Kauai County gets the Bizarro Award

Brian Baptiste, Mayor of Kauai wants to ban gated communities. He has written a measure he plans to send to the county council for approval that bans gates to private roads serving 5 or more homes. Guard stations and other means of access restriction would be prohibited under this measure. "Communities should be welcoming and accessible to everyone," he said in the Sunday, March 27 issue of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. "I envision our island with integrated communities where people of various socio-economic levels and cultures can live together without gates or barriers that hinder access."

How did this guy ever get elected?!!

Limiting simultaneous logins to Active Directory

For a number of years, Microsoft engineers have told me that "there is too much overhead" tracking simultaenous logons. However, Microsoft has just released to the web an unsupported tool called http://download.microsoft.com/download/f/d/0/fd05def7-68a1-4f71-8546-25c359cc0842/limitlogin.exe

More information on this little jewel can be found at:
http://blogs.msdn.com/jhoward/archive/2005/03/14/395135.aspx

http://www.thincomputing.net/newsitem296.html

Exchange Domain Servers and Exchange Enterprise Servers groups

If you have installed Exchange 2000 or 2003, then you have probably noticed that the SETUP /DOMAINPREP process creates two groups in the CN=Users container in each domain. These groups are the domain local group Exchange Enterprise Servers and the global group Exchange Domain Servers.

Do not delete these groups and do not move them out of the CN=Users container.

I have dispensed this advice over and over again, but still I come across problems caused by an over-zealous administrator. Moving these groups will produce errors and will cause the System Attendant to either fail or not restart. The solution is to simply move the groups back in to the Users container. See KB article 260914 "Domainprep utility does not work if Exchange Enterprise Servers group and Exchange Domain Servers group moved to a new container" for more information.

I just saw this again today, so this seemed like timely advice.

Those promised statistics....

A Gartner Group study of 300 CIOs found that 90% of them said the best investment they made for their company was e-mail.

Another study (I can't find the source now) estimates that 45% of all traffic on the Internet is spam. Ha! I'm betting that it is more like 85% considering I get between 100 and 200 junk messages per day.

Statistics, analysts, and studies (oh objectivity, we hardly knew ye!)

I love statistics. Well, at least talking about them, but not calculating them. I had almost enough statistics in college to qualify for a minor in statistics. Enough to know I never wanted to calculate them for a living. One of my favorite professors had a book called "How To Lie With Statistics" that he liked to use to point out how important it was that your underlying assumptions were both solid and stated up front. Otherwise, all you had were "lies, damn lies, and statistics."

I find bosses and decision makers disturbingly mesmerized by statistics of usage, sales, and analyst quotes. Any good techie knows that what the various industry analysts have to say about products, technology companies, and how people use those company's products is often severely tilted.

Nonetheless, non-technical decision makers eat them up and make multi-million dollar decisions based on something akin to slanted gossip.

Anyway, with that being said, you will find me posting some stuff from time to time from Gartner, Radicati, and others related to messaging and Active Directory. I include Radicati because I met Sara Radicati years and years ago and have always been impressed with her.

What brought all this up? Well, analysts regularly get trashed on some of the mailing lists I am on. And, in my Exchange 2003 24seven book, I regularly used messaging-related statistics to make a point.

Purging the Junk E-mail folder in Exchange 2003

If you are using the Outlook 2003 Junk E-mail feature or the Exchange 2003 Intelligent Message Filter (IMF), you may have noticed the spam piling up in user's Junk E-mail folders. I'm kind of weird about this folder; I purge it mine every day. Well mostly because if the mail piles up, it synchronizes to my Motorola MPx200 SmartPhone and drives me nuts. But, on to the big picture, you can't expect your user community to purge this folder.

The Exchange 2003 Mailbox Manager will allow you to purge this folder just like you can the standard folders. What you need to do is click the Add button on the Mailbox Manager Recipient Policy.



I like to purge anything older than 7 days in both the Deleted Items and the Junk E-mail folders. However, notify your user community that you are putting this policy in place. I have heard tales of many users using their Deleted Items folder as a CYA folder or an alternate filing system. I'll bet they use their trash can as a filing cabinet, too.

Make sure you clear the checkboxes for the default folders if you don't want to delete anything in those folders. Otherwise, your user community may be burning you in effigy.

Exchange 2003 24Seven - Errata

On page 574, I reference an out-of-date KB article (it really applies mostly to Exchange 2003). This section refers to the ResolveP2 functionality and Resolving Inbound SMTP Addresses. For the most up-to-date information about this feature, see KB 828770: Resolve Anonymous Senders Functionality in Microsoft Exchange 2003.

The Definitive Guide to Securing Windows In the Enterprise by Don Jones (eBOOK available)

Don Jones is in the process of writing a new eBOOK called The Definitive Guide to Securing Windows In the Enterprise. Chapter 1 is now available fo download at ScriptLogic's web site. Chapter 1 includes often forgotten issues of Windows security, securing scripts, RPCs in an enterprise environment, and some of the downsides to scripting.

Dell UltraSharp 2405FPW 24-inch, wide screen, flat panel LCD now shipping - $1,043.13

Dell Software & Peripherals It is finally ready to order and ship! I gotta get me some of this!!!! The Dell UltraSharp 2405FPW 24-inch Wide Aspect Flat Panel LCD Monitor with Height Adjustable Stand is now orderable. 15-pin D-sub / DVI-D / S-video / Composite / Component / 4 x USB 2.0. 16.7 Million colors. Clear, sharp images at a maximum resolution of up to 1920x1200 pixels. 22" x 9" x 22" to 25" / 22.1 lbs. Wide aspect panel improves productivity with less scrolling and toggling. Supports advanced features like PIP (Picture in Picture) and PBP (Picture By Picture). 4 USB 2.0 ports — two located on the side of the display for easy attachment/detachment of peripherals. 9-in-1 Flash card reader on side of the display. I'm on the hunt now for a coupon code for Dell peripherals and electronics.