So by now I thought the world would have caught up with this massive piece of news. It occurred two days ago and I am still having trouble finding any information about it.

Google smacked China. Basically what happened was Google became aware that it was under highly advanced and targeted attacks against its Gmail section. It was originating from inside China and going after the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Then they got serious and started digging. Finding that dozens of US, European and Chinese Gmail account for activists were being routinely accessed, not through Google’s breach but through each account holders breach. Add in to all this that the attack was not just on Google but on around 20 other large companies this is massive news.

With this Google has been sharing around the information it has gathered so far with other relevant parties.

The upshot of this? When Google first entered into China, opened up offices and started up Google.cn I was impressed. I have lived in China for a while and the greatest problem there, is not the corruption, the systemic caste system of communist party members and non-members. No the greatest problem is knowledge about the world and current events. opening up Google like this could only be a good thing… and then we found out that Google would filter the results. I can see their argument, opening up the internet is a great achievement and paying for it by censoring some results was a small price. however like the rest of the world China is hurriedly going ass-backwards on how the internet should work.

So now Google has flat out said “No, no more. We will not censor results for you. if you don’t like that then we will take our ball and go home.” effectively? Suck it China.

This is amazing, this is  wonderful and yet I can’t find much information or coverage on this. The ramifications are huge. If nothing else this should force a light onto China, if Google does pull out then everyone will sit up and pay attention.

As I said the greatest problem in China is the lack of world knowledge, so the greatest threat to the Chinese government is people waking up and paying attention.

I wanted to wait over a week before I brought this up. By now I am sure most people have forgotten their resolutions or just moved on because they were unrealistic. Also because of the massive failure rate in resolutions people become jaded. A friend of mine who shall be nameless (*cough*Eamon*cough*) has gone so far as to say his resolutions is to have no resolutions.

As David Klemke already wrote over on his blog people use New Year Resolutions as dreams. That’s a good way of putting it. The majority of my friends resolutions boil down to the usual few, Cut back on drinking, play less games, lose weight, get fit, etc, etc.

They are great ideas in theory but in practice they are so nebulous that trying to achieve them is nigh impossible. Not only because you don’t have a plan but because you don’t have a goal! Cut back on drinking, as in what? Once a day, a week, an hour? What?

To achieve in a resolution you need a defined goal then you need to construct the required steps to achieve that goal. If it is lose weight, how much? So you are 100kg with 25% body fat, create a target, say 90kg and 17% and then define down how you are to go about achieving it.

New Year’s Resolutions have gone out of fashion and a lot of people make the comment of why bother making them only on New Years? Well it’s a good enough time, you might as well. Set a goal, set what you need to achieve it, track your progress and then get it done.

I tackled this problem myself like a geek. I built a spreadsheet of what I wanted to achieve each day and defined down a point system for this. At a glance I can see what I achieved on any given day and what I should achieve to feel good about myself. I am currently trying to clean it up as a few people have expressed interest in it.

It’s now 12 days after New Years. It’s no longer a New year’s Resolution, it’s a life resolution. Make one, see what happens.

I realise that people have been banging on and on about this for a while. Everyone should be aware of what my stance is on this, however I wanted to cover two points that I only really encountered recently.

First, just in case, the internet filter is a scheme by which the Australian government will filter websites at the URL level. This is being put forth as a way to protect the children, the rallying cry of people with ulterior motives.

I will not be pointing out the flaws of this service, that has already been covered many times, for more reading go here.

No, what has me more worried are two things. One, the only people who really seem to care about this are tech people. People who understand the dangers of limiting our access to a free and open internet, the people who understand the “think of the children” as a ploy. This is anecdotal, sure, but the general response from people who don’t quite understand it is “what’s your point? It’s a good thing right? it stops child porn!” I am not sure how to combat this, there does not seem to be any form of widespread movement against it, No Clean Feed are doing their best but they can only do so much. Add in the fact Conroy is being a sneaky bitch by trying to get it passed in February but will not implement anything until after the election.

The other thing that worries me more and is a growing trend to match the trend of the world’s leaders trying to filter the internet. The tech people, the people who are the best placed to understand what is going on and to do something about it. The overwhelming response? “It’s so stupid, they can put this in place but I will just get around it!” No! That is not the point! Open access to the internet is not something you should have to “get around”. What about the average user? Should we not be fighting this trend of retardation? Should we not be using our knowledge to show why open access to the internet is the best possible option?

The thing that gets most people, is you have to pay for the good with the bad. Let me explain. All forms of freedom are tempered. The freedom of speech means that you are free to speak what you believe in without fear of reprisal. The flip side is you will hear a lot of things that you don’t agree with. The freedom to access whatever reading material’s or magazine’s you want means that you have to allow porn. There is always a price. The freedom of having an unrestricted, open internet mean everyone can access what sites they want without judgement. That also means, again, lots of porn.

This all comes back to the original problem. The filtering will go through under the banner of Think of the Children. however the same argument stands. The government should not be able to judge what you can and cannot do. If you as a parent are worried about your children, how about you act like a parent and do your fucking job? do you let your children have their own machine in an unmonitored area? Then anything that happens is your fault. Do you notice your children spending hours a day on the machine? How about connecting with your children over what is it currently their main pastime.

We as tech people need to stop saying this will not affect me because we can circumvent it. We need to start doing something about educating people to the dangers of this god awful scheme. If someone says “Think of the Children” then simply help them setup OpenDNS on their children’s machine. It’s worth the effort.

I am currently studying to finish up my MCSE Exams (Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer). I started attacking this the normal way I used to study, get the giant textbooks and work my way slowly from the front to the back taking notes as I go. I was around a quarter ways through the Windows XP book when I gave up the ghost (as it was covering everything I already knew) and decided to try my hand at a practice exam.

What the hell? It’s a polite way of saying that the exams bear little to no relation to real life. If you are administering to a Windows XP box or group you need to understand the basics, fine. But the incredibly obscure questions are so patently bizarre. The problem being these exams are multiple choice as they are all graded by a computer. Fine. However the questions do not judge how good you are at problem solving, if you can tackle problems from multiple angles, the ability to use related knowledge to figure out your problem. No, the exams are mostly questions of such an obscure nature that you never know the answer and you would never NEED to know the answer. Here are a few examples from the 70-291 exam that I am studying for right now:

You need to check the logs for the Routing and Remote Access machine. Where would you find these log files?

Followed by four different path names. Should I know this off the top of my head? Maybe, does this in anyway demonstrate my ability to work effectively administrator to a Server 2003 domain? Of course not.

The amount of these problems which are simple rote memorization is staggering. In real life if you were faced with needing to check log files or which snap in to use, if you don’t recall straight away then grabbing your handy guide book or hitting up google will solve your problem. If you deploy a new DHCP Server onto a separate subnet separated by a router and you do not have a DHCP Relay in place, can you google that? No. These are the sorts of things that should be tested, showing that someone is not only capable of understanding the network but thinking their way around problems.

Add in the fact I am half way through my MSCE and I learnt more on the job in two weeks than I will learning to pass 6 exams.

I wondered how other people handle this having to learn really precise, mostly useless information. So I started digging through the wonders of the internet and found what are called brain dumps. Basically they are collections of the current exam questions with answers. A glossy way of saying cheating. These message board are filled with people vouching for the authenticity of these exams by saying:

Used these collections, passed my exam today, all the questions were on it!

I know cheating has always been a (small) part of exams but this seems to make is it incredibly easy and add in the way these brain dumps are done up they almost seem legitimate.

Ultimately I will get my piece of paper but I don’t feel good about it. Can you tell I have an exam today…? /rant

So as some of you may be aware I am leaving my current job. I was working as the sole Systems Administrator for a 20-person Accounting Firm. I have been in the position for a shade over two and a half years.

It was my first big break into computers and it was an almost ideal setup. I inherited the machines from an offsite consultant. So all he worried about was that they worked enough that no one would call him. To say they were in a shambles is a bit of an understatement.

Add to this the week that I started they were merging with another company so I had to get up to speed real fast. Just the sort of challenge any self-respecting geek loves. So I had to learn how to handle Active Directory and Exchange migration in around two weeks.

I would not say the migration went without a hitch but it was an overall success. During the following year I learnt everything I could about the systems and got a real control over the network. I then learnt how to deal with users and boss’s. How to get a project approved (get it done THEN tell people about it) and how to keep the systems online.

However with all this I worked the same way there as I do at home. When I come across a problem the first time I fix it, remembering how I achieved the solutions. If it comes up another time I write a step by step procedure of what I do to fix it. If it then happens a third time I would simply point the user to the internal knowledge base and get them to fix it themselves. I did the same thing with procedures. The first time remember how it’s done, the next time write down a procedure. However there was a third step. If I had to do it a third time, get the machine to do it. If I had to do something more than twice I would write up a simple script or macro to get the machine to do it for me. Sometimes it was simple and elegant, other times, Kludge.

So after two years of this I had automated everything. I had my new user script with attached checklist, folder creation batch file, automated backup files and replication systems. The help desk was handled via email, which pointed to my iPhone which had remote access to the systems. The time when I knew I had made it was one sunny day walking back to work from lunch.

My iPhone buzzed with an email. It was a helpdesk ticket; one of my users couldn’t alter an amended tax return. Remoting in to my work machine from my iPhone I verified this was the problem. I then access the help desk, sent a reply with the attached procedure I had already written for the user. Once done they emailed me again and I closed the ticket. All in the space of the ten minute walk back to work.

Giving all this up was and will be hard. I had nursed this broken, sluggish network into good health was hard. Setting it all up how I thought it should be done was difficult. Now? The new firm is coming in with brand new, Dual Quad Core machines with 32Gb of Ram. All the fixes and work arounds I had to create? Outmoded, no longer needed. Internal helpdesk and Knowledge base I created? No longer applicable.

Add in to all this I will be demoted to a user. I am no longer the Systems Administrator. All the shortcuts and tricks I use to work a system, locked down.  I helped them over the weekend to move everything across and to finish the migration and it really was like having someone go through my dirty laundry. They would keep coming across something and ask its purpose, it was needed for a reason in the old system. That one crappy script stopped the old Ricoh scanning software from developing a memory leak and taking down the system, or yes that macro that hits random keys for 45 minutes generates the business critical reports!

I am proud of what I achieved there; it just seems too much like I need to start all over again.