I had just come across the following article, Is Techology to Blame for Jobless Recovery? and it is complete and utter bull. Here are the following problems that I have with this article:

1. It is afraid that computers like watson will take over the role of a doctor. While yes, it may replace the need of doctors (perhaps with such a service, you may only need 3 doctors instead of 5?) the doctor still needs to examine the patient and input the values into the “machine” to get a correct diagnosis. Perhaps this role should be done by a nurse, but you still need the same amount of staff in order to perform this roles. Also, watson cost a boat load of money, I don’t see hospitals and doctor offices investing in the technology TODAY, which is what the article is suggesting.

2. The claim is that businesses are investing in technology over people’s jobs. This could be possible, but I know that technology spending was down in 2007-2009 so that means there was a lot of antiquated systems that need to be replaced. What happens is that if companies don’t stay up to date with these software, they can tend to purchase new hardware and software costs that would not have occurred if they kept up to date.

Now, this is not saying that new technology doesn’t replace jobs. Systems like SAP replace accountants all the time. With that said, there are always people that need to run the reports and keep the systems up to date. This would just be a shift in the job demand, moreover, then the jobs not existing in the first place.

3. The article almost bashes the companies for making a profit rather than hiring new employees. Companies need to make profits and pay off debts from the bad times before they can re-invest into the workforce. Companies cannot operate their employees at 110% forever, but they need to get themselves out of the red in order to ensure that they continue to make profits when hiring new people. If the companies are making money, the jobs will occur eventually.

So, as a new years resolution, I have decided to be more active in linked in discussions. Some people tend to comment on something, but then no one ever chimes in, and all threads get old. At least, this is true for the groups that I am a member of…

So, I decided, I would comment on the following topic regarding document management software:

LinkedInDocumentManagementUser: Why does most scanning or capture software have fixed database tables for indexing data instead of using a flexible XML schema for what is ultimately transient metadata?

Well, seems like an easy enough topic, so why not throw my hat in with the following:

Koopa: My guess is that most scanning and capturing software was developed prior to XML schema and they haven’t modernized the code yet.

Would love to see it though!

I thought that my comment was spiffy enough, but I may have insulted him as he replied back with the following information.

LinkedInPissedOffDocumentManagementUser: Yes I believe you are correct all the currently accepted ‘Enterprise’ class platforms for document imaging, scanning and document capture were originally designed and developed in the late 90′s. There are few newer ones out there like PSI, KnowledgeLake for SharePoint and others. the other interesting play is companies like Drop Box and Box.net providing online document archives / collaboration. Thoughts?

Well, needless to say, I am going to throw the towel on this conversation, due to the fact that I am not familiar with ANY of the document management software he has mentioned, or do I consider myself a document management expert. All I know is that most software was written before XML came out and it costs money to update the code.

Sometimes you just gotta know when to bow out and go home…

The other day I was helping a client setup their fax environment and ran into an interesting issue. The server that we installed the software was windows 2008 R2 and the core software went great. There is a web client that they also wanted to have installed so I kicked off the install and everything appeared to install as well. In 2003, it would automatically enable windows authentication by default. This would allow users to automatically login to the web applications if their account exists in windows.

Well, in windows 2008, the application does not do this. Instead, you need to set this up manually. In earlier versions of windows, windows authentication is added as a feature automatically. In windows 2008, it is an installable module. I had to go into the IIS roles and check windows authentication. Once this was done, it required a restart of the IIS services. I then went into the website instance and enabled windows authentication. Once done, the web application worked as expected.

I wonder why this option is no longer installed automatically by windows. I understand that Microsoft is continually trying to make IIS more secure, but I’m not entirely sure that this was a good move. By default, website instances are setup as anonymous access and you need to allow other authentication methods. If anonymous access and another authentication method is checked, the website breaks. Therefore, I just don’t understand why windows authentication is not installed as a default installation.

For the life of me, I could not get my netscreen vpn software to connect.  No matter what I did to the virtual windows xp, it just would not fly.  I kept receiving the following errors:

6-24: 07:18:55.296 My Connections\wvenezia@bitxbit.com – Initiating IKE Phase 1 (IP ADDR=160.79.51.201)
6-24: 07:18:56.108 My Connections\wvenezia@bitxbit.com – SENDING>>>> ISAKMP OAK AG (SA, KE, NON, ID, VID 6x)
6-24: 07:19:11.239 My Connections\wvenezia@bitxbit.com – message not received! Retransmitting!
6-24: 07:19:11.239 My Connections\wvenezia@bitxbit.com – SENDING>>>> ISAKMP OAK AG (Retransmission)
6-24: 07:19:26.261 My Connections\wvenezia@bitxbit.com – message not received! Retransmitting!
6-24: 07:19:26.261 My Connections\wvenezia@bitxbit.com – SENDING>>>> ISAKMP OAK AG (Retransmission)
6-24: 07:19:41.283 My Connections\wvenezia@bitxbit.com – message not received! Retransmitting!
6-24: 07:19:41.283 My Connections\wvenezia@bitxbit.com – SENDING>>>> ISAKMP OAK AG (Retransmission)
6-24: 07:19:56.303 My Connections\wvenezia@bitxbit.com – Exceeded 3 IKE SA negotiation attempts

I had initially thought it was due to the virtualbox blocking the IKE packets from reaching the gateway, but then decided to take virtualbox out of the picture and troubleshoot this like a normal computer.  Once I did this, it only took me 10 minutes to figure out what is wrong.  The message not received means that the remote host did not get the packet and the retransmission means that the remote host is not responding.  Well, that would indicate that the netscreen software is sending out the packets right but the gateway is a no show.  I thought, maybe I used an old Security Policy.  I opened up my working laptop and compared it to the virtualbox pc, and sure enough, the gateway ip addresses are different.  Once I changed this, it started working without a charm!

This makes me very happy as I am tired of carting my laptop with me to use my vpn!

Well, it seems that in the latest attempt for google to take over the world, one browser at a time, their toolbar is calling such files as gtbe12.tmp.exe.  Can you make it seem more spyware than this google?  I mean, come on!
Well, I logged into my work computer this morning and it seems that everything was crawling.  Since I do not login to this computer very often (2 times a week) this behavior is not very surprising.  During this time, I check to see what processes are running and where the memory leaks are.

Today, it was outlook that was the memory leak, but due to Outlook and its need to consume more ram than the computerh as, I noticed this funny process – gtbe12.tmp.exe.  I thought for sure that I picked myself up a bug until I did a bit of research and it seems that it is hooked into google’s toolbar.

Sure enough, I had used IE7 the last time I had the computer open and google toolbar was installed on it.  As part of my initial process to get my computer working again, I did close down IE7.  While researching the issue, the process ended shortly after IE closed.  This corresponds with the internet’s account that the process is associated with IE + google toolbar.

The end result?  While I vote for spyware (and depending on how you view Google’s actions with their toolbar, you can more legitimately say that it is spyware) this process is ok to leave alone.  I would definitely keep my eye on it, but it appears to be temp executable files pertaining to updating the toolbar’s files.  After letting it run (once my computer stabilized from outlook), it did stop appearing…

I found that the topic of the day was rather fitting.  Why?  Winmail.dat is just stupidly annoying.  First, lets go into what causes winmail.dat to occur.  Winmail.dat is generated when outlook sends an email as a Rich Text Format.  This format is an “outlook” only format and any non-outlook emails receive a winmail.dat message since they don’t play nice with outlook.  Basically, Rich Text is like sending emails to an exclusive club and anyone not in it gets the shaft.

Go Microsoft.

The fix?  Well, there are a couple of schools of thought.  First, you can change it on the client settings.  The down and dirty method is to tell all your users that receive this issue to not use Rich Text formatting.  Simple right?

The issue.  I had a user that uses quickbooks to send out paystubs.  Even though she was set to not use Rich Text, the quickbooks integration still did anyways.  Nothing like trying to see how much you got paid and you get a winmail.dat instead of your paystub.  WEEEEEEEEEE

The solution? Make exchange 2007 NOT use Rich Text formatting.  I know, this seems a little extreme, but sometimes you have to go for the gold.  Stupid Quickbooks.

Open Exchange Management Console

Expand Organization Configuration

Hub Transport

Edit the default properties

Under Exchange Rich-text format, select Never use.

Problem solved….

As bizzare as it sounds, I have seen the problem first hand.  I had a user with a treo 680 and synced with the Palm Desktop.  Palm to desktop worked fine, but desktop to palm failed.  It never generated an error message, but it just continued to fail.  I tried all the normal stuff, deselecting it, reselecting it, forcing treo to palm sync, removing all data from the palm desktop and it still did the same basic behavior.  Finally, I decided to roll back to version 4.2 and it worked great.

Apparently, version 6.2.2 does not work well with windows XP.  That sounds a little bizzare, but here is a forum with more information on it…

http://forums.palm.com/palm/board/message?board.id=software&thread.id=37617

Ideally, I would like to see people with an exchange server and activesync to remove the need for Palm Desktop, but not everyone is fortunate enough to be on one!

Well, I don’t know about you, but my company has switched to IPSwitch Gold for monitoring a couple of months ago.  It seems to work really well, but not everything is “simple” to do if you do not know where the setting is.  For about the last 2 weeks, I have been trying to figure out how to put devices in maintenance mode…now I know that once you know how to do it, it is really easy to do.  The problem was I didn’t know and kept looking in the wrong places.  If I have this problems, others must as well.  Without further ado, here are the directions.

Maintenance

Use this section of the dialog to manually set the device Maintenance state, or schedule the maintenance state for a certain time period. Any device placed in Maintenance mode will not be polled, but it remains in the device list with an identifying icon. By default, the maintenance state is represented by an orange background color.

• Force this device into maintenance mode now. Select this option to put the selected device in maintenance mode. Clear the option to resume polling the device.
• Recurring maintenance times. This box displays all scheduled maintenance times for the device.
  • Click Add to schedule a new maintenance time for the device.
  • Select an entry, then click Edit to change a scheduled time.

    - or -

    Double-click a Schedule to edit its configuration.

  • Select an entry, then click Remove to delete a scheduled time.

So, like any other day, I am commuting to work.  I get off the train and wait on the subway platform when I see a familiar face.  I study the man, and determine that he looks remarkily like a big shot CEO for the company that we rent our office space from.  I keep my distance from the man, fearing that he might not be the person that I think he is, and we board the subway in the same car.  I sit across from him, and he waves hello, but never says a word.  I wave back and expect some sort of conversation to occur.  The man typically talks to me in the office as I am his IT contact and he has been known to flag me across the office just to bullshit every once and awhile.

I typically get off at 23rd street as my office is at 19th street.  The 28th street stop comes, and he gets off and mumbles, see ya to me.  I thought that this was a bit odd, but perhaps he was going to a meeting or something?  Who knows.  I continue with my routine and get breakfast and proceed to the office.  The CEO is there and says hello to me, and asked what took me so long.  I said I got breakfast and you would have known that if you didn’t run off the extit before mine…

I think that the age of ipods and other mp3 players have taken away the ability to strike up a conversation with a person that you know out of your element.  The guy didn’t know what to do with himself so much, he left the subway a stop early, and I might add, it was really cold outside today.

Maybe I just have that effect on people, who knows…

NOTE: Information has been taken from http://www.ilopia.com/Articles/WindowsServer2003/EmailServer.aspx, a great resource for configuring and setting up POP3/SMTP for windows 2003 server.

* Open Computer Management
* Expand Services and Applications, expand Internet Information Service
* Right click Default SMTP Virtual Server and click Properties
* Click the Access tab
* Click the Authentication button and make sure Anonymous Access and Integrated Windows Authentication is enabled.
* Click the Relay button and make sure Allow all computers which successfully… is enabled and Only the list below is selected.

First of all, Authentication and Relay is not the same thing. We use the Authentication button to specify which authentications methods are allowed for users and other SMTP servers. So enabling Anonymous here is not a security issue, in fact, it’s required if we want our server to be able to receive emails from other servers on Internet (I doubt you want to tell all administrators of email servers on Internet how they should logon to yours). We also need Windows Authentication so the email clients can authenticate to the server and be able to relay (send emails).

As Relay Restrictions we selected Only the list below because we do not want to be used by spammers to send emails. But we never specified any computers. That is valid, because we wants our clients to always use the username and password to authenticate, no matter where they are.

If you want users to only be allowed to relay if they are on a private network, then you can uncheck Windows Authentication as allowed authentication method, and specify the IP range for your network in the Relay Restrictions window.