Monthly Archives: November 2005

CentraLUG: 5 December: James Fogg on Windows-Linux Interoperability

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Please note the change in location: we will be meeting in Little Hall Room 230, a lab with computers. On the NHTI map located at http://www.nhti.edu/welcome/nhtimap.pdf (warning: 1 Mb+ PDF), the building is marked “K”

The monthly meeting of CentraLUG, the Concord/Central New Hampshire chapter of the Greater New Hampshire Linux Users Group, occurs on the first Monday of each month on the New Hampshire Institute Campus starting at 7 PM. Open to the public. Free admission. Tell your friends.

This month’s meeting will feature James Fogg discussing Windows-Linux interoperability. James Fogg is a principal with JDFogg Technology Consulting, where he is a network engineer specializing in delivering IT, Telecommunications and Computer Services, Systems, Sales and Consulting to the Fortune 500.

Many companies now operate mixed environments and managers expect their technical staff to be able to “make it work.” James will provide some ideas on how to do it. He’ll be covering interoperability methods between Microsoft Windows products and Linux/Unix systems. File Sharing, Application Sharing, network Services (DNS, DHCP, NTP, etc.), Mail and Printing. Also included will be the basics of Linux, Unix and Active Directory authentication, authorization and auditing.

I was pleased to learn that in the most recent editions of Microsoft’s Services for Unix, Microsoft is including an NFS client. SFU is a downloadable component for the currently supported versions of Windows and Microsoft has committed to including some of the functionality future OS releases. Interoperability is Good. SFU is one of several things James plans to cover.

Hope to see you there!

SANS: Top 20 vulnerabilities

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Computerworld News and eWeek point to an interesting SANS report. Computerworld: “SANS: Cyberattackers found green fields in 2005. After years of writing viruses and worms for operating systems and Internet server software, hackers found new areas to target in 2005, according to a report on security trends released today.”

It’s interesting to see malicious crackers moving “up the stack.” One encouraging aspect is that network stacks are becoming more resistant to attack. However, applications are reaching further down into the stack, with user-space apps poking at ports and taking on more risky behaviors. We want to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past…

Xbox 360 shortages: panic in the streets?

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Ken “Caesar” Fisher over at Ars Technica reports “Xbox 360: shortages no joke. Today I ventured out into the wilderness of North Boston to gauge Xbox mania. Initial reports on the ground paint a pretty grim picture for pre-Christmas Xbox shipments.”

There’s two possible explanations. Many, many, many rumor-mongers insist that Microsoft is staging this shortage, coordinating press releases with the stores, to announce a record sell-out on the opening day and start a panic that Junior won’t get his new machine for Christmas. The other is that Microsoft is incapable of planning around all the challenges of shipping a product on time. Which seems more likely?

Microsoft announces Simple Sharing Extensions

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Over at Scripting News, Dave Winer posts Sharing at so many levels!.

“Microsoft has unveiled a new proposal called SSE, which stands for Simple Sharing Extensions for RSS and OPML. “… “Now, in 2005, almost ten years later, we may be grown-up enough to actually work this way.”

Tigers and their stripes. I’m skeptical, of course. There’s only so many times you can have formats and features embraced, enhanced, extended and extinguished (E^4) before you look at a gift from Microsoft very carefully. On the plus side, though, the spec is released under a Creative Commons license. Interesting.