Vol. 12, #21 - May 28, 2007 - Issue #627 Antispyware Bill: More Bad Technology Legislation Editor's Corner Antispyware Bill: More Bad Technology Legislation Exchange Disclaimer Survey Sunbelt Seminar In Our Own Backyard: Tampa Quote Of The Week Admin Toolbox Admin Tools We Think You Shouldn't Be Without Tech Briefing The Top 10 Dead (Or Dying) Computer Skills Dell Signs Sales Deal With Wal-Mart, Sell Linux Boxes Virtual Machine Sprawl Prevention Best Practices Findpart Utility Locates Lost Partitions On Disk A Full-Volume Encryption Option For Windows Vista Tip: How To Create Dynamic Distribution Groups In Exchange 2007 Windows Server News Microsoft Trumps Oracle's Record-Breaking TPC Score Badware Is Getting Really Bad WServer Third Party News Double-Take Software Announces Its Latest Feature WServerNews Fave Links This Week's Links We Like. Tips, Hints And Fun Stuff WServerNews - Product of the Week Gain 2 Stars And Save Ten Bucks "If It Ain't Broke Don't Fix It" Is it always true though? If you run AV / Antispam from one of the big players on your Exchange server, you have probably noticed that image spam is getting through, tech support is crappy, and your yearly renewal fees are in the 40% range. Isn't that really BROKE? Kick them off your Exchange server and replace them with Ninja Email Security. A third-gen product that really helps you fight malware. And we will give you a competitive upgrade offer you can't refuse. Download the 30-day trial and ask your Rep about that special offer: http://www.wservernews.com/070528-Ninja Editor's Corner Antispyware Bill: More Bad Technology Legislation When a bill has support from the industry it is supposed to regulate, you can bet your boots that the consumers ultimately will pay, one way or another. The Congress Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection made progress on the "SPY ACT" - more formally known as H.R. 964, the "Securely Protect Yourself Against Cyber Trespass Act." Remember the CAN SPAM act? Well, I fear that this one is not much better. The SPY-ACT barrels ahead to solve a non-problem and in the meantime, quite possibly gives protection to the very people we don't want to protect. Alex and Eric wrote a really good blog post about this, and part of that post is a graph that shows the amount of spam AFTER the CAN SPAM act was enacted. Check that graph, it's terrible: http://www.wservernews.com/070528-Spy-Act Exchange Disclaimer Survey We recently asked: "If we could give you a solid disclaimer program for free or an extremely low price, would you install it on your Exchange Server(s)?". The results were resounding, 76% of you replied positively. We have a few more in depth questions about this now. This product would actually be our award-winning Ninja email security product, with only the disclaimer module enabled. It would be for an unlimited amount of time and unlimited mailboxes. If we would make this available at an extremely low price, please answer the following 8 (very short) questions: http://www.wservernews.com/070528-Exchange-Disclaimer-Survey Sunbelt Seminar In Our Own Backyard: Tampa I'd like to invite you to the following seminar we are hosting: "Winning the War on the Spyware Battlefield". Join renowned spyware researcher and Sunbelt's Director of Malware Research, Eric Howes, for an engaging discussion on the scope of the spyware problem. Hosted at the Microsoft office in Tampa, FL on Wednesday June 20th. Register here: http://www.wservernews.com/070528-Tampa-Seminar Quote Of The Week "Make sure you have finished speaking before your audience has finished listening". -- Dorothy Sarnoff Hope you enjoy this issue of WServerNews! Warm regards, Stu  |   Email me: feedback@wservernews.com Admin Toolbox Admin Tools We Think You Shouldn't Be Without Webify Active Directory! Download your gratis version of rDirectory now. Let users self-manage, but stay in control using native & delegated roles. http://www.wservernews.com/070528-Namescape MetaSploit is an essential tool for any serious Windows security tester. And it just got better. The 3.0 version of this product is now out. http://www.wservernews.com/070528-MetaSploit MOICE is an Office 03/07 add-on that pre-processes Office docs when you open them, converting it to the new, safer open XML-based Office 07 format: http://www.wservernews.com/070528-MOICE Protect your mission critical (virtual) Servers with real-time data replication and Disaster Recovery in-one: Double-Take! http://www.wservernews.com/070528-Double-Take Tech Briefing The Top 10 Dead (Or Dying) Computer Skills Are your skills in need of upgrading? ComputerWorld had a good story about this: "Those in search of eternal life need look no further than the computer industry. Here, last gasps are rarely taken, as aging systems crank away in back rooms across the U.S., not unlike 1970s reruns on Nickelodeon's TV Land. So while it may not be exactly easy for Novell NetWare engineers and OS/2 administrators to find employers who require their services, it's very difficult to declare these skills -- or any computer skill, really -- dead. Click here to get the Top 10: http://www.wservernews.com/070528-Top-10-Computer-Skills Dell Signs Sales Deal With Wal-Mart, Sell Linux Boxes Well, since Michael Dell is back in the saddle, things start to move. If I were buying shares, I'd buy Dell. (Disclosure: I don't trade shares, and my 401K sits in blind funds. I do not speculate in any of the companies I talk about.) Dell will begin selling two under $700 models of its desktop PCs at Wal-Mart Stores on June 10, fulfilling a series of recent hints from CEO Michael Dell that the company would move beyond the direct sales model. More retail outlets will follow. And starting this week, you can buy Dell computers with Linux as the operating system. They are offering Ubunto 7.04 on an Inspiron E1505n notebook, starting at $599, a Dimension E520, starting at $599, and the XPS 410n, starting at $849. Virtual Machine Sprawl Prevention Best Practices Many organizations have used virtualization to help reduce server sprawl: an overabundance of servers in their environments. Deploying virtual machines (VMs) willy-nilly, however, can lead to VM sprawl, defeating the purpose of virtualizing the servers. Learn how virtual machine sprawl starts and how to prevent it by expert Anil Desai. http://www.wservernews.com/070528-Virtual-Machines Findpart Utility Locates Lost Partitions On Disk Since disk partitioning is one of those storage-related issues where there seem to be more exceptions than actual rules, it helps to have as much information at your disposal on the topic of disk partitioning as possible. This tip examines a command-line utility called Findpart which scans a disk in order to find lost partitions. (registration required) http://www.wservernews.com/070528-Findpart A Full-Volume Encryption Option For Windows Vista BitLocker and Encrypting File System each allow different types of encryption in Windows Vista, but neither offer encryption for auxiliary volumes or removable drives. However, you are in luck. TrueCrypt 4.3 can encrypt whole and virtual drives -- and it works with Vista. Read this tip to learn more: http://www.wservernews.com/070528-TrueCrypt Tip: How To Create Dynamic Distribution Groups In Exchange 2007 Exchange Server 2007 offers a new feature called dynamic distribution groups that frees administrators from having to manually manage Exchange distribution lists. The only caveat is that Active Directory user object attributes have to be up to date for it to work. http://www.wservernews.com/070528-Dynamic-Distribution-Groups Windows Server News Microsoft Trumps Oracle's Record-Breaking TPC Score SQL Magazine reported that Microsoft announced its latest TPC-H benchmark score, which was quite impressive. Microsoft's latest score--posted on May 21, 2007--was 60,359 queries per hour (QphH) @3t with a Price/QphH of $32.60 compared with Oracle's best score--posted on May 14, 2007--of 37,813 QphH @3t with a Price/QphH of $38.00. Almost double the performance for a lower cost per query. Read the full article at SQLMag: http://www.wservernews.com/070528-TPC-Score Badware Is Getting Really Bad Michael Osterman is writing the Network World Unified Communications e-zine. It's a good newsletter and at the end I will link to where you can subscribe. The following is a copy of his editorial this week, with grateful acknowledgments. "StopBadWare.org, an initiative of the Oxford Internet Institute and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, issued a report in early May showing that five Web hosting companies host about a third of Web sites that distribute malware and other malicious content to Web users. "StopBadWare.org analyzed just under 49,300 Web sites and found that iPowerWeb was the worst offender, with 10,834 Web sites that contain malware and other malicious content. IPowerWeb hosts more than 500,000 Web sites, and so their proportion of 'bad' sites may actually represent a smaller percentage of their total sites than for some other companies that made the list of worst offenders. As of this writing, I'm not sure what iPowerWeb is doing to remediate the problem, but I am familiar with some significant outages that may be caused by the remediation effort - one site that operates on iPowerWeb's system with which I'm familiar has been down for more than five days as of this writing. "The StopBadWare.org report points out a couple of important issues for corporate decision makers. First, Web sites represent a major threat vector that many organizations do not yet protect against. Our own research shows that a significant proportion of organizations have not deployed any sort of protection against Web-based threats that can infect a user's computer simply by visiting a site and taking no action, such as clicking on a link. Although the problem has been around for some time, the StopBadWare.org report serves to underscore the severity and widespread nature of the threat. "Second, even simple Web surfing can create huge problems for organizations of all sizes and it needs to be addressed. It's critical for any organization - large or small - to deploy technology that can protect a network. These technologies include client-side antispyware tools, hosted Web filtering capabilities, on-premise Web filtering software and appliances, and other capabilities. Here are all the Network World newsletters: http://www.wservernews.com/070528-Subscribe WServer Third Party News Double-Take Software Announces Its Latest Feature The latest feature of Double-Take Software is the Double-Take Reporting Center which offers customers a logical way to manage their data protection strategies and "Take-5" by using five key reporting capabilities. These include the ability to: Centrally collect statistics about a Double-Take environment; Analyze the information; Report the results to others in the organization; Predict future protection effectiveness; and Decide what actions to take regarding a data protection strategy. Using the Double-Take Reporting Center feature, Double-Take customers can create and view the following reports: Performance Reports - View server and Double-Take replication performance by server or by group of servers over time Configuration Reports - List detailed configuration information about Windows Servers running Double-Take Utilization Reports - See statistics about file system, memory and network utilization on Double-Take-protected servers; Status Reports - Examine Double-Take protection status and qualify service level agreements (SLAs) using "Protected Time" reports; and Dashboard Reports - Aggregate multiple reports into a single contextual view for real-time analysis. The new Double-Take Reporting Center feature is available at no additional charge for all existing Double-Take Software customers covered by product maintenance. When performance matters, think Double-Take Software and allow your administrators to Take-5. http://www.wservernews.com/070528-Double-Take-Feature WServerNews Fave Links This Week's Links We Like. Tips, Hints And Fun Stuff The world's smallest twin-engine airplane has a wingspan of 16 feet, weighs 158 pounds (without pilot), runs on two 15 horsepower engines, cruises at 120 mph, has a range of 310 miles and can do aerobatics. I want one!!!! http://www.wservernews.com/070528-Small-Airplane Interested in Gadgets? This is the blog for you: http://www.wservernews.com/070528-Gadget-Blog Steampunk Keyboard Mod. A fully functional, quality 'retro' keyboard: http://www.wservernews.com/070528-Retro-Keyboard Personal Lightning Detector. The world's first convenient, dependable and easy-to-use personal lightning detector. But I hear Nokia is going to build this into some of their cell phones too: http://www.wservernews.com/070528-Lightning-Detector The Evilmadscientist site has a good one about hot-air high tech toasters: http://www.wservernews.com/070528-Evil-Mad-Scientist Is the back half of your car unnecessary weight? This guy cut his car in half, rerouted the gas tank, and see how -that- worked out: http://www.wservernews.com/070528-Car Got a sweet tooth and like cars? Then this is your video - Cake Car: http://www.wservernews.com/070528-Cake-Car The Mathematical Lives of Plants. Very interesting actually: http://www.wservernews.com/070528-Plants 30 pieces of trivia about Star Wars. (it's 30 years old now) http://www.wservernews.com/070528-Star-Wars-Trivia This DIY radio controlled lawnmower makes it more fun to mow that lawn: http://www.wservernews.com/070528-Lawnmower This croc got hungry enough to eat his vet. Really. http://www.wservernews.com/070528-Hungry-Croc How To Build A Mineral Oil Submerged Computer. In an aquarium, looks great! http://www.wservernews.com/070528-Mineral-Oil-PC Amazing Digital Surround Sound: "Virtual Haircut" (best with headphones): http://www.wservernews.com/070528-Virtual-Haircut THE SHOW OFF T-SHIRT is a t-shirt with a built in sound sensitive graphic equalizer panel. As the music beats, the shirts equalizer lights up to the beat of the music. http://www.wservernews.com/070528-Show-Off-Tshirt WServerNews - Product of the Week Gain 2 Stars And Save Ten Bucks Upgrade to 5-Star quality antimalware. And it's not us saying it, but the independent CNET reviewers at the Download.com site. Spy Sweeper and Spyware Doctor do not get more than 3 stars each these days. So now is the time to move to the best value antimalware, with the lowest cost yearly subscription: CounterSpy. The new V2 received rave reviews and protects you against all kinds of malware: trojans, rootkits, backdoors and more! Upgrade at a 50% discount, and get CounterSpy for just $9.95. Limited time offer, and now also valid for freeware: http://www.wservernews.com/070528-Competitive-Upgrade