First of all, why does everyone assume it's the IT guys' fault here?
Because:
A: It goes against the direct experience who set up and support both WinXX and Linux boxes on a regular basis.
B: It is the responsibility of whoever implemented your system to make sure it would do the job and to make sure they have a plan for dealing with problems.
C: Systems administration isn't so much about skills as it is about common sense. I do support for several small businesses and many of the people I've replaced were very skilled but didn't have the common sense to put security and reliability ahead of flash (and eventually got bit one too many times).
Both systems are reasonably
reliable, but when the Linux box falls over, it consistently takes longer to track down the
problem and get it back up and running.
This sentence I can buy. Nine times out of ten when a Windows box fails a simple reboot is all it takes to fix the problem. My Linux boxes fail far less often but when they do it's more likely to be something fairly serious.
No matter what kind of product you distribute there are going to be people with unreasonable expectations. I've had customers insist that I'm responsible for fixing some of Yahoo's broken messenger/groups features because "you're the one who put it on the computer" when in fact all I did was include a link to Yahoo in their bookmarks/favorites file. Thank god I didn't put a link to Ebay in there....
Companies sure aren't going to make the micropayments, because most companies
do not believe in Open Source, and certainly don't believe in it enough to fund it's
development, without something else coming back their way to put their own
ledgers in the black.. trust me on this one,
Some companies already do fund Open Source projects in exactly the same way individuals do, by donating code.
People working on open source have no monetary motivation for continuing to work on it.
They *could* give it up at any time with the only loss being that their "baby" goes left
unfinished.
So what? Propriatary software companies drop products all the time or get bought out by a competitor who just wants to kill the product.
As for company A promising to buy a lot of a product if Company B adds a particular feature, I'd just say that it takes a much bigger Company A to influence any of the major sofware makers than to simply hire a programmer to add feature X themselves (or bribe one of the existing developers to do it).
First and formost, check out the ISP Wireless mailing list and archives here:
http://ISP-Lists.ISP-Planet.com/isp-wireless/
Plan on spending a couple of long weekends looking over the archives because just about every question has been asked and answered multiple times on this list. If you subscribe, be aware that it is a very high volume list.
Also, give up on the idea of using NLOS connections. Yes it's possible under certain conditions to shoot through certain kinds of materials but if you plan your business around making that happen every time you're begging for trouble.
The sorts of people who would know to do that arn't the problem. The vast majority of hits I've been getting from this worm have been from systems where the owner doesn't know they have a web server installed. FWIW I'm still seeing CR hits from these people too.
Re:Friday's "Worldwide Caution" from Dept. of Stat
on
More On Tragedy
·
· Score: 1
I was surprised at how much more serious our local airport (a small regional one) was about security the last time I was there. The were manually searching many (maybe 1 in 4) bags and even made me demonstrate that my cell phone worked. In the past they've always been pretty layed back.
"Have you ever tried to get NT running?
Man what type of crack are you on? I've been a sysadmin here for 2 years, and tried to push out linux to users who wanted it on several occasions. And guess what? Linux is great -- that is if, and only if, you have perfect hardware and perfect setup and a standalone system. The minute that something is out-of-spec, linux goes AWOL and the poor desktop user is SOL because they don't know the difference between KDE and dd."
Funny, that's been pretty much my experience with Win2k. Hardware compatability is at least as limited as it it with Linux but the real problems have been with software compatability, more specifically the damm installers for many software packages. I had one user completely mangle his Win2k install with AOL6 and another with a combination of the Plextor Manager (comes with Plextor CDRWs) + the newer Media Player. The result was a BSOD every time he put in an audio CD. Up until maybe 6 months ago there were many printers and network cards (reasonably curent models) still on store shelves without working Win2k drivers. And don't even get me started on video cards (and audio for that matter) with Win2k drivers in perpetual beta. I've had several users go from a working Win2k install to a broken mess just because they chose to go to use Windows Update and installed some package that didn't get along with their existing hardware/software setup.
The joys of having the entire contents of your "My Documents (and others) folder copied to every machine you ever sit down at, even if all you need to do is send a quick email.
Believe it or not, lots of businesses still use some fairly arcane looking text mode interfaces. I've actually seen accountants typing in printer1=lpt2 followed by a few print paramaters because the laser printer was out of toner or whatever. People really can learn if they feel they need to.
"How does he know that he did not introduced new bugs that will cost his company hours of downtime
three weeks from now?"
He doesn't but then again he wouldn't know that if he was installing a binary only patch from MS either. You need to do testing with any patch from any vendor and you allways need to know what you're going to do if there are unforseen problems. At least this way he knows exactly what was done and can put things back if necessary very quickly.
"It sort of makes me wonder how well O'Reilly's electronic manuals sell."
FWIW I just (well a few weeks ago) signed up for O'Reilly's safari service. Basically you pay a X dollars/mo for access to Y books ($9.95 for 5 books in my case). At the end of the month you can swap out any or all of the books for any others. I wasn't so sure I wanted to encourage this whole renting books thing but three things tipped the ballance for me:
1. It really did seem like a pretty good deal for me. I already have a small collection of O'Reilly books but there are some that I just don't need to keep and others that I'd like to preview in depth before buying.
2. The books are in html so I can easily read on any system I feel like, dump a chapter onto a floppy to take with me, or whatever.
3. The license was streight forward without any nasty Easter Eggs.
The way I see it is if they can trust me not to screw them over and respect me enough to use a sane license then I'm willing to their business model a try.
I especially liked this quote from "Martyr or criminal"
"Book publishers say they need a tough law like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act or they'll never be able to make money selling electronic books. If programmers are allowed to crack eBook encryption, the next Napster-style trading system will be exchanging copies of "Moby Dick" instead of songs by Moby, they warn. "
Someone needs to point out to these jokers that Moby Dick was written in 1851 and is therefore in the public domain! You can read it for yourself here:
http://www.americanliterature.com/MD/MDINDEX.HTM L
"Yes, what he did is legal in Russia. But he marketted and sold the product to US citizens, and it is certainly illegal in the US (whether it should be or not is a different issue)."
Well, his employer did, I don't think there's been any evidence so far that Sklyarov did personally though. In any event, the US company handling US sales and the people who actually bought the product should be the ones responsible.
That machine (if we're thinking of the same one) was down many times during the challenge (probably more than it was up). Some of the reboots (the logs were posted) were due to software upgrades but I don't think the rest were ever fully explained. There were also some times when the machine was not reachable (at least from here) but the logs showed that it was "up" for whatever reason.
I agree however shouldn't the fact that the "customers" of GPLd software have access to the source take some of the liability off of the origional author(s)? If the customer really wants to know if the software does what he/she wants they DO have the option of auditing it themselves or paying someone else to do it for them.
"Again, admining a Unix box CAN be cheaper and takes less time, but when I get around to an office once a month, that ain't going to cut it when then need new users added to the system and mail accounts set up...how about a new CGI installed for the webserver...that sorta stuff. Having a geek on call would be perfect, but the cost of a fulltime windows person is still going to be far cheaper than a part time unix person that knows what they are doing."
That's why you set up remote access to the Unix boxen. They want something changed and you take care of it without having to get off your butt and go drive somewhere:) I'm not saying that's the right solution everywhere but it's sometimes cheaper & faster than fixing up the mess that some winadmin made (ie. backups? what backups?).
Local universities. Ours sells everything from office furnature to autoclaves(sp) and there's plenty of power cubes and misc cables for free or cheap.
Self storage companies: Many of the local ones have auctions on a regular basis to sell off the stuff from the storage lockers that wern't paid up. With both a jail and University near by there's lots of interesting unclaimed stuff:)
The local thrift store is pretty worthless though since wife of another local geek works there and grabs all the good stuff right away.
Slashdot Mirror
First of all, why does everyone assume it's the IT guys' fault here?
Because:
A: It goes against the direct experience who set up and support both WinXX and Linux boxes on a regular basis.
B: It is the responsibility of whoever implemented your system to make sure it would do the job and to make sure they have a plan for dealing with problems.
C: Systems administration isn't so much about skills as it is about common sense. I do support for several small businesses and many of the people I've replaced were very skilled but didn't have the common sense to put security and reliability ahead of flash (and eventually got bit one too many times).
Both systems are reasonably reliable, but when the Linux box falls over, it consistently takes longer to track down the problem and get it back up and running.
This sentence I can buy. Nine times out of ten when a Windows box fails a simple reboot is all it takes to fix the problem. My Linux boxes fail far less often but when they do it's more likely to be something fairly serious.
No matter what kind of product you distribute there are going to be people with unreasonable expectations. I've had customers insist that I'm responsible for fixing some of Yahoo's broken messenger/groups features because "you're the one who put it on the computer" when in fact all I did was include a link to Yahoo in their bookmarks/favorites file. Thank god I didn't put a link to Ebay in there....
Companies sure aren't going to make the micropayments, because most companies do not believe in Open Source, and certainly don't believe in it enough to fund it's development, without something else coming back their way to put their own ledgers in the black.. trust me on this one,
Some companies already do fund Open Source projects in exactly the same way individuals do, by donating code.
So what? Propriatary software companies drop products all the time or get bought out by a competitor who just wants to kill the product.
As for company A promising to buy a lot of a product if Company B adds a particular feature, I'd just say that it takes a much bigger Company A to influence any of the major sofware makers than to simply hire a programmer to add feature X themselves (or bribe one of the existing developers to do it).
Then something is wrong with your config.
"I tend to lose all interest in their views as I know they're biased."
Show me someone who knows anything about a topic who isn't biased.
" I don't know anybody (including muy Debian using friends) who cares much about the DFSG compared to the OSD and FSF freedoms."
Unless something has changed all 3 of these are basically the same.
$40/month isn't much (if any) more than 1 phone line + standard internet service, at least here in Qwest land.
First and formost, check out the ISP Wireless mailing list and archives here:
http://ISP-Lists.ISP-Planet.com/isp-wireless/
Plan on spending a couple of long weekends looking over the archives because just about every question has been asked and answered multiple times on this list. If you subscribe, be aware that it is a very high volume list.
Also, give up on the idea of using NLOS connections. Yes it's possible under certain conditions to shoot through certain kinds of materials but if you plan your business around making that happen every time you're begging for trouble.
The sorts of people who would know to do that arn't the problem. The vast majority of hits I've been getting from this worm have been from systems where the owner doesn't know they have a web server installed. FWIW I'm still seeing CR hits from these people too.
I was surprised at how much more serious our local airport (a small regional one) was about security the last time I was there. The were manually searching many (maybe 1 in 4) bags and even made me demonstrate that my cell phone worked. In the past they've always been pretty layed back.
--
Ray
Sure if the machine only has one user... Don't get me wrong, I like VNC but it's got nothing to do with this article.
The joys of having the entire contents of your "My Documents (and others) folder copied to every machine you ever sit down at, even if all you need to do is send a quick email.
" especially because the patch is HARDER to install in unix because it probably requires a recompile of the service."
Hmm, how is this hard? :
apt-get update; apt-get upgrade
Believe it or not, lots of businesses still use some fairly arcane looking text mode interfaces. I've actually seen accountants typing in printer1=lpt2 followed by a few print paramaters because the laser printer was out of toner or whatever. People really can learn if they feel they need to.
"How does he know that he did not introduced new bugs that will cost his company hours of downtime
three weeks from now?"
He doesn't but then again he wouldn't know that if he was installing a binary only patch from MS either. You need to do testing with any patch from any vendor and you allways need to know what you're going to do if there are unforseen problems. At least this way he knows exactly what was done and can put things back if necessary very quickly.
"It sort of makes me wonder how well O'Reilly's electronic manuals sell."
FWIW I just (well a few weeks ago) signed up for O'Reilly's safari service. Basically you pay a X dollars/mo for access to Y books ($9.95 for 5 books in my case). At the end of the month you can swap out any or all of the books for any others. I wasn't so sure I wanted to encourage this whole renting books thing but three things tipped the ballance for me:
1. It really did seem like a pretty good deal for me. I already have a small collection of O'Reilly books but there are some that I just don't need to keep and others that I'd like to preview in depth before buying.
2. The books are in html so I can easily read on any system I feel like, dump a chapter onto a floppy to take with me, or whatever.
3. The license was streight forward without any nasty Easter Eggs.
The way I see it is if they can trust me not to screw them over and respect me enough to use a sane license then I'm willing to their business model a try.
--
Ray
I especially liked this quote from "Martyr or criminal"
M L
"Book publishers say they need a tough law like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act or they'll never be able to make money selling electronic books. If programmers are allowed to crack eBook encryption, the next Napster-style trading system will be exchanging copies of "Moby Dick" instead of songs by Moby, they warn. "
Someone needs to point out to these jokers that Moby Dick was written in 1851 and is therefore in the public domain! You can read it for yourself here:
http://www.americanliterature.com/MD/MDINDEX.HT
--
Ray
"Yes, what he did is legal in Russia. But he marketted and sold the product to US citizens, and it is certainly illegal in the US (whether it should be or not is a different issue)."
Well, his employer did, I don't think there's been any evidence so far that Sklyarov did personally though. In any event, the US company handling US sales and the people who actually bought the product should be the ones responsible.
-- Ray
The GPL doesn't say anything like that.
That machine (if we're thinking of the same one) was down many times during the challenge (probably more than it was up). Some of the reboots (the logs were posted) were due to software upgrades but I don't think the rest were ever fully explained. There were also some times when the machine was not reachable (at least from here) but the logs showed that it was "up" for whatever reason.
I agree however shouldn't the fact that the "customers" of GPLd software have access to the source take some of the liability off of the origional author(s)? If the customer really wants to know if the software does what he/she wants they DO have the option of auditing it themselves or paying someone else to do it for them.
"Again, admining a Unix box CAN be cheaper and takes less time, but when I get around to an office once a month, that ain't going to cut it when then need new users added to the system and mail accounts set up...how about a new CGI installed for the webserver...that sorta stuff. Having a geek on call would be perfect, but the cost of a fulltime windows person is still going to be far cheaper than a part time unix person that knows what they are doing."
:) I'm not saying that's the right solution everywhere but it's sometimes cheaper & faster than fixing up the mess that some winadmin made (ie. backups? what backups?).
That's why you set up remote access to the Unix boxen. They want something changed and you take care of it without having to get off your butt and go drive somewhere
--
Ray
A few other places worth looking:
Local universities. Ours sells everything from office furnature to autoclaves(sp) and there's plenty of power cubes and misc cables for free or cheap.
Self storage companies: Many of the local ones have auctions on a regular basis to sell off the stuff from the storage lockers that wern't paid up. With both a jail and University near by there's lots of interesting unclaimed stuff:)
The local thrift store is pretty worthless though since wife of another local geek works there and grabs all the good stuff right away.
--
Ray