Back to the beginning if you will. I never said I agreed with Microsoft. I personally think the level of INTEGRATION they claim is not there. I think if it IS there, not only is it horrible coding but as we've seen it leaves holes (on average) that you can drive a truck through. I personally think MS should be hung out to dry for a horrible idea (integrating the OS and browser that closely without considering the security implementations) AND for making good natured capitalists like me look bad.
Many people (typically younger) don't realize that a monopoly IS NOT illegal. Uncompetetive business practices to MAINTAIN that monopoly are.
I guess my biggest point was that including the browser was not the best argument to take into court against Microsoft. Fighting to get unintegrated (at least this late in the game when the battle is all but lost in the browser wars) is just plain stupid.
Give them some real punishment and force them to open the office file formats. It doesn't cause them any loss of property in so much as releasing code to office itself and we all know it would do more harm to them than forcing them to release a half-assed effort at a non-IE bundled OS. Hell maybe require them to port IE to a platform other than wintel and mac as well.
The reason MS continues to "win" in whatever desktop war people talk about is because of two very real facts:
1) IE (despite all it's bugs) is a damn good general browser. Mozilla (which I happen to use daily) is going to kick it's ass but Netscape fucked it up a long time ago. It wasn't all MS's fault.
2) MS Office is THE defacto standard for business office applications. Sure many lawyers and government officials still require WordPerfect but unless a new version is released, it doesn't count anymore. Word has perfectly good wordperfect filters. The reason those industries still use word perfect is partly because previous version's file formats were not incompatible. Interoperability was guaranteed. If MS were forced as punishment to publish the Office file formats, there would be no need to have an MS desktop. Most linux users know that a linux desktop can be configured for a windows user so they feel right at home. I've done it here at the office and for family members. If you get the mime types setup just right, you don't have to even worry about them finding which application to launch to view a file.
The only area that an office clone could NOT compete in is Outlook in Corporate/Workgroup mode. This will change when Ximian releases a connector for Exchange 5.5 (at least in my case). At least until someone gets IMAP to support csutomized folder types that can handle something OTHER than mail. Allthough Outlook IS shipped with Office so the binary file format of task/calendar/contact files could be included in the judgement.
At what point do you say that it's okay to include a browser? The web browser has become so ubiquitous that I can't imagine not even having a copy of lynx installed.
I'm not an ms developer by any stretch but the point I was making was that while the tactics employeed in the "browser wars" may have been anti-competitive, there were more "smoking guns" than including the browser with the os. I personally think and know that Microsoft set out to destroy netscape because they (MS) dropped the ball on getting a browser together.
Personally I don't see how it's a conflict of interest. Are you saying that operating system developers/vendors are enjoined from providing thier own copy of any software that someone else develops?
Norton commander and such tools existed before windows 3.1. Should microsoft have not been allowed to include a file manager when they shipped the OS?
I'm not disagreeing with you on the netscape issue. I realize that netscape was there first (well second if you count Mosaic).
My point is this. You are a software company. You write Operating systems. You realize that people are using the web more and more. You decide to start shipping your own browser with your OS. You're a bit late to the party but at least you stopped and got a bottle of Maddog 20/20, right?
I think including a webbrowser was a natural evolution at the time. I don't think the act of including a web browser with your software is a crime.
Exactly. I htink Microsoft was rather bright in including the browser with the OS. It showed a bit of forsight into how important the web would be in the evolution of the internet as a whole. No one bitches about KDE ( via konq) and Gnome (via nautilus) embedding web code into the file managers.
I never understood why the states went after the bundling issue when it's not the smoking gun. Look at the business practices with OEM's and things like the BeOS bootloader issue.
I'm also opposed to forcing them to release sourcecode. I think it's thier right as a company to keep technology within the company if they so desire.
I tell you. This is a simple fact. If you want to hurt microsoft, force them to release specs to the office file formats. Enough said.
I've got two dsl bridges sitting here that I haven't found a good use for yet. I was thinking of rolling my own dsl from home to the office. Maybe these guys could use em.
Let's see here: 1. I still can't play Shockwave files with Mandrake installed "out of the box"
- Nor can anyone else on any linux distribution. Get the crossover plugin and you might have luck. Flash is the only native plugin available to linux from Macromedia.
2. I still have to resort to the command line when installing apps like OpenOffice
- Since when is this Mandrake's problem? Talk to the openoffice people.
3. I still have to resort to using LinNeighbourhood as Mandrake won't see my user account exported from a Linux box via Samba
- Again this seems like a KDE problem and not Mandrake's
4. CTRL+C and CTRL+V still doesn't work flawlessly between applications from different Desktop Environments (i.e. KDE and Gnome)
- yet another "talk to the actual application developer
5. I still have to manually configure mime types in Evolution to make it use Galeon instead of Mozilla
- So you decided to use Galeon over Mozilla which Mandrake happily preconfigured as the handler for those file types? Sounds like a you problem. I personally don't WANT galeon to overwrite my mime settings. Isn't that one of the pains in the ass under windows is that every app under god's nutsack want's to be your default handler?
6. I still have to manually configure Mozilla setup a minimum font size so that I don't get those stupid fonts that are so small that they are unreadable
- I'll give you this one. Why can't distro providers preinstall mozilla-fonts and set those as the default. Then again, maybe you like your fonts bigger than most.
7. I still have to re-configure mime types so that when I click an m3u (MP3 playlist) in Galeon, it uses xmms
- Sounds like another case of you just wanting to be a little different. Not a problem mind you but Mandrake (and any other distro for that matter) have to make a stand somewhere. This is our default config. We can help you with some stuff but not others. Hence the support subscriptions.
8. And of course I still can't edit Microsoft Word documents with 100% accuracy, despite all the crowing that goes on about OpenOffice, StarOffice, KDE Office and the others
- So this isn't a mandrake problem either. It sounds like an OpenOffice,StarOffice,KDE Office and the others problem.
Having said all that, I still fail to see what your problem with mandrake is? I don't personally use it but everything you've listed is not related to mandrake by any stretch.
Re:Have they fixed the fonts?
on
KDE 3.0 is Out
·
· Score: 3, Informative
It's funny. I don't find it THAT slow. Sure it's a bit sluggish at times but I wouldn't call it SLOW. Except maybe when you're debugging or opening files or closing tabs or...okay maybe it is a BIT slow.
I'm actually pretty damned happy with it. I've been using it nonstop for about 3 weeks developing an internal PHP webapp and it's a lifesaver.
We needed a large NAS for storing disk images for our training room. Basically an image of each MS OS with each browser available for that OS.
Myself and one of the other admins, built an IDE raid solution using the 3ware ide card and a bunch of hard drives. We now have a hotswap 160GB hardware raid storage device running nothing but linux and samba.
Oh yeah, it has an Intel DualPort server nic using the Intel drivers to bond the interfaces. Plug that into the cisco switch and I have a nice 160GB NAS for around 2k.
I've also set the RAID's fs to reiserfs because I didn't want this fucker to have to fsck if for some odd reason it went down. (It's only happened once). I'm thinking that wasn't the best choice since all the files we're working with are at a minimum 1GB.
I don't hate Microsoft. I hate the business practices of Microsoft. The two are separate.
Microsoft has done some pretty amazing things technology wise. They've also done some pretty shitty things (IIS anyone?).
The situation here is cost. If I HAVE to use MS Office (and face it, within companies this is an issue) then why should I have to run it on a Windows OS? Even with our volume license discount on Windows 2000 (now all XP licenses), the cost is well above the $50 USD that Win2K costs.
What this really does is make the operating system more of a comodity(sp?).
(apologies to MLK Jr.) I have a dream where computing get to the point where the OS doesn't matter. I have a dream where vendors have no choice to but to make sure they write the best damn OS they can because the end user will just walk across the street and get another OS. This will be possible when the OS stops being a factor.
If Microsoft wants to write a version of Office for Linux, go right ahead. As long as it doesn't require me to be root to install it, I'm cool;>
As far as I'm concerned, Codeweavers is doing a wonderful job to further the cause of Linux (at least on X86) and making the OS less of a factor. You Mac people don't care either way;)
Do I sound like I should be in marketing for Sun yet? heheheh
No one is saying monopolies are illegal. In fact they are quite legal when there is no other competition in the market.
What IS illegal is using your existing monopoly to stiffle any competition. Microsoft is within it's right (and I'll defend that right) to give a special discount to OEMS that promote only Microsoft products. It's called business.
The illegal part comes when you abuse that monopoly.
My first attempt (before the pdfprinter) was some sort of gtk-php or delphi based app using pdflib. Then I started looking at the licensing/cost and decided against it.
I understand. The point I was trying to make is that you shouldn't EXPECT anything. I agree that most of senior management are the typical loosers when it comes to this sort of thing. It doesn't set a good example at all. Hell my boss' boss forced me to allow Morpheus only to him. I tried to explain the why's and dont's of Morpheus and he said that he wanted it because he was spending so much time at work that he couldn't download at home. I at least got him to promise that he wouldn't download any pirated software and the firewall ruleset actually has the date and who requested the change and for what reason.
I think everyone thinks I'm saying that full on anal restriction to the internet at work is a good thing. I don't. I think you should treat people like adults until they prove otherwise.
We don't have any filters on the web at all. At our very first meeting after I wrote our AUP, I told people that unless someone gives me a reason to start causing restrictions. I think that's a fair trade right there. We had to lock out instant messengers because of abuse. We had to block out the napster/morpheus/music city class c's because of abuse. As long as you act like an adult and do what you were paid to do, I don't have a problem with you browsing the web at lunch time or chatting with a few friends on IRC.
But I did want to address something ELSE you brought up.
Yes they are the ones getting paid to do jack shit. They do all the things that you mention above but you know what? They're management. Wether we like it or not, that's one of the perks of getting to that level. If you keep at things (and me too) then someday we'll be in that position. We can then choose to set poor examples for our employees or set better ones by letting people work with us instead of for us. I'm lucky enough that my boss happens to not be one of those managers. He has admitted that he want's to be at the point one day where the people who work for him directly don't do any work but that's a long way coming. Think of it as motivation to do a good well at what you do. Eventually you can start your own company and do things your way.
But it is the company's business what happens with the "phat" t1 because they did pay for it.
I understand all about sitting with nothing to do. I'm a network admin. If I'm doing my job right, I have quite a bit of free time.
The problem (which I didn't make a good enough point about) is that MOST people don't think of computing resources as having a TANGIBLE cost. CPU cycles don't have a cost. Network connectivity doesn't have a cost. It's sort of the double edged sword with computers and internet connections being ubiquitous. You end up taking them for granted. You expect a company to provide a computer at your desk to do your job. You expect a company to provide internet access to do your job. What's the harm in me reading espn.com (when in the hell did they go over to MSN by the way?).
The harm is that if the entire company is reading espn.com or slashdot or news.com or k5 or foxnews.com (all the sites I read on a daily basis), is that the time spent doing that adds up.
Imagine the cost to a company that pays for bandwidth by the usage? What about remote offices that only have a 56K or 128K frame relay connection to the main office? That bandwidth can get sucked up fast while some other people are trying to use the network to actually work.
Wether people admit it or not, time IS money. My time has value. When I get an annoying sales call from some guy trying to get me to switch to his company or provider, the first thing I ask him is "Do you think my time is valuable?". If he says no, then he's a dumbass. If he says yes, then I tell him to send me an email with whatever information or leave me his business card/material (if he's cold calling) and I'll get back to him if I need his services or when I'm scoping something new.
The other side effect is the security issue. I've said in previous posts and even on a rant on my site that I HATE when companies create products that HAPPILY tunnel through HTTP. It makes my job next to impossible and creates Yet Another Security Problem. My primary responsibility and my paycheck comes from making sure that the network stays up. If anything threatens that, I get defensive.
I have to make a disclaimer too. I eat my own dogfood. I don't make exceptions for myself on the firewall. The only use of resources that is improper is my webcam and I've even given that low priority on the firewall.
Jesus christ! Has anyone on slashdot EVER worked in a corporate IT environment?
Let's take this quote right here which sums it up:
"The message is: 'I'm afraid you'll have to do it after hours at home, which is where you should be doing it in the first place,"' said Mikko Hypponen, manager of anti-virus research for Finish-based F-Secure Corp.
Where does ANYONE get off thinking company resources are PERSONAL resources? How is this a limitation of ANYONE'S rights? Do you think you have the right to drive the company car across the country for a personal vacation? Do you think you have the right to use the company FedEx account to send Christmas presents to your sister in New York? Then how in the hell do you think you have the right to use company network resources to send personal email and use ICQ? Would your boss let you sit there and read the newest John Grisham novel when you should be working? Then why do you think you are allowed to read slashdot all day?
People need to grow up. When you are at work, you should work. If your company is NICE enough to let you use resources for personal use then fine but you do NOT have a right to do anything with something that isn't yours.
All of the changes made in airport security lately are nothing but facepaint.
The problem is the fact that the people working airport security are those with no marketable skillsets whatsoever in the private sector. Thank god there's a fucking sunset clause on the PATRIOT act in regards to federalized screeners.
You have people working security who can't compete with the people flying. THEY want to fly somewhere too and be on the otherside of the xray machine. But they can't thanks to being fucking idiots. so what do they do? Hassle an 80 year old woman and force her to take out her dentures or somesuch stupidity.
I realize all this happened in Canada but it goes to show you that socialism doesn't make people any fucking smarter.
By the way, did you know that Argonbright Security is still working for the airports?
Next time you go through, check the actual name badge of your favorite airport screener. The uniforms won't say it but the badges do.
The least they could do is have the outbound mailserver strip the internal mail headers from the message before sending it out. It's easy to do with postfix and that's what we do. Why give out anymore information than needed? I noticed that they were able to get what CIDR block they use for internal IP's from the mailserver.
Jesus I don't run a covert espionage agency and I at least do that at our company. Hell I even proxy requests to private servers from an apache server in the DMZ.
Redhat (or insert your favorite company here) sales person sends an email to all sales people as follows:
"Do whatever it takes to bring in those customers."
5 years later, unhappy former employee or disgruntled competitor sues the company. All email is subpoened. FavCompany hasn't done anything wrong but the email from sales manager to sales staff is used as "proof/smoking gun" that the company was engaging in anti-competitive business practices.
People can and WILL interpret something in thier favor. I can tell another coworker that I think a particular employee is very fetching in that new dress and the next thing you know, I can be sued for sexual harrasment by someone who overheard the conversation. This isn't from personal experience mind you but it makes the point clear.
You shouldn't need encryption, right? You don't have anything to hide!
These companies don't need to delete email, right? They don't have anything to hide!
Well the only other trailer I was apple to find was on the movie's website here.
I don't think Tom Cruise would be that bad. I AM worried about Spielberg fucking it up though.
From what I've been able to find out, the originally had the script based around a cop who found out his brother was scheduled to be arrested. I think the strongest point of the book is the fact that the DIRECTOR of the agency is the one who finds out.
You know it's funny. I was watching the trailer and I heard that line and was like "This sounds familiar" and THEN the department of precrime logo came up and I almost wet myself. I had JUST finished reading "Minority Report" for the first time about a week ago and thought that it would make a good movie.
Slashdot Mirror
The carfax dog commerical is still the best.
;)
I've been known to randomly yell
"mother of pearl!"
in an odd moment
Back to the beginning if you will. I never said I agreed with Microsoft. I personally think the level of INTEGRATION they claim is not there. I think if it IS there, not only is it horrible coding but as we've seen it leaves holes (on average) that you can drive a truck through. I personally think MS should be hung out to dry for a horrible idea (integrating the OS and browser that closely without considering the security implementations) AND for making good natured capitalists like me look bad.
Many people (typically younger) don't realize that a monopoly IS NOT illegal. Uncompetetive business practices to MAINTAIN that monopoly are.
I guess my biggest point was that including the browser was not the best argument to take into court against Microsoft. Fighting to get unintegrated (at least this late in the game when the battle is all but lost in the browser wars) is just plain stupid.
Give them some real punishment and force them to open the office file formats. It doesn't cause them any loss of property in so much as releasing code to office itself and we all know it would do more harm to them than forcing them to release a half-assed effort at a non-IE bundled OS. Hell maybe require them to port IE to a platform other than wintel and mac as well.
The reason MS continues to "win" in whatever desktop war people talk about is because of two very real facts:
1) IE (despite all it's bugs) is a damn good general browser. Mozilla (which I happen to use daily) is going to kick it's ass but Netscape fucked it up a long time ago. It wasn't all MS's fault.
2) MS Office is THE defacto standard for business office applications. Sure many lawyers and government officials still require WordPerfect but unless a new version is released, it doesn't count anymore. Word has perfectly good wordperfect filters. The reason those industries still use word perfect is partly because previous version's file formats were not incompatible. Interoperability was guaranteed. If MS were forced as punishment to publish the Office file formats, there would be no need to have an MS desktop. Most linux users know that a linux desktop can be configured for a windows user so they feel right at home. I've done it here at the office and for family members. If you get the mime types setup just right, you don't have to even worry about them finding which application to launch to view a file.
The only area that an office clone could NOT compete in is Outlook in Corporate/Workgroup mode. This will change when Ximian releases a connector for Exchange 5.5 (at least in my case). At least until someone gets IMAP to support csutomized folder types that can handle something OTHER than mail. Allthough Outlook IS shipped with Office so the binary file format of task/calendar/contact files could be included in the judgement.
At what point do you say that it's okay to include a browser? The web browser has become so ubiquitous that I can't imagine not even having a copy of lynx installed.
I'm not an ms developer by any stretch but the point I was making was that while the tactics employeed in the "browser wars" may have been anti-competitive, there were more "smoking guns" than including the browser with the os. I personally think and know that Microsoft set out to destroy netscape because they (MS) dropped the ball on getting a browser together.
Personally I don't see how it's a conflict of interest. Are you saying that operating system developers/vendors are enjoined from providing thier own copy of any software that someone else develops?
Norton commander and such tools existed before windows 3.1. Should microsoft have not been allowed to include a file manager when they shipped the OS?
I'm not disagreeing with you on the netscape issue. I realize that netscape was there first (well second if you count Mosaic).
My point is this. You are a software company. You write Operating systems. You realize that people are using the web more and more. You decide to start shipping your own browser with your OS. You're a bit late to the party but at least you stopped and got a bottle of Maddog 20/20, right?
I think including a webbrowser was a natural evolution at the time. I don't think the act of including a web browser with your software is a crime.
Exactly. I htink Microsoft was rather bright in including the browser with the OS. It showed a bit of forsight into how important the web would be in the evolution of the internet as a whole. No one bitches about KDE ( via konq) and Gnome (via nautilus) embedding web code into the file managers.
I never understood why the states went after the bundling issue when it's not the smoking gun. Look at the business practices with OEM's and things like the BeOS bootloader issue.
I'm also opposed to forcing them to release sourcecode. I think it's thier right as a company to keep technology within the company if they so desire.
I tell you. This is a simple fact. If you want to hurt microsoft, force them to release specs to the office file formats. Enough said.
Damn guys. We only pay $895/mnth WITH local loop. That's a full T1 (not burstable or that fractional shit). AND that's in Georgia, home of Hellsouth.
I've got two dsl bridges sitting here that I haven't found a good use for yet. I was thinking of rolling my own dsl from home to the office. Maybe these guys could use em.
Let's see here:
1. I still can't play Shockwave files with Mandrake installed "out of the box"
- Nor can anyone else on any linux distribution. Get the crossover plugin and you might have luck. Flash is the only native plugin available to linux from Macromedia.
2. I still have to resort to the command line when installing apps like OpenOffice
- Since when is this Mandrake's problem? Talk to the openoffice people.
3. I still have to resort to using LinNeighbourhood as Mandrake won't see my user account exported from a Linux box via Samba
- Again this seems like a KDE problem and not Mandrake's
4. CTRL+C and CTRL+V still doesn't work flawlessly between applications from different Desktop Environments (i.e. KDE and Gnome)
- yet another "talk to the actual application developer
5. I still have to manually configure mime types in Evolution to make it use Galeon instead of Mozilla
- So you decided to use Galeon over Mozilla which Mandrake happily preconfigured as the handler for those file types? Sounds like a you problem. I personally don't WANT galeon to overwrite my mime settings. Isn't that one of the pains in the ass under windows is that every app under god's nutsack want's to be your default handler?
6. I still have to manually configure Mozilla setup a minimum font size so that I don't get those stupid fonts that are so small that they are unreadable
- I'll give you this one. Why can't distro providers preinstall mozilla-fonts and set those as the default. Then again, maybe you like your fonts bigger than most.
7. I still have to re-configure mime types so that when I click an m3u (MP3 playlist) in Galeon, it uses xmms
- Sounds like another case of you just wanting to be a little different. Not a problem mind you but Mandrake (and any other distro for that matter) have to make a stand somewhere. This is our default config. We can help you with some stuff but not others. Hence the support subscriptions.
8. And of course I still can't edit Microsoft Word documents with 100% accuracy, despite all the crowing that goes on about OpenOffice, StarOffice, KDE Office and the others
- So this isn't a mandrake problem either. It sounds like an OpenOffice,StarOffice,KDE Office and the others problem.
Having said all that, I still fail to see what your problem with mandrake is? I don't personally use it but everything you've listed is not related to mandrake by any stretch.
Try this (from google's chache
;)
It all may be moot with 3.0 anyway but if you don't feel like upgrading right now
It's funny. I don't find it THAT slow. Sure it's a bit sluggish at times but I wouldn't call it SLOW. Except maybe when you're debugging or opening files or closing tabs or...okay maybe it is a BIT slow.
I'm actually pretty damned happy with it. I've been using it nonstop for about 3 weeks developing an internal PHP webapp and it's a lifesaver.
Hehe we basically did the same thing.
We needed a large NAS for storing disk images for our training room. Basically an image of each MS OS with each browser available for that OS.
Myself and one of the other admins, built an IDE raid solution using the 3ware ide card and a bunch of hard drives. We now have a hotswap 160GB hardware raid storage device running nothing but linux and samba.
Oh yeah, it has an Intel DualPort server nic using the Intel drivers to bond the interfaces. Plug that into the cisco switch and I have a nice 160GB NAS for around 2k.
I've also set the RAID's fs to reiserfs because I didn't want this fucker to have to fsck if for some odd reason it went down. (It's only happened once). I'm thinking that wasn't the best choice since all the files we're working with are at a minimum 1GB.
You're missing the point.
;>
;)
I don't hate Microsoft. I hate the business practices of Microsoft. The two are separate.
Microsoft has done some pretty amazing things technology wise. They've also done some pretty shitty things (IIS anyone?).
The situation here is cost. If I HAVE to use MS Office (and face it, within companies this is an issue) then why should I have to run it on a Windows OS? Even with our volume license discount on Windows 2000 (now all XP licenses), the cost is well above the $50 USD that Win2K costs.
What this really does is make the operating system more of a comodity(sp?).
(apologies to MLK Jr.)
I have a dream where computing get to the point where the OS doesn't matter.
I have a dream where vendors have no choice to but to make sure they write the best damn OS they can because the end user will just walk across the street and get another OS. This will be possible when the OS stops being a factor.
If Microsoft wants to write a version of Office for Linux, go right ahead. As long as it doesn't require me to be root to install it, I'm cool
As far as I'm concerned, Codeweavers is doing a wonderful job to further the cause of Linux (at least on X86) and making the OS less of a factor. You Mac people don't care either way
Do I sound like I should be in marketing for Sun yet? heheheh
No one is saying monopolies are illegal. In fact they are quite legal when there is no other competition in the market.
What IS illegal is using your existing monopoly to stiffle any competition. Microsoft is within it's right (and I'll defend that right) to give a special discount to OEMS that promote only Microsoft products. It's called business.
The illegal part comes when you abuse that monopoly.
Problem is that pdflib costs for commercial use.
My first attempt (before the pdfprinter) was some sort of gtk-php or delphi based app using pdflib. Then I started looking at the licensing/cost and decided against it.
Hence a samba based pdf printer.
heheh I actually posted a reply on the newsforge article about how to do this.
Here's a link to the article on my website
Quick and Dirty PDF Printer
You'll need samba, ghostscript, mpack and a decent postscript printer driver.
hope it helps.
I understand. The point I was trying to make is that you shouldn't EXPECT anything. I agree that most of senior management are the typical loosers when it comes to this sort of thing. It doesn't set a good example at all. Hell my boss' boss forced me to allow Morpheus only to him. I tried to explain the why's and dont's of Morpheus and he said that he wanted it because he was spending so much time at work that he couldn't download at home. I at least got him to promise that he wouldn't download any pirated software and the firewall ruleset actually has the date and who requested the change and for what reason.
I think everyone thinks I'm saying that full on anal restriction to the internet at work is a good thing. I don't. I think you should treat people like adults until they prove otherwise.
We don't have any filters on the web at all. At our very first meeting after I wrote our AUP, I told people that unless someone gives me a reason to start causing restrictions. I think that's a fair trade right there. We had to lock out instant messengers because of abuse. We had to block out the napster/morpheus/music city class c's because of abuse. As long as you act like an adult and do what you were paid to do, I don't have a problem with you browsing the web at lunch time or chatting with a few friends on IRC.
But I did want to address something ELSE you brought up.
Yes they are the ones getting paid to do jack shit. They do all the things that you mention above but you know what? They're management. Wether we like it or not, that's one of the perks of getting to that level. If you keep at things (and me too) then someday we'll be in that position. We can then choose to set poor examples for our employees or set better ones by letting people work with us instead of for us. I'm lucky enough that my boss happens to not be one of those managers. He has admitted that he want's to be at the point one day where the people who work for him directly don't do any work but that's a long way coming. Think of it as motivation to do a good well at what you do. Eventually you can start your own company and do things your way.
But it is the company's business what happens with the "phat" t1 because they did pay for it.
I understand all about sitting with nothing to do. I'm a network admin. If I'm doing my job right, I have quite a bit of free time.
The problem (which I didn't make a good enough point about) is that MOST people don't think of computing resources as having a TANGIBLE cost. CPU cycles don't have a cost. Network connectivity doesn't have a cost. It's sort of the double edged sword with computers and internet connections being ubiquitous. You end up taking them for granted. You expect a company to provide a computer at your desk to do your job. You expect a company to provide internet access to do your job. What's the harm in me reading espn.com (when in the hell did they go over to MSN by the way?).
The harm is that if the entire company is reading espn.com or slashdot or news.com or k5 or foxnews.com (all the sites I read on a daily basis), is that the time spent doing that adds up.
Imagine the cost to a company that pays for bandwidth by the usage? What about remote offices that only have a 56K or 128K frame relay connection to the main office? That bandwidth can get sucked up fast while some other people are trying to use the network to actually work.
Wether people admit it or not, time IS money. My time has value. When I get an annoying sales call from some guy trying to get me to switch to his company or provider, the first thing I ask him is "Do you think my time is valuable?". If he says no, then he's a dumbass. If he says yes, then I tell him to send me an email with whatever information or leave me his business card/material (if he's cold calling) and I'll get back to him if I need his services or when I'm scoping something new.
The other side effect is the security issue. I've said in previous posts and even on a rant on my site that I HATE when companies create products that HAPPILY tunnel through HTTP. It makes my job next to impossible and creates Yet Another Security Problem. My primary responsibility and my paycheck comes from making sure that the network stays up. If anything threatens that, I get defensive.
I have to make a disclaimer too. I eat my own dogfood. I don't make exceptions for myself on the firewall. The only use of resources that is improper is my webcam and I've even given that low priority on the firewall.
Jesus christ! Has anyone on slashdot EVER worked in a corporate IT environment?
Let's take this quote right here which sums it up:
"The message is: 'I'm afraid you'll have to do it after hours at home, which is where you should be doing it in the first place,"' said Mikko Hypponen, manager of anti-virus research for Finish-based F-Secure Corp.
Where does ANYONE get off thinking company resources are PERSONAL resources? How is this a limitation of ANYONE'S rights? Do you think you have the right to drive the company car across the country for a personal vacation? Do you think you have the right to use the company FedEx account to send Christmas presents to your sister in New York? Then how in the hell do you think you have the right to use company network resources to send personal email and use ICQ? Would your boss let you sit there and read the newest John Grisham novel when you should be working? Then why do you think you are allowed to read slashdot all day?
People need to grow up. When you are at work, you should work. If your company is NICE enough to let you use resources for personal use then fine but you do NOT have a right to do anything with something that isn't yours.
Christ I need a beer.
Exactly.
All of the changes made in airport security lately are nothing but facepaint.
The problem is the fact that the people working airport security are those with no marketable skillsets whatsoever in the private sector. Thank god there's a fucking sunset clause on the PATRIOT act in regards to federalized screeners.
You have people working security who can't compete with the people flying. THEY want to fly somewhere too and be on the otherside of the xray machine. But they can't thanks to being fucking idiots. so what do they do? Hassle an 80 year old woman and force her to take out her dentures or somesuch stupidity.
I realize all this happened in Canada but it goes to show you that socialism doesn't make people any fucking smarter.
By the way, did you know that Argonbright Security is still working for the airports?
Next time you go through, check the actual name badge of your favorite airport screener. The uniforms won't say it but the badges do.
The least they could do is have the outbound mailserver strip the internal mail headers from the message before sending it out. It's easy to do with postfix and that's what we do. Why give out anymore information than needed? I noticed that they were able to get what CIDR block they use for internal IP's from the mailserver.
Jesus I don't run a covert espionage agency and I at least do that at our company. Hell I even proxy requests to private servers from an apache server in the DMZ.
Isn't this just basic network security?
Easy.
Redhat (or insert your favorite company here) sales person sends an email to all sales people as follows:
"Do whatever it takes to bring in those customers."
5 years later, unhappy former employee or disgruntled competitor sues the company. All email is subpoened. FavCompany hasn't done anything wrong but the email from sales manager to sales staff is used as "proof/smoking gun" that the company was engaging in anti-competitive business practices.
People can and WILL interpret something in thier favor. I can tell another coworker that I think a particular employee is very fetching in that new dress and the next thing you know, I can be sued for sexual harrasment by someone who overheard the conversation. This isn't from personal experience mind you but it makes the point clear.
You shouldn't need encryption, right? You don't have anything to hide!
These companies don't need to delete email, right? They don't have anything to hide!
Well the only other trailer I was apple to find was on the movie's website here.
I don't think Tom Cruise would be that bad. I AM worried about Spielberg fucking it up though.
From what I've been able to find out, the originally had the script based around a cop who found out his brother was scheduled to be arrested. I think the strongest point of the book is the fact that the DIRECTOR of the agency is the one who finds out.
You know it's funny. I was watching the trailer and I heard that line and was like "This sounds familiar" and THEN the department of precrime logo came up and I almost wet myself. I had JUST finished reading "Minority Report" for the first time about a week ago and thought that it would make a good movie.
Hey. At least I got to see the trailer for "Minority Report". I almost shit myself because I hadn't even HEARD about it.
No shit. That was the first thing I thought when I read it.
Use a couple of fucking openbsd boxes or linux boxes for vpn gateways and tell the IT wankers to take a fucking leap.