If youre suggesting OSX to avoid the viruses, you may have a nasty suprise coming to you in a year or two as its market share rises and those cross-platform exploits really take off.
Securing windows ISNT as hard as its made out; use Win7 64bit and keep everyone as non-admin, AND tightly control the plugins that are installed, and youre golden. Or you can use OSX and pretend that youre invincible, and then watch in horror as your flash plugin becomes the launching ground for the newest virus because you forgot to keep it up to date...
And Im not entirely sure about the wisdom of paying so much for each workstation-- youre talking about a small 20 person company, and on the one hand you wanted to save around $1100 (Win2k8 + 15 extra cals), but on the other youre going to burn on the order of $1000+ per user computer (more, if they go with those i7s you suggested!)? For that matter, what on earth makes you think the average finance person is going to need a core i5 for goodness sake? Pentium dualcores or AMD triple cores are way overkill for this-- giving them $300-400 processors is just silly.
And possibly the biggest issue I have with your suggestion-- after all this money spent on workstations (on the order of $20-30k), your backup solution is... 3 external USB drives? Tape drives are NOT that expensive-- an LTO3 drive can be had for under $1500, and an LTO4 autoloader for around $4k. Get one, and a stack of 20 tapes on rotation-- you WONT be sorry when Janet finds out that they deleted important_legal_info.doc 3 weeks ago.
By the way, microsoft can "pull the plug" on win2k3 licenses, but that DOESNT mean youre SOL if you need more CALs-- all Windows CALs are backwards compatible, so you just start buying the 2k8 CALs. There is no "forced upgrade"; several of my clients run 2k3 and continue to have more CALs installed every year.
There is ABSOLUTELY nothing wrong with "consumer grade" wifi. You may be right on with the RADIUS etc (though last time i checked it was called "WPA2 enterprise"), but throw DDWRT on the proper wifi router and it works just fine, ESPECIALLY for a 20 user company.
The issue is that this is kind of a basic thing. If the guy got hired with the understanding that he could handle architecting the network when he was not capable of doing so unless/. gave him good advice, I would say that was foolish on both his part and his employers'. And the question itself is the sort that is going to get hundreds of conflicting opinions, many of which the OP likely cannot implement (in b4 "use gentoo").
Depending on your thin client setup, thats not necessarily true. DVD playbak requires about 11mbits, so if everyone on the network were running DVD playback @ once, thats 90 clients on a Gigabit network (assuming only a single connection to the server). All that matters is that the server have sufficient graphics processing power.
I hear people throwing around "Linux + Openoffice" as if you can just walk in one day and announce to the legal and finance departments, "Good news! We're turning your world upside down" and make it happen. Having tried OpenOffice in a few places (didnt have MSOffice available at the time), and the employees gave it a shot. Checking in with them a few weeks later, looks like they went out and got MSOffice. When asked why, they said, no lie, "OpenOffice sucks. Its hard to use, and its ugly".
And tbqh having used Calc, I tend to agree-- Calc really is no replacement for Excel for serious usage (though I use it for my once-a-week time accounting). There are times to avoid MS, but I would be INCREDIBLY cautious about thinking you can install Linux+OOO everywhere and have everyone be OK with it. You may find your solution replaced just as quickly as you are.
And lets keep in mind this is ask/.. We dont know what this guys company does, or if they have other vendors that provide web interfaces requiring IE-- they DO exist, and you DONT want to have to explain why the entire network needs to be redone on week3 because you knew better than those stupid backwards vendors and now they cant run payroll in the morning.
How many IT employees do you suppose a 20 person company really needs? Personally, after about the 4th week, I think I would be about out of things to do in a company that size.
I do IT for a living, from helpdesk to routers to servers (Unix, Linux, Windows). I happen to also have a facebook account, since a lot of my friends and families do. Should I maybe spend the time to teach all of them a "better" way of keeping in touch? Or maybe not be such a curmudgeon and just use facebook like all my contacts?
Not just for links they don't like but for any kind of data that they can use or sell
Whether or not thats true, its pure speculation, and a hell of a reach. It is trivial (in forums for example) to set up filters that scan content as they are posted and automatically perform replacements-- I created such a filter once on a bbs. Doesnt mean the data GOES anywhere besides the bbs, it just gets processed prior to posting.
The fact that you get modded interesting is a little disturbing-- "interesting" for wild speculation and paranoia?
More to the point, if people dont really care about those features, facebook can do whatever it wants. When it goes too far, it will become clear to them pretty quickly.
Um, no, not at all, since the new driver (which they have no issue with ) IS "software and ideas Microsoft doesnt sell".
Microsoft is a company, and has ALWAYS been about making a profit. Keeping cheaters out, while simultaneously becoming THE hobbyist camera doohicky of the week, accomplishes that goal nicely.
Their server hardware stuff is generally really good. There prices, however, are not. Their 2TB drives cost around $800 a piece, when theyre just WD RE4 drives which newegg will sell for $250. Its the kind of markup which makes Apple look good by comparison.
The really great part is that you have to buy SOME of their drives-- in order to get the hotswap cages, which arent sold seperately according to sales.
Dell uses Foxconn, as Im sure many others do. Not sure that really makes a difference tho, Dell has their logos all over the case and mobo, which you would think makes it their problem.
If you read his post, your interpretation doesnt match. His complaint was that this bill would circumvent "due process" by allowing authorities to get a court order to act-- thus implying that getting said court order was outside of due process.
MS had a decent showing, though in raw numbers they did get thrashed. Sony has done some cool things, but ultimately they havent really been innovating lately other, and their numbers have been hurting because of it.
5 years from now, I expect Sony to be coming out with Yet Another Overpowered System, MS to be releasing another polished system with excellent online integration, and Nintendo to continue to do the Nintendo thing and come out with something off the wall (Gamecube? DS? Wii? etc etc). And I expect the numbers to be similar to this round, with MS and Nintendo on top and Sony wondering why people still dont like them or their overpriced system.
Once again, I dont think it is technology that is the enabler here. Youre simply remarking that "people with connections and money tend to be able to exploit the system". Thats NOT a problem of technology or its being withheld, and thats NOT a new issue.
Can you name a piece of technology that we (the joe schmoes) cannot access, which if we could would grant us this power and wealth you keep talking about? Or is it largely useless without the contacts and financial/legal resources to properly exploit it?
I ahhhh hate to break the news to ya McGrew, but actually repairing Windows PCs for a living I can tell you the vast majority of Windows infections post XP SP2 is PEBKAC related.
Hate to break it to YOU, but also doing IT work for a living-- dealing with top to bottom (helpdesk up to routers / firewalls), I can tell you thats a techie cop-out. The VAST (and I mean VAST) majority of infections come from out of date browsers and plugins with gaping vulnerabilities. I ask each and every infected customer to relate what they were doing prior to infection, and verify their claims with browser history and temp file. I see 2, maybe 3 per year that were honest-to-goodness "downloaded and ran cheeseburger.exe" exploits; all the rest went thru Acrobat or Flash or Java (1.5 FTW) or Quicktime or thru an out of date browser.
Switch your common offenders to Google Chrome, turn off all non-native plugins, enable the Chrome PDF and Flash native plugins, and THEN see how many infections you get (as chrome forcefully auto-updates all 3). I think you will be suprised.
You feel like financing this project? And setting up contingincies for things like "there is a leak and the pacific is starting to seep in"? And dealing with the phenomenal pressures that will be exerted?
Wiis are still being sold but they have enough to go back into their shed and devote the next few years to R&D and playtesting which the other rivals *cannot*.
Im a nintendo fanboy, no lie, but youre seriously underestimating both Sony and MS here. Lets keep in mind that up until recently PS2s were STILL being sold (and might continue to be?), and that Microsoft has ridiculous resources with which to create console after console whether or not they flop. Nintendo has had a great many successes, but lets also not forget that the N64 was considered a flop (due to Sony eating their lunch) and the Gamecube was semi-mediocre in terms of sales.
It does have a major flaw-- its insistence on installing that awful toolbar unless you choose "custom mode"-- regardless of whether or not you uncheck the "please install toolbar" box. STILL not fixed after what, 3 versions? Starting to think they have some kind of motivation for forcing this thing on people.
Wait, are you talking about Linux, Windows, or Mac? Pretty sure theyre all "unix clones" in some sense of the word, and pretty sure theyre all based on SOME technologies from the 70s...
the overwhelmingly vast majority of Americans don't know what these things are, let alone how to use them.
That is not technological advantage. Unlike many previous periods in history, the "overwhelmingly vast majority of Americans" have the tools at their disposal to learn these things in a few weeks of leisurely study on the internet. The fact that they choose not to does not mean the opponent has a TECHNOLOGICAL advantage.
Further, if youve ever been in a high school with any kind of filtering, you learn that the sort of information necessary to circumvent "the man" becomes commonly known when there is an incentive to do so. I was setting up a proxy in internet explorer long before I knew what a proxy was-- simply because all the other kids knew how so they could browse unrestricted.
I know the principles and could write my own system, but would never make it out of the legal system before I was too old to use it
Again, you are not describing a technological advantage. You freely admit that there is no technological barrier to you creating your own solution, and that is the legal system that is the barrier (so you say).
You "rethink" it.
You havent adequately explained why Joe Schmoe cant study internet infrastructure and security principles on the internet in sort of a crash course over 5 weeks and then protect himself. This isnt to place blame on anyone who doesnt do so, but merely to point out that there is ZERO technological barrier to doing so for anyone sufficiently motivated. When you see truecrypt and the like being knocked off of download sites, torrents of linux actually taken offline, and articles on setting up a hardened OS installation and VPN solutions being censored, THEN we can talk about technological "advantage". As it is you seem to discount the HUGE amount of trivially accessible information and technology there actually is today.
Slashdot Mirror
If youre suggesting OSX to avoid the viruses, you may have a nasty suprise coming to you in a year or two as its market share rises and those cross-platform exploits really take off.
Securing windows ISNT as hard as its made out; use Win7 64bit and keep everyone as non-admin, AND tightly control the plugins that are installed, and youre golden. Or you can use OSX and pretend that youre invincible, and then watch in horror as your flash plugin becomes the launching ground for the newest virus because you forgot to keep it up to date...
And Im not entirely sure about the wisdom of paying so much for each workstation-- youre talking about a small 20 person company, and on the one hand you wanted to save around $1100 (Win2k8 + 15 extra cals), but on the other youre going to burn on the order of $1000+ per user computer (more, if they go with those i7s you suggested!)? For that matter, what on earth makes you think the average finance person is going to need a core i5 for goodness sake? Pentium dualcores or AMD triple cores are way overkill for this-- giving them $300-400 processors is just silly.
And possibly the biggest issue I have with your suggestion-- after all this money spent on workstations (on the order of $20-30k), your backup solution is... 3 external USB drives? Tape drives are NOT that expensive-- an LTO3 drive can be had for under $1500, and an LTO4 autoloader for around $4k. Get one, and a stack of 20 tapes on rotation-- you WONT be sorry when Janet finds out that they deleted important_legal_info.doc 3 weeks ago.
By the way, microsoft can "pull the plug" on win2k3 licenses, but that DOESNT mean youre SOL if you need more CALs-- all Windows CALs are backwards compatible, so you just start buying the 2k8 CALs. There is no "forced upgrade"; several of my clients run 2k3 and continue to have more CALs installed every year.
There is ABSOLUTELY nothing wrong with "consumer grade" wifi. You may be right on with the RADIUS etc (though last time i checked it was called "WPA2 enterprise"), but throw DDWRT on the proper wifi router and it works just fine, ESPECIALLY for a 20 user company.
The issue is that this is kind of a basic thing. If the guy got hired with the understanding that he could handle architecting the network when he was not capable of doing so unless /. gave him good advice, I would say that was foolish on both his part and his employers'. And the question itself is the sort that is going to get hundreds of conflicting opinions, many of which the OP likely cannot implement (in b4 "use gentoo").
Depending on your thin client setup, thats not necessarily true. DVD playbak requires about 11mbits, so if everyone on the network were running DVD playback @ once, thats 90 clients on a Gigabit network (assuming only a single connection to the server). All that matters is that the server have sufficient graphics processing power.
I hear people throwing around "Linux + Openoffice" as if you can just walk in one day and announce to the legal and finance departments, "Good news! We're turning your world upside down" and make it happen. Having tried OpenOffice in a few places (didnt have MSOffice available at the time), and the employees gave it a shot. Checking in with them a few weeks later, looks like they went out and got MSOffice. When asked why, they said, no lie, "OpenOffice sucks. Its hard to use, and its ugly".
/.. We dont know what this guys company does, or if they have other vendors that provide web interfaces requiring IE-- they DO exist, and you DONT want to have to explain why the entire network needs to be redone on week3 because you knew better than those stupid backwards vendors and now they cant run payroll in the morning.
And tbqh having used Calc, I tend to agree-- Calc really is no replacement for Excel for serious usage (though I use it for my once-a-week time accounting). There are times to avoid MS, but I would be INCREDIBLY cautious about thinking you can install Linux+OOO everywhere and have everyone be OK with it. You may find your solution replaced just as quickly as you are.
And lets keep in mind this is ask
How many IT employees do you suppose a 20 person company really needs? Personally, after about the 4th week, I think I would be about out of things to do in a company that size.
I do IT for a living, from helpdesk to routers to servers (Unix, Linux, Windows). I happen to also have a facebook account, since a lot of my friends and families do. Should I maybe spend the time to teach all of them a "better" way of keeping in touch? Or maybe not be such a curmudgeon and just use facebook like all my contacts?
Not just for links they don't like but for any kind of data that they can use or sell
Whether or not thats true, its pure speculation, and a hell of a reach. It is trivial (in forums for example) to set up filters that scan content as they are posted and automatically perform replacements-- I created such a filter once on a bbs. Doesnt mean the data GOES anywhere besides the bbs, it just gets processed prior to posting.
The fact that you get modded interesting is a little disturbing-- "interesting" for wild speculation and paranoia?
Facebook is the internet on training wheels, for those who need the assist.
Apparently it hasnt occured to you that some people actually find it USEFUL for keeping up with a large number of contacts.
More to the point, if people dont really care about those features, facebook can do whatever it wants. When it goes too far, it will become clear to them pretty quickly.
Um, no, not at all, since the new driver (which they have no issue with ) IS "software and ideas Microsoft doesnt sell".
Microsoft is a company, and has ALWAYS been about making a profit. Keeping cheaters out, while simultaneously becoming THE hobbyist camera doohicky of the week, accomplishes that goal nicely.
Their server hardware stuff is generally really good. There prices, however, are not. Their 2TB drives cost around $800 a piece, when theyre just WD RE4 drives which newegg will sell for $250. Its the kind of markup which makes Apple look good by comparison.
The really great part is that you have to buy SOME of their drives-- in order to get the hotswap cages, which arent sold seperately according to sales.
Dell uses Foxconn, as Im sure many others do. Not sure that really makes a difference tho, Dell has their logos all over the case and mobo, which you would think makes it their problem.
We get crappy machines with defective capacitors that all rupture on the same day. At least its amusing to explain to finance.
If you read his post, your interpretation doesnt match. His complaint was that this bill would circumvent "due process" by allowing authorities to get a court order to act-- thus implying that getting said court order was outside of due process.
MS had a decent showing, though in raw numbers they did get thrashed. Sony has done some cool things, but ultimately they havent really been innovating lately other, and their numbers have been hurting because of it.
5 years from now, I expect Sony to be coming out with Yet Another Overpowered System, MS to be releasing another polished system with excellent online integration, and Nintendo to continue to do the Nintendo thing and come out with something off the wall (Gamecube? DS? Wii? etc etc). And I expect the numbers to be similar to this round, with MS and Nintendo on top and Sony wondering why people still dont like them or their overpriced system.
Once again, I dont think it is technology that is the enabler here. Youre simply remarking that "people with connections and money tend to be able to exploit the system". Thats NOT a problem of technology or its being withheld, and thats NOT a new issue.
Can you name a piece of technology that we (the joe schmoes) cannot access, which if we could would grant us this power and wealth you keep talking about? Or is it largely useless without the contacts and financial/legal resources to properly exploit it?
not cause they won't run on unix
Actually, im fairly certain win32 viruses WONT run on unix ;)
I ahhhh hate to break the news to ya McGrew, but actually repairing Windows PCs for a living I can tell you the vast majority of Windows infections post XP SP2 is PEBKAC related.
Hate to break it to YOU, but also doing IT work for a living-- dealing with top to bottom (helpdesk up to routers / firewalls), I can tell you thats a techie cop-out. The VAST (and I mean VAST) majority of infections come from out of date browsers and plugins with gaping vulnerabilities. I ask each and every infected customer to relate what they were doing prior to infection, and verify their claims with browser history and temp file. I see 2, maybe 3 per year that were honest-to-goodness "downloaded and ran cheeseburger.exe" exploits; all the rest went thru Acrobat or Flash or Java (1.5 FTW) or Quicktime or thru an out of date browser.
Switch your common offenders to Google Chrome, turn off all non-native plugins, enable the Chrome PDF and Flash native plugins, and THEN see how many infections you get (as chrome forcefully auto-updates all 3). I think you will be suprised.
You feel like financing this project? And setting up contingincies for things like "there is a leak and the pacific is starting to seep in"? And dealing with the phenomenal pressures that will be exerted?
Wiis are still being sold but they have enough to go back into their shed and devote the next few years to R&D and playtesting which the other rivals *cannot*.
Im a nintendo fanboy, no lie, but youre seriously underestimating both Sony and MS here. Lets keep in mind that up until recently PS2s were STILL being sold (and might continue to be?), and that Microsoft has ridiculous resources with which to create console after console whether or not they flop. Nintendo has had a great many successes, but lets also not forget that the N64 was considered a flop (due to Sony eating their lunch) and the Gamecube was semi-mediocre in terms of sales.
"8-bit look"
Whatever its flaws, the Wii doesnt really have an 8-bit look (and I say this as a guy who has several 8-bit systems close by).
It does have a major flaw-- its insistence on installing that awful toolbar unless you choose "custom mode"-- regardless of whether or not you uncheck the "please install toolbar" box. STILL not fixed after what, 3 versions? Starting to think they have some kind of motivation for forcing this thing on people.
Wait, are you talking about Linux, Windows, or Mac? Pretty sure theyre all "unix clones" in some sense of the word, and pretty sure theyre all based on SOME technologies from the 70s...
the overwhelmingly vast majority of Americans don't know what these things are, let alone how to use them.
That is not technological advantage. Unlike many previous periods in history, the "overwhelmingly vast majority of Americans" have the tools at their disposal to learn these things in a few weeks of leisurely study on the internet. The fact that they choose not to does not mean the opponent has a TECHNOLOGICAL advantage.
Further, if youve ever been in a high school with any kind of filtering, you learn that the sort of information necessary to circumvent "the man" becomes commonly known when there is an incentive to do so. I was setting up a proxy in internet explorer long before I knew what a proxy was-- simply because all the other kids knew how so they could browse unrestricted.
I know the principles and could write my own system, but would never make it out of the legal system before I was too old to use it
Again, you are not describing a technological advantage. You freely admit that there is no technological barrier to you creating your own solution, and that is the legal system that is the barrier (so you say).
You "rethink" it.
You havent adequately explained why Joe Schmoe cant study internet infrastructure and security principles on the internet in sort of a crash course over 5 weeks and then protect himself. This isnt to place blame on anyone who doesnt do so, but merely to point out that there is ZERO technological barrier to doing so for anyone sufficiently motivated. When you see truecrypt and the like being knocked off of download sites, torrents of linux actually taken offline, and articles on setting up a hardened OS installation and VPN solutions being censored, THEN we can talk about technological "advantage". As it is you seem to discount the HUGE amount of trivially accessible information and technology there actually is today.