I'm going to have to agree here. My home upload speed is a measly 45 Kb (Kilo bits for the non CS) thanks to Time Warner cable. I can't do a rsync of a 40 GB HD to a remote location. Forget a 500 GB HD (that would take all year at max throughput). So the *typical* broadband connection is at 100Mb/s, I don't see that happening.
On the server market, it's going to happen a lot faster (data-center to data-center) but then you run into issues of cost for the bandwidth needed. I have an unmetered 1Mb/s on the server (plenty fast for most things) and that is still not enough to rsync the HD out. To pay more means it would be cheaper for me to drive out there once in a while and back it up with esata.
I do consulting for a small company (think 35 people) and I've recommended the exact same thing to the director of IT there: You don't have the resources to do IT Right. Outsource as much as possible. It won't cost less, but it will be much more reliable. In the long run, the business has to have a reliable and sound base on which to stand.
He won't have to let people go, because he doesn't have the people now.
As far as the company data, well, I told him it was more likely that a hacker could get it off their servers than get it off the ASP's servers.
I run win2k3 sr1 64 bit and let me tell you it's not pretty. It doesn't go down, but that's because I don't push it hard. (it did go down once, but I can't prove it was the OS, so I'll give it the benefit of the doubt).
Also, why is administration rdp session not able to see the actual console? Who knows... Makes it a royal pita to install stuff on a server that's already in the hosting provider's data center 30 miles away.
>You took on the job and now have a duty to see it through. This goes double if it, as the OP says, is a small company that will be hurt badly by a late defection.
WTF? The employee has no obligation to do something he does not want to. Period.
The management of the company should have thought of that. That's the reason they are "management" and collect the big money.
If the project is hurt because of one developer leaving, then it's management's fault. As a matter of fact, anything that happens, good or bad, in a company, is management's fault.
So unless this guy is management (and by that I mean able to make binding decisions for the company) he has no responsibility whatsoever beyond doing the work while he gets paid.
> Once Win95 hit on billions of cheap PCs, it was "good enough."
Ubuntu is "good enough" and free. They'll even send you cds by mail for free (no shipping costs to you) if you don't want to or can't burn them yourself.
I use it at work. It opens word, excel, powerpoint (even has a MS access reader) and pdf fine. Runs java no problem. Eclipse no problem. samba makes mounting networked drives a breeze, and the hibernate works as advertised.
There are a few font issues, but you can install a microsoft font pack. The sub-pixel anti-aliased fonts look "good enough" on my 19inch lcd at 1280x1024.
Ok, it doesn't run Photoshop. Well, newsflash: if you need Photoshop for your Business, you're already running OS X. The GIMP is "good enough". Try Inkspace too...
Firefox and extensions work fine. Flash is mostly there (no characters in google's finance flash dynamic charting, but I'm ok with that). Besides, I use an extension that stops flash anyway.
Oh, and for non.Net development, it's better. UNIX-land tools are native (CVS, SVN, docBook toolchain, etc. No need for cygwin) Eclipse runs fine.
In sum, linux on the desktop in the Ubuntu flavor is "good enough". The revolution is being televised^WYouTubbed.
Oh, and before you think fanboi, know this: I've spent ten years in my life in MSLand. (from qbasic on DOS 5 until ASP 3.0) Python squeezed it out of me.
By the way, I long ago stopped recommending Novell for anything. Wait... I actually never recommended Novell for anything.
I also don't recommend Microsoft for anything. My friend bought server 2003 64 SR2 and I've had no end of grief getting that thing to run apps well. I've recently installed Ubuntu on my new desktop pc. What a relief. (a co-worker did the same a few days later. The semi-official company wiki runs on Ubuntu. I also run a couple of Debian servers there.)
I work at a Fortune 200, in health care.
PS: I also don't recommend anything by IBM; especially not their global consulting.
I only recommend Sun hardware because of AMD. But to be honest, I don't think it's worth the money with competent sysadmins.
They would definitely abandon Europe sales to save the company.
Linux threatens the company, now very seriously.
All Linux and Mac desktops released in the past 6 months already exceed Vista in usability for the common user.
Office 2007 does not run on anything but windows.
If Vista is unable to get at least 80% of desktop OS market share, Microsoft will have lost advantage of ubiquity, where an inferior product is adopted because everybody else has adopted it, and it would be more painful to adopt a superior solution. If 1 in 5 person out there does not use Microsoft Vista (resultantly Office), an average user would not gravitate toward Microsoft+Office as a safe albeit more expensive choice. Rather, the average user would see Ubuntu and alikes as a good alternative, and would demand such from their vendors.
As an example of market forces driving change, Dell now ships computers with AMD processors.
Now, the Microsoft strategy, as I see it, is to create enough anguish in the marketplace (in corporations to be honest) by implying possible threat, so that customers mill purchase Vista to be on the safe side.
The problem with that strategy is that a lot of companies are still on Windows 2000 pro and are seeing a surge in migration of unofficial IT desktops to Linux and Mac because developers today are generally fed up with 2000 and are jaded about Vista. Microsoft expects management at those companies to mandate safety and get rid of the Linux systems once Vista is out there. The problem, and Microsoft has not yet seen it, and will not see it even after it's killed their company, is that management in today's IT is made up of post-1970 geeks, which means the remnants of the mainframe management has now completely retired (in the past 10 years). Also, a lot more heavy hitters are playing nice with Linux (HP, IBM, Sun (especially with Ubuntu and Shuttleworth in particular) and Oracle). These vendors have a lot of pull in dynamic organizations, especially because of the recent SOA mega trend, and these vendors have no love for Microsoft.
My assessment is that there will be a softening of PC sales after the release of Vista and that a few vendors will start selling a lot of Ubuntu-loaded corporate desktops (Lenovo, HP) and then Dell will see their stock take another tumble, and they will scramble to sell a Ubuntu-ready PC by fall 2007.
Microsoft meanwhile, oblivious to all, will continue touting software-as-a-service in Google's footsteps, not realizing until much too late that Google makes money not from the users of the software but from advertisers who get dream-come-true-accurate lifestyle marketing profiles on users of Google applications.
They will continue selling Office and Vista licenses to corporations (who may or may not use them) and will not notice for a while that hardware vendors will have pushed hardware component manufacturers to make their hardware really play nice with Linux (internal components, but also printers, scanners, etc) and then maybe, just maybe, some systems that work on Linux will not work on windows, and the Chinese manufacturer of some component that get put in Lenovo laptops will just not write a windows driver, and slowly but surely fewer and fewer new models will work with Vista. We're talking mid 2008 here, with quad-cores and gru-on-cpu level machines.
Then Microsoft will be where it was in 1993: trying to convince hardware manufacturers.
This is why it is good that OpenSolaris is out there mingling in the Linux world (see nexenta) to give it some healthy competition.
It's also good that Java is GPLv2, to help with the adoption of of Java applications on Ubuntu desktops -- personal note: eclipse 3.2 works beautifully there.
In any case, from the above you can see that Microsoft has a major problem. I don't think Ray Ozzie can reinvent the company fast enough, especially with Steve Ballmer
Let me add to this: Today I got a second PC, (2 pcs on a desk, imagine that) and I installed Ubuntu 6.10. First, people were like "Good luck!". Well, after about 2 hours, I had firefox te way i like it, adobe acrobat 7, java, eclipse, jedit, samba working (type smb://someservername/ and put in your creds) and a goregeous interface, snappy apps, and had already checked the codebase out of the cvs server via ssh.
They were floored.
Of course, I did it all with the gui. Even set the desktop background to a photo of my son (which, for the average l-user, is the ultimate in tweaking.).
Why, yes, I work at a fortune 500. And my boss knows.
Now, if i can just figure out how to use sql enterprise manager on ubuntu... j/k, that's what the other machine is for. That and Lotus notes. I'm still trying to decide if I want to install the linux version of that steaming pile of crap software or leave it where it is.
Who keeps the systems where your private key is stored? On your desktop machine? Who keeps your desktop machine? On your USB? a) Are you violating a policy for using a USB device? and b) When then USB is plugged-in, it's part of the machine (see above)
If it's passphrase encrypted, are you 100% sure that there isn't a software keylogger on your machine?
Trust me, you can't hide anything from competent sysadmins.
The only way to make sure you control your machine is to install it, secure it, and manage it yourself, but then you've become the sysadmin.
And it may very well be that the company won't allow anyone but an experienced and trusted sysadmin to plug such a machine into the corporate network (for good reason I might add).
So you might as well get used to the idea that sysadmins have access to everything on the network.
[puts on sysadmin hat] Ad that is how it should be anyway if you want the network to even start down the path of better security.
6 billion people. Drop 1 billion from Rapture (or, more aptly, where the vultures go)
(and that's a stretch; the baggage requirements are severely restricted) 5 billion remain. Wait 25 years: 6 billion people.
The Rapture will not have as much of an impact as people predict.
Oh, you mean the 7-year war (or 3.5 depending on whose version of police-action you adhere to) that will wipe out the remainder? That would be about 6.99 years longer than needed with current arsenals.
Oh, that's right, not complete annihilation: only 1/3 of mankind would remain (oh wait, that would leave 1.6 billion people. outnumbering freshly returned Christians 1.6 to 1. (I'm not counting the population explosion that would happen after the Fundamentalists (disappeared|realized their error) and porn replaced sex education (but I digress)).
In any case, the only way to reach a point where humankind is extinct is either Total Thermonuclear War, or fucking up the environment so badly that we can't breathe anymore and all die uncomfortably.
In view of the current trend with pollution, maybe the nuclear option would be better, suffering-wise.
Sad huh?
I'm sure my one year old boy will thank me some day for all the filth I've spewed into the air over my lifetime.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe java is used for even smaller stuff?
j/k
I'm pretty sure he's talking about java on the server, delivering (x)html+css+javascript to browsers.
I'm going to have to agree here. My home upload speed is a measly 45 Kb (Kilo bits for the non CS) thanks to Time Warner cable. I can't do a rsync of a 40 GB HD to a remote location. Forget a 500 GB HD (that would take all year at max throughput). So the *typical* broadband connection is at 100Mb/s, I don't see that happening.
On the server market, it's going to happen a lot faster (data-center to data-center) but then you run into issues of cost for the bandwidth needed. I have an unmetered 1Mb/s on the server (plenty fast for most things) and that is still not enough to rsync the HD out. To pay more means it would be cheaper for me to drive out there once in a while and back it up with esata.
Amen.
I do consulting for a small company (think 35 people) and I've recommended the exact same thing to the director of IT there: You don't have the resources to do IT Right. Outsource as much as possible. It won't cost less, but it will be much more reliable. In the long run, the business has to have a reliable and sound base on which to stand.
He won't have to let people go, because he doesn't have the people now.
As far as the company data, well, I told him it was more likely that a hacker could get it off their servers than get it off the ASP's servers.
Thanks...
I run win2k3 sr1 64 bit and let me tell you it's not pretty. It doesn't go down, but that's because I don't push it hard. (it did go down once, but I can't prove it was the OS, so I'll give it the benefit of the doubt).
Also, why is administration rdp session not able to see the actual console? Who knows... Makes it a royal pita to install stuff on a server that's already in the hosting provider's data center 30 miles away.
Let me tell you I won't make that mistake again.
I should know better than expect correctness in AS, but come on...
Exactly our situation here. (Fortune 200, 10,000 employees)
All computers (I just got one from HP) are reimaged with win2k pro. I'm sure it came with XP.
>You took on the job and now have a duty to see it through. This goes double if it, as the OP says, is a small company that will be hurt badly by a late defection.
WTF? The employee has no obligation to do something he does not want to. Period.
The management of the company should have thought of that. That's the reason they are "management" and collect the big money.
If the project is hurt because of one developer leaving, then it's management's fault. As a matter of fact, anything that happens, good or bad, in a company, is management's fault.
So unless this guy is management (and by that I mean able to make binding decisions for the company) he has no responsibility whatsoever beyond doing the work while he gets paid.
I hope that clears up this whole thread/article.
> Once Win95 hit on billions of cheap PCs, it was "good enough."
.Net development, it's better. UNIX-land tools are native (CVS, SVN, docBook toolchain, etc. No need for cygwin) Eclipse runs fine.
Ubuntu is "good enough" and free. They'll even send you cds by mail for free (no shipping costs to you) if you don't want to or can't burn them yourself.
I use it at work. It opens word, excel, powerpoint (even has a MS access reader) and pdf fine. Runs java no problem. Eclipse no problem. samba makes mounting networked drives a breeze, and the hibernate works as advertised.
There are a few font issues, but you can install a microsoft font pack. The sub-pixel anti-aliased fonts look "good enough" on my 19inch lcd at 1280x1024.
Ok, it doesn't run Photoshop. Well, newsflash: if you need Photoshop for your Business, you're already running OS X. The GIMP is "good enough". Try Inkspace too...
Firefox and extensions work fine. Flash is mostly there (no characters in google's finance flash dynamic charting, but I'm ok with that). Besides, I use an extension that stops flash anyway.
Oh, and for non
In sum, linux on the desktop in the Ubuntu flavor is "good enough". The revolution is being televised^WYouTubbed.
Oh, and before you think fanboi, know this: I've spent ten years in my life in MSLand. (from qbasic on DOS 5 until ASP 3.0) Python squeezed it out of me.
Not really. 8500 pages of docs (almost guaranteed to be obsoleted by Vista) saved them almost a billion dollars in fines. What's that per page?
Ah, see, we can all play nice...
By the way, I long ago stopped recommending Novell for anything. Wait... I actually never recommended Novell for anything.
I also don't recommend Microsoft for anything. My friend bought server 2003 64 SR2 and I've had no end of grief getting that thing to run apps well. I've recently installed Ubuntu on my new desktop pc. What a relief. (a co-worker did the same a few days later. The semi-official company wiki runs on Ubuntu. I also run a couple of Debian servers there.)
I work at a Fortune 200, in health care.
PS: I also don't recommend anything by IBM; especially not their global consulting.
I only recommend Sun hardware because of AMD. But to be honest, I don't think it's worth the money with competent sysadmins.
Maybe you should try a Frenchwoman someday...
They would definitely abandon Europe sales to save the company.
Linux threatens the company, now very seriously.
All Linux and Mac desktops released in the past 6 months already exceed Vista in usability for the common user.
Office 2007 does not run on anything but windows.
If Vista is unable to get at least 80% of desktop OS market share, Microsoft will have lost advantage of ubiquity, where an inferior product is adopted because everybody else has adopted it, and it would be more painful to adopt a superior solution. If 1 in 5 person out there does not use Microsoft Vista (resultantly Office), an average user would not gravitate toward Microsoft+Office as a safe albeit more expensive choice. Rather, the average user would see Ubuntu and alikes as a good alternative, and would demand such from their vendors.
As an example of market forces driving change, Dell now ships computers with AMD processors.
Now, the Microsoft strategy, as I see it, is to create enough anguish in the marketplace (in corporations to be honest) by implying possible threat, so that customers mill purchase Vista to be on the safe side.
The problem with that strategy is that a lot of companies are still on Windows 2000 pro and are seeing a surge in migration of unofficial IT desktops to Linux and Mac because developers today are generally fed up with 2000 and are jaded about Vista.
Microsoft expects management at those companies to mandate safety and get rid of the Linux systems once Vista is out there. The problem, and Microsoft has not yet seen it, and will not see it even after it's killed their company, is that management in today's IT is made up of post-1970 geeks, which means the remnants of the mainframe management has now completely retired (in the past 10 years).
Also, a lot more heavy hitters are playing nice with Linux (HP, IBM, Sun (especially with Ubuntu and Shuttleworth in particular) and Oracle). These vendors have a lot of pull in dynamic organizations, especially because of the recent SOA mega trend, and these vendors have no love for Microsoft.
My assessment is that there will be a softening of PC sales after the release of Vista and that a few vendors will start selling a lot of Ubuntu-loaded corporate desktops (Lenovo, HP) and then Dell will see their stock take another tumble, and they will scramble to sell a Ubuntu-ready PC by fall 2007.
Microsoft meanwhile, oblivious to all, will continue touting software-as-a-service in Google's footsteps, not realizing until much too late that Google makes money not from the users of the software but from advertisers who get dream-come-true-accurate lifestyle marketing profiles on users of Google applications.
They will continue selling Office and Vista licenses to corporations (who may or may not use them) and will not notice for a while that hardware vendors will have pushed hardware component manufacturers to make their hardware really play nice with Linux (internal components, but also printers, scanners, etc) and then maybe, just maybe, some systems that work on Linux will not work on windows, and the Chinese manufacturer of some component that get put in Lenovo laptops will just not write a windows driver, and slowly but surely fewer and fewer new models will work with Vista. We're talking mid 2008 here, with quad-cores and gru-on-cpu level machines.
Then Microsoft will be where it was in 1993: trying to convince hardware manufacturers.
This is why it is good that OpenSolaris is out there mingling in the Linux world (see nexenta) to give it some healthy competition.
It's also good that Java is GPLv2, to help with the adoption of of Java applications on Ubuntu desktops -- personal note: eclipse 3.2 works beautifully there.
In any case, from the above you can see that Microsoft has a major problem. I don't think Ray Ozzie can reinvent the company fast enough, especially with Steve Ballmer
Let me add to this: Today I got a second PC, (2 pcs on a desk, imagine that) and I installed Ubuntu 6.10. First, people were like "Good luck!". Well, after about 2 hours, I had firefox te way i like it, adobe acrobat 7, java, eclipse, jedit, samba working (type smb://someservername/ and put in your creds) and a goregeous interface, snappy apps, and had already checked the codebase out of the cvs server via ssh.
They were floored.
Of course, I did it all with the gui. Even set the desktop background to a photo of my son (which, for the average l-user, is the ultimate in tweaking.).
Why, yes, I work at a fortune 500. And my boss knows.
Now, if i can just figure out how to use sql enterprise manager on ubuntu... j/k, that's what the other machine is for. That and Lotus notes. I'm still trying to decide if I want to install the linux version of that steaming pile of crap software or leave it where it is.
Touché!
aide-memoire does not take an accent over the o.
Yes, I am French.
You're right about not archiving confidential messages.
Also, I've never heard of smartcards used here at the Fortune 200 I work at. (Contrary to popular belief, I've not heard it all).
Who keeps the systems where your private key is stored?
On your desktop machine? Who keeps your desktop machine?
On your USB? a) Are you violating a policy for using a USB device? and b) When then USB is plugged-in, it's part of the machine (see above)
If it's passphrase encrypted, are you 100% sure that there isn't a software keylogger on your machine?
Trust me, you can't hide anything from competent sysadmins.
The only way to make sure you control your machine is to install it, secure it, and manage it yourself, but then you've become the sysadmin.
And it may very well be that the company won't allow anyone but an experienced and trusted sysadmin to plug such a machine into the corporate network (for good reason I might add).
So you might as well get used to the idea that sysadmins have access to everything on the network.
[puts on sysadmin hat]
Ad that is how it should be anyway if you want the network to even start down the path of better security.
Like, do'h, of course that's what I was talking about.
I think that's the whole point.
Nothing to worry about, it read just like a regular slashdot post. Enjoy your lunch.
Oh shit this made me laugh... *no* useful software... Does that include the OS itself? eh?
I think you were trolled. Look at the name of the poster. In any case, that was well done.
6 billion people.
Drop 1 billion from Rapture (or, more aptly, where the vultures go)
(and that's a stretch; the baggage requirements are severely restricted)
5 billion remain.
Wait 25 years:
6 billion people.
The Rapture will not have as much of an impact as people predict.
Oh, you mean the 7-year war (or 3.5 depending on whose version of police-action you adhere to) that will wipe out the remainder?
That would be about 6.99 years longer than needed with current arsenals.
Oh, that's right, not complete annihilation: only 1/3 of mankind would remain (oh wait, that would leave 1.6 billion people. outnumbering freshly returned Christians 1.6 to 1. (I'm not counting the population explosion that would happen after the Fundamentalists (disappeared|realized their error) and porn replaced sex education (but I digress)).
In any case, the only way to reach a point where humankind is extinct is either Total Thermonuclear War, or fucking up the environment so badly that we can't breathe anymore and all die uncomfortably.
In view of the current trend with pollution, maybe the nuclear option would be better, suffering-wise.
Sad huh?
I'm sure my one year old boy will thank me some day for all the filth I've spewed into the air over my lifetime.