Ken's Small Business Server Blog

Hawaii Department of Health Director Chiyome Fukino’s press release of July 27, 2009 was a public statement. The UIPA (Hawaii open records law) at 92F-12(a)(15) states:

§92F-12 Disclosure required. (a) Any other provision in this chapter to the contrary notwithstanding, each agency shall make available for public inspection and duplication during regular business hours:

(15) Information collected and maintained for the purpose of making information available to the general public;

Fukino’s July 27th press release stated:

“I, Dr. Chiyome Fukino, Director of the Hawai‛i State Department of Health, have seen the original vital records maintained on file by the Hawai‘i State Department of Health verifying Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawai‘i and is a natural-born American citizen. I have nothing further to add to this statement or my original statement issued in October 2008 over eight months ago.”

There were two very important pieces of information made available to the public in the above statement:

- “…Obama was born in Hawaii…”

- “…Obama…is a natural-born American citizen…”

~~~~~
Read the whole blog post here: http://naturalborncitizen.wordpress.com/

Watching the McCain/Obama debate....

Pahkistahn? I want my President to pronounce the names of countries like an American. If you are going to pronounce them like a middle-easterner, I'm gonna start thinking you are a middle-easterner...ya know what I mean??

Give me a fuckin break - either love my country or get the hell out...

I went ahead and purchased ESET's NOD32 version 3. It has a little larger footprint than the older version, but it is still small in comparison to other front-runners. Get the business version if you do not want the entire suite with a firewall, etc.

I can tell you that it is fast and reliable. It helped me clean a kids laptop that was infected with Vuntu, a task that Symantec could not do. Updates are fast and always on time (every hour, by default). It catches spyware, even ones that seem harmless. This product has my vote.

The business version comes with a central console that you can push installs, updates and even uninstall the clients with. All told, a very worthy product.

They have a trial version you can download, so go see for yourself.

I am currently looking for an alternative to Symantec Enterprise Antivirus. I have done a good bit of research now and just stumbled upon an independent website that enumerates virii and threats, and evaluates AV products giving pass/fail rankings based on their testing regimen. The site is http://www.virusbtn.com.

Go check out how your current AV product is fairing. For me, I am thinking that Eset NOD32 will be my next purchase.

You have to sign up to get to most of the pertinent content, but it's free and only takes a minute with email verification. I was astonished to find that what I have been using (and what many of my colleagues are using) is quite inadequate. Go check yours out now.

I watched the news tonight. China is making children’s toys with toxic lead in the paint and components. The government and private agencies do not have enough staff to check all the toys flooding into this country from overseas for the Christmas rush. The FDA has only checked about 10% of the overseas pharmaceutical manufacturing plants that make pills and medications we all use daily. Most of the pills available on the internet that you might ‘think’ are coming from Canada are actually coming from some of the darkest corners of the world, unregulated and uninvestigated.

Someone is going to get hurt – or worse.

Many large hardware manufacturers and IT firms have outsourced parts of their companies to overseas shops. I recently worked with a major vendor that didn’t seem to have anyone on staff but an Indian in a bucket. Heck, my Microsoft Partner Representative is in the Philippines, and sounds exactly like Microsoft Sam. The first message he left me I swore was automated until I returned the call.

Whatever happened to doing business with good ole Americans? I am not anti-international, nor am I trying to be prejudiced or even racist. I have a very internationally diverse ‘best friends’ list with which I endeavor diligently to maintain contact, despite workloads and distances. It just seems to me that we have worked so hard as a country to cut costs and open up international trade, all at the expense of enslaving less prosperous country’s workforces, that we have done so to the detriment of our own economic wellbeing. We seem to have forgotten to do business here at home all because of cost. The GAP has ten year old children sold into slavery, making clothes for the US. Would we do that to our children? No, but we have done it to theirs.

Suck it up America - sometimes the cost of doing what is right is steep.

I ask you, what is right about any of this? How can we play in a global economy at full price tariffs and yet let goods fly into every port we have at a discount? The IT market in the US nearly died from outsourcing, and many of those that weren’t displaced jumped ship to another vocation.

All I am saying is, let’s keep it at home, at least when we can. We are, on almost every level, the Gold Standard that the World aspires to. Do your part. Save the environment. Save the whales. Save the animals. Join Greenpeace. But for Pete’s sake, you won’t be able to do a single one of those things unless you Save our Country.

Do the right thing. Buy American. Impeach Hillary.

Ok. Rant over.

For those of you who have enjoyed Shared View, the new beta is out here.

If you use any of the popular web conferencing solutions available for a fee today you will be happy to know that Microsoft has a free solution now in Beta. I do not know how long it will be in beta, or if it will be a 'pay for' application at some point in the future, but if you need to colaborate with colleagues immediately and don't have the budget for the well-known apps, just go here and give Microsoft's SharedView a shot.

It promises up to 15 concurrent attendees, pre-session handouts so your attendees can research meeting content before hand, request/grant control, integration with Office's track changes functionality, and intergration with MSN messenger among other things.

Don't forget to read the FAQ section for instructions and features.

Hey Microsoft...we like free stuff!

I am currently evaluating a new Open Source application that promises big things. Antivirus, Anti Spam, Web Content filtering, Protocol filtering, Intrusion Detection and more -- all in one gateway appliance. This would be a dream come true for SMBs and large Enterprises as well.

The product is called Untangle (see www.untangle.com ) It is available as a free download, or you can get a branded appliance with paid support. It looks like they will even have a reseller channel.

Untangle is a Linux ISO that relies on other Open Source packages (ClamAV, etc) ready to install with a click, tested and guaranteed to work as a package. Anyone could build this type of package and link it all together, but I have spoken with some of the techs and they seem really eager and determined to make this a one-stop product that is ridiculously simple to use. Depending on your hardware, it sets up in about 15-20 minutes. It promises to take care of those pesky 'Network Edge' jobs that we all face and throw multiple products at....and have little success with...all in one box.

At first pass, I must say that it works quite well. I am not using all of the snap-ins yet, but AV and Antispam work well. With a little planning, one could place this in an SBS server network and keep it really very clean. I am working with it in my office and will make another post when I get it configured to work with SBS, for those of you who would like to know.

There are some glitches, as would be in any new product, but I fully believe this product will fill a huge void in our networks someday soon.

Welcome to our new blogs.

In the interest of communicating on the web, we have decided that we will get in on the action of blogging. However, we wish for this to be something other than just a 'me too' effort and really try to reach out with valid information, tips, tricks and perhaps even a little levity from time to time.

This particular area is dedicated to Microsft's Small Business Server, with all it's charms, to inform you of what it is and what it isn't, give you insight into some of the eccentricities of the product based on our experiences in the field and perhaps even to field some of your questions and commments on the same.

Please visit with us as we grow into this new type of media, and join in when you can.

Thanks for stopping by.