I’m going to have something really good coming up later this weekend

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized

I’m working on a new writeup. I have two coworkers who, when they start talking, I know I’d better start listening if I know what’s good for me.

I had lunch with them on Friday. I don’t know if it was the lunch discussion or after-lunch discussion, but they talked about a little-known security product. It’s free. It’s a little off-putting–one of these guys experimented with it and had difficulty figuring it out–but the other raved about it.

The problem is that we rarely live in an ideal world. We’re forced to run insecure, outdated software for business reasons, whether they’re good or bad. This mitigation, which he explained succinctly, is one of the best mitigations I’ve seen in my professional career, and it won’t cost you a dime to implement it.

I’m going to take an extra day or so to write up my own findings with it. So please stay tuned. I think this is going to be very good.

Microsoft’s bug bounty is a step in the right direction

Dave Farquhar security, Windows , , , , ,

Last week, Microsoft announced it’s offering a bug bounty program. Find a working exploit in Windows 8.1/blue/whatever it’s called this week, and Microsoft will hand over $100,000. Find a mitigation for that exploit, and Microsoft will pony up for that to, up to $50,000.

I think I know what they’re up to. Read more

I found a reasonably good, inexpensive keyboard for the Sero 7 Pro

Dave Farquhar Android, Hardware , , ,

I bought a keyboard this week for the Hisense Sero 7 Pro. It’s a universal keyboard/case made by Afunta, and I paid $12.50 for it. I took a chance on it, and now you don’t have to. Its spring-loaded jaws nicely accomodate the Sero 7 Pro, and the keyboard works with the Sero 7 Pro with no issues. Plug it in, wait a moment, and it starts working, replacing the onscreen keyboard when you need keyboard input, basically turning your tablet into a convertible. It has a micro USB connector, unlike many 7-inch keyboards, so it works with the Sero 7 without an adapter. It’s odd that most keyboards seem to have full-size USB connectors but most 7-inch tablets have micro ports.

I wouldn’t want to type at length with the keyboard, but it’s much nicer than using an onscreen keyboard on a 7-inch screen.

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Looking to hire IT talent? Write a good job description

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized , ,

I had lunch on Friday with the recruiter who placed me at my current gig. We talked about a lot of things, including our families, but we talked a lot about the tech labor market. It’s growing, finally, and going to grow a lot more in the next few years as Boeing relocates its IT operations to St. Louis, but the market still isn’t what I’d grown used to it being over the last seven years.

One problem he runs into is with clients. They’ll submit jobs that, for example, I’m a perfect match for, and he submits me, and we get no call. Then he follows up weeks or months later, and finds out something completely different. Read more

Snickering at the Emachine

Dave Farquhar Hardware, War Stories , , , ,

For several years, I administered a command and control system for the U.S. Air Force. I sat in a datacenter, surrounded by racks jam-packed full of servers, and they kept the building at 64 degrees year round. I quickly learned to keep a jacket handy. I did several things, but mostly patch management.

Our system consisted of a diverse collection of Dell 1U and 5U servers, HP blades, and a couple of Sun SPARC boxes. It was a professional-looking setup, and except for the times we were doing massive system upgrades, the system generally worked as well as it looked.

Then we got a neighbor.

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Cnet tackles the Gigabit Internet question

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized ,

Cnet questioned the motives of cable operators this week when it comes to offering truly high-speed Internet.

Cable operators argue that the demand for those high speeds isn’t there. It’s not gigabit that consumers oppose nearly so much as paying more than $100 a month just for Internet. The problem is that by the time you pay for super high-speed Internet, cable, and a couple of cell phones, you can easily spend $300 a month, if not more, and that’s the price of a car.

We’re still coming out of a recession, and a lot of people are still trying to get their heads above water after the excesses of the previous decade. But if prices are within reach, people are willing to buy, after a half-decade of austerity.

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