You may have recently read one of the many confusing or seemingly contradictory articles about the Symantec vs. Google grudge match that’s been going on for some time now. If not, here’s the problem in a nutshell:
Google found a troubling number of bad SSL certificates issued by Symantec – bad meaning they had issued certs for google.com and other high profile domains, but they issued them to people who were not Google, etc. Symantec said they were just test certificates used by internal staff, and they never left their four walls. But the fact remained that the certs were valid and could potentially cause a lot of trouble.
By now you may have read about an issue affecting Intel, AMD, and other processors, potentially exposing sensitive memory data. Until now, that data has been assumed to be safe, since a program running on a system isn’t supposed to be able to access the memory used by the kernel or core of that system. There are two separate bugs involved, known by the names “Meltdown” and “Spectre.” The bugs affect virtually every device that uses an Intel or AMD processor: desktop computers, laptops, tablets, phones – essentially almost all computing devices made since 1995.
Statdash is a task management progress tracker that allows you to see where your project stands in one dashboard. The solution employs an automated status request scheduler and activity notifications to eliminate the legwork usually needed to track down team members and find out the status of tasks and activities. We recently chatted with Pam Nelligan, Chief Software Architect and one of the co-founders of Statdash to learn more about her startup and how Everleap has fit into her growing business.
Everleap: Thanks for talking with us Pam. Tell us about yourself and your professional background.
Pam Nelligan: I’m a software developer and also a certified project manager. Software development has changed a lot since I started in 1991. It was a whole different world back then – no Internet per se and no development on the Internet. I worked for a software development company for 16 years and in 2007 went out on my own to be an independent contractor. When I left the company I was at, I decided to get into development on the Internet.
Founded in 2000, AmateurGolf.com is a website created for avid golfers who aren’t pros, connecting them to the pulse of the competitive amateur game. The site’s main focus is its directory of golf tournaments, a database of around 2,000 events per year. We recently chatted with founder Pete Wlodkowski to learn more about the site and his move to Everleap.
Everleap: Thanks for talking with us Pete. First off, could you tell us a little more about yourself and your professional background?
Pete Wlodkowski: I came to the business from a technology sales and marketing background. While I’m a non-techie and not a programmer, I got experience in the tech world working with a few different organizations, including a software company. It was here that I learned about websites, how they operate and how customers use them.
We recently published an article over on the DiscountASP.NET blog entitled, “https: who needs it?“, and it talks about all of the compelling reasons to implement HTTPS (via an SSL certificate) on your website. The tl;dr summary of that article is: You really need to implement HTTPS at your earliest convenience. Or maybe even before it’s convenient.
So yes, everyone needs to use https, and that includes us. We’ve gone through the Everleap website and made all the necessary changes, including forcing connections that come in on port 80 – normal HTTP connections – to HTTPS. You may have noticed we did the same on this blog, and our forum as well.
A new feature that we’re introducing with Update Rollup 11 for Windows Azure Pack is Auto Heal. Auto Heal is a monitoring tool and certain actions can be automatically taken when a condition is reached. For example, if your site uses 500 MB of memory, Auto Heal can be configured to recycle the application pool.
Let’s take a look at how to configure Auto Heal to recycle your site if it reaches 1 GB of memory usage.
We mentioned previously that on December 1st new ICANN rules are going into effect that change the way some domain contact information changes are processed. Well, here we are, and now we know a bit more about how the changes are going to be handled by our registrar, OpenSRS, so here’s an update.
First, the change affects all “generic top level domains.” Those are domains like .com, .net, .org, .biz, .info, etc., and it includes all of the new domain extensions, like .blog, .photo, etc. Country code domains such as .uk, .tv, .co, etc. are not governed by ICANN, so they are not affected.
There are some confusing aspects to domain name registration and maintenance, and unfortunately, some changes are about to be implemented that may well add to that confusion.
On December 1, 2016, new ICANN rules go into effect that create another step when you change the first name, last name, contact email or organization fields for your domain. Doing any of those things will now trigger the “trade process.” Which means those minor ownership information changes will now be treated the same way a domain transfer is treated.
The third .NET Conf UY is taking place September 29th through October 1st in Montevideo, Uruguay.
Get the very latest on Microsoft technologies, including HoloLens, .NET Core, DevOps, Docker, Universal Apps, Windows 10, Internet of Things, Xamarin, Sharepoint, Office 365, SQL Server and Visual Studio. Hob-nob with top experts, and enjoy a unique opportunity to learn, share and network. Workshops, conferences and fun are all guaranteed, in an informal, friendly environment.
If you have a large database, a lot of small databases, or need SQL server customization, our Managed SQL service is something you should consider.
And now you can get a Managed SQL server running SQL 2016. What’s new in SQL 2016? Stretch Database, Query Store, Temporal Tables, Native support for JSON and more.