musc@> $daniele.rant | Out-Blog

Black Tea, uploaded by Daniele Muscetta on Flickr.

Finally the first complete weekend.
After four weeks of holidays, I had pretty much got used to relax and do my stuff.
On monday 28th I started working. I worked the usual 5 days, and customers were waiting for me anxiously. I also had to work on friday night for some updates they had waited six months to do (when I was telling them "let's do this") but they could not wait anymore NOW obviously.
Then, late friday night I had weekend… sort of. Just saturday.
In fact, I had to be ready to leave early sunday morning to go to the "company meeting". Sunday and monday. Awesome. Not.
Tuesday to friday: work, work, work again.

Not THIS weekend I am doing MY stuff, actually trying to relax.
That's more my cup of tea.

Yesterday from a lot of places all over the world was possible to observe a partial lunar eclipse.

A couple of links with news and information about the event:
1) Nu.nl
2) news.com.au
3) Indianews
4) Nasa.Gov

My pic has also been published on nu.nl !

Cool. Transparency in this RC1 build finally works on my laptop. I mean, even with a DECENT resolution.
Everything is much more stable than in the previous beta1 and beta2 builds.

And yes, the background image I am using is this photo of mine.

This article shows an intersting (interesting because it is simple but effective!) approach to train SpamAssassing Bayesian spam filter by leveraging the training data in Thunderbird bayesian filter. Basically you can use a program to teach another program how to work better!
This paradigm is cool!

We already had a cat, but two days ago I found this kittten that had been abandoned and was sick, so I took it to the vet, and then home.
We accept suggestions for a name that suits her

File Screening in Windows 2003 R2 can be circumvented, but this isn't that terrible, IMHO, and I'll explain you why.
You might be wondering what the heack am I talking about. I am referring to what's written in this blog post (an old one) that I spotted only today. Here the author is referring to a MS Blog also mentioning a post about the fact that file screening in R2 can be circumvented.

Yes it can be circumvented, BUT… there are seveal "but"s I can say; In fact, I have been presenting Windows 2003 R2 to several customers and I got asked this question several times, and I usually explain this in the following way:

first, it would be too heavy of a performance hit to get and check the real "nature" of a file, rather than just its file name.
Also: how would you technically do that ? Checking some headers in the file ? In this case you would need to mantain a database of known file types, keeping it up to date as new versions of that file format appear…
and then what about executables which have been passed through a "packer"
(one of those utility that effectively shrinks them while mantaining them executable) ?
What about encrypted files ? What about… ?? It just doesn't plain work. Just like many other signature-based detection mechanisms (Antivirus or IDS). Or at least, to KEEP working needs to be constantly updated (or be useless).

The file screening thing is not meant to be impossible to circumvent, rather is a way of saying to the user that he/she's not allowed to place that content there, to get notified about that, to get this information TRACKED somewhere possibly….
Of course this can be circumvented. But is not going to be very practicle, especially when your users are USERS and are restricted so that they can't associate new extention to be opened from within their media player as you are suggesting….

Moreover, file screeing is just ONE of many features of the component called "File Server Resource Manager" in Windows 2003 R2. Those features are meant to be used altogether: So, for example, while a user COULD circumvent the restriction and copy ".mp3" files by calling them ".xyz", but then with the useful reporting an admin would very easily spot them by looking at those directory that strangely contain a lot of ".xyz" files that happen to be roughly 5MB in size (all of them)…
In the same way by using the reporting feature you could see those huge ".doc" files are actually divx by looking at the "large files" report – how many pages would you have written to get that Word document up to 700MB ?? It can't be the usual letter Mary writes, it looks a lot more like the size of Encarta… something is then fishy about it.

You get what I mean ? It won't block the user ALL the times, but it will still drastically reduce the user abilty to waste our space, and if implemented with the proper controls and procedures and preocesses (think ITIL) in place, this can still be a valuable tool.

(I also posted this answer as a comment on the above-mentioned blog).

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Looking at the computer screen, trying to understand a complex configuration…. headache. These days I am very tired, I would like to sleep more, to work less. I need holidays….

Mainly a cross post to say "me too!" or "I agree completely!".
I am referring to this blog post:

"[...]
For example, in response to "How do I write a batch file that…" some people will say, "First, install ". This doesn't actually solve the problem; it merely replaces it with a different problem.
In particular, if the solution begins with "First, install…" you've pretty much lost out of the gate. Solving a five-minute problem by taking a half hour to download and install a program is a net loss.
[...]
So be careful when you suggest a solution that has a high activation energy. Sure, something could be taken care of by a one-line perl script, but getting perl onto the machine is hardly a one-line endeavor.
[...]"

I think this is going to be the first post with the significant text written in ITALIAN on this Blog. But anyway, it will mostly make sense for italian people. It's something a friend of mine wrote, and want as many people as possible to read it. Here it is:

[...]
I had a dream.
Ho sognato che giravo per la mia città e c'erano tutte bandiere tricolori, gente che dai balconi sventola strilla "Italia Italia".
Sono convinto che sia per il fatto che la nostra Costituzione Repubblicana è stata difesa dall'attacco dei leghisti che con il tricolore si puliscono il culo.
Poi però mi sveglio e mi accorgo che si, la Costituzione è stata difesa, ma le bandiere erano per una partita di pallone. Vinta dar pupone al 94' minuto su rigore.
M'è venuto da piangere.
[...]

Playing in a band in Rome ? Want to get the best people to help you record your music ? Some friends of mine have opened a recording studio: Monkey Studio.

Also, my dad started leading some turistic trips and excursions with an association of friends. If you want to visit Rome and have a great turist guide who knows what he talks about, give them a try! The association also leads some trips in the countryside, to enjoy the nature.