General

A catch all category for posts that are neither specific to a Microsoft technology which has its own dedicated category or posts that aren’t based on a Microsoft technology, as rare as those are.

I’m an MCSE – What’s Next?

Richard Green on

I  had a booking today for what was to be the final exam in my path to becoming an MCSE – 70-298: Designing Security for a Windows Server 2003 Network.MCSE

I arrived at the testing centre to be told there was a problem with the link to Prometric and that the exam would need to be rescheduled. Whilst the centre organised a Prometric Incident ID for the fault they managed to get the link restored I was exuberant that I managed to sit the exam today.

I passed with a sore of 784 – Not the highest I’ve achieved on an exam but neither was it the lowest so I was quite happy with that fact.

The pass today does indeed mean that I have now met all of the criteria for an MCSE certification. These are the exams I’ve actually sat to make up my MCSE:

70-290: Managing and Maintaining a Windows Server 2003 Environment
70-291: Implementing, Managing and Maintaining a Windows Server 2003 Network Infrastructure
70-293: Planning and Maintaining a Windows Server 2003 Network Infrastructure
70-294: Planning, Implementing and Maintaining a Windows Server 2003 Active Directory Infrastructure

70-270: Installing, Configuring and Administering Windows XP Professional

70-298: Designing Security for a Windows Server 2003 Network

70-350: Implementing Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server 2004

My plan was originally to also complete 70-299 to allow me to obtain my MCSE: Security status, however this Server 2003 usage falling by the wayside and Server 2008 and Server 2008 R2 ever increasing in market presence, I’ve decided to drop 70-299 from my calendar and proceed ahead with the MCITP track for Server 2008.

I ordered the book for the 70-680: Configuring Windows 7 Technical Specialist exam on Thursday last week and Home Delivery Network should be bringing me that either later today or tomorrow.

In the mean time, I already have the ICND1 CCENT under my belt and I am sitting the second week of training and Global Knowledge in late May to allow me to plough ahead and sit my ICND2 to give me my CCNA certification.

My aim is to complete the ICND2 and the CCNA track by mid-June so that I can move to start the Windows 7 training and hopefully the Windows 7 exam by around July or August time. I slacked in 2009 on my personal training and development and I didn’t really get a lot of it done, however with 2010 being the year Microsoft seem to have a real product development rocket up their bottom, I’m going to try and make 2010 the year I put the rocket up myself.

Response to My Digital Economy Bill Email

Richard Green on

At the time of the Digital Economy Bill being passed, I emailed my local MP Maria Miller who is now the Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for Basingstoke.

I emailed her for two reasons. One was to express my disapproval that she failed to attend parliament on that day to vote for or against the bill – Although she did vote strongly against revealing MP’s expenses information earlier in the year. Secondly because I wanted to voice my concerns over the bill.

Here is her response to me today which ironically got flagged as spam by my mail server:

Dear Mr Green,

Thank you for your recent correspondence concerning the Digital Economy Bill. I share your concern about the way this piece of legislation has been handled by the Government. Since the Dissolution of Parliament, there are no longer any MPs, but I can continue with casework/correspondence.

The Bill contained important provisions regarding the regulatory environment for the digital and creative industries. It is completely unacceptable that the Government failed to allocate the sufficient time in the House of Commons for proper legislative scrutiny. It is wrong to push through these issues and because of this I did not support the Bill and I abstained from the vote.

The reason that I did not vote against the Bill is that a number of the measures within it have great merit – particularly tackling online copyright infringement. This is an extremely serious issue that costs the creative industries hundreds of millions of pounds each year. I want to make sure that Britain has the most favourable intellectual property framework in the world for innovators, digital content creators and high tech businesses.

Also, the measures in the Bill designed to tackle illegal peer to peer file sharing set up a proportionate regime that would, only following public consultation, repeated warnings and due process, lead to people having their internet connection temporarily suspended. It will not, as many have suggested, lead to people being disconnected without an appeal. Even if people are disconnected they will be able to sign up to another ISP immediately without penalty.

However, the Government should not push through such significant issues without proper debate – the handling of this Bill means that the debate on copyright is not over and my Party will seek to revisit options for a balanced solution as part of a broader update of copyright following the General Election.

Once again, thank you for taking the time to contact me.

With best wishes,

Maria Miller, Parliamentary Candidate

(Sent on her behalf by Lynn Fox, Secretary)

 

I’m not going to bother voicing my opinion to this email response because I’ve actually already made my opinions quite clear through over postings etc, however I read this article on TorrentFreak yesterday regarding a report produced in the US Government Accountability Office which is available from http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-423.

The report in summary states that “Lack of data hinders efforts to quantify impacts of counterfeiting and piracy,” however it then goes on to point out the following that “For instance, companies may experience increased revenues due to the sales of merchandise that are based on movie characters whose popularity is enhanced by sales of pirated movies.”

So is the Digital Economy Bill really going to help anything and is it in actual fact going to further hurt the economy because people procuring these downloads now aren’t going to buy the associated merchandise?

The Passing of the Digital Economy Bill

Richard Green on

Unless you live an anti-technological cave and don’t listen to the news, you will know that as has been feared amongst many people for a while now, the government have rushed through the Digital Economy Bill without a proper democratic review and have ignored the pleas of ISP’s such as TalkTalk, large numbers of the voting public along with IT experts advice all to please music industry.

The good news is none. The bad news is that as of now, copyright agencies can demand information regarding the subscriber of an internet connection to begin legal proceedings over alleged copyright infringements without gathering a shred of concrete evidence.

Evidence used in Peer-to-Peer file transfer cases has been and will continue to be disputed and has time and time again been proven to be incorrect and not uniquely identifying the to accused, however this aside the government still feel that these copyright agencies have it right. It’s like sentencing someone to murder without finding a murder weapon or having any evidence linking them to the crime. All the Digital Economy Bill will do it drive the users of Peer-to-Peer applications deeper underground and into using VPN and other encryption technologies.

The result of the Digital Economy Bill could even mean that people who provide public Wi-Fi hotspots such as those provided by McDonalds, BT OpenZone or the likes would be held responsible if their network was used for illegal Peer-to-Peer transfers and law now makes to distinction between being the person doing the downloading and being the person providing the means which is disgraceful.

What I personally find more disgraceful however is that my MP in Basingstoke didn’t even bother to turn up to parliament and cast a vote. The site ‘They Work for the BPI’ at http://www.theyworkforthebpi.com/ shows a list of all MP’s who voted and how they voted. The MP for Basingstoke, Maria Miller of the Conservatives didn’t attend the vote, nor did Julian Lewis, the MP for Totton where I am originally from.

An online comic website, DotGif has made a vey funny strip comic about the passing of the bill. Although funny, it’s sadly true at the same time to show how the music industries have managed to poison our democratic system. You can see the original at http://www.dotgif-comic.com/04/the-cost-of-the-bill/:

2010-04-09-mandelson[1]

I think that in the case of the Digital Economy Bill the British democratic system has failed its people and the nation that it is designed to serve and I think that the MP’s who voted in favour of the bill should be utterly ashamed of themselves for allowing this bill through to drive money deeper into the pockets of the music industries who have failed to keep up with consumer demands and changing media trends and for ruining the potential technological growth of Peer-to-Peer based services in Britain.

Ofcom Versus BSkyB: The Battle for British Media and Services

Richard Green on

Over the course of the weekend, I starting reading an article on the BBC News site which I sent to myself to read later as it was very interesting: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/2010/03/ofcom_v_sky_the_epic_business.html

The article surrounds the topic of Sky (BSkyB) and their power over the British broadcasting and multimedia markets and the investigation into their tactics and control by Ofcom.

The article touches subjects I have blogged about previously and also a topic I am very passionate about. Hit the next link to see all of my posts in the media category and you will start to see the picture I am painting (http://richardjgreen.net/index.php/topics/media/).

Sky provide a lot of content but they also block and inhibit the delivery of new content. With Sky in the way, how are companies like Love Film or even the USA’s very own Netflix going to get to market here?

Where are content on-demand and internet based video streaming services like the US enjoy for us Brits? How are products like Media Center in Windows XP, Vista and 7 ever going to get a good reception when the biggest player in the media industry doesn’t allow for their product to work using Media Center because they breech a European ruling regarding open standards for television service providers? Only Freeview and Freesat are available via Media Center and the channel line-up leaves something to be desired. With beautiful products like HD HomeRun from Silicon Dust available we are severely missing out.

I really look forward to the report from Ofcom, supposedly to be released this week coming, however I wonder if it will throw as many punches as are really necessary? The author Robert Peston says,

So for BSkyB, Ofcom’s tanks are not on the lawn, but are actually bulldozing through the studios.

Unfortunately, I doubt it will get to this. Politicians are too scared to tackle the media giant in Rupert Murdoch’s pocket because of the potential political backlash he could cause, however what is most concerning are David Cameron’s comments regarding the scaling back of Ofcom and their powers.

…with a Conservative Government, Ofcom as we know it will cease to exist. Its remit will be restricted to its narrow technical and enforcement roles. It will no longer play a role in making policy.

Ofcom are critical to ensuring the growth and success of the British media markets, and couple this with the plans from the Tory’s to release figures on BBC earnings and force the BBC to scale down some of the BBC products and offerings and you have to wonder if the Tory’s actually want us to progress with the rest of the world. All they need is Mandy to join their ranks and were destined for doom. I don’t have the time to look, but I’m sure a review of a list of the Tory sponsors would quickly reveal cash injection from Mr Murdoch. Coincidence? Perhaps not.

Did Console Kill the Arcade Star

Richard Green on

I’ve just returned home from a weekend away in our now regular holiday haunt of Rockley Park, and something twigged a techno-nerve whilst we were away and that is the title of this post: Did Console Kill the Arcade Star?

I’m from Southampton, and in the 1990’s at home the craze was Segaworld which was I must say a pretty awesome arcade with all the games of the day available, however in this 21st century, modern, interconnected, high definition world how can the arcades compete?

In yester-year, I was a massive fan of Sega Rally and Time Crisis 2, however I step into an arcade today and the games are exactly the same.

I’m an avid fan of gaming at home. I own a Wii, PlayStation 3 and my PC to scratch the World of Warcraft itch, however I can definatly see a place in the gaming eco-system for arcades or at least I would if they tried to be competitive. The games available today at viewed on our 40” LCD television, in 5.1 surround sound or 7.1 if your rich in glorious 1080p resolutions. Mix this with a few gamers perks that some people invest in, like a gaming chair or even a decent set of Logitech driving controls (aka steering wheel, pedals and a gear shifter) and you have a fully immersive gaming experience which not only gives you the same feel as the arcade but a significantly improved visual and audible experience.

Compare the graphics in Forza 3 from the Xbox 360 or Gran Turismo 5 Prologue on the PS3 to that of Ford Rally or Sega Rally and well….you can’t even compare them and that’s excluding the fact that even the most cared for arcade has broken things – Badly forcing steering wheels or flappy flappy paddles on a paddle-shift gearbox.

Then take all of this, and add the interactivity of the Wii, Project Natal for the Xbox 360 and whatever Sony deem their motion sensing offering to be and you add another dimension to the leaps ahead that console gaming has taken. Originally the arcades had guns for the shooters, but it didn’t even take long for home gamers to get these add-ons at their disposal, and now you can get fully fledged imitation weapons for playing Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 or gun holsters for your Wii remote.

All in all, arcades have had a rough time since the dawn of the next-gen consoles, however I do wonder if one day the attention of the developers and the studios will come full circle upon the arcades and bring them up to date again? In a way I hope so – I just hope they don’t expect they can continue to charge £1 or £1.50 per play for them when I can buy a fully licensed version of the game with unlimited credits for £35 for home use in my own personal arcade.

I would love to one day see some interactive services where arcade games can link to Xbox Live gamer tags and share games in common with the home systems such as Forza. Just imagine being able to play Forza 3 or GT 5 in the arcade, using cars from your own garage which have been collected from the systems internet connection or Wi-Fi and then once the race is over you can upload the times and race stats to your profile and share them on Facebook or Twitter with your friends?

Using SDM with GNS3 and Dynamips in Windows 7

Richard Green on

I am currently experimenting with the GNS3 and Dynamips network emulation platform to help me get to grips with some of the Cisco IOS commands for my CCNA, and I ran into a problem yesterday.

Parts of the ICND1 exam require knowledge of the Cisco SDM GUI application, however as it stands you cannot access the routers and switches within your GNS3 environment.

A link on the GNS3 forum takes you to a video which someone has produced providing instructions on how to access and use SDM for your virtual routers, however instructions are for Windows XP and cannot be followed for Windows 7.

If you are using GNS3 and Dynamips then follow these steps to get SDM working.

Read more…

The Anatomy of UPnP Device Discovery

Richard Green on

Since my Cisco ICND1 training last week, I’ve become somewhat obsessed. I’ve previously been looking at NETGEAR routers to replace my current FVG318 as I am hitting the concurrent connection limit on it almost daily. Due to now seeing a little piece of Cisco, I figured why not look at getting a Cisco router so that the router will be more reliable and also will help give me some on the job training.

Everything was looking good until I thought about UPnP. I use UPnP quite heavily at home: Not for the port forwarding but for the internal advertisement of network services (namely media streaming to the PlayStation 3).

I discovered a few articles which outlined that Cisco doesn’t support UPnP on any of its devices and that it looks like there is no plan to add support for it either which is a bad thing if you are an SME looking for easy to deploy networking products but good from a security standpoint I suppose.

To test, on the FVG318, I disabled UPnP and had Nicky test the media streaming, however it didn’t work so today I took it upon myself to test this to ensure I can actually achieve full functionality using a Cisco 2651XM.

Read more…

Updating and Invigorating

Richard Green on

Over the last 24 hours, I’ve made some notable changes to the blog to try and improve it’s looks and usability:

  • Removed some of the information shown about the post area on both the home screen and the single post view. This is to try and tidy up and streamline the post reading area. The information I’ve removed is the categories and post author.
  • Relocated the comments button from the top of each post to the bottom.
  • Increased the spacing between the bottom of one post and the top of the next one.

All posts and comments written by me on the blog will now report (past and future) as richardjgreen instead of the old daddygreen. This is an effort to consolidate my social network efforts into one entity. I’ve also updated my profile picture on all of my social outlets to something a bid more modern looking.

From this, I have now installed a new WordPress plug-in called TweetMeMe which shows a green tweet button on each post allowing you to retweet anything I blog with super ease and this plug-in is very common on other tech blogs so it’s well known and trusted.

I’ve also updated the blog version to the latest version of WordPress code as well as increasing the number of my tweets shown from four to five.

If anyone spots any news bugs or issues or has a any great ideas and visual elements I could add or improve on the site then I’m all ears.

Fix Up Look Sharp

Richard Green on

My brother posted on his Tumblr blog yesterday about getting credibility for his work which spurred me to take a look at my own neglected blog.

As a result, I’ve changed a few things today, and they are really minor changes but every little helps:

  • Increased the number of Twitter tweets displayed from three to four.
  • Made a change to the CSS bullet item so that tweets no longer display this – Previously the bullet was displayed, however it was behind the text due to the reduced padding on the left of the Twitter type.
  • Corrected the XAML for the Silverlight headings on the sidebar so that they have the correct background and foreground colours.
  • Updated the copyright notice at the bottom of the site to include 2010.
  • Updated a lot of the plugins used on the site to the latest versions.

I’m now looking to upgrade WordPress itself from the old version I am currently on to the latest version to stay with the times, however I will need to test this first to make sure it doesn’t break my custom theme or anything of the sort.

I’m also trying to look for a plugin which modifies the way my images are shown.

I already have a JavaScript / AJAX plugin which uses the Lightbox controls for displaying the larger images which works nicely, however a lot of the images I post a screenshots and are shown as inline thumbnails which I think would serve quite well in a gallery type display which is often the way a site I read called Engadget post their pictures. This would clean up the appearance of the type itself and leave the images until later. This is still a thought in progress though so nothing may come of it.

The biggest problem for me is compatibility. WordPress features a default gallery object which I tested this morning and it looks and performs how I would like it to and it interacts with the Lightbox plugin too, however Windows Live Writer which is my blogging software of choice doesn’t seem to support this embedded photo gallery, so unless I can find a way around that, it’s not a viable option.

Nextgenhacker101 Is the Best

Richard Green on

I got sent a link to a Microsoft Blog yesterday by a friend who had posted a link to a funny YouTube video. The blog posting is at http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2010/01/29/nextgenhacker101-owes-me-a-new-monitor.aspx but I’ll also just link directly to the video below:

This script kiddie (if we can call him that) is so ‘leet that he’s managed to discover a way to monitor who is viewing Google or any other website at a given moment in time: Unless that is, you have an internet connection faster than him else all he see’s is * and Request Timed Out.

Thank you for making my Monday afternoon Nextgenhacker101. For more classics you can also check his Channel on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/user/NextGenHacker101