Update on Novell Policy Announcement

Novell has issued a statement after listening to customer concerns:

"Novell has listened to you, the customer, and vows to keep Novell's Knowledgebase free and open to all customers and potential customers.
Read all about it in the chat forum
In the "Novell Support Response" thread. Thanks for taking the time to provide valuable feedback."

More info:

• Danita's Desk Blog

• Channel Register

• Novell Support Forums - Collen O'Keefe

FYI - Important Update on Novell Patch, Service Pack and Knowledgebase Access

Last week, Novell sent an email to its partners that has suddenly become a HUGE source of traffic on Novell’s Community Chat forum, as well as various mailing lists such as the NGWList, TTP, etc.

Could this be the nail that finally seals the Novell Coffin?

More info:
http://www.caledonia.net/blog/?p=216

http://forums.novell.com/novell-community-forums-stuff/community-chat/386700-upcoming-support-changes-post1858218.html

http://forums.novell.com/novell-community-forums-stuff/community-chat/387009-novell-support.html

If you are a concerned customer, consultant, employee or supporter of Novell in any way, please take the time to let Novell know that this is a really bad idea!

---

Valued Partner,

We continue to look for opportunities that enable you to increase the profit potential of your Novell business. Earlier this year, we began requiring the purchase of maintenance with product licenses. This provides you an additional revenue stream while ensuring that your customers have access to the award-winning support services, training resources, version upgrades and other benefits that maintenance delivers.

Update on Patch, Service Pack, & Support Knowledgebase Access for Customers

To further encourage more customers to take advantage of the comprehensive benefits a maintenance contract provides, Novell is announcing that as of November 15, 2009, maintenance or subscription authorization will be required to access service packs and patches (excluding stand-alone security patches) for most Novell products. In early 2010, we will extend this initiative to include Technical Information Documents (TIDs) in the Novell Support Knowledgebase for products in the general support phase of the product lifecycle. For details on this policy–as well as a list of products not subject to its provisions–please consult the resources listed below.

Increasing Value and Opportunity for You!

This policy not only provides continued value to your customers who have already chosen to purchase maintenance with their products, but also creates a purchase incentive for those customers who would be well-served by having access to a continuous stream of value-added patches, service packs, and knowledgebase assets, as well as the comprehensive benefits a maintenance contract provides.

With this exclusive benefit for maintenance customers in your arsenal, you:

• Now have an excellent opportunity to contact and re-engage dormant customers
• Can more easily facilitate renewals—and capitalize on revenue and service opportunities related to product upgrades in the process
• Now have another compelling reason to promote a variety of maintenance-related offers valid through October 31, 2009–located on the product home pages of Novell.com

We will be informing non-maintenance customers of this policy on September 24, 2009. The resources below will help you address questions and capitalize on leads generated by this advanced notification.

Where Can You Learn More?

To provide you with a chance to ask questions and get additional details on this policy, join us for a live sales enablement webcast on Tuesday, September 22 at 11:00 a.m. ET. You can join this webcast by clicking here at the appointed time.

PartnerNet Community Resource Page

You can also visit www.novell.com/communities/node/8991 to access comprehensive information regarding this policy, including a detailed FAQ, collateral on the value of maintenance, slides you can use to communicate this policy with your customers, and much more!

We invite to take advantage of this new policy and see it as an excellent opportunity to build your business while delivering even greater levels of satisfaction and value to your customers.

Sincerely,

John Dragoon
Senior Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer & Channel Chief

Novell and Citrix Joining Forces for Virtualization?

I've been hearing rumours that Novell and Citrix are going to be joining forces on the Virtualization Front. Now I read about it today. Red Hat has a KVM Hypervisor, Microsoft has Hyper-V, and there is VMware. Citrix has the XENServer 5.5 freebie. Novell has XEN Hypervisor code in SLES 10 and 11.

Take a look at this article in "The Register"

"I would guess that it won't be long before we hear of a Novell and Citrix announcement debuting Citrix Essentials for SUSE Linux and that Novell - which still does not have a profitable Linux business and cannot afford to code its own standalone hypervisor - has endorsed the XenServer 5.5 hypervisor as its own standalone product."

Computer Hardware Chart

Very nice handy Computer Hardware Chart!


Computer hardware poster 1.7 by *Sonic840 on deviantART

Happy SysAdmin Appreciation Day

Happy System Administrator Appreciation Day!
July 31st

Take your sysadmin to lunch! .. Or at least give them a hug! - That'll really shock them. Or give them candy!

http://www.sysadminday.com

10th annual SysAdmin Day

Novell IT in Action Tour, June 3 Denver

Novell IT in Action Tour
I'll be attending in Denver on Wednesday, June 3rd

Denver Marriott City Center
1701 California Street

From Novell:

So let Novell help you set the most efficient pace with the IT in Action tour, coming soon to a city near you. At this unique event, you'll learn how you can:

• Boost workforce productivity with the latest personal and team collaboration tools
• Trim infrastructure costs with proven networking, storage and cross-platform management services
• Raise the bar on security with innovative solutions for network access and endpoint management
• Extend limited IT resources with automated storage and access management processes

After the event, you can access in-depth virtual seminars on your favorite Novell products or take advantage of hands-on Advanced Technical Training (ATT) sessions. It's all part of our charge to help you set a winning pace for tackling the IT challenges you face.

Join us at the IT in Action Tour, where you'll get valuable tips and insights you can use today to generate immediate value in your organization.

Giveaways

IT in Action Kit
This kit contains evaluation software for all these products:

• Novell Access Manager 3.1
• Novell GroupWise 8
• Novell Open Enterprise Server 2 SP1
• Novell Storage Manager 2.5
• Novell ZENWorks
• OpenOffice.org Novell Edition for Windows
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11

An exclusive collection that saves you the hassle of downloads. They're the essential collection of tools you need to keep up with today's challenges.

GroupWise Roadmap

Dean Lythgoe recently updated his blog with a GroupWise Roadmap:

Dean's Blog

Hot Patches: We will be releasing within the next week or so a new Hot Patch for both GroupWise 7 and GroupWise 8. Please watch for this announcement. The patch is in final validation and we are working on a just a few details. This will be 7.0.3 HP3 and 8.0.0 HP2.

GroupWise 8.0.1: We will be in extended authorized beta in June and we plan to release at the end of the summer. September is the target. Everything appears to be on track and all quality metrics indicate a very solid, reliable release.

GMS/Mobility: We recently released GMS 3.0.1 for Linux. Nokia and Novell will continue to provide fixes and updates to GMS throughout the support contract. We are currently planning a GMS 3.0.2. A schedule has not yet been published.

Many of you are waiting for an announcement about the next generation mobility solution. We have stated that it will be based on the ActiveSync protocol and will include support for the iPhone. Product Marketing is handling these communications. I can't say more at this time - but I am very happy about how things are shaping up! :) Several members of my engineering team are involved and actively working on this and related integrations.

Teaming (Boulder): We are preparing for Authorized BETA 3 - scheduled for May 13th. The beta sites have been extremely enthusiastic about Boulder and its much improved UI and performance. Public beta is scheduled for June and expectations are very high. Final shipment is scheduled for mid-Summer - or around July/August. We will also be enhancing integrations between GroupWise and Teaming. These include the synchronization of appointments and tasks. We expect to deliver those integrations around the same time as the 8.0.1 and Boulder releases.
We have over 60 beta sites and active participation each week. Kablink is in full swing with over 1100 downloads of Teaming so far. Check out kablink.org to see the very latest open source activity and help contribute to our Teaming product!!

Conferencing (Bristol): Real time collaboration is a very hot topic and one that has huge potential. The Bristol schedule is still slightly in flux, but engineering is making good progress in each 'sprint' of its Agile process. Product Marketing is evaluating options and providing needed market and financial perspectives. The plan is to have a real-time collaboration solution/update later this year.

Server Migration Utility: Version 1.1 shipped yesterday. It is now live and available on download.novell.com. It includes support for GW8, bug fixes, usability improvements and additional documentation refinements. It can be used to migrate from one server to another - when a new server is added to your system - or to migrate from one server OS to another...like when all of you UPGRADE to Linux!!!

My Tribute to CP / M and Operating Systems

I grew up with Computers! I know a lot of people say that, but really - I grew up with Computers! And Computers grew up with me. It's mostly because of my late dad. My dad was a Manufacturer's Representative back in the 70's for companies like DEC, Lear Siegler, Televideo, Wang, Franklin (the first Apple II clone), Osborne, Kaypro, and TI. My dad took me out of school to accompany him to Trade Shows like Comdex, way back in the late 70's and early 80's! Thanks Dad!

It was a fun time to grow up! The computing and operating systems as well as the Internet developed right in line with the Space Race. There was a lot of similarities! We owe a lot of our Internet to the Space Race along with DARPA, ARPANET, and NSFnet, But what I really want to write about is Operating Systems... You know, like your first girl-friend, you never forget your first one or first time. My first relationship was with CP/M. I got to know her well.

Back in the 70's - it was a time for real Computer Men! We didn't have to mess with wimpy GUI interfaces or have to use a mouse! There was no point and click. No.. We used commands like PIP! If I wanted to send my document to the printer I typed in the following:

C> PIP LST:=A:LETTER.TXT

PIP was a solid manly command! For example, to rename a file: 

C> PIP A:NEW.DAT=A:INFO.DAT

There were also the other commands - DIR, REN, ERA, SAVE, TYPE, and USER.

Do they seem familiar? That's because CP/M was truly the Godfather of DOS or MS-DOS and PCDOS. Back in the day CP/M was THE operating system of choice for Business Applications. Remember Wordstar? and DBASE II, and VISICALC? Basically for personal computers your choices were get a hobby computer like an APPLE II or get a real computer like an Osborne or a Kaypro using CP/M.




The real reason I became familiar with CP/M was becasue my first real computer was a Kaypro II and it ran CP/M. I saved up $900 to buy my first computer when I was 21 years old. I was able to buy it at a discount through my Dad. I made extra money learning all about CP/M and Wordstar and teaching classes part time for my Dad's business. In Wordstar, the first real true Word Processing Application, if you wanted to save a file you typed in CTRL K D or ^K^D. If you wanted to just quit you'd type in ^KQ (that's the way it looked in the manual). The commands are still used today with Linux. If you remember Wordstar commands like, try typing in #joe file.txt in linux and it brings up a similar word processing command that uses the same Wordstar keystrokes. I use JOE a lot instead of VI or VIM. (Yes real computing nerds and manly people still use VI today).

This year we celebrate 40 years of Operating Systems, starting with the Grandfather of them all, Unix! Yes Unix turns 40 this year. I am older than Unix sadly, but my real true first love will always be CP/M!

When I received my Ham Radio Call sign from the FCC guess what it was? KC7CPM. ..and That is not a vanity call sign folks. That's the real honest to goodness call sign randomly picked by the FCC and given and placed in my care.

Is it Karma? Just a coincidence? Well consider this. I worked for Novell for 15 years. Guess what OS they originally designed NetWare on? It was CP/M.

Guess what company designed CP/M? Do you remember? It was Digital Research. Whatever happened to CP/M and Digital Research? It was bought by Novell back in the late 90's. Remember DRDOS 6.0? Remember Novell DOS 7? When I was at Novell, they owned the copyright and rights to CP/M along with DRDOS. Novell eventually sold it to a company called Caldera. Caldera changed their name to SCO Group and decided to wage a war against all Linux companies, the biggest one being Novell over copyrights with Linux from UnixWare that was also sold to Caldera about the same time as DR OSs. But that's another story of irony.

When I worked for Novell a call came in to tech support for CP/M help. Guess who got the call? Yep.. good thing I was there. CP/M - I'll never forget you! I've had other Operating System relationships over the years - Unix, MSDOS, PCDOS, DRDOS, NetWare, UnixWare, MacOS, MP/M, OS/2, AmigaDOS, Windows (3.0, 3.1, 3.11, NT, 2000, 95, 98, XP, Vista, Beta 7) and others, but CP/M - you were always my first!

Here are some cool links

• http://www.digitalresearch.biz

• CP/M commands

• Digital Research on Wikipedia

• Digital Research - The Untold Story

• The Gary Kildall Legacy (Inventor of CP/M) - A story that needs to be shared.

Articles from ComputerWorld:

• 40 Years of OS Milestones

• Gone but not forgotten: 10 Operating Systems the world left behind

Nasty Trojan - Spyware Protect 2009

Nasty Trojan - Spyware Protect 2009 on Windows XP SP2

Spyware Protect 2009 comes on a computer with a single purpose: to get your money and possibly hijack your online banking account. SpywareProtect 2009 is presented as anti-spyware as you may guess by reading its name. Spyware Protect 2009 is not anti-spyware although it is able to mimic some actions performed by security applications.

Not sure how this trojan was acquired.

At 2:40 PM local time (the time the HOSTS file was modified) - Backdoor Trogan file captured and modified the following:
1. Placed sysguard in C:\Windows
2. Registered iehelper.dll with the registry and placed in c:\windows\system32\
3. Modified hosts file and added a fake entry.
4. Added registry settings for Browser Helper.

Symptom:
Everytime Windows Explorer or IE would go to website or change folder, the following website would pop up:

http://browser-security.microsoft.com/block.php?r=17.2

I took the following actions:

1. Terminated sysguard out of Tasks List
2. Deleted sysguard.exe out of c:\windows\
3. Deleted iehelper.dll out of c:\windows\system32\

4. Deleted following entry out of HOSTS file c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\

195.245.119.131 browser-security.microsoft.com

5. Deleted the following registry settings:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{C9C42510-9B21-41c1-9DCD-8382A2D07C61}

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{C9C42510-9B21-41c1-9DCD-8382A2D07C61}\InProcServer32

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\BrowserHelper Objects

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\BrowserHelperObjects\{C9C42510-9B21-41c1-9DCD-8382A2D07C61}

Reference:
http://www.threatexpert.com/report.aspx?md5=f42ecaab6442d21e4beba274875d882b

Rebooted workstation and now verified that all is working.

If the user was running an iMac or Linux this problem wouldn't happen. ;-)

PALM OS RIP - It's been fun!

Today Ed Colligan (Palm CEO) talked to investors about the state of Palm and what some of their plans are going forward.

There will be no more PalmOS devices released by Palm (except the Centro getting released on other carriers). They're focused on webOS and Windows Mobile.

On the issue of PATENTS, Colligan made sure to note that there are no pending legal actions with Apple right now. He noted that Palm has 15 years worth of patents (over 1500 of them in total) and that in patent fights often go like this.

I finally got rid of my PALM OS Device (Palm Treo 700P) last week. More on that later... It seems just in time too. Good Luck to PALM with the new WebOS and the new Palm Pre due out later this year with Sprint, and with other carriers in 2010

Happy Birthday Apple MAC - 25 years!

Happy Birthday Macintosh!
Has it been 25 years?