SoCal IT Pro / OCNTUG
Newsletter Volume 2
Number 6
Southern California IT Professional
Association June 1, 2004
Welcome Members, Visitors and
Friends!
Inside this
Issue:
OCNTUG
Changes Its Name!
Windows
& .NET Magazine Changes Its Name
Service
Pack Releases
Meeting
Announcement: June 10, 2004
Previous
Meeting...
Random
Access Department: Baysian and Heuristic Techniques
Opinions
and Commentary Department
Feedback
From Our Readers
Final
Notes…
Email
the Editor
And Now, The News...
OCNTUG Changes Its Name!
As of June 1, 2004, we are
officially, The Southern California Information Technology Professional
Association! Our new website does exist, at http://www.socalitpro.org/, although it is
still under construction. Therefore you should still use http://www.SoCalITPro.org/ until the new site is
completed. Under our new organization, there will be certain membership benefits
that you will, no doubt, want to take advantage of, such as email accounts
@socalitpro.org, and reduced-rate subscriptions to Windows & .NET Magazine!
Top
Windows & .NET Magazine Changes Its Name!
As of
June, 2004, Windows & .NET Magazine is officially changing its name
to The IT Professional Magazine (so, actually, if you take the reduced
rate subscription package, you'll be getting the mag under a new name, but then,
what's in a name?). Now you may ask: What's in a name? (Didn't someone just ask
that?) Well, if you'll notice, the words "IT Professional" appear in the
magazine's name, in our organization name, in our website name, and in the names
of many of our sister organizations! IT should link us in our customer's minds
to such concepts as a high degree of professionalism, worldwide standardization,
and of course, to the Microsoft product line. A cool marketing ploy for all of
us, wouldn't you say? (I would say that. Then again, someone else might just
say, "Tag! You're IT!")
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The New Service Pack Releases
At the Longhorn Feedback
Session, the question of service packs was discussed. Everyone has been waiting
with bated breath for the release of service packs for both Windows XP and
Windows Server 2003. It was explained that the Microsoft Service Pack
Development Team can only work on a single service pack at a time. The XP
Service Pack 2 is due to be released soon, while the Server 2K3 Service Pack 1
is expected to be released sometime during the 4th Quarter of this year. Be
patient, kiddies.
Top
Meeting Announcement: Thursday, June 10, 2004
Article by Dick Porter,
Membership Chairman
Topic - Windows Network Infrastructure
June's presentation is
brought to us through Windows & .NET Magazine and Culminis. This
presentation is all content, no product promotion.
Dan Holme delivers a
broad perspective and a detailed, expert knowledge of Microsoft technology
platforms and how they are being implemented by enterprises large and small. A
graduate of Yale University and Thunderbird, the American Graduate School of
International Management, Dan has spent 10 years providing productivity-focused
solutions training to tens of thousands of IT professionals from the most
prestigious organizations and corporations around the world. Intelliem
specializes in boosting the productivity of IT professionals and end users by
creating advanced, customized solutions that integrate clients' specific design
and configuration into productivity-focused training and knowledge management
services (info@intelliem.com). As Intelliem’s lead technical guru, Dan has
developed successful productivity programs for end users that have produced
significant ROI for clients with tens of thousands of users around the world. He
has also recently supported the design and implementation of Active Directory
and Windows technologies at enterprises including Raytheon, General Electric,
Los Alamos, ABN AMRO and Johnson & Johnson. Dan’s works can be found on the
shelves, published by Microsoft Press, Que and Windows & NET Magazine. Dan
escapes the madness of technology on his snowboard, or with his backpack to
remote corners of the world.
Door prizes and software.
As always
please RSVP on the http://www.SoCalITPro.org/
website. The link is on the lower left hand side of the home page.
Top
At the Previous Meeting...
Article by Dick Porter, Membership
Chairman
May's presentations were by Microsoft Longhorn Developers
with Ron Gandiza of Culminis, Sybari on Advanced Spam Management, and Commtouch
on Advanced Spam Defense.
Microsoft presented Longhorn (the next version
of Windows) Developers live from Redmond facilitated by Ron Gandiza of Culminis.
Culminis is an organization, chartered with supporting the successful growth,
development, technical education, community service, and influence of IT
Professional user groups and associations interested in Microsoft IT products
and solutions. OCNTUG is a charter member of this organization.
Sybari
presented Advanced Spam Manager. Network Administrators require powerful and
automated solutions to significantly reduce spam and malicious content and their
resulting impact on an organization’s network. The Sybari Advanced Spam Manager
is an enterprise class, high-performance, anti-spam, and content-filtering
component designed specifically to assist administrators in reducing the impact
of spam messages and unsolicited mail traffic on their networks. Sybari
integrates best-of-breed third-party spam engine technology to improve the
accuracy of spam detection while reducing false positives and administrator
intensive work. Designed as a stand alone solution or for use with Sybari’s
Antigen, the Sybari Spam Manager delivers sophisticated message scanning for
Microsoft Exchange and SMTP Gateway servers. file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/AGrossman/Local%20Settings/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/OLK2F/www.sybari.com
Commtouch
presented Advanced Spam Defense. Organizations require robust, scalable
solutions to reduce, manage, and eliminate spam, unsolicited mail, and malicious
content from plaguing their networks and servers. With Sybari ASD, organizations
have the ability to deploy a comprehensive, feature-rich, stand-alone, anti-spam
solution which can be tailored to seamlessly support its needs and
infrastructure. Sybari ASD offers all inclusive spam detection via two
pioneering technologies, the Sybari ASD Spam Detection Service Center and the
stand-alone Sybari ASD Enterprise Gateway Module. Together these two
technologies make it possible for spam to be detected using effective techniques
that are independent of the content of messages. file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/AGrossman/Local%20Settings/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/OLK2F/www.commtouch.com
Vouchers for Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition were given
to all of the 200+ attendees, courtesy of Microsoft. Many, many door prizes were
distributed, including a portable USB Drive and wireless network cards courtesy
of Sybari. Plus there was lots of software, books, subscriptions to Technet Plus
and other prizes, courtesy of Culminis.
Top
Random Access Department: Baysian and Heuristic Techniques for Attacking the
Spam Problem
Nobody likes to show their ignorance. Especially me. So, when
I'm in over my head, I use the old maxim: 'Tis better to keep one's mouth closed
and be thought a fool, than to open it, and remove all doubt. The majority of my
students were perfect examples of this maxim, often fearing to ask even a
single, simple question. (Well, I did get questions like, "Can I go to the
bathroom." You can, but not in my classroom. You may leave the
room. Or, "You mean we have homework? Tonight? But..." Silly me! You don't
really neeeed homework! You might burst your gray matter! Or you might
accidently learn something!)
In the Sybari and Commtouch presentations of
spam identification and control, some 50 ˘ words (...that's what my Mom used to
call them, but I suppose they would be $5 words now, due to inflation...) were
bandied about, "heuristic" and "Baysian." My powerful mind quickly deduced that
they must somehow refer to statistical or algorithmic analytical techniques,
because I had at least some idea of what tasks might be involved in sorting out
potentially useless and offensive crud. I knew that an "heuristic" (derived from
the Greek work, "Eureka." meaning, "I have found it!" (Archemedes, remember from
physics?)) was basically a generalized test or "Rule of Thumb," which, in the
case of spam, could be used to select out specific words or phrases. Most
current anti-spam software uses this technique, even though it completely misses
many terms, and must be constantly updated.
On the other paw, er, hand,
the word "Baysian" (which correlated in my steel seive memory with the
biological term "Batesian Mimicry"--which made no sense at all!) implied to the
statistician in me (I was once a Statistician in the Air Farce (er, Force. I
calculated things like Mean Time Between Failures for aircraft tires, radar
tubes, and average tail numbers.)) that it might just be some form of
statistical method. When I took statistics, back in the Paleozoic Era, the
Baysian Theorem wasn't even mentioned. The course was all about frequency
distributions and t-tests, and f-tests, with a hint of ANOVA and MANOVA thrown
in for flavor, but mostly simple(?) univariate statistics. I found out by
checking out the TheFreeDictionary, http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/,
that old geezer statisticians like me are notoriously labeled "frequentists,"
because of our apparent passion for counting the frequency of events, and
analyzing frequency distributions.
According to the encyclopedia entry in
TheFreeDictionary (from which the following exerpts are freely plagiarized):
"Bayes' theorem is a result in probability theory, which
states the conditional probability of a variable A given B
in terms of the conditional probability of variable B given
A and the marginal probability of A alone. As a mathematical
theorem, Bayes' theorem is valid in all interpretations of probability.
However, there is disagreement as to what kinds of variables can be
substituted for A and B in the theorem..."
This boils
down to:
P(A|B) = \\frac{P(B | A) P(A)}{P(B)}
Furthermore, the
article states:
"The Bayesian interpretation of probability allows
probabilities assigned to random events, but also allows the assignment of
probabilities to any other kind of statement. Whereas a frequentist and a
Bayesian might both assign probability 1/2 to the event of getting a head when
a coin is tossed, a Bayesian might assign probability 1/2 to personal belief
in the proposition that there was life on Mars a billion years ago, without
intending to assert anything about any relative frequency."
Now,
precisely how this technique would apply to the problem of dissecting email for
evidence of spam is rather beyond the scope of my particular field of interest
at the moment (I haven't done any statistical work since the seventies, so I've
forgotten most of it), and because I have no interest in writing code for such
software (I quit programming at about that same time). In fact, Sybari refused
to explain the details of how it works, because they don't want heavy
competition, something we all understand. However, if you are sufficiently
intrigued, and wish to learn more, visit TheFreeDictionary.com. (Why should I
insert a second link to the same place, here. The link is already above, and I'm
just too lazy to do all that extra typing, because I'd have to code all that
html for a href=:...)
Top
Opinions and Commentary Department
(Gripes-R-Us Dept.)
About Last
Month's Longhorn Feedback Session
At the Longhorn feedback session, some
very interesting questions were brought up. One was the problem of reboots.
Microsoft has promised to reduce the number of reboots required when making
changes to the operating system, adding or removing hardware and software, and
with Windows 2000, and Server 2003, they have, in fact, been able to make some
serious reductions in the number of reboots required. However, I still hear a
Linux admin discussing how he changed the Linux kernal on the fly, without any
downtime (overheard in a discussion at another table at a local fast food
restaurant last week)! (...and I'm not certain whether they were joking around
or not...) The other admin told him that she hadn't rebooted a linux server
since it was installed three years ago. In my certification courses, I was told
that part of the problem lies in making changes to the registry, which requires
a reboot, because the relevant portions of the registry are loaded into memory
at boot up.
Now, please understand, I'm not Microsoft-bashing, here, and
I haven't done any programming, except for a few .bat files and some SQL in
school, for over twenty years...so I'm sure I don't know what I'm talking about.
But I have observed that other operating systems do quite well for themselves
without a registry. Also, when I was programming, and yes, it was linear COBOL
and FORTRAN, rather than object-oriented coding, one maxim was to eliminate that
which impeded the efficiency of the code. When other OSs need configuration
files, they are either binary or plain ASCII text files. (My vote is for the
text files. They are easily commented, and can be made completely unambiguous
for either the student, or the long-time pro so bogged down in the task, that he
suddenly doesn't remember which protocol to add, or which line should be
commented out.) (And yes, I know that the object of Microsoft's method is to
make the code impossible for competitors to reverse-engineer...which is just
good business practice.)
We all know that code in memory can easily be
overwritten without causing the operating system to hemmorhage...in both DOS and
Windows it is possible to load and unload device drivers at will, and Windows
does it constantly, depending upon the task to be done at the time. It should be
possible to put the OS in a receptive or expectant state for a few nanoseconds,
and load new code, even a kernal driver, without disturbing other processes. The
load could be incremental, over a few seconds, making necessary modifications to
modules with dependencies, as each incremental phase is executed. It should,
hypothetically, be possible to eliminate reboots altogether, except in the case
of a system crash.
Another problem was brought home to me, as Tom Mynar
and I walked to the parking lot after the meeting. Tom said that all he did was
add a little memory to a server, swap out an unnecessary CD-burner for a plain
CD-ROM drive, and add a larger hard disk, and the OS told him he had only three
(3) days to re-activate the operating system, or it would shut down. Perhaps it
suddenly thought it was loaded onto another machine? Tom said it took twenty
minutes on the phone with Microsoft to re-activate the server.
Well what if
the Senior Admin of a large corporation upgrades his five-hundred or more
servers all at once? Let's see, 500 servers x 20 minutes each = 10,000 minutes /
1440 minutes per day = 6.944 twenty-four hour days to complete the reactivation
task, or, given a single 8 hour shift per day comes to 23.833 days before all
servers are in compliance. That's 166.67 manhours! On the phone! Suppose it's
the US Government with 50,000 or more servers across the country? We're gonna
pay taxes for them to sit on the phone with Microsoft for 1,666,700 hours?
Re-Activating operating systems? Hey, Uncle Bill! Please come up with a better
way! I don't want my income tax refund delayed for 190.132 years because the IRS
is waiting on the phone to reactivate their servers! (Is that why my refund was
late this year? I thought electronic filing would be faster!)--Editor
Top
Reader Feedback
Concerning the Editor's opinions in last month's Random
Access section, Brad Fischl, of QuickStart Intelligence, Inc., writes:
Hi Robert,
I just read your comments on the W2K03 Server
Loadfest. There were a couple things you did not mention that may lead the
readers to incorrect conclusions.
A. QuickStart did not create the
course content or curriculum and had no input into the final course
what-so-ever.
B. QuickStart did not select the number 50 for the size
of the class. (In fact we prefer to keep our classes at 12-16 students
depending on the topic.) So when you mention that the Instructor was not
available to help because he was busy with 3 other students you also need to
mention that the class size was 2-3 times larger than one that QuickStart
would normally do. Not to mention the fact that some folks has no business
being in that class in the first place... (I.E. "How do you set up a loop back
address?")
C. Too much use of the terms "they" and "them" instead of
Microsoft makes the Instructor and QuickStart look like the brunt of the
complaining instead of the real source, our benefactor...
I have always
said that when someone gets something for free they do not appreciate it
and/or value it nearly as much as when they have to invest their own money
(however little that may be). I am hesitant about trying to schedule any more
W2K03 Server Loadfests after this feedback without severely cutting the class
size, making students show prerequisite knowledge, and perhaps charging a
nominal fee.
But this is just my opinion and does not necessarily
reflect the opinions of SCITPA members or the BOD.
:-)
Brad
My deepest apologies to Brad and QuickStart! I did not mean to
imply any fault with QuickStart. My beef is entirely directed at Microsoft. From
my first encounter with the MOC, I noticed it seriously lacking in organization,
which is probably why the instructors at SEA later settled on using the training
texts from Microsoft Press, which provide more information and in greater
detail. However, I continue to consider that there are even better texts
available from other authors, that do a much better job of explaining matters,
and include much better, clearer illustrations than any of the Microsoft
materials. If you really need to compare texts before you buy one, I heartily
recommend checking out Safari, at http://search.safaribooksonline.com/.--Editor
Top
Final Notes…
> Make certain that if you attended the May
meeting, that if you have not already done so, you go to file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/AGrossman/Local%20Settings/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/OLK2F/www.windowsserverfeedback.com/culminis,
and complete the survey, copying the number you receive onto your voucher, so
that you may pick up your free copy of Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition at
the June meeting!
> If anyone has any ideas for specific
vendors, from whom they would like to have presentations at the August through
November meetings, or whom they would like to have at the Nogginfest in
December, please notify Brad Fischl. It would be preferable if you have the
contact information for someone within that company. Thank you for your
suggestions.
> A new organization of developers is starting up,
and has its next meeting on May 19th. For those who are interested, the URL is:
http://www.socal.netarchitecture.org/
>
Job Postings are now available on the OCNTUG website. Postings are open to
employers and consultants looking to hire new employees directly, not to
headhunters (agents or agencies).
> If you any ideas for an
article that you might like to write for this Newsletter, or about any
third-party software that you would like to share with our members, please
submit your article to the Editor, contact information below.
See you at
the meeting on Thursday, June 10, 2004, enjoy!
Robert Holtzman, Editor
rholtzman@netzero.net
Top
SoCal
IT Pro/OCNTUG
Newsletter
Volume 2 No. 6
06/01/04
EOF