When I worked for the Navy, our users were expected to adhere to the Navy and DOD requirements. Locally, commanding officers could set policy regarding how much "freedom" people had to casually browse (i.e., "lunchtime" browsing desires versus mission needs and effects on badwidth). We had a happy medium and everyone complied without complaint. Based on that, here's what I would do:
1. Set a distinct, written policy regarding what's allowable and what isn't. If users can casually browse during idle moments, state this. If heavy multimedia-laden sites hurt your bandwidth, state that they're off limits. If the bosses don't want staffers wasting time working on their fantasy football rosters, make that crystal clear. Be specific about categories of sites that are off-limits.
1(a). Make sure that employees understand that there is no expectation of privacy on a corporate network, and they should avoid sites that might embarrass them. They need to understand that the company owns the network and the bandwidth, and using it is at the generosity of the company...they have no "right" to use the network for personal stuff. This covers your ass in case the company is sued and some legal demand is made for access logs and the like.
2. Demand that all requests for specific browsing history be routed through and be approved by management, at the highest possible level. This will give you the defense you need to say "no" to casual requests. Make sure those at the highest level understand the complexity of logging, sifting through and analyzing this data, and that an appearance of a domain in the logs doesn't necessarily indicate a violation of policy. Ask them to confer with you before making a decision on any request.
3. Based on the policies set in (1), provide only information regarding violations of policy on specific individuals or groups of people. If policy doesn't state that hitting ESPN is a violation, don't report it. If someone on staff is browsing medical information sites regarding erectile dysfunction medications, that should be their business and no one else's.
We had a fairly open link to the 'Net while I was at that DOD job, and this kind of policy worked very well for us. We blocked only the worst domains and those sites that gave us bandwidth headaches. We asked staffers to use common sense about 'Net use, since we frequently pulled in lots of text data and large weather images. When someone accidentially hit an adult site (mistyping an URL, for example), I would usually get an immediate call or e-mail from the user, detailing what happened. Perhaps there was a bit of fear involved, but whatever it was, it worked.
...getting rid of those CDs and DVDs would be a good idea, just to keep the data from magically escaping the facility and winding up in the hands of some cracker, thief or spammer.
Heh, this reminds me of the web server I managed at my last job. When we finally went on line locally, I demanded that we not use Windows, but Linux, and specifically Slackware. I installed version 8.0 and ran it with literally no changes (expect for occasional security patches and application updates to Apache, PHP and MySQL) until this past January. I shifted to a new box due to some hardware issues and installed 10.1. That site has now closed. I often wonder how long I could have run that Slack 8 box if the hardware had held up.
When I read this, I couldn't help thinking of a skit I saw performed on the old SCTV comedy show back in the early 1980s.
The skit was a goof on the old "Battle of the TV Network Stars" shows ABC used to produce. This was called "Battle of the PBS Stars." The highlight of the show was a boxing match between Mr. Rogers (played by Martin Short) and Julia Child (played by John Candy).
Mr. Rogers pretty much got his ass kicked by a 350-pound French woman.
I inherited a four-year-old Dell Latitude C610 with a 60 GB drive, 512 Mb and a decent Pentium processor. For wireless, I use a Netgear WG511.
I run Kubuntu (Breezy) and Windows XP in this old warhorse with very few issues. The Dell has ATI graphics, and the original Kubuntu install detected it just fine. I also had zero issues with detection of the wi-fi card.
I don't do any gaming or anything particularly system intensive with this old warhorse, but it's getting the job done. I take it lots of places, so it's well-traveled. Couldn't ask for much more that that.
Well, I don't know about you, but I don't need reminders of what happened that day. I worked for the Navy as a civilian at the time, and a number of the Pentagon dead were folks from the community (weather) in which I worked. I graduated from a Catholic Long Island high school in 1973 -- at least a dozen alumni from my old school were killed in the towers that day. Many of the fireman victims lived in the burbs of Long Island, around many of my friends and family, who watched the funerals day after day.
That this is a ploy to "remind the (A)merican people" is terribly cynical. Isn't the fact that we were brutally attacked and the loss of over 3000 people who were present at work enough to make you remember?
...the report that shows that John F Kennedy actually was shot by one guy in a building, not by a 3000-person conspiracy that included everyone from the CIA to the Chicago Cosa Nostra to the Cubans to a bunch of French guys who were mad about something to Jim Garrison's "cabal" in New Orleans.
He went fishing, saw aliens, flew a plane, killed an alien, watched the Army try to nuke the aliens, lost the girl, wound up in church. And he didn't even need to kill the rest of the aliens.
Also, the Professor on Felix the Cat. Much better then the Master Cylinder.
Er...maybe I'm appearing to be an uninformed dumbass here, but I'd really like to know who these "conservative Christian groups" who opposed this might be. The moment I read that, some red flags went up:
1. The original story is published in the Financial Times (London). A nice publication, but this stiry is lacking on the details. It's not likely the NY Times or WaPo would get away with that too frequently. Name names.
2. In today's political and media environment, it frequently appears that tossing up "conservative" and "Christian" (especially in the same sentence) is an easy way to create some kind of nameless, Luddite, Dark Ages bogey man. I'm conservative and Catholic, and I don't have a problem with this. Nor do a number of fellow conservatives and Christians that I know. I realize that my circle of acquaintences is pretty limited, but just who are these nameless "groups"?
3. What is this "pressue"? A letter writing campaign from some pro-family church-based group? I would call that the right to express one's opinion. Does this mean there was no "pressure" from non-conservative Christian groups to crate the domain? Alternatively, was there any pressure against the domain from adult content providers? I see a number of reasons why they wouldn't want this (some expressed in the replies here), so doesn't their opinion also have some sway with ICANN?
4. Just because a bunch of people write some letters, send some e-mails or make some phone calls doesn't mean there's "pressure" to do something. Once again, people express their opinions, which is a right. How many times have similar campaigns failed against some TV show that some groups found offensive?
5. How certain are the reporters that these groups are completely "conservative" or "Christian"? I'll bet I could find someone in my circle of liberal, Jewish, agnostic, athiest or libertarian friends that take the same position.
I'd prefer some reporting with factual substance. Not some drive-by shots at some straw man.
Samba serves as PDC/BDC (not using Active Directory yet)
Apparently, he's planning on running Active Directory on Linux?
That's something I'd like to see!
What I believe he meant is that, since he's using Samba on his Linux servers to replicate the file sharing/domain functions of Windows (NT), he doesn't have the ability to do Active Directory-like stuff yet (since the current Samba v3 implementation doesn't support it).
I don't seem to understand this assumption. Just because you're asking someone to switch from a Windows interface to a Linux disto interface, why is it automatically assumed they're going to have a difficult time making the transition? If they can perform the two basic functions of modern computer use (press key on keyboard, click button on mouse), I'll bet they'll pick up the system just fine. A couple of posters mentioned Edubuntu, and based on the what I've seen of that, I can't think of a reason that any minimally-capable child (or teacher, for that matter) couldn't master the use of that system in rapid fashion.
I also believe this idea of you not being around much to manage the systems is something not to worry about either. I'm a system administrator and our site's systems all run Windows. I'm not there all the time. The computers get heavy use on weekends and when I'm away on a trip or on holiday. Sometimes stuff breaks, and if it isn't critical (which it rarely is), it waits until I return. My guess is that if there were some unforseen glitch with one of these Linux boxes, a remedy could wait until you return. And if you're setting up a server, is remote access an option?
As for the day-to-day maintenance, I run a couple of Kubuntu systems at home and on the job, and I rarely find the need to "do" anything to them other than use them. On my personal system, I'm run Adept every few days to see what packages have been updated, and maybe I'll tweak something here or there. But, I don't spend any more time under the hood with these systems than I do with a Windows box.
Perhaps there's a faculty member on the school staff who might have an interest in this new system enough for you to show them the basics. You might train the trainer, as it were, and provide some information on routine maintenance, just to cover you in your absence. You could also provide a list of bookmarks/links to the plethora of Linux sites out there, specifically sites about the distro you choose.
One other thing: why not set the distro up on a single machine and show it to the staff at the school? Give them the opportunity to see what you're proposing, let they play with it a bit. My bet is that the unique experience of using a decent Linux distro, combined with the low cost and your enthusiasm, will let it sell itself. This sounds like an exciting project to me.
She contacted Apple, or at least went to Apple's site to find out about getting the battery replaced. She bought the Mini in July, right after graduation. She registered for the warranty on line right after that. When she visited the site, they knew how long she owned it (apparently, they pulled up her warranty registration...I'm running this blind since she's away at school).
She was informed that sending the unit back and replacing the battery would include a "fee" of over $30. She would have to pack and ship it at her expense.
I have to believe that what's she saying is correct, but I wasn't about to let he pay $30+ to have something fixed that was less than seven months old, especially if she had to ship it away (I don't know if Apple has a retail location where she is). I'd rather buy the kit and dot it myself the next time she comes home.
...why people insist on speding the kind of jack on an MP3 player that iPod owners do.
My wife wanted some kind of music player for working out. I found just what she needed: a SanDisk m260. 4GB flash memory, earbuds, strap, case, some software. Uses a standard AAA battery you can actually replace easily (unlike the $40 battery and removal tool I had to buy for my daughter's iPod Mini, which isn't holding it's charge after six months).
Sale price at local retailer: $150.
The sound is great and I've already dropped 330 MP3 files on it and still have 2.7 GB left to fill. It requirs no software: you plug it into an USB port and the OS sees it as a removeable drive, so you can just drag and drop files on it all day. This allows it work with any OS, including Linux (which I use) and that other system on her laptop.
Is watching video on a 2-inch screen really worth all that money? And, no, I don't work for SanDisk.
I currently have 21 years in with the DOD (which includes my 4 years military active duty).
I get 8 hours paid annual leave per two-week pay period (that's 30 days per year) and I can carry over 256 hours per leave year. (You start with 4 hours per PP, you move to 6 hours after a few years, then 8 hours at 14 years).
I get 4 hours paid sick leave per pay period. There's no "monetary" value in that (i.e., I can't sell it back if I quit or retire), but I can build up as much as I want. Luckily for me, I had almost a thousand hours of accumulated sick leave when I had my heart attack last January. I used over two hundred hours of that leave last year for surgery, recovery and rehab/doctor's visits.
I have a medical plan (BC/BS) that I partially pay for. It costs me about $236 per month to cover myself and my family. That money is deducted pre-tax. The DOD's cost is far higher. When I consider the costs of that same heart ailment (including a one-hour emergency room visit that totaled $19,000), it is worth every penny. Sure, free medical care would be nice, but I'm a realist. I could have had nothing, or a plan where I had to bear the entire cost.
I have pretty decent term life insurance. This is particularly ideal for me, since I can't get much now due to my recent illness.
The retirement plan is pretty good, including the Thrift Savings Plan, which is our 403(b)-type contributory supplement. The Fed drops something in there for you even if you don't contribute to it. They match much of what I do put in. This plan has been so popular they recently extended it to active-duty military, and they jumped all over it. Oh, yeah, the deductions for the TSP cntributions are also pre-tax, which lowers my annual nut a little more.
Those of us in the IT classification also get something else: higher salaries than other job skills at the same pay level. This was instituted around 1998 to stop the hemmoraging of IT people to dot-com jobs. The pay gap was wider for a few years, but it's closing a bit now. Nevertheless, a GS-11 Step 6 IT employee (like me) who gets no special area locality pay benefit earns $63,589 per year. Most other GS-11 Step 6 employees earn $60,636 per year. Not a big difference any more, but if you have a child in college and a mortgage and all that other middle-class baggage, every nickle helps.
I also know a large number of IT pros with whom I worked who bailed in the late '90s for dot-bomb jobs. I did some looking and interviewed with a couple of companies, but decided to hang in with the Fed. Lots of those people are now working for far less than they were earning in the government after their ventures when ass-up. Do you think I'm glad I stayed where I was?
I get a few other assignment-specific perks: my hours are flexible so I can work when I need to (i.e., after staff hours). The comp time and overtime bennies are there if I need them. The people I work for and with are terrific. I get my own parking space, which on a military installation can be like owning the Mona Lisa. They'll pay for training and certification related expenses, if I tie them to the job.
Now, there is a down side, and it's sort of a response to the comment below about "never getting fired". First of all, you can get fired: I saw it happen to a woman in an IT position in my organization last year. That was an ugly situation, but she eventually was forced out. So, you don't have to kill anyone to get the sack.
My organization is "restructuring" and my job is about to be eliminated. I'll be receiving my reduction-in-force (RIF) letter any day now, and will have 60 days on board after that before my position is eliminated. I'm not happy abut it, and I believe the thinking that led to this is flawed, but that's for another post. This is going to happen to a bunch of us (I'm the only IT person affected at my site), and that's just the way it is.
You will probably find, after digging through reams of directives, instructions and memos, that there are about a million ways to do this. I work in a military command and hold a top secret (SCI) clearance. At our site, all our classified work is done on ordinary workstations and laptops. Most of the systems are Dells purchaed off the shelf, and I've built at least one clone.
None of those systems have removeable drives, though having them is a good idea. It makes securing them easier, something you must do in a government-approved container (i.e., a safe). The space in which the systems are located and used must be secure to the level of classified information (secret, in your case). At our site, this is a window-less room with a large vault-like steel door. The door can be secured with a combination lock and a push-button cypher lock, the latter of whch is in use at all times (the combination lock is secured after hours). All classified material (papers, discs, ect) must be stored when the space is unoccupied.
The system will probably need to meet DOD C2 requirements, which you'll likely read about. Windows NT was close to C2, and I believe Windows 2000 is as well. The system must have positive authentication for users, appropriate warnings that appear on login, an audit trail, and ways of neutraliziing memory and swap space. Windows has a setting that clears the virtual memory/swap file on each reboot.
As for networking, if you want to network internally within your spaces, you can set up a normal LAN, but outside access will require using a secure network like the SIPRNET. You won't have access to the outside world (i.e., the Internet). Most DOD components contract for SIPR connectivity through DISA.
As you already know, labeling the CPU is important. You'll also need to label media, and keeping a log of all storage media in use is a pretty good idea to CYA. In fact, some places require it. You might also want to find out about the need for secondary storage off-site. If this is going to be a requirement, you'll need to find a similarly-classified place that you trust to stow your backup materials.
You will need to follow the DOD rules on destruction of drives and disks no longer in use...you just can't toss old floppies or hard drives onto the 20-year pile in your office. Research the destruction procedures, and learn to store unused material until you can have it destroyed.
You can buy shredders that will eat CDs and diskettes, but they have to be classified for the security level. Don't use the $29 Office Max shredder on sale for this.
The real key is getting users to follow the rules. Users, as you know, are the biggest pain in the ass, and you'll always be on top of them to keep the spaces sanitized. Remind them that once they save any classified material to removable storage, that storage is now classified and cannot be used outside of the environment.
Bad examples, at least Sesame Street. CTW put billions in marketing behind the show and it's characters. Nova has been on for how many years? My guess is that a poll of the population would fins that only about 20% have an immediate idea of what they show is.
1. The questionable dialog was removed by the show producers and PBS, not the government. This was a choice they made. Yes, I know, based on their fear of retribution, but I didn't see any FCC edicts demanding they change the show's dialog. If they're so concerned about "censorship," why didn't they leave it in and challenge the regulations?
2. PBS is partially funded with taxpayer money and private contributions. I suppose they feared losing their taxpayer dollars, which they should if the thumb their noses at FCC policy. No matter what your beliefs on this issue are or what your political positions happen to be, rules are rules. If you don't want to follow them, get into another line of work. As for the private funding, there may be a fear of losing some of that support as well. Just becasue someone contributes to PBS doesn't mean they aren't sensitive to these things.
3. If this show is so damn good, what's it doing on PBS anyway? If they sold it to Showtime or HBO, they'd have a smaller audience but all the so-called artistic freedom they want. Heck, The Sporanos isn't seen by a lot of people based on the reach of broadcast and non-premium cable channels, but do you know anyone who hasn't heard of it? Think of the DVD deals that would be possible...
I bought by first 386 computer in 1989, a gigantic Northgate with 4 MB RAM (which was a big selling feature...everyone else had 1 MB standard). Along with the PC came the Omnikey 101, one of the greatest keyboards ever invented. Two sets of function keys (on side, like the old XT keyboards which most of us learned on, and the "newer" AT style F-keys on the top), programmable, with the solid mechanical click when you pressed the keys.
By 1996, I had moved that keyboard to it's third computer. While working at my desk one day, I reached up for something on a shelf and accidentially tipped a copy of The Riverside Shakespeare over. The 1927-page 20-pound volume (all of Bill's works in one book) landed corner-first square in the middle of the Omnikey. The crash put a crack in the main board inside the case, rendering it unusable.
I eventually found a replacement Omnikey 102 on the net for about $95. This one didn't have the top row of function keys, but I didn't care. I still have that keyboard, and would love to get another original Omnikey for work, but they're tough to find since Northgate went out of business. There's a clone, the Avant Stellar, but at $189, that's more than some entire computers.
Corporations are accountable to their shareholders. Their sole motive is to make a profit. Government is accountable to the people. Its motive is to provide for all citizens' basic needs, and (in our case) to ensure that corporations do not abuse their power. Which one would you rather control your wires?
Not the government. Since when is the government accountable to anyone, except on election day? The fact is if a government-run agency somehow collapses due to bad management, the government will always be there to bail it out. Unfortunately, since we are the government, we get to foot the bill, usually by way of higher taxes.
That a corporation is accountable to share holders and its customers is more important to me. Yes, in some cases it doesn't work. Perfect example: the local cable company, one of those (until recently) slightly natural monopolies. Owned by AT&T, they have been nortorious for their bad service and terrible customer relations. Until this past November, people didn't look at satellite as an option because they didn't offer local channels. In the interim, AT&T sold the cableco to Comcast.
Right about that same time, both satellite companies added local channels to their offerings, and their sales went through the roof. Comcast is doing all it can to keep its customers and improve service, but I hear people are dropping them in droves.
The electric company for my region isn't a public agency: they're a private cooperative owned by the users. Each year, they look in the piggybank, figure out how much they have left after paying all their bills from least year, put aside a little for the future, and give the rest back to the users in the form of credits. I would dread the thought of the local county taking over this company, because they'd run it into the ground in no time.
While I agree with you on the two water pipes concept, I shiver at the thought of some government agency controlling all telecom. In spite of the financial collapses in recent years (which were cause by other forces), think for a moment where we'd be if there were still one monopoly phone company, as there was about 20 years ago. That "natural" monopoly would vey likely have prevented the alarming array of choices one now has regarding those services. And I wonder if the cell phone industry would ever have arrived where it is now if the competitive nature of the current telecom environment didn't exist.
One could, with some thought, stretch this down to those basic human needs. If I had the time and money to do so, I could find an alternative way to power my home (solar panels, which are a popular for heating water in this area). I could dig my own well for water, since the water table here in Florida is so easy to reach. I could certainly dump Bellsouth and use my cell phone for all calls (which I practically do anyway). And I already have DirecTV, so I've voted against the cable company.
I don't do all these things out of practicality more than anything else. It's easier for me to use the local electrico (and I have a voice in their operations), and the well water would have to made potable, something complicated and expensive. But, I could use that well to water my lawn, which means less cash in the hands of the water company. I could use those solar panels for my hot water heater. I've already mentioned the phone, and I only keep the land line because I want the DSL service from BS.
Besides, I work for the government, and I'm watching, first hand, how they can bollux things up. Do a search on NMCI.
This is a good idea, and maybe might be extended to the other TLDs: kids.com, kids.net, etc. Obviously, it would require some kind of monitoring and management, but it certainly appears to be a better way of "protecting" children then spurious free speech attacks on the 'net as an entity.
In fact, I believe extending this to the commercial TLDs would be a big marketing tool. Point out to parents that "our site is kid safe, we're part of the kids.whatever domain."
Slashdot Mirror
When I worked for the Navy, our users were expected to adhere to the Navy and DOD requirements. Locally, commanding officers could set policy regarding how much "freedom" people had to casually browse (i.e., "lunchtime" browsing desires versus mission needs and effects on badwidth). We had a happy medium and everyone complied without complaint. Based on that, here's what I would do:
1. Set a distinct, written policy regarding what's allowable and what isn't. If users can casually browse during idle moments, state this. If heavy multimedia-laden sites hurt your bandwidth, state that they're off limits. If the bosses don't want staffers wasting time working on their fantasy football rosters, make that crystal clear. Be specific about categories of sites that are off-limits.
1(a). Make sure that employees understand that there is no expectation of privacy on a corporate network, and they should avoid sites that might embarrass them. They need to understand that the company owns the network and the bandwidth, and using it is at the generosity of the company...they have no "right" to use the network for personal stuff. This covers your ass in case the company is sued and some legal demand is made for access logs and the like.
2. Demand that all requests for specific browsing history be routed through and be approved by management, at the highest possible level. This will give you the defense you need to say "no" to casual requests. Make sure those at the highest level understand the complexity of logging, sifting through and analyzing this data, and that an appearance of a domain in the logs doesn't necessarily indicate a violation of policy. Ask them to confer with you before making a decision on any request.
3. Based on the policies set in (1), provide only information regarding violations of policy on specific individuals or groups of people. If policy doesn't state that hitting ESPN is a violation, don't report it. If someone on staff is browsing medical information sites regarding erectile dysfunction medications, that should be their business and no one else's.
We had a fairly open link to the 'Net while I was at that DOD job, and this kind of policy worked very well for us. We blocked only the worst domains and those sites that gave us bandwidth headaches. We asked staffers to use common sense about 'Net use, since we frequently pulled in lots of text data and large weather images. When someone accidentially hit an adult site (mistyping an URL, for example), I would usually get an immediate call or e-mail from the user, detailing what happened. Perhaps there was a bit of fear involved, but whatever it was, it worked.
You mean the wonderful health care in Cuba as demonstrated here?
Wow, regulation is wonderful...
...getting rid of those CDs and DVDs would be a good idea, just to keep the data from magically escaping the facility and winding up in the hands of some cracker, thief or spammer.
Why do I see potential headlines here?
Keep this in the suitcase for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Heh, this reminds me of the web server I managed at my last job. When we finally went on line locally, I demanded that we not use Windows, but Linux, and specifically Slackware. I installed version 8.0 and ran it with literally no changes (expect for occasional security patches and application updates to Apache, PHP and MySQL) until this past January. I shifted to a new box due to some hardware issues and installed 10.1. That site has now closed. I often wonder how long I could have run that Slack 8 box if the hardware had held up.
When I read this, I couldn't help thinking of a skit I saw performed on the old SCTV comedy show back in the early 1980s.
The skit was a goof on the old "Battle of the TV Network Stars" shows ABC used to produce. This was called "Battle of the PBS Stars." The highlight of the show was a boxing match between Mr. Rogers (played by Martin Short) and Julia Child (played by John Candy).
Mr. Rogers pretty much got his ass kicked by a 350-pound French woman.
Why do I imagine this is the same thing?
How do you propose Microsoft "fix" it ? By writing everyone's applications for them ?
*****
Cut to: the Gates Compound, somewhere on an island off the Washington coast:
Melissa! Did you read what this guy said? Damn, why didn't I think of that? Hand me my checkbook, will you?
I inherited a four-year-old Dell Latitude C610 with a 60 GB drive, 512 Mb and a decent Pentium processor. For wireless, I use a Netgear WG511.
I run Kubuntu (Breezy) and Windows XP in this old warhorse with very few issues. The Dell has ATI graphics, and the original Kubuntu install detected it just fine. I also had zero issues with detection of the wi-fi card.
I don't do any gaming or anything particularly system intensive with this old warhorse, but it's getting the job done. I take it lots of places, so it's well-traveled. Couldn't ask for much more that that.
Well, I don't know about you, but I don't need reminders of what happened that day. I worked for the Navy as a civilian at the time, and a number of the Pentagon dead were folks from the community (weather) in which I worked. I graduated from a Catholic Long Island high school in 1973 -- at least a dozen alumni from my old school were killed in the towers that day. Many of the fireman victims lived in the burbs of Long Island, around many of my friends and family, who watched the funerals day after day.
That this is a ploy to "remind the (A)merican people" is terribly cynical. Isn't the fact that we were brutally attacked and the loss of over 3000 people who were present at work enough to make you remember?
It does for me....
...the report that shows that John F Kennedy actually was shot by one guy in a building, not by a 3000-person conspiracy that included everyone from the CIA to the Chicago Cosa Nostra to the Cubans to a bunch of French guys who were mad about something to Jim Garrison's "cabal" in New Orleans.
...from the original War of the Worlds .
He went fishing, saw aliens, flew a plane, killed an alien, watched the Army try to nuke the aliens, lost the girl, wound up in church. And he didn't even need to kill the rest of the aliens.
Also, the Professor on Felix the Cat. Much better then the Master Cylinder.
Er...maybe I'm appearing to be an uninformed dumbass here, but I'd really like to know who these "conservative Christian groups" who opposed this might be. The moment I read that, some red flags went up:
1. The original story is published in the Financial Times (London). A nice publication, but this stiry is lacking on the details. It's not likely the NY Times or WaPo would get away with that too frequently. Name names.
2. In today's political and media environment, it frequently appears that tossing up "conservative" and "Christian" (especially in the same sentence) is an easy way to create some kind of nameless, Luddite, Dark Ages bogey man. I'm conservative and Catholic, and I don't have a problem with this. Nor do a number of fellow conservatives and Christians that I know. I realize that my circle of acquaintences is pretty limited, but just who are these nameless "groups"?
3. What is this "pressue"? A letter writing campaign from some pro-family church-based group? I would call that the right to express one's opinion. Does this mean there was no "pressure" from non-conservative Christian groups to crate the domain? Alternatively, was there any pressure against the domain from adult content providers? I see a number of reasons why they wouldn't want this (some expressed in the replies here), so doesn't their opinion also have some sway with ICANN?
4. Just because a bunch of people write some letters, send some e-mails or make some phone calls doesn't mean there's "pressure" to do something. Once again, people express their opinions, which is a right. How many times have similar campaigns failed against some TV show that some groups found offensive?
5. How certain are the reporters that these groups are completely "conservative" or "Christian"? I'll bet I could find someone in my circle of liberal, Jewish, agnostic, athiest or libertarian friends that take the same position.
I'd prefer some reporting with factual substance. Not some drive-by shots at some straw man.
What I believe he meant is that, since he's using Samba on his Linux servers to replicate the file sharing/domain functions of Windows (NT), he doesn't have the ability to do Active Directory-like stuff yet (since the current Samba v3 implementation doesn't support it).
If you'd like to see it, you might not have too long to wait (perhaps even before Vista is released). The in-development Samba v4 will support Active Directory functions via LDAP and Kerberos, something that you perhaps can see right now, if you have a spare server upon which to install and play with the source. Based on the release notes, it appears that the Samba team has come a long way towards developing something that can exist in an AD environment or duplicate much of AD's functionality. That's something I can't wait to see.
I don't seem to understand this assumption. Just because you're asking someone to switch from a Windows interface to a Linux disto interface, why is it automatically assumed they're going to have a difficult time making the transition? If they can perform the two basic functions of modern computer use (press key on keyboard, click button on mouse), I'll bet they'll pick up the system just fine. A couple of posters mentioned Edubuntu, and based on the what I've seen of that, I can't think of a reason that any minimally-capable child (or teacher, for that matter) couldn't master the use of that system in rapid fashion.
I also believe this idea of you not being around much to manage the systems is something not to worry about either. I'm a system administrator and our site's systems all run Windows. I'm not there all the time. The computers get heavy use on weekends and when I'm away on a trip or on holiday. Sometimes stuff breaks, and if it isn't critical (which it rarely is), it waits until I return. My guess is that if there were some unforseen glitch with one of these Linux boxes, a remedy could wait until you return. And if you're setting up a server, is remote access an option?
As for the day-to-day maintenance, I run a couple of Kubuntu systems at home and on the job, and I rarely find the need to "do" anything to them other than use them. On my personal system, I'm run Adept every few days to see what packages have been updated, and maybe I'll tweak something here or there. But, I don't spend any more time under the hood with these systems than I do with a Windows box.
Perhaps there's a faculty member on the school staff who might have an interest in this new system enough for you to show them the basics. You might train the trainer, as it were, and provide some information on routine maintenance, just to cover you in your absence. You could also provide a list of bookmarks/links to the plethora of Linux sites out there, specifically sites about the distro you choose.
One other thing: why not set the distro up on a single machine and show it to the staff at the school? Give them the opportunity to see what you're proposing, let they play with it a bit. My bet is that the unique experience of using a decent Linux distro, combined with the low cost and your enthusiasm, will let it sell itself. This sounds like an exciting project to me.
She contacted Apple, or at least went to Apple's site to find out about getting the battery replaced. She bought the Mini in July, right after graduation. She registered for the warranty on line right after that. When she visited the site, they knew how long she owned it (apparently, they pulled up her warranty registration...I'm running this blind since she's away at school). She was informed that sending the unit back and replacing the battery would include a "fee" of over $30. She would have to pack and ship it at her expense. I have to believe that what's she saying is correct, but I wasn't about to let he pay $30+ to have something fixed that was less than seven months old, especially if she had to ship it away (I don't know if Apple has a retail location where she is). I'd rather buy the kit and dot it myself the next time she comes home.
...why people insist on speding the kind of jack on an MP3 player that iPod owners do.
My wife wanted some kind of music player for working out. I found just what she needed: a SanDisk m260. 4GB flash memory, earbuds, strap, case, some software. Uses a standard AAA battery you can actually replace easily (unlike the $40 battery and removal tool I had to buy for my daughter's iPod Mini, which isn't holding it's charge after six months).
Sale price at local retailer: $150.
The sound is great and I've already dropped 330 MP3 files on it and still have 2.7 GB left to fill. It requirs no software: you plug it into an USB port and the OS sees it as a removeable drive, so you can just drag and drop files on it all day. This allows it work with any OS, including Linux (which I use) and that other system on her laptop.
Is watching video on a 2-inch screen really worth all that money? And, no, I don't work for SanDisk.
Ridiculous? Hmmm, let's see:
I currently have 21 years in with the DOD (which includes my 4 years military active duty).
I get 8 hours paid annual leave per two-week pay period (that's 30 days per year) and I can carry over 256 hours per leave year. (You start with 4 hours per PP, you move to 6 hours after a few years, then 8 hours at 14 years).
I get 4 hours paid sick leave per pay period. There's no "monetary" value in that (i.e., I can't sell it back if I quit or retire), but I can build up as much as I want. Luckily for me, I had almost a thousand hours of accumulated sick leave when I had my heart attack last January. I used over two hundred hours of that leave last year for surgery, recovery and rehab/doctor's visits.
I have a medical plan (BC/BS) that I partially pay for. It costs me about $236 per month to cover myself and my family. That money is deducted pre-tax. The DOD's cost is far higher. When I consider the costs of that same heart ailment (including a one-hour emergency room visit that totaled $19,000), it is worth every penny. Sure, free medical care would be nice, but I'm a realist. I could have had nothing, or a plan where I had to bear the entire cost.
I have pretty decent term life insurance. This is particularly ideal for me, since I can't get much now due to my recent illness.
The retirement plan is pretty good, including the Thrift Savings Plan, which is our 403(b)-type contributory supplement. The Fed drops something in there for you even if you don't contribute to it. They match much of what I do put in. This plan has been so popular they recently extended it to active-duty military, and they jumped all over it. Oh, yeah, the deductions for the TSP cntributions are also pre-tax, which lowers my annual nut a little more.
Those of us in the IT classification also get something else: higher salaries than other job skills at the same pay level. This was instituted around 1998 to stop the hemmoraging of IT people to dot-com jobs. The pay gap was wider for a few years, but it's closing a bit now. Nevertheless, a GS-11 Step 6 IT employee (like me) who gets no special area locality pay benefit earns $63,589 per year. Most other GS-11 Step 6 employees earn $60,636 per year. Not a big difference any more, but if you have a child in college and a mortgage and all that other middle-class baggage, every nickle helps.
I also know a large number of IT pros with whom I worked who bailed in the late '90s for dot-bomb jobs. I did some looking and interviewed with a couple of companies, but decided to hang in with the Fed. Lots of those people are now working for far less than they were earning in the government after their ventures when ass-up. Do you think I'm glad I stayed where I was?
I get a few other assignment-specific perks: my hours are flexible so I can work when I need to (i.e., after staff hours). The comp time and overtime bennies are there if I need them. The people I work for and with are terrific. I get my own parking space, which on a military installation can be like owning the Mona Lisa. They'll pay for training and certification related expenses, if I tie them to the job.
Now, there is a down side, and it's sort of a response to the comment below about "never getting fired". First of all, you can get fired: I saw it happen to a woman in an IT position in my organization last year. That was an ugly situation, but she eventually was forced out. So, you don't have to kill anyone to get the sack.
My organization is "restructuring" and my job is about to be eliminated. I'll be receiving my reduction-in-force (RIF) letter any day now, and will have 60 days on board after that before my position is eliminated. I'm not happy abut it, and I believe the thinking that led to this is flawed, but that's for another post. This is going to happen to a bunch of us (I'm the only IT person affected at my site), and that's just the way it is.
So, what benefits do I get now? Well,
You will probably find, after digging through reams of directives, instructions and memos, that there are about a million ways to do this. I work in a military command and hold a top secret (SCI) clearance. At our site, all our classified work is done on ordinary workstations and laptops. Most of the systems are Dells purchaed off the shelf, and I've built at least one clone.
None of those systems have removeable drives, though having them is a good idea. It makes securing them easier, something you must do in a government-approved container (i.e., a safe). The space in which the systems are located and used must be secure to the level of classified information (secret, in your case). At our site, this is a window-less room with a large vault-like steel door. The door can be secured with a combination lock and a push-button cypher lock, the latter of whch is in use at all times (the combination lock is secured after hours). All classified material (papers, discs, ect) must be stored when the space is unoccupied.
The system will probably need to meet DOD C2 requirements, which you'll likely read about. Windows NT was close to C2, and I believe Windows 2000 is as well. The system must have positive authentication for users, appropriate warnings that appear on login, an audit trail, and ways of neutraliziing memory and swap space. Windows has a setting that clears the virtual memory/swap file on each reboot.
As for networking, if you want to network internally within your spaces, you can set up a normal LAN, but outside access will require using a secure network like the SIPRNET. You won't have access to the outside world (i.e., the Internet). Most DOD components contract for SIPR connectivity through DISA.
As you already know, labeling the CPU is important. You'll also need to label media, and keeping a log of all storage media in use is a pretty good idea to CYA. In fact, some places require it. You might also want to find out about the need for secondary storage off-site. If this is going to be a requirement, you'll need to find a similarly-classified place that you trust to stow your backup materials.
You will need to follow the DOD rules on destruction of drives and disks no longer in use...you just can't toss old floppies or hard drives onto the 20-year pile in your office. Research the destruction procedures, and learn to store unused material until you can have it destroyed.
You can buy shredders that will eat CDs and diskettes, but they have to be classified for the security level. Don't use the $29 Office Max shredder on sale for this.
The real key is getting users to follow the rules. Users, as you know, are the biggest pain in the ass, and you'll always be on top of them to keep the spaces sanitized. Remind them that once they save any classified material to removable storage, that storage is now classified and cannot be used outside of the environment.
Aren't you glad you have to do this?
...and the result would be...MS-DOS 7.0. At least there wouldn't be a fight over which GUI to use.
Bad examples, at least Sesame Street. CTW put billions in marketing behind the show and it's characters. Nova has been on for how many years? My guess is that a poll of the population would fins that only about 20% have an immediate idea of what they show is.
1. The questionable dialog was removed by the show producers and PBS, not the government. This was a choice they made. Yes, I know, based on their fear of retribution, but I didn't see any FCC edicts demanding they change the show's dialog. If they're so concerned about "censorship," why didn't they leave it in and challenge the regulations?
2. PBS is partially funded with taxpayer money and private contributions. I suppose they feared losing their taxpayer dollars, which they should if the thumb their noses at FCC policy. No matter what your beliefs on this issue are or what your political positions happen to be, rules are rules. If you don't want to follow them, get into another line of work. As for the private funding, there may be a fear of losing some of that support as well. Just becasue someone contributes to PBS doesn't mean they aren't sensitive to these things.
3. If this show is so damn good, what's it doing on PBS anyway? If they sold it to Showtime or HBO, they'd have a smaller audience but all the so-called artistic freedom they want. Heck, The Sporanos isn't seen by a lot of people based on the reach of broadcast and non-premium cable channels, but do you know anyone who hasn't heard of it? Think of the DVD deals that would be possible...
I bought by first 386 computer in 1989, a gigantic Northgate with 4 MB RAM (which was a big selling feature...everyone else had 1 MB standard). Along with the PC came the Omnikey 101, one of the greatest keyboards ever invented. Two sets of function keys (on side, like the old XT keyboards which most of us learned on, and the "newer" AT style F-keys on the top), programmable, with the solid mechanical click when you pressed the keys.
By 1996, I had moved that keyboard to it's third computer. While working at my desk one day, I reached up for something on a shelf and accidentially tipped a copy of The Riverside Shakespeare over. The 1927-page 20-pound volume (all of Bill's works in one book) landed corner-first square in the middle of the Omnikey. The crash put a crack in the main board inside the case, rendering it unusable.
I eventually found a replacement Omnikey 102 on the net for about $95. This one didn't have the top row of function keys, but I didn't care. I still have that keyboard, and would love to get another original Omnikey for work, but they're tough to find since Northgate went out of business. There's a clone, the Avant Stellar, but at $189, that's more than some entire computers.
Not the government. Since when is the government accountable to anyone, except on election day? The fact is if a government-run agency somehow collapses due to bad management, the government will always be there to bail it out. Unfortunately, since we are the government, we get to foot the bill, usually by way of higher taxes.
That a corporation is accountable to share holders and its customers is more important to me. Yes, in some cases it doesn't work. Perfect example: the local cable company, one of those (until recently) slightly natural monopolies. Owned by AT&T, they have been nortorious for their bad service and terrible customer relations. Until this past November, people didn't look at satellite as an option because they didn't offer local channels. In the interim, AT&T sold the cableco to Comcast.
Right about that same time, both satellite companies added local channels to their offerings, and their sales went through the roof. Comcast is doing all it can to keep its customers and improve service, but I hear people are dropping them in droves.
The electric company for my region isn't a public agency: they're a private cooperative owned by the users. Each year, they look in the piggybank, figure out how much they have left after paying all their bills from least year, put aside a little for the future, and give the rest back to the users in the form of credits. I would dread the thought of the local county taking over this company, because they'd run it into the ground in no time.
While I agree with you on the two water pipes concept, I shiver at the thought of some government agency controlling all telecom. In spite of the financial collapses in recent years (which were cause by other forces), think for a moment where we'd be if there were still one monopoly phone company, as there was about 20 years ago. That "natural" monopoly would vey likely have prevented the alarming array of choices one now has regarding those services. And I wonder if the cell phone industry would ever have arrived where it is now if the competitive nature of the current telecom environment didn't exist.
One could, with some thought, stretch this down to those basic human needs. If I had the time and money to do so, I could find an alternative way to power my home (solar panels, which are a popular for heating water in this area). I could dig my own well for water, since the water table here in Florida is so easy to reach. I could certainly dump Bellsouth and use my cell phone for all calls (which I practically do anyway). And I already have DirecTV, so I've voted against the cable company.
I don't do all these things out of practicality more than anything else. It's easier for me to use the local electrico (and I have a voice in their operations), and the well water would have to made potable, something complicated and expensive. But, I could use that well to water my lawn, which means less cash in the hands of the water company. I could use those solar panels for my hot water heater. I've already mentioned the phone, and I only keep the land line because I want the DSL service from BS.
Besides, I work for the government, and I'm watching, first hand, how they can bollux things up. Do a search on NMCI.
I like choice. Choice gives you options.
This is a good idea, and maybe might be extended to the other TLDs: kids.com, kids.net, etc. Obviously, it would require some kind of monitoring and management, but it certainly appears to be a better way of "protecting" children then spurious free speech attacks on the 'net as an entity.
In fact, I believe extending this to the commercial TLDs would be a big marketing tool. Point out to parents that "our site is kid safe, we're part of the kids.whatever domain."
Build a better mousetrap...