There's one thing that I don't get sometimes about Microsoft's advice.. for being so Enterprisey... they aren't.  Take the SRD blog advice...

http://blogs.technet.com/b/srd/archive/2010/08/31/an-update-on-the-dll-preloading-remote-attack-vector.aspx

 we have a defense in depth patch that is two fold.. you must deploy it to your systems ...but it's not on WSUS ... okay so they heard that feedback and it will be.

...and then you must set a registry key.... but... the advice they give for deploying and fixing when you find an issue is so single user centric....

While the impact of the above change seems to be low, a reader of this blog wrote in that he experienced a compatibility issue with the Outlook 2002 address book. If you experience issues such as this, they can be mitigated by setting a special policy for the affected binaries that overrides the default CWDIllegalInDllSearch. The following steps show how to do this for OUTLOOK.EXE:

Hewlett Packard NEW Datavault (Vail) and SBS MVP Kevin Royalty Roadshow - coming to a city near you! - Blain Barton's Blog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/blainbar/archive/2010/08/30/hewlett-packard-new-datavault-vail-and-sbs-mvp-kevin-royalty-roadshow-coming-to-a-city-near-you.aspx

Join Microsoft SBS and Home Server MVP Kevin Royalty, (Cincinnati, OH), 
for an evening Roadshow event in conjunction with Hewlett Packard that 
is focused on the “New” upcoming DataVault based on codename ”Vail”.

He will also will be talking about other stuff in the HP stack for Small 
Business IT Professionals like G6 Servers, HP Laptops and more.

Free Food will be provided at All events in addition to a Special 
Discount code for All that attend in person for an HP DataVault.

New York:
http://hpdatavaultnews.com/sbs/newyork/index.html

Philadelphia
http://www.hpdatavaultnews.com/sbs/philadelphia/index.html

Tampa

http://hpdatavaultnews.com/sbs/tampa/index.html

Fort Lauderdale
http://hpdatavaultnews.com/sbs/ftlauderdale/index.html

http://msmvps.com/blogs/bradley/archive/2010/08/30/a-bit-of-group-policy-for-aurora.aspx

Oops I forgot a step.

One thing that SBS does for you in connect that Aurora does not is move the computer to the Organizational unit you set up.

Go into the active directory computers and users and right mouse click on that computer and...

...move it to the proper OU you set up

Again this is where you have to decide how you are going to enable group policy... in this demo I made it match exactly how SBS had set up it's Organizational unit structure.  You may not want to do this.  But bottom line, move the computer to the OU so that the group policy will kick in.

Like any good cook you'll want to have a recipe and customize it for your own.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/small-business-server-code-name-aurora-build-document.aspx

While I've started a community wiki build document for Aurora, think of what your "dish" will look like and ways you might customize it.

One of the things you notice upon cracking open the current beta of Aurora is that while it has the Group policy management console it does not have group policy predone for you.  Given the small network marketplace I can kinda understand why they are making this decision (but nevertheless if I were in charge of the Universe I'd have the policies preloaded but just not enforced to make it easier to use group policy should you want to)  But no worries you can export them from SBS 2008 and put similar ones in Aurora.

Now you won't need the WSUS group polices as WSUS is not on Aurora, but you might want those handy dandy Win7 and XP firewall policies.

To export out of SBS 2008 and import into Aurora do the following:

Go down to the Group policy objects section and right mouse click on the group polices you want to export.

XChange: Microsoft Dangles Incentives To Cloud-Wary Partners:
http://www.crn.com/news/cloud/226900062/xchange-microsoft-dangles-incentives-to-cloud-wary-partners.htm;jsessionid=iuY3ZR+JHHQTrkrsav9bAA**.ecappj02

"This isn't just about signing partners up -- we want to make sure we are assisting partners to transform their business into the world of cloud," he said.

The ongoing industry shift to the cloud is even more dramatic than resellers that made the transition to being solution providers, but the good news is that the return is much larger, noted Martorano.

"The services revenue is six times the software revenue opportunity," he declared.

=======

Do you make money off of selling Microsoft licenses?  I'm guessing not.  I'm guessing it costs you more (as it does me) to figure out the licensing nuances than you make off of it.  And I'll bet many of you still make money off of desktop services even if you aren't "all in" on the cloud.

Now mind you it looks to me that the SBSC $500 is not the cloud services $500... so check out Mark

TIF, TIFF, and MDI files are no longer associated with Microsoft Office Document Imaging (MODI) after you install Office 2003 Service Pack 3 or certain post-SP3 security bulletins:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/967055/
After you install Microsoft Office 2003 Service Pack 3 (SP3) or certain post-SP3 security bulletins, the TIF, TIFF, and MDI files are no longer associated with Microsoft Office Document Imaging (MODI).

This problem is resolved in the Word 2003 hotfix package that was released on February 24, 2009. For more information about the hotfix package, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
967054  (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/967054/ ) Description of the Word 2003 hotfix package (Modifileassoc.msp): February 24, 2009

http://www.minasi.com/newsletters/nws1008a.htm

The new kindle reviews are coming in.

In reading Mark's review of the new kindle, and now two days into ownership myself, the pros of the Kindle (or any ebook reader for that matter).. is the instantaneous gratification of an immediate book purchase.

But you know the one thing I miss... and I miss this in my Zune/iTunes experience as well, something I'm going to call the "art of the analog".  I'm of that old fuddy duddy generation that actually remembers what an Album cover looks like.  And as we've progressed into our march to all digital it's the art of the covers of things that I miss the most.

Take album covers.  Even in the cd era it's hard to replace the large square area of space that could be artwork on one side, and background stories on the other. 

And sometimes it

Third Tier offering Technical Training at SMBNation PreDay Event! :: Third Tier:
http://www.thirdtier.net/2010/08/third-tier-offering-technical-training-at-smbnation-preday-event/

Planning to go to SMBnation?  Consider one of the preday events.  In addition to Karl's cloud sessions (see http://www.smbbooks.com/index.php?option=com_flexicontent&view=items&cid=48:seminars&id=140:walking-into-the-cloud&Itemid=89) Third tier will be having a deep technical preday event.

Check it out!

I didn't expect that my newly received Kindle would know I bought it.

It's already called "Susan's Kindle", it's hooked to my Amazon account and recommends a combo of security books and "chick flick" books.

Kinda cool but kinda creepy that it already knows who I am and what I read because it's prelinked to my Amazon account.

So I gotta ask.. is there a password on here or is there some other magic mumbo jumbo under the hood?

Rational Survivability: Amazon's Kindle: Some Interesting Security Thoughts:
http://rationalsecurity.typepad.com/blog/2009/02/amazons-kindle-some-interesting-security-thoughts.html

Ah I see someone else who works in cloud security has thought of this prior to me.