Re:View from a government agency
on
Does IT Matter?
·
· Score: 1
They've started to figure it out. But we run all the major apps off of an application server so all the PCs (really thin clients) do is run the emulator, browser and remote desktop client. If one breaks we drop a replacement in within 20 minutes. (lightning fast around here) The "broken" one gets re-imaged to wipe whatever the user did to it and goes back in the pile. Overall though, they are pretty reliable. Much more reliable than the old Win98 desktops some had. Less reliable than the green-screens. Good middle ground I guess.
View from a government agency
on
Does IT Matter?
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I work for a local government agency and I see firsthand how the promise of IT is a double-edged sword.
In my department we recently replaced 75 green-screen terminals. Many, many people were happy to see this happen, but in reality most of the new PCs are simply running terminal emulators and are glorified dumb terminals.
So on the face of it, we didn't really do anything but spend a lot of money and make everything prettier... ON THE SURFACE
However, now that the infrastructure is in place, we can begin to really look forward. We are now considering projects that have the promise of eliminating hours of uneccessary work each day and of making public information much more accessible both online and at local kiosks, just to name a couple.
The key is that you can't just implement new technology for technologies sake, which was kinda what the whole "bubble" was all about. You have to take a long term view of how and why you will leverage that technology going forward. May seem obvious to us, but not to all.
Enterprise means Big Company. So stop thinking in terms of a single desktop, or even 5. Lets start at a departmental level and say 100 clients.
Windows
Windows XP Pro - ~$100
Office XP Pro - ~$200 (being generous)
Client Access License - $15 (you do use servers right?)
Total per client: $315
Total @ 100 clients: $31,500
Suse
Media Kit - $99
10 Seat Client License - $899
Total per client: ~$91
Total ~ 100 clients: $9089
Looks cheaper to me...
Well I'm a very green Linux newbie who has been playing with a Debian box at home for about 2 weeks now and I LOVE it.
It was no harder to install than DOS, and I'm finding it extremely easy to use. Key things that I like: GREAT website and documentation, dead-simple to find configuration data, easy package management.
Now, the disclaimer. It's a headless server, and will stay that way. I never *once* considered using Linux on the desktop. I looked at RedHat, Lindows and Knoppix and thought they were all a joke. IMO linux in general has a loooong way to go before being a desktop OS, but is absolutely wonderful as a simple server OS. I already have dhcpd, samba (as a PDC) and apache running on my box and am about to tackle mail. Nothing but port 22 will face the public until I know more of what I'm doing.
It's not that they are calling the new hardware a 'hack' or even saying it caused the problem, it's just that they need to have everything removed in order to verify it is Apple hardware that is causing the problem.
Why in the hell are you complaining about tech support anyway? It sucks across the board.
I've recently moved from the private sector to government as a systems administrator.
My previous employer was a small, very high quality software consulting firm. They took pride in their work, had a good management team (from an engineering perspective) and a great culture. They were ultimately victims of their own overaggressive growth plan coupled with the market collapse. I was laid off in September, in the first of three waves of cutbacks.
I now work for the superior court in my county in a systems administration/desktop support role. I've got two words: CULTURE SHOCK.
However, I really like the job and am actually finding it challenging. The only reason I'm finding it challenging though is because they are in the midst of modernizing everything and they are actually going to implement fairly leading-edge technology.
Anyway here's a short list of what I like and don't like about working for the government.
PROS 1. Stability. This is especially important for me as I had to live off of a credit card for 3 months following my layoff. Yes, that's ENTIRELY my fault but it does enable me to truly appreciate stability.
2. Benefits. I work in a closed shop, and while I don't exactly agree with the union philosophy, it does net me some great benefits. And when it comes down to using those benefits, such as vacation, you don't get denied because it might impact a project.
CONS 1. Beaurocracy. Lots of red tape. Lots of paperwork. Lots of "That's not my job."
2. Things happen very slowly. Deadlines get blown by without a second thought. People will take WEEKS to do the simplest tasks if you don't keep checking up.
3. Politics. This is probably the worst thing about government imo. I'm in an agency that used to be a county department. This means anything we do autonomously is met with skepticism and outright stonewalling by the county IT department.
Overall though, the pros outweight the cons for now. When my current project is implemented and my job reverts to just server ops I'll probably be looking elsewhere for work.
After dealing with multiple incidents of hacking at my former work, we formed a security policy that included enforced, complex passwords. Luckily we did the same analysis on existing passwords to justify the change because it caused quite an uproar.
Our heuristic was simple (to me)- inlcude one character from each of the following subsets of characters; UPPERCASE, lowercase and Numbers, minimum of 8 digits.
I must have spent at least 10 minutes with most people helping them choose passwords that fit the criteria. The worst ones of course were the executives, one made me sit with them for over a half an hour while they figured it out.
Luckily it was a small company of 40 people or so, I might have gone crazy.
I personally find these types of articles very interesting. Granted, they impart a Diamond Age feeling, but I think that is more of a sign of Neal Stephenson's insight rather than just sci-fi hype. (Comsat?)
The fact is nanotechnology is making great strides lately, even if only in terms of public perception(or media hype, whatever). That in itself is good. The more people become aware of what could be, the more likely people are going to start funding/supporting nanotech so that it will be. This is all relevant to Slashdot because nanotech will change computing drastically once it arrives in full force.
Since when was computing the domain of silicon only? Keep it coming.
Slashdot Mirror
They've started to figure it out. But we run all the major apps off of an application server so all the PCs (really thin clients) do is run the emulator, browser and remote desktop client. If one breaks we drop a replacement in within 20 minutes. (lightning fast around here) The "broken" one gets re-imaged to wipe whatever the user did to it and goes back in the pile. Overall though, they are pretty reliable. Much more reliable than the old Win98 desktops some had. Less reliable than the green-screens. Good middle ground I guess.
I work for a local government agency and I see firsthand how the promise of IT is a double-edged sword.
In my department we recently replaced 75 green-screen terminals. Many, many people were happy to see this happen, but in reality most of the new PCs are simply running terminal emulators and are glorified dumb terminals.
So on the face of it, we didn't really do anything but spend a lot of money and make everything prettier... ON THE SURFACE
However, now that the infrastructure is in place, we can begin to really look forward. We are now considering projects that have the promise of eliminating hours of uneccessary work each day and of making public information much more accessible both online and at local kiosks, just to name a couple.
The key is that you can't just implement new technology for technologies sake, which was kinda what the whole "bubble" was all about. You have to take a long term view of how and why you will leverage that technology going forward. May seem obvious to us, but not to all.
Enterprise means Big Company. So stop thinking in terms of a single desktop, or even 5. Lets start at a departmental level and say 100 clients. Windows Windows XP Pro - ~$100 Office XP Pro - ~$200 (being generous) Client Access License - $15 (you do use servers right?) Total per client: $315 Total @ 100 clients: $31,500 Suse Media Kit - $99 10 Seat Client License - $899 Total per client: ~$91 Total ~ 100 clients: $9089 Looks cheaper to me...
Well I'm a very green Linux newbie who has been playing with a Debian box at home for about 2 weeks now and I LOVE it.
It was no harder to install than DOS, and I'm finding it extremely easy to use. Key things that I like: GREAT website and documentation, dead-simple to find configuration data, easy package management.
Now, the disclaimer. It's a headless server, and will stay that way. I never *once* considered using Linux on the desktop. I looked at RedHat, Lindows and Knoppix and thought they were all a joke. IMO linux in general has a loooong way to go before being a desktop OS, but is absolutely wonderful as a simple server OS. I already have dhcpd, samba (as a PDC) and apache running on my box and am about to tackle mail. Nothing but port 22 will face the public until I know more of what I'm doing.
Common criteria = I have a set of requirements, same as a lot of others.
In this case, the requirements were themselves inadequate for a net connected system, and MS did a half assed job of meeting them.
The news is not really about MS, but about a method of evaluating complex software products.
You know, slashdot really isn't as good of a search engine as Google.
1) Go to google.com
2) search for "active directory mac os x"
3) click the third result.
4) prof- nah.
Or you can click this link:
Integrating Mac OS X with Active Directory
That's how everyone does it.
It's not that they are calling the new hardware a 'hack' or even saying it caused the problem, it's just that they need to have everything removed in order to verify it is Apple hardware that is causing the problem.
Why in the hell are you complaining about tech support anyway? It sucks across the board.
I've recently moved from the private sector to government as a systems administrator.
My previous employer was a small, very high quality software consulting firm. They took pride in their work, had a good management team (from an engineering perspective) and a great culture. They were ultimately victims of their own overaggressive growth plan coupled with the market collapse. I was laid off in September, in the first of three waves of cutbacks.
I now work for the superior court in my county in a systems administration/desktop support role. I've got two words: CULTURE SHOCK.
However, I really like the job and am actually finding it challenging. The only reason I'm finding it challenging though is because they are in the midst of modernizing everything and they are actually going to implement fairly leading-edge technology.
Anyway here's a short list of what I like and don't like about working for the government.
PROS
1. Stability. This is especially important for me as I had to live off of a credit card for 3 months following my layoff. Yes, that's ENTIRELY my fault but it does enable me to truly appreciate stability.
2. Benefits. I work in a closed shop, and while I don't exactly agree with the union philosophy, it does net me some great benefits. And when it comes down to using those benefits, such as vacation, you don't get denied because it might impact a project.
CONS
1. Beaurocracy. Lots of red tape. Lots of paperwork. Lots of "That's not my job."
2. Things happen very slowly. Deadlines get blown by without a second thought. People will take WEEKS to do the simplest tasks if you don't keep checking up.
3. Politics. This is probably the worst thing about government imo. I'm in an agency that used to be a county department. This means anything we do autonomously is met with skepticism and outright stonewalling by the county IT department.
Overall though, the pros outweight the cons for now. When my current project is implemented and my job reverts to just server ops I'll probably be looking elsewhere for work.
Disclaimer: I have 10.1.4
You should be able to connect to the NT4 shares using the built-in smb protocol on your Powerbook.
Access the NT4 share using the finder menu item "connect to server" and then put in the share path in the following format:
smb://domain;server/share
I use this everyday to connect to a share on my main workstation, w2k pro on an AD domain.
After dealing with multiple incidents of hacking at my former work, we formed a security policy that included enforced, complex passwords. Luckily we did the same analysis on existing passwords to justify the change because it caused quite an uproar.
Our heuristic was simple (to me)- inlcude one character from each of the following subsets of characters; UPPERCASE, lowercase and Numbers, minimum of 8 digits.
I must have spent at least 10 minutes with most people helping them choose passwords that fit the criteria. The worst ones of course were the executives, one made me sit with them for over a half an hour while they figured it out.
Luckily it was a small company of 40 people or so, I might have gone crazy.
I personally find these types of articles very interesting. Granted, they impart a Diamond Age feeling, but I think that is more of a sign of Neal Stephenson's insight rather than just sci-fi hype. (Comsat?)
The fact is nanotechnology is making great strides lately, even if only in terms of public perception(or media hype, whatever). That in itself is good. The more people become aware of what could be, the more likely people are going to start funding/supporting nanotech so that it will be. This is all relevant to Slashdot because nanotech will change computing drastically once it arrives in full force.
Since when was computing the domain of silicon only? Keep it coming.
Scarpa