I agree with you... to a point. We do allow the use of USB drives on all computers, but if I worked in a security sensitive environment, that kind of access would go.
As for charging back "lost time" to the IT department... that would mean that every single employee got to dictate to the IT group what their individual needs for the day were rather than having IT work with management and users to get company needs addressed. How would you handle the user that as pissed off because IT wouldn't help them with their home network and they considered that "lost time".
I do agre that computing should be convenient for the end user (I'm an IT Director), but could not imagine a day when I could have 2,000 separate requests - 1 from each user - all over the board and I was held accountable for each and every one, no matter how irrational.
It sounds like your company has other issues beyond an unresponsive IT department. You indicated that IT has been unable to sell necessary changes to senior management. Are you positive that senior management agrees that changes are needed or that they actually understand the seriousness of the problem? You might find that IT feels that their hands have been tied and have nowhere else to go since senior management isn't helping them.
A group of users making "demands" of the IT department is somewhat inappropriate. Yes, the IT department exists to help users with their work, but their priorities are set by senior management. If you plan to create some kind of IT Steering Committee, I would recommend a few things: (1) Lose the attitude -- all you'll do is put the IT folks on the defensive (and remember, since you're not in their group, you may actually have NO idea what priorities have been laid out for them by senior management); (2) Get the blessing of senior management before you try this; (3) Make sure at least one or two high-level people attend your meetings and buy-in to what you talk about.
Treat the IT folks like human beings. They may have perfectly good reasons for dismissing what you consider reasonable ideas. Perhaps they're seriously understaffed so that great desktop Linux rollout one of your users is convinced is the right idea just doesn't pay off for them, for example.
I have a Dell 24" both at home and on my desk at work, but even before that, I was getting headaches working on computers, which I do... way too much! At my last eye doctor appointment, he told me to use reading glasses while I'm working at the computer. I'm only 32, but thought I'd give it a go even though I was a little skeptical. Since I started using reading glasses, no more headaches.
It should be able to, actually. Since electromagnetic transmission is at the speed of light, if we can just somehow get the entire Internet backbone running in this alternate dimension.
Slashdot doesn't cost you a damn thing. I see this every time there's a dupe. People bitching about how much Slashdot sucks. If you don't like it, leave. It's really very, very simple.
I've never called Microsoft for support for Exchange. I *have* called consulting groups with people that know more about Exchange than I thought possible. I don't think MS does a great job supporting their products, but some third party integrators do a great job.
Before I write, I should say that I'm in no way opposed to open source and use it where appropriate.
If you want something very well supported, not horribly difficult to administer in a simple environment and tried and true, just go with Active Directory and Exchange, especially if your company's focus is on something other than providing unique technology solutions. (i.e. you sell baskets)
While the open source solution might cost less up front, there is nothing in open sourece land at present that can touch the Exchange/Outlook combination. Sure, there are products such as OpenExchange, but, let's assume that you want the option to easily add other services later on, such as true handheld synchronization (i.e. www.good.com)
I know it can be sacrilege on Slashdot to not promote an open source solution every time, but sometimes, the business side of the house is more important than a cool technology solution.
Like many of the posters commented, I just keep on walking. I used to stop, and I used to let them look through my bags - after all, after I buy the merchandise, everything is now *mine* and not theirs. I finally got sick of it since just about every store has this problem. Now, when I'm walking and it goes off, I keep going. If anyone says anything, I keep walking. I did have someone chase me down and tell me I had to come back into the store so my bags could be searched. I hope I didn't run over his feet as I was driving away...
Having a superior product means nothing if you can't market it. For years, NetWare was superior to NT, but MS beat the crap out of Novell in the marketing game and hence, won the battle.
Actually, stuff DID happen in the primary timeline as a result of the events in Yesterday's Enterprise. Tasha Yar's daughter - the half-human, halk-Romulan hybrid - was born. Sela, I think. She appeared in later episodes and told Picard that she was Tasha's daughter, but no one on the Enterprise could figure out how that could be.
I can think of a few times when it's worked nicely (and many when it hasn't, of course). Two really GOOD time travel stories in the Trek world that jump to mind are DS9's Trials and Tribblations and TNG's Yesterday's Enterprise. Trials and Tribblations was definitely not designed to be a serious episode and yes, time travel was definitely a plot device, but was also the point of the episode.
TNG's Yesterday's Enterprise used time travel effectively, I think. Rather than a cheap plot device with a big red "reset button" at the end, there were actual consequences related to the time travel that came into play in later episodes, so it wasn't just forgotten.
In these cases, I think the writers did an outstanding job on creating unique time travel episodes.
I have to agree with this statement. In general, when I look at solutions, I look at the technical merits and try to find the right fit. But Larry Ellison is one of the most arrogant, ruthless SOBs on the planet and I just can't bring myself to support the company.
Yes, it's a failure, but consider what you just said - I assume you mean that heads should roll and all that good stuff. Exactly what purpose would that serve? If this really was an unpatched machine sitting in an office, wouldn't it be better for IT to re-examine their procedures and take appropriate steps to prevent the situation from happening again? Contrary to popular belief, keeping hundreds of systems patched, particularly when they're out of the direct control of IT for whatever reason, can be pretty damn hard, even for really good admins.
I really can't see what that would solve, except to force the university to spend a huge amount of money defending itself from legal attack with money that could be better spent on improving/fixing the situation. The knee jerk reaction to every situation in this country is to just sue people left and right and it really kinda sucks. As much as I feel for the students that have to deal with this, if any do sue the university, I really hope they lose even more time and some money in the process.
Peter,
I did fail to include some important information. We're looking at an initial implementation in the 4TB range. The goals are:
* Provide clustering ability
* Snapshots for data protection
* Easier/more efficient storage allocation
* More reasonable backups
On the clustering side, we're rolling out Exchange 2003 and Citrix in the next few months, and I'd like them to be highly available - hence clustering. We're also just simply wasting DAS space on each of about 35 total servers. Eventually, I see us at around 30 servers (through consolidation) all connected to an iSCSI SAN.
We're looking at both LeftHand and EqualLogic right now. As I add physical units, I also add more network connections and the EqualLogic solution automatically stripes all data across new units as they're brought online. In theory, that means I get additional I/O to the box. Further, EqualLogic is releasing a multipath I/O driver for Windows in early January. So, (again, in theory and what I've been reading), since each server will have four 1Gb NICs, I can use one for client communication and two for communication with the iSCSI array, and providing both load balancing and fault tolerance.
If I go down this road, I will have separate switches between the server farm and the storage array. I don't want to mix client traffic and storage traffic.
I do want decently performing storage for cheap, but also want some other things like the ability to cluster servers and provide a higher level of data protection, neither of which I can do at present.
The way I understand things: if I need more performance out of my iSCSI array, I just add more processors and network connections. Of course, this won't necessariyl provide an individual server with better performance, but the system as a whole should improve. Does that make sense?
Scott
Actually, questioning it being owned by a company in a country with a (unfair or not) reputation for fairly low quality products in a lot of areas. Last time I checked, folks were still entitled to their opinions.
I didn't mean to imply racism, actually. Just that a Chinese-owned IBM product line, on the surface, doesn't sit well with me. Basically the potential for quality issues indicated in other posts. If they have the same quality and support, great. But I don't think I'd buy a large quantity of anything from the new company until I see that.
We've been reevaluating our desktop vendor of choice lately. Most of them are basically commodities at this point, but even though I don't usually have any kind of attachment to a particular vendor, I can't see buying PCs from a Chinese-owned IBM... yeah, I know everything inside most PCs says Made in China, but...
As an American that did NOT vote for GW Bush and as an American that does NOT like the direction our country is headed, particularly with respect to what we're doing around the world, I have to say that I don't like your comment. I think it would have been fine if you hadn't included that part about "And *YET* the moment you bring this up, some USian will come up and pretend that they care." Guess what? Some of us do. Just slightly under 1/2 of us do care, according to the results of a national poll we had a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, the so-called "moral majority" got out the vote.
It's too bad that people can get up on their soapbox like the parent post, but can't do so under their own names.
I've gotten to a point where I just don't do it anymore... even for my parents. I (gently) told them when they asked that I really don't like doing that kind of work (I enjoy other aspects of IT), and that I don't want to spend holidays cleaning up computers. They understood and I moved on.
In "real" life, I'm an IT Director for a small private college and love it.
On the side:
I haven't taught in a number of years, but I used to teach adult ed computer classes for a local community college and school district. I enjoyed it a lot. For the last several years, I've been writing articles for TechRepublic - up to about 250 published at last count - and I find it highly enjoyable. Being paid is a serious motivating factor to stay current with what's going on. I'm also writing a book for O'Reilly at present. I'm also a father (1 here, 1 on the way, and 2 nephews that live with us) and husband, so keeping going can be hard, but I like the pace.
Slashdot Mirror
I hear ya... that year 200 compliance stuff was a bear, what with just coming off the Jesus execution and all :-) (Ok, ok... I had to comment on it!)
As for charging back "lost time" to the IT department... that would mean that every single employee got to dictate to the IT group what their individual needs for the day were rather than having IT work with management and users to get company needs addressed. How would you handle the user that as pissed off because IT wouldn't help them with their home network and they considered that "lost time".
I do agre that computing should be convenient for the end user (I'm an IT Director), but could not imagine a day when I could have 2,000 separate requests - 1 from each user - all over the board and I was held accountable for each and every one, no matter how irrational.
There is a balance!
It sounds like your company has other issues beyond an unresponsive IT department. You indicated that IT has been unable to sell necessary changes to senior management. Are you positive that senior management agrees that changes are needed or that they actually understand the seriousness of the problem? You might find that IT feels that their hands have been tied and have nowhere else to go since senior management isn't helping them.
A group of users making "demands" of the IT department is somewhat inappropriate. Yes, the IT department exists to help users with their work, but their priorities are set by senior management. If you plan to create some kind of IT Steering Committee, I would recommend a few things: (1) Lose the attitude -- all you'll do is put the IT folks on the defensive (and remember, since you're not in their group, you may actually have NO idea what priorities have been laid out for them by senior management); (2) Get the blessing of senior management before you try this; (3) Make sure at least one or two high-level people attend your meetings and buy-in to what you talk about.
Treat the IT folks like human beings. They may have perfectly good reasons for dismissing what you consider reasonable ideas. Perhaps they're seriously understaffed so that great desktop Linux rollout one of your users is convinced is the right idea just doesn't pay off for them, for example.
Actually, for all new products under this venture, they'd drop the "i" and replace with an "na" so as to differentiate the lines.
I have a Dell 24" both at home and on my desk at work, but even before that, I was getting headaches working on computers, which I do... way too much! At my last eye doctor appointment, he told me to use reading glasses while I'm working at the computer. I'm only 32, but thought I'd give it a go even though I was a little skeptical. Since I started using reading glasses, no more headaches.
It should be able to, actually. Since electromagnetic transmission is at the speed of light, if we can just somehow get the entire Internet backbone running in this alternate dimension.
You picked an appropriate name.
Slashdot doesn't cost you a damn thing. I see this every time there's a dupe. People bitching about how much Slashdot sucks. If you don't like it, leave. It's really very, very simple.
I've never called Microsoft for support for Exchange. I *have* called consulting groups with people that know more about Exchange than I thought possible. I don't think MS does a great job supporting their products, but some third party integrators do a great job.
Before I write, I should say that I'm in no way opposed to open source and use it where appropriate.
If you want something very well supported, not horribly difficult to administer in a simple environment and tried and true, just go with Active Directory and Exchange, especially if your company's focus is on something other than providing unique technology solutions. (i.e. you sell baskets)
While the open source solution might cost less up front, there is nothing in open sourece land at present that can touch the Exchange/Outlook combination. Sure, there are products such as OpenExchange, but, let's assume that you want the option to easily add other services later on, such as true handheld synchronization (i.e. www.good.com)
I know it can be sacrilege on Slashdot to not promote an open source solution every time, but sometimes, the business side of the house is more important than a cool technology solution.
Like many of the posters commented, I just keep on walking. I used to stop, and I used to let them look through my bags - after all, after I buy the merchandise, everything is now *mine* and not theirs. I finally got sick of it since just about every store has this problem. Now, when I'm walking and it goes off, I keep going. If anyone says anything, I keep walking. I did have someone chase me down and tell me I had to come back into the store so my bags could be searched. I hope I didn't run over his feet as I was driving away...
Ok... could ISPs that don't sign this be called CoC blockers?
Having a superior product means nothing if you can't market it. For years, NetWare was superior to NT, but MS beat the crap out of Novell in the marketing game and hence, won the battle.
Actually, stuff DID happen in the primary timeline as a result of the events in Yesterday's Enterprise. Tasha Yar's daughter - the half-human, halk-Romulan hybrid - was born. Sela, I think. She appeared in later episodes and told Picard that she was Tasha's daughter, but no one on the Enterprise could figure out how that could be.
I can think of a few times when it's worked nicely (and many when it hasn't, of course). Two really GOOD time travel stories in the Trek world that jump to mind are DS9's Trials and Tribblations and TNG's Yesterday's Enterprise. Trials and Tribblations was definitely not designed to be a serious episode and yes, time travel was definitely a plot device, but was also the point of the episode. TNG's Yesterday's Enterprise used time travel effectively, I think. Rather than a cheap plot device with a big red "reset button" at the end, there were actual consequences related to the time travel that came into play in later episodes, so it wasn't just forgotten. In these cases, I think the writers did an outstanding job on creating unique time travel episodes.
I have to agree with this statement. In general, when I look at solutions, I look at the technical merits and try to find the right fit. But Larry Ellison is one of the most arrogant, ruthless SOBs on the planet and I just can't bring myself to support the company.
Yes, it's a failure, but consider what you just said - I assume you mean that heads should roll and all that good stuff. Exactly what purpose would that serve? If this really was an unpatched machine sitting in an office, wouldn't it be better for IT to re-examine their procedures and take appropriate steps to prevent the situation from happening again? Contrary to popular belief, keeping hundreds of systems patched, particularly when they're out of the direct control of IT for whatever reason, can be pretty damn hard, even for really good admins.
I really can't see what that would solve, except to force the university to spend a huge amount of money defending itself from legal attack with money that could be better spent on improving/fixing the situation. The knee jerk reaction to every situation in this country is to just sue people left and right and it really kinda sucks. As much as I feel for the students that have to deal with this, if any do sue the university, I really hope they lose even more time and some money in the process.
Peter, I did fail to include some important information. We're looking at an initial implementation in the 4TB range. The goals are: * Provide clustering ability * Snapshots for data protection * Easier/more efficient storage allocation * More reasonable backups On the clustering side, we're rolling out Exchange 2003 and Citrix in the next few months, and I'd like them to be highly available - hence clustering. We're also just simply wasting DAS space on each of about 35 total servers. Eventually, I see us at around 30 servers (through consolidation) all connected to an iSCSI SAN. We're looking at both LeftHand and EqualLogic right now. As I add physical units, I also add more network connections and the EqualLogic solution automatically stripes all data across new units as they're brought online. In theory, that means I get additional I/O to the box. Further, EqualLogic is releasing a multipath I/O driver for Windows in early January. So, (again, in theory and what I've been reading), since each server will have four 1Gb NICs, I can use one for client communication and two for communication with the iSCSI array, and providing both load balancing and fault tolerance. If I go down this road, I will have separate switches between the server farm and the storage array. I don't want to mix client traffic and storage traffic. I do want decently performing storage for cheap, but also want some other things like the ability to cluster servers and provide a higher level of data protection, neither of which I can do at present. The way I understand things: if I need more performance out of my iSCSI array, I just add more processors and network connections. Of course, this won't necessariyl provide an individual server with better performance, but the system as a whole should improve. Does that make sense? Scott
Actually, questioning it being owned by a company in a country with a (unfair or not) reputation for fairly low quality products in a lot of areas. Last time I checked, folks were still entitled to their opinions.
I didn't mean to imply racism, actually. Just that a Chinese-owned IBM product line, on the surface, doesn't sit well with me. Basically the potential for quality issues indicated in other posts. If they have the same quality and support, great. But I don't think I'd buy a large quantity of anything from the new company until I see that.
We've been reevaluating our desktop vendor of choice lately. Most of them are basically commodities at this point, but even though I don't usually have any kind of attachment to a particular vendor, I can't see buying PCs from a Chinese-owned IBM... yeah, I know everything inside most PCs says Made in China, but...
As an American that did NOT vote for GW Bush and as an American that does NOT like the direction our country is headed, particularly with respect to what we're doing around the world, I have to say that I don't like your comment. I think it would have been fine if you hadn't included that part about "And *YET* the moment you bring this up, some USian will come up and pretend that they care." Guess what? Some of us do. Just slightly under 1/2 of us do care, according to the results of a national poll we had a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, the so-called "moral majority" got out the vote.
It's too bad that people can get up on their soapbox like the parent post, but can't do so under their own names.
I've gotten to a point where I just don't do it anymore... even for my parents. I (gently) told them when they asked that I really don't like doing that kind of work (I enjoy other aspects of IT), and that I don't want to spend holidays cleaning up computers. They understood and I moved on.
In "real" life, I'm an IT Director for a small private college and love it.
On the side:
I haven't taught in a number of years, but I used to teach adult ed computer classes for a local community college and school district. I enjoyed it a lot.
For the last several years, I've been writing articles for TechRepublic - up to about 250 published at last count - and I find it highly enjoyable. Being paid is a serious motivating factor to stay current with what's going on. I'm also writing a book for O'Reilly at present.
I'm also a father (1 here, 1 on the way, and 2 nephews that live with us) and husband, so keeping going can be hard, but I like the pace.