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No More Unrestricted Internet At Work
Schlemphfer writes: "You can forget about using private email or surfing the web while at work if these bozos have their way. And judging by the Reuters article, it looks like they might. Basically what they're doing is trying to scare senior management into thinking that allowing employees unrestricted use of the net will cripple a company with viruses and lawsuits."
trying to scare senior management into thinking that allowing employees unrestricted use of the net will cripple a company with viruses
It will. Haven't you ever worked in IT before? Christ, what I wouldn't give to go back to the days of dumb terminals and VAXen, so I wouldn't have to deal with all of these Windows infections.
--saint
For goodness sakes' people--your at work. Your not getting paid to check your email or surf for personal pleasure. Your getting paid to work for the company. It is also the companies connection, so they should be able to make those restrictions if they so choose. I don't understand why people get so up in arms about this.
At work we have somewhat of an answer to viruses. 20 file extensions including exe, pif, scr, com, bat, vbs, vbe, and others are filtered at the server into a "Quarantine" folder and reports are generated every few hours on it and piped to a line printer for our review. We deal with them from there by either giving them to the employee, or by responding to who sent it with an automagically generated email.
Additionally, all mail is screened against the server's pattern file, which tries to update itself hourly. If sometimes passes through mail, it'll be found if on a server, and the client software, which updates its pattern file upon logon, will find things as they're opened.
All with unnoticable performance difference. We haven't had a virus infection in a LONG time now.
Worms like Nimda are a bit more annoying, but we take things like this seriously, and by doing so, avoided Nimda and others completely.
=====
As for net access, we do run reports on the proxy logs occasionally. Employees understand that they have little privacy in the workplace and that if we see them goofing off (except for after hours or at lunch), they do get an email regarding it. But we haven't had to do that in years. They more or less behave, because we trust them and they trust us.
-----
I'm the guy with the passwords to the routers
;)
connected to the T1 lines.
There are already a few hundred routes in the
tables... who's going to notice everything from
my workstation misses the filtering appliance?
Oh that's right, it's my job to make sure no one
*else* does this, too.
what's wrong with these guys...my computer at home is way too slow to download all that porn...
seriously though, i'd go crazy if i had to work 8 hours straight without any distractions...so, what if i shoot over to Hotmail to check my personal e-mail, or over to ESPN to check out the latest sports news, or even here to post my thoughts on the latest tech news topics...and that doesn't even count the numerous times i use the internet to look up java related things on Sun's website or trouble shoot my Websphere problems over at IBM...
what's the point of having all that information available at our finger tips if we can't use it...
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
Or perhaps 144 round automatic rubber powered weaponry. Wonder what kind of law they'll have to pass to outlaw that?
Crippling access to anything often denies legitimate uses of things and forces the employees to come up with outrageous work-arounds if they're smart enough. If they're not, then they just bother the IT staff to death with a million questions as to why they can't do the research needed, or recieve the .exe file that they need to complete their work.
I remember being in a school that had open internet access, then going to another school that had limited internet access and constantly being frustrated by the limitations imposed. I couldn't download the application I was working on and test it on a new machine, I couldn't go to a website talking about Middlesex county. There were a lot of legitimate things that I wished to do that I was blocked from, yet I could go to satanic websites, pro-life websites with all sorts of horrid imagery, and more.
Most attempts at controlling content end up being failures. Bring this to the attention of those seeking to control the information you recieve and you'll get a confused look, they'll pause and say "I don't know why you couldn't access that site. You should be able to."
I think it would be better to leave things open and dock the pay of any employee who violates "Guidelines". Let 'em hang themselves. Set up the "filters" not as filters that block the person but as flags that flag the IT staff regarding potential illegal use. The IT staff could then investiage and initiate a "three strikes" scenario. Strike one- warning, strike 2- docked pay, strike 3- no more internet access no way no how.
-Sara
People seem to think they have a right to surf the net and send anything they want from work. Well, that's not the way it is. The computers and Internet connections are owned by the company. They don't pay people to do that stuff.
Due to viruses and other problems I've blocked any attachment capable of carrying a virus. Yes, it's sometimes a hassle but that's the way it is now. Management has requested we monitor the type of sites people visit just to make sure there isn't a big problem. So far they haven't requested user lists or specific sites. They won't until XXX sites start getting out of hand.
Viruses, security holes, and loss of productivity have caused these limits to be placed. Want to surf for fun, do it at home.
I just can't have a problem with this. As somebody who has been both employer and employee at tech firms, I can say from both experience and idealism that there ain't nothing wrong with employers filtering Internet access. When you're at work, your time is your employers'. Inherently.
If you are unhappy with the fact that your evil corporate money-grubbing employer doesn't want you dicking around on company time...well, good luck in getting a new job.
-Waldo Jaquith
This won't work for people who do more than automaton work. If you restrict net access or filter sites in any way, you risk employee burnout, employee morale, and employees' ability to research job-related stuff. If my company used filtering or blocked my internet access, I might not be able to get the information I need to do my job. What happens when I need to look for API documentation?
This is kind of like curing athlete's foot by amputating the patient's leg.
"You done taken a wrong turn."
-Bill McKinney, in Deliverance
Frankly, I'm surprised that this hasn't become more widespread, and long before this. My present employer's internal network was crippled for days by the nimda worm, all because some idiot salesdroid double-clicked on an attachment in her Hotmail account.
As the sole unix admin there, I mostly got to sit back and chuckle evilly, but half a week's lost productivity is no laughing matter when you're tallying up the balance sheets at the end of the month.
The bottom line here is that you are being paid to work, not to check your personal email, IM your friends, or post to Slashdot. If that seems unreasonable, start your own damn company.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
In the 19th and early 20th century, at the heart of the industrial revolution, working conditions were appalling. There were no government restrictions on what employers could require from employees.
As a result of the socialist labour movements, both through their political arms and through strikes and other actions, work place reforms were put in place.
Age limits were raised, limitations on salary cutting was introduced and dangerous machinery was forced to be made safer.
Now, at the beginning of the 21C, we have forgotten those gains and how they were made. We have forgotten that employers must be kept in check by organized employees.
If you stand alone, they will monitor every aspect of your lives, from email to web surfing, to drug use. The actions in this article are only the beginning.
Remember that old saying, which is now so relevant - in Union is Strength.
These e-mail filters from outside companies might make it harder to be sued for sexual harrasment because you are showing an active pursuit of purity but it does not prevent the porno from making its way into your system 100%. You can protect the inside of your company so it doesn't go out but its hard to protect it from those people outside of your network that want to pass on the "funny, dirty picture" with one of their friends that happens to be your employees.
Web filtering is a lot easier to do and doesn't require and expensive commercial package. Squid + SquidGuard have been a perfect match for my purposes.
My solution when C-level management calls for these sort of filters is by giving them what they ask for -- all the way. After a few days, they will always want them relaxed. I always find it funny its never the grunts that are the ones abusing e-mail, its always the suits! :)
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Whilst it may be a bit extreme to say "criple" ther is some justification there...
I am the system administrator at a college here in Australia and if we did not filter/limit the kids access to the internet then all the bandwidth on our (meager) internet connection would be soaked up by kids wasting time on MUDs, IRC, HotMail, Chat, Online games, Warez sites, and other such activities, and the staff and students who actually try to do some work (research/E-mail etc) would have a hell of a time trying to get anything done.
So whilst I agree that private use of the 'net should be allowed, there is limits that need to be put on WHAT private use is allowed. Not only to free up the bandwidth for legitimate uses, but also free up computers for thos that wish to work rather than just waste their time...
What you gave you the idea that you HAVE the right to deal with your own shit on somebody else's time??? I actually thought this was one of the prime arguments to using Linux on the desktop: It gives the manager top level control over the applications that can be used while employees are on the clock, so that the employer can define the workflow on the computer, rather than having people you are paying by the hour checking their email surfing etc. That just doesn't make sense...
Of course their are exceptions...Not allowing developers access to the internet for research and such is suicide...But for many jobs this is perfectly valid.
-The art of programming is the pursuit of absolute simplicity.
Jesus christ! Has anyone on slashdot EVER worked in a corporate IT environment?
Let's take this quote right here which sums it up:
"The message is: 'I'm afraid you'll have to do it after hours at home, which is where you should be doing it in the first place,"' said Mikko Hypponen, manager of anti-virus research for Finish-based F-Secure Corp.
Where does ANYONE get off thinking company resources are PERSONAL resources? How is this a limitation of ANYONE'S rights? Do you think you have the right to drive the company car across the country for a personal vacation? Do you think you have the right to use the company FedEx account to send Christmas presents to your sister in New York? Then how in the hell do you think you have the right to use company network resources to send personal email and use ICQ? Would your boss let you sit there and read the newest John Grisham novel when you should be working? Then why do you think you are allowed to read slashdot all day?
People need to grow up. When you are at work, you should work. If your company is NICE enough to let you use resources for personal use then fine but you do NOT have a right to do anything with something that isn't yours.
Christ I need a beer.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
Granted, I would be pretty upset if my external e-mail and internet access were taken away, but my employer would be well within their rights to do so.
I use the internet quite a bit while at work; it's an invaluable programming reference. Any surfing beyond that, though, is technically an abuse of company resources. I'm pretty good about sneaking over here to Slashdot only on short breaks, but there are times when I let the mouse wander a little more than I should.
In a big company, lots of employees surfing around and forwarding stupid jokes and viruses to one another can cost a company in terms of both bandwidth and lost productivity.
Having internet access at work is nice and all, but a God-given right it ain't.
I wish they would limit it at home too so I would get some work done because I wouldn't spend so much time on /. !!
I stole this Sig
I have to agree with the above posters that companies have a legitimate point here. Flash animations, greeting cards, personal email, pr0n...all this stuff takes bandwith folks. Moreover, all this stuff will travel over the COMPANY's network on COMPANY time.
Worse, let's say Dumb Secretary #1 opens up an ILOVEYOU-type virus (I saw such a case on the evening news at the time.) Boom-infected machines that will have to be cleaned up. This is most certainly a BAD THING.
Now, before I'm flamed by the personal freedoms crowd, let me point out that work is a privilege. You have been hired by said company to perform said tasks. You have not been hired to bid on eBay, manage your stocks, or visit the Hamsterdance. Those people who need access, like developers, will likely be granted it. The article means companies in general, some tech firms probably won't mess with it.
We'll have to see where this goes, but I say let's wait and see.
~chazzf
No statement is true, not even this one.
I think corporations biggest threat is lost productivity time from programmers reading slashdot. (I bet I'm about the 75th person making this comment).
Without personal email, how would I do my job the one day each week our Exchange server decides to stop routing Internet email? Err, well...maybe that's what our exchange network's real goal is, and they are just randomly phasing it in a little at a time.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
Dear sir,
::wanders off to look for the coffee pot::
Please speak to my employer.
-Sara
[slashdot for mental health!]
Revolution OS is on the sundance channel if anyone cares. Off-topic but I'll post it at +1 so it takes a few minutes to get modded down.
Here is the CLOSEST quote to identifying a firm that is contemplating cutoff of access:
"As a result, companies are considering dramatically curtailing, or even abolishing completely the freedoms, on which employees have grown increasingly reliant over the past few years. "
Companies? What "companies"? The only firms named in the article are firewall and security companies that are spewing the fear used in this marketing spewing article.
No real management is going to take this seriously.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
I'm sure that in most cases if a business case can be made for it, it will pass. Some people do web research, some people relax by doing a little web browsing, etc. But there's no doubt that the internet has been the goof-off's best friend - and that a clampdown would result in a net productivity gain.
What is more productive?
/. to participate in brain-stimulating discussion regarding a variety of issues from copyright law to hardware to GPL issues. Returns to work refreshed and ready for a challenge.
Scenario A: Employee needs break desperately, has net access and goes to
Scenario B: Employee needs break desperately, does not have net access, wanders outside to smoke and oggle female co-workers. Returns to work with a hardon and a brain that is more fuzzed than before.
Proposed rule: Limit all NON-GEEK employees from accessing the internet. They mess with the bandwidth that could be better spend downloading the latest Slackware distro.
-Sara
Aim and the rest have their legitimate uses too. We save hundreds of dollars in communication costs with our overseas factories, and the response time is better than with the telephone (even if they are on a call, they can still answer an IM).
Additionally, the occasional personal use tends to reduce the number of personal phone calls coming in dramaticly, so as long as it isn't excessive, we tend to let it slide.
Have you read the Moderator Guidelines yet?
These things are often presented as if the "conservative" action is to restrict usage. But, for example, restricting access to the web means restricting instant access to the whole of the world's static knowledge store. Operating with no access to information seems a risk, too. So it isn't a choice between "risk" and "no risk", it's a choice between "one risk" and "another risk". I never seem to see it presented that way, though.
I also don't understand the focus on racy and inflammatory stuff as the biggest risk to a company. The biggest risk to the company is not the Internet but the Intranet. It's often the case that in a single button click, one can get to the corporate secrets and with little more than a few more keystrokes one can output that info to a file and mail it to a party outside the company's walls. That risk outshines the risk of pornography in many cases.
And, finally, a lot of this seems a scapegoat for lazy/bad management. If your employees are productively yielding what they should, what difference does it make where they are surfing. And if they are not yielding what they should, why not address that issue?
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
So why is the article under the "Your Rights Online" section?
Face it, he who owns the property gets to set the rules for it. If I refuse to let Timothy redecorate my bathroom for proper feng shui alignments, I am hardly infringing on his freedom of religion. Yet somehow if I don't allow him to use my computer to cruise for pr0n I am somehow infringing on his rights.
If you own that workstation in your cubicle, go do whatever you want with it. But if you boss owns it instead, then you had better follow his rules regarding it.
This isn't about "Your Rights Online", but rather "Your Employer's Rights Regarding Your Employer's Property".
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
But seriously, I couldn't do my job if I didn't have the net. Sure I browse /. for about an hour a day, but I'm there 9 or 10 hours somedays, so what's the big deal? Also, every bigwig in my company has AIM or YahooIM installed, so do you really think they will block all that stuff? When the big guys visited our location last time, I got pulled out of a very important meeting to help one of them get connected to YahooIM.
"Da ist ein Technölüst in mein Unterpanten!"
You're surfing the Internet on your employer's time
Your employer is paying the bill for the T3 (or whatever)
And you think you have the right to surf the Internet while at work? When you're on the company's time, you're supposed to be working...not bidding on crap on eBay.
Would someone please tell timothy what censorship is? This story doesn't even come close to the definition.
--
The real Raunchola isn't cool enough to have any imposters
I'll go for that. And no one can argue that there aren't free alternatives. Pegasus Mail is free, and it's immune to auto-executing worms. The only kind that can still run are executables, but the way the program displays mail means the user has to try a little harder to find the file and run it. Add to that the fact that mass-mailing worms are currently written to look at Microsoft address books and not Pegasus's, and you have a pretty good solution.
And it ain't a half-bad e-mail client.
That light you see at the end of the tunnel might be from an oncoming train.
...but please, please, please leave me a hole for Google's Usenet archive. Almost every programming question I've ever had has been answered 100 times on Usenet.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
Where I work, we completely cut off access to the Internet from nine to noon, and one to five. In other words, if you want to do anything on the Internet, you can't do it during regular business hours (except during lunch). In our case the purpose was not security or reducing liability, but to increase the productivity of our coders. Management wasn't too happy with the amount of time programmers spent web surfing and IRCing.
Some coders complained they needed to use the Web for reference and research purposes, so we set up a single computer with 24 hour Internet access in a very public area where everyone could see whether or not you doing something work related. Surprisingly, it doesn't see much use.
This whole policy was none too popular (as you might imagine) when it was first implemented a few months ago. But by every objective measure, productivity is very markedly improved, bugs are fewer, we're getting things done within a reasonable time frame for a change. It still isn't a popular policy, but even the programmers who most resent the policy have had to admit (grudgingly) that it works.
I've read quite a few comments on here saying "the internet is not a right, you should be working". Well, that isn't the issue really. It's not like we are talking about a law, but a company choice. Now granted, it is within a companies right to restrict internet access, but a company has to factor in all the results of the restriction, not just the lost time and virus threats.
The fact of the matter is right now Americans are required to work way too much as is. Many jobs onyl allow you two weeks of vaction for several years after you start, and even then you might not get that "benefit" for a year after your start date. People getting burnt out at work happens all the time, and that hurts business in terms of productivity. Sure they enact short term solutions like fire the employees and hire new ones, but the new ones get burnt out faster trying to catch up. Allowing someone some time to spend checking up on their personal email and sending an ICQ to their wife is not to much to give up when it means your employees will be happier, and therefor more productive.
But I imagine the suits along with all the "you are paid to work" zealots on this site will only see the one dimension picture of lost email due to "personal" activities. At what point did we become slaves anyway?
Do you realize how much time people waste talking on the phone? One guy next to me used to spend at least an hour a week chattering about bridge. It was very annoying. But he did good work so there.
Do businesses realize that people might call up phone sex lines? They can also contact prostitutes, drug dealers, hit men, or even rat out the company to the SEC/FBI. The list of bad contacts goes on and on. I say, "Let's rip those phones out of the wall."
And what about the friggin door. Many good companies like to say that their most important assets walk out of the door every evening. Hah. Do you realize the trouble they can find when they leave the protective womb? There are drugs, criminals, blackmailers and spousal distraction units. Heck, there are even video games. I say, "Just lock them up for good." To heck with the door.
If email viruses are causing all these untold millions of damages, how bout just banishing outlook and make everyone read plain old email. Problem solved, doesn't really cost a dime. Oh wait, I can't sell a new crappy firewall / email screener with that plan now can I?
Never mind...
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
When the current economy is pretty much the employer's market, the big guys can always impose more restrictions and come up with just about any logics behind it, to squeeze out every ounce of 'productivity' and to cut cost.
Boy.. Tell me about it.
air and light and time and space
Where I work (5000+ people company), this is what we do:
Honestly, I think that is about the best you can do. IT needs the internet extensively; other departments not so much. Hell, my boss has said to me on more than one occasion that if
I must say that I don't think its a good idea to totally remove internet access though for entire departments. I mean, if you work 8-5, that's the largest portion of your day spent at the office. You do have a life outside of work, and sometimes you have to do something online during those hours. Same goes for the phone, you are going to need it for a personal call every now & again. Of course, if you abuse the privileges, then you should have them revoked, plain & simple. But basic access should be allowed, after proper training, etc. However, giving everyone in the company unrestricted access is just flat-out stupid.
Having said that, there is indeed a need for increased security awareness in many companies. Buying more gear isn't really that cost effective though. Educating your people and letting them know the expected behaviour is better. This includes increasing the Cluedness of manglement so that they are aware of what their people are doing. If someone feels a need to surf pr0n all day instead of doing their job, your problem is not giving them access to pr0n. Why not find out why people are doing it instead of working?
If you've got people using decent passwords that they don't put on PostIt notes on their monitor; if your network techs are using ssh instead of telnet to configure routers; if every two bit middle manager stops demanding to be an exception to all the rules; and if you still have security issues, then maybe you can start looking at more drastic solutions. Security must be holistic, and more often than not it's more a business process issue, not a purely technical one.
Lastly, I've been at sites with really tight access policies that were easy enough to bypass for someone in the know. If there's any outbound access permitted, there's a way to bypass the security. So go ahead and implement this stuff. If I really want to get past it, I probably can.
But then, I've got better things to do with my time than surf pr0n at work, so when I say I need ssh access outbound, I actually do. Don't stop me doing my job by implementing some half-assed pseudo-security solution. Better yet, hire me to do it right! ;-)
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're NOT after you.
Gads, a tad bit reactionary, aren't we???
First, any company that doesn't take, at least, modest precautions in blocking certain types of e-mail attachments, or abusive downloadable web content is foolish, and, IMHO, acting negligently towards their own fiduciary responsibility, or toward their Internet neighbors.
I've been long sickened by the number of automated attacks that my IDS picks up. How long has CodeRed and Nimda been around??? Too many of these are comprimised hosts supported by corporate networks of some sort.
Second, there's little "right" involved in your use of corporate assets such as personal computers and networks. It's a kindergarten mentality to expect a company to be required to provide you with resources to order the latest teen-pop drivel, or whatever it is you just _have_ to buy during work hours.
That said, I (and many of those within my company) couldn't do our jobs as developers without net access. Any company which starts arbitrarily blocking access to the Internet without properly judging the necessary impact to their workers is also foolish.
If your company manufactures pencils, then OK, they can probably get away without providing unrestricted access to the Internet without any negative impact on their workforce. On the other hand, if your company develops software, etc... the impact would be substantial.
It's all a matter of degree, and like most things on this planet, the right solution lies in moderation.
Was this REALLY worth a Slashdot news item? I do not see how this is news in that a) it's not anything new, or hasn't been bandied about ad nausem; and b) common sense tells me that the submission itself is borderline troll. Seriously, timothy, did you think this was news???
It'd be nice to be able to moderate story submissions in addition to comments.
The biggest developments are around email prevention, experts say. Elaborate content filtering software, which can run upwards of $30,000 to install, can block all but the tamest incoming emails, and most attachments, said Trend Micro's Genes.
Corporations, particularly those that were stung hard by the wave of virus and worm attacks during the past two years, are considering it a top priority.
Here's a free clue: QUIT USING MICROSOFT SOFTWARE.
Sheesh, how stupid can you be? And what a stupid solution to the problem, cutting your nose off to spite your face.
Seriously, damned near all the email viruses are targeted directly at Outlook. So the solution is to ban email? Why not just, ya know, not use Outlook?
Myopic. Utterly myopic.
If you are root...
Here at my company, as a sysadmin, I've been suggesting a policy of completely unfiltered web access *and* completely unfiltered proxy log access.
From the CEO all the way down to the temps.
(Except for *me* of course...)
We already filter out dangerous attachments from email and have good virus software. We really don't have a problem in that respect.
The thing is, once you take something like this away from your staff, you are saying "We don't trust you. We think you're slacking."
In my office, people work damn hard and are pretty happy in their work. We have a good atmosphere and no real division between workers and management. Once a company starts doing this kind of thing, the mood changes and people get resentful.
How many people in how many companies have said "This place really started to go downhill when they took away the free soft drinks..."?
Just my 2 yen,
Jim in Tokyo
-- My Weblog.
Not because I spend my time surfing and downloading when I'm at work (though on slowdays, there isn't much else to do). It's because my job is to clean up after people who break their computer because they were downloading the latest and greatist virus. What would I do without unrestricted acess, I wouldn't have any viruses to purge.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
So the internet lowers productivity by 25% just by connecting to it. Anyone with any brains at all would pull the plug.
Maybe you don't remember time wasting activities in the pre-internet era. Things like: wandering the plant on epic donut quests, endless banter with your office mates, reading thick publications like Byte and PC-Week cover-to-cover, writing video game emulators, calling all of the car stereo stores in the Yellow Pages looking for the best deal on an in-dash cassette player, and countless others.
I'm guessing that Internet usage has cut into the above activities more than into real work. In my case, I think the amount of off-topic time I spend at work has remained roughly constant over the last 15 years. (And it's been more than balanced by work I've done while at home).
I am "real management". MIS for a fairly large shop, a couple thousand PC's. We are basically an AS/400 outfit, but before I started, my predessessor had no concept of internet security. Mostly because it didn't affect out bread and butter AS/400's.
All PC's were basically on the 'Net. Full, unmonitored, unmetered access. My guys has so many "My PC is slow" calls, within the first week of my tenure, we had over 300 individual viruses identified. When you are dealing with an AS/400, it is basically text. When there are 10 people using a 4M DSL line and it is saturated with data, there is a problem. Especially when you pay per MB.
So the first thing I did was turn off the firewall to get things under control. Then once monitoring began, we found many people visiting a myriad of porn sites. Plenty of desktop wallpaper that would make a $5 whore blush. Can you say 'Sexual harassment in the workplace lawsuit'?
Once my staff had eradicated all viruses (minus 100 or so PC's that got chernoybl'ed) the damage came out to several hundred thousand dollars of company money that could have gone to my salary....er...^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H back into next years budget.
If you want to make a buck, TAANSTAFL. The company is there to make money, not give out free high speed internet access. The hardware is there to help the employee make money for the company, not cost the company money.
Then everyone had to sign a new company policy regarding internet usage. Basically, obey company policy, or you're gone. You don't like it, don't sign it. Internet usage is a tool, not a right. If the employee doesn't want to use that tool for the benefit of the company, it won't be provided for them.
And before everyone gets bent out of shape, the policy does say it can be used for personal use on breaks, lunch and after hours, if the employee stays away from porn and viruses.
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
1. Work is Work. You can chat with your buddies on your own time. Would you yak on the phone to your significant other all day? I hope not, otherwise I'm gonna slap you.
/., or Salon, or hardware prices, or rfc's or wireless stuff. But we don't have admin priv on our boxes, so no icq, kazaa, or any silly crap that is distracting. Personally, if you're chatting, or dl'ing mp3s you're wasting time. OTOH, if you're engaging in something at least related to your job in some way, fine.
2.If I have downtime, I like to browse
3. Mail and web access/files should be filtered, if only because people *still* open attachements. If you act like an ass, expect to be treated like one. I do like having ssh access to my home box, it allows me to test our network from an external site, in cases of dns, ftp, smtp, etc.
4. Shopping online at work is silly, that's wasting company time (who the hell does that?). At least try to utilise their bandwidth and time by doing something that is somewhat job-related.
The solution to people wasting company time on this BS is not to ratchet down the firewall and install the latest version of MS-Censor on the proxy. The solution is to open up the proxy and make the logs readable by anyone in the company. Preferably sorted by person.
This has the following useful side effects:
* People will know EXACTLY to what degree their web activities are logged
* Abusers can be persuaded by public consensus to clean up their habits
* Everyone is equally accountable
The solution to the virus problem is harder. Our good buddies in Redmond have left so many possible ways for a virus to propagate that plugging all the holes is practically impossible.
In order to help prevent viruses, the "standard desktop" environment used inside the company would be darn near unworkable (i.e. no file associations, executables/docs stripped from E-mail, macros/scripting disabled, "high" javascript security on browsers, etc. etc.)
The best compromise is to keep one's resident antivirus software up to date and accept that the standard Microsoft office environment is going to be vulnerable to fast spreading viruses. Budget for IT staff appropriately.
I work for one of the big six consulting firms (currently #2), and while we do have official policies regarding web and email use (standard porn, etc.), they are not enforced. Why, you ask? One, we hire good, productive people, and we get rid of those who are not. Two, our corporate IT department is smart enough to know that once you start censoring some sites/email then it goes downhill really quick. And considering that 3/4 or more of our business is IT, corp IT would get bitchslapped quick if they tried any of this. I do monster research on the 'net, and send and get all kinds of various email attachments; curtailing my usage (and most of my co-workers) would be a massive fuxor.
In the 4 years I've been here, we got hit with 1 virus (nimba maybe?). Rather than do all this draconian shit, how about you just hire better employees? Yeah, it's a real pain in the ass (I went through 6 different interviews for a level 1 position), and we outsource our trivial tasks (computer help desk, travel department), and you have to pay them more, but you bypass all this stupid shit.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
When Wired covered this, they noted that "companies typically start out blocking what filtering firms call the "sinful six" categories: pornography, gambling, illegal activities, hate sites, tasteless material and violent content."
Hell, I understand porn and gambling, but tastelessness and violence pretty much runs out the whole damn Internet. Guess I'll have to get my news about Mid-East turmoil from Zoog Disney...
It may be cold, but at least it's clear.
I work as a consultant, and one of my clients was a LARGE corporation. (I mean, REALLY large. One of the largest...big...)
Anyhow, around the time when Code Red was in full swing, they decided to start blocking employee access to "free" email sites such as Hotmail and Yahoo!, due to the fact that "viruses can propogate via these services".
Hmmm.
I'll be a good consultant, and go along with the flow. I won't bring up the facts that Code Red was designed to be propogated via MS Outlook/Express, most "free" mail sites already do virus scanning, and there wasn't (and still isn't) ANY virus scanning software on the PC's at this company.
But, then again, this is the client who also Sent in the clowns....
Really. Because there's times I'm very, very, happy not to be using Windows, such as when the latest Outlook or Word infection is going around.
Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)
External regulation should not be needed. If the employees are spending all their time on the web, then clearly their work is unrewarding. If I am enjoying the code I am working on, than I can go for hours with no breaks. Employees should also be smart enough to realize that if they squander these perks, they are going to get the boot. blocking porn sites at work is acceptable. but not blocking IM ports, especially as most of my team communicated with IM. it saved a ton of time, and provided checksums on file transmissions that windows file sharing does not always do.
A draconian attitude regarding squeezing every last second of work out of an employee is pointless! all it does is breed resentment in the employees. when I was working in an environment where 5pm counterstrike matches were commonplace, we tended to do more work after the match. however, the work was interesting enough we did not mind.
the moment the management is against the workers is the moment production starts to fall. everyone should be working toward the goal.
also I highly doubt that ANYONE here could go 8 hours without a slashdot fix. dream on.
I can't see this working properly for Internet or computer companies. I do support mail for many customers at an ISP, and a large part of my communication with our customers is the transfer of driver files contained in self extracting executables, along with finding online postings and fixes for recent viruses and other things. If this kind of thing is put in place where I work, my job will be entirely pointless, and our customers will not have support. I can see how it would also hamper the folks at Dell, or Gateway, or AOL/Time Warner for many of the same reasons. Though they may not have as much personal contact with their customers as I do, certain things can't be blocked. Additionally, as work stations are often moved here, there isn't really a way to limit access for certain segments of the network, or a certain range of IPs.
"You think that's air you're breathing now?"
At my place of work they are beginning to crack down on internet access. There are just too many web based worms to allow users to surf. We can't keep up with the patches to our NT servers and Windows 2000 desktops.
Luckily we run virus protection on our exchange server. It catches an infected email every few days!
The short of it is that network security is a full time job and we can't afford to hire a dedicated network security person. So what are we going to do?
(Sigh) If only we ran Linux.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
ISP's can't be liable for things like piracy because they make no attempt to control the customer's internet access, but only provide a conduit for that access. Couldn't this apply to other companies that provide access? As an employer, why on earth would I want to get into the whole filtering game when it could conceivably bite me in the ass?
Besides that, can you imagine sitting at your desk for ten hours a day with no decent distractions? It seems like a great way to kill morale without providing any sort of advantage to the employer.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
We use websense at work, and even it blocks stuff that occasionally I need to get into. Luckily I can either find the info somewhere else or use Googles cached feature, but if I had *no* internet access it would make things rather difficult.
Random Musings
I usually have an IRC client or two sitting in the background while I work and do other things; not only does it give me something to do when I need to walk away from the problem for a few minutes, but it also gives me somewhere I can ask questions and shoot ideas at.
So while it's pretty bad if all the user is doing is IRCing/reading SlashDot/checking Hotmail, most people can multitask and have these things go on in the background for use in idle periods (let's recompile and check slashdot while it chungs along; that query's taking a while, wonder if anyone's on IRC; hm, I don't get it, might as well check my email while I work it out)
I used to use company time to browse the web. But not to use email. But I always exceeded my quotas and got my work done right, too.
Now that I have a DSL connection, I feel like a hypocrite saying I agree with the sovereign right of an employer to rule their property as they see fit (unless they are discriminating). But I never ever did complain when restrictions were handed down; I always knew whose rights were whose.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
They mention a lot of European (especially German) companies doing stuff like this in the article. Maybe their employees don't care quite as much as American ones would because we work many fewer hours per year and per day (this is on average of course) that Americans do. Just a thought from a German who _hasn't_ had his internet and email use limited.
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
They won't stop me-
I'm a BOFH!
Besides, I'd rather have the users porn surfing than asking me about excel and access anyway.
I recently did an experiment. Like many things, I did it because I had two choices:
1) Wait for the family computer's dead harddrive to come back from RMA and listen to whining and complaining about not being able to download MP3s and pr0n and high speed
2) Try out the cd image of DemoLinux a while back and see how it works.
Having been born without a patience gland, I chose the latter. After all, what could go wrong? I booted it up, hit enter a few times on simple and intuitive menus, and was looking at a X11 GUI login. A few minutes later KDE1 and Netscape 4.7 were up and running with a Java version of AIM running as well.
Next, I rebooted it, wrote down step by step instructions to start it up and setup the network. Only seven steps were needed and three could be done by most anyone.
"Pick your language:", etc.
Even my ancient new technology hating parents were able to start it up and surf away.
The point is, that an old version of KDE+Netscape was user friendly enough for dumb people to use it. KDE3 and newer software associated with recent Linux distro releases like Mandrake 8.2 are even easier. If it was preinstalled on corporate desktops, it couldn't get much easier for people to pick up.
Why don't companies load up Linux on some of their desktops that don't require specific proprietary software? I've seen people doing office work, there isn't much to it Linux can't handle.
excellent approach for a many companies. (other than the productivity comes first approach)
They are strict regarding work time, but lenient outside of that
I used to work for Bellsouth DSL's tech support. Well, a day after signing up for their DSL, I had like 5 or 10 spam messages. Now, the address I used wasn't at all common. I've not given it out to anyone, nor have I signed up for anything under it. I post to DSL Reports from home that it does seem like Bellsouth is selling email addresses (under a topic that was already posted). I got fired from Bellsouth for posting that message. Apparently they traced down the sender and crossreferenced the IP with my address, and then found out I was employed by them. I was promptly fired.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
As so many others have pointed out, this is not a case of rights -- it's a case of privilege. And, as usual, there seems to be a conflation of two different issues in the same discussion.
From the standpoint of security and/or legal responsibility, of course a company needs to restrict Internet access. No filter is perfect, but as long as it blocks out most of the obvious porn, gambling, "hacker" (speaking colloquially), racist, etc. sites it should at least make it abundantly clear that an employee is trying very hard to circumvent the rules. But then again, there should already be policies on the books dealing with those things, Internet or no Internet.
On the other hand, from a standpoint of productivity, a company should be very wary of restricting Internet access. I don't buy the argument that if an employee isn't surfing the Internet for X hours per day that all of a sudden, he will be productive for X more hours per day. There is a limit to how productive someone is going to be -- if you take away the Internet, some other "time waster" will rise in its place. Do you really think everyone who has a Palm just uses it for phone numbers and schedules? Do you think that just because someone is at their desk concentrating intently that they aren't working on a crossword puzzle? Do you think that every phone call made is for business? How about good old-fashioned staring into space?
An employee is productive if he or she performs to expectations, period. Companies should have an interest in getting rid of (or better yet, finding a way to motivate) unproductive employees anyway -- but it shouldn't involve cutting off the Internet from employees who are already pulling at least their own share of the weight, if not more. If my company wants to call me on the carpet for reading Slashdot or sending an e-mail to my girlfriend to see how her Monday is going after being sick with the flu all weekend, fine. I will be more than glad to show them the half-dozen individual and team achievement awards that senior management has given to me in the last three years, agree sarcastically that the Internet has indeed made me a lousy employee, and otherwise be as amicable as Galileo before the Inquisition. I will also be sure never to work more than 40 hours per week, observe Internet usage policies religiously, and perform utterly mediocre work for the length of time it takes to find a job for a competitor who understands that achievement is the bottom line.
"she says i'm lousy conversation. as if that's supposed to help."
I believe that this is the Anti-Virus/Security lobby that really are talking about this. As noted, there are no names mentioned. Why would someone want to even apply if they were that draconian.
If they think that doing this will increase productivity, they have another thing coming. I personally spend MORE time at the computer and within reach of my phone because of the internet. Sure, I always have a web page open but I usually stick to computer related sites or am using it to plan my business trips.
If one thing that really surprises me about people and porn at work is that they have not learned from example after example on the news. In my town, we have had firefighters dismissed, teachers arrested (kiddie porn) and other things that continually prove, to me, that you have to be stupid as hell to view that stuff at work.
Viruses can be virtually eliminated by adding a network scanner (which you should have anyway since you probably use windows and maybe outlook), and using a client and server other then outlook and exchange. There's just TOO many holes to be patched and you can use Notes or Groupwise for e-mail. Plus, other then maybe the online calendaring features that maybe 10-20 percent of the users actually use (Groupwise has some pretty amazing stuff, but we never use it), most users would be served well by a plan old POP server and SMTP. Just cuz you use Office doesn't mean you need to use Outlook. At work we never install it. This doesn't totally solve the virii problem, but all you have to do is filter the extensions and scan those you do let thru.
That cures probably the biggest thing that causes wasted time. This and user education. All you have to do is threaten the users that they may have to take such a measure and most will curtail their web use. The policy at work is that if you use too much and it starts to affect the company's mission (education since we are a college), then it will be cut off. So far, we've done well. We didn't upgrade because of our users using it for warez and other things. We use it because of the teleconfrences we do and things like that. Things that DO eat badwidth for our mission. One other way they also hvae cut down is by using small hard drives too. I am not sure what drive they are ordering as the standard disk, but when we ordered my computer, 12-20 gig was the norm and they ordered a 6 gig drive. I don't have ROOM to do work and download crap at work. Anyway, any company who does this is just doing it because that's the only way they know how to deal with it. Users who are educated about it will curtail their use voluntarily. It works well for us. YMMV.
Gorkman
Basically the line we have been hearing is people in the IT career fold should be allowed access to the net, but no-one else.
What about lawyers, most legal research is done online nowadays - they have just as good reasons as IT staff to want unlimited access to information!
Also journalists, scientists, etc. We should remember that it wasn't some poxy pr0n collecting nerd who invented the WWW, it was a physicist trying to improve communication with his fellow peers!
People are not machines and looking busy is not the same as being productive. I had spent days at work just staring out the window trying to come up with a good solution to a problem, rather than looking busy doing something stupid. Ultimately the smart way will win.
BTW, I'm writing this from home, while on my other computer I'm logged into work running bunch of tests on a system that's dueto go to Q/A tomorrow.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
It's a freaking management issue ok. If employees are jerking off in the bathrooms, taking too much time on smoke breaks, running their own consulting business out of their cubicle or chatting all day long with lonely housewives in Australia, its a MANAGEMENT issue.
Get it? Technology cannot cure the ills of your torpid, sclerotic 1960s era management structure. If you don't know what you employees are doing, or even if they have enough work to do, no amount Internet logging/blocking is going to stop them from wasting your money and their time at work.
-josh
Asside. If your company "firewall" is anything like mine, your users, aka peers, can send anything they want at a ".zip" or anything that is not one of the banned names so frightening to M$ Admins.
Incompetence breeding inconvenience for the rest of us. Nice work, meat heads. It's not going to bother me too much because my job gives me enough time at home to have a life. Some people will not be so lucky and your efforts, or lack thereof, will really burn them. Get your freaking act togeter or go away or expect your best people to pack up and leave.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Hey now, smoking does not fuzz your brain as you imply, the smoke break is a high probability method of solving a problem. Not only is it a stimulant, an addict can't think clearly during withdrawl. Of course we could stop smoking and in time wouldn't have these problems, but if it were that easy I'd have quit a long time ago.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
E-mail went out to all Lucent today -- starting ASAP all access to webmail accounts (HotMail, Netscape, Yahoo, etc.) will be blocked and is against policy. It seems they don't like the threat of viruses getting thru around the normal e-mail checks.
However, they have expressly allowed limited personal use of company e-mail.
VPN sucks.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
On the other end, the cable companies are now expressly forbiding "VPN". While you may think they are only after the retarded M$ full desktop bandwith hogger, what they really want is your money. The asses that block ports 25 and 80 will get around to 22 sooner or later, regardless of your actual badwith use. My cable company, Cox, just started to block port 21 on incoming ftp request. I'm not sure how they can distinguish that from the AOL client, but they did tonight and my mother got a "blocked by administrator" sign instead of pictures of my baby girl. So clever, they will soon be out of my $65/month I'm paying for a static IP. No the asses are not going to get the $50/month DHCP fee from me either. Snip, bye bye.
The internet is almost the coporate lap dog the entertainment companies, publishers and telcos wanted. If the feds kill wireless there will be no useful net left. I'm fed up with the spam, the adverts, the unilateral contracts, the credit card demands and the whole fuck you.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
I've worked for several Fortune 500 firms, in their IT departments and seen the folly of over restrictive practices.
Three of the companies restricted access alot. Ports would not even be opened on the firewalls if there was a business case, leading to quite senior people in IT and other departments using dialup accounts from their desktops. One company had such restrictive worldwide security guidelines that individual business units were getting T1 lines and not disclosing their existence when we did security audits (I worked for central IT)
The company I work for now and one other are very relaxed - the firewalls don't let much in but let pretty much anything out. Result, no one routes around the company firewalls/virus scanners/IDS sensors/caches we're not allowed to pass MP3's but that's about it.
Yes dialup can be prevented if the desktops are locked down, and the phones on users desks are digital, but 3G phones are coming, many with Bluetooth/IRDA, companies are better off being resonable now rather than losing visibity of what their employees are doing.
Employee access to external POP3 services is prohibited, both by policy and firewall rules.
Where viruses and worms (Nimda, Code Red, etc) have made it into the company, we've almost universally tracked the vector down to a 'Free Email' service, primarily Hotmail and Yahoo! mail.
We are considering blocking all such services, or at least forcing all traffic to and from these services through the antivirus system, and suffer the latency and associated user complaints.
Again, we cannot force all web traffic through a scanner, as there is strong opposition from various divisions to any change that would slow down web access.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
These policies wouldn't have stopped Nimda getting on to our corporate network. That was tracked down to a couple of notebooks belonging to sales and marketing guys. They'd connected those machines to the internet at home, and when they were on the road. That's when they got infected. Then they infected and re-infected the corporate network several times when they plugged in at the office.
With increasing numbers of portable devices, and wireless networking, including 3G phones, it's going to be harder and harder to plug all the gaps. Instead of listening to the sales pitch of the anti-virus and firewall manufacturers, we should use some commonsense: ditch products like Outlook.
Change always improves productivity for the short term : i.e. You fell into the rut of a certain work pattern, and when something jarred you out of that rut (ex. Internet access forcing you to change the daily site visiting rituals) you are invigorated and over the short term see improvements in your productivity. This has been detailed in many productivity books which discuss a specific example of a company that tested which lighting was best for productivity, and they found that whether they lowered, increased, or re-established a set amount of light that productivity improved whenever change occurred. In other words : It has nothing to do with the distraction of the internet, and everything to do with you being forced to changed habits for the short term. People have had the ability to be distracted since long before the Internet came around, so this again seems like a technical solution to a people problem as others have termed it: You will NEVER get more productivity from technical solutions (apart from just the temporary improvement of change), but rather you will just move the slacking to different places. Far before the internet there were people who spent 90% of their work hours doing anything but work related activities.
Back in the late '80s the Christmas Tree E-Mail trojan gave my university's mainframes a serious case of constipation. Damn profs and its damn ability to recieve script files!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Employees excessively surfing the web is a *symptom* of, not the *reason*, too much free time at work. If they're goofing off, it's not because they have unrestricted internet access; it's because they either don't have enough work to do or they're not doing the work they've been given.
That means it's a problem their managers need to address; not something for the IT department. If someone is surfing six hours a day, then it's the manager's fault that they're not properly supervising them and giving them tasks or disciplining them for not getting their work done.
That said, a company would have to be foolish not to employ some basic filtering measures(porno, gambling, gaming sites, file sharing services, e-mail attachments) to keep network traffic and the more obvious time wasters in check.
However, if an employee is doing all their work and checking Yahoo Mail or ESPN.com, what is the harm? It keeps them happy and the company's work is getting done.
"Can you say, "Can you say 'Sexual embarassment != Sexual harassment'?" There's a difference."
I think you've been watching too much of "The Man Show." Flipping through my employee handbook reveals that the law defines harassment (sexual or otherwise) as creating an uncomfortable or hostile environment. It has nothing to do with physical assault.
And the fact is, that in any business environment, your "human nature" argument is shit. When you're at work, everyone has to draw a line and have some consideration for the tastes of others...the fact that you may have no taste or sensibility does not preclude others from having it.
Heck, even as a male, I would be very unsettled dealing with any idiot that put pr0n wallpaper on their screen.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Could it be...the Business Software Alliance? In their Guide to Software Management, they say business owners should
"Ensure that software can not be downloaded from the Internet by employees without special approval."
They further suggest automated tools to help enforce this rule and say employees should sign an agreement to abide by it.
It also suggests, BTW, that software that is "free" or available for unrestricted downloading from the Internet is probably "too good to be true" and should be avoided.
wow, the average age of the /. user must be much greater than i expected ... so many people who have resigned themselves to working the standard 8 hours a day tedium with no outlet for any sort of relief ... "work is for WORKING", "its not your time its the COMPANIES TIMES" etc etc etc ...
... but even having said that i would go crazy without the ability to access the internet or play small games at work ... to be anything else is to surely be some sort of mindless machine ... and my boss realises that that is not what i am ... we have a ADSL line that can access the net, and unless ppl were to spend all day on it or have dodgy stuff obviously displayed on their computers, they are free to do as they please, so long as in the end the work gets done, its that easy ...
.exe attachment not once BUT TWICE i am one of the ppl that has to clean up the mess, but there is no way known that i would want to restrict them to sitting in their cubes staring at the walls when there are no support calls coming in ... it would get to the point that i would worry each day that they are going to come in with an automatic weapon and wipe half of us out screaming "I JUST WANTED TO CHECK MY HOTMAIL!!!" ... we solve these types of problems by TEACHING our people that .exe and .com files shouldnt be touched unless they are obviously from something they are expecting, and as a result anyone that notices one of these will now run it by me to make sure that its a virus or something obviously bad ...
... all you ppl who let work rule your lives scare the hell out of me, your life isnt meant to be spent working, and i think that some of you need to take a load off for a while ... go jerk off somewhere or something ...
... anyway, id better get back to work :)
... what it is like to have your spririt broken like that??? to have resigned that 8 hours of your life a day - AN ENTIRE THIRD - of it is surrendered so completely to someone else just because they give you some money for it. has your life become so shallow and money obsessed that you are prepared to resign the greater part of your waking day to someone else just for money?
i am working in a job i like (computer programmer), and its something that i will even do at home after hours on a different level (i write commercial apps at work, and i fiddle with games/graphics programming at home)
... sure, when one of the plebs in support double clicks on a
... and on the flipside, if i think of something outside of work - when im not *GASP* actually getting paid for it - that is useful or may relate to my work, i may still actually spend a bit or a lot of time (whatever may be required) working it over or writing it down or something AND I DONT ASK FOR MONEY THE NEXT MORNING
... i just hope to that i never EVER become as depressing and inert as half the ppl who have replied to this posting
Most of the article deals with filtering attachments in email:
I cannot think of any legitimate reason to email somebody a screen saver at work, but unfortunately there is a lot of legitimate exe files been sent as attachments, and a lot of viruses and worms that propagate via formats other than those listed above...I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
A lot of /.ers complain well if they wouldn't use Outlook.... if they wouldn't use IIS.... if they wouldn't use Microsoft...
/. can all piss an moan about how Ximian is almost this and Sendmail and PINE rule the Earth with an iron fist of security but 60-75% of the computing public is getting their mail with Outlook.
/. community w/o your archnemsis MS the IT industry would not exist as we know it (yeah there's a lot of shit MCSEs but don't kid yourself there's a lot of shit Solaris guys too) and I am loathe to admit it /. probably wouldn't even exist.
Well they do.
On a recent interview, I decided I did NOT want to work for the company I was speaking to. (They had mentioned that TCP/IP was owned by MS b/c (I swear this is true) to implement it you had to "Right click on Network Neighborhood, choose Protocols, choose Microsoft....") I asked them why they were switching from CC Mail to Outlook and not to Lotus Notes which is a more "natural" move.
The IT Manager (not the TCP/IP lady) said basically this:
"Our users want Outlook. They used it elsewhere. It works really well with Office. It does a lot of things right. Yeah Lotus is more secure but it is ugly and it is harder to administer [I disagree]. Plus you need a developer to take advantage of the program. Outlook does everything Notes does before you get a developer involved anf it does it a lot easier."
So what the IT Manager was saying was; Everyone uses it, it's easy.
He's pretty much right.
All the folks that yell and scream: BUT *NIX IS BETTER, you're all correct. In the late 70s early 80s all the people that yelled BUT BETA IS BETTER were right too.
So if the same people who shrug their shoulders at insecurity and poor design are certainly going to belive that cutting down USENET, surfing and private email will "protect" them.
I personally blocked Hotmail, Yahoo!, & MSNMail for about 2 months at a site. To tell you the truth I couldn't take all the effing viruses either. And you know what? It stopped the viruses. I mean dead. 25/week --> 0/week
We here at
Are *NIXes better? Duh. Is PINE safer? Duh. Now tell Jane Secretary that she has to jump through hoops to send email from her bosses account...
The IT Manager just wanted happy users and was willing to hire a few more Admins to take care of the mess. He knew the score.
And
And why precisely on your company's computer, on your company's network, over your company's T do you feel you have any right to do anything they don't want you to? (Hey if you own stock raise Hell, I'm with you there!)
This
This is an area where Linux (or at least FreeBSD) could outdo Windows.
I'm currently residing in Japan where this kind of silly matter would never come up.
Quick quiz: How many people in Japan commit suicide from working like dogs compared to North Americans? My guess would be a LOT more, from what I've heard. There's even a word for it; I forget what it is but it starts with a "K".
What about the Japanese idea that an employer owes the worker a lifelong job in exchange for loyalty? That seems way more fucked up to me than putting in 9-5 and expecting a cheque. Of course, the job for life deal isn't really panning out that much anymore, and neither are a lot of other feudal Japanese traditions.
I'll tell you one thing AC, I wouldn't want to be in Japan when the time comes for the Japanese way of life to change. History has shown that societal change in Japan is never gradual, subtle, peaceful, or bloodless.
---
I didn't want to leave this space blank.
There is a class of people in the world who are deathly afraid that somewhere somebody might be happy, and they work diligently to make as sure as possible that never happens.
These people work on the basis of comparative happiness: if you are happy it makes them feel bad by comparison. If you are sad - they feel good by comparison.
If they could these people would bring back the dark ages complete with plague and small pox - in the midst of such misery they are positively buoyant.
The proper way to handle such people is to point out their agenda of misery so that no one is fooled by what they have to say.
In my opinion these are foul subhumans who are responsible for most of the problems in the world; step on them whenever possible. At the very least be exuberant when you are around them - no matter how miserable you are feeling - never show pain, that is what they want.
Your waisting company time and resources. Not only that but do you have ANY idea the pain it is to put right a system after some daft bugger runs "that little bouncing dog"? Even if it's not a virus, the next user will get all confused, or it'll be baddly written and eat up all the system resources (when working with big files (70ish 26MB files at once, this is very bad)...
No, out right banning of users access to the net, except when its needed (like for the IT team & management, and at break times) and banning the installing of none-authorised software is a GOOD THING (again the IT is execpt but management are not).
mlk, knows roots password on the firewall.
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
I have a friend. He's had a computer as long as aI have and that's a pretty long time.
When I had an Apple IIe he had a C64. I got an Amiga 500, he got one too. I got a 486DX66, he got one... So on and so on.
I am a Sys Admin. He works outside of the IT world but in a technical job.
He doesn't know the first thing about computers. He turns it on, clicks on Starcraft, or Word and does what he has to do. He surfs the web via Yahoo! has no interest in Google. He once wrote a very large paper in Notepad because he found Notepad before he found Word.
"Why didn't you cut and paste it into Word when you found it?"
"Cut and what?"
This guy has 160 IQ. He's a genius. He uses his computer as a tool. It is something he uses to do some things. He doesn't care about Linux, or Outlook or any of that.
I've talked to him on a number of occasions about viruses. He just got NYB! NYB is about 10 years old. It is a boot sector virus. Took a disk and shoved it into his machine...
Do you think training him will make any difference?
I think there are a lot more of him out there than us. I think lot's of people use a computer to "Get the mail" "Go on AOL" "Write a paper"
In any event it would be much easier to take his disks and block his access than it would ever be to train this guy.
Again let me stress this, he's not stupid he just doesn't care about all the "stuff' that goes on with a computer. He just wants to use it.
This
Look, the company you work at owns the hardware/computers there -- not you. You don't have the right to use their resources as you please.
While I think they shouldn't have the right to snoop on your private documents or e-mails just because you're in their building, that doesn't mean they can't restrict certain types of uses.
A wise company has a distributed system, whereby users login with different usernames/passwords for "leisure activity" and for "work activity". The company should separate the "leisure" and "work" logins and files separately, on separate hard-drives.
A good idea is to give unrestricted access on the "leisure" system, but allocate less resources to them. There's no reason why they need to be operating at 2GHz with 1GB RAM for leisure. Btw, sorry, the workplace is not for playing Quake or Descent 3.
Furthermore, privacy policies should be different on the leisure and work accounts/systems. There should be no privacy on your "work" account, but only on your "leisure" account. The company should also assign different e-mails for "leisure" and "work" accounts for each person; if you want privacy, you'll only use your "business" e-mail for work.
Though an individual's activities would not be monitored on the "leisure" system, the time spent on the "leisure" and "work" accounts would be monitored and compared; obviously, companies don't want to keep someone on the paycheck who spends 4 out of 8 hours a day on leisure.
The key thing here is for employees to realize that they don't have the RIGHT to use their company's resources for their own personal matters.
It, however, is also not acceptable for companies to go back on previously agreed-upon privacy rules in regards to their employees. Companies also shouldn't go on a power trip, as that is likely to alienate employees.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
I recently had a VERY positive experance with an online store that uses AIM for sales assistence to answer customer questions about product availability and features.
Suffice to say being able to enter an AIM screen name and ask a question and get a reply a few minutes later without having to sit there on hold with the phone was DEFINTLY a positive when dealing with the company.
It is also likely a good deal cheaper then a small time company running a complete phone query system to direct customer questions and such.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
Er, stop me if I am wrong but after reading carefully the article, it appears that the proponents of this new wave are software virus companies. So my question is : "if there is no more danger for virus on the corporate systems by blocking people from download on the fast pipes, will these same virus companies be able to survive just by selling to individuals on their after hours home systems? Aren't they realizing that they are killing their golden goose?"
If your company starts adopting this policy, then it's one good reason for you to start working from 9am till 5pm every day. I don't think that they would prefer that to your current 14 hours that you regularely put on the job, even if your pcshows the slashdot web page every once in a while.
PPA, the girl next door.
-- I feel better now. Thanks for asking.
Sure we have access to commonplace sites like cnn.com, espn.com, and the like, but this is a very, very touchy situation. Traffic is monitored and regularly audited. The only way you know whether or not a site is restricted is by clicking a link and hoping to god you do see the dreaded WARNING!!! YOU HAVE VIOLATED COMPANY POLICY BY ENTERING THIS SITE! banner. Hell, I once got wacked by our firewall for a URL that happened to have "sex" in it. (ex. www.transexpress.com)
Needless to say, I rarely do much surfing during downtime at work for fear of a PHB confrontation on my internet habits.
I work at a UNIX/Linux shop...they can't use "Email viruses" as an excuse!
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
This would be a valuable tool for employees using the net properly, as looking at where people in similar positions are going will tell you where they're finding good material.
For the rest, most would think twice about abusing the web and having 20 hours of slutgoths.com and bdsmchat.com at the head of their lists.
From my vast experience, The IT dept is immune to al these rules. Everyone MUST run WIn98 with Siebel and Lotus Notes EXCEPT the IT dept. They can run what they want....but if the lead developer brings down the network (we ALWAYS know who did it), he is no longer the lead developer. Thats why people in sales if they are laid off, they can hang around for a while...in IT, they walk you out the door no less than 3 seconds after you're handed the manila envelope. They SHIP your stuff to you.(I have seen this plenty of times..including yours truly). Although your buddies in the dept will "keep" your email address for you, and ship u a free laptop along with your desk supplies. :)
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The CEO said any checking of "non-company" email and any surfing "not work related" is grounds for firing. All the smart people have left now. (I have an interview tomorrow) They even have some lackey's sniffing the wire watching for http/pop3 traffic. They seriously think they can catch the last Unix admin.......
Of course they don't realize that my secure shell sessions are tunneling monster and slashdot back to my desktop.
I just read my email though mutt on my home mail server.
It really is sad though. They took a fun company and destroyed it. It seems to be a growing trend among Corporate America. Oh well at least I have a choice. I feel sorry for all the smaller guys/gals at the company. Companies will be sorry, all the talent will go to companies that actually care about their employees (a little).
Just my
I couldn't care less if you used the internet at work for 60 hours a week. If you produced results, I wouldnt care if you never showed up. Work at home, I dont care. But if you don't produce results, OUT you go. Are Managers so spineless that they can't fire someone for not doing any work? Instead, they'll be passive and cut EVEVRYONE off to avoid confrontation w/ one slacker. As a rule, our UNIX admins don;t have to do shit. They're paid to be there when the shit hits the fan. They're paid to solve problems. , If problems happen ALL day, you need new admins!
We have one network admin that just sat there and when a network problem happened, he just fixed it. No one KNEW there were problems because he was always on top of it. His 30 minutes of work for the day made 95% of the company do 8 hours of work.A good 3 days out of the week he did shit form home. DId I care? Hell no..his productivity was the same..if there was something he couldnt fix from home..he came to the job. He was paid WELL for his skill. My wife's gastrointenologist gets paid $250 for a visit (which lasts maybe 5 minutes). $250 for 5 minutes of work? Yes.you're paying for his knowledge and skill, not how much he has to break his back. We are professionals, not wage slaves/factory workers. At least we SHOULD be professionals and demanding to be treated like professionals
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
Or are we looking in the wrong direction to apply a fix? Most of the destruction caused by employee web-surfing is the result of launching some hell-raising Exchange virus via Outlook, which is apparently a majoy FLAW with MS software. So, should we damn our employees because we choose poorly for enterprise eMail? Or, rather, should we be looking for better options / lobbying for better (read "bug-fixed") software. It's true that productivity is not a simple deduction from hours worked...there's a whole quality-of-life factor (as it applies in the workplace) that is germane to this evaluation. And it just seems to me that, rather than immediatly salve the symptoms, we look to medicate the disease.
Yes, we surfed the net and wasted company time, but for most people, the time savings of being able to look up the phone number for the Bumfuck, Idaho branch of TD Waterhouse, or check breaking company news without having to go over to the Bloomberg machine, or do a google search to track down who bought Joe's Pickel Factory so we know what to do with the old stock certificate someone gave us, far outweighs the wasted time.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Absolutely untrue. I'm sitting here right now on a Windows box, with no IE, no Outhouse, no Windows Networking. I have Opera, Lynx, and Mozilla available for webbrowsing, and Pegasus Mail for email. Yes, a real professional cracker could probably find *some* way into my system, but it's easily more secure than some default Linux installs I've seen, and it has *NO* vulnerability to any of the exploits that have cost large amounts of money and productivity lately (Nimda, Code Red, etc. - I received all of them and was infected by none.)
I've had to setup the kind of insecure and insane systems most companies are now running, with IE and Outhouse and open shares hanging out like trails of blood attracting the sharks - but it's NOT because it's impossible to set up a reasonably secure systems using Windows boxes - it's because I've been ORDERED to setup the blamed things that way.
Frankly I'm so sick and tired of being ordered to do things in the stupidest possible way on a daily basis I've decided to find a new career. IT has become a haven for morons where having a clue means you are perceived as a threat to everyone elses job.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
An aspect that I haven't seen brought up, however, is the productivity that comes from keeping salaried employees at work. Being able to handle personal business online and not having to take long lunches or leave early before the stores/banks/etc. close is a benefit to employees, employers and even the environment.
We're allowed to send 3 personal emails a week and receive 3 (all without attachments) we can surf the web for personal use for a max of 1 hour a day during breaks and cannot use chat rooms and webmail. We cannot do any ecommerce. Failing to adhere is a serious disciplinery action and permie staff and contractors can be dismissed.
That's the "official" policy but in practice, people seem to be disregarding it so far.
I can understand that companies want to protect their systems and to not lose productivity by people emailing and surfing when they should really be working. Internet access at work is a privilege and not a right and it's abuse of this right that has led to this, as some see it, "draconian" policy.
And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour Isaiah 3:5
We should shut down employee cafeterias because food can bring harmful bacteria into the company and we might get sued.
--Blair
Why is this her fault?
Really. Think about this. She just did the natural, normal thing, to investigate the attachment. It's not her fault, it's the 'software engineers' at Microsoft who had the knowledge, background, and ability to have made an interface that did NOT execute an executive email attachment so easily!
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
People often forget that bandwidth is a whack more expensive outside of the USA. I'm the NetGeek at a small "historically disadvantaged" (i.e. black) university in S/Africa. We're sitting on just about a T1, and seem to have about 400 staff users and a couple thousand student Net users.
A lot of the cool P2P stuff, MP3 suckers, streaming audio, etc, just isn't on -- I reckon 3 users would fire up 128Kbps streams and that would be the end of it (we're have a 480Kbps CIR from overseas).
I've bashed out some stuff that bolts onto squid so that the students get preset usage limits, and see these in the face every time they fire up a browser in the lab. It seems to be working ok, and I think its a good solution to controlling B/W abuse. I'm still worried about the content scanning (virus) issue. I can't imagine implementing any kind of "quarantine area for attachments". The academic staff send Word/Excel & a bazillion other kinds of attachments to colleagues at other universities several hundred times a day I'm sure, completely legitimately. (And the secretaries send AVIs of Fabio to all their friends...)
But, one of the PHB types in our management wants me to monitor how much time staff spend on the web. I told him I don't think this can be done reliably since people leave their browsers tuned in to sites that automagically refresh all the time -- I can see a handful of people with "WWW sessions" that run all through the night. Believe me, a couple of HoDs have asked about web usage stats as they would use these when drawing up retrenchment shortlists.
This is yet another thing which boils down to people holding to the outdated "theory x". There's many sites out there (like this one) that can explain this better than I.
Bosses: treat your employees nicely, make them enjoy work and they will enjoy working. If you treat them like slave labor, productivity will decrease.
Anyone who has never heard about these theories needs to take an intro level "business relations" class before they're put in charge of people.
Smokers are also less likely to get RTS injuries, because the stop typing every hour and a half or so to go have a smoke.
Smokers also save money on the company retirement plans and health insurance policies, because smokers tend to die younger and quicker (heart attacks and lung cancer are much cheaper ways to die than slower diseases).
Bosses who take frequent smoke-breaks are much less likely to be hard-assed about you going to Starbucks every morning at 10:30.
Conclusion: I don't smoke, but would never discourage others in my office from smoking. It is mostly to my advantage that they continue.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Im surprised anyone still has it. Here in australia we pay for bandwidth used and we monitor our usage carefully, we dont dictate we simply provide guidelines (which are international for our company) and people ar expected not to go outside them. We do scan our proxy logs for certain keywords and trust me get caught looking at porn its instant dismissal - no questions.
/. who whine about liberties and freedom are missing the point - its work, we pay you for a job and we pay for the resources you use and the computer you use them on - if you dont like it then find another job, internet is NOT a right.
.mov, .mpeg, .mp3, .wav, .vbs, .js and a lot of others - we spend a lot of time securing and managing our systems and theres no work reason for any of the above products (we would block jpegs as well but they are sometimes (our work study indicates only about 30% of the time) work related.
None of my staff can bypass it as the scan results go directly to Human resources and i support it - they have no reason to be doing anything like that.
Now this might seem a bit extreme but thertes good reasons why i agree.
1. We encourage our staff to use the Net responsibly and for legitimate research and work purposes, we dont mind reading a newspaper, looking at the sports results or catching up with a hobby during their breaks.
2. We expect them to have the good sense to know what isnt appopriate and they sign a legal agreement noting they understand the conditions and the consequences of their actions BEFORE they get their login and passwords to the system.
3. its work - not home
The people on
PS we dont allow newsgroups, ICQ, IRC or Instant Messengers and we block FTP for all expect IT users - our support calls for people who have downloaded software have gone thru the floor and as its also a breach to do that people dont try it anyway.
Why did we do this?
our internet bills went thru the roof thats why and we looked at the traffic - guess what ? Porn sites, movie sites, tucows, game sites etc.
2 staff sacked for breaches and now its a whole different workplace.
I have zero tolerance for whiners, in a previous management role i was the one who had to deal with kiddie porn found on a computer by one of my support guys when he was fixing it (Aust gove so i had to call the police etc) and it was the most disgusting thing i have ever seen. Look at porn on my network get your balls lopped - what you do at home is your business and i like naked chicks as much as the next guy but i dont see it as appropriate in any circumstance for work.
PS and for those of you who think iam a nazi we also filter mail and block
Internet access is not a right at work, its a company provided privelege
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....
yep, and I typically work 2 hours unpaid overtime every day.
If I couldn't spend 2 hours on the net, then I wouldn't work that overtime.
Since that time on the net gives me a break from my normal work, it refreshes and revitalises me, gives my brain a rest and often provides information useful to me at work. So I'm actually more productive by spending 2 hours on the net.
Assuming that time spent browsing the web is non-productive is very short sighted and for IT people, probably incorrect.
~Cederic
A decision today to choke access to the 'net might be setting up management for a huge debacle in years to come.
Imagine, in 3 or 4 years, when a fresh group of entry level employees arrive (job function will not matter at this point.) Manager asks new employee, tell me why X is happening. New employee doesn't know much about X so he/she wants to do a little research first. In their HS/college days, the research was done on the net, so new employee opens up the browser and attempts to access a search engine. Only an error is returned, citing restricted 'net access. So the new employee, after having to ask around a bit, finds out that you must get approval to have any sort of access. Now the fresh-out-of-school employee has to call IT to find out the procedure. He/she then must get various signatures from HR, management, and whoever else. That HR person is on vacation, so forget about getting approval this week. Later on in the day, eager to find out how his/her new employee is doing, the manager asks about the answer. Now the new employee is screwed, on their first day.
Moral of the story? The next generation of employees is being brought up in an environment where knowledge is known to be easily available on the 'net. Due to this, they begin to rely on this means of learning more. Web classes are now tought in most colleges, many secondary schools, and some primary schools. 2nd and 3rd graders look things up for homework asignments on the web. Students learn to rely on the web to help them learn and solve problems. But when they get to work, they won't be able to do so and will be stuck on their first days.
Don't beleive it? You should. There is absolutly no way I could preform at my best without the web. It allows me to find out anything I might need to know in order to be an effective problem solver (a major part of my job.) I started using the 'net to help myself learn around '93-'94, at the beginning of HS, when it [the 'net] was in its infancy. Imagine someone who began using it yesterday, or today, as a secondary school kid.
Although the security problems merrit much concern (hey- I'm in IT too!), a simple end to unrestricted 'net is a very short-sighted solution. And I'm not even mentioning all the other aforementioned reasons 'net access is inherently good.
BTW, on a personal note, the day I am stripped of 'net access is the day I stip my employer of any thought time spent on company business off company time.
I'd take the time to contact a lawyer and ask about a wrongful termination suit. Perhaps there was a clause in your contract prohibiting this, but my gut feeling is that this was a bit less than legal. I think it would be worth your time and money to consult a lawyer about it.
...why won't they look at the source of the problem and ban Outlook. Or, even better, Windows?
And if they are so indoctrinated with "we-need-Windows-for-our-business" stuff, why not just block all email attachments (and learn to communicate in text)?
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
I need to have SSH open in order to support and work at our customers. And as long I have SSH and HTTP I am happy. It's amazing what you can pipe through these ports. ;-)
Not everyone will be willing to do this of course, but I got around our company's strict proxy server (that only allowed http over port 80 and ftp over port 21) by using Remotely Anywhere in HTTP tunneling mode. I am not sure if there are other products that will do this, but I tried 3 or 4 others before I found one that worked.
It's attitudes like this that convince me daily that we need a stronger labour movement in technical industries.
I am continually amazed at the attitudes out of people here at Slashdot. On the one hand, we've got all this fire and fury for free software -- a concept which seeks to dissolve the idea of intellectual property, for reasons which apply to all property -- yet we have, on the other, people who seem set that it's OK to sell yourself to your boss, for 8 hours or 10 hours or whatever... and that during that time, only he -- and his privileged managers -- have a right to tell you what to do while you're at work.
I'm not saying we've got a "right to surf the Internet at work." That's trivial. Still, I'm shocked by the prevailent argument that we don't have a right to complain, or to have a democratic say in the policies that govern us at work.
It's insane. I would've figured there'd be more self-respect out of this bunch...
BRx.
Life after capitalism? The participatory economics project
Yeah, except those "studies" are done by companies with a vested interest in selling filtering software.
From the article:
The biggest developments are around email prevention, experts say. Elaborate content filtering software, which can run upwards of $30,000 to install, can block all but the tamest incoming emails, and most attachments, said Trend Micro's Genes.
...
But instituting these new security measures can be a costly and labor-intensive investment, experts say, likely discouraging firms with meager IT budgets from upgrading beyond the status quo. "It's a question of resources," said a spokeswoman at UK-based Sophos Anti-Virus. "If you have one or two guys implementing IT at your organization, it's not going to make much sense."
What a crock... I am a network administrator (and basically the ONLY IT employee) for a small company of about 50 people and using some procmail scripts on our FreeBSD mail server, have been able to accomplish this with probably about 3 hours total of set up time. For those interested, here's a URL to a FREE solution to blocking e-mail attachments based on extensions, filenames, and even content (it can scan for Office document macros). Procmail Security
Since I've been there, we've had absolutely ZERO e-mail based viruses/worms that penetrated the desktop through our mail server (One did get through but that was through an executive's AOL account...)
So far, most employees have been very cooperative towards the policy and are grateful that they don't have to be so worried when they read about e-mail viruses going around because the server automatically mangles or quarantines viruses that match the ruleset we implemented.
How about allowing net access, with a well know use policy, and trust your employees to be adults.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
In related news, scores on Tetris and up over 30% worldwide .....
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
If XML becomes the de-facto standard for document content and styling, proprietary formats (e.g., Word) will no longer be an issue re: security, and neither will their consequent e-mail attachments.
"One empirical experiment is worth a thousand expert opinions." -Bill Nye
I can't believe people here actually think the policies stated in that article are BAD. I mean, anyone with a few weeks experience in a decent sized corporate IT environment can tell you these kinds of rules are needed to keep order on the network.
Yes, we have virus scanning software that scans all email, desktops, and user shares, but that still does not mean viruses do not get in. Users like to check their 'free' email on Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail, and other places and bring many in around our normal system.
People complain filtering content in the workplace seems draconian, but I see no reason users need to be viewing 'hot, young, fill-in-the-blank' websites anyway. In fact, in some states, like in Virginia, it is illegal to view adult content on state owned computers. As a former employee of the state, I saw 14 people fired in a one year period for surfing adult sites. You first get a warning and they start monitoring all http traffic from your box. Next your gone. People still thought they could get away with it.
As far as the other so called harsh draconian measures, think about this - most users are not techno-savvy. It's not a Microsoft issue, it's a person issue. Some people hate computers, they hate to use them, and they break them often. All software crashes as some point or another. Reviewing our helpdesk tracking software I can point out many Mac's and UNIX issues that they have had to solve as well as microsoft issues.
Think about this - do you wear a tie to work? Why? It's corporate policy. Do you work better with a tie on? Why don't we just ban tie's because wearing them seems useless. Corporate polices are there for a reason. Apperance, preformance, and substinance counts. It's what seperates the Fortune 100 from the rest of the pack. Polices like the ones discussed further this mentality. If you don't agree, fine. Work for a small more personalize company, but don't expect to be on the cover of Forbes anytime soon.
Bottom line, most users not in IT are computer ignorant. They call up and ask what their password is, after they create it themselves. Should we blame the companies that make the software? Should we blame measures put forth to stop people from hurting themselves? Why should we try and place blame on anyone? This is more of a western philosophy. In eastern thinking, people focus on the problem and fixing it, not on placing blame on a group or individual.
An old tech guy I used to work with summed up this argument pretty well in something he said to me about the shipping department in a company I used to work for. The department had multiple new calls to the helpdesk every week from these guys. Many times, the guys down there (large, burly, bearded men) would break their boxen so bad they would have to be replaced. We couldn't even figure out how they broke some of this stuff, but they did, constantly. I asked about it one day and he said to me:
"The shippping department? Well...I'll put it this way, you could leave three cannonballs down there on Monday, and by Wednesday, they will have broken two of them and lost the third one."
Sometimes you have to save users from themselves.
{/rant}
-Sternn
Yes!!! If I'm focused on a high priority project, I don't have time to post on /. In fact I have no problem working thru my breaks, lunch, and OT. However, if work is slower, or bogged down, or waiting on someone else, that's when I browse/post. Prior to having Web access, I'd go shoot the bull with a co-worker, and I guarantee that if he was also having a slow day, I could easily blow MORE than 2 hours there.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
"Corporate inhumanity" is a fact of life, it's called capitalism. If you don't have to deal with it, more power to you, but the rest of us do.
As for George Carlin, he's an irritating commie pinko anyhow :-)
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
...the people proposing this aren't the companies concerned about security, but rather people with a vested interest in selling you a "solution" to your "problem".
If they were interested in security, they'd be suggesting much less agressive reactive measures (even with such draconian measures, something will slip through and present you with the same woes as without them...) and suggesting more proactive ones.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Else they could loose their source of income, bored techies browsing slashdot at work.
I surf your hard drive from my desk looking for games to delete (actually lock you out so you can see it, but can't run or delete it). I walk through the rows of cubes looking for people playing Tetris, SMB, and yes even Solitaire is outlawed. I watch the web logs for suspect sites, and then I set up surveillance. Hmmm, looks like user jdreger is writing an email to his friend about how silly Martha's being... We can't have that. Oh lookie here, and hes getting around the firewall with a proxy site. He's fired. Make an example of him so the others will comply.
At my work I am one of these creatures. I used to be one of the users, and did the same things they did. I feel bad about selling out sometimes, but my boss wants to ensure 100% efficiency on the part of the technicians. And a technician playing games or writing email or surfing the web isn't making money. And that technician not making us money may be why I get laid off next year. It's a horrible fascist regime we run at my work. No wonder we have such a high turnover rate.
Lousy facepalm.
On some Air Force bases, one is not permitted to access yahoo, snotmail, outside pop servers, etc, while on duty and with military computers. They have proxy servers that attempt to restrict access to such sites. It also attempts to block access to "questionable" websites (any site with the word "sex" in it, even if it is a biology/scientific site, gets blocked - there are a lot of other sites that sporadically suprize me with a message about not being authorized to access this site and my ip has been logged). Nonetheless, I STILL access my outside pop mail servers - I simply find the chink in the proxy armor and get my mail anyway. Usually, the same tricks I use to get to my mail also works for other incorrectly blocked sites (with a "bad" keyword associated with its URL).
You are not supposed to connect any computer to the network that isn't registered and thus authorized either (no personal laptops allowed without special permission). I am able to connect anyway and make it appear that my laptop is my authorized desktop machine. Of course, I am in a somewhat privaledged position - being the supervisor of an IT subgroup on the base - and I know how the system works, what is techinically not allowed and knowing how to foil most of the blocks. It is doable to get around restrictions on accessing personal email, etc. It just might take a certain amount of tinkering and experimentation.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
This is going to sound stupid, but how do I get my mom to see port 3333 instead of 21? I've seen the ipchains directive to do things on my end, but I have not figured out the other side. Most family members will only use a browser to look at things, sad but true. What does is it look like on say IE or Mozilla? ftp://65.x.xxx.x -what?
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Cite, please?
Personally (as a professional programmer) I often browse tech-related sites at lunchtime. My browsing of /., MS sites, a few decent on-line rags, etc. is the main thing responsible for the level of technological knowledge I have, and on which my employer and its clients rely. For example...
Bet you can't beat that with any two hours of extra "productivity" per day.
As the saying goes, if you think training is expensive, try ignorance. Think about that, and perhaps you'll reconsider your views on letting competent and professional staff surf on demand.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
By 1982 we had terminals of our own (I guess they paid for them by cutting the data entry staff), but they were up at the front of the room and we had to wait to use them -- often we fought over them. While we waited we revised our code by editing the printouts with red/blue double-ended pencils: red for deletes, blue for adds. I still have one of those pencils as a souvineer, and some punch cards and green striped paper printouts -- remember those? This was back in the sea-of-desks days, well before cubicals. We didn't need cubicals because we were coding on paper and the only phone calls were work related (on the shared phone, mind you - one per every 5-6 workers).
If you had email and any sort of communications package in the 1980s, you were lucky! Ahhh, the good old days.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.