The Unspoken Horrors of IT

We all know the kinds of things that happen in front of a keyboard and computer monitor.

The kinds of things you wouldn't really want to discuss with Nana... Or Mum... Or any polite company really.

Which is fine!

Those that know me know, I'm certainly no conservative (Hi mum!)

I'm more than happy for people to do whatever unspeakable act they like bathed in the glow of their LCD screens... Today however, during the normal course of our duties, we were confronted with the gory aftermath of such escapades.

A laptop came in for repair and it was simply filthy. Apparently a "Glass of water" had been spilt on it, but upon further investigation, we wondered at the possible divity of the user as the "water" seemed very much like "Red Wine".

All thoughts of divinity were quashed when we noticed some suspicious looking stains on the T and Y keys.

"There's no way" the team all thought, experiencing a rare, collective recoil... But we just had to know.

It happens that where we work we have access to black lights and people trained in the CSI style use of them. And with very little prompting one such trained professional proceeded to investigate our suspect stains... And confirmed our fears.

Suspicious and unsettling white stains - Photo by Tyson

"The stains are most likely a bodily fluid"

Those... white... stains... are... a... Bodily Fluid...

The mind BOGGLES!

Why in the name of all that's holy would you present a computer for repair so recently after, what can only be described as, having sex with it?

Why, sweet Christ, not use a tissue or wet wipe when finished?

Let me tell you in the cold light of day, far removed from the intense solo passions of an evening "family movies", the reality sinks in... This dude just had sex with his computer... Then split red wine on it... THEN asked us to fix it for him.

Bravo, anonymous porno jerk off guy... BRAVO!

The Global Hive Mind

http://www.ted.com/talks/chris_anderson_how_web_video_powers_global_innovation.html

Please if you do nothing else today, at least have a look at this! This inspiring video reminds me why I got into IT. It's a talk on the power of Web Video, by Chris Anderson (who may have a vested interest in the topic but his insights are eye opening.)

The basic premise is that now web video is so accessible interesting things are happening. People are learning and developing skills and ideas faster than ever before.

It’s clear evidence that a global network such as the internet, has the potential to significantly improve on the educational capacity of the human race. Thus improving the quality of life for millions (possibly that'll be even be billions).

The really exciting part, is that this rapid exchange of ideas that is now possible, and accessible to many over the internet, will inevitably forge better ideas faster.

The issue then becomes, making access to this vital educational tool ubiquitous. It is of paramount importance that this technology reach as many people as possible, and hearing from, Christopher Makau towards the end of the talk, that seems like it could be a reality sooner than we think.

Rant - Grrr Cloud

OK I’ve just got to say it... What is it with these people and “The Cloud”?!
Anyone who reads this blog, yes both of you, (hi Mum) knows that the Cloud as a networking concept has existed for decades. It’s only recently that it’s become a fashionable marketing accessory.

(That’s a joke BTW, there’s no way my Mum reads this blog.)

The Cloud is a conceptual hook to represent a large network... Often the internet. It’s an umbrella concept used to simplify the complexities of large networks, similar to what the concept of Traffic is, to Cars and roads. Basically it’s a mental get out of jail free card “Don’t worry about that bit it’s in the Cloud.”

I can show you network diagrams from the 90s that use clouds to represent large networks and the internet.

So now finally the rest of the world is catching on to the concept. But that bugs me! I see all these sales, marketing and management people carrying on about how wonderful the cloud is going to make everything... Do they realise they’re using a synonym for “the Internet”?

There’s nothing new in these “Cloud Services” certainly nothing you couldn’t achieve with a couple of big data centres’ and some clever scripting. But that’s the rub, that’s all we’re seeing from Cloud Platforms... Put your stuff in a data centre and run some clever scripts on it. It’s primarily just marketing Bollocks and it annoys me.

Some bright spark (probably Eric Schmidt) has coined a term to hook public interest in internet services by giving it a cool name.

So anyway I’m now gunna get back to scripting my documents to synchronise with a FTP server hosted offshore. Probably quicker to say I’m “Clouding” my stuff.

Long time no Blog

Hmmm it’s ages between posts.

This is largely due to the fact that I'm spending a lot of my time in Azeroth.

Yup! I’m back on the WoW.

But didn’t I post this... and this... Ranting about how MMOs like WoW is destroying gaming? Well yeah, but in my defense much has changed!

It’s been made “Casual Friendly” which is frequently interpreted by the more dedicated fans as “noobifed”. Well compared to the hardcore I am a noob and I for one am loving the changes. It’s easier to get groups together for dungeons and they are, as a rule, much more successful than the groups I remember from back in the day.

So there you have it! No posts because I’ve been raiding Ice Crown Citadel. Dam Lich King is going down!

Windows 7 Firewall

Recently I've been looking into the Firewall built into the Windows 7 Client and I must say I’m pretty impressed with the levels of flexibility and power I’ve seen so far.

To expose this functionality you’ll need to open;

Windows Firewall with Advanced Security (you can just search for that from the start menu)

Now this stuff may not work for you but my objective was to lock Windows down tighter that a fishes arsehole! I mean think about it! Why should every application on your PC be allowed uncontrolled access to the internet? Whose PC is it? Whose internet bandwidth is it? Is it yours? Or are you just going to gift it to whoever wrote the apps you choose to install?

No. No. NO!

We’re IT pros! WE say what happens on our PCs. Not Steve Jobs, not Larry and Sergey and certainly not the cool guys that wrote that crack and keygen for that game you played once and then uninstalled!

Think you don’t need to worry? One command for you my friend;

Netstat -aon

Go on, go run it now… I’ll wait. I’m happy to wait, I’m just an article on the internet.

If netstat’s too hard to interpret check out TCP View. (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897437.aspx ) it’s a bit friendlier and runs in real-time. Alternatively you could always pull out network monitor and just have a little look at all your outbound traffic.

So do you know what half to the crap running there does? I didn't.

So I’ve set myself the challenge of creating a functional machine with no “allow all” rules either inbound or outbound. OK there is one notable exception to this challenge, the Xbox 360. I’ve allowed all incoming connections, this is not best practice. But the risk for the 360 is minimal and I need to ensure a consistent WAF (Wife Approval Factor) as the 360 is her main source of media content. So I’m not playing media center extender rules… Yet. I’m sure I’ll eventually find an article on configuring MCE for the 360.

So the first step is to break everything! Block outgoing connections;

The Box labeled 4 indicates you should do this on all profiles.

Now would be a good time to run your netstat -aon again. Just to get a picture of what a connectionless machine looks like. Might be a good idea to restart first.

So now you can jump into the outbound rules and create exceptions for what you need.

You’ll note there are a bunch of rules that are built in. I’ve left these as they are for now. Looking at it there are some things I could live without but that can be addressed in another article.

Creating a rule is easy just right click out bound rules and select new rule. Then there's a wizard. I'm not going to screen dump all that, it's pretty obvious. I will say when creating port rules for outbound connections, you are interested only in Remote ports. Local ports don't matter as much here.

So at first I created a port rule for 80 and 443 allowing all… "Allowing all"!? WRONG!

I amended that so that it was a Program Rule allowing 80 and 443 for Chrome. Sweeeet!

As you can see I’ve banged in other things I think I need. To create rules allowing Windows Update you need to create Custom Rules and then select the services button. Allow 80 and 443 for Windows Update and BITS.

Only you know what you'll need and it'll probably take a bit of time and patience. This page has some rules for other common applications http://npr.freei.me/firewallrules.html and is a good spot to start. First things to get going is windows updates (see above) and updates for your anti-virus applications.

From here the challenge is going to be defining rules for all the games I play now, and any new games as they are installed. OK I'll admit it’s still not tighter than a fishes arsehole BUT it is a work in progress and it’s better than it was. 

Network Monitor

Ok I’ve posted enough rants about the state of the Gaming Industry recenetly. Now it’s time get back to the hardcore tech!

Over the past fortnight, I’ve been working like a dog on issues around a new firewall implementation. I won’t go into those issues because quite frankly, they’re pretty boring. However I’ll talk about one thing I’d recommend any IT pro or enthusiast become familiar with.

The art of Network Packet Analysis.

Being the Microsoft fan boy that I am :) ... I’ve been using Network Monitor and it’s been serving me well troubleshooting issues with my bastard firewall implementation.

So to begin your journey into the wonderful world of layers 2 and 3, you can load up NetWork monitor and then select what interface you want it to listen on. Then select New Capture.

Then click start

As soon as you click start you’ll see there’s probably a whole bunch of frames streaming in and your brain will be frozen by data overload (well ok mine usually will be anyway).

In this situation it’s a good idea to filter your data. To start with select the display filter

Now try these filters;

To filter by address Ipv4.address == 192.168.1.1 (or what ever IP your like)

To filter by port tcp.port == 80 (port 80 is for web traffic but we all know that... check this link out for more ports!)

To filter by application Conversation.ProcessName == "wspsrv.exe"

Note you can string multiple filters together by using an “and”.

Once you’ve found data that is relevant you can right click on a frame and select Find Conversations, obviously this will show you all frames in a given conversation.

Interpreting the data provided by an application like this can be tricky but the more you do it the better you become at it. I would encourage anyone working in the field to become at least vaguely familiar with tools like this one.

The Economics of Ease

This may seem like a middle aged bloke pining for his youth, but let me just say; Games today are nowhere near as difficult as they were when I was young.

Yes there is a certain amount of nostalgia associated with that statement; however it’s also an irrefutable fact! I’ll even go on to say the reason games are easier is purely economic.

Back in the 80s (Haha! More nostalgia!) one of the primary sources of high end gaming experiences was the local arcade. Or in my case, having grown up in a small rural community, it was back in the 90s you could play Mortal Kombat at the local Laundromat. Nevertheless when on holidays I’d locate the nearest coin-ops and pump the majority of my spending money into them. My spending money was by no means meagre however it never really lasted more than a day.

These games were hard, unfriendly to new players and bloody addictive. As a result my brothers and I experienced game play in 3 minutes blocks between which we’d frantically feed our parents hard earned coins into that tiny but insatiable slot. The response was almost Pavlovian;

• “Warrior needs food badly...” = insert 20c
• “Woah! Shell Shocked!” = insert $1
• “Game over... Continue?” = insert whatever we’ve got left!

Now with the benefit of hindsight the economic incentive for this level of difficulty is obvious. And just as obvious is the incentive we had to be better at the games we played.

  

This level of difficulty was mirrored on the home systems we enjoyed. The arcade ports were just as difficult and the titles developed exclusively for the home platforms shared this apparent contempt for the player. But as a wise man pointed out while we discussed this very issue; there were far fewer gamers back in the “good ol’ days” and the kinds of people who enjoyed games also enjoyed more intellectual pursuits.

 
Find a gamer in the 80s or 90s and chances are they would enjoy chess, puzzles and generally derive value from things that required skill and cunning. These attributes characterised the games we played as youths. Yes they were hard; but with this level difficulty, also came a high level of satisfaction when you managed to achieve victory!

  

Then the rabble came. I blame Sony. Their slick marketing of the Playstation brought gaming into popular culture and as it became less of a niche pursuit the difficulty of games was diminished.

 
This time the economic incentive was to sell more games to people who would play at home. So as the demographic broadened then by necessity the skill and cunning required to enjoy games was lessened. If game got a reputation for being unforgiving fewer of this new wave of gamers would be willing to shell out cash for a copy. Who wants to pay to be punished? Actually don’t answer that.

  

But it gets worse because then the MMOs came. These games are all about extracting as much cash as possible for the audience but instead of inserting coins every 3 minutes you insert credit card details every month. The value proposition of an MMO is so much greater than that of an arcade game but they’ve achieved that by flattening the difficulty curve to such an extent that a human doesn’t even have to be at the keyboard to be successful! If a game is so repetitive that it can be botted; how can it really be all that interesting? As I’ve said before this is a dangerous concession to the lowest common denominator and it’s made entirely as an economic decision.

 Just look at the Nintendo Wii. It has out sold the Xbox 360 and Play Station 3 presumably on the premise that it’s more accessible thus securing a larger market. But that may be to the platforms own detriment. The Wii may well the best selling console but it’s also the least played (ref http://www.edge-online.com/news/nielsen-wii-has-lowest-user-activity )

I don’t want to come off as a grumpy old man caught up in the nostalgia of his youth. I think it’s great that games now have a wider audience; as the capital generated by this larger player base has facilitated the production some really entertaining titles. It’s just that these titles are designed so the majority of players will be able to witness the final cinematic.

  

All hope is not lost though as there also seems to be a bit of trend towards ramping up difficulty ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon's_Souls#Reception ). Maybe we’ll witness the creation of a new subgenre, Hardcore games for Hardcore gamers.

 
Whatever happens I really hope that games in general aren’t diminished by their acceptance into a larger market.