RC and RTM and haven't played with the final release yet, but I have to say I've been very happy with the results. My experiences with Vista (both in beta/RC as well as final production release) was very different. My "favorite" vista experience was showing up to work one day and finding my system jacked so hard from the windows updates the night before that it could not longer boot + using the system restore points didn't help. I've had nothing but terrible experiences with any Vista system I've used for a chunk of time. So far I've had nothing but good experiences on my Win7 testbeds (ASUS EEEPC w/ 2GB of RAM and a Core i5 desktop w/ 4GB). We've kept our ~200 desktops running XP. Time to start thinking about Win7 deployments...
... but it doesn't sound to me like this is something that would be a "black mark".
While there are plenty of people out there who find gambling distasteful, working for a software engineernig firm that sells software the gambling industry doesn't seem like it would be worth of causing taint.
BTW, my recollection is that the many of the online gambling companies split up development and operations into separate legal entities (i.e. you might work for a SE firm that sells to the gambling industry, but the reality could be that you only have 1 client or that all clients are owned by the same person).
Assuming that that is true, I doubt most people are even aware of it.
As you said, the original xbox w/ XBMC was IMHO the best (or perhaps one of the best) options for a HTPC. Unfortunately, the original xbox really can only deal with SD content. I was able to get *some* 720P content working, but the Pentium Celeron processor just doesn't have the oomph for HD.
I've been running the Windows port of XBMC (MediaPortal) http://www.team-mediaportal.com/ on a computer hooked up to my TV w/ mixed results.
In the current system, the higher the value of your vehicle the more you pay towards infrastructure taxes. I don't think that this reflects the proper value system. You should pay more taxes to support transportation infrastructure if:
1. Your vehicle is fuel inefficient
2. Your vehicle is heavy / places more strain on the roads
3. Your vehicle creates more pollution
Assuming a general agreement with these values, then it seems to me that a tax on gas @ the pump approximately aligns with these values and doesn't require technical infrastructure or "big brother" to implement.
Gas at the pump should be expensive as hell. It will serve as an incentive to carpool, drive more fuel efficient vehicles, etc. Our dependence on [foreign] oil already is one of the country's greatest problems and it isn't going to do anything but get worse..
I was a DirecTV subscriber for years w/ my trusty Series2 DirecTivo. When it was time to go HD I had a choice between leaving DirecTV to get cable service or leaving my Tivo. Since the reason I couldn't use a Series3 device w/ DirecTV was because they didn't implement CableCard, it seemed to me that DirecTV was trying to completely control their marketplace (i.e. you must buy our hardware -- which BTW won't be useful for anyone but us).
1. When given a choice, I will not support that business model as it works against my interests
2. My TV experience is more about my DVR than it is about my provider. While I find the increasing amount of advertising very frustrating on my Tivo, it still beats the competition.
We left DirecTV and have never looked back.
Developing a new system w/ SSN as a primary key is "a crime" (technically not legally). That said, there are a lot of legacy (i.e. mainframe/etc) systems built around SSNs as a primary key. Our new systems use internal database IDs, but there is pretty much no way that we could deprecate the usage of SSNs as a primary key for our legacy systems. I imagine that this is a very common scenario for larger organizations.
I've spent most of my career working for organizations large enough to have their own IT departments. I'm certainly not saying that in-house staff are not to be trusted and you are better off with outsiders. My point is that "looking over someone's shoulder" A) is viable/sustainable and B) is effective.
That said, I am not aware of statistics one way or the other on IT crimes committed by staff vs. consultants. It seems to me that malice and greed are the two primary motivators for these forms of IT crime.
I can only share from my own experience that consultants and outsiders tend to be apathetic and employees are more likely to be passionate. Passion is very important in your staff and is a key component of success. However, passion is a dual edged blade and I've seen my share of employees *FURIOUS* at their employers. Most consultants simply aren't emotionally invested in their clients enough for spite to be a motivating factor. On the other hand, most consultants aren't emotionally invested enough in their clients to "go the extra mile" and make sacrifices (i.e. time) for the organization.
As far as greed goes, my opinion is that in general this applies fairly equally to employees as consultants although it is my opinion that employees are more likely to be involved in this sort of thing (i.e. over time they become aware of the flaws in the system and slowly realize that they can do "bad things" and get away).
I agree that encryption requires discipline, buy-in, and education. An administrator can be involved in all of these, but not know the password to private keys. Implementation of this in a small scale (i.e. a couple users w/ "secure" access) is fairly feasible. I am assuming from the tone of the post that the organization size in question is rather small.
It is my understanding that the encryption built into Office 2007 is actually fairly solid. Encrypting key Word/Excel documents requires minimal training although there is always the risk of forgetting the password. Once again, not an enterprise solution, but viable for a small business that is paranoid about its data.
That said, I agree with many of the postings that question the fundamental nature of the paranoia. My experience has been that after a rational discourse about options, costs, pros, and cons that Sr. Mgmt has always ended up choosing the traditional approach (i.e. a handful of IT staff have access to everything) over the alternatives.
I've had this same conversation with Sr. Management at companies I've consulted with and companies where I've managed the IT staff.
Watching over someone's shoulder is a "fail" strategy. I'm not going to get into the details of why, but consider that my executive summary. Let's move on.
From a trust perspective a third party isn't necessarily more or less trustworthy than your own staff. A bitter employee is (in my opinion) more likely to do something awful to you then a consultant for hire.
I suggest that you consider encrypting your most sensitive documents. This can protect your key intellectual property from your network admins while still providing them the access they need to do their job (namely allowing you to keep accessing those documents reliably).
This approach works fine for basic documents but doesn't lend itself well to source code unfortunately.
Really?
It has been common knowledge for a LONG time that you shouldn't do this. I know this = troll, but really....
Next article: I opened up an.exe attachment that a friend sent me and got a virus. Should I have done that?
This is exactly the point that the article missed. It may be the case that for a "luxury laptop" that Apple's products stack up reasonably well price wise.
Most people do not need luxury laptops. In fact, these days I'm starting to become increasingly attracted to the sub $500 market.
Unless your application(s) are horrifically written, you won't need a lot of hardware to pump that out. If you are really worried about high availability (and for those sorts of traffic numbers, I don't know if you really should), then make arrangements for a hot spare and plan on manually flipping the switch if the primary machine fails.
One possible cause of this is the list of UNC's you've visited that XP keeps cached under "my network places"
I don't have the information handy, but there are some GPO settings that can disable this behavior.
I worked for Warner Music Group a number of years ago and it was common knowledge that a *very* small % of the catalog was responsible for most of the profit (I no longer recall the numbers).
The fact that the long tail doesn't apply to the music industry hardly seems like news to me.
Speaking as an IT manager who has done his share of hiring, testing is absolutely necessary.
People lie or exaggerate on their resumes. Flat out lies can often be detected in technical interviews, but exaggerations can be trickier.
Being able to answer questions in an interview is not the same as being able to do the job. A good test ought to be able to give the candidate real-world problems and assess their ability to solve them. Examples from positions I have hired.
Business Analyst - I have them build sample functional specifications for a limited scope fictitious application (typically something simple like a basic web app that lets people access a secure content page via a username/password) that I serve as the internal client for. I look to see if they asked the right questions and to get a sense as to how they approach the planning.
DBA / Data Analyst - I describe to them the same fictitious application and have them provide me a data model
Software engineers - I ask them to build it
Testing is a good way to help decide between multiple candidates who appear qualified. There have been numerous times where we thought "Candidate X" would be the one we would hire after the oral interviews but decided on "Candidate Y" after seeing their testing performance.
That said, I've been on the other side of the fence and have been really irritated at tests I needed to take. I only subject candidates to testing (although one could argue that a technical interview *is* testing) when they have gotten pretty far into the interview process and are seriously being considered for the position.
I also believe that the tests should be strongly connected to the job description (i.e. not some generic HR crud).
The poster complains that other industries don't test their employees. That may be true, but they probably should as well. My wife is an Architect (bricks and mortar) and was amazed at the number of people who were hired to her firm that did not have the CAD skills that they claimed. I believe that their company should have had applicants *demonstrate* CAD skills during the hiring process. The poster believes that just because they have worked for "X" years in the industry that this proves your competency. This is a false assumption.
To the poster I am responding to: Knock yourself out. Enjoy working for a company where you coworkers are not properly screened. I'll be enjoying working with a team of people that I can trust.
The Dell laptop looks nice. It is about an inch larger than the Q1 Ultra and weighs about the same. My Q1U has a 60GB HD in it which is rather useful. An SSD would be nice, but with 8GB you wouldn't be able to get much use of it as a portable media player on trips.
The Dell is more of a traditional laptop while the Q1U is a tablet PC. I'm not sure that I really find the tablet PC functionality very compelling in day to day use (i.e. using a tablet w/o a keyboard/mouse combination is painful for anything but the shortest amount of work).
What really tempts me is the 1.6Ghz processor. Running Vista on 800Mhz = painful!
My wife's ring was Titanium and Moissanite. It is a tension set design that simply couldn't be made out of other metals.
We went w/ Moissanite because it is almost as hard as diamond but without the "taint" (i.e. blood, marketing, and assorted BS).
I had a particular design in mind. I contracted with the online jeweler that made my her ring to make mine. They told me that after a few tries that ended up with broken stones (both Moissanite and then Diamond) that the design just wasn't viable in Titanium.
I ended up going to a local jeweler and having them make a ring from a Platinum/Iridium mix. I think 95/5 is a common mix. It's been a while, but I believe I chose 90/10 because I thought it had better material properties.
I really liked the ring, but grew somewhat envious of the lightness of her ring (the density difference between the metals is significant!).
I ended up later purchasing a Titanium ring from a local Teno (http://www.teno.com) that is what I wear as my wedding band now.
I have a Samsung Q1 Ultra UMPC that runs Vista. While the UI + tablet features are very nice, the system is unbearably slow. Vista simply doesn't run well in constricted hardware.
I've considered downgrading the OS to XP tablet edition, but I'm not sure if the performance gains would be worth the effort.
Linux has some appeal, but my gut tells me that driver support could be pretty painful...
Although I'm guessing Raytheon must have purchased it somehow.
Trivia: the same company that developed the exoskeleton also made the animatronic dinosaurs for the jursassic park ride @ Universal Studios.
Trivia: Sarcos worked very closely with the Center for Engineering Design @ the University of Utah. IMHO a very interesting collaboration between the academic and commercial worlds.
I did some research work there during my bioengineering days and one of my friends worked on the project...
The idea that decisions can about what disk/RAID class is best can be made by the HW on a block by block basis is very slick.
We didn't shell out the $s for the licenses because the old model (i.e. my databases are RAID-10, my file servers are RAID-5, etc) works "good enough" when compared to the sticker of the automated tiered storage licenses.
'it was in a bad state'. Had it moved to Arkansas? BAH!
HAHAHA:):)
My biggest bitch was that the $150K solution consisted of $37K of HW and the rest was software licenses and/or support that doesn't seem to be transferable. This basically means that there is no secondary market for the devices because anyone who would buy one would need to buy new software licenses. Since the SW licenses are more valuable than the HW, it wouldn't make sense to buy used HW. "nice"....
The above weighed in heavily in our decision not to go with Xiotech for our second SAN.
We have a Xiotech Magnitude that we paid ~$150K for in 2003 that is sitting around like a giant paper weight. Any takers? $3,000? $2,000? going once... going twice...:)
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RC and RTM and haven't played with the final release yet, but I have to say I've been very happy with the results. My experiences with Vista (both in beta/RC as well as final production release) was very different. My "favorite" vista experience was showing up to work one day and finding my system jacked so hard from the windows updates the night before that it could not longer boot + using the system restore points didn't help. I've had nothing but terrible experiences with any Vista system I've used for a chunk of time. So far I've had nothing but good experiences on my Win7 testbeds (ASUS EEEPC w/ 2GB of RAM and a Core i5 desktop w/ 4GB). We've kept our ~200 desktops running XP. Time to start thinking about Win7 deployments...
... but it doesn't sound to me like this is something that would be a "black mark".
While there are plenty of people out there who find gambling distasteful, working for a software engineernig firm that sells software the gambling industry doesn't seem like it would be worth of causing taint.
BTW, my recollection is that the many of the online gambling companies split up development and operations into separate legal entities (i.e. you might work for a SE firm that sells to the gambling industry, but the reality could be that you only have 1 client or that all clients are owned by the same person).
Assuming that that is true, I doubt most people are even aware of it.
As you said, the original xbox w/ XBMC was IMHO the best (or perhaps one of the best) options for a HTPC. Unfortunately, the original xbox really can only deal with SD content. I was able to get *some* 720P content working, but the Pentium Celeron processor just doesn't have the oomph for HD.
I've been running the Windows port of XBMC (MediaPortal) http://www.team-mediaportal.com/ on a computer hooked up to my TV w/ mixed results.
"The device also detects 'the specific places where infrastructure interferes with the earth's magnetic fields.'"
AT&T:
Engineer: We have coverage issues!
Marketing: Ah! That is a feature. It allows our customers to "sense" where they have no reception
In the current system, the higher the value of your vehicle the more you pay towards infrastructure taxes. I don't think that this reflects the proper value system. You should pay more taxes to support transportation infrastructure if: 1. Your vehicle is fuel inefficient 2. Your vehicle is heavy / places more strain on the roads 3. Your vehicle creates more pollution Assuming a general agreement with these values, then it seems to me that a tax on gas @ the pump approximately aligns with these values and doesn't require technical infrastructure or "big brother" to implement. Gas at the pump should be expensive as hell. It will serve as an incentive to carpool, drive more fuel efficient vehicles, etc. Our dependence on [foreign] oil already is one of the country's greatest problems and it isn't going to do anything but get worse..
I was a DirecTV subscriber for years w/ my trusty Series2 DirecTivo. When it was time to go HD I had a choice between leaving DirecTV to get cable service or leaving my Tivo. Since the reason I couldn't use a Series3 device w/ DirecTV was because they didn't implement CableCard, it seemed to me that DirecTV was trying to completely control their marketplace (i.e. you must buy our hardware -- which BTW won't be useful for anyone but us). 1. When given a choice, I will not support that business model as it works against my interests 2. My TV experience is more about my DVR than it is about my provider. While I find the increasing amount of advertising very frustrating on my Tivo, it still beats the competition. We left DirecTV and have never looked back.
Developing a new system w/ SSN as a primary key is "a crime" (technically not legally). That said, there are a lot of legacy (i.e. mainframe/etc) systems built around SSNs as a primary key. Our new systems use internal database IDs, but there is pretty much no way that we could deprecate the usage of SSNs as a primary key for our legacy systems. I imagine that this is a very common scenario for larger organizations.
That said, I am not aware of statistics one way or the other on IT crimes committed by staff vs. consultants. It seems to me that malice and greed are the two primary motivators for these forms of IT crime.
I can only share from my own experience that consultants and outsiders tend to be apathetic and employees are more likely to be passionate. Passion is very important in your staff and is a key component of success. However, passion is a dual edged blade and I've seen my share of employees *FURIOUS* at their employers. Most consultants simply aren't emotionally invested in their clients enough for spite to be a motivating factor. On the other hand, most consultants aren't emotionally invested enough in their clients to "go the extra mile" and make sacrifices (i.e. time) for the organization.
As far as greed goes, my opinion is that in general this applies fairly equally to employees as consultants although it is my opinion that employees are more likely to be involved in this sort of thing (i.e. over time they become aware of the flaws in the system and slowly realize that they can do "bad things" and get away).
I agree that encryption requires discipline, buy-in, and education. An administrator can be involved in all of these, but not know the password to private keys. Implementation of this in a small scale (i.e. a couple users w/ "secure" access) is fairly feasible. I am assuming from the tone of the post that the organization size in question is rather small. It is my understanding that the encryption built into Office 2007 is actually fairly solid. Encrypting key Word/Excel documents requires minimal training although there is always the risk of forgetting the password. Once again, not an enterprise solution, but viable for a small business that is paranoid about its data. That said, I agree with many of the postings that question the fundamental nature of the paranoia. My experience has been that after a rational discourse about options, costs, pros, and cons that Sr. Mgmt has always ended up choosing the traditional approach (i.e. a handful of IT staff have access to everything) over the alternatives.
I've had this same conversation with Sr. Management at companies I've consulted with and companies where I've managed the IT staff. Watching over someone's shoulder is a "fail" strategy. I'm not going to get into the details of why, but consider that my executive summary. Let's move on. From a trust perspective a third party isn't necessarily more or less trustworthy than your own staff. A bitter employee is (in my opinion) more likely to do something awful to you then a consultant for hire. I suggest that you consider encrypting your most sensitive documents. This can protect your key intellectual property from your network admins while still providing them the access they need to do their job (namely allowing you to keep accessing those documents reliably). This approach works fine for basic documents but doesn't lend itself well to source code unfortunately.
Really? It has been common knowledge for a LONG time that you shouldn't do this. I know this = troll, but really.... Next article: I opened up an .exe attachment that a friend sent me and got a virus. Should I have done that?
This is exactly the point that the article missed. It may be the case that for a "luxury laptop" that Apple's products stack up reasonably well price wise. Most people do not need luxury laptops. In fact, these days I'm starting to become increasingly attracted to the sub $500 market.
Unless your application(s) are horrifically written, you won't need a lot of hardware to pump that out. If you are really worried about high availability (and for those sorts of traffic numbers, I don't know if you really should), then make arrangements for a hot spare and plan on manually flipping the switch if the primary machine fails.
We support ~200 users and have found OTRS to be a good solution.
One possible cause of this is the list of UNC's you've visited that XP keeps cached under "my network places" I don't have the information handy, but there are some GPO settings that can disable this behavior.
I worked for Warner Music Group a number of years ago and it was common knowledge that a *very* small % of the catalog was responsible for most of the profit (I no longer recall the numbers). The fact that the long tail doesn't apply to the music industry hardly seems like news to me.
... now if they could just get flash running on Windows Mobile....
Maybe it is because IT managers approach HR/hiring more analytically than managers in many other disciplines.
Speaking as an IT manager who has done his share of hiring, testing is absolutely necessary.
That said, I've been on the other side of the fence and have been really irritated at tests I needed to take. I only subject candidates to testing (although one could argue that a technical interview *is* testing) when they have gotten pretty far into the interview process and are seriously being considered for the position.
I also believe that the tests should be strongly connected to the job description (i.e. not some generic HR crud).
The poster complains that other industries don't test their employees. That may be true, but they probably should as well. My wife is an Architect (bricks and mortar) and was amazed at the number of people who were hired to her firm that did not have the CAD skills that they claimed. I believe that their company should have had applicants *demonstrate* CAD skills during the hiring process. The poster believes that just because they have worked for "X" years in the industry that this proves your competency. This is a false assumption.
To the poster I am responding to: Knock yourself out. Enjoy working for a company where you coworkers are not properly screened. I'll be enjoying working with a team of people that I can trust.
The Dell laptop looks nice. It is about an inch larger than the Q1 Ultra and weighs about the same. My Q1U has a 60GB HD in it which is rather useful. An SSD would be nice, but with 8GB you wouldn't be able to get much use of it as a portable media player on trips.
The Dell is more of a traditional laptop while the Q1U is a tablet PC. I'm not sure that I really find the tablet PC functionality very compelling in day to day use (i.e. using a tablet w/o a keyboard/mouse combination is painful for anything but the shortest amount of work).
What really tempts me is the 1.6Ghz processor. Running Vista on 800Mhz = painful!
My wife's ring was Titanium and Moissanite. It is a tension set design that simply couldn't be made out of other metals.
We went w/ Moissanite because it is almost as hard as diamond but without the "taint" (i.e. blood, marketing, and assorted BS).
I had a particular design in mind. I contracted with the online jeweler that made my her ring to make mine. They told me that after a few tries that ended up with broken stones (both Moissanite and then Diamond) that the design just wasn't viable in Titanium.
I ended up going to a local jeweler and having them make a ring from a Platinum/Iridium mix. I think 95/5 is a common mix. It's been a while, but I believe I chose 90/10 because I thought it had better material properties.
I really liked the ring, but grew somewhat envious of the lightness of her ring (the density difference between the metals is significant!).
I ended up later purchasing a Titanium ring from a local Teno (http://www.teno.com) that is what I wear as my wedding band now.
I have a Samsung Q1 Ultra UMPC that runs Vista. While the UI + tablet features are very nice, the system is unbearably slow. Vista simply doesn't run well in constricted hardware.
I've considered downgrading the OS to XP tablet edition, but I'm not sure if the performance gains would be worth the effort.
Linux has some appeal, but my gut tells me that driver support could be pretty painful...
Although I'm guessing Raytheon must have purchased it somehow.
Trivia: the same company that developed the exoskeleton also made the animatronic dinosaurs for the jursassic park ride @ Universal Studios.
Trivia: Sarcos worked very closely with the Center for Engineering Design @ the University of Utah. IMHO a very interesting collaboration between the academic and commercial worlds.
I did some research work there during my bioengineering days and one of my friends worked on the project...
The idea that decisions can about what disk/RAID class is best can be made by the HW on a block by block basis is very slick.
We didn't shell out the $s for the licenses because the old model (i.e. my databases are RAID-10, my file servers are RAID-5, etc) works "good enough" when compared to the sticker of the automated tiered storage licenses.
'it was in a bad state'. Had it moved to Arkansas? BAH!
:) :)
:)
HAHAHA
My biggest bitch was that the $150K solution consisted of $37K of HW and the rest was software licenses and/or support that doesn't seem to be transferable. This basically means that there is no secondary market for the devices because anyone who would buy one would need to buy new software licenses. Since the SW licenses are more valuable than the HW, it wouldn't make sense to buy used HW. "nice"....
The above weighed in heavily in our decision not to go with Xiotech for our second SAN.
That said, the article was still interesting.
The disk healing features are very interesting.
:)
We have a Xiotech Magnitude that we paid ~$150K for in 2003 that is sitting around like a giant paper weight. Any takers? $3,000? $2,000? going once... going twice...