Windows Vista SP1

I have 4 computers that run Windows Vista. Two desktop computers and two laptop computers. All except for one run Windows Vista Ultimate. One of the laptops (a tablet PC) runs Windows Vista Business. For some reason, one of my desktops picked up on SP1 and offered to install it, to which I accepted. The other 3 however, have not said one thing via Windows Update about SP1. Even when I force a check for updates... nothing! Ahhhh, the mysteries of Microsoft.

How is Symantec still in business?

Some companies continue to survive, despite their own best efforts. Case in point: Symantec.

When my company was looking into purchasing Symantec Enterprise Vault, I literally called their sales department 6 times trying to speak to someone to ask them a few questions. I actually left them a message that I had $20,000 ready and waiting for their software, all they had to do was call me back. No call... really...

I recently installed Symantec Endpoint Protection 11 on a computer to test. Very first thing it did was break my wireless connection. Upon searching (I love you, Google), it turns out that it's a known issue that SEP11 breaks WPA and WPA2 authentication. When I try to pull up the link to the Symantec support article to see if there's a fix (it's been known for at least 4 months now), Symantec.com is down. Down. Really. Down. They probably tried to use their own product to protect their servers.

Last Thursday, Hotmail started blocking emails from my company's server. Turns out that Symantec Brightmail, which Hotmail uses for spam filtering, seems to think that our IP has been compromised. You know, the IP that is protected by another one of their products, Symantec Endpoint Protection. Of course, after some Googling (yes, it's a verb, too) I found several blogs from people like me who were blocked recently. Probably someone at Symantec pushed the wrong button. But the irony remains that they blacklisted a mail server that was protected by them...

RatemyCop.com

There are various news stories floating around about RatemyCop.com. Most of them center around Police agencies being up in arms about someone's right to have their views heard on a public forum. The funny thing about this is, I don't think many people would have heard of the website if the cops hadn't raised a ruckus about trying to get it shut down.

A word about passwords...

If you’re protecting something of value, you need more than just a lock. You need to manage the keys. For some reason, people at my company don't feel inclined to create decent passwords, and then keep them to themselves.

Weewar map editor

Weewar has a map editor now. Thankfully, as I was starting to tire of the same old maps. I threw a new map together and will try it out. As a rookie map editor, the only way I could make sure the map wasn't one sided was to make it mirror image. I suppose with enough thought I could make a more random looking map, but I'm still new to this.