Polycom PVX

We were looking into solutions to connect mobile clients into our H.323 video conference suite and as we use Polycom VSX8000 and VSX7000S units for our rooms the following seems a great fit;

The Polycom PVX works in conjunction with your PC and USB camera to provide the highest quality video and audio experience in the industry. Add the Polycom PVX to your PC and within minutes you’ll be talking, via video, to customers and colleagues around the world. The Polycom PVX solution is an easy way to communicate face-to-face from your office, from your home or on the road.

Utilizing the industry’s highest quality audio/video algorithms, Polycom PVX is the only PC application capable of delivering true VGA resolution, secure communications, and People+Content™. PVX can be purchased with a high resolution USB web camera for optimal video quality at the desktop, thereby eliminating the need for a separate video camera and reducing clutter in your workspace. And when used in conjunction with your laptop and USB webcam, Polycom PVX provides the ultimate in portability. [1]

Great response from our vendor, roughly 3 hours from ordering online until delivery. Woot!

Then the pain You need to register your serial number with Polycom to get an activation code. Ok, some pain but do-able. You need to create an account, well that’s pretty normal – What’s this, the website can’t be used via Firefox … or IE7 … code collapse … oh crap!

[01-May-2007] Dig out an old eMac with an IE v5.2 install and I can get an account created which is supposed to email me the password for the account — 10hours later and I’m still waiting! (Note to Polycom: fix your @&%$#’n web server! This isn’t the early 1990′s and customers expect that your sites are supposed to work!)

[02-May-2007] After another password reset I’m finally able to get the thing enabled.

The good news is that even without the activation PVX runs in 5 minute bursts in ‘evaluation mode’ so we were able to get a successful test session with the VSX8000. This looks like a viable solution for our roaming laptop users to keep in touch (If only we can smooth out the activation process)

[1] Polycom PVX [Polycom.au]

A new J.R.R. Tolkien book!

The Children Of Hurin,

Painstakingly restored from Tolkien’s manuscripts and presented for the first time as a fully continuous and standalone story, the epic tale of The Children of Hurin will reunite fans of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings with Elves and Men, dragons and Dwarves, eagles and Orcs, and the rich landscape and characters unique to Tolkien.

Turin is born into a Middle-earth crushed by the recent victory of the Dark Lord, Morgoth, and his monstrous army. The greatest warriors among Elves and Men have perished and Turin’s father, Hurin, has been captured. For his defiance, Hurin’s entire family is cursed by Morgoth to be brought down into darkness and despair.

But, like his father, Turin refuses to be cowed by Morgoth and as he grows so does the legend of the deadly hero. In a land overrun with marauding Orcs, Turin gathers to him a band of outlaws and gradually they begin to turn the tide in the war for supremacy of Middle-earth.

Then Morgoth unleashes his greatest weapon: Glaurung, Mightiest of Dragons, and he proves an unstoppable foe. As the Dragon carves a fiery swathe through Middle-earth there remains only one man who can slay him, but to do that he will first have to confront his destiny. … [1]

ISBN: 9780007246229; ISBN-10: 0007246226;
Publication Date: 17/04/2007; Format: Non Standard Hardback;
Trimsize: 143 x 222; Pages: 320; $49.99

The book was published on 17 April 2007,[1][2] by HarperCollins in the United Kingdom and by Houghton Mifflin in the United States. Alan Lee, illustrator of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings created the painting on the jacket as well as other paintings throughout the book.

The story deals with a hero of the First Age, Húrin, of the race of Men, who is cursed by the Dark Lord Morgoth, and the effect this curse has on his children Túrin Turambar and Nienor. … [2]

[1] The Children Of Hurin by J R R Tolkien [HarperCollins Australia]
[2] The Children of Húrin [Wikipedia]
[3] The Children of Hurin – FAQ (18.02.07) [tolkienlibrary]

Windows “Longhorn” Server BETA 3

Microsoft Windows Server code name “Longhorn” is the next generation of the Windows Server operating system that helps information technology (IT) professionals maximize control over their infrastructure while providing unprecedented availability and management capabilities, leading to a significantly more secure, reliable, and robust server environment than ever before. Windows Server “Longhorn” delivers new value to organizations by ensuring all users regardless of location are able to get the full complement of services from the network. Windows Server “Longhorn” also provides deep insight into the operating system and diagnostic capabilities to allow administrators to spend more time adding business value.

Windows Server “Longhorn” builds on the success and strengths of the award-winning Windows Server 2003 operating system and on the innovations delivered in Service Pack 1 and Windows Server 2003 R2. However, Windows Server “Longhorn” is far more than a refinement of predecessor operating systems. Windows Server “Longhorn” is designed to provide organizations with the most productive platform for powering applications, networks, and Web services from the workgroup to the datacenter with exciting, valuable new functionality and powerful improvements to the base operating system. … [1]

Although this is Beta3, this is the first publicly available release.

Microsoft is posting the final beta and first publicly available and feature-complete version of Windows Server Longhorn, marking the final time the product will be available for testing and feedback before the long-awaited server update is available later this year. [2]

You can get yourself a copy from – www.microsoft.com/getbeta3

[1] Windows Server Code Name “Longhorn” Product Overview [Microsoft]
[2] Microsoft releases first Longhorn public beta [ARNETT]

Scott Sigler’s Earthcore

Deep below a desolate Utah mountain lays the largest platinum deposit ever discovered. A billion-dollar find, it waits for any company that can drill a world’s record, three-mile-deep mine shaft.EarthCore is the company with the technology, the resources and the guts to go after the mother lode. Young executive Connell Kirkland is the company’s driving force, pushing himself and those around him to uncover the massive treasure.

But Kirkland and EarthCore are not the first to find this treasure. The mountain’s history reveals two centuries of disappearances, murder, and insanity.

The discovery of ancient platinum knives, razor-sharp despite lying untouched for 1,000 years, reveals evidence of an ancient culture. If the artifacts are genuine, they show a pre-historic empire that once spanned from the Southern tip of South America all the way up through the American Southwest.

Wealth and fame lie under that Utah mountain, but at three miles below the surface, where the rocks are so hot they burn bare skin, something has been waiting for centuries. Waiting … and guarding. Kirkland and EarthCore are about to find out first-hand why this treasure has never been unearthed.

net@nite 17 [4]
# Scott Sigler’s book, Ancestor, entered the top selling list in Amazon. He attempted to Bum Rush the Charts for his books, and it worked!
# Scott’s books can also be found on Podiobooks as a podcast.
# Cory Doctorow also allows for his books to be downloaded as an e-book for free.
# Scott Sigler is using Garageband to record with a Macbook Pro being routed from an Alesis Multimix Firewire with a Behringer Studio Pro microphone.

[1.] Earthcore – A free audio book [Podiobooks]
[2.] EarthCore Synopses [Scott Sigler's Author Site]
[3.] Earthcore (Paperback) [Amazon]
[4.] net@nite 17: There’s Something Wrong With The Sheep [The TWiT Netcast Network]

This weeks links: 2007-04-24

Follow the Bouncing Malware: Day of the Jackal [SANS]
Another posting in the ‘Follow the Bouncing Malware’ series;
(OK… Once again, I find myself in the rather unenviable position of having to warn those of you whose brain waves fall a little short of the beach not to shoot yourselves in the foot. So… if you find that people are always questioning the number of angels that could dance on your head: DO NOT GO TO ANY OF THE SITES I MENTIONED IN THIS LITTLE MALWARE DECONSTRUCTION. JUST DON’T.)
…
Oh… BTW, LaughingBoy… ‘Leet h4xor d00dz don’t use MidnightCommander… if you need to install mc when you 0wn a box, you pro’lly need to do a little remedial work on your ‘nix command line foo…
ROTFLMAO

Welcome to Le hiatus
Over the next six months, I will venture to India to do some volunteer work. My current employers have been flexible enough to let me go and to top it off, they have let me take the laptop!! – Claire Spencer [Le hiatus]

Home Inspection Nightmares IV

What do you mean you’re not running Firefox 2.x?

The end of support for Firefox 1.5 was announced and discussed six-months ago, but a few users have help out kicking and screaming.

Firefox 1.5: This version of Firefox will be supported until April 24, 2007 with security and stability updates. We strongly encourage all users to upgrade to Firefox 2. [1]

We have a few machines that had been left on FF1.5 that needed to be identified so that they could be upgraded. This meant that rather than using ‘sneaker net’ we needed a test script to check a series of Windows machines to see if FireFox needed an upgrade.

For the script to work as published;

(1.) The Account that the ‘admin’ is logged into the local machine with must be able to remotely open the registry key ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Mozilla’ on remote machines.

(2.) The executable “regfind.exe” should be somewhere else in the %path% for the machine from which the script is running.

Due to the short development time the script doesn’t handle the error for machines that it cannot connect to with an output to the text file. You should watch the on-screen error messages and compare the result log with the number of machines in pclist.txt. For this reason, it would be best to run the script with 2 to 10 machines in the pclist.txt per run.

A “good” machine will produce an output such as the “Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.3″ shown below.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Mozilla
Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.3

Required:

• Login as local Administrator; Registry access to remote machines
• pclist.txt – plain text file, one machine name per line
• REGFIND.EXE (from the W2K resource Kit – located in compmgmt.cab)

Output:

• results.txt

THE CODE:
for /F %%A in (pclist.txt) do (REGFIND.EXE -m \\%%A -p HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Mozilla -y -n "Mozilla Firefox" >>results.txt)

This can of course be wrapped up into a neat little command file;

:: --------------------------------------------------------
:: FILE : ff2-find.cmd
:: Batchfile : FireFox Version ID
:: Purpose : Locate if FireFox version is v1.5 or v2.x
:: : to locate machines that require upgrade
:: OS : Windows 2K, XP
:: Created : Visible Procrastinations
:: : 23-APR-2006
:: Required : Login as local Administrator; Registry access to remote machines
:: : pclist.txt - plain text file, one machine name per line
:: : REGFIND.EXE (W2K resource Kit)
:: Output : results.txt
:: --------------------------------------------------------
:: dependency: Must be able to open key 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Mozilla'
:: on remote machines
:: --------------------------------------------------------
::
echo ----------------------- >>results.txt
echo %date% %time% >>results.txt
echo ----------------------- >>results.txt
:: testing syntax
::
:: REGFIND.EXE -p HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Mozilla -y -n "Mozilla Firefox 2.0."
::
:: Fully auto loop reading from pclist.txt
for /F %%A in (pclist.txt) do (REGFIND.EXE -m \\%%A -p HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Mozilla -y -n "Mozilla Firefox" >>results.txt)
echo ----------------------- >>results.txt
echo - machine list - >>results.txt
echo ----------------------- >>results.txt
for /F %%A in (pclist.txt) do (echo %%A >>results.txt)
:end

My work here is done …

[1.] Firefox 1.5 [Mozilla.com]
[2.] Firefox Support [MozillaZine]

VirusScan 8.0i – Patch 15

McAfee VirusScan Enterprise 8.0i Patch 11 and earlier
…
Exploit – Attacker would be able to abnormally stop On-Access scan or execute arbitrary code on the target computer.
…
NOTE: Virus Scan Enterprise 8.0i Patch 12 or later fixes this flaw, but the remediation steps below assume that you are installing Patch 15, so it will refer to VSE80P15.ZIP. As of 4/17/07, Patch 15 is the latest available patch for VSE 8.0i

Time to patch your VS8.0i installs again, this time with Patch13 (VSE80P15.Zip)

The good news is that in our site this has limited impact;

In order for this attack to work, the target computer must have East Asia language files installed, and the default Unicode codepage must be set to a language which contains multi-byte characters–such as Chinese.

IMPACT:
Our SOE AniVirus has moved on to VS8.5i so this will only apply to machines still on the 8.0i version

[1.] McAfee Security Bulletin – VirusScan Enterprise 8.0i Patch 12 or later fixes vulnerability of disabling On-Access scanning and possible arbitrary code execution [612750] [McAfee]

Using Netsh to change between DHCP and Static IPs

A case where a laptops DHCP resolution is causing problem when docked on campus and is causing headaches as we try to identify the cause. To solve the incident for the User as a short term solution we can use netsh to static code the IP when on campus and use DHCP when off site.

netsh interface ip set address "Local Area Connection" dhcp

netsh interface ip show config

netsh interface ip set address "Local Area Connection" static ipaddr subnetmask gateway metric

To change the Local Area Connection to 192.168.0.50, subnet mask 255.255.255.0, default gateway 192.168.0.1 and a metric of 1, type:

netsh interface ip set address “Local Area Connection” static 192.168.0.50 255.255.255.0
netsh interface ip set address “Local Area Connection” gasteway = 192.168.0.1 gwmetric = 1

NOTE: Type netsh interface ip dump to see the settings of a configured PC. [2]

[1.] How to Use the NETSH Command to Change from Static IP Address to DHCP in Windows 2000 [MS]
[2.] Switch from DHCP to Static IP address, and back, using NETSH [JSI FAQ]
[3.] Change quickly from static ip to dhcp [DZone Snippets]

This weeks links: 2007-04-18

Mozilla Releases Thunderbird 2 (18-Apr-2007) [Mozilla.org]
Mozilla released Thunderbird 2 today, a major update to its free, open source email client. Thunderbird 2 offers easy ways to manage and organize your email with message tags, advanced folder views, message history navigation, find as you type, and improved new mail alert notifications. Thunderbird 2 also includes support for Microsoft Vista and an updated user interface.

Firefox 1.5 [Mozilla.com]
Firefox 1.5: This version of Firefox will be supported until April 24, 2007 with security and stability updates. We strongly encourage all users to upgrade to Firefox 2.
UPDATE NOW!

INSEAD goes virtual
[China MBA and Higher Education News]
… INSEAD is one of the first management schools to dip a toe into the online economy although several other business schools are studying it. The school has hired three architecture students — Botond Molnar, Balint Halasz, and Peter Vikar — to create virtual classrooms suitable for lectures that will supplement in-person learning. …

Going Commando

 

Found at Wilson’s Prom …

Who the hell has cammo undies?