Did "a few other things" include different DNS servers? I haven't used file sharing sites for years (Nothing worth the hassle of finding cracks has been released, and Steam Just Works(tm)), but I am so very sorely tempted to start to VPN everything at the router.
Has anyone created a Chrome / Firefox plugin to make PGP email encryption easy for web clients?
"Oh my god, really? Jesus, we should tell them to get their priorities straight! How dare they waste my tax on such useless projects! I'm so voting third-party next time... We need reforms!
"Oh, this was hyperbole? Huh... Well, you'd have used real facts if you had any. This is serious stuff, after all. I guess this monitoring is a proportionate response then. I'm glad they're looking out for us; I had no idea. Definitely going to be more skeptical of the detractors, though. What do they have to hide?"
Our arrest warning stipulates that anything you say "may be given in evidence." That's both for the prosecution and the defense. As such, evidence they lose is just as bad for them; "Their word against mine" in court is actually quite fairly weighted. No such protection from the opinions of a jury, though.
"Hey, is this the Whistle Blowing Dept? I work on classified info for the CIA and found out the US Govt is spying on every American citizen. I want to report it."
"Oh, hey there... No, no no this is the Resolve Embarassing Situations Quickly Dept. We made an extra secure compound for you guys down in Cuba. I'll call them up and get you a free flight. Don't worry about the black fabric bag they put on your head; It's to keep the place extra super secret!"
You're the IT Manager. You grep the traffic logs for hits on the Slashdot.org story submission form and you associate that with the originating internal IP which was assigned to the consultants laptop on the ouside agency / guest VLAN.
Wait, why am I having to tell you this? Holy shit, they're both right; It's incompetency all the way down!
Crimes against humanity have specific criteria within the Rome Statute, none of which has been breached by this form of privacy intrusion. It could be a breach of human rights, though.
That being said, the US hasn't ratified the Rome Statute and doesn't recognise the authority of the International Criminal Court. You're SOOL with that one, I'm afraid.
As for guns, your police and armed forces have more of them, of better quality and capability, and are better trained in their use. GLWT.
Have you checked out if his team are giving him good info? Do you know he's actually over a reasonable budget, or is this just the CFO's opinion? What are his credentials for saying so? Is he hated because he doesn't know what the hell is going on, or because he constantly says no to unreasonable demands from other departments?
We have almost no information here for a fully justified and well reasoned response. For all we know he may well have screwed the CxO's daughter at an Xmas party and he's looking for an excuse to fire the guy.
He either delivers, or he doesn't. If he delivers then he's "Working as intended" and you need to adjust his performance management criteria to better reflect what you need out of him. Hell, he may be working just to fulfil those metrics because they're so out of whack with what he actually is supposed to be doing. My Line Manager almost got me fired because she kept making idiotic decisions without asking for my input, and having to pick up the pieces made me look incompetent. We had a stern chat about "treading on my toes" and she backed off, now we're both less stressful and things work better. Costs less, too.
I started rambling; Apologies for that. I'm trying to say that you don't sound like you have enough information to make this decision. If you don't know how to get that information, you probably should hand this project on to someone who does. It's what HR department exist for.
You've missed the point. I'll quote it by itself so it doesn't happen again:
Am I just that lucky and skillful and freaking awesome in selecting hardware?
This person checks the hardware support list for his distro of choice and makes purchasing decisions based upon it. 99.9% of the home computer users in the world don't do that. They log on to Amazon or drive to WalMart or whatever big-name IT retailer is local and buy whatever they damn well want and it will always work on Windows. When Linux has that kind of hardware support, you'll see Linux start to get desktop adoption.
The other thing is DRM for streaming media. I can't get Netflix on my Raspberry Pi because it won't run Silverlight. I would love to have my Raspberry Pi as a streaming media client for my TV, but right now it's a £25 paperweight, and being so small and light it's not very good at that either. I may just give it away.
O/T: When the fuck will Unicode be fixed? I still see à before every Pound Sterling sign. I have commented on this for years.
I'd stand in that group. Not at the front, though, in case I get arrested or worse. Not near Snowden either, in case they drone strike him to martyrdom. No, I'll be one of the ones in the middle who can say I helped but didn't actually sacrifice much.
And here is why they get away with what they get away with. Everyone else talking about this is exactly like me.
Part of the reason people will buy a brand new release-day game is because they can hammer the shit out of it in a short time over a holiday break and sell it used to recoup some of the cost (over 50% for new titles, easily). If this isn't the case, the era of $60+ release-day console games is over.
I can see your point, but it would be impossible to police. You can identify a car driven by a disqualified driver because it's often registered to that person, or a family member. There's no way for a policeman, on the street, to identify a banned mobile phone user. It would require a PNC check to buy a mobile phone.
Plus, how do you stop someone buying another person that phone? It's a £50 up-front fee and £10 a month over here for a PAYG phone. Get a friend who will pay the contract with your cash and you can have any phone you want.
Besides, who uses a cellphone to talk anymore? This is about texting while driving. They should be banned.
That's a lot of money. DD-WRT router with a VPN configured and a USB hard drive hooked up to the USB port. Secure, half the price, can double as secure web browsing from networks you don't control.
I'm looking into setting up my Raspberry Pi as a wireless hotspot connecting to this VPN so I can share it with friends / family while out on holiday.
Make using a mobile phone punishable by confiscating the car immediately (as it is in the UK for driving uninsured) and a mandatory appearance in court, punishment being revocation of license.
Wake on LAN script? The issue there is people who are ill won't be at their computer, so you're wasting money. If it hits suspend after so many minutes it's not so bad, I guess.
The guy before you probably didn't do that because he knew the system would be bullet-proof and could be managed by a tech paid 1/10 your salary. It is entirely possible to be so good at your job that you make yourself redundant.
On a locked down government network (heh, I know...) I wouldn't be surprised if the 6 minute boot time is because they're using roaming profiles. Every morning pulling the same data back down to the client, even though they use exactly they same PC every day.
Slashdot Mirror
They can damn well try! I'm behind seven proxi###&4%f2a664#NO CARRIER
In the Gigahertz Wars of the 2000's, this is the equivalent of PTSD.
I'm so sorry, brother.
"Shut up! Leave me to paw at the jangling keys like an enthralled toddler! It's so shiny... All past transgressions are forgiven!"
Said everyowner of a PS3, purchaser of a Sony Rootkit CD, and anyone who is dissatisfied with current copyright terms.
Did "a few other things" include different DNS servers? I haven't used file sharing sites for years (Nothing worth the hassle of finding cracks has been released, and Steam Just Works(tm)), but I am so very sorely tempted to start to VPN everything at the router.
Has anyone created a Chrome / Firefox plugin to make PGP email encryption easy for web clients?
"Oh my god, really? Jesus, we should tell them to get their priorities straight! How dare they waste my tax on such useless projects! I'm so voting third-party next time... We need reforms!
"Oh, this was hyperbole? Huh... Well, you'd have used real facts if you had any. This is serious stuff, after all. I guess this monitoring is a proportionate response then. I'm glad they're looking out for us; I had no idea. Definitely going to be more skeptical of the detractors, though. What do they have to hide?"
This is why your hand-waving is not helpful.
"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that."
- George Carlin (1937 - 2008)
Let me guess. This was asked of 1000 people at 14.00 on a Tuesday in the advertisements between Maury Povich and Americas Next Flop, right?
I never used Facebook or the others on the list.
Know someone who does? That's enough for them to know you.
Our arrest warning stipulates that anything you say "may be given in evidence." That's both for the prosecution and the defense. As such, evidence they lose is just as bad for them; "Their word against mine" in court is actually quite fairly weighted. No such protection from the opinions of a jury, though.
"Hey, is this the Whistle Blowing Dept? I work on classified info for the CIA and found out the US Govt is spying on every American citizen. I want to report it."
"Oh, hey there... No, no no this is the Resolve Embarassing Situations Quickly Dept. We made an extra secure compound for you guys down in Cuba. I'll call them up and get you a free flight. Don't worry about the black fabric bag they put on your head; It's to keep the place extra super secret!"
You're the IT Manager. You grep the traffic logs for hits on the Slashdot.org story submission form and you associate that with the originating internal IP which was assigned to the consultants laptop on the ouside agency / guest VLAN.
Wait, why am I having to tell you this? Holy shit, they're both right; It's incompetency all the way down!
Crimes against humanity have specific criteria within the Rome Statute, none of which has been breached by this form of privacy intrusion. It could be a breach of human rights, though.
That being said, the US hasn't ratified the Rome Statute and doesn't recognise the authority of the International Criminal Court. You're SOOL with that one, I'm afraid.
As for guns, your police and armed forces have more of them, of better quality and capability, and are better trained in their use. GLWT.
Have you checked out if his team are giving him good info? Do you know he's actually over a reasonable budget, or is this just the CFO's opinion? What are his credentials for saying so? Is he hated because he doesn't know what the hell is going on, or because he constantly says no to unreasonable demands from other departments?
We have almost no information here for a fully justified and well reasoned response. For all we know he may well have screwed the CxO's daughter at an Xmas party and he's looking for an excuse to fire the guy.
He either delivers, or he doesn't. If he delivers then he's "Working as intended" and you need to adjust his performance management criteria to better reflect what you need out of him. Hell, he may be working just to fulfil those metrics because they're so out of whack with what he actually is supposed to be doing. My Line Manager almost got me fired because she kept making idiotic decisions without asking for my input, and having to pick up the pieces made me look incompetent. We had a stern chat about "treading on my toes" and she backed off, now we're both less stressful and things work better. Costs less, too.
I started rambling; Apologies for that. I'm trying to say that you don't sound like you have enough information to make this decision. If you don't know how to get that information, you probably should hand this project on to someone who does. It's what HR department exist for.
Am I just that lucky and skillful and freaking awesome in selecting hardware ?
This person checks the hardware support list for his distro of choice and makes purchasing decisions based upon it. 99.9% of the home computer users in the world don't do that. They log on to Amazon or drive to WalMart or whatever big-name IT retailer is local and buy whatever they damn well want and it will always work on Windows. When Linux has that kind of hardware support, you'll see Linux start to get desktop adoption.
The other thing is DRM for streaming media. I can't get Netflix on my Raspberry Pi because it won't run Silverlight. I would love to have my Raspberry Pi as a streaming media client for my TV, but right now it's a £25 paperweight, and being so small and light it's not very good at that either. I may just give it away.
O/T: When the fuck will Unicode be fixed? I still see à before every Pound Sterling sign. I have commented on this for years.
Seeing as I'm already on your lawn, would you like help pruning back your Wisteria?
Yeah, but they made the shit tasty and the dark inviting and comfy. Some folk just really like bread and circuses.
I'd stand in that group. Not at the front, though, in case I get arrested or worse. Not near Snowden either, in case they drone strike him to martyrdom. No, I'll be one of the ones in the middle who can say I helped but didn't actually sacrifice much.
And here is why they get away with what they get away with. Everyone else talking about this is exactly like me.
Part of the reason people will buy a brand new release-day game is because they can hammer the shit out of it in a short time over a holiday break and sell it used to recoup some of the cost (over 50% for new titles, easily). If this isn't the case, the era of $60+ release-day console games is over.
I can see your point, but it would be impossible to police. You can identify a car driven by a disqualified driver because it's often registered to that person, or a family member. There's no way for a policeman, on the street, to identify a banned mobile phone user. It would require a PNC check to buy a mobile phone.
Plus, how do you stop someone buying another person that phone? It's a £50 up-front fee and £10 a month over here for a PAYG phone. Get a friend who will pay the contract with your cash and you can have any phone you want.
Besides, who uses a cellphone to talk anymore? This is about texting while driving. They should be banned.
That's a lot of money. DD-WRT router with a VPN configured and a USB hard drive hooked up to the USB port. Secure, half the price, can double as secure web browsing from networks you don't control.
I'm looking into setting up my Raspberry Pi as a wireless hotspot connecting to this VPN so I can share it with friends / family while out on holiday.
Not.
A.
Technology.
Problem.
Make using a mobile phone punishable by confiscating the car immediately (as it is in the UK for driving uninsured) and a mandatory appearance in court, punishment being revocation of license.
Wake on LAN script? The issue there is people who are ill won't be at their computer, so you're wasting money. If it hits suspend after so many minutes it's not so bad, I guess.
The guy before you probably didn't do that because he knew the system would be bullet-proof and could be managed by a tech paid 1/10 your salary. It is entirely possible to be so good at your job that you make yourself redundant.
A lot of large organizations do not know the meaning of the word "agile".
A general trait of large organisms is a lack of agility.
On a locked down government network (heh, I know...) I wouldn't be surprised if the 6 minute boot time is because they're using roaming profiles. Every morning pulling the same data back down to the client, even though they use exactly they same PC every day.
I help save money at boot time by leaving my PC on all night doing Bitcoin mining. It's win-win!