February 2008
In this issue

√ How I'd Hack Weak
    Passwords
√ Virtualization
√ Rat's Nest Under the
    Table
 √ Quick Access Toolbar
 

The RAT’S NEST Under The Table

When the conference room first opened it was shiny, new and very impressive. A lot of money was spent building and furnishing the conference room and the table was very impressive. The goal was to impress the prospects, the customers and top management.

Then, someone wanted to plug their notebook computer into the wall. And the questions started to pop up:

Where was the electrical outlet?

Where was the network wall outlet?

Where did the projector sit on the conference table?

How long was the VGA cable to the projector?

Soon the expensive conference room had a ‘rat’s nest’ of cables underneath the impressive conference table. You’ve seen plenty of ‘rat’s nests’: the power cables, the network cables, the extended phone jacks for the conference phone -- all balled up under the conference table. And everyone pretended that the conference room still looked impressive.

Can the conference room be functional AND impressive?

Is there a way to accommodate all the A/V and communication cables without digging up the floor?

Read how
How I’d Hack Your Weak Passwords
By: John P. (A friend of Preferred's)

If you invited me to try and crack your password, you know the one that you use over and over for like every web page you visit, how many guesses would it take before I got it?

Let’s see. . .  here is my top 10 list. I can obtain most of this information much easier than you think, then I might just be able to get into your e-mail, computer, or online banking. After all, if I get into one I’ll probably get into all of them.

1. Your partner, child, or pet’s name, possibly followed by a 0 or 1
     (because they’re always making you use a number, aren’t they?)
2. The last 4 digits of your social security number.
3. 123 or 1234 or 123456.
4. “password”
5. Your city, or college, football team name.
6. Date of birth - yours, your partner’s or your child’s.
7. “god”
8. “letmein”
9. “money”
10. “love”

Statistically speaking that should probably cover about 20% of you. But don’t worry. If I didn’t get it yet it will probably only take a few more minutes before I do. . .

Hackers, and I’m not talking about the ethical kind, have developed a whole range of tools to get at your personal data. And the main impediment standing between your information remaining safe, or leaking out, is the password you choose. (Ironically, the best protection people have is usually the one they take least seriously.)  Read more

Virtualization Overview 

   
Virtualization has proven to be a successful strategy for large corporations in the last year. What we have learned from these large scale projects is now being used to assist medium sized enterprises. This is the first in a series of Virtualization articles exploring the opportunities available to our customers. 

Introduction
Among the leading business challenges confronting CIOs and IT managers today are: cost-effective utilization of IT infrastructure; responsiveness in supporting new business initiatives; and flexibility in adapting to organizational changes. Driving an additional sense of urgency is the continued climate of IT budget constraints and more stringent regulatory requirements. Virtualization is a fundamental technological innovation that allows skilled IT managers to deploy creative solutions to such business challenges. 

Virtualization in a Nutshell
Simply put, virtualization is an idea whose time has come. The term virtualization broadly describes the separation of a resource or request for a service from the underlying physical delivery of that service. With virtual memory, for example, computer software gains access to more memory than is physically installed, via the background swapping of data to disk storage. Similarly, virtualization techniques can be applied to other IT infrastructure layers - including networks, storage, laptop or server hardware, operating systems and applications. This blend of virtualization technologies - or virtual infrastructure - provides a layer of abstraction between computing, storage and networking hardware, and the applications running on it . The deployment of virtual infrastructure is non-disruptive, since the user experiences are largely unchanged. However, virtual infrastructure gives administrators the advantage of managing pooled resources across the enterprise, allowing IT managers to be more responsive to dynamic organizational needs and to better leverage infrastructure investments.

 Using virtual infrastructure solutions, enterprise IT managers can address challenges that include:

Microsoft 

Place your favorite commands on the Quick Access Toolbar

Applies to: Microsoft Office Excel 2007, Outlook 2007, PowerPoint 2007, Word 2007

There's a fast way to put the commands and buttons you use most often within easy reach — put them on the Quick Access Toolbar.

This row of buttons above the Ribbon, part of the Microsoft Office Fluent user interface, already contains several buttons by default, but you can add new commands.

The demo shows you two ways to do this, as well as how to remove them later if you want to.

Watch the demo to see how

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