For a lot of my points, the reasoning is "If your computer goes down, grab a different one and nothing is lost."
I know, IT is seldom done as it should be especially in smaller shops, but this is exactly what you ought to be able to do on any well-designed and maintained corporate network. Replacing a broken machine with a new one that mirrors the user's last state minus the last 10 minutes takes us about 20 minutes and one network boot. And our budget is really low.
Hell, you can ever go to a public terminal like a cyber-cafe and access your data if need be. This is way more versatile than carrying your apps and data around with you.
Yes, but for this to work you would have to store your company data directly on the Google servers. We could not do this for legal reasons even if we wanted to. Besides, we do not want our employees to be able to access just any file from anywhere. We are required both by law and by contract to keep certain information on our own network. So we have to maintain our own infrastructure anyway. Why should we bother with Google Apps on top of that?
Google Apps is good for home users, and it may be good for certain SOHO setups and non-profits where confidentiality is not regulated too strictly. But using it for anything larger? I for one certainly would not do that.
Lost productivity due to forgetting the thumb drive with your work at home - Most larger companies will have you grilled for taking work-related material home on a thumb drive, and have you crucified for even bringing your personal thumb drive to work. And rightly so. If you need to work from your home the company should give you a preconfigured laptop.
Lost productivity due to your company's internal network going down - no internal network = no access to online apps
Lost work due to a hard drive failure - Any company whose file server can lose data when ONE hard drive fails deserves to lose productivity. Other than that I do not see what you mean with this argument.
Lost work AND productivity due to computer theft - This argument makes even less sense than the previous one. If you are referring to lost data on stolen laptops and thelikes: There is this thing called full disk encryption which should by now be standard procedure for any corporate laptop. Again, who does not do this deserves to lose data. And since you synced your work to the company's file server all you have to do to continue working is go to any computer hooked up to your company network. If you are referring to the most current version of your work being lost when the laptop is stolen: You can only use Google Apps when you have Internet connectivity. When you have Internet connectivity you can access your company's VPN and sync your work aginst their file server.
Lost work AND productivity due to accidental overwrite of a shared file on a network drive - Google did not invent versioning. Even Microsoft offers something in this regard, namely Shadow Copy. So no, this is not a valid point unless your company hired a butt monkey as their server admin.
Lost work AND productivity due to malicious code (viruses, trojans, et al)Oh, right. You access Google Apps on nothing but thin air and three Hail Marys. You don't need a computer with an operating system and a browser for that. Oh dear.
Lost productivity due to most software's inability to provide a decent collaborative environment - That depends on what degree of collaboration you need. I would guess that for most office jobs versioning is fully sufficient, and more specialised jobs require specific tools that Google Apps cannot compete with anyway.
Google Apps bring little benefit for most work environments that I have seen so far, but they come with lots of additional headaches.
While you do have a point, sys admins are among those people whom the "ordinary" employee only ever notices when something does not work. They do not (usually) contribute to new products, they do not (usually) get you sales, so unless your network share is not there or your build server is down you have little need to directly interact with them. The result is that many people forget about who enables them to do their job. Sys admins receive far more abuse relative to praise than other fields, or so has been my experience so far. And the time when the amount of digits on the paycheck made up for this are long gone in most companies.
You are right of course in this aspect. I forgot, since over here in Europe those terms have largely been found to be unenforcible. OK, so the TomTom is fixed to the dashboard and cannot be removed without damaging the car. Point still stands, plus you still would have to get rid of the TomTom yourself AND recover the premium you paid on your car because of the bundling.
I could not quite understand what you are trying to say. If your point is that rrohbeck should have sucked it up and not asked for a refund, then, sorry, it is you who is the moron. Why should someone pay for something they do not want if there is an option to get their money back?
To give you the obligatory car analogy: Imagine $carmanifacturer bundles a TomTom nav with any car sale by default. You do not want the TomTom, either because you already have one or because you can get a different nav somewhere else for a better price. Would you suck it up and pay for the TomTom that you have no use for, or would you try to negotiate with the sales rep?
The European Constitution is as anti-democratic as can be, both in the way it was drafted and unsuccessfully attempted to be imposed on its supposed subjects, and in its most central terms. So no, it is not ironic.
Using a medium that has been proven by history to easily survive several centuries with comparatively simple storage requirements (read: almost any non-wet location) is certainly a good alternative to having to worry about unreliable media degradation, unforeseeable file format compatibility and backup maintenance.
Symantec is among the last companies I would turn to when IT security - or software at all - is concerned. They sport quite a track record for lousy software, ranging from rootkit-like folder hiding that promptly got exploited by malware to shoddy ActiveX controls. And their products rather reliably kill Windows installations. At least their detection rates have apparently improved recently.
Re. DNS cache poisoning: Yes, it does happen. No, hosts files will not protect you from it unless you want your online experience to suck hard enough to create a vacuum in the Intertubes. How would you prevent this attack type by using a hosts file? Unless you want to add every single host you want to visit to the file. Oh, wait, that is where you get the 14 megs from!
Re. thronka: Assuming the testimonial is genuine, whatever I say about your idea being stupid applies to their liking your idea analogously.
Re. sootman: "Mine is only 216k [...]". Plus I still think it is stupid to abuse the hosts file as a filter. sootman wants an ad blocker; that is what Ad Block Plus is for - application-level filtering that does not impact the system as a whole.
You of all people in this thread accuse us of going off topic? You high or something? Who replied to a humorous reference to a masterpiece of comedy with a weirdly formatted flame promoting equally weird believes? Besides, we may be bashing your professional appearance, but that is only because your opinions lead us to question it.
[...] that's why obsessive internet psycho stalkers like you have followed me around forums to forums for 10 yrs [...]
You not only beat me to a reply, you also left me few to say. Citing Oliver Day's opinion piece as justification for abusing the hosts file is absolutely laughable. Not only because he suggests something different, but also because some of his ideas for this file are not exactly smart.
Shared host files could provide a DNS-proof method of reaching sites, not to mention removing an additional vector of detection if anyone were trying to monitor the use of subversive sites.
Yeah, great. Never mind that the DNS was developed because static hosts files became unwieldy and impossible to keep up to date for ever growing numbers of hosts.
Facepalms don't cut it for this level of idiocy. I am not going to deconstruct this ridiculous rant piece by piece, but a few points:
Anyone who seriously uses a hosts file as a filter should be shot on sight. In case you have not noticed, there's this thing called DNS.
Anyone who relies on the Windows firewall alone for security should be publicly whipped, anyone who does so in a corporate environment should, again, be shot.
Anyone who uses FORTRAN or "pascal" examples in relation to on-client security on a modern Windows OS should be hung up by their genitals. For the love of Christ, please do the world a favour and take a C/C++ class!
Another poster already shone a light on your background, "apk". Makes for an entertaining read. Someone like you is already a standing meme in German IT news forum Heise.de. Maybe the two of you could start a joint venture?
It is not THEIR fault that windows is so fucked up (is it)?
I have been running a Windows machine without a local firewall and without an on-access AV software for over two years now, and if the periodic checks on the machine and the logs in my gateway's firewall don't deceive me, it's infection-free. And I certainly don't spend my online time at disney.com. So no, it's not the users' fault that Windows is insecure. But it is their fault if they manage to get their system compromised by not following the most basic safety procedures.
And judging by the many pointless discussions I have had about this subject in corporate environments, nevermind the clueless and disinterested home users, anything less aggressive than killing their data will not drive the point home.
So I wholeheartedly support the GP's point of view. If this malware causes widespread massive data loss it might
educate those users who are directly affected and
make it into international news and thereby get the issue on people's minds.
Yes, this attack might turn out to be a great thing.
You are not, perchance, the code monkey from third floor, second office to the right? I think I debugged some code yesterday that followed the same principle.
Dangerous to the person posting the leak, of course.
If "our" safety relies on some information being suppressed, I'd rather the information gets out as fast and as loud as possible so that the underlying flaw gets fixed ASAP. Security by obscurity has been proven to be a very stupid concept in IT. Relying on it for your life is suicidal.
It's like blurring the location of power stations and other critical infrastructure on Google Maps: The target is still vulnerable. Nothing was gained.
Quite the opposite is true: It aims to ensure the anonymity of its sources to the best. It aims for maximum uptime, distributes its server locations strategically to ensure operations even against wide-spread censorship and disruption and aims to verify the integrity of the information it provides. (Not its authenticity, mind you. That is someone else's job.) That's more than you could ask for from most web hosting providers.
it certainly goes against any geek value
Quite the opposite is true, again: Openness of information, transparency of official bodies and procedures, exposure of censorship and malicious activities, using technology to promote a social good - and most importantly: the irresistible lust for anything fancy and exciting. All they lack is Nerf Guns.
While private R&D might end up on WikiLeaks, there is none of it there so far as far as I can tell. The rather obvious reason for this is that it simply is not really interesting to most people, and those who want it usually pay well enough for it that your hypothetical co-worker would have to be a total and utter moron to turn to WikiLeaks with their information.
Regarding the military: Considering the (usually leaked) budget of espionage and counter-espionage outfits around the world I would wager a bet that any really sensitive information that ends up on WikiLeaks is already common knowledge among most parties involved. And if you find your nation's secrets there you at least know it has been burned.
WikiLeaks really is a tool for distributing information to the public at large. Interested parties in a specific field usually will already have their sources and means of acquiring whatever information they need. It's us, the Great Unwashed, who are its target audience, because we are kept out of most circles - even if we ought to know what they are up to because their doings directly or indirectly affect our lives.
I'd like to see WikiLeaks post a leak of everyone who contributed leaks to their site.
Oh yeah, smart. Why the hell do you think WikiLeaks exists in the first place? Because leaking certain information is either forbidden or extremely dangerous. The sources have to be protected. If they didn't, they would not need to use WikiLeaks but could just put their information on their personal website.
The idea behind this is to have a common, open standard for web video that Just Works out of the box for everyone. By using system codecs you are back at the start. Right now you have to install different plug-ins for different web sites: Some use Flash, others Silverlight, a few QuickTime. If system codecs were used, you'd have to install H.264 for some, QuickTime for others, DivX for some... It makes even less sense than staying with Flash and the likes.
When you have one agreed-upon codec built directly into all browsers the end user does not have to install anything besides their browser and the content producers only have to worry about one media format.
Those gas clouds are probably circulating at the same speed as us.
Nice assumption. TFA apparently assumes otherwise. Now I don't know which one of you is right, but at least they did not call people names without even bothering to read their text and without bothering to give any more of an explanation for their opinion other than "I mean, for Christ sakes [sic!]". Which leaves only one fucking twit here, as I see it.
Why can't the user create their *own* workflow on a modern desktop?
Why should they? The vast majority of users are just that: users. They don't want to create their own applications, they want to click a button and get their work done.
I am a programmer myself, and I certainly like to tinker with stuff. But when I write a letter I expect OpenOffice to work reasonably good out of the box.
Yes, I did forget that. Same rules apply as for online multiplayer, though: If the guy/gal next to me on the couch cheats and I don't like it, I'll either kick them (physically) or stop playing with them.
It really boils down to this: When you play alone, you set the rules and are free to do whatever you want in the game. When you play with others, certain social rules will be set and enforced. It really has nothing to do with video games or cheats at all. Simple social behaviour. Just because you bought your beer does not mean you can smash it into someone else's face without receiving a proper beating.
Slashdot Mirror
Now I am the one who had to refer to Wikipedia. I take it you are talking about South Africa, then?
Wait, what? The Combine have taken over? Oh dammit, I should spend less time in the basement.
For a lot of my points, the reasoning is "If your computer goes down, grab a different one and nothing is lost."
I know, IT is seldom done as it should be especially in smaller shops, but this is exactly what you ought to be able to do on any well-designed and maintained corporate network. Replacing a broken machine with a new one that mirrors the user's last state minus the last 10 minutes takes us about 20 minutes and one network boot. And our budget is really low.
Hell, you can ever go to a public terminal like a cyber-cafe and access your data if need be. This is way more versatile than carrying your apps and data around with you.
Yes, but for this to work you would have to store your company data directly on the Google servers. We could not do this for legal reasons even if we wanted to. Besides, we do not want our employees to be able to access just any file from anywhere. We are required both by law and by contract to keep certain information on our own network. So we have to maintain our own infrastructure anyway. Why should we bother with Google Apps on top of that?
Google Apps is good for home users, and it may be good for certain SOHO setups and non-profits where confidentiality is not regulated too strictly. But using it for anything larger? I for one certainly would not do that.
Google Apps bring little benefit for most work environments that I have seen so far, but they come with lots of additional headaches.
While you do have a point, sys admins are among those people whom the "ordinary" employee only ever notices when something does not work. They do not (usually) contribute to new products, they do not (usually) get you sales, so unless your network share is not there or your build server is down you have little need to directly interact with them. The result is that many people forget about who enables them to do their job. Sys admins receive far more abuse relative to praise than other fields, or so has been my experience so far. And the time when the amount of digits on the paycheck made up for this are long gone in most companies.
You are right of course in this aspect. I forgot, since over here in Europe those terms have largely been found to be unenforcible. OK, so the TomTom is fixed to the dashboard and cannot be removed without damaging the car. Point still stands, plus you still would have to get rid of the TomTom yourself AND recover the premium you paid on your car because of the bundling.
I could not quite understand what you are trying to say. If your point is that rrohbeck should have sucked it up and not asked for a refund, then, sorry, it is you who is the moron. Why should someone pay for something they do not want if there is an option to get their money back?
To give you the obligatory car analogy: Imagine $carmanifacturer bundles a TomTom nav with any car sale by default. You do not want the TomTom, either because you already have one or because you can get a different nav somewhere else for a better price. Would you suck it up and pay for the TomTom that you have no use for, or would you try to negotiate with the sales rep?
The European Constitution is as anti-democratic as can be, both in the way it was drafted and unsuccessfully attempted to be imposed on its supposed subjects, and in its most central terms. So no, it is not ironic.
Using a medium that has been proven by history to easily survive several centuries with comparatively simple storage requirements (read: almost any non-wet location) is certainly a good alternative to having to worry about unreliable media degradation, unforeseeable file format compatibility and backup maintenance.
Given human history I see a whole new field for advertising, spam, disgusting pranks and porn.
If you're having sex with someone's brain [...]
Disgusting thought. Is there even a name for this, ahem, variant?
Might be a politician, or an analyst. They both have managed to make a living out of it.
Thank you very much for the link! It surely makes for an entertaining read. And there I was, wondering whether there is more to that person...
Absolutely hilarious.
[...] that's why obsessive internet psycho stalkers like you have followed me around forums to forums for 10 yrs [...]
You, sir, are a certified weirdo.
Shared host files could provide a DNS-proof method of reaching sites, not to mention removing an additional vector of detection if anyone were trying to monitor the use of subversive sites.
Yeah, great. Never mind that the DNS was developed because static hosts files became unwieldy and impossible to keep up to date for ever growing numbers of hosts.
Facepalms don't cut it for this level of idiocy. I am not going to deconstruct this ridiculous rant piece by piece, but a few points:
Another poster already shone a light on your background, "apk". Makes for an entertaining read. Someone like you is already a standing meme in German IT news forum Heise.de. Maybe the two of you could start a joint venture?
It is not THEIR fault that windows is so fucked up (is it)?
I have been running a Windows machine without a local firewall and without an on-access AV software for over two years now, and if the periodic checks on the machine and the logs in my gateway's firewall don't deceive me, it's infection-free. And I certainly don't spend my online time at disney.com. So no, it's not the users' fault that Windows is insecure. But it is their fault if they manage to get their system compromised by not following the most basic safety procedures.
And judging by the many pointless discussions I have had about this subject in corporate environments, nevermind the clueless and disinterested home users, anything less aggressive than killing their data will not drive the point home.
So I wholeheartedly support the GP's point of view. If this malware causes widespread massive data loss it might
Yes, this attack might turn out to be a great thing.
You are not, perchance, the code monkey from third floor, second office to the right? I think I debugged some code yesterday that followed the same principle.
Dangerous to the person posting the leak, of course.
If "our" safety relies on some information being suppressed, I'd rather the information gets out as fast and as loud as possible so that the underlying flaw gets fixed ASAP. Security by obscurity has been proven to be a very stupid concept in IT. Relying on it for your life is suicidal.
It's like blurring the location of power stations and other critical infrastructure on Google Maps: The target is still vulnerable. Nothing was gained.
wikileaks goes against any IT best practice
Quite the opposite is true: It aims to ensure the anonymity of its sources to the best. It aims for maximum uptime, distributes its server locations strategically to ensure operations even against wide-spread censorship and disruption and aims to verify the integrity of the information it provides. (Not its authenticity, mind you. That is someone else's job.) That's more than you could ask for from most web hosting providers.
it certainly goes against any geek value
Quite the opposite is true, again: Openness of information, transparency of official bodies and procedures, exposure of censorship and malicious activities, using technology to promote a social good - and most importantly: the irresistible lust for anything fancy and exciting. All they lack is Nerf Guns.
While private R&D might end up on WikiLeaks, there is none of it there so far as far as I can tell. The rather obvious reason for this is that it simply is not really interesting to most people, and those who want it usually pay well enough for it that your hypothetical co-worker would have to be a total and utter moron to turn to WikiLeaks with their information.
Regarding the military: Considering the (usually leaked) budget of espionage and counter-espionage outfits around the world I would wager a bet that any really sensitive information that ends up on WikiLeaks is already common knowledge among most parties involved. And if you find your nation's secrets there you at least know it has been burned.
WikiLeaks really is a tool for distributing information to the public at large. Interested parties in a specific field usually will already have their sources and means of acquiring whatever information they need. It's us, the Great Unwashed, who are its target audience, because we are kept out of most circles - even if we ought to know what they are up to because their doings directly or indirectly affect our lives.
I'd like to see WikiLeaks post a leak of everyone who contributed leaks to their site.
Oh yeah, smart. Why the hell do you think WikiLeaks exists in the first place? Because leaking certain information is either forbidden or extremely dangerous. The sources have to be protected. If they didn't, they would not need to use WikiLeaks but could just put their information on their personal website.
Gosh, that wasn't so hard to figure out, was it?
The idea behind this is to have a common, open standard for web video that Just Works out of the box for everyone. By using system codecs you are back at the start. Right now you have to install different plug-ins for different web sites: Some use Flash, others Silverlight, a few QuickTime. If system codecs were used, you'd have to install H.264 for some, QuickTime for others, DivX for some... It makes even less sense than staying with Flash and the likes.
When you have one agreed-upon codec built directly into all browsers the end user does not have to install anything besides their browser and the content producers only have to worry about one media format.
Those gas clouds are probably circulating at the same speed as us.
Nice assumption. TFA apparently assumes otherwise. Now I don't know which one of you is right, but at least they did not call people names without even bothering to read their text and without bothering to give any more of an explanation for their opinion other than "I mean, for Christ sakes [sic!]". Which leaves only one fucking twit here, as I see it.
Why can't the user create their *own* workflow on a modern desktop?
Why should they? The vast majority of users are just that: users. They don't want to create their own applications, they want to click a button and get their work done.
I am a programmer myself, and I certainly like to tinker with stuff. But when I write a letter I expect OpenOffice to work reasonably good out of the box.
Yes, I did forget that. Same rules apply as for online multiplayer, though: If the guy/gal next to me on the couch cheats and I don't like it, I'll either kick them (physically) or stop playing with them.
It really boils down to this: When you play alone, you set the rules and are free to do whatever you want in the game. When you play with others, certain social rules will be set and enforced. It really has nothing to do with video games or cheats at all. Simple social behaviour. Just because you bought your beer does not mean you can smash it into someone else's face without receiving a proper beating.