Timberline Employee Blog

For more than two decades I have been convinced that IBM PC clone based personal computers were the most cost effective way to compute. Fifteen years ago I operated a small local BBS on DOS and OS/2 operating systems. On that BBS we featured Fidonet messages and its accompanying Filebone freeware and shareware files.

One day I noticed a set of floppy images in my in folder. I found out that day that Linux was born. I tried it and discarded it. Almost a decade later, I now have Linux on 95% of the servers I build. The turning point for Linux was when easy CDROM based distributions started coming complete with GUI interfaces. GUI, while unnecessary for servers, is entirely necessary for self taught knowledge if only for multiple windows. Multiple windows can be opened and viewed at the same time. A help window and an application window or terminal window open at the same time can do wonders over a plain terminal or DOS window with ‘help’ or ‘man’. Sure you can swap to different screens but reading cryptic help messages and remembering after swapping screens can sometimes be problematic.

About this point I’ve used Macs for school and only very minimally for work. The online community has had a lot of OS Snobs. I never took Apple seriously, guilty of reverse snobbery. As far as I knew the added monetary cost of Mac equipment has either caused these people to be snobs because they spent too much and it had to get out of thier systems -or- they were already rich snobs. Either way, not for me at this time. Most of the applications I could find were all for purchase and expensive.

Windows from the ground up has been great as a single user multitasking operating system. It truly wasn’t good until WFW 3.11 when networking was introduced as part of the Windows package. And it truly hasn’t been great afterwords. Windows 98 is the closest thing to great that Microsoft has had since. I’m basing that in time to install, patch, load helper programs and plug-ins, and secure. Windows ME flopped. Windows XP added a lot of eye candy. Everybody likes eye candy and the Games. Windows XP does do better at the gaming experience except for Dungeon Keeper 2 which must be played on Windows 98 (I’m still looking to see if Leopard and Wine can do it.).

So lets go jump to 2004. Linux is great for file, web, and email servers. If you are not locked into vendor browsers and readers, Linux also makes for a good desktop. Windows XP is great at a user ‘experience’ but is poor on time invested on up-keep.  What is this OSX people have been talking about? Is it really built up on a Linux/Unix type foundation? It sounds interesting. Let me look up online what I can find out… Hmm still too much OS Snobbery clouding out the people who want to help.

Jump back to 2007. Vista. Before Microsoft it was singular. You could only look at one vista. Now Microsoft has pluralized Vista into too many options. The parties involved at Microsoft who pluralized Vista into more than three platforms probably work at Apple or even for somebody that Microsoft stomped upon to get to where it is at. I had a notebook with Vista on it. I returned it to the store I bought it. I have a PC with a free Vista upgrade. The upgrade is still sitting on my desk unopened. Vista has more eye candy and dashboard plug-ins than XP, but nobody can convince me of its main selling point, security. Microsoft as a business is built on upgrading, how do you convince people must upgrade unless what they have is unsecure? The face of computing has evolved since Microsoft incorporated but the business model in this arena has not. Driver support and corporate lock-in aside, ultimately for me it came down to the number of versions of Vista that turned me away. Vista caused me to to not buy a notebook, or rather Vista caused me to return the notebook I purchased. This must cost the manufacturer even more. Not only a lost sale, but a return to process.

What now? I finally need to replace some old equipment. Boot camp? What is Boot camp? This is starting to sound promising in the computing world. There is a notebook designed to run Windows XP and is being actively marketed and it is called Mac.

I picked up a MacBook Pro, upgraded to Leopard (OSX 10.5), ran the Boot Camp install, and installed XP from my own disks. All the necessary XP drivers are included on the Leopard disks. I found out later I needed the non Leopard restore disks to install iLife 08.

I’m quite happy now. Windows XP games and business apps work. My new notebook has Wireless N and bluetooth. If I install VMware Fusion, I can even run Dungeon Keeper 2. If I wanted to, I could even skip boot camp and run everything in VMware Fusion. I have found a lot of freeware ported from the same free software movements that are propelling Linux.

If your attachments are nearing 10 megabytes or more, then yes they are too big. Many email servers only let messages of 10 megabytes or less through. File encoding also takes up some of this space so I use estimate 7 megabytes is what you’re left with.

One option is to tell Outlook Express to split messages up. There are a few pitfalls here. If the party you are sending to email client cannot recombine the message, you are left with several messages full of junk. If not all the messages come through you are left with junk too.

To automatically split messages:

1. Open Tools/Accounts, select the email account you want to change, and click Properties.
2. Click the Advanced tab
3. Under Sending, click Break apart messages larger than…
4. Enter 7000 kb for the break size. This is slightly less than 7 megabytes and is a good approximate number to keep under the 10 megabyte including encoding limit.
5. Save your changes.

Splitting is automatic. Test by sending yourself a large attachment.

Updated 9/28/2007

Did you need to run the Shoretel version 7 client on Windows 2000? Shoretel has dropped support for Windows 2000 clients while at the same time is not certifying Shoretel versions less than 7 to work with the latest necessary Microsoft server security patches. So if you to were forced to update to version 7 while you still have some Windows 2000 Workstations in use, this trick may help you out.

The Shoretel client upgrade is blocked with a message about NETWORK SERVICE not available. Simply create a user called NETWORK SERVICE and then run the client upgrade again. It worked for me on ST7 v.12.5.8107.0.

I have found a few programs to relatively securely encrypt email and files. One of those is the GPG Gnu Privacy Guard.

So now that you’ve decided to converse by email, you’ve learned that every email you send can be stored forever on some obscure server your email made its way through.So what do you do now?Simply, encrypt.

One tool, GnuPG, is a GPL licensed encryption engine. It doesn’t do anything by itself. However when combined with a few other tools Outlook integration is only a few steps away. I used Gpg4WIN from gpg4win.org. It includes the whole suite of tools needed to interface Outlook and the GnuPG encryption engine. The site is a German site and the included documents are in German so I chose to download the light package without documents. If you look around you can find an English manual.

After installing you will need to generate a key using your name, email, and a good pass phrase using the GNU Privacy Assistant, GPA for short. Don’t loose your password. You will need it.

For secured communications with an outside party, that party must also have GPG software installed and you must exchange your public keys. Once you install their key on your computer you can encrypt emails automatically using a combination of your key and their key.

The second thing Gpg4WIN does for you is it allows you to sign your email against your public key. It is recommended that you email your public key to just those you communicate with and to avoid posting your key to the public key servers as it is possible for spammers to harvest emails from them. The easiest way to email your key to open up the WinPT Key Manager, right click on your key, and select send key to mail recipient.

Outlook Express needs a plug-in running in your system tray when you wish to sign or encrypt emails. You can download gpgoe from wald.intevation.org/projects/gpgoe. Only message bodies are encrypted with this plug-in, attachments and subject lines are not encrypted. To automatically encrypt attachments, use Sylpheed-Claws instead of Outlook Express. This program is included in the Gpg4WIN download but is not installed by default. The party on the other end will also need to run something other than Outlook Express to automatically decrypt your emails with attachments.

Encryption can be thought of like a lock on a door. It keeps the honest people out. As computers become faster and given enough time and processor power any encryption key can be broken. If security is of the utmost concern then don’t use a public method of communication. The key is here is to consider the cost of breaking in verses the payoff.