Using Credentials in Powershell

Gracefully borrowed from http://www.adminarsenal.com/

Putting it all together

We now know how to convert a SecureString to an encrypted standard string. We can take any method we like to get a SecureString, convert it to a standard string and then save it to a file. Here is an example of each:

Exporting SecureString from Plain text

"P@ssword1" | ConvertTo-SecureString -AsPlainText -Force | ConvertFrom-SecureString | Out-File "C:\Temp 2\Password.txt"

Exporting SecureString from Get-Credential

(Get-Credential).Password | ConvertFrom-SecureString | Out-File "C:\Temp 2\Password.txt"

Exporting SecureString from Read-Host

Read-Host "Enter Password" -AsSecureString | ConvertFrom-SecureString | Out-File "C:\Temp 2\Password.txt"

Any one of these examples should provide you with a Password.txt file that has an encrypted standard string the represents the password.

When you need to use this encrypted password, you simply reverse the process by importing the data from your file and use ConvertTo-SecureString. If all you need is a SecureString, you can stop there. You could even take it a step further and create a PSCredential object.
Creating SecureString object

$pass = Get-Content "C:\Temp 2\Password.txt" | ConvertTo-SecureString

Creating PSCredential object

$User = "MyUserName" $File = "C:\Temp 2\Password.txt" $MyCredential=New-Object -TypeName System.Management.Automation.PSCredential ` -ArgumentList $User, (Get-Content $File | ConvertTo-SecureString)

Apple Launches iPhone 6 camera replacement program

From the everlasting, all-knowing Slashdot. It should be noted that this is just for the iPhone 6 PLUS model.

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/15/08/22/1419206/apple-launches-free-iphone-6-plus-camera-replacement-program

https://www.apple.com/support/iphone6plus-isightcamera/

CBS Now Offering Monthly Service

One of the big networks are finally offering a monthly fee service. CBS is now offering a CBS All Access service at $5.99/mo. for streaming all content. They claim even the NCAA basketball tourney will be streamed. Not a bad price for access to all of the shows. Now I need to start choosing keeping closer tabs on the monthly service fees for streaming.

It makes me wonder how long it will take someone to start up a service to package these streaming services and make them available the way cable companies should have done long ago.

LastPass Password Management

I've been really pleased with LastPass as a password management plugin for Chrome. It has the ability to store and generate complex passwords for all your sites as well as store encrypted notes about each one.

Just make sure to turn off the "Automatically Fill Login Information" option if you work in Systems Administration. Just the other day it updated this information on a site I was using without me noticing. I had to scramble for the valid username and password before systems started throwing alerts.

Typical Network Speeds

Borrowed from http://www.channelz.org/network-speed-table/

Tech	Scope	High	Low	Typical
POTS	WAN	56,000	300	50,000
ISDN	WAN	2,048,000	128,000	128,000
T1	WAN	1,544,000	1,544,000	1,544,000
E1	WAN	2,048,000	2,048,000	2,048,000
802.11b	WLAN	11,000,000	4,300,000	4,300,000
DSL	WAN	52,000,000	256,000	6,000,000
802.16 WiMAX	WLAN/WWAN	70,000,000	10,000,000	10,000,000
Ethernet	LAN	10,000,000	10,000,000	10,000,000
Cable	WAN	400,000,000	512,000	16,000,000
Token	RingLAN	16,000,000	4,000,000	16,000,000
802.11g	WLAN	54,000,000	4,300,000	19,000,000
802.11a	WLAN	54,000,000	5,500,000	23,000,000
E3	WAN	34,368,000	34,368,000	34,368,000
T3	WAN	44,773,000	44,773,000	44,773,000
802.11n	WLAN	248,000,000	4,300,000	74,000,000
Fast Ethernet	LAN	100,000,000	100,000,000	100,000,000
FDDI	WAN	200,000,000	100,000,000	100,000,000
ATM	LAN/WAN	622,000,000	622,000,000	622,000,000
Gigabit Ethernet	LAN	1,000,000,000	1,000,000,000	1,000,000,000

GB = 1e9

10GB = 1e10