Michael N. Dundas

I had the privilege yesterday of speaking to some law enforcement personnel and forensics experts.  The topic was on DNS forensics, the SSL server_name option, and working with service providers.  I enjoyed the opportunity.   I really like talking about network forensics, and being surrounded by smart people that are experts in their field. It also allows me to practice my public speaking which is always good.

The DNS section of the presentation was based on my earlier two posts on DNS analysis which are here and here.   The SSL server_name option was based on my post that is here.  The “Working with service providers” I have never really posted about yet, but have been engaged with service providers all over the world for almost 5 years consistently, so I spoke about my experiences, and thoughts.

The presentation slides are here.

As our house is being shown, I am working from a nearby Starbucks.  I have had a Starbucks card for a while now and had not used it much till recently.   I started using it because the Starbucks around here find it necessary to charge for Internet access which bothers me.  With a Starbucks card you get 2 hours free a day, so I started populating mine and using it.

I just logged in to check it while sitting here, and found they keep a history of your purchases so you can review.

I bet like most companies that provide cards, the information they store on you and analyze for research is much more extensive than what is available to you on the website.  With all this data, you could data mine quite extensively for patterns.  Questions such as What do you tend to purchase and when? What else was available in the store at the time that you didn’t purchase?  How does your pattern compare to others that purchased items in the same hour?  What is the average spending per day/week/month based on postal code?  Many other questions, but you get the idea.  I wonder if you requested to see ‘all’ the information they have obtained on you, they would actually show you?

The other reason for the Starbucks card was a friend of mine who said “The cards are great!  It’s not real money that way”.

* photo courtesy of Nigel Maine

A colleague of mine recently sent out a challenge to find ways to improve efficiency and effectiveness of satisfying customers – “delivering more things faster”.  He is looking for any suggestions, but I thought his example was a really good one, so I have posted it here.

“Are you wasting time in meetings?”  If you are or feel you are then some suggestions.

1. Leave them. If you are in a meeting for communications reasons only, demand that the organizer send minutes.

2. How many people are in the meeting? Are there more than 4 or 5 in the meeting?  If so then ask yourself why this is the case.  Do you need to be there?

3. Why is your boss or perhaps bosses boss at the meeting? It makes more sense for a single team member to attend the meeting and update the boss on the outcomes.  If the boss really wants to be there, then maybe you don’t need to be.

4.  Is a decision going to be made?  Who is going to make it?  When? If no decision is going to be made, then the meeting may just be informational.  Sure, it is good to get people in a room to brain storm and discuss ideas to move towards a decision but for these meetings you have to ask yourself it is the best use of your time to be present, or if your time is better spent on other deliverables.

5.  Why are there three people from the same department attending the same meeting?. In rare cases this might be required depending on the skill set and stack holders involved.  One of the benefits of a team is to permit work and tasks to be done in parallel.  Could one team member attend and respond to questions and bring any questions to the other team members thereby freeing them up to accomplish other deliverables?

6.  Why are you attending and not participating? Have you ever attended a meeting and realized that you are just listening and not actually participating?  Although it is a good way to learn, it might not be the most efficient use of your time.  Consider reading the minutes of the meeting when they are published.

7.  Was there a ‘stake in the sand’ presented by the meeting holder?  Why not? Meetings need to be focused on one or more goals the company is trying to achieve, otherwise why have them?  The meeting holder called a meeting with the intent to accomplish something.  It is important that is clear to everyone at the onset of the meeting.  If it isn’t clear, then one should question the value of spending the time in the meeting.

8.  Is this meeting topic a priority?  How does it help the company? At the end of the day you are there to move the company forward in it’s goals and priorities.  If the meeting is not accomplishing this, then resources are being wasted.

These may not all apply in all situations, however they are good guidelines and questions you can ask yourself as you agree to meetings and attend them.  The more efficent you are, the better you feel about what you have accomplished, the smarter you will work and the more the company and yourself will benefit.

A quick entry I have been meaning to do for a while now.  It is late and I need to get to bed.  I signed up for Facebook a couple of years ago when it was all the rage.  My wife actually singed up first and then convinced me.  It was really cool at first.  I started hooking up with friends and family.  Soon I was finding people that I hadn’t seen in a long time, friends from University, high school and to my surprise even elementary school.

Lately I find that I am rarely on Facebook.  The only reason I keep my account is that I have people I am friends with that are distant and do not yet appreciate the advantages of Twitter yet, so it is my only constant connection to them.  I started using Twitter more and more.  Rather than update my Facebook status by logging onto Facebook, I just tell Twitter to update it for me with tweets.  One problem with this approach is friends that comment on my wall or comment on my status I often miss as I am not on Facebook and email updates are annoying.  I don’t really use  any applications in Facebook.  I used to use notes but I now just use this blog for that function.  This website is easier for anyone to get to since a Facebook account is not required.  I’ve recently starting just putting links in Facebook to this website in the about me, quotations and other fields.  If you want to know about me, it makes more sense to come here.  I dislike the Facebook user interface.  All in all I am disappointed with Facebook.

I think Facebook would do much better to open up and use Twitter for status, wall updates, and reply to comments.  Facebook took an interesting step this month, allowing you to link your Gmail or OpenId account and use that for login credintials instead of requiring their own authentication.  Maybe integration with Twitter is not far off.

With the entire family now suffering from the flu (it started with me on Thu), we decided to attack the storage room today.  The storage room contains years worth of stuff and not just Anna and my life together.  There is elementary, high-school, and university items that have been collected.  Add to that everything Anna and I have collected over the last 18 years.  In fairness, I am the pack rat.  I keep things till I am sure they are no longer useful.  Anna will toss things at a moments notice.  Consequently, a good portion of the storage room is considered ‘my stuff’. Some of the stuff I kept made me realize how much older I am than I feel.   I took pictures of some of the items of interest to me before tossing them.

I installed and maintained Novell UnixWare and Netware for service provider while I was in school. I learned a lot and it was very applicable, leading edge at the time all 28.8 kbps dial-up.

This was my first mobile phone.  I purchased it from Bell and it was expensed by the service provider I was working for.  I can’t get over the size and weight of it.  It had an LED green screen.  At the time it was cool.  I tried to charge it and subsequently power it up, but it no longer functions.

Foxpro was a database that I did a lot of programming with, first just on my own out of interest and then for work at the library.

I actually did some work on OS/2.  Not a lot but I recall this book being recommended as I was more familiar with Windows.  As I recall it was not very helpful in the end.

Pascal was the first language I taught myself after basic in elementary school. I used it quite extensively till I switched to C. Netscape Livewire was a platform that I had to develop in at one of my summer co-ops employments. Ecco was a contact management system used as a very simple CRM system by the ISP I worked for during school. I wrote some simple batch interfacing to it for the ISP. Impromtu was a reporting module used in another co-cop term by the company. I was responsible for the database server and associated applications, so I had to troubleshoot it at times.

A bunch of other books I purchased and used at one time or another in my career. Check out the last book entitled Finding it on the Internet — does anyone remember gopher, archie, WAIS?  I do and I used them.  Not for long, but it still makes me feel old.

I used to be a big fan of last.fm.  I have been a member for close to three years and have used them quite regularly  to stream music to our kitchen during meals, our living room, and my home office.  Even when I was at my employers office, I would often have it streaming from my laptop while I was working.  It was great.  It allowed me to hear new songs.  Songs that I liked, I would make note of the particulars and check the artist out.  If I liked the songs of the artist, I would sometimes purchase the songs via the Internet.

I was not impressed with the last.fm decision to charge €3.00 per month for anyone who is not geographically located in the U.S.A., Europe, or Germany.   It is not that I have an issue with the €3.00 per month I don’t.  I have issue with two things.  First the fact that they were not transparent about the reason for this change initially.  They announced the new change and did not explain why certain countries were exempt from the fee.  Finally, after five days and many subscriber queries and complaints, last.fm decided to come clean.  While I appreciate they did finally come clean and explain to their subscribers why, I dis-like their initial dishonestly.  It gives insight into the management and their ethics and priorities.  The second is the fact that it is long over due for the entertainment industry to stop clinging to old business models and change them.  The Internet is international not national.  The laws and business models have to change and I wish they would stop fighting it.  If last.fm had said everyone must now pay the €3.00 per month, I probably would have just signed up.

As such, I started looking around.  It was easly to quickly find an alternative.  I have been trying Imeem out over the last week.  It takes a while to get used to their interface, but once you do it is not too bad.  They have deals with major record labels and I have been able to find much of the same music I listened to on last.fm.  I encourage anyone that was a last.fm user that is on the fence to try it out first before making a decision to be a subscriber of last.fm.