Author and IT Consultant since 1986

I feel so special – I got an email from Robert S. Mueller III, Executive Director of the FBI. Amazingly, it appears that the Bureau is aware that I’ve been contacted by the Central Bank of Nigeria, and they felt compelled to protect my interests and investigate the contracts and related fund dispersal promised by the bank in payment for the rendering of some unspecified services.

This is good news indeed, since I didn’t even know that the CBN owed me $10,000,000.00, and now not only do I know about it, but I can rest assured that the FBI has already confirmed for me that the fund transfer is legitimate, and they will closely monitor the transfer. All I have to do is contact the CBN using the phone number and email address that the FBI has so thoughtfully provided, and follow their instructions expediently.

Seriously, does anybody fall for these scams anymore?

What is hosted email security?

Hosted (outsourced) email security is a service offered by 3rd party providers which handles the scanning of inbound (and sometimes outbound) email messages. Following the trend toward SaaS (Software as a Service), or “Cloud Computing” as it is becoming known, hosted email services handle such things as spam filtering, virus and other crimeware removal, phishing protection, etc.

Recent Growth and Projections

The last several months have seen spending on outsourced email hosting and security grow at the substantial rate, primarily among small to medium sized businesses. The growth rate within larger corporations (greater than 2500 users) is smaller but also increasing measurably. According to IDC, The Radicati Group, and other analysts, these growth rates should continue to accelerate over the next few years, exceeding an estimated $2 billion by 2012. This represents a 40% growth in the number of seats over today’s figures.

Already, about 5% of SMB users are utilizing hosted email security solutions, a figure expected to grow to 9% over the next few years.

Advantages to SMBs – Reasons for Growth

A variety of reasons are cited by researchers and subscribers for outsourcing email security, but the main ones are:

• Lower Network Resource Requirements: Spam entering a company’s network incurs bandwidth and storage costs, even if it’s caught in spam filters. Outsourced spam filtering solutions only allow legitimate email to enter the network.
• Fewer Maintenance Costs: The costs of acquiring, configuring, and keeping spam filters up to date can be extensive for in-house solutions, especially when you include the cost of the admin’s time.
• Malware Protection: While an outsourced solution shouldn’t replace in-house virus scanners, keeping up with the latest threats becomes the burden of the solution provider for email. These companies often employ up-to-the-minute malware updates and multiple scanning engines.
• Business Continuity: Should a company’s own network fail or become compromised, the external service provider can queue their mail for a period of time, until their Disaster Recovery Plan is executed (you do have a DR Plan, right?).

Reservations

Not everyone is jumping on the bandwagon. The biggest concern expressed by potential customers is the perceived security and reliability of the service providers’ network. However, research done by NetworkWold indicates that many of these providers maintain infrastructures more robust and secure than that of most of the enterprises they serve. Another issue is the concern for the safety of confidential information being in the hands of an external agency, which is why most subscribers only use these services for inbound email, even though some providers offer outbound filtering as well.

Outlook

As IT departments strive to cut costs while maintaining service levels, more will be looking at the ROI offered by outsourced security solutions.

Today Exxon Mobile recorded their 2nd quarter profits of $11.68 billion. This is lower than analysts’ predictions, but still managed to break the record for the largest quarterly profit for a U.S. company (previously set by Exxon Mobile).

This works out to $1,485.55 per second in profits, over $128 million per day. Yes – you’re reading that correctly – that’s $128 million in profit, not revenue, every day.

Who do they think they’re fooling when they blame high fuel costs on the speculators or production problems? Petroleum seems to be the only industry in the world where production problems equal higher profits. Look up the term ‘oligopoly.’

Legendary writer and author Jerry Pournelle sent me an email! OK, so I’m a subscriber on his website and he sent it out to everybody, but still, I thought it was cool. The message was a warning about the fact that malicious hackers had compromised the online job boards and were selling their services to spammers and scam artists. Monster.com, hotjobs.com, and other mainstream job boards are affected. You can get the details here.

I became a fan of Jerry’s writing in the ’80s when he was a columnist for BYTE Magazine. This was back when magazines printed a lot of useful technical information, hacks, program listings, and electronics projects. A fellow programmer was a subscriber, and introduced me to the magazine, and particularly “Chaos Manor,” Jerry’s column. When BYTE was sold to another publisher, it’s format turned more to product reviews and coverage of the IT business industry. In other words, it became geared more for managers with IT budgets and less for programmers, hobbyists, and end users. Not long after that the magazine ceased publication altogether.

I missed Jerry’s anecdotal accounts of his struggles with technology. He did product reviews too, but always from the first-person perspective of a non-technical person (an author) actually trying to implement, rather than just cover, the products. His often humorous tales were always informative and entertaining. I was delighted when I discovered a year or so ago that Jerry was still writing his Chaos Manor Reviews, as well as Other Musings. I should have known that his talent and desire (need?) for self-expression would have steered him toward the online publishing world, and was chagrined that I hadn’t thought to search on his name sooner.

During our trip to Arizona this past spring (see pictures), the visit to Tombstone inspired in me a renewed interest in the famous Gunfight at the OK Corral and the surrounding events. After some research, I wrote a quick little article entitled Surprising Facts about the Gunfight at the OK Corral. I wasn’t quite satisfied with that one however, so I sat down and wrote a more extensive article called Behind the OK Corral – the Legend and the Legacy, which goes into more depth and discusses the prevailing attitudes and histories of the combatants. It also covers some of the alternate interpretations of history as maintained by the surviving members of the Clanton family. Give it a read and let me know what you think.

I recently happened on the scene in Davison recently as police and paramedics responded to a 911 call that turned out to be a suspected heroin overdose.
As a staff writer for the Davison Messenger, I tried to get a few statements from witnesses and took a few pictures. The Messenger has decided to print the story in the newest edition which should be hitting the streets as I write this. I also put a copy of the article on Triond. Please read the suspected heroin overdose story and let me know what you think.

My home server, which acts as a development web server as well as a file and print server for the numerous PCs around my household, was running on SUSE Linux 10.0. This version of SUSE was the only one of its kind, before Novel re-branded the free version of the OS as OpenSUSE. It was getting increasingly difficult for me to get the updates for SUSE Linux 10.0, so I figured it was time to upgrade to something a little newer. Of course I was planning on loading OpenSUSE 10.3, the current stable release.

Looking for ultra-light linux for kids’ PC

About this time my kids’ old Window 98 PC seemed to be grinding down to a halt as they tried to get it to do more – IM, online games, etc. I tried a couple of small linux loads known for good performance on old hardware, like Puppy Linux and Damn Small Linux (DSL). While both of these are great distros, on this hardware Puppy Linux bogged down with too little memory, and DSL had problems with the USB wireless network adapter on that PC. I even put in an old 16 bit Intel NIC and spent a couple of evenings fishing CAT-5 cable through the attic and wall, but still had some problems with DSL recognizing it.

Someone Mentioned FreeBSD

On some forum (can’t recall where), someone mentioned FreeBSD as a viable option for old, slow hardware, so I decided to try it out on the kids’ PC. After some tweaking of the device hints to get it to use the old NIC, it worked great. Performance is acceptable for the hardware (300 mhz Pentium II), and it runs most Linux software in addition to native FreeBSD code. After some more online research about the relative strengths and weaknesses of FreeBSD vs. other BSDs vs. Linux, I decided to reload the server with FreeBSD. This server is built on a DELL Dimensions platform, with a 2 Gigahertz Intel processor and 256 Meg of memory. It has 2 internal hard drives, a 30 Gig Maxtor 6E030L0, and a 160 Gig Seagate ST3160215A (which came out of a failed external USB SimTech drive.

The Plan

Since the Seagate had a lot of unused space, I wanted to use part of it to back up stuff I wanted to save, but I also knew I would need some of it free for the FreeBSD installation. The trouble is, it was formatted as a ReiserFS file system, which FreeBSD can read but not write to. So the plan included steps to shrink that file system and leave enough unallocated space for FreeBSD to create usable storage. So the steps in general were:

1. Estimate space required to backup user data and development work.
2. Shrink the ReiserFS file system to create unallocated space on the disk, but leave enough on ReiserFS to accommodate the backup.
3. Change the partition sizes on the disk (shrinking the file system does not affect the underlying partition size).
4. Backup desired files.
5. Download FreeBSD and create installation CDs.
6. Install
7. Restore files and configure applications (samba, cups, apache, quanta Plus, etc.)

Next: Part 1 (coming soon): Using resize_reiserfs and cfdisk.

Several months ago I wrote an article for a Helium Marketplace publisher.  My submission was not selected, but I find that it is one of my more popular articles on Helium (definitely in the top 3), so I thought I’d share it here.  Please read How to find out what’s running on your PC (and why this is important).  Let me know how you like it.

Imagine planting a pine tree, a small seedling, using a spade shovel. Not too difficult, right? Now imagine doing that 1000 times. Repeat every spring for 14 years. That’s exactly what Bob Zirnhelt did on 11 acres where he and his wife live in Davison, Michigan.

Beginning in 1991, Bob began buying young trees from the Genesee County Conservation District. Every spring he would buy 1000 seedlings and plant them around his home. “It’s one of the best ways to enhance the beauty and improve the value of your home,” he says. Bob is a code enforcer for the city of Burton, and knows a thing or two about home values.

Read Full “Zirnhelt’s Trail” Story on NewsFlavor.