The world as frankps sees it!
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Dell Latitude E4200 with built-in mobile broadband
0I bought a Dell Latitude E4200 for my new boss, as this laptop is light, handy and comes in the beautiful color of deep burgundy red! Not only Apple can make machines with a great design. No, no, seriously, the 12,1 inch ultraportable benefits from a fast solid-state hard drive (SSD) and it’s weight is about 1,19 KG. The build quality is impressive, with a magnesium-alloy chassis and no obvious areas of weakness.
But before you continue, grab yourself a coffee cup …
Windows 7 and RiksTV
42 years ago
Windows 7 RC has already been out for some time, but I have only recently started discovering the changes since the public beta. I wrote a longer introduction to Windows 7 when I got the hands on the beta. The introduction is still worth reading. Also information about DVB-T and HDTV seems to be some of the topics that are most interesting for my readers.
Get yourself a cup of coffee and read the rest of this article.
Google Analytics and Analytics App
02 years ago
I have not been blogging regularly for a while now, and I can see the results of that on the blog stats. I have now below 200 readers a day. So when slowly coming back to updating my blog, I have decided to follow more closely what my readers most often search for and actually read.
To do be able to get more information about what my readers, I am changing from only using the WordPress plugin WordPress.com Stats to collect data from Google Analytics, to read the data directly on the Google Analytics website. But if you are new to blogging, I must say that WordPress.com Stats has been a great starting point. But as you get more with reading blog stats, you would like to dive in to the incredible depth of information that Google Analytics provides. Another limitation with WordPress.com Stats is that it makes heavily use of Flash to present the data, and these presentations are therefor not available on the iPhone.
If you are new to both WordPress.com Stats and Google Analytics, you should know that Google Analytics is a powerful tool for webmasters that provides a very useful insight into a website’s traffic. The service allows the website owner to track the referrals, search engine keywords, ads, email promotions as well as offline initiatives that brought the said visitors to your site.
Now Google publishes the data it collects as a standard XML data. That led me to thinking that there might be an iPhone application that can make use of it and format it to iPhone small screen. And there sure was! I found two-three apps, and fast decided to Analytics App. For $5.99US, this application is a keeper. Up-to-date stats from all of your sites, whether you’re on the road, in a meeting, or sitting on the tram on your way to or from work, Analytics App gives you quick and easy access to your analytics data. And why buy the app? Cause it is so much more convenient to use then from within Safari.
You’ll find yourself checking your stats with Analytics App not only on the go, but at your desk as well! But more important Analytics App can make any spare moment a productive moment. How many leads did you get today? What keywords were hot this month? What content brought in the most conversions?
The application Analytics App is well designed and fast, whilst retaining all of the important functionality of Google Analytics – namely tracking just how popular you are! It supports multiple accounts (websites), stats all over the joint, and has a beautifully presented plotted graph analysis.
I have only been using Analytics App for a few days. One of the first things I checked was what browsers and operating systems people were using. After a week I can say that there are only four operating systems in use among the visitors of frankps.net: Windows, Linux, MacOS X and iPhone. No visitors using BeOS or Haiku. When it comes to browsers, there are just as many visitors using Firefox as Internet Explorer. The are quite a few Safari users, and on the bottom you’ll find a few people using Chrome and Opera. But far more important then the hits of browsers and hits in general, is time spent on site. Have the visitors actually read the article? Have they clicked to other articles that you have linked up? Where did they go from your site? And how did they get there? Average time spent on site can be quite a shock for a few of us …
One thing I have not found out with Analytics App is why on Earth is the data presented in Norwegian? The OS and the app itself are both in English.
Aftenposten application for iPhone
12 years ago
The iPhone application for the newspaper New York Times, is one of my favorite. I have not often read their paper or traditional Internet edition. Sadly, I didn’t notice that also Aftenposten released such an application two weeks ago.
I have now installed it and find there to be pros and cons with this application. Two big pros:Â Reading the main news is easier then ever and including business news from E24.
I don’t care about the Soccer news section, but I think it should be included. What I don’t understand is why they have included a Gallery section. I don’t think iPhone users view pictures to much on their phones. Bandwidth costs, but more important I have turned off 3G support most of the time, simply to have the longest possible battery time. What Aftenposten rather should do with their fourth news section in this application, is news based on geolocation awareness. Readers should simply get newsstreams from the biggest cities/towns in Norway.
Introduction to Windows 7 Security
13 years ago
Paul Cooke – CISSP
Director
Microsoft
Core Security in Windows 7, explore related usage scenarios, and look into how to manage these in an enterprise environment.
The Windows Vista Foundation is continued. User Account Control and Enhanced Auditing. Security Development Lifecycle process. Kernel Patch Protection, Windows Service Hardening, DEP & ASLR (IE 8 inclusive), Mandatory Integrity Controls.
User Access Control
Make the system work well for standard users
Administrators use full privilege only for administrative tasks
File and registry virtualization helps applications that are not UAC compliant
Windows 7
Reduce the number of OS applications and tasks that require elevation
Refactor applications into elevated/non-elevated pieces
Flexible promt behavior for administrators
Customer Value: Users can do even more as a standard user (for instance change time zone) and administrators will see fewer UAC Elevation Prompts. MS has done a lot to evaluate user submitted data of their user experiences. Users will be able to do more in Windows 7 then in Vista.
Desktop Auditing
Simplidied configuration results in lower TCO
Demonstrate why a person has access to specific information
Understand why a person has been denied access to specific informatioin
Track all changes made by specific people or groups
Advanced Security Settings for Global File SACL (Photo taken) – you can then find when and who is poking around on the system.
UAC Control
Set the level for what level the UAC should prompted you on. You can no longer turn UAC off, but can set it to never prompt me. More or less the same? You can now look at the BitLocker state on your disk without getting prompted. Users can run updates without getting prompted. You set the level of UAC. You can also prevent them from doing so.
Securing Anywhere Access
Network Security
Windows Firefall can coexist with 3rd party products
Multi-Home Profiles – with Vista you can only have one such Home profile.
DNSSec
Network Access Protection (NAP)
Ensure that only “healthy” machines can access corporate data
Enable “unhealthy” machines to get clean before they gain access
NAP is the same as for Vista. Just as UAC, NAP is here to stay
DirectAccess
Same experiences accessing corporate resources inside and outside the office
Seamless connection increases productivity updates and policies
Seamless connection increases productivity of mobile users
Easy to service mobile PCs and distribute updates and policies
Built on Open Standards, IPv6 and IPSec. Not many people has IPv6 deployed. Torado protocol to tunnel IPv6 over an IPv4 network. Use Kerberos token. Cisco VPN also use IPSec. It is the VPNless VPN…
AppLocker
Application Control
Users can install and run non-standard application. Run applications from USB sticks and non-standard applications.
Even standard users can install some types of software
unauthorized applications may:
- introduce malware
- Increase helpdesk calls
- Reduce user productivity
Simple Rule Strcture: Allow, Exception & Deny
Publisher Rules: Product Publisher, Name, Filename & Version
Multiple Policies: Executables, installers, scripts & DLLs
Rule creation tools & wizard
Audit mode only
He actually mentioned somebody bloged about blocking Google apps. I guess that was my blog …
(Photo of a white list)
Publisher – Path – Hash are different ways of blocking/allowing applications. You can set version number, but also allow higher version number. Then you don’t have to maintain the white list every time there is a patch. You can also allow applications from a Publisher, for instance Microsoft, and you allow one specific application or a suite of applications. You can also allow a specific user or a group of users to use an application that is banned for the rest of the organization.
More about AppLocker tomorrow – First lecture, 9 o’clock.
Internet Explorer 8
(foto)
Freedom from intrusion – Social Engineering and Exploits
Reduce unwanted communications
Protection from harm: Browser and Web Server Exploits.
Protect Data
RMS, EFS and BitLocker
30 % of lost data is from lost devices.
BitLocker To Go
USB external devices (sticks and drives)
Create group policies to mandate the use of encryption
Now supports the FAT filesystem from Windows 7.
New Key Protectors for BitLocker
- Domain Recovery Agent (DRA)
- Smart Card – data volumes only
Windows 7 has a bunch of new GPOs for BitLocker. You can now set the minimum pin length. Deny write access to removable media if it is not BitLocker protected. A BitLocker protected device only give write access to other Windows 7 machines, but read access to XP SP2, Vista and Windows Server 2008.
You can choose between passphrase or smart card for your removable devices.