My New Suggestions to Microsoft:

After listning to my clients complains and people who talk to me about Microsoft Technologies, I felt I can suggest some punch lines to Microsoft... I will take royalties if MS starts using them :-)

"With Microsoft: You are always Obselete"

and

"Learning is a Life Long Process: If you don't believe, here's our NEXT UPDATED VERSION"

Well, I am really passionate about Microsoft Technologies and I understand that the changes are for good, but our clients demand stability and their primary aim is buisness not upgrading to latest technologies always... Being a MVP I feel its important to let MS know about this serious concern that comes up to us everytime...

Secure you SQL Server

This is a note is for SQL Server Administrators... Read further to see if your SQL Server is vulnerable...
As you must be aware that by default SQL server opens port 1433 to the internet when services are installed... And ofcourse the celebrated "sa" account with all rights and no password is world famous... :-) The SPIDA worm took advantage of these two things and made TCP/IP hits on various IP addresses on the internet... Ofcourse, it was bound to find one or another IP who had its 1433 port open and SQL Server "sa" account having password blank... That was it, a silly mistake and what all can happen is to our imagination... Though some of the things worth noting are that the worm deletes certain fields and tries similar other IPs... There can be no end to this...
Also it changes the password to 4 characters, which are ofcourse sent to the hacker and adds guest account into the adminstrator group... You can now imagine what else can happen to your system...

Bloomington, IL gets a MSDN Event

Blooomington, IL which is the headquarter of State Farm Insurance (one of the largest insurance companies of US), head quarters of Country Insurance, houses Illinois State University (ISU), Illinois Wesleyan University - finally gets due importance and has a MSDN event...
The event is being conducted at a local hotel (Radisson) and is scheduled to run from 1 pm to 5 pm on March 24th 2004... The topic of the discussion will be "Security Briefings"... You can register for the event @ http://www.microsoft.com/seminar/events/inperson/default.mspx ... I am hopeful that more such events would be conducted in the future...
I shall be trying that .Net Bloomington User Group (.Net- BUG) gets involved in the activities and gets support from Microsoft for conducting similar events in the future...