Do you know anybody who actually owns a netbook? I don't. [...]
Here in Germany they keep spreading across university campuses, and quite numerously at that. Primarily among the kinda-computer-savvy-but-not-nerdy-enough-for-CS crowd, but also interestingly among female students, probably because of their smaller size and weight. They are still vastly outnumbered by "proper" notebooks, but the uptake is way more than I'd expected. Well, they are ideal for a lot of students after all. They handle web surfing and office tasks just fine, are cheap, compact, sport quite long battery time - unless you really need processing power or a large display they are perfectly sufficient.
Why does it make a difference whether the author of a statement reveals their identity? It doesn't make their statement any truer or falser, any more or less relevant, any better or worse presented.
And frankly, if the poster above me had signed their contribution with their full name, address, phone number, finger print and bust size/penis length I still wouldn't have a clue who the hell they are. Identity on the Internet doesn't mean shit.
The reason the difference is important is this scheme isn't to fight shoplifting, the theft of a physical item. This is to fight copyright infringement, [...]
It is similar. From what I got from TFA what happens is this: You take a game package from the shelf, walk to check-out and hand over your cash. The clerk scans the box's unique ID and uploads it to some central management server, thereby activating it for use.
Under current schemes you already usually need a valid license code (for multi-player, at least, and with most games that's the most valuable part anyway), ie. one issued by the game manifacturer. The only change is that even with a working keygen you could activate your unauthorised copy only with a key that is valid and has been purchased for real but not activated yet by the legitimate customer.
Might buy them a couple of hours against the crews for the first few games to come with this, but so far each new copy prevention scheme has been broken some way or another. Waste of resources.
[...] It's hard to envision a scenario in which the parent company is gone yet I still want to play it online, [...]
It's not so much about playing online - that's what CD keys usually are for, and they still are working quite fine - but increasingly about being able to install and play a game at all. I still like to go for a fair hour of Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodline. The developer went out of business. Had it a DRM that required online activation I'd be screwed.
Besides: Many DRMs still also check whether the game media is in the drive. I'm not a disk-jockey. And last time I checked game companies didn't offer free replacements for worn-out media. Therefore I usually download no-cd cracks for the games I legally own, so I can enjoy hassle-free gaming - just like the evil pirates do, y'know?
Interesting indeed. Now if only Linux picked that up... (No offense to Mac users; I just don't like OS X.) But in the course of the boot-in-x-seconds rage that is going on right now a lot of stuff is being reworked and slimmed down. At least it's a start.
It seems to me only Microsoft somehow does not show much involvement in this field.
Second that, and add the wish for more performant operation to that. I didn't buy that quad-core and those 4 gigs of RAM so that the OS developers can waste those resources, I bought them so that my applications run faster and perform better. As far as I'm concerned, an OS should be designed and coded so efficiently that it runs equally performant on an Eee PC and a 2x4-Core Mac Pro. Any surplus resources should be reserved for apps. Now that would be an innovation I'd happily pay good money for.
Windows zealots... well, I'm not sure I've met one. Weird, really, given that it's exactly the same sort of mix of great and awful as the other major platforms, albeit with different pluses and minuses.
[...]
So far I've only met Windows zealots in the corporate environment, and those almost always turned out as either those who make money off the Windows ecosystem and want to keep it nice and untainted to avoid the additional cost and effort for supporting several platforms or those whom you could sell Ubuntu as the next Windows iteration if you just told them so.
The majority of Windows users I have encountered so far agree that Windows is far from ideal. They are simply too lazy to look for alternatives.
The minority of those Windows users that actually is informed enough to be able (and willing) to make a switch is held back by specific requirements and issues, mostly software that can't be replaced but won't work with Wine and more exotic hardware that isn't supported under any non-Windows OS (DVB receivers are a big issue apparently. Couldn't say, I don't use them.).
Who in this godless world has modded this insightful? IP addresses, MAC addresses, host names, user agents - NEVER trust any information which comes from an untrustworthy source or has travelled along an untrustworthy path. Plain and simple. If you don't trust it, kick it out. If you trust it, check it out in detail and see whether your trust was warranted.
Your suggestion is akin to enforcing valid return addresses on letter bombs.
Besides, you did hear about bot nets, did you? You know, those pesky things that keep stuffing your e-mail box with all those nice ads for penis enlargement and cheap medication? If not: welcome to life!
Judging by the experience posted, it looks like some people are holding back on the social networking thing and finding it difficult because of peer pressure pushing them into it.
Indeed. At the university I attend several tutors have recently begun to organise courses via StudiVZ[1] (a german Facebook clone that has received sound bashing for its security and privacy holes), effectively forcing people to sign up for it. They caved to protests quite quickly and offered regular sign-up options, still the whole issue left behind quite a bad taste.
RE mobile phones: I got my first mobile about eight or nine years ago, have been carrying one almost 'round the clock with me since then. Thing is, I keep it muted. Always. And I have disabled the voice mail. If I can't or don't want to answer a call or read a text just right now then I simply don't. Works great for me.
Why was this modded down? "Do no harm" actually is the first thing we teach our fledgling admins.
That something is "not out of the ordinary" does not automatically mean it isn't utter bollocks. Indiscriminate blocks are stupid in most cases. If a domain didn't cause trouble, it shouldn't be added to such a generic blacklist. That's just as stupid as blocking dynamic IPs from sending mail - the problem does not lie in the IP but in the mail, so the answer is to fix the mail system.
[...] if you actually think about it, the address bar really *does* belong under the tab bar.
The address is a property of the current page. [...]
I see your point, but I disagree: The address bar is the central part of the browser interface. Putting it "on" the tab is semantically correct, but would feel absolutely odd to me.
Maybe that's because I'm a shell guy; I think of the adress bar more of a command line to control the browser with than a property of the page I'm on just now.
Actually the placement of the adress bar is what annoys the hell out of me in IE 7: The uppermost space in an application window is reserved for the main menu bar. Anything else is just out of place there. In (Vista/2008) Explorer it somehow makes sense to me to have the adress bar on top for some reason. I guess that's because it replaces the title bar, thus being the one element that identifies the window's content. But in IE it just is counter-intuitive. Weird how the swapping of two UI elements can make such a difference in how I perceive an interface.
Do you honestly believe that you or your employees are going to build a system with higher availability than Google? In the magical fantasy world we all wish we lived in, you may have the budget, skill, manpower, and infrastructure resources to do this. In the real world it is not even remotely possible. [...]
Google has to run a massively sized setup catering to a vast diversity of customer types. Sure, they have more manpower and know-how than my employer's IT dept. But they have to distribute this manpower across a very wide field, working on dozens of products and issues in parallel. They have to deal with and prepare for basically any issue imaginable to the IT savvy part of mankind.
My employer's IT infrastructure, communications system and document/information management system are tailored to our needs. We have everything we need, but nothing we don't. We follow a safety and recovery protocol that reflects our business structure and priorities.
Short of the annihilation of Western Europe there aren't too many scenarios that would compromise our infrastructure in a way that would impact business. Why should we trade this situation for a little more convenience?
(Notwithstanding the fact that for legal reasons we won't actually even consider outsourcing anything more delicate than delivering lunch to our IT folk. Mere uptime is not our greatest concern.)
I'd love to see that happen, but that's what actually started this discussion: How do you catch a first-time terrorist with 100% certainty without creating an Orwellian society? How do you balance the need for survival of the few (ie. those unfortunate to die in an attack) with the need for freedom and privacy of the many (ie. the rest of society)? Where do you draw the line? Which powers can you surrender to the state before the state becomes a bigger threat to your life and livelyhood than the terrorists from whom the state wants to protect you? (Practical example: No-fly lists. Judging from the reports about false positives and the absence of a comparable amount of reported valid hits the lists seem to me as an utter failure. But quite some people critical of the US government have ended up on it. Coincidence? I hardly think so. Power corrupts after all.)
The anti-terrorism measures currently enacted in western countries do little to deter terrorists (most failed attacks post-Madrid were foiled not by law enforcement using their new powers but by inexperience and even outright stupidity on the culprits' part) but seriously undermine democratic principles and violate fundamental rights. The balance has been lost.
So instead of making our governments stronger I'd go for making our enemies weaker. Just makes more sense to me.
No offence. I've seen it happen far too often, so I'm a bit sensitive when it comes to protecting data from leaking.
On your other point, though: Sure, it's your company. But your customers' data is not yours. If you're one of the few people who make sensible decisions, fine. But again: I've witnessed too many fuckups to trust anyone to make the right choice. I usually check and double-check on contractors.
[...] we only put data on their servers while it's needed. Visiting customer sites, etc. [...]
I do hope you don't put any sensitive data there, like any kind of customer data? At least at my current employer we'd grill you for good if we found out about something like this. We already have quite a hard time keeping our employees from storing company data anywhere outside approved locations. Contractors are required to sign an agreement that forbids them from doing such a thing under penalty (along with requiring them to encrypt all data they receive from us).
[...] "so maybe we should focus our attention on the underlying problem, ie. the fact that people want to bomb us," line is simply an immature viewpoint. [...]
Oh, is it? Cutting down on the number of people you piss off by your own actions out of ignorance, selfishness or outright carelessness certainly would not be a bad idea, would it? Especially in light of my last point, re unlimited targets.
You secure the planes, they bomb the airports.
You secure the airports, they bomb the train stations.
You secure the train stations, they bomb the cinemas.
You secure the cinemas, they bomb the supermarkets.
You secure the supermarkets, they bomb the schools.
You secure the schools, they bomb the playgrounds.
You secure the playgrounds, they bomb the churches.
You secure the churches, they bomb the post offices.
You secure the post offices...
You can take it only so far before your whole country is simply choked to death. So at least to me it seems smarter to keep people from wanting to harm you than to erect countless barriers that are sure to keep you in, but ultimately fail to keep your enemies out.
[...] Better identity confirmation systems might keep terrorists from killing a plane full of people. [...]
Oh, really? And exactly how would such a system safeguard us from the prime group of people who carry out large-scale acts of terrorism in western countries these days, namely isolated cells of fundamentalists who
are self-taught and have not previously raised a flag with law enforcement and thus would not appear in any blacklist or watchlist and were free to enter any plane they wish and
don't care about legal consequences because they blow themselves to pieces anyway?
Besides: If you make the planes safe, the bad guys will simply go for the f...ing airport. They won't run out of targets in the foreseeable future, so maybe we should focus our attention on the underlying problem, ie. the fact that people want to bomb us, instead of giving up the very freedom we supposedly want to defend for a false sense of security.
Re:Business types who refuse to listen to techies.
on
The Pragmatic CSO
·
· Score: 1
Executive management (except CIO/CSO obviously) shouldn't need to understand anything about the technical details. [...]
I disagree. A CEO doesn't need to know how to code, but they need to have a grasp of what IT is. Their business - by now, just about any business regardless of its industry sector - depends to a varying degree on software. The larger this degree, the more important it is for the top brass to understand what IT consists of and how to manage it. Not in detail, mind you. But they ought to understand the basic principles and processes behind it. Just like they ought to have an understanding of economics, even though their bean-counters handle all the petty details.
Re:It's not just security
on
The Pragmatic CSO
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
[...] support who won't let you install a vital and harmless piece of software because it's against regulations [...]
Has it never occured to you that they might simply be protecting their jobs? Someone put those regulations in place, and IT/tech support are required to make sure those regulations are followed. If some lowly grunt at helpdesk allows you to install a "vital and harmless[1] piece of software" and anything goes wrong, it's not so much your ass on the line as theirs. So next time think twice before laying blame.
Find out who's responsible for IT regulations and make your case to them for the permission of your vital software.
[1] Am I the only one to whom those two terms seem mutually exclusive? If it's vital to the company, it has to be 100% functional and so ought to be managed centrally by IT. If it's unimportant enough to let individual users play around with it, it shouldn't be anywhere near the company's systems other than in a testbed maintained and supervised by IT so as to keep it from interfering with the vital components.
The only law a "pirate" breaks is copyright law, property law is completely untouched. If it were, we'd already have seen a flood of lawsuits to that regard.
If you find a legal text that supports your interpretation, please do provide it. But I very much doubt it.
Calling that wee little control panel item that allows you to run uninstallers for some of your software a package manager is a bit of a stretch to me. It's akin to referring to a crutch as a car: Both will somehow help you to move, but...
That's actually the one thing I never understood about Windows: Why have MS never created a proper package management system? It's the killer feature for any corporate environment. If all the "freetards" (no offence, I'm one of 'em) can do it, why can't MS? They sure have the cash, the brains, and the power to force all major players in the desktop software market to use such a system.
We (somewhere between small and medium, branches in Germany, Austria and the US) use two naming schemes:
The primary scheme is [serverclass+#].[branch].domain.com
This is what we, the tech staff, use for establishing connections for live systems and what we communicate to our users.
Examples would be mail1.berlin.domain.com, internalweb3.munich.domain.com etc. These names are more logical than physical, ie. one machine that offers several services via one IP is reachable under several names. This allows us to flexibly assign machines to certain roles.
The second naming scheme is what we use to identify the physical (resp. virtual) machines, versus the logical services. And it's simply Shakespeare characters. In my branch we went through the Tempest, the others started off with King Lear, Othello and another one whose name escapes me. We use those names only for reference and for management operations (SSH'ing, file transfers, whole-disk backups, virtual machine management), so our users never get to see those.
Quite a lot of stuff is worth cracking. That does not have any influence on what can be cracked. Computing resources available today are enormous, but they are still finite. And to the best of my understanding they will be quite finite enough to ensure our privacy for the next couple of decades.
But since you so vehemently say otherwise, you surely posess reliable and verifiable information to the contrary that you could share with us here to enlighten us?
Slashdot Mirror
That is an interesting thesis, but I don't see it holding much water. Emotional stability and IQ don't correlate in my experience.
Do you know anybody who actually owns a netbook? I don't. [...]
Here in Germany they keep spreading across university campuses, and quite numerously at that. Primarily among the kinda-computer-savvy-but-not-nerdy-enough-for-CS crowd, but also interestingly among female students, probably because of their smaller size and weight. They are still vastly outnumbered by "proper" notebooks, but the uptake is way more than I'd expected. Well, they are ideal for a lot of students after all. They handle web surfing and office tasks just fine, are cheap, compact, sport quite long battery time - unless you really need processing power or a large display they are perfectly sufficient.
...I only care what you say.
Why does it make a difference whether the author of a statement reveals their identity? It doesn't make their statement any truer or falser, any more or less relevant, any better or worse presented.
And frankly, if the poster above me had signed their contribution with their full name, address, phone number, finger print and bust size/penis length I still wouldn't have a clue who the hell they are. Identity on the Internet doesn't mean shit.
But it's not similar at all. [...]
The reason the difference is important is this scheme isn't to fight shoplifting, the theft of a physical item. This is to fight copyright infringement, [...]
It is similar. From what I got from TFA what happens is this: You take a game package from the shelf, walk to check-out and hand over your cash. The clerk scans the box's unique ID and uploads it to some central management server, thereby activating it for use.
Under current schemes you already usually need a valid license code (for multi-player, at least, and with most games that's the most valuable part anyway), ie. one issued by the game manifacturer. The only change is that even with a working keygen you could activate your unauthorised copy only with a key that is valid and has been purchased for real but not activated yet by the legitimate customer.
Might buy them a couple of hours against the crews for the first few games to come with this, but so far each new copy prevention scheme has been broken some way or another. Waste of resources.
[...] It's hard to envision a scenario in which the parent company is gone yet I still want to play it online, [...]
It's not so much about playing online - that's what CD keys usually are for, and they still are working quite fine - but increasingly about being able to install and play a game at all. I still like to go for a fair hour of Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodline. The developer went out of business. Had it a DRM that required online activation I'd be screwed.
Besides: Many DRMs still also check whether the game media is in the drive. I'm not a disk-jockey. And last time I checked game companies didn't offer free replacements for worn-out media. Therefore I usually download no-cd cracks for the games I legally own, so I can enjoy hassle-free gaming - just like the evil pirates do, y'know?
Interesting indeed. Now if only Linux picked that up... (No offense to Mac users; I just don't like OS X.) But in the course of the boot-in-x-seconds rage that is going on right now a lot of stuff is being reworked and slimmed down. At least it's a start. It seems to me only Microsoft somehow does not show much involvement in this field.
Second that, and add the wish for more performant operation to that. I didn't buy that quad-core and those 4 gigs of RAM so that the OS developers can waste those resources, I bought them so that my applications run faster and perform better. As far as I'm concerned, an OS should be designed and coded so efficiently that it runs equally performant on an Eee PC and a 2x4-Core Mac Pro. Any surplus resources should be reserved for apps. Now that would be an innovation I'd happily pay good money for.
[...]
Windows zealots ... well, I'm not sure I've met one. Weird, really, given that it's exactly the same sort of mix of great and awful as the other major platforms, albeit with different pluses and minuses.
[...]
So far I've only met Windows zealots in the corporate environment, and those almost always turned out as either those who make money off the Windows ecosystem and want to keep it nice and untainted to avoid the additional cost and effort for supporting several platforms or those whom you could sell Ubuntu as the next Windows iteration if you just told them so.
The majority of Windows users I have encountered so far agree that Windows is far from ideal. They are simply too lazy to look for alternatives.
The minority of those Windows users that actually is informed enough to be able (and willing) to make a switch is held back by specific requirements and issues, mostly software that can't be replaced but won't work with Wine and more exotic hardware that isn't supported under any non-Windows OS (DVB receivers are a big issue apparently. Couldn't say, I don't use them.).
Who in this godless world has modded this insightful? IP addresses, MAC addresses, host names, user agents - NEVER trust any information which comes from an untrustworthy source or has travelled along an untrustworthy path. Plain and simple. If you don't trust it, kick it out. If you trust it, check it out in detail and see whether your trust was warranted.
Your suggestion is akin to enforcing valid return addresses on letter bombs.
Besides, you did hear about bot nets, did you? You know, those pesky things that keep stuffing your e-mail box with all those nice ads for penis enlargement and cheap medication? If not: welcome to life!
Judging by the experience posted, it looks like some people are holding back on the social networking thing and finding it difficult because of peer pressure pushing them into it.
Indeed. At the university I attend several tutors have recently begun to organise courses via StudiVZ[1] (a german Facebook clone that has received sound bashing for its security and privacy holes), effectively forcing people to sign up for it. They caved to protests quite quickly and offered regular sign-up options, still the whole issue left behind quite a bad taste.
RE mobile phones: I got my first mobile about eight or nine years ago, have been carrying one almost 'round the clock with me since then. Thing is, I keep it muted. Always. And I have disabled the voice mail. If I can't or don't want to answer a call or read a text just right now then I simply don't. Works great for me.
[1] http://www.studivz.net/
Why was this modded down? "Do no harm" actually is the first thing we teach our fledgling admins.
That something is "not out of the ordinary" does not automatically mean it isn't utter bollocks. Indiscriminate blocks are stupid in most cases. If a domain didn't cause trouble, it shouldn't be added to such a generic blacklist. That's just as stupid as blocking dynamic IPs from sending mail - the problem does not lie in the IP but in the mail, so the answer is to fix the mail system.
[...] if you actually think about it, the address bar really *does* belong under the tab bar.
The address is a property of the current page. [...]
I see your point, but I disagree: The address bar is the central part of the browser interface. Putting it "on" the tab is semantically correct, but would feel absolutely odd to me.
Maybe that's because I'm a shell guy; I think of the adress bar more of a command line to control the browser with than a property of the page I'm on just now.
Actually the placement of the adress bar is what annoys the hell out of me in IE 7: The uppermost space in an application window is reserved for the main menu bar. Anything else is just out of place there. In (Vista/2008) Explorer it somehow makes sense to me to have the adress bar on top for some reason. I guess that's because it replaces the title bar, thus being the one element that identifies the window's content. But in IE it just is counter-intuitive. Weird how the swapping of two UI elements can make such a difference in how I perceive an interface.
Do you honestly believe that you or your employees are going to build a system with higher availability than Google? In the magical fantasy world we all wish we lived in, you may have the budget, skill, manpower, and infrastructure resources to do this. In the real world it is not even remotely possible. [...]
Google has to run a massively sized setup catering to a vast diversity of customer types. Sure, they have more manpower and know-how than my employer's IT dept. But they have to distribute this manpower across a very wide field, working on dozens of products and issues in parallel. They have to deal with and prepare for basically any issue imaginable to the IT savvy part of mankind.
My employer's IT infrastructure, communications system and document/information management system are tailored to our needs. We have everything we need, but nothing we don't. We follow a safety and recovery protocol that reflects our business structure and priorities.
Short of the annihilation of Western Europe there aren't too many scenarios that would compromise our infrastructure in a way that would impact business. Why should we trade this situation for a little more convenience?
(Notwithstanding the fact that for legal reasons we won't actually even consider outsourcing anything more delicate than delivering lunch to our IT folk. Mere uptime is not our greatest concern.)
I'd love to see that happen, but that's what actually started this discussion: How do you catch a first-time terrorist with 100% certainty without creating an Orwellian society? How do you balance the need for survival of the few (ie. those unfortunate to die in an attack) with the need for freedom and privacy of the many (ie. the rest of society)? Where do you draw the line? Which powers can you surrender to the state before the state becomes a bigger threat to your life and livelyhood than the terrorists from whom the state wants to protect you? (Practical example: No-fly lists. Judging from the reports about false positives and the absence of a comparable amount of reported valid hits the lists seem to me as an utter failure. But quite some people critical of the US government have ended up on it. Coincidence? I hardly think so. Power corrupts after all.)
The anti-terrorism measures currently enacted in western countries do little to deter terrorists (most failed attacks post-Madrid were foiled not by law enforcement using their new powers but by inexperience and even outright stupidity on the culprits' part) but seriously undermine democratic principles and violate fundamental rights. The balance has been lost.
So instead of making our governments stronger I'd go for making our enemies weaker. Just makes more sense to me.
No offence. I've seen it happen far too often, so I'm a bit sensitive when it comes to protecting data from leaking.
On your other point, though: Sure, it's your company. But your customers' data is not yours. If you're one of the few people who make sensible decisions, fine. But again: I've witnessed too many fuckups to trust anyone to make the right choice. I usually check and double-check on contractors.
[...] we only put data on their servers while it's needed. Visiting customer sites, etc. [...]
I do hope you don't put any sensitive data there, like any kind of customer data? At least at my current employer we'd grill you for good if we found out about something like this. We already have quite a hard time keeping our employees from storing company data anywhere outside approved locations. Contractors are required to sign an agreement that forbids them from doing such a thing under penalty (along with requiring them to encrypt all data they receive from us).
[...] "so maybe we should focus our attention on the underlying problem, ie. the fact that people want to bomb us," line is simply an immature viewpoint. [...]
Oh, is it? Cutting down on the number of people you piss off by your own actions out of ignorance, selfishness or outright carelessness certainly would not be a bad idea, would it? Especially in light of my last point, re unlimited targets.
You secure the planes, they bomb the airports.
You secure the airports, they bomb the train stations.
You secure the train stations, they bomb the cinemas.
You secure the cinemas, they bomb the supermarkets.
You secure the supermarkets, they bomb the schools.
You secure the schools, they bomb the playgrounds.
You secure the playgrounds, they bomb the churches.
You secure the churches, they bomb the post offices.
You secure the post offices...
You can take it only so far before your whole country is simply choked to death. So at least to me it seems smarter to keep people from wanting to harm you than to erect countless barriers that are sure to keep you in, but ultimately fail to keep your enemies out.
[...] Better identity confirmation systems might keep terrorists from killing a plane full of people. [...]
Oh, really? And exactly how would such a system safeguard us from the prime group of people who carry out large-scale acts of terrorism in western countries these days, namely isolated cells of fundamentalists who
Besides: If you make the planes safe, the bad guys will simply go for the f...ing airport. They won't run out of targets in the foreseeable future, so maybe we should focus our attention on the underlying problem, ie. the fact that people want to bomb us, instead of giving up the very freedom we supposedly want to defend for a false sense of security.
Executive management (except CIO/CSO obviously) shouldn't need to understand anything about the technical details. [...]
I disagree. A CEO doesn't need to know how to code, but they need to have a grasp of what IT is. Their business - by now, just about any business regardless of its industry sector - depends to a varying degree on software. The larger this degree, the more important it is for the top brass to understand what IT consists of and how to manage it. Not in detail, mind you. But they ought to understand the basic principles and processes behind it. Just like they ought to have an understanding of economics, even though their bean-counters handle all the petty details.
[...] support who won't let you install a vital and harmless piece of software because it's against regulations [...]
Has it never occured to you that they might simply be protecting their jobs? Someone put those regulations in place, and IT/tech support are required to make sure those regulations are followed. If some lowly grunt at helpdesk allows you to install a "vital and harmless[1] piece of software" and anything goes wrong, it's not so much your ass on the line as theirs. So next time think twice before laying blame.
Find out who's responsible for IT regulations and make your case to them for the permission of your vital software.
[1] Am I the only one to whom those two terms seem mutually exclusive? If it's vital to the company, it has to be 100% functional and so ought to be managed centrally by IT. If it's unimportant enough to let individual users play around with it, it shouldn't be anywhere near the company's systems other than in a testbed maintained and supervised by IT so as to keep it from interfering with the vital components.
The only law a "pirate" breaks is copyright law, property law is completely untouched. If it were, we'd already have seen a flood of lawsuits to that regard. If you find a legal text that supports your interpretation, please do provide it. But I very much doubt it.
[...] microsoft has a package manager, [...]
Calling that wee little control panel item that allows you to run uninstallers for some of your software a package manager is a bit of a stretch to me. It's akin to referring to a crutch as a car: Both will somehow help you to move, but...
That's actually the one thing I never understood about Windows: Why have MS never created a proper package management system? It's the killer feature for any corporate environment. If all the "freetards" (no offence, I'm one of 'em) can do it, why can't MS? They sure have the cash, the brains, and the power to force all major players in the desktop software market to use such a system.
We (somewhere between small and medium, branches in Germany, Austria and the US) use two naming schemes:
The primary scheme is [serverclass+#].[branch].domain.com This is what we, the tech staff, use for establishing connections for live systems and what we communicate to our users.
Examples would be mail1.berlin.domain.com, internalweb3.munich.domain.com etc. These names are more logical than physical, ie. one machine that offers several services via one IP is reachable under several names. This allows us to flexibly assign machines to certain roles.
The second naming scheme is what we use to identify the physical (resp. virtual) machines, versus the logical services. And it's simply Shakespeare characters. In my branch we went through the Tempest, the others started off with King Lear, Othello and another one whose name escapes me. We use those names only for reference and for management operations (SSH'ing, file transfers, whole-disk backups, virtual machine management), so our users never get to see those.
el[underscore]scheffe[at]gmx[dot]net
Quite a lot of stuff is worth cracking. That does not have any influence on what can be cracked. Computing resources available today are enormous, but they are still finite. And to the best of my understanding they will be quite finite enough to ensure our privacy for the next couple of decades. But since you so vehemently say otherwise, you surely posess reliable and verifiable information to the contrary that you could share with us here to enlighten us?