Another one jumps ship

Those who followed the NetWare newsletter should remember all the praise I've heaped on Ted "The Rev" Haeger over the years. If not, see:

* The Rev expands Novell's online community

* Novell Cool Solutions gets blogs and wikis

* Novell's 'Rev' reaches out further to his flock

*Haeger evangelizes OpenSuSE

and a lot more. Ted Haeger was, in many ways, the chief cheerleader for Novell technology. but more than that, he was an honest cheerleader. You could learn as much from what he didn't say as from what he did. Now he's moving on.

According to another ex-Novellite, Matt Asay, Ted is moving on to Bungee Labs - and Matt is taking credit for attracting Ted to the new startup.

You can read the Rev's own words on his blog, where he says: "The people who make up Novell’s technical community, both outside and inside of the company, have been wonderful to me." And, as I said, Ted tells you a lot with what he doesn't say - and who he doesn't thank!

IPv6 on NetWare

Mark Miller is writing a series on IPv6 for ITPlanet, and the latest installment notes:

"IP on NetWare, available with NetWare 6.5, enables NetWare applications such as NDS and Winsock to use IPv6 as a native transport protocol over the NetWare server platform. The IPv6 element functions as an add-on component to the existing TCP/IP protocol stack (using a dual IPv4/IPv6 protocol stack architecture), with IPv6 over Ethernet at the Data Link Layer. IPv6 functions that are supported include Neighbor Discovery, Stateless Address Autoconfiguration, the Basic Socket Interface Extensions, the Transmission Mechanisms for hosts and routers, Automatic and Configured tunneling, and others."

Novell SecureLogin Security Issue

FrSIRT Security has issued advisories concerning Novell's SecureLogin "adschema" Utility and AD Password Modification Security Issues.

"Two vulnerabilities have been identified in Novell SecureLogin, which could be exploited by attackers to bypass security restrictions and potentially obtain elevated privileges.

The first issue is caused by an error in the "ADSCHEMA" utility that grants users excess permissions to their own attributes. No further details have been disclosed.

The second vulnerability is caused by an error within the Active Directory (AD) password change feature. No further details have been disclosed."

Further information, and patching data, are avaulable from Novell.

Novell stomps on partners feet - once again.

The Novell "marketing machine" recently tried to by-pass its channel partners according to a story in Computer Reseller News (CRN).

Evidently the company recently mass-mailed a number of Small Business Suite customers telling them it was time to renew their support contracts, and noting that they could contact a "local retailer" to do so - but neglected to either give details of, or even inform, the partner who made the original sale! As one said:

"I don't care if they contact the client directly as long as they give me the same opportunity to make the same margin as the direct sales initiative, and they should list our name and number," he said. "I don't think that's asking too much. If they want me to stop selling their product, this is the way to do it."

Considering the poor sales numbers in Novell's last financial report, ticking off your channel partners doesn't seem like a good thing to do.

The computer game that started it all

My Network World colleague Deni Connor reminisces with Drew Major about Snipes - a game I often played with my staff, late at night, as we waited for yet another Compsurf to finish!

I don't know if it actually "changed" networking, but it certainly made it more fun...

Get your own copy of Snipes and you too can reminisce!