You will note in the 2012 presidential election, the majority of Cuban Americans in South Florida voted for Obama; and he carried Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties with huge margins: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election_in_Florida,_2012
The GOP's hold on South Florida is broken; it was primarily among older Cuban who came over during the revolution. This issue has been less polarizing for their children and grandchildren. Indeed, 3rd and 4th generation Cuban-Americans have real no intention of moving back to the island and view their grandparent's property claims as a lost cause.
Over the last two years I've had the opportunity to work with him and his staff. Some personal observations: 1. No, he didn't understand technology. He understood marketing. Indeed there where times when he would remind me of Frank Abagnale Jr impersonating a doctor or lawyer. When the discussion would turn technical he would get this deer-in-the-headlights expression. Perhaps most troubling was his lack of even a basic understanding of IT security concepts; as the Federal CIO you would have at least expected someone who would try to understand the legal obligations involved. 2. He couldn't take criticism. When government reps raised security issues with his cloud plan, he would turn to his industry reps who would reassure him everything would be OK. He surrounded himself with yes-men, creating an echo chamber where anything that would contradict his 'brilliant' ideas would be promptly excised. 3. Outside OMB, he had no support in the federal government. Federal CIOs treated him respectfully, but they knew he had no legal or fiscal authority for any of his plans; most decided to play along and wait for his term to expire. His relationship with Congress was even worst; the Hill would usually outright ignore him.
I already know of several Federal CIOs who are now revising thier 2012 budgets to write out Kundra's pet programs. His legacy would go past this October.
I predict it will take about 0.00000023s for anyone with an agenda and means to manipulate this to their will. Corporate America? The Media? Politics of all types? Government?
Pick your poison and enjoy it before it kills you.
1. Load a VM enviroment on your XP boxes, then you can create instances of VM's running other x86 based OS's. I'd recommend UNIX, in paricular a flavor of Linux, a flavor of BSD, and Open Solaris.
2. Boot an alternate OS on your XP boxes from a USB, DVD, or other removable media.
Have you considered breaking up the page into smaller segments? That page has 1.2Mb of pictures! Chopping the page into 5 or 6 smaller sections will even out the load on the server. Rebooting won't help.
I grew up in O-Town and still have a lot of family there. I don't think Orlando would have been a good candidate for free wireless for the following reasons:
Relatively few people actually live in the City of Orlando. Most actually reside in the Orange and Seminole County suburbs far from downtown.
Likewise, relatively few people visit downtown. Other than some offices and local government, downtown Orlando has been in a death spiral for at least a decade. The vast majority of economic, social, and cultural (what little there is) activity occurs in the suburbs as well.
Since the majority of people who visit downtown are there for work, they probably have better internet connections from their comfy, air-conditioned cubicles.
The City of Orlando has some good programs but suck at getting the word out. They are also disconnected from the needs of there residents. Just 4 blocks west of this hot spot is the Parramore ghetto, an area you'll never see in a "Happiest Place on Earth" advertising campaign.
In summary, with little motivation to visit downtown in the first place, I can't imagine many people out of the blue dragging their laptops to a downtown park for a free connection.
Free city sponsored wireless makes sense in places like Austin and San Francisco which have sophisticated and centralized populations. For a blue collar, sprawling suburban metropolis like Orlando, it makes little sense.
Note that the BSA does not exclude schools in its audits. Indeed, in it the past is has
actively targeted
shool districts.
Ask anyone opposing a move to Oo.o "Can they prove 100% compliance with licensing?", if not, "What would the cost (in dollars and manhours) be of finding out?" and "If the BSA audited the school district, what would it cut from the budget to pay for the eventual fine?"
Note that with Open Source Software, licensing is not a liability to the user.
Ask your school's legal department for their opinion on this issue. Their opinion will be credible, neutral, and powerful, and most likely support your arguement.
Choice quote (emphasis added):
"The main conclusion of the analysis was that FOSS software plays a more critical role in the DoD than has generally been recognized. FOSS applications are most important in four broad areas: Infrastructure Support, Software Development, Security, and Research. One unexpected result was the degree to which Security depends on FOSS. Banning FOSS would remove certain types of infrastructure components (e.g., OpenBSD) that currently help support network security. It would also limit DoD access to--and overall expertise in--the use of powerful FOSS analysis and detection applications that hostile groups could use to help stage cyberattacks. Finally, it would remove the demonstrated ability of FOSS applications to be updated rapidly in response to new types of cyberattack . Taken together, these factors imply that banning FOSS would have immediate, broad, and strongly negative impacts on the ability of many sensitive and security-focused DoD groups to defend against cyberattacks."
Overall, MITRE carries much more credibility in the government than some apparently politically and economically motivated "thinktank"
Average Fuel Economy: (EPA Highway + City / 2)
Hybrid: 48.5 MPG
LX: 35 MPG
Gas bill per year (estimating driven 15,000 miles/year, Fuel cost $2.00/gallon)
Hybrid: $618.56
LX: $857.14
difference: $238.59
Years to recoup price difference in gas savings:
17.98 years
Note this is using relatively high mileage and (until recently) gas costs, which work in favor of the hybrid. Similar comparison against the top-of-the-line Civic EX @ MSRP of $17,260, 34.5 avg MPG brings the recoupment time down to 9.5 years. Futhermore, it does not take into account any additional maintenance costs (if any) associated with the hybrid subsystems.
Thus, there is no motivation to buy a hybrid for strictly economic reasons, since the recoupment period probably exceeds the lifetime of the vehicle. The only reason someone should buy a hybrid is for environmental satisfaction.
Disclaimer: I drive a Honda Civic, get avg 38 MPG, am very satisfied with my car, but can't wait to get into hybrid once the prices are more rational...
An undisclosed company bought an undisclosed number of licenses for an undisclosed amount of money, protecting it from undisclosed intellectual property claims.
Yep, I'm convinced! It's unbelievable how far SCO has taken this without presenting a single shred of evidence that can independently verify their claims.
This announcement isn't aimed at the individual Linux users, it's aimed at the PHB's.
It's all about risk management. If a company has a sizeable investment in Linux, and that investment is threatened, then competent management will take necessary steps to protect it. For any company, managment has to determine which option will cost less:
1. Not take any action and await the outcome of IBM vs SCO. Taking this path, one would have to calculate the chance that IBM wins, therefore no new cost, versus SCO wins, and how much would they then have to pay out and/or possibly migrate to another OS.
2. Buy the SCO license as a hedge against an SCO victory. Furthermore, this may also bring other benefits, such as imdemmifing the company from any future claims against Linux from yet another company.
This has nothing to do with right or wrong, but with the bottom line.
Apple is about to redefine the UNIX workstation market that will leave everyone, including Linux, in it's dust.
Why? 1. At $3K, the 2x2.0 is more than half the cost of any other 64bit UNIX workstation, and brings comparable, if not better, performance. Prepare to see a crapflood of cheap SUN ultra's, SGI Octanes, RS6000, and HPUX workstations on EBAY.
2. OS X has one thing that no other UNIX based operating system can claim: Microsoft Office. Look under most UNIX user's desks in the workplace, and more often then not you'll see a windows box for documentation/presentations/outlook stuff. From a PHB's perspective, that means a single $3K box can replace a $9K+ UNIX workstation plus a $1500 PC. Not to mention the associated savings in power, maintenance, real estate, KVM switches, cabling, administration...
3. The quality experience. This is the point hardest to grasp by the typical L1nux d00d. I'm using UNIX for WORK. If something goes wrong, I don't have the time, patience, or desire to recompile my kernel, figure out the config, or test a driver. I want to pickup a phone and pay someone to do if for me. NOW. As Apple sells the "complete widget", I expect them to quickly figure out what's wrong with the box. (The same applies to most other commercial UNIX which is why SUN and SGI are still in business)
4. The codebase. Scratch OS X and it bleeds BSD. Porting most opensource apps isn't too complicated. Add the growing library of OS X cocoa/carbon apps. Windows on VirtualPC should render decent performance on the new hardware (Please MS, don't kill it!). Finish off with Java. You have a computer that may run every modern piece of software written.
5. The interface. While this is subjective, OS X brings a lot of quality that Gnome/KDE/etc can't match, and don't get me started on how it compares against Windows... It just 'works'
Expect to see Apple make a strong play for the workplace. Then see users want to use the same at home. If IBM can supply the faster chips, then prepare to see Apple start to grow in the business and home markets.
Why has no one release a product like the SUN PCiii card for Apple? The beauty of this setup is that x86 apps run natively, thus there is no emulation performance lag. You effectively get two computers in one.
Hate to burst you cozy little conspiracy theory, but MS products *do not* get a bye whe it comes to examining them. Case in point: The primary Microsoft OS in the DOD is still Windows NT, running Office 97. The approval to operate Win2K did not come down until 2002, and XP was just approved last month. Contrary to what you may think, a lot of smart people will scrutinize the OS until there's a final consensus. If anything, this arrangement actually helps Microsoft! The first thing we have to do when we get a new box is slag the preloaded OS and load an approved one, then apply all the SP's and patches...
This can be achieved without having to actively propel the probe back up to orbit. Change the eccentricity of the orbit to go into the atmosphere, but not enough to cause it to crash into the planet. After it makes it's pass through the atmosphere, change the eccentricity back into near-circular and prepare to return to earth. This would take some skill, as atmospheric effects would affect the velocity and direction of the probe, and corrections would have to be made when the probe emerges.
This was a very real concern during re-entry of the manned space missions. If the angle of re-entry was to steep, then the spacecraft would come in too fast and burn up. If the angle was too shallow, then the danger was the spacecraft would "bounce" off the atmosphere and get into an unpredictable orbit around the earth. In this case, we could use the bounce to our advantage.
TLA means "Three Letter Acronym", a generic reference for federal agencies. Other examples are: NRO, DIA, ATF, DEA, DoJ, DoD, DoS, DoT, INS, IRS, HHS, GSA, LoC, OPR, FAA, FCC... Ad Infinitum, ad nauseum...
And to clarify alot of paranoia, These tools were built in conjunction with the Federal government, major manufacturers, service providers and academia. The are basically scanners that look for the most common vulnerabilities on systems. And no, you're not installing an NSA/CIA/FBI/TLA backdoor onto your system.
Babelfish translation of the text (brace yourselves):
As for the black color conversion iMac flat panel, the work of the Suyama senior of the Suyama tooth research which already adapts in disassembly paint of the numerous Mac. The greedy search to side Mack of work of tooth course skill manufacture each time is surprised. We have become the good opportunity where information of medical technology with respect to HP by your you expand the width of interest with the information whose it is few usually to touch, it covers public and private matters and when conversing with the person on the eye even, it has utilized as the information where is useful. And the case of information of analog record MP3 conversion, astringent phase such as tune selection. As for me the Japanese of the sixties pop (as for me liking the singer, hill ??, it does) with only recurrence of the CD being you have not heard, you enjoy even with this. What looked at the activity of the in the first place Suyama senior by your will try customizing with reached conceivably with opportunity. You gave the opportunity where Mac heat accelerates more and more.
The problem you're facing isn't technical, it's political. It sounds like your management is afraid to take a stand. This could be due to several reasons. One is they simply don't understand the issues and don't want to accept responsibility for making a bad decision. Another reason is that they may not want to take an unpopular position against the faculty.
Whatever reason they may have, be sure to get it all on paper. This serves primarily to protect you. If the unripe manure should hit the circular ventilator, a paper trail will demonstrate that you attempted to resolve a situation that management was unwilling to face.
Propose to your management that the legal department should institute an Acceptable Use Policy. Chances are there may already be something that can be applied to this situation. This way management can save face by saying 'Legal made us do it' and you also get a policy that should conform to the applicable laws.
DO NOT, repeat DO NOT attempt to impose a solution on your own without an explicit written and approved policy to back you up. The worst that can happen is losing your job. You also unnescesarily risk alienating any potential support you may have. You are in the right and do not need to resort to doing the wrong thing.
This is _the_ system that Apple needs to break into the enterprise business category. Of course Apple would prefer businesses to buy their PowerMac line, but the up-front cost of this system makes it unattractive to most medium businesses. The entry level system with the 15" LCD is $2,198. When you are buying a small number of workstations, you may be able to justify a couple hundred dollars difference. When buying several hundred, however, price will be king. Furthermore, the PowerMac is simply over-qualified for most business users, as these systems are primarily used for Word/Excel/PowerPoint/Outlook/IE
The eMac would be perfect for medium to large companies. As configured it should handle office productivity apps at a very reasonable cost. Compare the price against similarly configured business systems from Dell and Compaq:
Apple eMac (700mhz G4, 128MB RAM, 40GB HD, 17" monitor, 32MB video card, Apple Protection Plan): $1,118* Dell Workstation 340 (1.7Ghz P4, 128MB RAM, 40GB HD, 17" monitor, 32MB video card, basic 3yr support): $1,374 Compaq Evo D300s (1.7Ghz P4, 128MB RAM, 40GB HD, 17" monitor, 32MB video card, basic 3yr support): $1,277 * This includes the "education discount". Even if you add on $100, you still have a competetive system.
Let's hope someone at Apple can "Think Different" enough to realize the huge untapped market the eMac could mean to that company.
Tell me about it. About three years ago, four of our servers were at the end of their useful life and needed to be replaced.
After doing some intensive research, we found a package that satisfied our current and future needs. Top of the line dual processors, maxed-out memory, dual RAID controllers, the fastest harddrives, etc, at quite a nice price
So we write up the paperwork and send it off to the procurement folks. About 9 weeks later (this is considered blindingly quick in the federal govt) The boxes finally arrive. Upon opening them, however, we discover these aren't the systems we requested. They had less memory, and more importantly, no RAID nor harddrives. We contact Procurement to let them know there has been an error. A week later, they call us back to inform us that there was *no error*. It turns out they took our request, and duplicating our effort, researched what was available. Taking it in their hands to decide what was best for us, they found and ordered these 'comparable systems'. Total savings: $39 per server.
Long story short, we had to purchase everything else we needed seperately. Your tax dollars at work...
The procurement system in the government has long been known to be broken. It's a system that was designed for the industrial age to acquire massive quantities of commodity goods. Applying this obsolete system in the 'Information Age' betrays its shortfalls:
Beaureucratic documentation and approval processes that adds no value. What they succeed in is adding weeks and months (and sometimes years) to the procurement cycle.
This system inherently favors large corporations over any other source. Instead of overhauling the process, the government tinkers with legislative band-aids such as small and minority business requirements
By design, the people with the knowledge to make intelligent purchase decisions are not allowed to make the purchases!
The problem is that no one with any real influence has a true desire to fix it. While elected leaders decry waste and inefficiency, most of those wasted dollars is spent in someone's district. The beaureucracy doesn't want to change the system since it creates jobs which are a nightmare to eliminate. Lastly, the system creates a strong 'profit motive' for large business to work with the governent since inflated purchase prices go directly towards the bottomline.
In the end it's just another means of creating pork, only much more difficult to see
Slashdot Mirror
You will note in the 2012 presidential election, the majority of Cuban Americans in South Florida voted for Obama; and he carried Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties with huge margins:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election_in_Florida,_2012
The GOP's hold on South Florida is broken; it was primarily among older Cuban who came over during the revolution. This issue has been less polarizing for their children and grandchildren. Indeed, 3rd and 4th generation Cuban-Americans have real no intention of moving back to the island and view their grandparent's property claims as a lost cause.
Over the last two years I've had the opportunity to work with him and his staff. Some personal observations:
1. No, he didn't understand technology. He understood marketing. Indeed there where times when he would remind me of Frank Abagnale Jr impersonating a doctor or lawyer. When the discussion would turn technical he would get this deer-in-the-headlights expression. Perhaps most troubling was his lack of even a basic understanding of IT security concepts; as the Federal CIO you would have at least expected someone who would try to understand the legal obligations involved.
2. He couldn't take criticism. When government reps raised security issues with his cloud plan, he would turn to his industry reps who would reassure him everything would be OK. He surrounded himself with yes-men, creating an echo chamber where anything that would contradict his 'brilliant' ideas would be promptly excised.
3. Outside OMB, he had no support in the federal government. Federal CIOs treated him respectfully, but they knew he had no legal or fiscal authority for any of his plans; most decided to play along and wait for his term to expire. His relationship with Congress was even worst; the Hill would usually outright ignore him.
I already know of several Federal CIOs who are now revising thier 2012 budgets to write out Kundra's pet programs. His legacy would go past this October.
I predict it will take about 0.00000023s for anyone with an agenda and means to manipulate this to their will. Corporate America? The Media? Politics of all types? Government?
Pick your poison and enjoy it before it kills you.
1. Load a VM enviroment on your XP boxes, then you can create instances of VM's running other x86 based OS's. I'd recommend UNIX, in paricular a flavor of Linux, a flavor of BSD, and Open Solaris.
2. Boot an alternate OS on your XP boxes from a USB, DVD, or other removable media.
Have you considered breaking up the page into smaller segments? That page has 1.2Mb of pictures! Chopping the page into 5 or 6 smaller sections will even out the load on the server. Rebooting won't help.
- Relatively few people actually live in the City of Orlando. Most actually reside in the Orange and Seminole County suburbs far from downtown.
- Likewise, relatively few people visit downtown. Other than some offices and local government, downtown Orlando has been in a death spiral for at least a decade. The vast majority of economic, social, and cultural (what little there is) activity occurs in the suburbs as well.
- Since the majority of people who visit downtown are there for work, they probably have better internet connections from their comfy, air-conditioned cubicles.
- The City of Orlando has some good programs but suck at getting the word out. They are also disconnected from the needs of there residents. Just 4 blocks west of this hot spot is the Parramore ghetto, an area you'll never see in a "Happiest Place on Earth" advertising campaign.
In summary, with little motivation to visit downtown in the first place, I can't imagine many people out of the blue dragging their laptops to a downtown park for a free connection.Free city sponsored wireless makes sense in places like Austin and San Francisco which have sophisticated and centralized populations. For a blue collar, sprawling suburban metropolis like Orlando, it makes little sense.
Anytime someone trots out these "Open Source is bad for the goverment" pieces,
I like to hit back with the MITRE report titled Use of Free and Open-Source Software (FOSS) in the U.S. Department of Defense
Choice quote (emphasis added):
"The main conclusion of the analysis was that FOSS software plays a more critical role in the DoD than has generally been recognized. FOSS applications are most important in four broad areas: Infrastructure Support, Software Development, Security, and Research. One unexpected result was the degree to which Security depends on FOSS. Banning FOSS would remove certain types of infrastructure components (e.g., OpenBSD) that currently help support network security. It would also limit DoD access to--and overall expertise in--the use of powerful FOSS analysis and detection applications that hostile groups could use to help stage cyberattacks. Finally, it would remove the demonstrated ability of FOSS applications to be updated rapidly in response to new types of cyberattack . Taken together, these factors imply that banning FOSS would have immediate, broad, and strongly negative impacts on the ability of many sensitive and security-focused DoD groups to defend against cyberattacks."
Overall, MITRE carries much more credibility in the government than some apparently politically and economically motivated "thinktank"
To check this, I did a comparison against the Honda Civic Hybrid versus the CIVIC LX Sedan. All data taken from Honda's website
MSRP:
Hybrid: $19,650
LX: $15,360
difference: $4,290
Average Fuel Economy: (EPA Highway + City / 2)
Hybrid: 48.5 MPG
LX: 35 MPG
Gas bill per year (estimating driven 15,000 miles/year, Fuel cost $2.00/gallon)
Hybrid: $618.56
LX: $857.14
difference: $238.59
Years to recoup price difference in gas savings:
17.98 years
Note this is using relatively high mileage and (until recently) gas costs, which work in favor of the hybrid. Similar comparison against the top-of-the-line Civic EX @ MSRP of $17,260, 34.5 avg MPG brings the recoupment time down to 9.5 years. Futhermore, it does not take into account any additional maintenance costs (if any) associated with the hybrid subsystems.
Thus, there is no motivation to buy a hybrid for strictly economic reasons, since the recoupment period probably exceeds the lifetime of the vehicle. The only reason someone should buy a hybrid is for environmental satisfaction.
Disclaimer: I drive a Honda Civic, get avg 38 MPG, am very satisfied with my car, but can't wait to get into hybrid once the prices are more rational...
...It's just as true today as it was seven years ago.
An undisclosed company bought an undisclosed number of licenses for an undisclosed amount of money, protecting it from undisclosed intellectual property claims.
Yep, I'm convinced!
It's unbelievable how far SCO has taken this without presenting a single shred of evidence that can independently verify their claims.
Nah, they're using the the Microsoft Flight Simulator SDK
Sounds like another platform for NetBSD
This announcement isn't aimed at the individual Linux users, it's aimed at the PHB's.
It's all about risk management. If a company has a sizeable investment in Linux, and that investment is threatened, then competent management will take necessary steps to protect it. For any company, managment has to determine which option will cost less:
1. Not take any action and await the outcome of IBM vs SCO. Taking this path, one would have to calculate the chance that IBM wins, therefore no new cost, versus SCO wins, and how much would they then have to pay out and/or possibly migrate to another OS.
2. Buy the SCO license as a hedge against an SCO victory. Furthermore, this may also bring other benefits, such as imdemmifing the company from any future claims against Linux from yet another company.
This has nothing to do with right or wrong, but with the bottom line.
Apple is about to redefine the UNIX workstation market that will leave everyone, including Linux, in it's dust.
Why?
1. At $3K, the 2x2.0 is more than half the cost of any other 64bit UNIX workstation, and brings comparable, if not better, performance. Prepare to see a crapflood of cheap SUN ultra's, SGI Octanes, RS6000, and HPUX workstations on EBAY.
2. OS X has one thing that no other UNIX based operating system can claim: Microsoft Office. Look under most UNIX user's desks in the workplace, and more often then not you'll see a windows box for documentation/presentations/outlook stuff. From a PHB's perspective, that means a single $3K box can replace a $9K+ UNIX workstation plus a $1500 PC. Not to mention the associated savings in power, maintenance, real estate, KVM switches, cabling, administration...
3. The quality experience. This is the point hardest to grasp by the typical L1nux d00d. I'm using UNIX for WORK. If something goes wrong, I don't have the time, patience, or desire to recompile my kernel, figure out the config, or test a driver. I want to pickup a phone and pay someone to do if for me. NOW. As Apple sells the "complete widget", I expect them to quickly figure out what's wrong with the box. (The same applies to most other commercial UNIX which is why SUN and SGI are still in business)
4. The codebase. Scratch OS X and it bleeds BSD. Porting most opensource apps isn't too complicated. Add the growing library of OS X cocoa/carbon apps. Windows on VirtualPC should render decent performance on the new hardware (Please MS, don't kill it!). Finish off with Java. You have a computer that may run every modern piece of software written.
5. The interface. While this is subjective, OS X brings a lot of quality that Gnome/KDE/etc can't match, and don't get me started on how it compares against Windows... It just 'works'
Expect to see Apple make a strong play for the workplace. Then see users want to use the same at home. If IBM can supply the faster chips, then prepare to see Apple start to grow in the business and home markets.
Why has no one release a product like the SUN PCiii card for Apple?
The beauty of this setup is that x86 apps run natively, thus there is no emulation performance lag. You effectively get two computers in one.
Hate to burst you cozy little conspiracy theory, but MS products *do not* get a bye whe it comes to examining them. Case in point:
The primary Microsoft OS in the DOD is still Windows NT, running Office 97. The approval to operate Win2K did not come down until 2002, and XP was just approved last month. Contrary to what you may think, a lot of smart people will scrutinize the OS until there's a final consensus.
If anything, this arrangement actually helps Microsoft! The first thing we have to do when we get a new box is slag the preloaded OS and load an approved one, then apply all the SP's and patches...
The walking-wounded versus the half-dead...
This beats Timmy vs Jimmy!
CRIPPLE FIGHT!!!
This can be achieved without having to actively propel the probe back up to orbit. Change the eccentricity of the orbit to go into the atmosphere, but not enough to cause it to crash into the planet. After it makes it's pass through the atmosphere, change the eccentricity back into near-circular and prepare to return to earth. This would take some skill, as atmospheric effects would affect the velocity and direction of the probe, and corrections would have to be made when the probe emerges.
This was a very real concern during re-entry of the manned space missions. If the angle of re-entry was to steep, then the spacecraft would come in too fast and burn up. If the angle was too shallow, then the danger was the spacecraft would "bounce" off the atmosphere and get into an unpredictable orbit around the earth. In this case, we could use the bounce to our advantage.
TLA means "Three Letter Acronym", a generic reference for federal agencies. Other examples are:
NRO, DIA, ATF, DEA, DoJ, DoD, DoS, DoT, INS, IRS, HHS, GSA, LoC, OPR, FAA, FCC... Ad Infinitum, ad nauseum...
http://www.cisecurity.org/
And to clarify alot of paranoia,
These tools were built in conjunction with the Federal government, major manufacturers, service providers and academia. The are basically scanners that look for the most common vulnerabilities on systems. And no, you're not installing an NSA/CIA/FBI/TLA backdoor onto your system.
More pictures, site apparently by the modder
Babelfish translation of the text (brace yourselves):
As for the black color conversion iMac flat panel, the work of the Suyama senior of the Suyama tooth research which already adapts in disassembly paint of the numerous Mac. The greedy search to side Mack of work of tooth course skill manufacture each time is surprised. We have become the good opportunity where information of medical technology with respect to HP by your you expand the width of interest with the information whose it is few usually to touch, it covers public and private matters and when conversing with the person on the eye even, it has utilized as the information where is useful. And the case of information of analog record MP3 conversion, astringent phase such as tune selection. As for me the Japanese of the sixties pop (as for me liking the singer, hill ??, it does) with only recurrence of the CD being you have not heard, you enjoy even with this. What looked at the activity of the in the first place Suyama senior by your will try customizing with reached conceivably with opportunity. You gave the opportunity where Mac heat accelerates more and more.
Dustpuppy has given a very sound solution.
The problem you're facing isn't technical, it's political. It sounds like your management is afraid to take a stand. This could be due to several reasons. One is they simply don't understand the issues and don't want to accept responsibility for making a bad decision. Another reason is that they may not want to take an unpopular position against the faculty.
Whatever reason they may have, be sure to get it all on paper. This serves primarily to protect you. If the unripe manure should hit the circular ventilator, a paper trail will demonstrate that you attempted to resolve a situation that management was unwilling to face.
Propose to your management that the legal department should institute an Acceptable Use Policy. Chances are there may already be something that can be applied to this situation. This way management can save face by saying 'Legal made us do it' and you also get a policy that should conform to the applicable laws.
DO NOT, repeat DO NOT attempt to impose a solution on your own without an explicit written and approved policy to back you up. The worst that can happen is losing your job. You also unnescesarily risk alienating any potential support you may have. You are in the right and do not need to resort to doing the wrong thing.
This is _the_ system that Apple needs to break into the enterprise business category. Of course Apple would prefer businesses to buy their PowerMac line, but the up-front cost of this system makes it unattractive to most medium businesses. The entry level system with the 15" LCD is $2,198. When you are buying a small number of workstations, you may be able to justify a couple hundred dollars difference. When buying several hundred, however, price will be king. Furthermore, the PowerMac is simply over-qualified for most business users, as these systems are primarily used for Word/Excel/PowerPoint/Outlook/IE
The eMac would be perfect for medium to large companies. As configured it should handle office productivity apps at a very reasonable cost. Compare the price against similarly configured business systems from Dell and Compaq:
Apple eMac (700mhz G4, 128MB RAM, 40GB HD, 17" monitor, 32MB video card, Apple Protection Plan): $1,118*
Dell Workstation 340 (1.7Ghz P4, 128MB RAM, 40GB HD, 17" monitor, 32MB video card, basic 3yr support): $1,374
Compaq Evo D300s (1.7Ghz P4, 128MB RAM, 40GB HD, 17" monitor, 32MB video card, basic 3yr support): $1,277
* This includes the "education discount". Even if you add on $100, you still have a competetive system.
Let's hope someone at Apple can "Think Different" enough to realize the huge untapped market the eMac could mean to that company.
After doing some intensive research, we found a package that satisfied our current and future needs. Top of the line dual processors, maxed-out memory, dual RAID controllers, the fastest harddrives, etc, at quite a nice price
So we write up the paperwork and send it off to the procurement folks. About 9 weeks later (this is considered blindingly quick in the federal govt) The boxes finally arrive. Upon opening them, however, we discover these aren't the systems we requested. They had less memory, and more importantly, no RAID nor harddrives. We contact Procurement to let them know there has been an error. A week later, they call us back to inform us that there was *no error*. It turns out they took our request, and duplicating our effort, researched what was available. Taking it in their hands to decide what was best for us, they found and ordered these 'comparable systems'. Total savings: $39 per server.
Long story short, we had to purchase everything else we needed seperately. Your tax dollars at work...
The procurement system in the government has long been known to be broken. It's a system that was designed for the industrial age to acquire massive quantities of commodity goods. Applying this obsolete system in the 'Information Age' betrays its shortfalls:
- Beaureucratic documentation and approval processes that adds no value. What they succeed in is adding weeks and months (and sometimes years) to the procurement cycle.
- This system inherently favors large corporations over any other source. Instead of overhauling the process, the government tinkers with legislative band-aids such as small and minority business requirements
- By design, the people with the knowledge to make intelligent purchase decisions are not allowed to make the purchases!
The problem is that no one with any real influence has a true desire to fix it. While elected leaders decry waste and inefficiency, most of those wasted dollars is spent in someone's district. The beaureucracy doesn't want to change the system since it creates jobs which are a nightmare to eliminate. Lastly, the system creates a strong 'profit motive' for large business to work with the governent since inflated purchase prices go directly towards the bottomline.In the end it's just another means of creating pork, only much more difficult to see