Comments for Technology for Mortals

Comment on Tomshardware redeems themselves with new flash versus hard drive energy efficiency tests by 4.0

4.0 — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:05:33 +0000

Your post really helps in promoting energy efficient technologies. Great!

Comment on BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5 installation nightmares by Digital Lemmonade » Blog Archive » BlackBerry Server installation issues

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:33:21 +0000

[...] http://www.formortals.com/blackberry-enterprise-server-5-installation-nightmares/ [...]

Comment on Microsoft’s Achille’s Heel by Jed

Jed — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 18:39:53 +0000

And this is the reason I like http://www.formortals.com. Surprising posts.

Comment on An introduction to VLAN Trunking by George Ou

George Ou — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:01:22 +0000

I don’t agree with that advice Phil. It might be better to use physical networks in theory, but it’s so darn impractical that you end up sacrificing security because of cost considerations. There’s a finite budget for security and it’s better to spend the money elsewhere than trying to stick with a small theoretical advantage to physical network separation.

VLANs are only insecure if the switch gets hacked (fairly unlikely if locked down correctly), or if you use VLAN 1 or whatever the native VLAN is on the switch which opens the possibility for VLAN hopping. But if you implement VLANs and layer 2 security correctly, VLAN security is the least of your worries.

Comment on Replaced lost cell phone with cheap Nokia 1661 by Francine

Francine — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 04:03:41 +0000

Thank you, thank you! Worked like a charm!

Comment on An introduction to VLAN Trunking by Phil

Phil — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 20:03:10 +0000

You really should mention that VLANS have security considerations of their own. From the SANS website:

Recommendations

Try not to use VLANs as a mechanism for enforcing security policy. They are great for segmenting networks, reducing broadcasts and collisions and so forth, but not as a security tool.

If you MUST use them in a security context, ensure that the trunking ports have a unique native VLAN number.

Comment on Problems with Lingo VoIP phone service by chuck

chuck — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 17:26:02 +0000

When trying to call us some people always receive message that call cannot be completed or that the number is not working. That is when they are calling from most traditional phone service I think. They can reach our number with no problems when calling from cell phones. It is not all land based line phones that have problems reaching our number…just those two that we know of but now many do we not know about??? This has happened since we switched to Lingo.

Comment on Implementing VLAN trunking by Bob Caulk

Bob Caulk — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 22:49:48 +0000

Michelle Obama gave advice. She did not give advise. Someone could as her to advise . . .

Comment on BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5 installation nightmares by Peter Barrett

Peter Barrett — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 10:47:18 +0000

Just thought I’d drop a line to say “thanks” for this article. We are currently running an evaluation of BES 5 installed on Windows Server 2008, and experienced the issue of not being able to connect to the web console. After finding the article and following the suggestions it is now working fine, so once again thanks.

Comment on Review of The Evoluent Vertical Mouse by Justin James

Justin James — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:59:28 +0000

@Mike Perry

Mike -

Send me an email at j_james [at] mindspring [dot] com

J.Ja