In this week’s newsletter
Wither Windows management? IE Mode in (Chr)Edge. Deploy fully-patched PCs. Secure? Private?? Ouch!!! Will Contoso be next? Lessons painfully learned! Cheap remote access? (Ask Our Readers). How to transfer share names and permissions to a new file server (Tip). Lots more — read it all, read it here on WServerNews!
Enjoy this week’s newsletter and feel free to send us feedback on any of the topics we’ve covered — we love hearing from our readers!
Got questions? Ask our readers!
WServerNews goes out each week to more than 200,000 IT pro subscribers worldwide! That’s a lot of expertise to tap into. Do you need help with some technical problem or are looking for expert advice on something IT-related? Ask Our Readers by emailing your problems and/or questions to us at [email protected]
Editor’s Corner
This week’s observations and ruminations from Mitch Tulloch our Senior Editor…
Wither Windows management?
Two weeks ago we asked our readers if they could respond to the following query sent to us by Jeremy Moskowitz:
I’m starting to maybe detect a trend in Windows 10 management land. People seem to be sl-o-wing-down of rolling out Windows 10 and other security and management enhancements. The basic question is: “Are you considering a push toward some MDM system away from on-prem GP/Active Directory … and is this causing you to re-think or stall your plans for Windows 10 rollouts and security projects? Or are you staying with on-prem GP/AD and SCCM for the forseeable future?”
We received a few replies to Jeremy’s questions and have selected a couple of them to share here.
Jeff Doty, Systems Administrator for a company based in Washington State, USA said:
We have nearly completed our Win 10 rollout (Global), only like 100 Win 7 system left. We use AD/GP and SCCM to manage. We are starting to take a look at the SCCM Azure Intune (or whatever they are calling it now) MDM to see if it gives us some advantages.
Gustavo Diaz, IT Specialist at a company in Canada that supplies equipment and services to the plastics industry shared these thoughts:
In regards Jeremy’s question, in our company we are using SCCM and Group Policy on-premises to do Win10 deployments.
We’ve doing this for 1.5 years, replacing all Win7 with Win10.
Originally we tried update option with SCCM, but it didn’t work very well.
So we decided to go with “wipe and reload” and so far so good!
As long as we move the computer from Win7 OU in Active Directory to Win10 OU, life is good!
I’ve using SCCM since version 2.0. To be honest I’m a bit concern if Microsoft wants to “merge” this product with something else.
SCCM is a complex product, and it takes years of experience to have a handle on the many things you can or can’t do.
If there are any other newsletter readers working in corporate/enterprise environments who would like to share their own thoughts on this subject you can email me at [email protected]
IE Mode in (Chr)Edge
Enterprises that have intranets that still require employees to use Internet Explorer can now upgrade to the new Chromium-based Microsoft Edge browser as it includes a feature called IE Mode that simulates using Internet Explorer from the point of view of the web server. The following article gives details:
Microsoft’s Three Browsers (text/plain)
https://textslashplain.com/2020/02/03/microsofts-three-browsers/
Deploy fully-patched PCs
How do you do deploy fully-patched Windows 10 PCs in your organization? I’ve compiled a bunch of different approaches picked up from other IT pros and mentioned a few of them in this article on our TechGenix website:
Deploying fully patched Windows 10 computers: A guide for IT pros (TechGenix)
https://techgenix.com/deploying-fully-patched-windows-10-computers/
If you follow a different approach and would like to share your expertise and experience with our readers, you can either shoot me an email at [email protected] for inclusion in the Mailbag section of a future newsletter or add a comment at the bottom of the above article.
Secure? Private?? Ouch!!!
From the Bad News department comes still more bad news:
App Used by Netanyahu’s Likud Leaks Israel’s Entire Voter Registry (Haaretz)
Software error exposes the ID numbers for 1.26 million Danish citizens (ZDNet)
Skimming heist that hit convenience chain may have compromised 30 million cards (Ars Technica)
How bad can it possibly get? Place your bets by emailing me at [email protected]
Will Contoso be next?
Remember that guidance from Microsoft in their original documentation for Windows 2000 Server about using corp as a subdomain within your Active Directory domain i.e. corp.example.com? Most of that early documentation is now gone, but you can still find traces of it around like this:
and this:
Well, a lot of large enterprises probably followed that advice in their early AD deployments, and maybe some of them even today still have a few corp subdomains kicking around in their AD forest.
Well, this could soon be a problem:
Dangerous Domain Corp.com Goes Up for Sale (Krebs on Security)
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/02/dangerous-domain-corp-com-goes-up-for-sale/
Lessons painfully learned!
And finally, a friend recently forwarded me this amusing and insightful article that lists dozens of “don’t do that’s” when it comes to the day to day operation of running of the IT infrastructure of an organization:
(A few) Ops Lessons We All Learn The Hard Way (Signs of Triviality)
https://www.netmeister.org/blog/ops-lessons.html
Well worth a read. Can you think of anything he left out? Email me at [email protected]
Got more thoughts about anything in this newsletter?
Email us at [email protected]!
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Ask Our Readers – Frustration with Windows 10 Snap Assist (one response)
In last week’s newsletter we shared the following question sent to us by Name Withheld:
FINALLY upgraded my W7 PC to W10 in December – everything worked fine — except this morning :(.
Now when I press CTRL RIGHARROW to snap Word 2013 to right edge of screen, it goes right but also snaps UPWARDS so it only fills the TOP RIGHT quadrant of my screen!!
Then if I press CTRL LEFTARROW it snaps to left edge but only fills TOP LEFT quadrant!!!
Everything else snaps fine – no probs with other apps.
All I can say is – WHY????
Alfred Noble offered this suggestion to our reader:
Maybe see this Laptop Magazine article from a few years back :
https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/snap-windows-10
Thanks!
Ask Our Readers – Cheap remote access? (new question)
George T. from Georgia, USA sent us the following question which we’re redirecting to our readers hoping they can shed some light on the matter:
I recently had a business IT colleague recommend Terminal Service Plus (TSPlus) as a more cost-effective alternative from a licensing perspective with respect to costly Remote Desktop Services (RDS) CALs for Windows Server. Especially for smaller businesses who need to provide remote access for their employees:
However, another IT colleague of mine has told me that this product can’t possibly be in compliance with Microsoft licensing. In other words you will still need to purchase Microsoft CALs to be in compliance with using TSPlus within a Windows-based environment, even if you just run it on Windows 10 not Windows Server.
So…what do your readers think on this subject? Does running TSPlus on Windows Server violate Microsoft’s EULA? Has anyone had to deal with this kind of situation by having Microsoft’s Licensing Police come to arrest them and cart them away? Please help as I can’t find any authoritative information on this matter either on the TSPlus website or on Microsoft.com. Thanks!!
I really don’t know the answer to this myself, so can any of our newsletter readers sound out? Email us at [email protected]
Tip of the Week
>> Got any IT pro tips you’d like to share with other readers of our newsletter? Email us at [email protected]
How to transfer share names and permissions to a new file server
This old article can still help with this task when your file server is running Windows Server:
Saving and restoring existing Windows shares (Microsoft Support)
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/125996/saving-and-restoring-existing-windows-shares
Admin Toolbox
>> Got any admin tools or software you’d like to recommend to our readers? Email us at [email protected]
This report covers five key principles that accelerate data protection and help drive real, impactful change inside your organizations in 2020.
http://www.wservernews.com/go/q4uwjin9/
Device Cleanup removes non-present devices from the Windows device management:
https://www.uwe-sieber.de/misc_tools_e.html
FastAdmin is a practical system administrators utility that allows you to remotely monitor and manage Windows computers and servers in your Active Directory domain:
https://wizardsoft.nl/products/fastadmin
TraceWrangler is a network capture file toolkit running on Windows that supports PCAP as well as PCAPng which is the standard file format used by Wireshark:
https://www.tracewrangler.com/
Mailbag
In last week’s newsletter I mentioned that as the push towards upgrading mobile networks to 5G accelerates, the concerns about whether the technology is secure have been steadily rising. Pat Blank who works as a Systems Engineer for an IT services and support company in the UK responded to this as follows:
Hi Mitch, regarding your recent musings as to the safety of 5G, this particular snippet of a senate hearing on the subject should interest and scare you in equal measure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekNC0J3xx1w
Granted, this is nearly a year old but as far as I’m aware, the industry still hasn’t supported any independent testing. I mean, that would cost money right? Might as well just let this current generation be the guinea pigs instead!
Bottom line is, no wireless radiation is good for us, it’s more about what we can tolerate. As an aside, while humans can technically tolerate Cesium, my next holiday probably won’t be in Chernobyl.
This fifth generation of wireless technology just happens to have the most dense frequencies and is therefore potentially the most dangerous. But as the old saying goes, it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission, hence the rush to roll it out globally asap.
Any other reader thoughts on this subject? Email us at [email protected]
Factoid – Franken-fruits and veggies
Last week’s factoid and question was this:
Fact: The more attention-grabbing a television program or online video is, the more likely you’ll keep watching it but the less likely you’ll understand or remember what you just saw.
Question: I notice this a lot whenever I hang out in a pub or sports bar. Regardless of what’s playing on the TV screens hanging everywhere from the ceiling, the scene on the TV keeps changing every 2-3 seconds and as a result I find my eyes glued to the screen while my brain switches off. Anyone else experience this?
This one generated a lot of comments from our readers (I guess a lot of you watch television).
Rick Kiersey who works in the Engineering Department for a civic government in Indiana suggested:
Concerning the scene on the TV changing at a pub or sports bar, your brain might not be switching off because of that. It might have something to do with the amount of alcohol being consumed!
Not true! I only drink coffee when I eat something in a pub!
Pete Calvert says things are somewhat different down under in Australia:
Hey Mitch, certainly might be the case in the US and Japan where the sheer volume of things vying for your attention (especially as people channel flick) has resulted in some very crazy adverts, but for programs and videos to be attention-grabbing there are ways other than quick scene changes. Colour palettes, music/sound, juxtaposition of styles (eg. Cartoon and Real Life), and other techniques can be just as attention grabbing – and holding.
Rapid scene changes can overload people’s capacity to remember everything, but I’d suggest that if the creator is doing their job then and their purpose is to inform and educate rather than just entertain, then you should be more likely to understand and remember.
In Australia we don’t (by and large) have the crazy scene-riffling I see on US or Japanese TV, at least not in quantity, and when I do see stuff like that it isn’t likely to keep holding my attention – though watching TV in the US or Japan does seem to be a sure-fire way of shutting down my brain if I wanted to.
Glad to see that Aussies aren’t as heavily afflicted with the dreaded SSS (scene-shifting syndrome) that plagues many of us here!
Michael Hallsted shared the following perspective:
I would not worry too much about it, because that is just your mind’s built in defense mechanism kicking in. The fact that you notice it is a good indicator of an active mind analyzing and prioritizing one’s surroundings. Basically, the mind has decided that the constant drivel from a bar TV is not necessary for survival, in any sense of the word, so it just stops the brain from processing anything from that source. You have more important things to think about and remember, life, family, friends, work. Basic survival techniques never go away, they just take different forms depending on the environment that you are in.
Don’t tell TV advertisers that — they might try to think up a better way of corralling our attention!
Daniel Bragg who works as a Senior Developer for a company that developers technology for the health care industry takes the following approach:
It’s quite problematic, and it’s tuned to how the ‘lizard-brain’ of men instinctively react to movement, and it’s almost archaic connection to hunting for survival (rather than hunting for sport, which many still do).
Whenever I and my spouse head out to dinner, if we find ourselves in a bar or restaurant that has TVs playing, I’ll try to find a seat with a picturesque view of the wall (and my spouse), because I’m there to spend time with her, not catch up on the sport scores and continue the advertising indoctrination I get while I’m in front of my home TV. The last place we dined, I couldn’t find such a spot, so I asked that the TV be turned off, or at least changed to a less-attention-grabbing channel. As it was a quiet time for them, they changed the channel, and I was much happier.
Plus-one there for acting like a man and standing up for your Rights to Change the Channel!!
And finally here is how Jim Ruby responded:
We call that ‘beer goggles’. It can have an increasingly adverse affect the closer it gets to last call.
Once again — NOT GUILTY!!!
Now let’s move on to this week’s factoid:
Fact: Veggies grown in Europe taste way better than veggies grown in North America.
Source: As they say, the proof is in the pudding. Only in this case it’s in red peppers. A few weeks ago our local Safeway store here in Winnipeg, Canada had some red peppers that had been sourced from Spain. They tasted GREAT. Lots of flavor, juicy, sweetish, yummy! Then two weeks later they were back to carrying Mexican-grown peppers again. As always these are beautiful to look at, no blemishes — but no taste either.
Sadly, this seems to be the case with most fruit and veggies grown in Mexico these days. Veggies are firm and colorful but have little flavor. And fruit? Looks beautiful but completely unripe and hard as a baseball. In fact I remember with disappointment a trip I made to Los Angeles two years ago, the hotel I stayed at had a large chain supermarket store nearby. I wandered over thinking I might be able to buy some RIPE fruit there because of the proximity of California with Mexico. Boy, was I disappointed!! Same stacks of unripe peaches, pears, etc I see here in our Winnipeg stores in the summer — totally unripe and inedible, and they won’t ripen at home either.
Makes me wish I lived in southern Europe.
Question: What are your own feelings about today’s franken-fruits and veggies? When was the last time you had a piece of fruit that was genuinely, naturally ripe? Or the last time you had a carrot that reminded you of how carrots tasted when you were a kid? Or the last time you ate a tomato that actually tasted like a tomato?
Email your answers to [email protected]
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Conference calendar
>> Got an IT conference or event happening that you’d like to promote in our newsletter? Email us at [email protected]
Microsoft Business Applications Summit
April 20-21, 2020 in Anaheim, California
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/BusinessApplicationsSummit
Microsoft Build
May 19-21, 2020 in Seattle, Washington
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/build
Microsoft Inspire
July 20-24, 2020 in Las Vegas, Nevada
https://partner.microsoft.com/en-us/inspire
Other Microsoft events
Microsoft Licensing Boot Camps – Dec 9-10 in Seattle, Washington
https://www.directionsonmicrosoft.com/training
Infosec conferences
Cyber Security Summit – Nov 21 in Houston, Texas
https://cybersummitusa.com/houston19/
Cyber Security Summit – Dec 5 in Los Angeles, California
https://cybersummitusa.com/losangeles19/
Other conferences
European SharePoint, Office 365 & Azure Conference – Dec 2-5 in Prague, Czech Republic
https://www.sharepointeurope.com/
SharePoint Fest – Dec 9-13 in Chicago, Illinois
https://www.sharepointfest.com/Chicago/
Podcast Corner
From Slack to stateful serverless: An interview with Nimbella (The T-Suite)
https://techgenix.com/podcast/the-t-suite/
Inspiring Your Team to Learn with Don Jones (RunAsRadio)
The State Of SD-WAN In 2020 And Future Forecasts (Heavy Networking)
https://packetpushers.net/series/weekly-show/
VMC: A Cloud Migration Story (Virtually Speaking)
https://www.vspeakingpodcast.com/
The New CWNP Track with Tom Carpenter (Clear To Send)
The value of Managed SD-WAN (The CTO Advisor)
https://www.thectoadvisor.com/podcast
Is Joshua Schulte The Shadow Brokers? (Risky Business)
https://risky.biz/netcasts/risky-business/
So… what is Power Platform? (Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast)
https://www.msclouditpropodcast.com/
Cloud Earnings and Microsoft Reorgs (Microsoft Cloud Show)
http://www.microsoftcloudshow.com/podcast
What’s next for the Windows Insider Program (Windows Insider)
https://insider.windows.com/en-us/podcasts/
New on Techgenix.com
Veeam sets sights on U.S. cloud data management market
After being bought for $5 billion last month by a private equity firm, Veeam is moving to the U.S. with an eye on the growing cloud data management market.
https://techgenix.com/veeam-cloud-data-management/
Exchange 2016: Working with a third-party layer like CloudBlue
Many Exchange 2016 organizations need an extra layer of security. CloudBlue is one third-party vendor that may fill the bill.
https://techgenix.com/exchange-2016-cloudblue/
Handling errors with PowerShell try-catch command
Error handling is an important part of any program. For PowerShell, try-catch can tackle terminating errors that arise in your application.
https://techgenix.com/powershell-try-catch-command/
Review: Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365
As Microsoft Office 365 grows in popularity, users need solutions to back up Office 365 data. Here’s our review of Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365.
https://techgenix.com/veeam-backup-microsoft-office-365/
Cybersecurity risks facing legacy industrial control systems
Twenty-five years is ancient history in the world of IT. And outdated industrial control systems still in use are proving to be a cybersecurity headache.
https://techgenix.com/industrial-control-systems-cybersecurity/
Fun videos from Flixxy
Even The Aliens Are Doing It – Walmart’s Super Bowl 2020 Ad
The most famous visitors in the universe are coming to Walmart. They come in peace. They come for groceries and beyond…
https://www.flixxy.com/even-the-aliens-are-doing-it-walmarts-super-bowl-ad.htm
Amazon Super Bowl Commercial 2020 – Before Alexa
Amazon’s spot with Ellen Degeneres and Portia de Rossi imagines life without the Alexa voice assistant.
https://www.flixxy.com/amazon-super-bowl-commercial-2020-before-alexa.htm
Mindblowing Japanese Mirror Illusion
These Japanese dancers are creating an amazing optical illusion.
https://www.flixxy.com/mindblowing-japanese-fake-mirror-act.htm
Amazing Chinese Acrobatic Troupe Performs at the Spring Festival 2020
An acrobatic performances of extraordinary strength and beauty at the Spring Festival 2020.
https://www.flixxy.com/amazing-chinese-acrobatic-troupe-performs-at-the-spring-festival-2020.htm
More articles of interest
How VDI Can Extend Windows 7 End of Life
As Microsoft stops supporting Windows 7, IT admins must plan to adapt. Run through the options, including transitioning to VDI with Windows 7 on Windows Virtual Desktop.
How to Navigate a Ransomware Recovery Process
Before you start your recovery, follow this plan to avoid additional trouble.
Compare vCenter Foundation vs. Standard Before Implementing
Virtualization is a big step for many SMBs. Take a closer look at VMware’s vCenter software offerings to make the best decision for your organization.
10 DevOps Tools Vendors to Watch In 2020
A vast market for DevOps tools includes every major IT vendor and many up-and-comers. A panel of industry experts say these 10 are most likely to shift the market in 2020.
Send us your feedback!
Got feedback about anything in this issue of WServerNews? Email us at [email protected]