Can be done!

I'm now on Windows Vista. No DVD needed either. The only things now needed are office and anti-virus which are in progress and should be done by tomorrow. Then I can work on getting my sync and domain membership working and in less than 24 hours should be back where I started but with a brand new O/S. Check it out....

Vista Upgrade - Can it be done...

Can a user, armed with an internet connection, DVD writer and no tech support in a foreign place update their laptop from XP Pro to Vista with no loss of service?
To succeed and return to this blog will indicate that Microsoft is excellent and that I have a fine level of IT Skills. To fail will mark me as a fool and render my remaining full day here a much less rich experience....

Here goes!

Groove on - baby

Went to a session on real world groove examples.
However, I was a bit fed up of my laptop and also had low battery, so I'll just summarise the Q&A that might be asked of me.

Q. What is groove anyway?
A. It's an online or hosted environment for collaboration which can be used by anyone.

Q. But we've got sharepoint so we can just use that...
A. No we can't becuase we would have to issue everyone with IDs and also it's not as good for colaborating on things in the same way that groove is (authors opinion disclaimer)

Q. So give us an example of how we could use it at Lancaster...
A. An academic rings the helpdesk and says he wants to collaborate with lots of people inside and out and he can't find a way of doing it. We suggest groove, which is part of office. He goes away and does it and it's all good.

Q. Ah ha, but we might want to enforce our own ways of working and do clever things, and stop students using it for MP3 and video, and link it to the rest of our world, oh and I've got another 20 ideas and it's all getting complicated.
A. Ok, you twisted my arm... lets get some locally hosted servers and start rocking out with it in a more structured way.

So there you have it. Why don't you start using it now. Go on....... Then when it gets a following we can put some more investment in it.

(disclaimer... my own opinion again) It's better than sharepoint....

Internet Safety for Kids

www.packet-level.com/kids

 
 

This breakout was a hard hitting look at the way the peiderfiles and predators target kids online and how to protect against them. I found this very hard and emotive and will have to review this again later to see what effects it has.

Some of the stories were horrendous, rape, abduction of very young children (as young as 3)

 
 

It could be argued that the presenter was extreme, using key loggers etc. Although she was telling them about this. Also masquerading as a 12 year old boy with similar interests in order to see what information could be obtained. She was able to obtain school / room / when PE was. Is this not going to cause problems when eventually it all comes out...

 
 

Details of the presentation including the video can be downloaded from the website..

 
 

Stats:

• Average of 3 minutes from entering a chat room (passive) until sexual content is advanced.
  
• 71% teens have online profile
  

   
   

  Perfect victim
  

• 11-14
  
• No parental involvement
  
• No definite bedtime
  
• Can be away from home without anyone noticing
  
• Exclusive use of computer in private area (most common threat)
  

   
   

  www.htcia.org has archived webcasts on how to do data mining training courses… However, some of this is US based only. In the UK you cannot do things like link a mobile number to a street address etc.
  

   
   

  MySpace, Xanga and Live Journal are all sites that are available. No such thing as "private" myspace page. That's just a ruse to keep mom and dad off. The list of friends can pile up quick. Private means nothing.
  

  How can the parent get the kids myspace page. Ask them. Use key loggers (blaster (software), www.keyghost.com) and replaced key logger on laptop.
  

   
   

  "Technophilia" Persons using the computer to engage in sexual deviance.
  

  It's not just girls. 5-7 year old boys (US) are under target and allowed to operate in an organisation with membership in the US.
  

   
   

  Then, only at the end of the session were there tips on how to actually secure access online. They are all in the presentation..
  

   
   

  I might blog about this again…after a think.
  

  Perhaps ISS has a responsibility to publicise this to the uni. Community.
  

  
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

VOIP Technologies for idiots (paraphrased)

Michael Krele and Rajatish Mukherjee attempted to give people like me a complete overview of how telephony systems worked from. Starting with a primer on terminology… how many do you know? I knew quite a few (although I did used to work with PBXs on teletype machines)

 
 

Telephone System

• PBX Private Branch Exchange
  
• POTS Plain Old Telephone System
  
• IP-PBX IP based PBX
  
• Hybrid PBX IP enabled PBX
  
• Switch PBX
  
• Node Specific PBX in a network
  
• Trunk Access to PSTN
  

 
 

Telephony

• PSTN Public switched telephone network
  
• ISDN Integrated services digital network
  
• TDM Time Division Multiplexing
  
• PRI Primary rate interface
  
• E1 30 voice channels (Europe)
  
• T1 23+1 voice channels (USA)
  
• BRI Basic rate interface (2 voice channels)
  

Computer Telephone Integration

• CTI Computer Telephone Integration
  
• CSTA Computer Supported Telephone Application
  
• GETS Genesys Enterprise Telephony Server
  
• CUPS Cisco Unified Presence Server
  

   
   

  Protocols and Codec
  

  • QSig ISDN based signaling protocol to connect different PBXs
    
  • SIP IETF Standard, signaling protocol (Session Initiation Protocol)
    
  • H.323 ITU Standard, signaling protocol
    
  • G.711 Standard voice codec (ISDN quality)
    
  • RTAudio Microsoft's dynamic voice codec (superior voice quality)
    

   
   

  Others
  

  • QoS Quality of Service
    
  • QoE Quality of Experience
    
  • CDR Call Detail Record
    

   
   

 
 

PBX are massive racks of kit with built in inelegance. Then you add cards for subscribers. e.g analog / digital cards (16 or 24 lines, add another card after 24 lines) once the whole lot is full then you need to add another system. It's actually more complicated than that as sometimes dependent on what type of cards you have you may need to leave some slots empty for power / CPU reasons. Other cards you can add would be Mgmt cards / Networking (Qsig) and a card for connection to the network (PRI / BRI).

They you can play with all the cards such as putting in all networking cards to create an IP PBX or a hybrid.

Now then, you can then do a corporate GSM Mobile approach, this involves giving everyone a GSM mobile phone. This means that when back at base you can get free calls and they still work outside the workplace. Thus you can have 4-5 digit numbers inside the branch and full mobile numbers outside. This means that you can replace the PBX (aside from a few bits and pieces) .

 
 

So then, how can we make everything better? How can we blaze our way into the future? Well… no prizes for guessing that it's called VOIP and it's got a Microsoft flavour… It's a three step process.

• Build a foundation with a single identity in AD, install IM and presence with OCS2007
  
• Add VOIP software to OCS2007
  
• Finally OCS Standalone
  

   
   

  Sounds great, however…. problems still exist such as lack of emergency call (including information as to where people are), receptionist, teams and hunt group, hold music etc...
  

  So.. How about keep your existing phone and link in to Office Communicator, then you can have the best of both worlds (as long as your PBX supports call forking). There also seems to be a need for a SIP mediation server to link the PBX to OCS2007, however I was a bit confused about that.
  

   
   

  Implications for Lancaster?
  

  I guess the big question for me is how does our Cisco VOIP system interop with LCS? If this can be tightly linked then this might be very good news, we should be able to do things like:
  

• Ring people on your VOIP phone from link on your PC, or global address list, or from SharePoint / outlook.
  
• Conference call across the VOIP network from communicator.
  

   
   

  Ah ha… good news. You can do this now with a CSTA interface, but it's very expensive and not many people do it so DRAT!
  

MOmmy

Dhananjay Mahajan provided a very interesting start to his presentation by showing a "crash" screen and suggesting that if you've never seen a windows application crash in the last few months then you should go and do some gambling!

 
 

He then presented on how you can use Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) to use this data to improve your infrastructure.

e.g When a desktop or app crashes, 90%+ of users reboot, or call the helpdesk and are told to reboot! <5% of crashes will get escalated to desktop administrator.

 
 

How do you solve this, whilst keeping costs down? Well, not surprisingly the answer is MOM. Well, there are a few caveats to this, best use Vista for example (seems to be a theme of the week here). It's all easy and supports:

• Agentless monitoring
  
  • No agent deployment required, as it uses the windows error reporting service (build into windows)
    
  • You can add your own solutions, so linking to hotfixes / knowledge articles etc.
    
  • You can aggregate all the error reporting data together.
    
• Collective client monitoring (you can monitor them from one place)
  

   
   

  So it's all good. And indeed in the demo, it all looked good. A little over my head and of course we don't currently do any of this.
  

   
   

  Anyway… I switched off at that point, but I've downloaded the slides, so ask if you really, really want to know.
  

   
   

  Hey ho...
  

   
   

Identity recources..

Forgot to mention that you can read all the Microsoft UIM type resources at:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb687784.aspx