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Open Source Training/Teaching as Advocacy?
dsavitsk asks: "I am a part owner and I.T. manager of a small company. I spend most of my time writing in-house software in Python and VB, and administering the various systems we use. (Our current setup is a Win2k Server, a few win2k clients, a FreeBSD gateway, and a few other things.) I am also in law school, so my time is very short. In general, whenever I can, I will use an open source program over a closed one (hence, most of our software is now Python powered). One of the perks of my job is that I have an open budget and mandate to learn as much as I can about new technology we might use. (I've bought $1200.00 in O'Reilly books in the last year alone!) So, the question. I simply don't have time to learn everything I need to know, and to configure lots of open source projects that don't have a pile of books or decent documentation written about them. I found, in fact, that not knowing anything, it was much easier to set up a Windows domain than a Samba server. We also don't have the money to hire a full time sysadmin. What we would like is to hire a consultant for open source software who would not only come in to install and configure something, but who would also teach me the hows and whys so that I could then pickup where they left off. Clearly, we are not looking for free help, and would be happy to pay market rate for the work. In short, we are looking for people who would advocate for open source not just be producing it and consulting about it, but by administering it and teaching at the same time. So, where would I find such a someone?"
Meanwhile, there's a crapload of us sitting out here, "Man, I would love to find a place I can go in and part time with open source stuff, at the same time, I don't want to babysit."
My first guess would be to call your local LUG and check local web bulletin boards for guys that do this kind of stuff.
How about a quick look at the AUTHORS file?
One of the wonders of Free software is that you can deal with the actual authors of the software you're using. Not everyone will be likely to help you out, but you might get some good suggestions on who *can* help you. Of course, physical proximity is helpful for setting some things up on your machine, but many packages can be installed and configured remotely, and email takes the pain of asynchronous communication away nicely.
Your looking in the right place, give us some info about where and who to email the resumes. I'm sure your quest will be a short one.
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Encrypting SMB passwords is the wrong place to applys security. There is a gain that is not entirely trivial, but bad guys who can sniff your network can still capture your data, run dictionary attacks on your passwords, and so on. If you don't trust your network's physical security, there is no solution that makes a big difference except encryption at or below the transport layer (i.e., SSL/TLS or IPSec). Enforcing a weak security solution while breaking functionality is a double lose.