There are ways to deal with this, too. Humans can't respond instantly, so the 'trick' has, in some cases, been to tell the bot to wait before a response.
Instead, you could tell the bot to do comparative analysis of the question/statement for a moment or two, and if it doesn't have info on the topic in its database, it could search for the information (via google or the like) and retrieve something which it could approximate a response from. This seems like it'd be relatively trivial to perform on account of search engines often returning results that answer questions, and there are plenty of chat logs online, which it might be able to pull from directly.
Additionally, you could 'taint' it, so that a 'stupid' bot would not be able to (say) search for 'topic expertise' type questions. Make the bot a barista or a clerk, and seed its database with pertinent information relating to that 'role'. Ask the bot about computers, and the bot doesn't know how to respond due to a search criteria that demerits off-knowledge searches: for instance, (say) the WizzBang 5000 is an awesome espresso machine, and the bot is a barrista. But it also might be the name of a computer. She should know that, as a barista, it's a coffee machine - unless she's dull. But if it's not in her database, she'd have to search for it, with a preference for her area of expertise (eg. +coffee, +espresso, +cafe, +mocha, etc.) Search results which return computer related terms could automatically be ignored, and so on and so forth, to help improve the quality of the responses.
From what I can tell, the biggest problem with writing a good bot is in implementing the language parsing in a fashion which is relatively error prone; this demands a good understanding of language rules, regular expression, colloquial exceptions to language, and the like. Most bots appear to lack at least one of these things to sufficient degree.
My experience has been that the perceived gender of the bot plays a great bit into the believable nature of the bot due to response expectations.
This, at least, only holds true with a male chatter and a 'female' bot - and I'm not talking about virtual sex chat or anything like that. A person can, for a substantial period of time, be tricked by a 'flirty' bot that comes across as a cute, dumb female. It's kind of funny to see a (sub-average intelligence, I'd guess) person hold a running dialog/virtual relationship for several months with a bot.
It's also much easier to trick someone when they don't know they're being tricked, and where there is no preconception of prior familiarity (IE, such as on an IRC 'chat' channel). It'd be a good tactic to employ by the FBI, I think.
Could be. My 'main' IBM Model M keyboard, built in '82, is still going strong. It spent the first 14 or so years of its life in a high school computer lab, and I eat things like pretzels (ie salt + crumbs) at it. I've only 'cleaned' it once, but I've turned it over and placed it against the wall, kicked, and shaken it many a time to clean it out.
(Are you sure you didn't buy a couple murder weapons off ebay?:P)
However, my primary keyboard for the past 5 years has been a Thinkpad X30s keyboard. I've used it so much that there are literal divots in the keys (ie, fingernails have, over time, cut into and worn away the plastic to a degree that the divots are easily felt on a half dozen of the keys - not just polished smooth, but literal dents), and it's not wearing out yet. Yes, I eat while using my laptop (I've cleaned it out 2-3 times). It's had several minor liquid spills as well (coffee + milk, water).
The quality thing isn't necessarily shackled to a specific keyboard. I've killed a couple IBM PS/2 keyboards. I've got an old Gateway 2000 keyboard, circa 1994 or so, that still works fine (and I really like it's feel for gaming).
I have three Model Ms that were made between January 1982 and December 1984 (IIRC). They all still work just fine.
For some things, I still prefer them. Until I got an IBM X30 Thinkpad 5 or so years ago, they were certainly the preferred keyboard. However, I've grown to like having a 'keyboard nipple' pointing device, and the responsiveness of the keyboards is great. Even the x30 keyboard is a little smaller than even a normal keyboard, and I've got big hands, I've found it's perfect - as I don't need to move my fingers as much, and there's still enough of a key pitch that multiple keystrokes per punch don't occur.
Just wish keyboards like the X30 (and many of the subsequent IBM/Lenovo) had/has were more readily for all computing platforms (USB standalone).
Have you contributed the code to allow for a single-sign-on back up to the projects? The inability to tie in easily to central auth servers -particularly kerbos/AD - is one of the biggest shortcomings of open source packages such as the ones above.
Then corporate policy needs to change. Push a reboot over the domain to the workstations (+/- 2 hour window) during the night.
Or better yet, use the wake-on-LAN functionality every PC has now to wake them up at 5AM +/- an hour or so after automatically shutting them down at 6PM the night prior.
There is a huge, huge difference between old PCs with CRTs (or even new ones with LCDs, but substantially less so) and something like a thinclient.
Long story short, switching over from fairly old PCs to thinclients in an organization which doesn't buy new equipment all that often will see the organization saving the cost of the thinclients in a handful of years in power use alone.
Yes, there's the server side to consider, but realistically: it'll still cost less in overall licensing, the hardware costs are lower overall, the power use is night-and-day (many/most TCs use less than 2-3 watts in operation), and there is a much lower maintenance/management cost involved.
Short of Batman going back to his 1930s roots and start killing people brutally using guns, clubs, lead slappers, and the like, how do you suppose they'd get an "R"? Show more dead bodies and gore? That'd not improve the film a bit.
No, Hannibal Lecter could not have been conveyed in a PG-13 film. Because, by definition, horror has to be scary, and scary means children don't get to see it. Even if it's "just" psychologically terrifying doesn't mean it gets a PG-13. There's a big step from "psycho-thriller" to "psycho-horror" and "psycho-horror" lands a movie firmly in R territory.
Also part of the point was that damn, that was seriously rated PG-13 and not R?
No doubt. I had to check on IMDB - even though I'd seen the film 3 times - to verify that it was, indeed, PG-13. Because I didn't believe it. The most recent one was dark, dark, dark, and not only because it had an at-the-time dead Ledger playing the craziest portrayal of the Joker yet.
Granted, a lot of movies fall on the 'wrong' side of the rating line, often. But as a general rule, studios want to avoid "R" movies anyway. Parents are trusting, and will let their kids view PG-13 films unattended, but not R. I expect this to change as PG-13 films get more nudity and swearing.
Ironically, films have kind of mellowed out all along. Used to be, PG films would occasionally have nudity and inter-gender violence (1974, Reynolds, The Longest Yard). It seems uncommon to see 'major' films like that made today at all, never mind with anything less than an "R" rating.
They are grittier, people are less 'cookie cutter/superficial bad guys.' In most of the non R rated superhero movies I've seen you could always walk away with the feeling that the main villain could have, at any moment, had a change of heart because he's not really evil - he's just made bad choices (lol.)
That's a large part of the reason why I'd rather my 5-year-old son watch, say, Commando than a modern equivalent that's rated PG-13 (say, Ironman). The "good guy" isn't as clear cut, and aside from that, there's really little difference in the film itself aside from the level of swearing.
Sure, there's a quality difference (particularly in my example), and sometimes a difference in the level of gore, but if you want to confuse a child, let him watch a PG-13 action film.
(Oh, and the 2 most recent Batman films were - thankfully, inaccurately, IMO - rated PG-13. Their ambiguity was somewhat less than in other PG13 films, though they were pretty dark and gritty.)
The studios have it all wrong. The reason Watchmen tanked was because it sucked. Badly.
First, you take a half-rate superhero and make a movie out of him. Starting off, it's already disadvantaged: there's a reason s/he's a half-rate comic book hero. He has a crummy story, costume, plot, writers, or what have you which the vast majority of people do not like. They're already striking out before they've even got the storyboard - which is, frankly, astonishing, because it's a comic book, after all.
Second, they don't fix most of the flaws in the comic, but amplify them, in the creation of the movie. That's like strike three, except the third ball hits you in the face and kills you.
(Thankfully, today's PG-13 is, in many ways, as gratuitous and maturely themed as yesteryear's R.)
It's too bad, really. I remember when FilePlanet was actually a really good site to get patches, mods, and demos from.
As FilePlanet (and similar sites) became shittier, I actually found myself more inclined to look on various warez sites for full game versions. Or, as more often happened, I'd just not bother and pull out an old-but-good game and play that instead.
Maybe if they didn't suck the brass nob so hard, they'd not be going away.
I've noticed in a number of occasions that Open Source stuff is often a double-edged sword.
You get it in, and it works - it does its job silently and unobtrusively. It has no visibility, no notable interfaces that say "this is open source/Linux" or anything like that. Contrast that to something like Office or Sharepoint which is noticeably branded "Microsoft" - whether through icons, widgets, actual branding. It's always visible, for good or (often, when it's not working) bad. But at least it's visible.
Whether you use WebSphere from IBM or Sharepoint from Microsoft, you have the ability to leverage an API and develop a custom solution around something that has a few things.
1. A community. 2. Documentation 3. Support
You have all of these with various Open Source CMS packages as well:
1) Community. Community defines Open Source in a sense - and there's a much larger, more involved community of users to pull from. 2) Documentation. The bigger projects, such as Drupal, have incredible documentation. I'm unfamiliar with WebSphere, but finding anything specific to help deal with SharePoint issues (short of contacting MS) can sometimes be difficult. 3) Support. Not only can a person very easily get free support through the community, or dig into the project themselves to find the problem (which is half the reason you need paid-for support in the first place), but there are many companies out there providing paid-for support for OSS CMS.
That said, I am actually a big fan of Sharepoint because it's retardedly simple to operate, administer, deploy, and regulate. In an 'enterprise' you are likely running Windows on the desktop with MS Office, and Sharepoint is a simple and inexpensive fit for an enterprise like that.
And what do you do when one part of that software stack needs to be replaced due to a verifiable business case? You are shackled to Sharepoint + dependencies, and you can't move the dependencies independently to something else.
That's one thing to like about Drupal: it provides an (optionally) very minimal tool set/framework upon which you can build pretty much anything without mucking into the actual Drupal internals. It's "object oriented web design", which is very nice.
There are plenty of examples of web services running on Open Source for 'enterprise' use - groupware, CRM, accounting, the works. Some of these packages are very good.
Its hard to be specific/determine what you're trying to do without knowing more specifics as to what you're looking for. Of the groupware projects I'm aware of, I know the following have a fair amount of support/use:
Of these, I know that Plone, Drupal, and Typo3 are all "platforms" for developing, managing, and extending content. I seem to recall either eGroupWare or OpenGroupWare extend/integrate with MS Office products. No, it's not going to be the level of integration that Sharepoint stuff offers, but it's something to mention, at any rate (and isn't going to have the massive licensing costs + perpetual lock-in that a MS solution has*).
Plone, in particular, has a lot of support and corporate/"enterprise" use. From their site:
Plone is among the top 2% of all open source projects worldwide, with 200 core developers and more than 300 solution providers in 57 countries. The project has been actively developed since 2001, is available in more than 40 languages, and has the best security track record of any major CMS. It is owned by the Plone Foundation, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization, and is available for all major operating systems. Sources: CVE and Ohloh.
Akamai (yeah, that Akamai - the guys who load balance Microsoft web servers)
Nokia (QT Software stuff)
MyCity ("real time monitoring system for Cities, Towns, Districts or utilities. It makes use of the GPRS service offered by the various GSM network operators")
Discover Magazine
Novell, Inc. (for enterprise services)
NASAScience (public site for NASA's Science Mission Directorate)
FSF (yeah, those hippies)
universities, university science/it departments, hospitals, public/government sites... the list goes on.
Those are notable company names, and at least in the case of Akamai, Novell and Nokia, everyone in IT should know about them. They're also some fairly diverse (and expansive) implementations using the same central CMS - and they're not shackled to a single software backend, able to run on any OS and server combination they could imagine.
* The cost factor associated with MS solution lock-in is a big consideration, bigger than just a simple argument of something like "OpenOffice vs. MS Office". With a web-based, top-level technology like this, it's much, much more important to keep the technologies used "open" - because it is the top-level interface to all your data. You can not move away from a closed package on the backend without moving the entire system, at once, to something open (more often than not, with MS). You're basically stuck with that stack unless you want to start over; there's no ability to independently consider parts of the stack and replace them, as there often is with open systems.
Well, 'brainstorm' has been around for a while as an English word.
Though, just wait: Microsoft will buck the trend, trying to be a trend-setting force in the market, and come out with some sort of derivative. Like, maybe, Brainorgy. Or Wetware. Or something like that.
Though, seriously: I can see popular OS and application vendors making something like this much more common. Not only does it allow users to be more involved in deciding which bugs are the most irritating (on the desktop), or which features should be upcoming, but it allows users to have a little investment in the software they're using, as well. "Don't like it? Use something else."
I've got $10 that Apple is the first company to have a native 'brainstorm' application for their 'desktop' OS - or, at least, a web portal that is transparent enough to appear so.
I did something like this. Just installed Ubuntu from a LiveCD using the "Text mode install" option. It installed a minimal install which booted quickly. (I did this with the internal disks unplugged to guarantee that GRUB got installed to the correct place). You could do this with Debian as well (which would be preferred for something like this, IMO, except for the way that Debian's kernel still uses the old ata drivers and it might cause some issues).
Theoretically, you could then do something like just doing an 'aptitude install firefox' - and it'll install Firefox and the required X files. Then script X to start automatically (you could use gdm for this, but I think that might slow things down a bit) with firefox as the shell. If you were to put this in inittab (which, urg, Ubuntu no longer uses) the result would look something like this:
Then put 'firefox' in the user's.xinitrc and remove all 'services' and other things which start at boot (ie, most anything in/etc/rc#.d can be moved to K##name except for the networking and maybe sound related services).
Bingo, simple "web browsing" terminal that boots (very) quickly. (At least, that's how I'd do it.)
Alternatively, since you want openoffice on there too, I'd put icewm with two icons on there. That'll keep it lean. (And yes, it all can go on,and very quickly from, USB. Remove the USB when you're done.)
I set up a WindPC running Ubuntu for my mom at Christmas. I'll get a call every once in a while that something's not behaving properly (usually, it's not resuming from suspend). She's quite computer illiterate; the usual best fix is to have her hit ctl-alt-backspace and restart X (such as was the case when an app was frozen and stealing input focus, and I didn't have access to an IP network to kill the app). It happens in all software environments, not just Windows.
There are a couple ways to 'automate' your backups being "offline" but still automated; not perfect, but better than what they apparently had.
Server on the Internet, with a private subnet behind said server where your backup server(s) are. Internal interface on server must have absolutely zero services running, and the connection must not be routable.
However, backup servers also need to be not kept "online" when not backing up. You can:
* Keep them powered off and only power them on (automatically) when you're doing backups (which occur on a schedule from the main server). * Keep them on, but with the network interface down. * If the backup servers use external storage but are kept on, have those on a separate power unit that powers up only on schedule as well.
Personally, this sounds like an "inside job": it's malicious and performed with a great deal of knowledge of the operation. That speaks of a disgruntled employee to me, not some kiddie at it for kicks. There are a lot of steps which can be taken, but realistically, you're not going to be able to deal with something like this unless you've got your data backups completely 'unattached'.
Oh man, you just described one of my previous employer's primary software tool: a custom app written in a nominal WYSIWYG/Access type database package, which had undergone 6+ years of near-constant linear modification and addition. This, on top of one or two upgrades over the years that broke functionality which needed to be hacked around.
So, question: how do you work around something like that? This particular situation, in my estimation, required an entirely new product. What they had couldn't be fixed, not by one or ten people, in a reasonable time frame. I was working on moving the whole mess on over to MySQL + PHP after their dismissal of alternatives, when I got sacked: "we don't need you anymore, we decided to go with a vendored app".
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There are ways to deal with this, too. Humans can't respond instantly, so the 'trick' has, in some cases, been to tell the bot to wait before a response.
Instead, you could tell the bot to do comparative analysis of the question/statement for a moment or two, and if it doesn't have info on the topic in its database, it could search for the information (via google or the like) and retrieve something which it could approximate a response from. This seems like it'd be relatively trivial to perform on account of search engines often returning results that answer questions, and there are plenty of chat logs online, which it might be able to pull from directly.
Additionally, you could 'taint' it, so that a 'stupid' bot would not be able to (say) search for 'topic expertise' type questions. Make the bot a barista or a clerk, and seed its database with pertinent information relating to that 'role'. Ask the bot about computers, and the bot doesn't know how to respond due to a search criteria that demerits off-knowledge searches: for instance, (say) the WizzBang 5000 is an awesome espresso machine, and the bot is a barrista. But it also might be the name of a computer. She should know that, as a barista, it's a coffee machine - unless she's dull. But if it's not in her database, she'd have to search for it, with a preference for her area of expertise (eg. +coffee, +espresso, +cafe, +mocha, etc.) Search results which return computer related terms could automatically be ignored, and so on and so forth, to help improve the quality of the responses.
From what I can tell, the biggest problem with writing a good bot is in implementing the language parsing in a fashion which is relatively error prone; this demands a good understanding of language rules, regular expression, colloquial exceptions to language, and the like. Most bots appear to lack at least one of these things to sufficient degree.
My experience has been that the perceived gender of the bot plays a great bit into the believable nature of the bot due to response expectations.
This, at least, only holds true with a male chatter and a 'female' bot - and I'm not talking about virtual sex chat or anything like that. A person can, for a substantial period of time, be tricked by a 'flirty' bot that comes across as a cute, dumb female. It's kind of funny to see a (sub-average intelligence, I'd guess) person hold a running dialog/virtual relationship for several months with a bot.
It's also much easier to trick someone when they don't know they're being tricked, and where there is no preconception of prior familiarity (IE, such as on an IRC 'chat' channel). It'd be a good tactic to employ by the FBI, I think.
Could be. My 'main' IBM Model M keyboard, built in '82, is still going strong. It spent the first 14 or so years of its life in a high school computer lab, and I eat things like pretzels (ie salt + crumbs) at it. I've only 'cleaned' it once, but I've turned it over and placed it against the wall, kicked, and shaken it many a time to clean it out.
(Are you sure you didn't buy a couple murder weapons off ebay? :P)
However, my primary keyboard for the past 5 years has been a Thinkpad X30s keyboard. I've used it so much that there are literal divots in the keys (ie, fingernails have, over time, cut into and worn away the plastic to a degree that the divots are easily felt on a half dozen of the keys - not just polished smooth, but literal dents), and it's not wearing out yet. Yes, I eat while using my laptop (I've cleaned it out 2-3 times). It's had several minor liquid spills as well (coffee + milk, water).
The quality thing isn't necessarily shackled to a specific keyboard. I've killed a couple IBM PS/2 keyboards. I've got an old Gateway 2000 keyboard, circa 1994 or so, that still works fine (and I really like it's feel for gaming).
I have three Model Ms that were made between January 1982 and December 1984 (IIRC). They all still work just fine.
For some things, I still prefer them. Until I got an IBM X30 Thinkpad 5 or so years ago, they were certainly the preferred keyboard. However, I've grown to like having a 'keyboard nipple' pointing device, and the responsiveness of the keyboards is great. Even the x30 keyboard is a little smaller than even a normal keyboard, and I've got big hands, I've found it's perfect - as I don't need to move my fingers as much, and there's still enough of a key pitch that multiple keystrokes per punch don't occur.
Just wish keyboards like the X30 (and many of the subsequent IBM/Lenovo) had/has were more readily for all computing platforms (USB standalone).
Have you contributed the code to allow for a single-sign-on back up to the projects? The inability to tie in easily to central auth servers -particularly kerbos/AD - is one of the biggest shortcomings of open source packages such as the ones above.
A big ramdisk might put SSD to shame - but not for long, I think. Also, there'd be a big caching penalty (time).
Big ramdisks would be nice for something like Eclipse, but I'd say it'd be hard to justify the cost. Better price-point to go with SSD.
Slight difference: Linux kernel line count includes all the drivers, which are obviously not being used all at once.
Though, I can imagine future versions of Firefox + KDE + Xorg beating a person to death that way, regardless of OS.
Then corporate policy needs to change. Push a reboot over the domain to the workstations (+/- 2 hour window) during the night.
Or better yet, use the wake-on-LAN functionality every PC has now to wake them up at 5AM +/- an hour or so after automatically shutting them down at 6PM the night prior.
There is a huge, huge difference between old PCs with CRTs (or even new ones with LCDs, but substantially less so) and something like a thinclient.
Long story short, switching over from fairly old PCs to thinclients in an organization which doesn't buy new equipment all that often will see the organization saving the cost of the thinclients in a handful of years in power use alone.
Yes, there's the server side to consider, but realistically: it'll still cost less in overall licensing, the hardware costs are lower overall, the power use is night-and-day (many/most TCs use less than 2-3 watts in operation), and there is a much lower maintenance/management cost involved.
Short of Batman going back to his 1930s roots and start killing people brutally using guns, clubs, lead slappers, and the like, how do you suppose they'd get an "R"? Show more dead bodies and gore? That'd not improve the film a bit.
No, Hannibal Lecter could not have been conveyed in a PG-13 film. Because, by definition, horror has to be scary, and scary means children don't get to see it. Even if it's "just" psychologically terrifying doesn't mean it gets a PG-13. There's a big step from "psycho-thriller" to "psycho-horror" and "psycho-horror" lands a movie firmly in R territory.
Also part of the point was that damn, that was seriously rated PG-13 and not R?
No doubt. I had to check on IMDB - even though I'd seen the film 3 times - to verify that it was, indeed, PG-13. Because I didn't believe it. The most recent one was dark, dark, dark, and not only because it had an at-the-time dead Ledger playing the craziest portrayal of the Joker yet.
Granted, a lot of movies fall on the 'wrong' side of the rating line, often. But as a general rule, studios want to avoid "R" movies anyway. Parents are trusting, and will let their kids view PG-13 films unattended, but not R. I expect this to change as PG-13 films get more nudity and swearing.
Ironically, films have kind of mellowed out all along. Used to be, PG films would occasionally have nudity and inter-gender violence (1974, Reynolds, The Longest Yard). It seems uncommon to see 'major' films like that made today at all, never mind with anything less than an "R" rating.
They are grittier, people are less 'cookie cutter/superficial bad guys.' In most of the non R rated superhero movies I've seen you could always walk away with the feeling that the main villain could have, at any moment, had a change of heart because he's not really evil - he's just made bad choices (lol.)
That's a large part of the reason why I'd rather my 5-year-old son watch, say, Commando than a modern equivalent that's rated PG-13 (say, Ironman). The "good guy" isn't as clear cut, and aside from that, there's really little difference in the film itself aside from the level of swearing.
Sure, there's a quality difference (particularly in my example), and sometimes a difference in the level of gore, but if you want to confuse a child, let him watch a PG-13 action film.
(Oh, and the 2 most recent Batman films were - thankfully, inaccurately, IMO - rated PG-13. Their ambiguity was somewhat less than in other PG13 films, though they were pretty dark and gritty.)
The studios have it all wrong. The reason Watchmen tanked was because it sucked. Badly.
First, you take a half-rate superhero and make a movie out of him. Starting off, it's already disadvantaged: there's a reason s/he's a half-rate comic book hero. He has a crummy story, costume, plot, writers, or what have you which the vast majority of people do not like. They're already striking out before they've even got the storyboard - which is, frankly, astonishing, because it's a comic book, after all.
Second, they don't fix most of the flaws in the comic, but amplify them, in the creation of the movie. That's like strike three, except the third ball hits you in the face and kills you.
(Thankfully, today's PG-13 is, in many ways, as gratuitous and maturely themed as yesteryear's R.)
It's too bad, really. I remember when FilePlanet was actually a really good site to get patches, mods, and demos from.
As FilePlanet (and similar sites) became shittier, I actually found myself more inclined to look on various warez sites for full game versions. Or, as more often happened, I'd just not bother and pull out an old-but-good game and play that instead.
Maybe if they didn't suck the brass nob so hard, they'd not be going away.
I've noticed in a number of occasions that Open Source stuff is often a double-edged sword.
You get it in, and it works - it does its job silently and unobtrusively. It has no visibility, no notable interfaces that say "this is open source/Linux" or anything like that. Contrast that to something like Office or Sharepoint which is noticeably branded "Microsoft" - whether through icons, widgets, actual branding. It's always visible, for good or (often, when it's not working) bad. But at least it's visible.
Whether you use WebSphere from IBM or Sharepoint from Microsoft, you have the ability to leverage an API and develop a custom solution around something that has a few things.
1. A community.
2. Documentation
3. Support
You have all of these with various Open Source CMS packages as well:
1) Community. Community defines Open Source in a sense - and there's a much larger, more involved community of users to pull from.
2) Documentation. The bigger projects, such as Drupal, have incredible documentation. I'm unfamiliar with WebSphere, but finding anything specific to help deal with SharePoint issues (short of contacting MS) can sometimes be difficult.
3) Support. Not only can a person very easily get free support through the community, or dig into the project themselves to find the problem (which is half the reason you need paid-for support in the first place), but there are many companies out there providing paid-for support for OSS CMS.
That said, I am actually a big fan of Sharepoint because it's retardedly simple to operate, administer, deploy, and regulate. In an 'enterprise' you are likely running Windows on the desktop with MS Office, and Sharepoint is a simple and inexpensive fit for an enterprise like that.
And what do you do when one part of that software stack needs to be replaced due to a verifiable business case? You are shackled to Sharepoint + dependencies, and you can't move the dependencies independently to something else.
Linux 0.98? Wow! If I might ask, what'd it ship on?
That's one thing to like about Drupal: it provides an (optionally) very minimal tool set/framework upon which you can build pretty much anything without mucking into the actual Drupal internals. It's "object oriented web design", which is very nice.
There are plenty of examples of web services running on Open Source for 'enterprise' use - groupware, CRM, accounting, the works. Some of these packages are very good.
Its hard to be specific/determine what you're trying to do without knowing more specifics as to what you're looking for. Of the groupware projects I'm aware of, I know the following have a fair amount of support/use:
* Plone CMS
* OBM
* eGroupWare
* Drupal
* Typo3
Of these, I know that Plone, Drupal, and Typo3 are all "platforms" for developing, managing, and extending content. I seem to recall either eGroupWare or OpenGroupWare extend/integrate with MS Office products. No, it's not going to be the level of integration that Sharepoint stuff offers, but it's something to mention, at any rate (and isn't going to have the massive licensing costs + perpetual lock-in that a MS solution has*).
Plone, in particular, has a lot of support and corporate/"enterprise" use. From their site:
Plone is among the top 2% of all open source projects worldwide, with 200 core developers and more than 300 solution providers in 57 countries. The project has been actively developed since 2001, is available in more than 40 languages, and has the best security track record of any major CMS.
It is owned by the Plone Foundation, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization, and is available for all major operating systems.
Sources: CVE and Ohloh.
That alone is impressive enough; but also consider some of the notable companies which utilize Plone in/for a variety of purposes:
Akamai (yeah, that Akamai - the guys who load balance Microsoft web servers)
Nokia (QT Software stuff)
MyCity ("real time monitoring system for Cities, Towns, Districts or utilities. It makes use of the GPRS service offered by the various GSM network operators")
Discover Magazine
Novell, Inc. (for enterprise services)
NASAScience (public site for NASA's Science Mission Directorate)
FSF (yeah, those hippies)
universities, university science/it departments, hospitals, public/government sites... the list goes on.
Those are notable company names, and at least in the case of Akamai, Novell and Nokia, everyone in IT should know about them. They're also some fairly diverse (and expansive) implementations using the same central CMS - and they're not shackled to a single software backend, able to run on any OS and server combination they could imagine.
* The cost factor associated with MS solution lock-in is a big consideration, bigger than just a simple argument of something like "OpenOffice vs. MS Office". With a web-based, top-level technology like this, it's much, much more important to keep the technologies used "open" - because it is the top-level interface to all your data. You can not move away from a closed package on the backend without moving the entire system, at once, to something open (more often than not, with MS). You're basically stuck with that stack unless you want to start over; there's no ability to independently consider parts of the stack and replace them, as there often is with open systems.
Well, 'brainstorm' has been around for a while as an English word.
Though, just wait: Microsoft will buck the trend, trying to be a trend-setting force in the market, and come out with some sort of derivative. Like, maybe, Brainorgy. Or Wetware. Or something like that.
Though, seriously: I can see popular OS and application vendors making something like this much more common. Not only does it allow users to be more involved in deciding which bugs are the most irritating (on the desktop), or which features should be upcoming, but it allows users to have a little investment in the software they're using, as well. "Don't like it? Use something else."
I've got $10 that Apple is the first company to have a native 'brainstorm' application for their 'desktop' OS - or, at least, a web portal that is transparent enough to appear so.
I did something like this. Just installed Ubuntu from a LiveCD using the "Text mode install" option. It installed a minimal install which booted quickly. (I did this with the internal disks unplugged to guarantee that GRUB got installed to the correct place). You could do this with Debian as well (which would be preferred for something like this, IMO, except for the way that Debian's kernel still uses the old ata drivers and it might cause some issues).
Theoretically, you could then do something like just doing an 'aptitude install firefox' - and it'll install Firefox and the required X files. Then script X to start automatically (you could use gdm for this, but I think that might slow things down a bit) with firefox as the shell. If you were to put this in inittab (which, urg, Ubuntu no longer uses) the result would look something like this:
x:5:respawn:/bin/su - username -c 'PATH=$PATH:/usr/X11R6/bin startx'
Then put 'firefox' in the user's .xinitrc and remove all 'services' and other things which start at boot (ie, most anything in /etc/rc#.d can be moved to K##name except for the networking and maybe sound related services).
Bingo, simple "web browsing" terminal that boots (very) quickly. (At least, that's how I'd do it.)
Alternatively, since you want openoffice on there too, I'd put icewm with two icons on there. That'll keep it lean. (And yes, it all can go on ,and very quickly from, USB. Remove the USB when you're done.)
I set up a WindPC running Ubuntu for my mom at Christmas. I'll get a call every once in a while that something's not behaving properly (usually, it's not resuming from suspend). She's quite computer illiterate; the usual best fix is to have her hit ctl-alt-backspace and restart X (such as was the case when an app was frozen and stealing input focus, and I didn't have access to an IP network to kill the app). It happens in all software environments, not just Windows.
There are a couple ways to 'automate' your backups being "offline" but still automated; not perfect, but better than what they apparently had.
Server on the Internet, with a private subnet behind said server where your backup server(s) are. Internal interface on server must have absolutely zero services running, and the connection must not be routable.
However, backup servers also need to be not kept "online" when not backing up. You can:
* Keep them powered off and only power them on (automatically) when you're doing backups (which occur on a schedule from the main server).
* Keep them on, but with the network interface down.
* If the backup servers use external storage but are kept on, have those on a separate power unit that powers up only on schedule as well.
Personally, this sounds like an "inside job": it's malicious and performed with a great deal of knowledge of the operation. That speaks of a disgruntled employee to me, not some kiddie at it for kicks. There are a lot of steps which can be taken, but realistically, you're not going to be able to deal with something like this unless you've got your data backups completely 'unattached'.
Oh man, you just described one of my previous employer's primary software tool: a custom app written in a nominal WYSIWYG/Access type database package, which had undergone 6+ years of near-constant linear modification and addition. This, on top of one or two upgrades over the years that broke functionality which needed to be hacked around.
So, question: how do you work around something like that? This particular situation, in my estimation, required an entirely new product. What they had couldn't be fixed, not by one or ten people, in a reasonable time frame. I was working on moving the whole mess on over to MySQL + PHP after their dismissal of alternatives, when I got sacked: "we don't need you anymore, we decided to go with a vendored app".