What the %&#$ is Wrong?

So, I heard you have a sinkhole..

I know what can fix a sinkhole… Photoshop CS5′s Content Aware Fill

There…  good as new.

Recently there has been a humongous amount of groups that have been making Facebook full of fail.  It’s starting to make Facebook a lower class of social networking that almost makes it feel like MySpace. It started to be cute with the “1,000,000 strong to blah blah blah” but it’s now becoming asinine.

Here are some groups that are absolutly full of fail:

Anything from “Spambook”

The asshole that started this webpage made it so you can mindlessly spam everyone on your friends list by simply going to his page a clicking the like button on one of his listed items. Someone that is a friend of mine joined the group that joined the “Count to 20000″ group and it took me 53 hits of the Page Down button to scroll past it. After looking at this guy’s twitter, he’s obviously just a /b/tard that is trying to do it for “the lulz”. What he doesn’t realize is that is he in in fact 100% full of fail. p

Any groups that offer you free game crap.

I don’t mind that you play the games on Facebook. I don’t mind that you occasionally post something on your wall about your accomplishments. What annoys me, is that you think it’s a great ideas to join stupid groups that try and promise you free crap for the games you are playing.  You are not going to get anything, there is no “hidden exploit” in the game, there is no secret items.  Just save yourself some face and quit joining these groups.

Groups that make you Like them to see what they are about.

A classic bait and switch. They make you like their page for you to see what you are liking, and as a result others that are friends of yours do the same. These groups are just plain annoying because you want to know what they contain, but you don’t want to click the damn like button to spam all of your friends with something stupid.

Here are some examples of some of these stupid groups:

Guaranteed – 9 in 10 people get hypnotized into sleeping after seeing this!!
PROVEN – Men are NOT able to see a TREE in this Illusion BUT ALL Women CAN!!

Groups about Facebook starting to charge to use it.

Facebook will never start charging to use the product…. never.  Even thinking that they might in the future is just stupid.  This is just carry-over crap from rumors that were on MySpace years ago about MySpace starting to charge for their services.  Anyone who joins these kind of groups or believes that it actually will happen needs their head examined…. seriously…

Some examples of stupidity:
Will myspace charge money for making accounts? – Yahoo Answers
We Will Not Pay To Use Facebook.Need As Many Members Possible To Stop This!

Ipredator, The Pirate Bay’s new VPN service has just been released.

Governmental and ISP tracking of what you do online no longer has to be a worry. “Pirates” can now sigh with relief and everything can proceed as it did before when governmental agencies and ISP’s came cracking down on sites like The Pirate Bay, Suprnova, Mininova, etc.  Freedom the internet has returned.. well.. at the price of 5 Euros a month

Ipredator VPN service enjoys the strongest legal protection possible under Swedish Law because of the service type (pre-paid flat-rate service). This means that Ipredator do not have to keep an ordinary customer database (to be able handle transactions etc.). This is of importance if forced to hand over information.

So, wtf is wrong?

At this time, the biggest complaints are that it doesn’t explicitly say that they do not keep logs on their site, but BoingBoing was told by former Pirate Bay spokesperson Peter Sunde that it is indeed the case that they do not keep logs.   Many comments so far are saying they will not sign up for the service unless it specifically says that in their terms and conditions.  We will see if The Pirate Bay listens to the people and puts that promise in black and white.

Also, there are a few people that are not happy that they use the PPTP protocol for the service, due to a few vulnerabilities that are well documented.  Many of the potential subscribers are asking for Open VPN support to be incorporated into their system for a clean, trustworthy open-source system.

SaumZ

For those of you who don’t know what ActiveSync is, it is a data synchronization program developed by Microsoft for use with its Microsoft Windows line of operating systems.

This will enable our iPhone and other smart phone users to be able to get their email just like our people that have blackberries can.

So, I started off by doing what anyone else would do, turn it on and test.

I did the following from Microsoft Technet

1. On the Exchange front-end server that is running Exchange ActiveSync, log on with the Exchange administrator account, and then start Exchange System Manager.
2. Expand Global Settings, right-click Mobile Services, and then click Properties.
3. On the Mobile Services Properties page, in the Exchange ActiveSync pane, select or clear the check box next to Enable user initiated synchronization.
4. Click OK

Easy enough, so let’s try and test this out. Well, it didn’t work and I had a error message to work with which was this:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: MSExchangeOMA
Event Category: (1000)
Event ID: 1503
Date: 9/4/2008
Time: 9:54:44 AM
User: N/A
Computer: Exchange Server Name
Description:

An unknown error occurred while processing the current request:
Message: The remote server returned an error: (403) Forbidden.
Source: Microsoft.Exchange.OMA.ExchangeDataProvider

Stack trace:
at Microsoft.Exchange.OMA.ExchangeDataProvider.OmaWebRequest.GetRequestStream()
at Microsoft.Exchange.OMA.ExchangeDataProvider.ExchangeServices.GetSpecialFolders()
at Microsoft.Exchange.OMA.ExchangeDataProvider.ExchangeServices..ctor(UserInfo user)

Forbidden – … ok?! Well, after some googling, I came across this workaround for this issue. I guess if you have SSL and forms based authentication in place, this just doesn’t work. So, what you need to do is following method 2 of this article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/817379/

I would highly suggest you do this workaround during a downtime. I did mine in the middle of the day, and my SMTP Virtual Server didn’t exactly want to start back up automatically and I didn’t catch it right away causing a few people to get messages stuck in their outbox. Yes n00b move on my part, but oh well.

So – we tested the phone again. Still isn’t working. Ok… time to go back to the event viewer. Yup – something there.

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Server ActiveSync
Event Category: None
Event ID: 3005
Date: 9/8/2008
Time: 3:31:14 PM
User: Username
Computer: Exchange Server

Description:

Unexpected Exchange mailbox Server error: Server: [Server Name] User: [E-Mail Address] HTTP status code: [400]. Verify that the Exchange mailbox Server is working correctly.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

hmmm – yup, the server is running. What else could it be. *scratches head*

After not finding much on google, I decided to dig into Microsoft’s forums a bit. There was one solution that I found here. And it links to another forums here.

A person by the username twisty168 has figured out a very simple solution to this issue, which is the following:

1. Open IIS Manager
2. Navigate to Websites -> right click on “Default web site” and click on properties.
3. On the web site tab click on advanced
4. Under “Multiple identities for this website” click on the default entry and click on edit
5. I made the following changes – IP address: (All Unssigned), TCP port:80, Host Header Value: “Blank”
6. Click ok and restart IIS Admin Service (warning will disconnect clients) to be sure!

We tested the phone, and it works!

A couple things to watch out for is this error message. After doing some reading on it, it means nothing and you can ignore it.

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Server ActiveSync
Event Category: None
Event ID: 3005
Date: 9/9/2008
Time: 9:45:26 AM
User: Username
Computer: Exchange Server
Description:

Unexpected Exchange mailbox Server error: Server: [Server Name] User: [E-Mail Address] HTTP status code: [409]. Verify that the Exchange mailbox Server is working correctly.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

I hope this helps out everyone else that may be needing help with this issue!

SaumZ

Today, Google announced that they are launching their Google Public DNS service.

According to Google, the new Public DNS service will do the following for a user,

• Speed up your browsing experience.
• Improve your security.
• Get the results you expect with absolutely no redirection.

They go into more detail on their site on how this will make it better for everyone based on those three statements.

As a technology purist, I love that they 100% follow the DNS standards. Not even OpenDNS can offer that, but I also wonder why Google is coming out with such a service.

Here are some ideas:

1. Stepping Stone for Google OS:  One thing they could be doing is provide a controlled and secured base for their Google OS, which Google has said it going to be mainly internet based.  This will cut out the middle-man when they are supporting or troubleshooting issues or improvements to their OS.
2. To improve their Adwords program:  They could use the permanent data that they are keeping in their logs to help out with providing a system for targeted advertising.  Targeted advertising would help increase the cost per ad, due to advertisers having more confidence in reaching their intended target.  I can see this being an additional service on top of their general Adwords program that they currently have so they do not disrupt their current client base, but provide organic growth with their more sophisticated clients.
3. Public Relations: One thing you can count on with Google Public DNS is getting a clean result without redirection.  I know with my ISP, Qwest, I get hijacked returns.  But, with Qwest, I have an option to opt out of their “Qwest Web Help” service that was giving me back a hijacked DNS redirection. Now that I opted out, it still shows me a Qwest site, but saying that there is a DNS issue, no more ads.  There are also reports of other large ISP’s like Comcast doing the same thing, but without any way to opt out. Google also has a highly visible privacy policy so you know that they will be doing with your data. A lot of ISP’s do not provide such a easy to find policy, so it makes you wonder what they do with your information. All of the pure technology and improved security with the Google Public DNS will cause people to trust Google over their own ISP, which says a lot.
4. Combination of all of above:  Providing such a basic internet protocol in it’s pure and secure form will probably enable all 3 of my speculations to come true.  If that was the case, Google would have killed many birds with one stone by providing something so fundamental.

Time will tell, and I know a lot of people will be testing their new service.  I know I will be.

SaumZ