OK, never is a bit of an overstatement. Every once in a while I update the PIX OS and need to reboot to apply the new software.
I picked up a 515E for next to nothing on ebay. Sure, you need to learn the PIX architecture and OS to make effective use of the thing, but it is solid as a rock.
There are plenty of books written on the PIX firewall appliances. Pickup a used PIX on ebay, buy a book, and throw away your $49.00 nat/firewall/router.
There is a current movement underway to slowly replace Microsoft at many companies.
At my company, we are slowly rolling out Macs, Google apps, and Linux. Sure, we still have Active Directory, Exchange and SQL, but they are of the 2003/2005 variety. We have NO plans to go to Vista, 2008 server, Exchange 2007, or SQL 2008.
Gmail will eventually replace our Exchange 2003 server, and the ONE application that needs SQL 2005 is running on a terminal server.
Even if MS gave their products away, we still would not consider them. They offer nothing in terms of usability, functionality, stability, or security over their competitors.
MS right now is fucked (they may be starting to realize this). I've been to a couple new product launch events for Microsoft recently, and I can't see one reason to buy their new stuff. ISVs are starting to make their products OS independent (or, at least, support multiple platforms) - thanks to Apple's desktop market share.
Companies will keep the old stuff and when it is time to replace it, MS will probably not be considered. It won't happen overnight - it will take a decade or so.
Here are just some of the issues I've had to deal with since the 10.5 release:
1. Open Directory replica failures. 2. Tiger clients either do not bind to 10.5 open directory or do not inherit preferences correctly. 3. Software Update Server did not work until 10.5.2 4. "Blue Screen of Death" issue on some workstations. 5. Renaming files on Samba shares would cause a kernel panic on some workstations. 6. iChat server still does not work in a mixed Active Directory/Open Directory environment 7. Finder Move data loss problem.
These are the only ones at the front of my memory right now - I'm sure there are other issues. Granted these issues are a mix of Server and Workstation problems, but the lack of stability remains. My users do not care whether the bug manifests itself on a server or a workstation. If it breaks somewhere it is a BUG.
The problem may be that we are requiring students to use the WRONG type of calculator.
When I attended high-school, students were encouraged to purchase and use graphing calculators. The expectation was that a quick graphical representation of a function would increase the understanding of the function.
Almost everyone bought those silly TI calculators - math teachers expected to see them, and assisted the students in using them.
My math teacher almost shit a brick when I showed her my HP 48G. She asked why I bought it and I told her that I liked the way a fully programmable RPN calculator worked. Sadly, she had no idea how to use it.
That calculator (and my Radio Shack COCO2 with embedded basic) started me off into the Engineering and CS course of study.
Calculators aren't the enemy of math education any more than power tools are the enemy of the trades.
As high-speed internet connections are used for purposes other than web-browsing and email, metered access will be a disaster.
At my house, I have an Analog Terminal Adapter (telephone), multiple satellite boxes, apple TVs, game consoles, video cameras, alarm system, and HVAC thermostat all plugged into my network. Many of these devices "call home" for one reason or another, and I have little, to zero control over that process.
Metered access will either prevent me from using these devices to their full potential, or cause me to spend a lot of money to keep them working.
Metered access, especially at these rates, is nothing more than an attempt to keep demand artificially low. Once the infrastructure guys "reduce demand" the financial pressures of network upgrades go away, and the shareholders become happy.
If metered network access succeeds, it will only be due the monopoly status of the provider, not because the market wants it.
Rigged elections, pollution and the environment, and a war based on lies does not really concern Joe six-pack; but mess with his TV and you WILL feel the backlash.
I suspect cable companies don't realize how angry people will be once they realize that the 4-5 TVs in their house will no longer work (without a box) as digital cable is forced down the throats of their customers.
Just recently Cablevision started to move analog channels to their digital service which means one day you have a channel, and the next day you don't unless you rent a box from the cable company.
Cablevision just did this to me. It would cost me another $20 a month just to get a couple of perfectly fine analog TVs working again, on top of my $160/mo I already give the cable company. My solution was to go to Dish Network - they gave me all the boxes I need for about $20 LESS a month than I pay now - and no contract.
Soon I'll be moving my voice service to Broadvoice. Eventually my plan is to buy NO services from Cablevision at all.
Vote with your wallet and these idiots might start listening to their customers.
A few comments seem to suggest that using gmail for your business is "unprofessional".
Gmail can host email for your domain. You manage your domain, Gmail hosts your mail - most people will not realize that your email is kept at Gmail's servers.
This product grew out of the Postini merger. Many, many companies use Postini for "front-end" email security and filtering. Your domain's MX records point to Postini's mail servers. Postini receives your mail, scans it, filters it, and then delivers it to your mail servers. I've used Postini's service in the past, and it is an awesome service.
The only difference with Gmail is that the mail now is not forwarded to your mail server, it is kept at Gmail.
My comment was meant to highlight the large number of competitors that Microsoft never had before.
Google, Apple, and the open source community now have entire application platforms that can compete with Microsoft.
Does this mean that all the networks built in the last 20 years will, overnight, switch to something else? No. What it does mean is that slowly as new systems are evaluated and rolled out, Microsoft is being considered less and less.
Just yesterday we rolled out OpenFire as our internal IM system. We considered Sharepoint, but it was bigger and more expensive than we needed. iChat server could not integrate with our directory system (despite what Apple docs say).
Microsoft losing mindshare to others should not be a surprise - when you have Microsoft's marketshare, the only direction you can realistically go is down.
I'm a 32 year old IT guy with a wife and kid. I love all things technology.
I got our DVR the minute our cable company offered it - why? Because it was available.
My wife uses it to watch Lost at her convenience - she skips the ads. My daughter uses it to watch Elmo (no ads there).
That leaves me - I never use the DVR - why? I hardly watch TV - it's background noise when I exercise or work on my laptop. There is no show I regularly watch. I see this trend happening with my kid sister in college and her friends. They don't watch TV - it is left on in the background while they do things online.
Some networks are posting their content online and forcing ads to the end viewer, but I doubt that will work. I've seen my wife watch back episodes of Lost online while she works. During commercials, she switches to her work, and switches back to watching the show after the commercial.
Ad agencies will have a hard time with this phenomenon. Expect to see more blatant product placement in shows instead of 30 second ad spots.
Microsoft if fighting a battle against becoming irrelevant. On one hand their products are hindered by backwards compatibility required by the business community, yet on another hand, their products are becoming irrelevant thanks to web platforms like Google apps, and virtualization tools like Parallels and VMware.
If Microsoft cuts their ties with "old-school" software like VBA, ActiveX, and 16-bit dos-era software to improve their current offerings, they slit their throats with the business community - it will force their "cash base" of customers to find something new - and it probably won't be a Microsoft product.
If Microsoft does not cut their ties with old-school software, the development cost of keeping the backwards compatibility causes their current software to stagnate compared to the dynamic offerings of Apple, Google, and the open source community.
Microsoft is becoming less relevant by the day. I see it at my company and many others.
There is an issue with XP Service Pack 3 when installing on a Mac with BootCamp. During the free disk space check, the SP3 installer reports that there is not enough free diskspace.
The fix is a quick registry edit:
Create a regkey(REG_SZ) (String Value) called BootDir under HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup and set the value to C:\
Reboot, and then proceed with the SP3 install. That little bit of knowledge cost $295.00 and 3 hours of my time.
MADD's founder broke with the group in the 1980s: MADD founder Candy Lightner broke ties with the group in the 1980s. In 2002, she told the Washington Times: "[MADD] has become far more neo-prohibitionist than I had ever wanted or envisioned... I didn't start MADD to deal with alcohol. I started MADD to deal with the issue of drunk driving."
MADD is a bunch of nutcases that want ANY amount of drinking to be illegal. If we let these special intrest groups take our freedoms away, one by one, we will no longer be a free people. Our founding fathers would be ashamed.
Games are just that - games. They are a convenient way to explain what would otherwise be called bad parenting.
Exchange isn't something you can take out of the box, install while you are having a few beers, and expect great results. A large Exchange deployment requires planning. Everything from the server and network architecture to the storage subsystems needs to be thought out. This includes backups and archiving.
There are lots of companies that make tons of products to do this. CA, Symantec, and EMC, just to name a few.
This upgrade looks like a convenient cover for something more sinister.
With 2008 server Microsoft is really starting to embrace the command line. Powershell seems nice, and 2008 can be installed without any GUI in "core" mode, and managed via external graphical tools or SSH.
Now MS wants you to manage your Unix/Linux machines with a GUI? MS strategy seems more disjointed than ever.
The guys that develop our voting machines should be held to the same standards that the Nevada Gaming Commission requires for cashless wagering systems:
I have a Macbook Air and I solved this problem by tethering my Palm 700wx via bluetooth to my MBA. No hacking, no sacrifices (WiFi and Bluetooth still intact).
Apart from the fun of moding - why would anyone else do this?
I'm not a mathematician. My experience with mathematics is limited to my college education (electrical engineering and computer science).
Mathematics, in my use, is nothing more than language to describe the natural world. In that sense, it is both an invention and a discovery. The invention part is the actual mechanics of the language, and the stuff it is trying to describe is the discovery.
"better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer"
Our liberties and freedoms were secured by the blood of our forefathers for a reason. There is no reason "important enough" to forsake those liberties and freedoms.
The entire senate should be ashamed of this waste of senate time.
Until every citizen of the United States has the ability to get an education, a good paying job, live in a safe neighborhood, access to excellent healthcare, and a comfortable retirement none of these "distraction issues" should even be brought up in the senate.
Fix the big problems first - effectively and permanently.
Only then will our legislators have earned the ability to debate lesser issues.
Blu-ray's biggest problem will be demonstrating additional value to joe six-pack. Sony needs to look at what happened to the music industry:
CDs had obvious quality improvements over cassettes and records at the time. As the hardware prices fell, the $5 to $10 premium for CDs was justifiable in the minds of most consumers. Two successors to the CD format (SACD and DVD audio) have pretty much failed - the cost is too high and the benefit over conventional CDs is not obvious to most consumers.
Today, almost no one I know listens to CDs any longer. Compressed audio in the form of MP3s are good enough and very convenient.
Blu-ray will have the same problem. DVDs are "good enough" for most people, and you can't beat the convenience of on-demand high-def video. Devices like Apple TV/iTunes and set-top boxes from cable companies will have the lion's share of the HD movie distribution business in the future.
Physical discs like DVDs will be relegated to portable use (kids in the back seat of a car...etc), and in that environment, do you really care about HD? If the answer is no, then Blu-ray is in trouble.
By following FFIEC rules and implementing a TRUE 2-factor authentication system like RSA tokens.
Any credentials stored by a keylogger are useless due to the token expiration.
RSA tokens are not perfect, they are still vulnerable to a man-in-the-middle attack, but those attacks are rare, and can be mitigated through the use of certificates.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, never is a bit of an overstatement. Every once in a while I update the PIX OS and need to reboot to apply the new software.
I picked up a 515E for next to nothing on ebay. Sure, you need to learn the PIX architecture and OS to make effective use of the thing, but it is solid as a rock.
There are plenty of books written on the PIX firewall appliances. Pickup a used PIX on ebay, buy a book, and throw away your $49.00 nat/firewall/router.
-ted
Here is my response that I sent to the Obama campaign:
My spouse and I will no longer be donating to the Obama campaign. Barack Obama's support of the telecom immunity bill is disappointing.
We also withdraw our offer to host a fellow at our home.
This bill shows that Corporate America is now above the law.
Barack Obama's stance on Corporate influence in our political system is now clear.
Regards,
Ted and Shelly Varias
There is a current movement underway to slowly replace Microsoft at many companies.
At my company, we are slowly rolling out Macs, Google apps, and Linux. Sure, we still have Active Directory, Exchange and SQL, but they are of the 2003/2005 variety. We have NO plans to go to Vista, 2008 server, Exchange 2007, or SQL 2008.
Gmail will eventually replace our Exchange 2003 server, and the ONE application that needs SQL 2005 is running on a terminal server.
Even if MS gave their products away, we still would not consider them. They offer nothing in terms of usability, functionality, stability, or security over their competitors.
MS right now is fucked (they may be starting to realize this). I've been to a couple new product launch events for Microsoft recently, and I can't see one reason to buy their new stuff. ISVs are starting to make their products OS independent (or, at least, support multiple platforms) - thanks to Apple's desktop market share.
Companies will keep the old stuff and when it is time to replace it, MS will probably not be considered. It won't happen overnight - it will take a decade or so.
-ted
Here are just some of the issues I've had to deal with since the 10.5 release:
1. Open Directory replica failures.
2. Tiger clients either do not bind to 10.5 open directory or do not inherit preferences correctly.
3. Software Update Server did not work until 10.5.2
4. "Blue Screen of Death" issue on some workstations.
5. Renaming files on Samba shares would cause a kernel panic on some workstations.
6. iChat server still does not work in a mixed Active Directory/Open Directory environment
7. Finder Move data loss problem.
These are the only ones at the front of my memory right now - I'm sure there are other issues. Granted these issues are a mix of Server and Workstation problems, but the lack of stability remains. My users do not care whether the bug manifests itself on a server or a workstation. If it breaks somewhere it is a BUG.
-ted
The problem may be that we are requiring students to use the WRONG type of calculator.
When I attended high-school, students were encouraged to purchase and use graphing calculators. The expectation was that a quick graphical representation of a function would increase the understanding of the function.
Almost everyone bought those silly TI calculators - math teachers expected to see them, and assisted the students in using them.
My math teacher almost shit a brick when I showed her my HP 48G. She asked why I bought it and I told her that I liked the way a fully programmable RPN calculator worked. Sadly, she had no idea how to use it.
That calculator (and my Radio Shack COCO2 with embedded basic) started me off into the Engineering and CS course of study.
Calculators aren't the enemy of math education any more than power tools are the enemy of the trades.
-ted
As high-speed internet connections are used for purposes other than web-browsing and email, metered access will be a disaster.
At my house, I have an Analog Terminal Adapter (telephone), multiple satellite boxes, apple TVs, game consoles, video cameras, alarm system, and HVAC thermostat all plugged into my network. Many of these devices "call home" for one reason or another, and I have little, to zero control over that process.
Metered access will either prevent me from using these devices to their full potential, or cause me to spend a lot of money to keep them working.
Metered access, especially at these rates, is nothing more than an attempt to keep demand artificially low. Once the infrastructure guys "reduce demand" the financial pressures of network upgrades go away, and the shareholders become happy.
If metered network access succeeds, it will only be due the monopoly status of the provider, not because the market wants it.
-ted
Rigged elections, pollution and the environment, and a war based on lies does not really concern Joe six-pack; but mess with his TV and you WILL feel the backlash.
I suspect cable companies don't realize how angry people will be once they realize that the 4-5 TVs in their house will no longer work (without a box) as digital cable is forced down the throats of their customers.
Just recently Cablevision started to move analog channels to their digital service which means one day you have a channel, and the next day you don't unless you rent a box from the cable company.
Cablevision just did this to me. It would cost me another $20 a month just to get a couple of perfectly fine analog TVs working again, on top of my $160/mo I already give the cable company. My solution was to go to Dish Network - they gave me all the boxes I need for about $20 LESS a month than I pay now - and no contract.
Soon I'll be moving my voice service to Broadvoice. Eventually my plan is to buy NO services from Cablevision at all.
Vote with your wallet and these idiots might start listening to their customers.
-ted
A few comments seem to suggest that using gmail for your business is "unprofessional".
Gmail can host email for your domain. You manage your domain, Gmail hosts your mail - most people will not realize that your email is kept at Gmail's servers.
This product grew out of the Postini merger. Many, many companies use Postini for "front-end" email security and filtering. Your domain's MX records point to Postini's mail servers. Postini receives your mail, scans it, filters it, and then delivers it to your mail servers. I've used Postini's service in the past, and it is an awesome service.
The only difference with Gmail is that the mail now is not forwarded to your mail server, it is kept at Gmail.
Unprofessional? Hardly.
-ted
My comment was meant to highlight the large number of competitors that Microsoft never had before.
Google, Apple, and the open source community now have entire application platforms that can compete with Microsoft.
Does this mean that all the networks built in the last 20 years will, overnight, switch to something else? No. What it does mean is that slowly as new systems are evaluated and rolled out, Microsoft is being considered less and less.
Just yesterday we rolled out OpenFire as our internal IM system. We considered Sharepoint, but it was bigger and more expensive than we needed. iChat server could not integrate with our directory system (despite what Apple docs say).
Microsoft losing mindshare to others should not be a surprise - when you have Microsoft's marketshare, the only direction you can realistically go is down.
-ted
I'm a 32 year old IT guy with a wife and kid. I love all things technology.
I got our DVR the minute our cable company offered it - why? Because it was available.
My wife uses it to watch Lost at her convenience - she skips the ads. My daughter uses it to watch Elmo (no ads there).
That leaves me - I never use the DVR - why? I hardly watch TV - it's background noise when I exercise or work on my laptop. There is no show I regularly watch. I see this trend happening with my kid sister in college and her friends. They don't watch TV - it is left on in the background while they do things online.
Some networks are posting their content online and forcing ads to the end viewer, but I doubt that will work. I've seen my wife watch back episodes of Lost online while she works. During commercials, she switches to her work, and switches back to watching the show after the commercial.
Ad agencies will have a hard time with this phenomenon. Expect to see more blatant product placement in shows instead of 30 second ad spots.
-ted
Microsoft if fighting a battle against becoming irrelevant. On one hand their products are hindered by backwards compatibility required by the business community, yet on another hand, their products are becoming irrelevant thanks to web platforms like Google apps, and virtualization tools like Parallels and VMware.
If Microsoft cuts their ties with "old-school" software like VBA, ActiveX, and 16-bit dos-era software to improve their current offerings, they slit their throats with the business community - it will force their "cash base" of customers to find something new - and it probably won't be a Microsoft product.
If Microsoft does not cut their ties with old-school software, the development cost of keeping the backwards compatibility causes their current software to stagnate compared to the dynamic offerings of Apple, Google, and the open source community.
Microsoft is becoming less relevant by the day. I see it at my company and many others.
-ted
There is an issue with XP Service Pack 3 when installing on a Mac with BootCamp. During the free disk space check, the SP3 installer reports that there is not enough free diskspace.
The fix is a quick registry edit:
Create a regkey(REG_SZ) (String Value) called BootDir under HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup and set the value to C:\
Reboot, and then proceed with the SP3 install. That little bit of knowledge cost $295.00 and 3 hours of my time.
-ted
Yes they are both automobiles, so according to Darl McBride's logic, one must be a copy of the other?
To claim that Linux is a copy of Unix, and to claim that there are no programming books for Linux as proof, is absolutely absurd.
I'm no attorney, but could this testimony be considered perjury even though the testimony was given at a civil trial and not a criminal trial?
Darl McBride belongs in jail.
-ted
MADD's founder broke with the group in the 1980s:
... I didn't start MADD to deal with alcohol. I started MADD to deal with the issue of drunk driving."
MADD founder Candy Lightner broke ties with the group in the 1980s. In 2002, she told the Washington Times: "[MADD] has become far more neo-prohibitionist than I had ever wanted or envisioned
MADD is a bunch of nutcases that want ANY amount of drinking to be illegal. If we let these special intrest groups take our freedoms away, one by one, we will no longer be a free people. Our founding fathers would be ashamed.
Games are just that - games. They are a convenient way to explain what would otherwise be called bad parenting.
-ted
right here:
http://www.emc.com/products/family/email-xtender-family.htm
Exchange isn't something you can take out of the box, install while you are having a few beers, and expect great results. A large Exchange deployment requires planning. Everything from the server and network architecture to the storage subsystems needs to be thought out. This includes backups and archiving.
There are lots of companies that make tons of products to do this. CA, Symantec, and EMC, just to name a few.
This upgrade looks like a convenient cover for something more sinister.
-ted
With 2008 server Microsoft is really starting to embrace the command line. Powershell seems nice, and 2008 can be installed without any GUI in "core" mode, and managed via external graphical tools or SSH.
Now MS wants you to manage your Unix/Linux machines with a GUI? MS strategy seems more disjointed than ever.
-ted
Boy, that was a cheezy joke huh?
-ted
That sums up the problem nicely. It's a shame more people in this country don't care about our electoral process.
-ted
The guys that develop our voting machines should be held to the same standards that the Nevada Gaming Commission requires for cashless wagering systems:
http://gaming.nv.gov/documents/pdf/07jan11_techstds_kiosks_proposed.pdf
These guys have some ridiculously high standards to ensure the integrity of gaming equipment. Why can't we get similar standards for voting machines?
-ted
I have a Macbook Air and I solved this problem by tethering my Palm 700wx via bluetooth to my MBA. No hacking, no sacrifices (WiFi and Bluetooth still intact).
Apart from the fun of moding - why would anyone else do this?
-ted
I'm not a mathematician. My experience with mathematics is limited to my college education (electrical engineering and computer science).
Mathematics, in my use, is nothing more than language to describe the natural world. In that sense, it is both an invention and a discovery. The invention part is the actual mechanics of the language, and the stuff it is trying to describe is the discovery.
-ted
"better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer"
Our liberties and freedoms were secured by the blood of our forefathers for a reason. There is no reason "important enough" to forsake those liberties and freedoms.
-ted
The entire senate should be ashamed of this waste of senate time.
Until every citizen of the United States has the ability to get an education, a good paying job, live in a safe neighborhood, access to excellent healthcare, and a comfortable retirement none of these "distraction issues" should even be brought up in the senate.
Fix the big problems first - effectively and permanently.
Only then will our legislators have earned the ability to debate lesser issues.
-ted
Blu-ray's biggest problem will be demonstrating additional value to joe six-pack. Sony needs to look at what happened to the music industry:
CDs had obvious quality improvements over cassettes and records at the time. As the hardware prices fell, the $5 to $10 premium for CDs was justifiable in the minds of most consumers. Two successors to the CD format (SACD and DVD audio) have pretty much failed - the cost is too high and the benefit over conventional CDs is not obvious to most consumers.
Today, almost no one I know listens to CDs any longer. Compressed audio in the form of MP3s are good enough and very convenient.
Blu-ray will have the same problem. DVDs are "good enough" for most people, and you can't beat the convenience of on-demand high-def video. Devices like Apple TV/iTunes and set-top boxes from cable companies will have the lion's share of the HD movie distribution business in the future.
Physical discs like DVDs will be relegated to portable use (kids in the back seat of a car...etc), and in that environment, do you really care about HD? If the answer is no, then Blu-ray is in trouble.
-ted
By following FFIEC rules and implementing a TRUE 2-factor authentication system like RSA tokens.
Any credentials stored by a keylogger are useless due to the token expiration.
RSA tokens are not perfect, they are still vulnerable to a man-in-the-middle attack, but those attacks are rare, and can be mitigated through the use of certificates.
-ted