The Internet Journal has an article on this at: http://www.intranetjournal.com/articles/200811/ij_11_24_08a.html It would appear to want Microsoft to lose it’s position at the top of the Office Suite chart. I’m not sure about it yet, but I have decided to download it and try it out. After all, if it performs as advertised, then it’s usable on Windows, Mac OSX and Linux. To make it even more interesting, it uses Open Document Format by default and while it can’t handle the Office 2007 extensions yet, that will be a plugin at some point.

We had a number of odd discussions, one of which referred to password policies. I promised to provide a list of links that contain general password policy guidelines. Here are several: http://riit.smeal.psu.edu/privacy-and-security-policies/pwdpolicy.pdf http://www.psc.edu/general/policies/passwords/ http://policies.lakeheadu.ca/policy.php?pid=168 http://www2.slac.stanford.edu/computing/security/password/passwordpolicy.htm http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/tivihelp/v2r1/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.itame.doc_6.0/rev/am60_cmdref194.htm http://www.pueblo.us/documents/Policies/PasswordPolicy0106.pdf http://www.securitydocs.com/pdf/3410.PDF http://www.usm.edu/infosec/pw-policy.php I suspect that if you look through these, you will find that there is a common core of items that make the most sense. I was to also provide a link to that video I showed.

It looks like I have not bothered with a blog entry since March. A lot can happen in 6 months… Data center closure Legacy migrations to a new datacenter Server consolidation Learning more than I wanted to about VMware NetApp configuration and testing Taking on a management role Having input in setting portions of corporate direction Hiring staff (all one so far) Vacation Family crisis (yeah, the fun never ends) and lots more… It’s been a roller coaster.

That’s election week for those who can’t count, as well as Thanksgiving week. Topics: RT and interfacing to exchange and procmail Ontario Linux Fest HTCIA case study What to do with old computers Maybe some switches avaialable for those who show up? Other groups in the region

The meeting for this month was punted out to the 31, due to scheduling conflicts and OLS. No special topics, but I did run across another distribution that is supposed to work with the firebox II units I gave away a while ago. I’m going to try to set up one of the “alternate” models with that and if it works, do another session on it. Another hot topic which has reared it’s ugly head last week is the DNS vulnerability to cache poisoning.