SOLUTION: Stop the bureaucracy, the regulations, the overzealous change management, the management-instigated impediments to performing clever and innovative seat-of-your-pants style computer work and back comes the meritocracy of computing in its glory years and back comes the satisfaction and motivation. Management today are the problem: They are of a generation that computing has simply overtaken, and their traditional ways are causing this frustrating problem.
The argument that "anyone can read the code and hack you with ease" is false. To win the argument, one must explain the relationship between a _cypher_ (implemented in a program) and a _key_ (generated by a program).
Secure programs are written such that even their *authors* can not hack them. The reason is because these programs do not directly provide security. Instead, for example, they may help users generate unique digital keys. Is is the combination of this digital key and the program itself (ie. the cypher) that provides security. Reading the source code will _not_ give the reader the key required to breach someone's privacy, especially if the program is good and can produce trillions of different and complex keys, each of which take a long time to test.
Conversely, closed sourced programs are generally scrutinised by far fewer people, and as such they are generally less able to perform with the same speed, efficiency and reliability of their open source alternatives, including security related programs described above.
Switch to Linux. The only software piracy (license violations) that go on in the open source world are by developers, never by end users. Software piracy is inevitable in the proprietary software world for both techies and end users in general. They have no choice. For example, a techy will very rarely buy a license for some software that they have an interest in for whatever reason (say for skill development - in which case they are indirectly helping the vendor who is trying to charge them!), and an end user is much more interested in getting stuff for free (as in beer), especially given that there is something of a "chase" so to speak to find the cracked copy or whatever.
In another life I was a Windows sys admin, and have pirated absolutely nothing (relatively speaking;) since I switched to Linux four years ago. Do it, its liberating.
I work for a large global systems integrator as an information security analyst. Their workstation platform is MS Windows XP. When I joined the just company over 2 years ago, the first thig I did was to request permission from the COE/SOE management for my region (APAC) to use Linux as my desktop OS. I got rejected, laughably for security reasons pertaining to lack of centralised patch management for linux vulnerabilities. I was told I could apply to have a copy of MS Virtual PC installed if I could justify the need, and run linux in that. Instead, I informed my manager of my intentions (not willing to bend), shrunk the NTFS filesystem (with qt_parted no less) and installed Fedora Core 4 (the latest at the time, and my choice of distro). Since then: - When word got around, I presented linux desktops to the regional system architects to describe how I use linux in a windows environment (leveraging samba, wine, PAM, CUPS, etc) and keep it COE/SOE compatible. (Admitedly they found it all interesting but it didn't get anywhere) - I have deployed numerous linux based systems into production environments (especially around OpenVPN) and have saved my department a few hundered thousand in licencing costs for proprietary alternatives, whilst generating the same revenue in ongoing support as would a proprietary solution - Among other things, I have been able to keep my linux skills sharp
All of the above stemmed from not being willing to diverge from my core skill and love in terms of my coice of computing environment. If you are a Linux user, do your office a favour and just install it and use it at work. Install your Windows OS in Qemu and/or dual-boot if you need to, but you will be doing your self and your employer a favour by providing expertise in brilliant technology, providing alternative revenue opportunities, and keeping your own mind stimulated and free of the abstracted treat-people-as-monkeys world that Microsoft bases its OS designs on.
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The word 'Repair' implies too much analytical thinking. The mantra goes Retry, Reboot, Reinstall.
SOLUTION: Stop the bureaucracy, the regulations, the overzealous change management, the management-instigated impediments to performing clever and innovative seat-of-your-pants style computer work and back comes the meritocracy of computing in its glory years and back comes the satisfaction and motivation. Management today are the problem: They are of a generation that computing has simply overtaken, and their traditional ways are causing this frustrating problem.
XP or Vista only.
The argument that "anyone can read the code and hack you with ease" is false. To win the argument, one must explain the relationship between a _cypher_ (implemented in a program) and a _key_ (generated by a program). Secure programs are written such that even their *authors* can not hack them. The reason is because these programs do not directly provide security. Instead, for example, they may help users generate unique digital keys. Is is the combination of this digital key and the program itself (ie. the cypher) that provides security. Reading the source code will _not_ give the reader the key required to breach someone's privacy, especially if the program is good and can produce trillions of different and complex keys, each of which take a long time to test. Conversely, closed sourced programs are generally scrutinised by far fewer people, and as such they are generally less able to perform with the same speed, efficiency and reliability of their open source alternatives, including security related programs described above.
Switch to Linux. The only software piracy (license violations) that go on in the open source world are by developers, never by end users. Software piracy is inevitable in the proprietary software world for both techies and end users in general. They have no choice. For example, a techy will very rarely buy a license for some software that they have an interest in for whatever reason (say for skill development - in which case they are indirectly helping the vendor who is trying to charge them!), and an end user is much more interested in getting stuff for free (as in beer), especially given that there is something of a "chase" so to speak to find the cracked copy or whatever. In another life I was a Windows sys admin, and have pirated absolutely nothing (relatively speaking ;) since I switched to Linux four years ago. Do it, its liberating.
I work for a large global systems integrator as an information security analyst. Their workstation platform is MS Windows XP. When I joined the just company over 2 years ago, the first thig I did was to request permission from the COE/SOE management for my region (APAC) to use Linux as my desktop OS. I got rejected, laughably for security reasons pertaining to lack of centralised patch management for linux vulnerabilities. I was told I could apply to have a copy of MS Virtual PC installed if I could justify the need, and run linux in that. Instead, I informed my manager of my intentions (not willing to bend), shrunk the NTFS filesystem (with qt_parted no less) and installed Fedora Core 4 (the latest at the time, and my choice of distro). Since then:
- When word got around, I presented linux desktops to the regional system architects to describe how I use linux in a windows environment (leveraging samba, wine, PAM, CUPS, etc) and keep it COE/SOE compatible. (Admitedly they found it all interesting but it didn't get anywhere)
- I have deployed numerous linux based systems into production environments (especially around OpenVPN) and have saved my department a few hundered thousand in licencing costs for proprietary alternatives, whilst generating the same revenue in ongoing support as would a proprietary solution
- Among other things, I have been able to keep my linux skills sharp
All of the above stemmed from not being willing to diverge from my core skill and love in terms of my coice of computing environment.
If you are a Linux user, do your office a favour and just install it and use it at work. Install your Windows OS in Qemu and/or dual-boot if you need to, but you will be doing your self and your employer a favour by providing expertise in brilliant technology, providing alternative revenue opportunities, and keeping your own mind stimulated and free of the abstracted treat-people-as-monkeys world that Microsoft bases its OS designs on.