Bang
Pop
Whoosh
Kaaboom
Crack
Wizz
Fizz
Spark
Flash

Yesterday a colleague gave a presentation that required the use of their laptop for a demo - given that our sales team had nicked the protector we had to resort to using two laptops, each with an external monitor connected. These laptops were connected via Net Meeting - desktop sharing, to give us 4 screens which everyone crowded around.

Today, I saw this. Don't know if it will do the same job, but worth a trial.

Useful list of current threats on the Internet. Includes some network address ranges that you definitely want to block at your firewall.

Current 'Live' INFOCon status

GREEN -- Everything is normal. No significant new threat known.

YELLOW -- We are currently tracking a significant new threat. The impact is either unknown or expected to be minor to the infrastructure. However, local impact could be significant. Users are adviced to take immediate specific action to contain the impact. Example: 'MSBlaster' worm outbreak. 

ORANGE -- A major disruption in connectivity is imminent or in progress. Examples: Code Red on its return, and SQL Slammer worm during its first half day 

RED -- Loss of connectivity across a large part of the internet. 

I've just added some live internet traffic analysis monitoring software to my servers. You can get stats on my inside or outside traffic passing thru my perimeter router.

For those of you who've read any of Dan Brown's novels especially Da Vinci Code or Digital Fortress you might be wondering what all the strange codes/symbols inside & on the book's cover mean. Well - no I wont spoil it for you. Try to figure it out here And only use Google for research (no searching for the solution!)

[Update]: Just figured out the 'GUID' like codes in the back of Digital Fortress & Deception Point - its just as Ian, TJ and myself thought. The code numbers are chapter numbers which gives to a letter from the first word of its opening sentence. Then arrange these letters into a Cesarian grid. And read down the grid.

For a long time now I've been wishing for a realistic solution to Internet access whilst driving or at least when parked somewhere. Mobile phones are too expensive and small. Ever tried blogging more than a single sentence on a phone!

However, this site has again spark my interest with their carbot. This guy's even got a handy install guide for wiring it into you car. Hopefully the current demand for more WiFi hotspots will eventually include most major towns in the UK. Else I guess we have to wait for WiMax in 2006/7.

Following on from the Windows 2000 Security guides, here's the equivlent for Windows 2003 Servers. I have used the settings suggested in this guide on my employers network since Windows 2003 release with great success - some of the users might think too much success as the group policies are alway the first thing to be blamed when strange stuff occurs on the network. By hey, we still running!

How do they collect the fine?

I loath SQL. Here's another example of why:

This wont execute from Query Analyzer

INSERT INTO [dbo].[TB_PROPERTY]([KEY],[STRING_VAL],[SYSOWNED],[msrepl_tran_version])
VALUES ('KEY_NAME', 'IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM sysobjects
        WHERE id = OBJECT_ID(''%STORED_PROCEDURE_NAME%'') AND OBJECTPROPERTY(id, ''IsProcedure'') = 1)
    DROP PROCEDURE [dbo].[%STORED_PROCEDURE_NAME%]
GO', 1, '2A3AD395-E4A4-4875-BF77-BF64F00A0A52' )
GO

It seems that QA detects the GO statement inside the quoted string and refuses to continue. A 'GO' string that begins on a new line is always interpreted as a keyword even if inside a string! Doh!

Various workarounds for hosting these two ASP.NET apps in the same web site have been suggested before - this new one looks worth a try.

Is your Sharepoint server broken? Does it return HTTP 500 errors? Chances are that you've been upgraded by Windows Update to service pack 1. Here's the fix.

Bit Erosion. This could finally explain why some of our customers systems stop working after we've left them in a perfectly working condition. That or they've just muppets.

Since the release of service pack 2 I've been up to my neck in problems with people's laptop. The worst problem was that all our company anti-virus software was disabled making us less secure - I've managed to fix that recently. However the next problem is on one of our build machines (why we used XP I dont know), whenever SP2 installs itself (via Windows Update) we lose all the network adapters! I have just found a link to a suggested fix for resetting the IP stack, so thats the next thing to try. Wish me luck!

Basically run this command line:

netsh int ip reset logfile.txt