The Microsoft Security Intelligence Report for 2010 was released not too long ago. It is a report on the threat landscape seen across 600 million systems worldwide.
This report has a summary for quite a number of countries (170 and counting), and Canada is in the list. Here are the stats they found:
Microsoft detected malware on 4.2 of every 1,000 computers scanned in Canada in 4Q10 (a CCM score of 4.2, compared to the 4Q10 average worldwide CCM of 8.7).

- The most common category in Canada in 4Q10 was Adware, which affected 35.6 percent of all cleaned computers, down from 41.0 percent in 3Q10.
- The second most common category in Canada in 4Q10 was Misc. Trojans, which affected 35.3 percent of all cleaned computers, up from 29.0 percent in 3Q10.
- The third most common category in Canada in 4Q10 was Misc. Potentially Unwanted Software, which affected 26.3 percent of all cleaned computers, down from 26.1 percent in 3Q10.
Yet another presentation on the docket! I submitted an abstract to SharePoint Summit 2011 and they accepted! I will be presenting on SharePoint and how it manages Identity. More specifically, how SharePoint 2010 uses WIF to handle Claims based authentication and Federation.
Here are the details
Event: SharePoint Summit 2011, January 31st 2011 – February 2nd, 2011
When: 11:30 a.m. - 12:45 p.m. February 1st, 2011
Where: Four Seasons Hotel, Toronto
Abstract: Managing identities within an organization is relatively easy. However, as business changes, we need to be able to adapt quickly. Identity is something that often gets overlooked in adaptation. In this session we will discuss the Windows Identity Foundation and how SharePoint uses it to adapt easily to change.
Link: http://www.sharepointsummit2011.com/Toronto/conference_day2.htm#session_7_3
Tonight at the IT Pro Toronto we did a pre-launch
of the Infrastructure 2010 project.
Have you ever been in a position where you just don’t have a clear grasp of a concept
or design? It’s not fun. As a result, CIPS
Toronto, IT Pro Toronto, and TorontoSQL banded
together to create a massive event to help make things a little more clear.
To give you a clearer understanding of how corporate networks work. Perhaps
to explain why some decisions are made, and why in retrospect, some are bad decisions.
Infrastructure 2010 is about teaching you everything there is to know about a state-of-the-art,
best practices compliant, corporate intranet. We will build, from the ground
up, an entire infrastructure. We will teach you how to build, from the ground
up, an entire infrastructure.
Sessions are minimum 300 level, and content-rich. Therefore:
Well, maybe. (P.S. if you work for Microsoft, pretend you didn’t see that picture)
October 15th Evening SQL Server DBA Event: Disaster Recovery –
Edwin Sarmiento, MVP for SQL Server
Speaker: Edwin M. Sarmiento, MVP for SQL Server
Date: Thursday, October 15th, 2009
Time: 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM
Venue: Microsoft Ottawa Office
RSVP: http://www.clicktoattend.com/?id=142063
Session 1 (6:00 PM to 7:10 PM): Understanding and communicating business-orientated
disaster recovery concepts and objectives
So you have a database maintenance plan that does a backup of your databases and you’re
pretty sure that it works fine. But is that really enough? Are you sure that you will
be able to meet your service level agreements if and when disaster strikes? This session
will explain the need for understanding and communicating business-orientated disaster
recovery concepts and objectives to the business stakeholders. This will include defining
your RPO and RTO and how it affects your disaster recovery plan.
Session 2 (7:20 to 8:30 PM): Disaster Recovery for the Paranoid DBA
In the first session, much have been said about disaster recovery in general. In this
session, we will look at bringing the concepts down to SQL Server. This session will
focus on dealing with a recovery situation for a SQL Server 2005/2008 database, an
instance or an entire server. Topics covered will be backup schemes, partial backups
and piecemeal restores, page-level recovery and a thorough understanding of how to
troubleshoot a "Suspect" database.
Speaker Bio:
Edwin
M. Sarmiento (MVP for SQL Server) works as a Senior SQL Server DBA/Systems
Engineer for The Pythian Group in Ottawa, Canada.
He is very passionate about technology but has interests in music, professional and
organizational development, leadership and management matters when not working with
databases. He lives up to his primary mission statement – "To help people
grow and develop their full potential as God has planned for them.".
Refreshments:
Pizza and pop will be provided.
Note: No one will be admitted by building security after 5:55 PM, and the
event will start promptly at 6:00 PM.
OttawaSQL.net is a community group of Ottawa area developers and IT professionals.
We share an interest in Microsoft’s data technologies especially: SQL Server,
SharePoint, PerformancePoint, Workflow Foundations, LINQ, ADO.NET and Entity Framework.
After getting my camera back from Mitch Garvis after Techdays and
FailCamp in Toronto, I decided to upload photos from the events, and to my surprise
there were some pretty good shots. Here is what I came back with:
Still working out session details, but it looks like I will be presenting in Ottawa
and Montreal for Techdays 2009. I will
be loitering around at the Toronto event soaking up all the techie-goodness, so come
find me at any of the three events. We can talk shop, shoot the breeze, or just
mill about having a good time.
I promise I won’t embarrass anyone. Except maybe myself. But that’s a
warning for all occasions.
Here are the dates of the events across Canada. Buy your tickets before the
early-bird deal runs out!
City |
Date |
Venue |
VANCOUVER |
SEPTEMBER 14-15
|
Vancouver Convention Centre |
TORONTO |
SEPTEMBER 29-30
|
Metro Toronto Convention Centre
|
HALIFAX |
NOVEMBER 2-3
|
World Trade & Convention Centre
|
CALGARY |
NOVEMBER 17-18
|
Calgary Stampede
|
MONTREAL |
DECEMBER 2-3
|
Mont-Royal Centre |
OTTAWA |
DECEMBER 9-10
|
Hampton Inn & Convention Centre
|
WINNIPEG |
DECEMBER 15-16 |
Winnipeg Convention Centre
|
The Early Bird price is $299. The regular Price is $599.
I will post more on the sessions I will be presenting at a later date when I get the
full details.
See you there!
Microsoft certainly isn’t to blame here, it’s a law in Quebec that prevents contests
from happening. Better chance for me to win it though!
As budgets get tighter, Tech·Days is the perfect way to get the Tech·Ed experience
without the travel expense, with two days of skill-strengthening education to help
you position yourself for success by:
-
Learning the technology—with a customizable agenda from over forty
sessions across five technical tracks on both current technologies and new products,
like Windows® 7 and Microsoft® Exchange 2010;
-
Connecting with Experts and Peers—with Birds-of-a-Feather lunches
and the new Windows 7 Zone, you'll have lots of opportunities to share your ideas
with those who know the products best; and
-
Apply what you learn—with a Learning Kit packed with products and
resources so you can continue to grow your skills long after the event has finished.
Technologies discussed: Windows 7 Operating System, Windows Server®
2008 R2 operating system, Visual Studio® 2008 development system, Silverlight™ browser
plug-in, Exchange 2010, Security/Management, and more.
If you want the VIP Discount use the promo code TD09Partner.
City |
Date |
Venue |
VANCOUVER
TD09Partner |
SEPTEMBER 14-15
|
Vancouver Convention Centre |
TORONTO
TD09Partner |
SEPTEMBER 29-30
|
Metro Toronto Convention Centre
|
HALIFAX
TD09Partner |
NOVEMBER 2-3
|
World Trade & Convention Centre
|
CALGARY
TD09Partner |
NOVEMBER 17-18
|
Calgary Stampede
|
MONTREAL
TD09Partner |
DECEMBER 2-3
|
Mont-Royal Centre |
OTTAWA
TD09Partner |
DECEMBER 9-10
|
Hampton Inn & Convention Centre
|
WINNIPEG
TD09Partner |
DECEMBER 15-16 |
Winnipeg Convention Centre
|
Early Bird: $299, Regular Price: $599
There is a good chance I will be presenting at one (or more) of these locations, so
keep an eye out. In the event that I don’t, I will definitely be enjoying the
Toronto stop of the tour. In either case, I will be there ready to learn, with
a pocket-full of business cards.
Oh, and I’ll be leaving with a box/bag/shopping cart* of swag.
*Metaphorical shopping cart. They are going to give away lots of
awesome stuff.
In my previous post I started
talking about part of my personal history with software development, and when QBasic
got me hooked. I ended the post talking about the move to Canada. We arrived
in Canada literally a week (7 days exactly) before Grade 9 started. After getting
enrolled in school, I tried to find something to keep my mind occupied. It was
either that or contemplate what Grade 9 would be like for someone who used to live
3000 miles away in another country. And winter. Still 4 months away, but
definitely something I didn’t want to think about. Being that we moved to a
house in the country, I couldn’t just walk around town either. Mental occupation
was harder than I thought.
So what does a 14 year old boy, new to the country, living in the middle of nowhere,
do to keep himself from going crazy? Install Linux of course! I needed
something to keep my interest, as well as to keep the gears in my head moving.
If memory serves, I started out with a vanilla copy of Red Hat Linux. It was
pretty easy to install, but being new to the OS architecture, the device mapping was
a little confusing. After a couple months of studying the Linux architecture,
I started writing shell scripts, and even delved into the source code. After
testing some minor modifications to different components I started to learn the basis
for the C/C++ languages. Imagine that, a 14 year old kid understanding the basis
for C++.
While trying to keep my mind still occupied, I came across an interesting find: The
National Security Agency’s Security Enhanced
Linux Kernel. If compiled and installed wrong, you will destroy the build.
Learned that the hard way… And seeing as I couldn’t find a proper driver for
my modem anyway, I gave up on Linux and moved back to XP. Not that the internet
was all that useful anyway; I was connecting at 28.8 half the time.
Going back to the image in Part 1,
I met an interesting character in school. He turned out to be one of my best
friends, and fellow developers, Greg. We started working on some odd projects here
and there in VB, until I was tasked with building a web store. Since I had never
actually brought HTML and Dev together, I was a little nervous about what I was getting
myself into. Going with what I knew well, I started in ASP with VB code.
This was not ASP.NET. Earlier, I had said I never found VB all that
intuitive as a language. The syntax never really made sense to me. So
my friend suggested I take a look at PHP as an alternative. I liked it.
PHP had the flow of C, and the usefulness of VB. With PHP I got the store finished
and launched. The site worked great. I was 15.
Once the first spring of my existence in Canada rolled around, a couple friends and
I decided to start a band. We sucked. But seeing as one of the other members
was Greg, we had an awesome website. We had media streaming, custom modified
forums, and full site statistics. The statistics were built around the forum.
The site pulled data from recent posts, recent events, and recent user logins, and
compared the data to the media streams. We could see who was doing what.
Mind you, there was only about 50 people who loitered around the site, but the site
was a great proof of concept for what we could do.
Following the demise of the band, Greg and I were invited to a Microsoft hosted event.
It was here that I fell in love with ASP.NET. Which I will discuss in Part
3.
When I saw this comic a couple weeks ago, it hit a chord just right with me.
Except of course it was PHP, and grade 9. The funny thing was, I started writing
programs way back when I was in grade 5. I tried to start learning development
when I was in grade 3. Let me tell you, there are certain subtleties to programming
that don’t quite become apparent to a 9 year old.
10 PRINT “Steve is Awesome!”
20 GOTO 10
While QBasic was fun to play with, I gave up on that when I found a book on Visual
Basic in Grade 5. I vaguely remember it being Visual Basic 5 too. I could
be wrong. It was a little more than 10 years ago – you do the math. The
problem I found with VB was that it didn’t feel all that intuitive from a language
perspective to me. I could never find it to flow properly. But at the
time, that’s all I had to go on. So I gave up on development for a while and
tried my hand at HTML. Once again, certain things just aren’t apparent at certain
ages. When I first tried HTML, I started in notepad. Shortly thereafter
I ended in notepad. Maybe sports would be more fun? Nah… Enter FrontPage
a few months later.
After finally getting the hang of FrontPage, I built some amazing (read: ugly) sites.
All-in-all they weren’t bad for an 11 year old.
Once middle school rolled around, I tried my hand at the other sciences and found
out I really enjoyed biology. Being the semi-OCD-like person I am, I put all
my attention into biology and medicine, with a curiosity for chemistry. I knew way too
much for my own good.
Now I have to mention that all of this is taking place in beautiful Southern California.
I was born and raised there for 14 years. At the end of Grade 8, my parents
decided to move to Canada. Don’t ask - long story. And at that time, I
was still into the life sciences. In my next
post, I’ll continue on with my story.