Pro/Server – 7/20/2009

What a day today was!

We started out the day with a super-in-depth discussion on IP addressing and subnetting and supernetting.  I won’t rehash the entire lecture here because it’s a) really long and b) already been done before here.  I seriously recommend checking this out and reading all about it.  And make sure you’re good at doing this — you WILL see this again in your future classes and professional career.  It’s so convenient to be able to do this in your head on the fly and not have to rely on some kind of calculator — and you will be able to do a lot of this in your head with enough practice.

After the whole IP addressing thing was complete, we shifted gears and discussed chapter 12, which dealt with Internet Explorer.  This chapter should come as a much lighter load than the IP addressing conversation.  Somethings I definitely want you to take away from this chapter:

• Cookies are not inheritently bad.  Just like in real life, small amounts of cookies in the right situations can be extremely enjoyable and convenient.  It’s when we start getting cookies all the time from everyone and their mother do our machines (and butts) get bloated.  We talked about how to handle cookies using Microsoft’s bundled browser, and I showed you a tip to help you strike a balance between convenience and risk/bloatiness: enable first party cookies, and disable third-party ones.
• Browser history is one of those areas you need to keep under  control.  If left alone, it could bloat up your browsing experience (at best) or have potentially harmful side effects (at worst).
• Keep y0ur browser up-to-date.  Seriously.  If you’re still using IE6 (ahem, ahem).  Upgrade, now.  To at least IE7.  Scratch that, IE8.  Ok, scratch that again, Firefox.
• IE is the only browser out there that natively supports ActiveX components.  Depending on who’s telling you, that’s either a good thing or a bad thing.  It’s good, since Active X allows a web site to access your computer hardware and run more like a desktop app, except that it’s stored wholly on the web.  It’s bad because, well, it accesses your computer hardware.  The potential for bad stuff to happen is astronomical.  I’d recommend not using them whenever possible, and you can do that by installing a non-IE browser.
• BHOs, or Browser Helper Objects, are add-ons for IE.  Most modern browsers have them, and they’re not bad — in fact, many of them are quite good and add great functionality.  Good ones include, for example, Adobe Reader.  Adobe Reader’s BHO allows you to open a .pdf document inside your browser natively.  An example of a bad BHO would include the MyWebSearch toolbar (anyone?  anyone?) which allows you to upload all your browsing habits to a third-party firm who sells all your information off to spammers and third-world mafias.

Finally, after all that discussion, we moved into the final topic of the day, and that is the concepts of Users and Groups.  We’ve talked about both before in earlier classes, but just to reiderate, users represent a separate person using the computer, while groups are designed to be several similar users.  A computer has only one real way of knowing who is sitting in front of it using it, and that’s through the user account.  Windows uses accounts to keep track of permissions, rights, auditing, etc., and the concept of them becomes very important when we get to Server classes (two more weeks).  But for our purposes here, know that Windows XP (and Vista, and 7 for that matter) have user groups that are stored locally on the given machine that their OS is installed on.  (Using Server, we set up these user accounts just once on the centralized server, not locally on each machine — much better administratively).

We have groups to lump different users into.  So, for example, if I have five local users that will all have similar rights, permissions, or auditing setups, I might throw them all into the same group and then configure the rights, permissions and auditing setups on the group.

Some groups come with Windows.  These groups are called built-in groups, and the Administrators, Power Users and Users groups are three examples.

Other groups’ memberships change based on different criteria.  These groups are called implicit groups.  A great example of this type of group is the Authenticated Users group — refering to users who have been authenticated (logged in).

What’s more, we also talked about different ways of managing users and groups (Control Panel, MMC or even the command prompt) and how Windows XP uses cached credentials whenever a DC is down, and the pros and cons of using this system.

Homework:

• Chapter 11 Worksheet – download it here
• Take Home Test Four – download it here