PC (hopefully GFI keeps this straight).

Nokia signs off Open Source - looses $5 billion

Interesting blog post I found here.

In years past Nokia was putting some major support and ownership dollars behind open source projects including being a major patron of KDE.

At some point Nokia P'ed off its major management, then replaced them with former Microsoft execs, magically some months later they announced Symbian OS would be "no more", in favor of Windows 7 mobile - yep they immediately lost BIG TIME - read the whole deal here.

The sores was strong in those ones.

Tired of customer service purgatory?

Ever call somewhere, only to spend hours on hold waiting for a customer service representative?? - Your waiting is OVER!!!

www.lucyphone.com is a new service that will wait on hold for you until a LIVE person answers - while you do more important things, it then lets the rep know that *he* needs to wait while you are reached, lucyphone.com then calls you back with the live rep on the line.

Some other good options - backdoors to live humans at many large organizations, www.DialAHuman.com and www.GetHuman.com will also tell you how to reach a real person faster at many companies.

giving the chrome pig the boot

Google Chrome finally drew its last straw when I finally decided to do a concisive before and after test - it is a @#$@#!% pig!

Chrome with only 1 page loaded and only the google voice extension running (but not logged in), used over 300mb ram. screw my sheetmetal and shiver me...!! Thats 530mb vs 840 with Chrome!!!

Opera on the other hand managed to use more... only when I loaded 20 TABS AT ONCE, and just barely more if that considering the load on it, and it has so many more features that chrome just lacks and probably doesnt even consider adding - for instance *smart* password management, tab groups... Below you can see 20 tabs only uses 949mb.

The only good thing about chrome is that it works good with google web pages - but uses 500mb ram with 3 tabs open - forget that. Ohh and blogger still SUCKS on chrome.

Egyptian dictatorships shuts down internet and cells

Luckily we dont live in a country like this ... yet.

Luckily our government just floods us with propaganda and fleeces us through the media.

Open source - the future of automobiles?

Did he say open sores? - YES the auto industry is an open sore, and now a revolutionary group has come along to completely shatter the box.

River Simple has come along and built the Open Source hydrogen car - they have running prototypes, and will actually be field testing 50 or more units with the public next year.

Ok - so ya everyone knows Hydrogen is the way of the future - but these guys have gone 100 steps beyond that. They built a car that was built for hydrogen - verses conventional cars that are being re-designed and fitted for hydrogen - they did not do a "re-design", they did a design from scratch. Eliminating the weight of the motor and transmission, reduces the need for this huge frame subsystem to hold back all the other weight in an accident.

So - they have attacked the "fuel problem", the next thing they attacked was the "industry problem" - yes the auto industry truly is "the problem" - their plan is a whole new industry where cars are never sold, but leased, {now here's the difference} with the cost of maintenance, FUEL, insurance and retirement of the vehicle built into the lease - this forces the manufacturer to produce a more reliable and more efficient vehicle. - Imagine if the automobile maker had to pay for the fuel their filthy car uses.

Further more - by opening the design to public input, engineering is ratified to the nth degree, greatly speeding the design process and bringing in a much wider view of ideas that a conventional automobile design team will always be limited on. This portion of the project is managed by the 40 fires foundation.

Dont get me wrong - I love cars, love fuel, love power and speed, but I dont get how a company like Hyundai can make a powerful sports sedan that has 274 horse power but gets 35 mpg, while everyone else is stuck in the mud making sports cars - or even normal cars that cant break 20-25 mpg. Because they are holding back, and it is something like this hydro car that will expose everything.

Who was or is ITT

Who was/is ITT

They have owned:

• Commercial Cable Co (owned the Atlantic connection between Americas + Europe)
• Bell of Brussels (formerly of AT&T)
• Several American telcos in the 1920-30s
• PCM (as in they invented pulse code mod)
• Ericsson
• Wonder Bread
• Avis car rental
• Starwood Resorts - hundreds world wide such as Sheraton and Weston.
• ITT Hartford Insurance
• ITT Tech (of course)
• Countries - as in they quietly dictated:

Chile

Nigeria

(probably ours among others)

They have been suspiciously involved with the Nazis, Chinese and Martians, and even criminally prosecuted for said involvement. - Conversely ITT sued (successfully) the USA for damaging of ITT holdings in Nazi Germany during WWII - sounds like someone got their arm twisted hard. Many other political scandals have been revealed of the companies unscrupulous endeavors to influence and own.

In 1970 ITT sales were $8 billion - thats comparable to $48 billion by todays standards!!! Bill Gates was only worth $40 billion last year.

Check it all here

This was the murial over their entry way in NY showing worlds in their balance:

Western Electric - WECO

Ok - this is probably uber geeky (i hate both those words) of me, but I found this extremely fascinating how the history of WECO is like a sleezy soap opera for telecom nuts:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Electric

Its amazing how these sleazy tactics have survived over 150 years now (yes, I believe they {both the original WECO/ATT} are still in business in some form today) - didnt the devious master minds behind it all DIE!?!? - how have they passed along their devious legacy all these years?!

Anyone in to telecom will recognize many of the names on this site - and how WECO was a hidden arm of AT&T and how they many times attempted to silently gain majority investment in their competition to steer them queer.

- Names like Nippon Electric Co (of Japan - doh), Graybar, Western Union, Agere, Systimax ITT, are mentioned in this history lesson (as if someone learned).

How many people knew 2 men named Barton and Gray (flip those 2 names and it =?) started (well 70%) WECO, and split apart only 2 years later - and yet their names still survive today under unison.

I also found it interesting that WECO was attacking (and defeating) issues like Side Tone back in 1890 when todays VoIP telephone manufacturers are still trying to figure this out (mostly the lower end ones).

I bet many older people remember well names like WECO, and ITT - these are huge companies that have nearly become bigger than the earth itself it would seem - to only be seemingly knocked down and dissolved under an "its not fair act" - only to be reborn (are they Buddhists?) into some new hidden beast.

I hate this site - such a waste of precious time... we will spin off on that one in a later post ;)

For closers - here is their logo with the world at their feet:

Disks, Cylinders, Heads, Sectors, and who forgot the track

Good article on how hard disks are laid out, and the limits we exceeded years ago -

http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/linux/Large-Disk.html

Microsoft application virtualization

MS has a growing product (already in v 4.x) that does virtualization - but not at the OS level like the plethora of products out their - they are doing it at the application level. For Joe Schmoe, this is trivial, but for large organizations this could smooth out deployment and resource utilization significantly.

Customized settings can be maintained across platforms without a thought.

Check out App-V here.

Microsoft outguns the Mexican cartels

Those acid washing cartel henchmen must have been shaking in their boots when the black suits banged on their door - 300 no less. Just imagine if the DEA had resources like that.

Windows OS8

It has been announced. What does OS8 mean? - Just 2 more versions until Windows OSX - at which point it should be right on par with apple.

Joe will be happy to learn Windows finally will have an "App Store" to get the latest annoying app everyone is raving about - well this was Joe Lagreca's idea - M$ is proposing a maintained list of "vetted" apps that are known to be virus and malware free - and roll into that patch control for said apps under windows update - i had to stop using Firefox due to all its dam patches, and Adobe flash is going next.

Some of the other hot features may include MMovie, MPhoto, MTalk, and Msight, just take any everyday word, add a consonant to it and slap on a copyright - who needs to be smarter than a 5th grader? Hopefully they come out with a Spaceport Extreme - its the only way to surf the web.

Another interesting and useful feature the ability to do a factory default install on command, preserving all your documents and settings (my users will use this rigorously).

This should be interesting.

Should I buy an iPad

A question often asked of me -

This flow chart brought several clients into the bottom corner, and yet they still keep following the rest of the lemmings.