Joel Esler

Thursday, December 6

All SANS exams to be proctored?

"Effective December 1st, 2007, all new GIAC certification attempts and
re-certification attempts are required to be proctored. The price of a
GIAC certification attempt in conjunction with SANS training is $499,
the challenge price remains $899. The price of a recertification
attempt is $325."

This is why people like the SANS certification. Not only is it hard, (the test and the courses speak for themselves), but you get to take them in the comfort of your own home, on your own computer, in your own web browser. This is one of the huge selling points of the GIAC certifications, and one that I have personally pushed. No one wants to go take time out of their week to go to a testing center! People want to be at home, late at night with the lights turned off, (insert whatever analogy you want here), and take the exams where they have no distractions. I really don't agree with this.

"If you started your GIAC Silver Certification attempt and received
access to your exams before December 1st, 2007 your certification
requirements will remain unchanged."

Good. I took mine several years ago. Does this mean that re-certs will have to go to a testing center? Will we have access to Google and other materials in order to take our tests?

"GIAC has selected Kryterion as our partner to deliver proctored exams
through their network of host locations. Kryterion has nearly complete
coverage in the USA and many testing centers throughout the world. In
addition, Kryterion has been very responsive to adding GIAC proctored
testing centers in locations where we need them. The list of Kryterion
test center locations posted on the GIAC website,
http://www.giac.org/proctor/kryterion.php. If you will be taking a GIAC
proctored exam in the future and do not see a site near you, please fill
out the form provided with your location specifics, so that we can work
to get a site added near you:
http://www.giac.org/proctor/kryterion.php#form"

Okay, so looking at this site, the nearest one to me is in Wilmington, at a CompUSA. What is that? 50 miles from my house? One direction? So not only do we have to pay for the course, and the exam, but now, i have to get off my ass, and pay for the gas on my car to drive 100 miles to take a damn exam, which I used to take in my house! Also, Kryterion has alot of CompUSA locations. Okay, that's interesting, however, if BGR's rumor is true, that might be shortlived. Then I have to drive God knows how far?

"All GIAC certification attempts purchased after December 1st, 2007 will
be comprised of one single exam that covers all the certification
objectives. This new exam format is four or five hours in length,
depending on the specific certification."

Okay, so not only get to sit in CompUSA for 4 to 5 hours, but then I have to take the exams all at once! Not allowing for a nice break in between the TCP test and the class test like it used to be? Bullshit.

"All GIAC certification attempts purchased after December 1st, 2007 are
open book format, but not open internet or open computer."

That sucks. Really Really sucks.

"Candidates will be allowed to bring one back pack or briefcase of course books,
reference material, printed notes, printed spreadsheets, etc., but no
electronic devices such as extra computers, CD-ROM or USB flash drives."

Again, stupid, and it sucks. But they didn't state the size of backpack or briefcase. So if I can get my duffle back on my back? Is that okay?

Dear SANS,

This is the stupidest thing you have ever done. Far stupider then your practical drop that you did. (Which you fixed with the Silver/Gold program.) I do not agree with it, and I think you will lose a very large majority of your certification base with this. Why are you doing it?

"GIAC will soon be ANSI/ISO certified as a certification..."

What does that mean for me? An extra cookie? Does that get me hired, uh, less? Does that give me more money in my bottom line if you get ISO certified? No.

Some of you are sitting there and saying "holy crap Joel, all you have to do is drive to a testing facility". Yes. That is the point. You just lost the most motivating factor of your certification. Me. Being at home. The world is moving to telecommuting and the ability to do anything from anywhere. Hell, before now, I could have taken the SANS test on my iPhone!

Seems like SANS is going backwards.

RSS Feed, now at full throttle

I moved the RSS feed back to full. Now that I have a descent count.

I appreciate all the people that clicked through, either on the short rss article, or on others, it gives me a better count. I think the bandwidth that I have is sufficient since I removed the bigger video files and what not from the site. We should be good now.

Tuesday, December 4

Still a Quicktime ZeroDay out there!

WabiSabiLabi is reporting that the Quicktime vulnerability that I wrote about last week is NOT the one in their "for sale" repository.

Now, the way I look at this is that WabiSabiLabi is not doing the responsible thing and disclosing it to the vendor. They are selling it. Basically trying to blackmail or hold the vulnerability for ransom.

I'm not of the opinion that everything needs to be disclosed to the public, but it should at least be disclosed to the vendor. If there is an exploit, and it's not being reported to the vendor, then it's irresponsible in my opinion.

WabiSabiLabi says this is their philosophy: "Wabi-sabi nurtures all that is authentic by acknowledging three simple realities: nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect."

I can understand people trying to get paid for their research, but there is a certain line. They should apply for a job at the vendor or something. I don't know what the proper procedure is, but holding the vulnerability for ransom isn't fair.

If you are going to have a vulnerability, try to get the vendor to pay you for it. Or keep it to your damn self.

If you are interesting in paying into WabiSabi's coffers: 442.62 will get you a Quicktime exploit for Windows XP.

A small price to pay for Apple to ensure the security of it's customers.

Two new Mac Exploits

I just saw that two new Mac Exploits have hit the streets. Both are Denial of Service exploits.

The first one is an exploit against vpnd, version Leopard 10.5.0.

The second is against xnu, 10.4, 10.5.1 (i386), and 10.5.1 (ppc).

Both are from digit-labs.org.

And we all know that a DoS is one step away from a remote exploit.

Podcast 101?

I've been invited to participate in a Podcast this week. This will be my first "official" podcast. I've been in other podcasts before, but just because I was present. But this will be the first time I've been a panel member.

Should be cool.

I don't actually know if I will be on the podcast yet, as my daughter is having some extremely minor surgery tomorrow. If I am going to be on the podcast, I will let you know via a post here, with a link to the site.

Microsoft reopens WPAD Vulnerability from 1999.

Apparently MSFT hasn't had enough vulns lately. They decided to reintroduce one (or never fix it in the first place).

From 1999.

Reported last week at a "ethical hacker conference" in New Zealand by Beau Butler, the WPAD vulnerability allows you to perform a man-in-the-middle attack for hostnames that do not have a FQDN. Essentially, what happened is Microsoft fixed it back in 1999, and it's taken this long to figure out that they only fixed it for ".com". Other extensions weren't fixed at all ".au", ".nz" for example.

Some blogs have picked this up and said "Zero Day!!!" But it's not. It's the same one from 1999.

Here is a link to the Microsoft Security Advisory posted yesterday.

It lists several mitigating factors.
• Customers who do not have a primary DNS suffix configured on their system are not affected by this vulnerability. In most cases, home users that are not members of a domain have no primary DNS suffix configured. Connection-specific DNS suffixes may be provided by some Internet Service Providers (ISPs), and these configurations are not affected by this vulnerability.
• Customers whose DNS domain name is registered as a second-level domain (SLD) below a top-level domain (TLD) are not affected by this vulnerability. Customers whose DNS suffixes reflect this registration would not be affected by this vulnerability. An example of a customer who is not affected is contoso.com or fabrikam.gov, where “contoso” and “fabrikam” are customer registered SLDs under their respective “.com” and “.gov” TLDs.
• Customers who have specified a proxy server via DHCP server settings or DNS are not affected by this vulnerability.
• Customers who have a trusted WPAD server in their organization are not affected by this vulnerability. (See the Workaround section for specific steps in creating a WPAD.DAT file on a WPAD server.)
• Customers who have manually specified a proxy server in Internet Explorer are not at risk from this vulnerability when using Internet Explorer.
• Customers who have disabled 'Automatically Detect Settings' in Internet Explorer are not at risk from this vulnerability when using Internet Explorer.

In my opinion, this is weak. That's apparently Secunia's opinion as well. As they rated it "less critical".

My question is, did MSFT re-introduce this vulnerability? Or did they just half ass fix it in `99?

The following OS'es are affected:
Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server
Microsoft Windows 2000 Datacenter Server
Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
Microsoft Windows 2000 Server
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Web Edition
Microsoft Windows Vista
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
Microsoft Windows XP Professional

Two new Mac Exploits

I just saw that two new Mac Exploits have hit the streets. Both are Denial of Service exploits.

The first one is an exploit against vpnd, version Leopard 10.5.0.

The second is against xnu, 10.4, 10.5.1 (i386), and 10.5.1 (ppc).

Both are from digit-labs.org.

And we all know that a DoS is one step away from a remote exploit.

Podcast 101?

Should be cool.

Microsoft reopens WPAD Vulnerability from 1999.

Apparently MSFT hasn't had enough vulns lately. They decided to reintroduce one (or never fix it in the first place).

From 1999.

Some blogs have picked this up and said "Zero Day!!!" But it's not. It's the same one from 1999.

Here is a link to the Microsoft Security Advisory posted yesterday.

In my opinion, this is weak. That's apparently Secunia's opinion as well. As they rated it "less critical".

My question is, did MSFT re-introduce this vulnerability? Or did they just half ass fix it in `99?

Short rss feeds

I've shortened my RSS feeds, please click on the link to get the full article, you'll see why below... with that said...

Ever since I moved the blog back from web.mac.com to my own servers, as I have said before, I am receiving alot more traffic than before. At present I am getting about 4000-4500 hits a day, which isn't much in the grand scheme of things, but when you go from getting 1000 hits a day, to 4x that a day, it really makes a difference in servers, server load, and ability to serve content to readers to keep it interesting.

So, I'm trying to get an accurate metric of how many people read the blog. Problem is, I have tons of people that read me through rss and atom feeds (btw -- the atom feed is being kept alive manually, I'll stop doing this shortly. Please subscribe to the rss feed. http://www.joelesler.net/rss.xml).

Most blog aggregation services will tell you in the "GET" request how many people they are aggregating for. Google does this, Newslines does this, and Bloglines does this. So thanks to them for that. But these obscure blog readers; and individual blog readers that read in Safari, or Mail.app, or NetNewsWire, there is no good way to get a count from them. You've got people coming from different IP's. You have people coming from multiple IP's (do i count them as two?) So it's tricky.

So what I did was, shortened the rss.xml feed. That way, in hopes that you guys click into the site and read the full post, so I can get an accurate count.

I have every intention of making the rss feed full length again, let's say I'll do it next week. So don't worry, you'll get your full feeds. But for now, I am just trying to get an accurate count.

I've also posted some convenient "subscribe here" buttons on the right --------->

so if you read from one of those readers, feel free to add me there. Notice that I've added the ones that give me counts :)

Thanks for your patience while I get this stuff done.

Sunday, December 2

/usr/ports update

I updated my port tree (and all the ports underneath it) using portupgrade tonight. Then bash stopped working.

Crap.

Found this article, (click on title of blog entry to go to the website). Good thing I did too.

"...After this I was able to start X and continue on with my work. Though this worked, the above is not the correct way to fix the “shared object ‘libintl.so.6′ not found” error. Reading /usr/ports/UPDATING revealed I needed to do:

portupgrade -rf gettext

The above is required if you upgraded to: gettext-0.16.1. /usr/ports/UPDATING shows:

20070318:
AFFECTS: users of devel/gettext (ie: YOU)
AUTHOR: ade@FreeBSD.org

As a result of the upgrade to gettext-0.16.1, the shared library version
of libintl has changed, so you will need to rebuild all ports that
depend on gettext (ie: most of them, sorry):

portupgrade -rf gettext"

/usr/ports update

I updated my port tree (and all the ports underneath it) using portupgrade tonight. Then bash stopped working.

Crap.

Found this article, (click on title of blog entry to go to the website). Good thing I did too.

Thursday, November 29

Now, that's a nice User-Agent

I was looking through my httpd-access.log today for something, and ran across this, (Yes, I have removed the IP):

"[29/Nov/2007:17:18:18 -0500] "GET /uploaded_images/questionmark-785318.jpg HTTP/1.1" 200 6203 "http://www.bloglines.com/myblogs_display?sub=44519724&site=8488306" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.9) Gecko/20071025 Internet Explorer'); DROP TABLE browsers;--"

Little injection attempt there? Trying to drop the ol' browser table in some kind of stats db.

So who cares. Well it made me think of something. If this person can obviously alter his/her User-Agent to do that, what is to make you think that the rest of the Agent string is valid? How do we know that his person is really using "Internet Explorer"?

At what point does the trust break. I've often gone with the adage of "don't trust anything", not a single packet. What if you use p0f to passively fingerprint the OS'es of the machines attempting to access your network, okay, and I go in, compile my own kernel on my Linux box, and set my IP and TCP attributes such that it will appear to be Windows when I communicate with your network?

What can you trust on your own network? If someone hacks into your web server, is there any merit in seeing what they did once they got on the machine? You no longer can trust a single thing on the box, and definitely anything coming out of the box! It has to be rebuilt.

Mod_security did not catch the above attempt btw. (It will now)

Facebook

I've been hearing alot recently about the new way to communicate with the world, via social networks. MySpace, FaceBook, Pownce and the like. I've had a couple people encourage me to do it. So I decided I'd at least join one.

So I grabbed a FaceBook account and requested a Pownce account. I have my principles against joining MySpace. (Which in my opinion is truly the biggest waste of bandwidth on the internet.)

So, if you want, hit me up on FaceBook. See you there.

Update: I now have a Pownce account. Hit me up there too. Username = joelesler

Wednesday, November 28

Facebook

So I grabbed a FaceBook account and requested a Pownce account. I have my principles against joining MySpace. (Which in my opinion is truly the biggest waste of bandwidth on the internet.)

So, if you want, hit me up on FaceBook. See you there.

Update: I now have a Pownce account. Hit me up there too. Username = joelesler

Rebuilt Website

The machine I was running this website on wasn't handling the load too well. Had to rebuild. I had a server sitting around here, so I loaded it with freebsd, and put www.joelesler.net on it.

Now it works much better. Had to place it in the basement of the house though, it was kinda loud with all those fans running. Had to drill a hole in the floor of my office to get the Cat 6 cable through the floor, but all is well now.

Tuesday, November 27

Okay Apple. Are you awake?

Friend of mine pointed this out to me. http://nvd.nist.gov/nvd.cfm?cvename=CVE-2002-0252
This vulnerability from 2002 appears to be the same vulnerability that was just found in 7.2 and 7.3 in Quicktime!

Except that the 2002 vulnerability was found in a piece of software called... Quicktime. Uh? And I thought Microsoft was the only company that re-introduced old vulnerabilities.

Come on Apple, I hold you to a higher standard than that! Let's go.

You get the moron label on this post.

UPDATE: The original vulnerability was for the Japanese version of Quicktime. You would think that Apple would update all their code.

Okay Apple. Are you awake?

Monday, November 26

Apple QuickTime 7.3 RTSP Response 0day Remote SEH Overwrite PoC Exploit

For those of you that have not seen it this morning, (actually, it was last week, but who cares), there is a PoC (and actual exploit code out for XP and Vista -- I have not seen any for OSX, just the PoC), for Apple Quicktime 7.3.

While we are waiting for Apple to post a patch, please, please go here: http://zapatopi.net/afdb/build.html. And affix to head.

Secunia gives us advice:

"Do not browse untrusted websites, follow untrusted links, nor open untrusted QTL files."

Uhhh thanks?

Stupid advertising mistakes

W00t! I am Paypal, and I am going to give you 20% cashback, on all your purchases from all these fine retailers!!

Except we didn't have enough retailers to fill our graphic, so we took the same ones on the top, moved them around, and put them on the bottom too! Look! We have twice as many now!

Why do retailers feel the need to over inflate? Sorry, I just needed to vent this morning. Thanks.

Apple QuickTime 7.3 RTSP Response 0day Remote SEH Overwrite PoC Exploit

While we are waiting for Apple to post a patch, please, please go here: http://zapatopi.net/afdb/build.html. And affix to head.

Secunia gives us advice:

"Do not browse untrusted websites, follow untrusted links, nor open untrusted QTL files."

Uhhh thanks?

Stupid advertising mistakes

W00t! I am Paypal, and I am going to give you 20% cashback, on all your purchases from all these fine retailers!!

Except we didn't have enough retailers to fill our graphic, so we took the same ones on the top, moved them around, and put them on the bottom too! Look! We have twice as many now!

Why do retailers feel the need to over inflate? Sorry, I just needed to vent this morning. Thanks.

Sunday, November 25

joelesler.net

I decided I should go ahead and actually get a primary domain, instead of surfing off of esler.is-a-geek.net (which is a dynamic dns freebie domain (is-a-geek.net), and bought joelesler.net. I couldn't get joelesler.com, my long lost twin in Australia owns that one, and I am not a .org, so I didn't get that one. esler.org and esler.net were also taken, or I would have grabbed those as well. That way I could set up fun email address for the whole family.

The only one that was available is esler.com, but they want 2500 bucks for that one. I'm not going to pay 2500 bucks for my own damn last name. But esler.com used to be a website for an airport in Alexandria, Louisiana, (seriously! Esler airpark!), so someone has it parked, and has the stranglehold on that one currently. I actually landed at the airpark once when I was in the military. We were going to Fort Polk, and that's the airport we landed in. Of course I didn't know it until later.

I have email here, all the DNS zones I can handle, and loads of other goodies that you can do with your own domain. So I have changed my email on the right of page to reflect my new domain.

Esler.is-a-geek.net will still work for now, it's free! But eventually, when I get tired of renewing it every 90 days, I'll ditch it.

Saturday, November 24

M/S Explorer is sinking

No really. The M/S Explorer has crashed, and is sinking.

"More than 150 passengers and crew have been rescued from a stricken tourist ship after it hit ice off Antarctica. The M/S Explorer is now lying on its side close to the South Shetland Islands, in the Antarctic Ocean."

Okay, so it was a cheap poke designed to get you laughing. As long as it worked then I am fine.

All passengers and crew were evacuated, so we can laugh.

(That was a Microsoft Explorer joke..)

joelesler.net

I have email here, all the DNS zones I can handle, and loads of other goodies that you can do with your own domain. So I have changed my email on the right of page to reflect my new domain.

Esler.is-a-geek.net will still work for now, it's free! But eventually, when I get tired of renewing it every 90 days, I'll ditch it.

M/S Explorer is sinking

No really. The M/S Explorer has crashed, and is sinking.

Okay, so it was a cheap poke designed to get you laughing. As long as it worked then I am fine.

All passengers and crew were evacuated, so we can laugh.

(That was a Microsoft Explorer joke..)

Friday, November 23

Thank you for watching

For those of you who read my next post and then took the URL in the log that I posted, and copies and pasted that into the address bar of your browser, and read the Microsoft label page, you are missing the point.

-- Thank you for reading, but that's not what I am asking. --

Look at the log entry. If you have access to apache logs yourself, go look at yours, or find some on the internet, then come back and tell me what is wrong with that log entry.

(BTW -- Those of you that cut and pasted, about 20 of you did it, so don't feel bad, you are not alone.)

Wednesday, November 21

Why would a browser do this?

First of all, tell me what's wrong with this picture, then explain to my why a browser would do this?

[21/Nov/2007:16:36:05 --0500] "GET http://esler.is-a-geek.net/labels/Microsoft.html HTTP/1.1" 406 340 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0; Maxthon)" - "-"

Maxthon is the name of the browser.

iChat Screen Names For Over 30 Apple Stores

Digg - iChat Screen Names For Over 30 Apple Stores:

I never even thought of doing this with all the Apple Stores that I have been to. Get the screen names for all the iChat's for the machines in the store? Someone add these all to your iChat buddy list and send me a screen shot. That would be hilarious.

iChat Screen Names For Over 30 Apple Stores

Sunday, November 18

Gas is stupid expensive, and Security 2.0

Yeah, I get it. If oil prices go up for this reason or that reason, gas prices are soon to follow. But costing me 60.00 to fill up the tank?

Come on. Is that truly necessary? There is nothing that can be done
about that at all?

On another note--

I've thinking about writing a blog entry about the state of modern security in computer networks. Does it work? Where are we at? Are all the extremely restrictive policies in your corporate work environment working? What can be relaxed? Why?

Like to hear your thoughts. What does "security 2.0" mean to you?

Gas is stupid expensive, and Security 2.0

Yeah, I get it. If oil prices go up for this reason or that reason, gas prices are soon to follow. But costing me 60.00 to fill up the tank?

Come on. Is that truly necessary? There is nothing that can be done
about that at all?

On another note--

Like to hear your thoughts. What does "security 2.0" mean to you?

Wednesday, November 14

Cabling

I have no idea where this picture came from, (well, the site I got it from is here, but I don't know what the picture is of) but I thought it was great.

Think you have issues with cabling in your network?

Think again.

Cabling

I have no idea where this picture came from, (well, the site I got it from is here, but I don't know what the picture is of) but I thought it was great.

Think you have issues with cabling in your network?

Think again.

Monday, November 12

Love it when I am right

I love it when I am right.

Remember this post? I said that Apple and Starbucks should partner. Imagine the possibilities.

800 posts, and mod_security blocking

Took a look at my mod_security logs tonight. Apparently, if you use Google's Reader to my rss feed, then actually try to go to my website via the link in the RSS.. trying to do all this when you are behind a Bluecoat Proxy server on your internal network...

You get blocked. The bluecoat proxy forwards your "X-forwarded for" header to the Google Reader, then, finally when you click on the link to come to my website, Google forwards your internal IP.

Which mod_security didn't like:

"!^(((25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)\\.(25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)\\.(25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)\\.(25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-
9][0-9]?)|)|unknown)$" at HEADER("X-FORWARDED-FOR")

It doesn't like you. I commented out the rule, so everything should be fine now.

Love it when I am right

I love it when I am right.

Remember this post? I said that Apple and Starbucks should partner. Imagine the possibilities.

800 posts, and mod_security blocking

You get blocked. The bluecoat proxy forwards your "X-forwarded for" header to the Google Reader, then, finally when you click on the link to come to my website, Google forwards your internal IP.

Which mod_security didn't like:

It doesn't like you. I commented out the rule, so everything should be fine now.

MacBook Pro Goodness

I bit the bullet.

I went out this weekend and purchased my first Intel based Mac. I didn't buy the first gen (or the second gen for that matter) MacBook Pro (MBP), simply because, usually, it's a bad thing to buy Apple hardware in it's first gen. (Except for the iPhone currently)

But the MBP is excellent. It's not hot, it runs fast (even with it's stock 2 Gigs of RAM), and works flawlessly. The MBP had Tiger on it when I bought it, but came with a Leopard install disk, which is nice.

The only thing that I had problems with was, my old wireless card from AT*T was PCMCIA. The new MBP's have Express card slots. So, I had to get a new card. Which the guy at the store, let me tell you, was a prick. Dude, obviously, if I come in, ask for an exact model number for a laptop card, tell you I already have an account (which he had to verify, because he didn't believe I already had a SIM card), I have obviously already looked to see if my computer supports it.

He insisted that OSX was not supported and the card wouldn't work. Well uh, no, it's not supported by AT*T that doesn't mean that it's not supported by the card manufacturer. (Option) What a tool, anyway...

I get the card home, plug it in, and wtf. The lights are flashing.. huh? What did I do wrong? Oh, I had the SIM card inserted backwards. My bad.

Flipped it around, and it worked fine. In fact, not only did it work fine, but Leopard has NATIVE DRIVER SUPPORT for it. No loading 3rd party software, no wierd communications spyware... err.. manager i mean... It just works. Nice little toolbar access to the card. Very nice.

Anyway, I gotta go order my other two Gigs of RAM for this thing, so I can love on it some more.

MacBook Pro Goodness

Friday, November 9

Welcome back

iWeb is a great program, makes nice webpages, the problem is, it stores the entire website in one huge file called "Domain". So, I have taken the time to transition everything back to here.

Essentially, because iWeb keeps everything in that one file, I couldn't edit the webpage on multiple computers, nor could I edit it from the road. I used to keep the Domain file on my iDisk, so I could sync it between machines... Which was fine... except when it got to be like 250 Mb's. It was alot to sync. So, I decided to move everything back to my Linux server.

I'll probably lose some people in the transition between the iWeb domain, and bringing it back to my server, but hopefully they find me again.

Welcome back

Tuesday, November 6

TWiT -- This Week in Tech

This week I started listening to TWiT, otherwise known as This Week in Tech. With Leo Laporte and John Dvorak.

First of all, little bit of background, I listen to two (now three) podcasts. I listen to Diggnation (which is what got me started listening to Podcasts), and the Totally Rad Show. Both have Alex Albrecht in them, (he’s pretty funny), and the former has Kevin Rose, founder of Digg.com and both are from the TechTV show The Screen Savers. Which was a show ‘back in the day’ before G4 bought the channel and ruined it. Anyway...

I started listening to TWiT (Leo Laporte was also a host of The Screen Savers) today and kinda like it. There are just a couple things about it that I am not in total agreement with. First of all, it’s press and media ish people. There are no real real real geeks on the show. (Alex and Kevin have even lost a bit of touch.) Hello? There are geeks out there people that have the ability to talk to the public as well! (Uh, me?) People can joke and be knowledgeable at the same time.

Second, one of things I found interesting in the TWiT podcast was John Dvorak. Now we all know Dvorak as the guy who is really big into bashing all things everything. Apple, Microsoft, etc. He’s got something to say. Most of which I agree with (when it comes to Microsoft being an evil corporation), but some of it I do not. (Like his famed Apple punditry). But it was interesting to hear him (in TWiT episode 119) say basically, look people Microsoft is done. Buy a Mac. It’s over for MSFT. Something I have been saying for awhile, because I pretty much dislike anything MSFT. But it was interesting to hear Dvorak say that.

Third, Leo doesn’t read his email. (He said this on Episode 119) I don’t know how you can survive without reading or writing email, since that is the mainstream form of communication now adays. But anyway, to each his own.

On the email note, I recently received an email chastising me about not writing on the blog anymore. Truth is, I’ve been very busy and haven’t had time to do a proper review of any tech stuff, and I’ve been up to my eyeballs in packets. (which I suppose I could write about).

Thanks to the couple hundred readers that I do have, I’ll have to get back on the blogging wagon. I always think that no one reads this thing until I start getting emails asking me to “write something new!” “Haven’t heard from you in awhile!”

Back to podcasts --

I was actually asked to start a podcast on general tech/security stuff, but I declined. First of all, who has the time? I wouldn’t do it alone, and the people I would want to do a podcast with would probably make fun of me for asking them to do it. (Although, if they did, it would be the funniest podcast out there, bar none.)

If you have any podcasts out there that you think I should be listening to, please let me know!

Monday, November 5

Google Phone, Apple Stock, and other Random Blatherings

Today’s news has just been a buzz with Google’s announcement of their “gphone”. Wait...

Google’s phone is NOT a PHONE! It’s Open Software, FOR phones. Google isn’t making a phone (yet), and no products have been announced. So at this point, this is ‘releaseware’. Other phone companies (Motorola, Sony, Nokia, and the like) have to want to put Google’s software on their phones. Will they do that? When they have a significant investment in their own OS’es on their phones now? Time will tell.

Apple’s Stock Price --

I can’t complain. Everytime Apple’s stock price levels out and doesn’t go anywhere for awhile, they introduce something new. iPhone, iPod Nano, iPod Touch, 3rd Quarter earnings, new laptops... just keep on going Apple, keep on going.

Trolls--
I’ve noticed as of late alot of trolls in some IRC channels that I am in. Why would you come into a product channel and say “your product sucks because ”? Do I jump into the #windows channel and say “Control Panel sucks, therefore the whole OS sucks!” No!, because that’s called “Trolling”! Why would you pop in one of my channels, where clearly, there are alot of people that know more about the product then you and say something insane like.. “You can’t achieve >1 Gig speeds with your product!”.

Sorry, just needed to vent.

For those reading this blog looking for leopard feedback, here you go. I like it. There are only a couple things I can’t get to work. Back to my Mac for one (probably because of some firewall setting I have), local lan browsing always doesn’t work, and my laptop battery power really really sucks now. I can drain my whole laptop battery in about 10 minutes. Something isn’t right.

I really like Time machine, it’s great. I like alot of their new features, even though, I admit, leopard could have used a bit more testing before release.

Hopefully they release a fix-it pack soon. But I still like it!

Thursday, October 11

Quick Story

This comic was on xkcd the other day. Reminded me of my high school days.

I was in computer class one day (I think it was called Keyboarding 1 or something). Our computers were locked down to the point where you could only run like two programs. One was WordPerfect [was it WordPerfect?](remember that? The Blue screen with the white letters?), the other was some typing speed tester. Well, they neglected to think about the security aspect, and that anyone would be able to use WordPerfect to navigate throughout the school’s networks.

Guess what?

Change directory... What directory would you like to change to? How about ../../../../../../../.? Well... the details of how I exactly did it are lost to time right now, but basically, lame directory transversal. Was able to navigate to the teachers computer where her name was “Sysop”. (Imagine that?)

Well, she maintained the usernames and passwords for all of the users on the networks, all of which were editable using WordPerfect. Very Nice.

Anyway. I never did anything malicious, let me just say that right now, before anyone jumps to conclusions. But the kid sitting behind me did. (No really, he really did) His name was Shawn. I don’t remember his last name, but I know he got kicked out of school a year or two later.

The teacher didn’t really know what we were doing (she was across the room) but she could tell we were in the file navigator. So consequently by the next day, my parents and I were in the Principles office. The teacher claimed I hacked her Sysop password (not true). They wanted me to tell them what the new one was, I had no idea. I didn’t do it!

I was suspended at the end. My Dad was pissed.

I say all that to say this, which brings me back to the comic.

Years later after I left home, joined the military, and blew some stuff up... Dad and I were sharing a beer going over all the funny crap I did as a kid when we came upon this moment in time.

Dad admitted to me that at the time he had to act mad, but he told me that he actually was very proud of me at that moment. He said that I always knew what I was going to do for a living from the age of 14. I just had no idea how to get there.

Famous quote by Steve Jobs, (of course!):
“Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward .... But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.”

Quick Story

Wednesday, September 26

Manifold

I didn’t do it!

Wish I could take credit for this one, it’s genius.

Friend of mine named Joel Esler (same exact name, even middle) made a flash based game called Manifold. It’s not me :)

Joel and I met almost 10 years ago now, online, and have kept in touch ever since. We have the same first, middle, and last names. He lives in Australia and is a graphic artist. (And apparently makes really good flash games too!)

So I just wanted to clear that up, it’s not me, it’s him, go support him!

Good job Joel!

Outlook and Mail.app

At the client I am working at, they actually use the Outlook calendar how it is supposed to be used. Scheduling appointments, conference calls, and inviting people to them, using the Accept, Decline..etc buttons within Outlook to actually schedule conference calls.

I am baffled by the use of this technology, since most offices that I’ve worked at don’t use Calendars on their computers as they are supposed to. I have no idea why this is so hard for people to grasp.

Anyway, I have noticed that when people send me an invite in Outlook and I receive it in Mail.app, it basically looks like this:

When: Wednesday, September 26, 2007 7:30 PM-9:00 PM (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada).
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Which, is annoying. I want it to look like an iCal icon, allowing me to click on it (or even do what it’s supposed to and automatically import into iCal) and add it into iCal. Well I Googled.

Found these two: OMiC and MailTags, but I didn’t want to install an app. Why should I have to install a third party app!? i don’t want to do that. So I started looking some more, and decided I should poke around the menus. After looking for a bit I found that by hitting the “Command-[“ key combination Mail.app would switch the format of the mail around and I got what I wanted. No third party app.

Why isn’t it ALL that easy?

Manifold

Outlook and Mail.app

Sunday, September 23

Review of the Snort book

Friend of mine Richard Bejtlich posted his review of the Snort Book that I had a hand in writing. I just wanted to say that I agree with every word he had to say. He did make some nice comments (and some bad comments -- citing the publisher at fault -- which is true) about my chapter, can’t fault him for that!

Thanks Richard for posting the review. I totally agree!

Tuesday, September 18

Full Disclosure

In the interest of Full-Disclosure for this blog and everything I’ll let you know where I stand.

-- I love Macs and everything Apple. Don’t care what you think, it all works for me. Don’t have any problems admitting it, even if one of my best friends thinks I am a tool because of it. (WuTang)
-- My first OS was DOS, first computer was a Tandy 1000 SX bought from Radio Shack. My OS progression has been:
DOS
Windows 3.1
Windows 95
Windows 98
Windows ME + NT
Windows XP + 2000
Redhat Linux
Mandrake Linux
Slackware
SuSE
OSX

That’s not all the OS’es I know, that’s just the ones I’ve personally had loaded on my systems.
-- I have an iPhone, iSight, Mac keyboards, docs, Mice..
-- I have a 3G iPod
-- I have a PowerBook G4
-- I have a PowerMac Dual G5 2.0
-- My wife has a MacBook Black
-- I work for Sourcefire, we make Snort, it’s the best company I’ve ever worked for, and I love it. I believe in our products and our philosophy of customer service. I work in the Professional Services department. Which means I am half sales, half technical, and another half jack-of-all-trades. (Which is 3 halves for you doing the math) It’s a great job, I have great management. I travel ALOT and actually, as I said in this post I am off the road for a year to work with one customer.
-- In my spare time I grade GIAC Gold papers for GIAC.org which is affiliated with SANS.
-- In my other spare time I am a handler with the Internet Storm Center. It takes a lot of time, and we get a lot of email.
-- I wrote a chapter of a book. I edited a another chapter, but my edits weren’t included in neither my bio or the other chapter (even though I was paid to do the edits).
-- The book sucked. Even my chapter had errors in it. (TCP Conversations do NOT start with a “FIN” wtf!) The publisher took the rough draft (read: not the final edits) of all the authors and published the rough drafts, this is because the publisher for the book quit in the middle of the process, plus Syngress (the publishing company) was bought out, so I am sure there were some things lost.. There are a couple chapters in the book that are excellent, and it’s worth the purchase. But on a elementary grading scale of the book, I give it a C-.

Anything I forgot? Leave a comment. If you are going to write about me in your blog, leave a comment on my blog pointing to your post!

Monday, September 17

Stoned.Angelina makes its way back..

Does anyone remember this boot sector virus? Stoned.Angelina? no? It’s only 13 years old.

Apparently a bunch of laptops pre-installed with Windows Vista Home Premium (wtf ever that means) was found to be infected with this 13 year old virus.

What happened to that MSFT anti-virus?

The Register has the story. Albeit funny though.

It is “an unfortunate” mistake for the company that put it on there “Bullguard”.

Bullheaded move is more like it.

Update: Apparently this dude over at computerdefense.org didn’t really like my post. First of all, it’s meant to relay information and yet, be funny at the same time.

So, #1 -- This is Bullguard’s fault. If you couldn’t read into that in the above post, well I am sorry.
#2 -- This is not Vista’s fault. Just MSFT being a victim of circumstance. This shouldn’t happen to an Apple computer because they control the manufacturing process of the hardware and the software. MSFT doesn’t. They just make the software, so they are at the hardware manufacturers mercy.
#3 -- I was definitely making fun of Vista’s naming structure. “Vista Home Premium” What does that mean? My question for Microsoft is, why couldn’t there just be ONE version of Vista. OSX does it! Linux does it! (yes they have versions like “Advanced Server” -- or whatever it’s called now..)
#4 -- I was poking fun at MSFT’s anti-virus service.

However, the dude that calls me everything but the kitchen sink over on his blog, says “I’ve actually had AV Vendors tell me that they pull old and out-dated virus signatures…” How is that responsible? So all I have to do if I want to infect computers is to introduce a really old virus? What kind of liability issues does that raise?

Further down in the posts in his blog he says “Now, I’m often accused of being a Microsoft Zealot...” Well, at least he admits it. He’s on the MSFT side of the fence, I am on the Apple/Linux side of the fence. At least now, I know where we all stand.

If you are going to write about me in your blog, leave a comment on my blog pointing to your post!

Sunday, September 9

Waiting in Line (or, how humans are lemmings)

I live near this small town in Delaware named “Middletown”.

At the intersection of 71 and 299, there is a single stop light, 4 way (with turn lanes) stop in the middle of town. Everyday I drive North on Route 1 to get to work and South on Route 1 to come home. The closest exit to where I live is the 299 exit off of Route 1. So, I would be approaching town from the right (headed West). Now, since the overwhelming majority of people that live in Middletown and Townsend work in either Dover or Wilmington, most people use Route 1 or 13 for the commute. (If you use 13, you just don’t want to pay the toll and are a cheapskate).

Anyway. Everyday, when I get off the exit headed towards Middletown, there is a line... A LONG LINE of people waiting at the light at 299/71. Like, a mile long... Now, as you can see from the above map, Middletown was built with the logical “Block” concept where the roads are in squares surrounding the main intersection. One way streets and everything. Aside from Lake street, which is not really the best street, the rest of the streets are normal small town neighborhood streets. Why oh Why do all these people wait at the light like 1984 zombies waiting for the light to change? Why doesn’t anyone go down the side blocks? Wouldn’t that make life so much easier? Or, perhaps, spend the 2 miles it takes to learn the shortcuts to avoid the intersection in the middle of town all-together and save alot less stress.

It makes me sad to make the turn to avoid the intersection, like I do everyday, and see the long line of people waiting... So sad.

Waiting in Line (or, how humans are lemmings)

Thursday, September 6

New Apple Keyboard review

Okay, so I went to the Apple store the other day (the Christiana Mall one is about 2 miles from work), just to see if I liked the new Apple Keyboard that they released at the same time as the new iMac.

Surprisingly, I did like it. I was impressed. I think I like it better than my old white Mac keyboard because the keys don’t travel as far. It’s more like a laptop keyboard (which I prefer), and the keys don’t depress as far as a regular keyboard does, but it has a nice ‘tactile’ feedback.

So, now it sits @ home. I really like it.

In fact, while using it the first day, I mentioned to my wife ‘hey, I think I type faster on this thing’. Of course, she rolled her eyes at me, but I had to test it.

I went to www.typingtest.com where you can take a non-scientific measurement of your typing speed, and with my Powerbook keyboard I can crank out 92 WPM (tested twice), with the new Mac Keyboard I can crank out 90 WPM, but with my old white mac keyboard, for some reason (maybe mental block), I can only get about 84 WPM.

So, like I said, non-scientific. But very interesting. To each his own, but I like it.

New Apple Keyboard review

Tuesday, September 4

A year log endeavor

For those of you that haven’t heard, I’m off the road for the next year. One of our clients has bought a year’s worth of my services to be at their office helping them configure their IDS’s, and generally help out their Incident Analysis team. Apparently this company (who I am not mentioning) had an Incident analysis team, but it had been downsized, several different managers...etc.. Therefore, they have hired me for a year in order to help them implement our product, and work in their team, since I have a bit of experience in Computer Response Teams, having worked for one for 4 years.

I’ll be able to get back to posting information and analysis again.

A year log endeavor

Monday, August 20

iWeb fun

I haven’t put anything up in awhile because apparently, iWeb had a problem. Alot of people have attributed it to the fact that Apple has had a lot more users of .mac since they updated iLife, and the webdav syncing timing has been off, and therefore you have not been able to publish anything on iWeb in awhile.

Annoying.

Anyway. I talked to Apple about how to fix the problem, and they asked me to submit my Domain file, which, Apple’s upload interface only allows you to upload a max of 50 Mb.

This website is over 250 Mb’s. Good luck Apple!

Well, I just tried to republish and it worked, so we’ll see if it stays fixed.

iWeb fun

Saturday, August 11

Mobile Photos

I’ve had a iWeb Gallery for a bit now, but iWeb has been on the fritz a bit.

http://gallery.mac.com/joel.esler#100051

Mobile Photos

I’ve had a iWeb Gallery for a bit now, but iWeb has been on the fritz a bit.

http://gallery.mac.com/joel.esler#100051

Tuesday, August 7

New Apple fun

iMac’s, iLife 08, iWork 08, Airport Extreme, Mac Mini updates...

They almost updated everything in the product line. Nice.

So I picked up iLife and iWork 08’s, because I was at an Apple Store anyway because my battery on my powerbook died. (suckkin)

iLife looks nice, I like the new iWeb features. Almost all of the Icons are different, and they actually allow for “Web Widgets” now, which allows you to put actual html into the iWeb design, which is nice. iPhoto got a refresh as well, kinda looks like iTunes, really, and you can organize your pictures by ‘events’. Which are auto created based upon picture import batch, from what I can tell. Double clicking on a picture ‘zooms’ it in, kinda, App -opening - iPhone style. Very nice. The icon changed slightly for iPhoto as well I think. More refined. I haven’t messed with Garageband, (and don’t). iMovie won’t install on the powerbook. I don’t use it on here anyway.

iWork is nice as well, I especially like the Numbers program (the Mac replacement for Excel). The interface is a hella lot nicer. Pages and Keynote got a really nice refresher as well. Pages looks like an actual word processor now with the font bar (center, right, left, justification..etc.) actually in the interface, as opposed to in the ‘inspector’ bar like they should be. Keynote also got some actions on stuff like ‘actions’. The ability to move words within a slide, make them transparent and nice things like that. Alot of it is ‘have to see to understand’. But overall some very nice refinements that I have been looking for from the two suites for some time.

They didn’t have the new iMac’s out at the store when I was there yet, but I might have to go back there tomorrow and see it in person and give you a report on how it’s working. I am especially interested in how the keyboard is.

Airport extreme got Gigabit ports. nice.

Looks like the Mac mini got new processors too.

.Mac looks like it got an update as well with ‘Photo Galleries’. The iPhone also got a magic update timed to appear today apparently. See here for more details. Nice.
Maybe to eliminate my flickr account? We’ll see.

Also.. uh.. 10GB of storage? Um. That wasn’t there before! That’s alot more storage than before. The data transfer rates also went from 5Gb to 10Gb. (For the bottom accounts) Frickin sweet.

AHH!! I just noticed that .Mac will accept registrations from private domain names too. So you can point your CNAME ‘www’ at web.mac.com and then when people go to your web address it automagically goes to web.mac.com. Nice. Redirection.

Okay, so I just ran over and created a Web Gallery named ‘Moving’.

New Apple fun

Monday, July 2

Joel’s iPhone review

Okay, I’ve had all weekend to play with the phone, and here we go, I’ll go app by app, experience by experience.

At first I was caught in the wave of people whose activation wasn’t going through. From the time I submitted my activation on iTunes, to the time it went through was about 19 hours. 19 EXCRUCIATING hours. Let me tell you, sitting here wanting to play with my phone, and it not working is a pain the butt. But eventually, it started working, synced up, and everything is hunky dory now. Turns out there was a ‘hold’ on my activation by AT&T. Whatever the hell that means. But after a couple tech-support calls, it works now, and I am a happy camper.

Unlocking/Locking -- works by touching the top button, works great.

Home screen -- Exactly how it looks in all the commercials, exactly like the picture I have above, it functions as it should.

Text messaging (SMS) -- Works just fine, formats the chat like iChat, like you have seen. The Keyboard, which I will probably discuss several times this entry, is a bit interesting. As Apple says, “you start typing with one finger to get used to how it operates”, but actually, it’s getting used to you. It’s learning the names and proper nouns and things like that you will be typing. After a couple days of use, you can type with your thumbs. I am at this stage, I can type pretty fast, but I am not up to the speed that I was on while on my blackberry. Apple says you have to learn to trust the auto-correcting feature, and once you do, you work faster. I can see this. Maybe i’ll make another blog entry in a couple days reporting on how fast I am.

Calendar -- It works nicely, has the bubble look for calendar entries much like iCal. The only thing that is lacking in iCal is “Todo’s”. It’s not in a separate application or anything, but it’s kinda helpful to have those. I WANT MY TODO’S APPLE!!

Photos -- It’s a photo browsing app, you can flick from picture to picture from left to right, right to left, use the pinch to enlarge and decrease. Works great, no complaints here. I used the Photos feature to make a picture of my daughter sitting up on the floor my wallpaper. I like the feature of being able to email a photo right from the application, it kind of “minimizes” the photo, then puts it in an email for you to send. It’s kind of hard to describe, but I remember watching the effect on one of the Apple videos.

Camera -- It actually takes some descent photos. Considering it’s 2 megapixel camera, you have to kind of forgive it for any shaking or bad lighting. However, considering the camera on my last phone was a 1.3 megapixel, i can see that. Here’s a picture I took with my camera yesterday.

Youtube -- Not a ‘useful’ feature, but definitely cool to pass the time with if you are bored.

Stocks widget -- I have all my stocks on there, it syncs quickly via Edge or Wifi.

Google Maps -- NICE. The integration with Google Maps is beautiful, Jobs said it was the best Google Maps client ever, and I tend to agree. It’s better then Google’s own implementation, and a hella lot better then the one I had on my blackberry.

Weather -- This is a handy feature, I can have several of them open at the same time, and i can flick left and right to be able to access the weather in whatever areas I set. I set them by hitting the edit button, too easy. Updates quickly via Edge or Wifi.

Clock -- The clock allows me to track the time in several time zones (it syncs via the cell tower), and has Cupertino built in as the default. Also has an Alarm, Stopwatch, and a countdown timer on it as well. The countdown timer has the most satisfying interface, which resembles a DaVinci cryptex
you flick your finger up and down to adjust the time.

Calculator -- It’s a simple +, -, *, /, calculator. Nothing special and nothing scientific.

Notes -- Simple Note pad, the font is sort of informal and rather ‘note-ish’. Kind of satisfying, the only problem is, when it syncs with iTunes it does NOT sync with ‘Stickies’ (The note application), so Notes are not synced anywhere I can see on OSX. One can surmise then that the notes will be synced with the Notes in OSX Leopard’s Mail.app application.

Settings --This was a section that I was curious about, so I’ll try and cover it in some detail:
1) Airplane Mode, simple slide left or right to turn off all wireless features. Nice.
2) Wi-fi -- You can turn wi-fi on or off, select the access point, and turn the “Ask to join networks” on or off. Now, from what i can tell, iPhone won’t just join some random access point. You have to tell it to do so, but once you do, it will remember that access point for future use. Nice. That way you can just walk into Panera, it grabs and IP and is ready for use.
3) Usage -- All kinds of metrics, usage, standby time, call time, lifetime call time, edge network data sent/received.
4) Sounds -- Vibrate on or off in silent mode, vibrate on or off in ring mode, ring volume, ringtone, and tones for voicemail, text message, mail, sent mail, calendar alerts, lock sounds, and keyboard clicking (which i turned off because it’s rather annoying when typing).
5) Brightness -- You can set it, or let it auto-adjust (on by default).
6) Wallpapers -- You can select from a built in wallpaper, or you can select your own.
7) General --
a) About -- what network you are on, how many songs, videos, photos, total capacity, available capacity, version (1.0), serial number, model number, wifi mac address, bluetooth mac address, imei and iccid numbers, and modem firmware. Finally a legal scroll page which includes the GPL license, and the licenses for bsd along with a shit-ton of other legal stuff from Google, Apple, and your mother.
b) Date and Time -- 24 hour time, set automatically, time zone support, and the ability to select a time zone (by city/state).
c) Auto-Lock -- 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or never minutes.
d) Passcode lock -- (that you would have to type in after you lock/unlock the phone)
e) Network -- VPN and Wi-Fi. VPN supports L2TP and PPTP, as well as proxies.
f) Bluetooth -- ON or OFF, and what devices you are paired to. Apparently supports handsets only.
g) Keyboard -- Auto-Caps, or Enable Caps Lock
h) Reset -- Resets the device (also done by Holding down the Home button and the Sleep/Wake button)

8) Mail -- Allows you to do a bunch of things with mail, setup the accounts, auto-checks, how many recent messages to show, minimum font size and the like.
9) Phone -- Call Forwarding and Call Waiting are found here, as well as the ability to block your phone number.
10) Safari -- Cookies, Cache, etc..
11) iPod -- AudioBook speed, EQ, volume limit
12) Photos -- Repeat, shuffle, and other stuff for slideshows

Phone -- Favorites work well, Recents, Contacts, Keypad, and Visual Voicemail all work excellent like they do in the commercials. The Rubber-banding effect in contacts (well in ANYTHING) really, is nice. It’s like the iPhone is allowing you to scroll off the end, and prove to you yes, there really is nothing there, then brings you back to reality.
Call Quality -- Excellent, the speakerphone isn’t very loud, and I haven’t tested the hold or the conferencing features yet, but generally works great.
Bluetooth headset -- I haven’t tried it with a regular headset yet, but it works great with my car.

Mail -- Again, has a button to sync. (I use IMAP) Works great. Sometimes swiping your finger across an email to delete it is a bit awkward, (doesn’t work everytime, but I think it’s my fault). The Keyboard, as I said before, takes a bit to get used to, but once it’s learning your typing style, it works great. I can now type at full speed wit my thumbs on it. I’ve read some stuff recently about the in-ability to push email to the iPhone. Not true. Yahoo can push email to an iPhone, and I am sure Gmail, and .mac will get it. Blackberry enterprise can’t push but that’s RIM’s fault. ;)

Safari -- Now, I have heard alot of bitching about how slow the Edge network is. In my experience, it’s actually not that bad. It’s not as fast as the wifi, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not as slow as dialup either. I can deal with it. It’s actually faster IMO then my blackberry. My blackberry was painfully slow at webpages. It DOES support Javascript and RSS feeds. Unlike what these tools are saying out there in the press.

iPod -- Enuff said. a visual ipod. It kicks ass.

Things I wish the iPhone had --
Todo’s, already said it.
Removeable battery, even though by the time this one dies it’ll be time to buy a new phone, still though, i wish I could get a new battery, or an extra one for it.
A separate IM application -- I overcame this by setting AOLIM to forward my messages to my mobile when I am not near IM client. Works through SMS, and works just fine. Still though, I would like to have a separate iChat application.

Other than that, I love this thing. It ROCKS. If you are one of the non-believers or one of the people that thinks it’s all hype, then fine, don’t buy one. No skin off my back, I know it kicks serious booty. But I do suggest that you if you are reading an article that just says that the iPhone sucks, check their facts. Email me at the link below and I’ll debunk or approve, I don’t mind. Go to an AT&T store or an Apple store and play with it. You’ll be convinced.

But for those of you are that are looking to reduce the amount of devices and cables they have to carry, and are looking for something to really make their life more organized and simpler, then there you go. Get it.

Tuesday, June 12

WWDC

Well, as you can probably guess, alot of people have written me asking what I think about the stuff that Mr. Jobs presented this morning at the WWDC (World Wide Developer Conference) in San Francisco, CA.

In case you are sleeping in a cave, he announced a few things: A new desktop, new Finder, Safari on Windows, Dashboard, Time Machine, Spaces, blah blah, and some other stuff.. Let me talk about a few of these

New Desktop: Thank God. Unified them, transparent menu bar, reflective Dock. Stacks? Um, okay. I’ll use it, it’ll be nice, but didn’t someone else have that?

New Finder: THANK GOD. The present Finder sucks, so I am glad they did this. However, it occurred to me that some of the stuff like searches that are for ‘Today’ and ‘Yesterday’ can already be done with Smart Folders in Tiger. Seriously, give it a shot. I’ll wait.. Well, maybe I won’t. The things I did like alot were the features to be able to instantly search via Spotlight and ‘browse’ via Finder the other computers on my lan (which you can do now, it’s just alot better in Leopard), and the ‘Back to my Mac’ feature. The ability to connect to your home PC no matter where you are. NICE. I will be using THAT one alot. Cover Flow? mmm.. okay. We’ll see.

Quicklook: Nice. The ability to look at files w/out having to open their app. Nice.

iChat: Nothing new here except the picture superimposing. Kinda nice. I already use iChat alot, so these features will be nice. I use iChat to communicate w/ my wife and baby while I am on the road. Makes up for me being gone (a little bit).

Safari on Windows: More on this later, but this is kinda cool.

Dashboard: Steve, we saw this last year. Boring.

Time Machine: Nice feature, except, again... we saw this last year. Boring.

Spaces: Multiple Desktops? Um, how long have Linux/other *nix’s had this? A long time? yes. How did Mac make it better? They made it prettier. That’s all. Boring.

All the other stuff: Boring. I’ll talk about what I think about Safari on Windows in a sec.

Things that WEREN’T Covered, and probably should have:

Mail -- Yes, we saw a bunch of this last year, Stationary (whoop de do, Outlook has had stationary for years, and it’s irritating, Apple just made it easier to use and prettier) However, Mail supports Notes and ToDo’s now (this we knew last year) it also integrates RSS feeds (nice), and it auto-recognizes Addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses in the text of an email and allows you to auto-create an Address Book entry for that person (nice). It also recognizes dates and auto-creates (with the help of a drop down) events in iCal. Nice. Watch the video linked to see. Leopard++

iCal -- Another one of my daily apps, iCal got better. Inline editing (instead of in the side PAIN -- pane), unified interface, nice. Like it. Leopard++

Parental Controls -- Nice. Alot better. I don’t know how this lines up against Vista, but this will be a welcome addition. Leopard++

Boot Camp -- Ehh.. Kind of expected native Windows apps running parallel w/ OSX ones. Not having to reboot to use Windows Apps. I tried to predict this, apparently the Leopard developers don’t read my blog.

Photo Booth -- Ehh. I don’t use it. I don’t care.

DVD Player -- Good. The other one was ‘just okay’

Overall -- okay. I’ll buy it for 129.00.

Now, why do I think Jobs introduced Safari for Windows. Lets look at the situation here. Let’s say Windows people are afraid to switch to a mac because they don’t know how to operated the interface. Okay. Safari and iTunes are the Mac apps on Windows. Both are different in their own special way, each having a nice interface.

The new Finder in Leopard is just like iTunes. Compare em, go ahead. Safari is exactly the same on both platforms.

IMHO -- I think Apple is making a play here for switchers. Don’t be afraid to switch to OSX, have you used iTunes before? Then you know OSX. Done. Everything in OSX will look like an app you are already familiar with.. okay? No more excuses. Oh, you have an app that doesn’t run on OSX? Boot camp, thanks.

I think this is targeted at the potential switcher audience. Good luck.

I’ll still buy Leopard, and I’ll still buy the iPhone. I like them both. But I am buying Leopard for the Back to my mac, intra-network computer access in Finder, Time Machine, Mail, and the new iChat. That’s it.

What did you guys think?