Well, given that some larger cities are doing it, albeit slowly, sort of makes the point moot.
Obviously, having to convert fewer users and go through fewer political meetings to even start the project is an advantage. No surprise there.
I work part time for City College of San Francisco - you wouldn't believe the political process that has to be gone through to just get a new application onto the system here. Endless meetings at which nothing is done, everything is postponed, and pointless objections are raised just to establish that someone has an input to the process. And if you do get the app on the system, people immediately want to sabotage it.
There's nothing technical about this process at all - it's all political monkey business. It would be true even if OSS weren't on the agenda - as it isn't here at CCSF (but it should be.)
I wouldn't complain too much about "not trying hard enough". It's hard enough to get people to switch to OSS. As I've advocated often here, letting them take their time about it is a good thing if it encourages them to do it at all.
As long as they let a consultant keep them informed about enhancements and changes in the OSS landscape, so they can know when OSS products have gotten good enough to switch out more parts of their proprietary infrastructure, it's not that bad a deal to take their time - especially if it allows their users to adjust.
On the other hand, there are times, as a recent report indicated, when you want to yank the proprietary products out from under the users and tell them there's no going back - otherwise some of the users will sabotage the entire project by continuing to use the proprietary stuff no matter what - even if they just as easily use the OSS stuff. You have to decide this policy on a case-by-case basis depending on each user or manager. You can't decide this sort of thing on an organization-wide basis.
That's true, as I've said before here. However, people are fixated on the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" concept - as well as not wanting to do any work they don't have to, of course.
On the other hand, if the server isn't connected to anything but local workstations and isn't doing anything but one thing, it's probably okay to let it stand for as long as it can. Where I would question that policy is, if it's only doing one thing, do you really want to never improve its ability to do that one thing - or what that one thing actually is? If not, then how "mission critical" is that one thing really?
I don't "come across" as anything of the sort - except to you. You come across as an asshole wanting to proclaim everyone a moron for no reason but your ego.
I'm quite well aware that it isn't easy for a bunch of Arabs to waltz into the US and start setting up shop in the same manner as they might in Iraq. That was never my point - that was your extension of my point for your own agenda.
My point was that it was and is quite possible for them to acquire the necessary equipment in the US. HOW they do that - i.e., whether they use front people or do it themselves - was and is irrelevant to my simple point - that the hardware is available.
Actually, given the ease of smuggling stuff into the US - as the recent port sale articles have repeatedly stated, only 5% of the cargo is examined by Customs - I doubt any terrorist other than homegrown would bother trying to get stuff locally. Just ship a container load of Semtex in...of course, more likely, a few pounds here and there out of a container load of something else. If you can get drugs in, you can get explosives and weapons in.
Given the ease with which the 9/11 hijackers functioned in the US - including receiving wire transfers of $100,000 at a time and getting trained at pilot schools here - I doubt terrorists wishing to engage in more mundane operations - like the guy who simply walked up to cars lined up at an intersection outside the CIA some years back and started shooting - would find it particularly difficult to pull such operations off. As long as they stayed mobile and didn't hunker down at local mosques or such nonsense, it could take quite some time to catch them. They didn't catch the CIA guy - they had to find him overseas and extradite him.
The key to effective terrorism is to make it bloody and chronic. Such levels of terrorism nearly brought down the Italian and Turkish governments back in the '70's. Put a hundred men in the US with a sufficient number of AK's, ammo, hand grenades, and some C-4, and you could have National Guard troops on every street corner in every major city in the US in a matter of weeks.
A couple guys with grenades in their jacket pockets walk onto a couple crowded commute trains in New York and San Francisco and Chicago, pull out the grenades, say "Imshallah" and toss them - fifty people each get injured, a couple dozen killed. Do that every day for a week and no trains will be moving in the cities involved.
Blow a car bomb on each bridge here in the Bay area and nobody will be crossing those bridges.
Drive up next to the open part of the BART track here and toss a command-detonated satchel charge; blow the next train off the tracks - that's it for BART travel. The whole city of San Francisco could be almost totally paralyzed by a dozen guys in a couple of days with nothing but some explosives and some stolen cars.
I know - I planned that sort of thing (but not targeting those sorts of civilian targets) ten years ago. Fortunately for the US, I got caught early because I didn't do adequate planning for the bank robberies. Had I a money man to finance the operation and a foreign government intelligence agency to supply the equipment, that wouldn't have been necessary; I could have gone straight into operations. A few guys competently trained (which fortunately ninety-five percent of terrorists aren't) and equipped could bring a city to its knees in a week or two. Read about Richard Marcinko's Red Cell SEAL team - turn a few guys as well trained as them loose and it's all over. And the whole point of his Red Cell team was to show how terrorists could take US military base security apart. He was ridiculously successful in almost every mission - including putting IEDs next to nuclear sub reactors at Groton, penetrating US Navy nuclear weapons lockers, putting fake IEDs on Air Force One, and getting a couple guys with several pounds of C-4 within twenty yards of the President's cottage in Camp David.
I studied terrorism for ten years - I know what's possible. It's just the incompetence and lack of resources of most terrorists that keeps terrorism from being the most effective form of warfare extant.
My point was very simple and easy to comprehend - except for you, apparently. It's quite possible to obtain explosives suitable for IEDs and military quality hardware in the US.
And if you don't know that, YOU'RE talking out your ass. Do a Google for armory thefts and the government reports thereon in the last twenty years.
Try this quote from the first page of a Google search:
According to the Washington Post, the 500-member Kansas Militia claims to have recruited a number of members from the Ft. Riley area. The degree of involvement by reservists or active-duty GIs in the burgeoning militia movement is unknown at present. There is evidence that militia members or sympathizers have legally and illegally obtained weapons and explosives from military facilities and learned how to use them courtesy of the taxpayers. Stolen explosives and weapons, according to testimony of a Los Angeles police detective at a 1993 hearing of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, were allowing extremist groups to become better armed than law enforcement agents. At the same hearing, a Michigan National Guardsman admitted that for five years he had been stealing small arms parts and selling them to an Illinois gun dealer whose customers included David Koresh's Branch Davidian religious sect near Waco, Texas.
In early 1987, five Ku Klux Klan members were charged by a federal grand jury in Raleigh, N.C., with conspiring to steal U.S. military weapons, explosives and rockets to equip a white supremacist paramilitary unit. In 1988, an associate of former Green Beret Lt. Col. and current Idaho-based militia leader James (Bo) Gritz, pleaded guilty to shipping 200 military plastic explosives by commercial airline for use in the Nevada desert to train Afghan rebels. In July 1994, members of the Blue Ridge Hunt Club, a militia in Virginia, were charged with plotting to plunder a National Guard armory for weapons and ammunition.
For five years, Sen. John Glenn (D-Ohio) has been investigating the widespread theft of military equipment and weapons from various U.S. installations. He commented that while the military has improved control over sensitive weapons and supplies, you can't guarantee that TNT or blasting caps are immune from theft. Glenn's office released a General Accounting Office report on corrective actions taken by the Army to cure inventory and physical security weaknesses. It also noted that in July 1994, the Army's Criminal Investigation Command began an on-going vulnerability assessment for small arms, ammunition, and explosives.
In addition to those obtained through theft, many weapons obtained by militias were bought openly from the military. Since 1993, 3.7 million pounds of outdated explosives have been sold by the Defense Department to citizens and companies with government licenses. A Pentagon official admitted that no checks are made to ensure that the lethal items are used for legal purposes.
"Stolen were 150 pounds of C-4, 250 pounds of sheet explosives, 20,000 feet of detonator cord and 2,500 blasting caps."
Fortunately the bozos who stole them were apparently clueless as to how to use them, and presumably stole them just to have them or sell them. But they got them from a company storage depot. Any terrorist with access to Google could find such locations all over the country.
So what's YOUR point? That we're all safe as daisies because Bush is in charge?
Enderle is a joke. For anybody to take his criticism seriously, they have to be Windows shills - like him - themselves.
I would agree that the OSDL report could have been more comprehensive in its specifics, but that's the nature of these things - they're meant to be read by idiot managers who can't think and don't care.
You're forgetting how many National Guard armories (that have been broken into and stuff stolen) are in the United States.
Of course, all the stuff that used to be in them is now in Iraq, too, so never mind.
You're also forgetting the literally TONS of construction explosives that have been stolen in the US from poorly guarded construction sites.
Not to mention how many US military depot troops with drug, alcohol and sex problems have undoubtedly been bribed to fudge the paperwork as stuff "went missing" or was "consumed during training exercises."
Finally, the US has maybe 600 tactical nuclear weapons - and as Richard Marcinko demonstrated (and videotaped) with his Red Cell SEAL team, US military security is a joke.
"A few months back, Norris found more than 10,000 infected PCs on the inside of a Fortune 100 company network, all trying to contact a control server located at ChangeIP.com. When Norris called the company with the bad news, its poorly trained network administrator had no idea how to respond. "I call this guy up and say, 'Hey, you've got 10,000 infected computers on your network that are attacking me,' and this guy is basically, like, 'Well, what do you want me to do about it?' ""
Tell me again how sys admins are hired on ability.
Tell me again how sys admins are worth the money they get paid.
Tell me again how sys admins all know what they're doing and therefore Windows is better than Linux because they all use Windows.
System administration isn't like system design and programming. In those professions you have to produce something that actually works (however inefficiently and bugridden and with a poor user interface). In system administration, as long as someone can log on, you've done your job - no matter how many viruses, botnets, inefficient servers, and system crashes occur (as long as the system crashes are short term, anyway) or how much excessive money you spent on licenses.
Face it, the IT industry today is so fucked it will take a major meltdown of the Internet or a major corporation going out of business because of shitty enterprise software to correct it.
While the psychology is true, the end result is a disaster for virtually all companies.
Marcus Ranum did a whole rant on this and pretty much cleaned the clock of the concept that "accountability" has any meaning at all.
In other words, it's bullshit.
And nothing SAP says about OSS can be taken seriously. They are deathly afraid that the ERP marketplace is going to go the way of the CRM marketplace - with giants like Siebel being considered responsible for the mess, and OSS entries like SugarCRM cleaning their clock.
And they're right - that's exactly what is going to happen. I can't predict how fast, but it will happen.
'"The mess that companies have with their IT today is unimaginable, and the larger they get the more mess they have," Graf said. Some SAP customers have as many as 3,000 systems, for example. "They would be happy with just 1,000," he said.'
The above is the only part he got right.
The rest of it is mere justification for SAP's position in the ERP marketplace - and a response to the fear that ERP is being blamed for most of the mess he describes.
Sooner or later CIOs will realize that building apps from OSS tools is far cheaper and more effective than being saddled with a dinosaur like SAP for the next twenty years.
Take anything SAP says about OSS with about the same barrel of salt you can take from anything George Bush says about Iraq.
Of course, it may be their product managers so infected, and not so much the programmers, as I can't imagine programmers being that enthused over Group Policy Management Consoles...
Certainly Microsoft is the home of "Lotus eating" when it comes to security and reliability. I mean, their antispyware product disables Norton Anti-Virus? Who thought that one up?
Who suggested not using proprietary software at all? Not me.
What I'm saying is that you can plan to wean the company off proprietary software over time.
Nobody said you have to stop using proprietary software in the short term.
All of the OSS consultants I'm aware of will accept the use of proprietary software for short-term and critical business needs - such as the need to deal with a partner company that only uses such.
This does NOT mean there isn't a solution for that situation. But nobody said you have to hold the company in stasis while that solution is found or implemented.
This stuff is, as I've said, all excuses to make up for lack of imagination in IT management (and higher management).
A good deal of what is done in business is not done for any rational reasons at all. Big surprise. Businesses consistently piss money and time and people away for no reason. Of course, there's an excuse for every time it happens if management gets called on it. They trot out some "reason" without any effort to justify that "reason's" actual relative importance in terms of actual cost and effectiveness.
Almost twenty years ago at Bank of America, I watch BoFA dump its entire cash management software strategy because they didn't have the nerve to re-engineer their product with superior tools, instead opting to contract with a third party for a bug-ridden piece of crap that was unsellable. Everybody except management got fired or laid off. The excuse was that the "market was saturated". Anybody with a brain knows that the software market is NEVER "saturated". You just upgrade and sell to the same people all over again. This is the entire basis of the software market (and today people are getting tired of it, which is one more reason OSS is of interest). BoFA management simply didn't comprehend this because they were not people who understood the software industry.
The same applies to OSS. People with a mindset of proprietary software simply can't understand that OSS is a complete shift in how business is done. So they make decisions based on erroneous concepts like "we have to go out and 'shop' for OSS." They also don't understand the principles of proper IT infrastructure in the first place. OSS merely points these failings out.
And there are solutions to absolutely every single thing you've said.
All you've done is demonstrate exactly why people have problems converting to OSS - and none of them are the fault of OSS.
They are ALL the fault of short-term, narrow-minded, incompetent thinking on the part of management of virtually every corporation in existence.
I agree - OSS has no chance in this climate.
Except for one thing - there do seem to be exceptions to the rule - and they are proving everything I've said.
Which means sooner or later, even the idiots will have to come around (or go out of business) when these others point out to them how stupid and expensive their systems are and how little competitive advantage they have in comparison with those who went OSS.
I'm not going to argue the point anymore with people who can't think logically - which is the vast majority of people here and in business. I'm simply going to keep pointing out the logical way to go and get my clients from people who CAN comprehend. There are quite a few other open source consultants doing the same thing - and they seem to be making a living. It's fairly easy when you can bid, as in one example, a $20,000 system based on OSS against a $60,000 based on Windows.
So everybody else can just go on their merry lemming way, making Bill the richest guy in the world, and dealing with the crashes, viruses, expense, inflexibility, etc., etc. I'm sure companies run by people like that have worse problems than their IT systems anyway.
First of all, I've seen a Windows XP system go down the tubes within 24 hours of unpacking the Dell box, simply by uninstalling McAfee. After that, it was unable to communicate to a Linksys router - three tech "geniuses" - me, SBC and Geek Squad - couldn't solve the problem. Why? Because there was nothing to look at - everything was buried in the fucking Registry. Reloading the system fixed the problem. Windows score: 0.
"Smart about what you install?" Oh, right, don't install anything - that will work. You work for Microsoft, by any chance? I install what I NEED to install, just like everybody else. I don't install crap just to be installing stuff. I don't install spyware, crappy calendars, sports games, or other drivel.
Text files vs Registry. Look, stupid, when I talk about not updating a text file except by hand, I'm talking about not having a half dozen different programs updating the same configuration - which is what the Registry does. And in fact, I HAVE had problems with Mandriva doing exactly that - their goddamn menu editor is a disaster (and that's not just my opinion.) The more Linux emulates Windows by making the configuration of subsystems more complex, the more problems Linux will have. A GUI that updates a single text file is no problem - all it does it act as your "hand".
As for the Registry being easy to copy, export and update, gimme a break. Most users can't even fucking FIND the thing (not that finding Linux text files is any easier.) There's no difference between Windows and Linux in ease of copying, exporting or updating anything - except Linux doesn't allow any Tom, Dick and Harry program to update its system files.
The rest of your post is meaningless ranting - especially your claim that you use Linux every day. Billshit (I didn't mispell "bullshit", BTW) - you're a Windows shill running off at the mouth.
"No way you can beat me. Give it up. Give...it...up."
Why wait? While this will generate some heat, their EXCUSE will be that "Well, it's a beta, we didn't tell you to put into production."
Meanwhile they get to damage Norton for tons of people who won't know what the problem is.
This sets the stage for their marketing later: "Gee, you know how Norton conflicts with everything including our antispyware? Better buy everything from us, so you won't have conflicts with other software. "
I can see the ads now, touting how wonderfully integrated with the OS their AV suite is...
In other words, you have a bunch of Windows morons trying to run a Linux-based system without apparently spending any effort to set it up correctly. Apparently, there was no training, no effort to integrate the system with the employees old ways of working, no nothing, in fact. You obviously just dumped Linux on a bunch of Windows guys and expected it to be seamless.
And then you blame Linux.
Smart, really smart.
I predict your job is pretty shaky at the moment.
I was right - you're clueless about how IT should be run.
And anybody who says they had nothing to do once a Windows system was set up is simply a liar.
Look, sooner or later you WILL move from the software you have. Either because the company that makes it goes out of business or is bought by another company that discontinues the product because it doesn't fit their marketing goals, or because the business needs of your organization changes, or some other reason that the product either is no longer supported, doesn't work any more for some technical or business reason, or simply disappears.
The issue is whether your management is planning NOW for that inevitable eventuality. And the way to do that and minimize the costs and disruption is to start pursuing - over time - a planned OSS migration.
Nobody says you have to migrate to OSS overnight. That's a red herring. It's also a red herring to say that your company has to do it alone.
I didn't even know what you meant by CATI, so I Googled. This isn't rocket science software, apparently. It's no more involved than any other enterprise software and probably less so. There's no reason a bunch of open source guys who know the tools couldn't be commissioned to design and buld the thing over time as a low-cost, budgeted project that wouldn't cost more annually than your current license fees, most likely.
The issue remains the same: no matter WHAT the cost of conversion, sooner or later you will have paid more for proprietary licenses than you will for conversion. And if you don't convert, sooner or later you will HAVE TO convert.
It's really that simple.
The idea that one migrates to OSS by running out and just "finding" a replacement program that happens to be OSS is an example of the "proprietary mindset". It doesn't work like that. Unfortunately a lot of OSS evangelists act like it does, making up lists of "comparable" OSS programs - GIMP matches Photoshop (which as Photoshop know, it doesn't), etc.
That's not how to go about this. The key is to use the existing tools and infrastructure products available now to build the next generation enterprise apps for your industry in an OSS development manner.
Meanwhile, considerable conversion could be done in other areas where the software functionality is more "commodity".
Have you worked anywhere or ever been in any human institution whatever?
"Pecking order" exists as an inbuilt humam mechanism. Humans are primates. Primates have hierarchical behavior patterns. So humans do, too.
And they express it in EVERY social situation: business, home, church, society, individual friendships, you name it.
It is the second dominant flaw in humans. The first is the fear of death - which is the motivation for the second flaw.
All human psychology can be summed up as: "If you're right, I'm wrong - and if I'm wrong, I'm dead - and that can't be allowed. So you're wrong, and I'm right."
It's merely the expression of this primitive, pre-rational, primate fear that gets complex in humans due to their conceptual processing ability which has led to more complex social structures than a bonobo chimp troop.
But the bottom line is the same:
You humans are all going to die. We Transhumans aren't.
An alternative to this chemical is a good combat handgun, an assault rifle with a grenade launcher, and body armor - and of course the training to use them. And if they don't work, a sniper rifle, an IED, or poison can also be made to work well.
I see - you wouldn't be part of the "faith-based" reality of the Bush administration, would you?
It's easy to cover incompetence by saying everybody else does it this way, so we should, too.
That's a reality I expect you aren't able to face.
And it's not a question of "geeks vs everybody else" - I can't stand most geeks, either, since they use technical expertise to cover their incompetence at everything else. the issue is whether the things management thinks are important are actually relevant to the bottom line of the business. In fact, whether management even understands what the "bottom line" is - since most of the time, it appears to them to be office politics, insuring that the employees kowtow to their random decisions, and taking care of their perks. Actually supporting the company's purported reason for existence - supplying something to customers and hopefully making a profit doing so - takes a back seat - in the trunk, most of the time - to these other issues.
And if you can't understand that, you either have never worked in a corporate, or for that matter, large educational, or government, environment, or you are simply too low on the totem pole to see the forest for the trees of your little cubicle.
And your response is from someone who, in order to avoid criticism of an underlying issue, decides to treat the topic as narrow to avoid discussion of the underlying issues.
Yes, it is relevant to the death of US troops that they are in Iraq because of the policies of the moron in office and the fact that morons voted to put him there.
And yes, Windows is the bottom line cause of this problem. No Windows = fewer (if not no) viruses = no AV software to have conflicts with or eat up system resources.
Now, I'll grant you that I'm not currently running the plethora of computer security tools available for Linux. If I was running a server, I would, and I would have to take the performance impact. But these same TYPES of tools need to be run on any corporate Windows server - AS WELL AS the antivirus stuff. So in the end, the issue is: if you have to run computer security software - and you do - pick an OS that doesn't need to run every type of security tool under the sun because it limits certain risks by design.
"users flock to use Windows because in a real working environment it delivers what users need with a level of usability and stability that is entirely acceptable."
BULLSHIT!
They don't "flock" - they are HERDED. By accident of history, and the stupidity of AT&T for keeping the price of UNIX so high during the eighties, Microsoft built an OS empire on crap. The average corporate exec is a moron who only buys what the vendors tell him to buy and the vendors were bought and sold by Gates and his restrictive contracts. The vendors didn't care what they sold to the corporations as long as the corporations paid them.
Nowadays, Windows is known for being such shit that people who do switch to Linux cite it as the number one reason for doing so - to get out from under Microsoft's monopoly.
The level of usability and stability of Windows is NOT acceptable to anyone who wants to get a job done without the corporate politics preventing him from doing so.
I finally switched my day to day work from Windows XP to Mandriva 2006 over the last month. Except for the times I have to boot into Windows for client purposes, I have had to reboot Linux ONCE in over a month - yesterday when the stupid Pan newsreader apparently hosed its socket file and couldn't download any news articles or start its queue. If I'd known how to fix it, I wouldn't have had to reboot, but rebooting seemed the quickest way to fix the problem. Whereas with Windows XP, I would have had to reboot at least once every two days or daily to fix some equally stupid problem of OS or application.
At work, the Windows XP workstation is fairly stable - except that almost every day Winlogon.exe has a problem logging me on, or McAfee has a problem shutting down when Windows shuts down. On the other hand, I haven't installed much personal software on that system.
Windows is unreliable because it uses a Registry - an updateable Registry at that. That was the worst design decision Microsoft ever made. Linux uses text config files that are never updated except by hand. Almost by itself this accounts for the phenomenable stability of Linux. You simply can't trust an OS to third party programmers updating your system.
The second and third worst design decisions made by MS were to try to make the system "simple" by hiding the complexity inside more complexity, and by "featuritis". Unfortunately I see more and more of that being adopted by Linux. Adding more "features" does not make a system easier to use - it makes it harder, and more complex, and the complexity eventually breaks the system entirely requiring a total redesign.
The only two issues facing Linux adoption in the marketplace are the current lack of enterprise level applications, and the incompetence of IT management in being unable to discern what is important and what is not in deploying IT infrastructure.
The former will be resolved as more enterprise class applications are built using the OSS tools currently being built.
The latter problem will remain forever, apparently.
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"Hard work, imagination and business practices also matter."
When was the last time the US excelled in any of that?
Well, given that some larger cities are doing it, albeit slowly, sort of makes the point moot.
Obviously, having to convert fewer users and go through fewer political meetings to even start the project is an advantage. No surprise there.
I work part time for City College of San Francisco - you wouldn't believe the political process that has to be gone through to just get a new application onto the system here. Endless meetings at which nothing is done, everything is postponed, and pointless objections are raised just to establish that someone has an input to the process. And if you do get the app on the system, people immediately want to sabotage it.
There's nothing technical about this process at all - it's all political monkey business.
It would be true even if OSS weren't on the agenda - as it isn't here at CCSF (but it should be.)
I wouldn't complain too much about "not trying hard enough". It's hard enough to get people to switch to OSS. As I've advocated often here, letting them take their time about it is a good thing if it encourages them to do it at all.
As long as they let a consultant keep them informed about enhancements and changes in the OSS landscape, so they can know when OSS products have gotten good enough to switch out more parts of their proprietary infrastructure, it's not that bad a deal to take their time - especially if it allows their users to adjust.
On the other hand, there are times, as a recent report indicated, when you want to yank the proprietary products out from under the users and tell them there's no going back - otherwise some of the users will sabotage the entire project by continuing to use the proprietary stuff no matter what - even if they just as easily use the OSS stuff. You have to decide this policy on a case-by-case basis depending on each user or manager. You can't decide this sort of thing on an organization-wide basis.
That's true, as I've said before here. However, people are fixated on the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" concept - as well as not wanting to do any work they don't have to, of course.
On the other hand, if the server isn't connected to anything but local workstations and isn't doing anything but one thing, it's probably okay to let it stand for as long as it can. Where I would question that policy is, if it's only doing one thing, do you really want to never improve its ability to do that one thing - or what that one thing actually is? If not, then how "mission critical" is that one thing really?
I don't "come across" as anything of the sort - except to you. You come across as an asshole wanting to proclaim everyone a moron for no reason but your ego.
I'm quite well aware that it isn't easy for a bunch of Arabs to waltz into the US and start setting up shop in the same manner as they might in Iraq. That was never my point - that was your extension of my point for your own agenda.
My point was that it was and is quite possible for them to acquire the necessary equipment in the US. HOW they do that - i.e., whether they use front people or do it themselves - was and is irrelevant to my simple point - that the hardware is available.
Actually, given the ease of smuggling stuff into the US - as the recent port sale articles have repeatedly stated, only 5% of the cargo is examined by Customs - I doubt any terrorist other than homegrown would bother trying to get stuff locally. Just ship a container load of Semtex in...of course, more likely, a few pounds here and there out of a container load of something else. If you can get drugs in, you can get explosives and weapons in.
Given the ease with which the 9/11 hijackers functioned in the US - including receiving wire transfers of $100,000 at a time and getting trained at pilot schools here - I doubt terrorists wishing to engage in more mundane operations - like the guy who simply walked up to cars lined up at an intersection outside the CIA some years back and started shooting - would find it particularly difficult to pull such operations off. As long as they stayed mobile and didn't hunker down at local mosques or such nonsense, it could take quite some time to catch them. They didn't catch the CIA guy - they had to find him overseas and extradite him.
The key to effective terrorism is to make it bloody and chronic. Such levels of terrorism nearly brought down the Italian and Turkish governments back in the '70's. Put a hundred men in the US with a sufficient number of AK's, ammo, hand grenades, and some C-4, and you could have National Guard troops on every street corner in every major city in the US in a matter of weeks.
A couple guys with grenades in their jacket pockets walk onto a couple crowded commute trains in New York and San Francisco and Chicago, pull out the grenades, say "Imshallah" and toss them - fifty people each get injured, a couple dozen killed. Do that every day for a week and no trains will be moving in the cities involved.
Blow a car bomb on each bridge here in the Bay area and nobody will be crossing those bridges.
Drive up next to the open part of the BART track here and toss a command-detonated satchel charge; blow the next train off the tracks - that's it for BART travel. The whole city of San Francisco could be almost totally paralyzed by a dozen guys in a couple of days with nothing but some explosives and some stolen cars.
I know - I planned that sort of thing (but not targeting those sorts of civilian targets) ten years ago. Fortunately for the US, I got caught early because I didn't do adequate planning for the bank robberies. Had I a money man to finance the operation and a foreign government intelligence agency to supply the equipment, that wouldn't have been necessary; I could have gone straight into operations. A few guys competently trained (which fortunately ninety-five percent of terrorists aren't) and equipped could bring a city to its knees in a week or two. Read about Richard Marcinko's Red Cell SEAL team - turn a few guys as well trained as them loose and it's all over. And the whole point of his Red Cell team was to show how terrorists could take US military base security apart. He was ridiculously successful in almost every mission - including putting IEDs next to nuclear sub reactors at Groton, penetrating US Navy nuclear weapons lockers, putting fake IEDs on Air Force One, and getting a couple guys with several pounds of C-4 within twenty yards of the President's cottage in Camp David.
I studied terrorism for ten years - I know what's possible. It's just the incompetence and lack of resources of most terrorists that keeps terrorism from being the most effective form of warfare extant.
My point was very simple and easy to comprehend - except for you, apparently. It's quite possible to obtain explosives suitable for IEDs and military quality hardware in the US.
And if you don't know that, YOU'RE talking out your ass. Do a Google for armory thefts and the government reports thereon in the last twenty years.
Try this quote from the first page of a Google search:
According to the Washington Post, the 500-member Kansas Militia claims to have recruited a number of members from the Ft. Riley area. The degree of involvement by reservists or active-duty GIs in the burgeoning militia movement is unknown at present. There is evidence that militia members or sympathizers have legally and illegally obtained weapons and explosives from military facilities and learned how to use them courtesy of the taxpayers. Stolen explosives and weapons, according to testimony of a Los Angeles police detective at a 1993 hearing of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, were allowing extremist groups to become better armed than law enforcement agents. At the same hearing, a Michigan National Guardsman admitted that for five years he had been stealing small arms parts and selling them to an Illinois gun dealer whose customers included David Koresh's Branch Davidian religious sect near Waco, Texas.
In early 1987, five Ku Klux Klan members were charged by a federal grand jury in Raleigh, N.C., with conspiring to steal U.S. military weapons, explosives and rockets to equip a white supremacist paramilitary unit. In 1988, an associate of former Green Beret Lt. Col. and current Idaho-based militia leader James (Bo) Gritz, pleaded guilty to shipping 200 military plastic explosives by commercial airline for use in the Nevada desert to train Afghan rebels. In July 1994, members of the Blue Ridge Hunt Club, a militia in Virginia, were charged with plotting to plunder a National Guard armory for weapons and ammunition.
For five years, Sen. John Glenn (D-Ohio) has been investigating the widespread theft of military equipment and weapons from various U.S. installations. He commented that while the military has improved control over sensitive weapons and supplies, you can't guarantee that TNT or blasting caps are immune from theft. Glenn's office released a General Accounting Office report on corrective actions taken by the Army to cure inventory and physical security weaknesses. It also noted that in July 1994, the Army's Criminal Investigation Command began an on-going vulnerability assessment for small arms, ammunition, and explosives.
In addition to those obtained through theft, many weapons obtained by militias were bought openly from the military. Since 1993, 3.7 million pounds of outdated explosives have been sold by the Defense Department to citizens and companies with government licenses. A Pentagon official admitted that no checks are made to ensure that the lethal items are used for legal purposes.
Try this ABC report from last month for stolen explosives:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1439535
"Stolen were 150 pounds of C-4, 250 pounds of sheet explosives, 20,000 feet of detonator cord and 2,500 blasting caps."
Fortunately the bozos who stole them were apparently clueless as to how to use them, and presumably stole them just to have them or sell them. But they got them from a company storage depot. Any terrorist with access to Google could find such locations all over the country.
So what's YOUR point? That we're all safe as daisies because Bush is in charge?
Nicely put.
Enderle is a joke. For anybody to take his criticism seriously, they have to be Windows shills - like him - themselves.
I would agree that the OSDL report could have been more comprehensive in its specifics, but that's the nature of these things - they're meant to be read by idiot managers who can't think and don't care.
Lke Enderle himself.
Well, you COULD pleasure The Corrs since they now have MBE's...
(No, an MBE is not a sexual disease - it's "Member of the British Empire".)
You're forgetting how many National Guard armories (that have been broken into and stuff stolen) are in the United States.
Of course, all the stuff that used to be in them is now in Iraq, too, so never mind.
You're also forgetting the literally TONS of construction explosives that have been stolen in the US from poorly guarded construction sites.
Not to mention how many US military depot troops with drug, alcohol and sex problems have undoubtedly been bribed to fudge the paperwork as stuff "went missing" or was "consumed during training exercises."
Finally, the US has maybe 600 tactical nuclear weapons - and as Richard Marcinko demonstrated (and videotaped) with his Red Cell SEAL team, US military security is a joke.
"A few months back, Norris found more than 10,000 infected PCs on the inside of a Fortune 100 company network, all trying to contact a control server located at ChangeIP.com. When Norris called the company with the bad news, its poorly trained network administrator had no idea how to respond. "I call this guy up and say, 'Hey, you've got 10,000 infected computers on your network that are attacking me,' and this guy is basically, like, 'Well, what do you want me to do about it?' ""
Tell me again how sys admins are hired on ability.
Tell me again how sys admins are worth the money they get paid.
Tell me again how sys admins all know what they're doing and therefore Windows is better than Linux because they all use Windows.
System administration isn't like system design and programming. In those professions you have to produce something that actually works (however inefficiently and bugridden and with a poor user interface). In system administration, as long as someone can log on, you've done your job - no matter how many viruses, botnets, inefficient servers, and system crashes occur (as long as the system crashes are short term, anyway) or how much excessive money you spent on licenses.
Face it, the IT industry today is so fucked it will take a major meltdown of the Internet or a major corporation going out of business because of shitty enterprise software to correct it.
While the psychology is true, the end result is a disaster for virtually all companies.
Marcus Ranum did a whole rant on this and pretty much cleaned the clock of the concept that "accountability" has any meaning at all.
In other words, it's bullshit.
And nothing SAP says about OSS can be taken seriously. They are deathly afraid that the ERP marketplace is going to go the way of the CRM marketplace - with giants like Siebel being considered responsible for the mess, and OSS entries like SugarCRM cleaning their clock.
And they're right - that's exactly what is going to happen. I can't predict how fast, but it will happen.
'"The mess that companies have with their IT today is unimaginable, and the larger they get the more mess they have," Graf said. Some SAP customers have as many as 3,000 systems, for example. "They would be happy with just 1,000," he said.'
The above is the only part he got right.
The rest of it is mere justification for SAP's position in the ERP marketplace - and a response to the fear that ERP is being blamed for most of the mess he describes.
Sooner or later CIOs will realize that building apps from OSS tools is far cheaper and more effective than being saddled with a dinosaur like SAP for the next twenty years.
Take anything SAP says about OSS with about the same barrel of salt you can take from anything George Bush says about Iraq.
Of course, it may be their product managers so infected, and not so much the programmers, as I can't imagine programmers being that enthused over Group Policy Management Consoles...
Certainly Microsoft is the home of "Lotus eating" when it comes to security and reliability. I mean, their antispyware product disables Norton Anti-Virus? Who thought that one up?
Who suggested not using proprietary software at all? Not me.
What I'm saying is that you can plan to wean the company off proprietary software over time.
Nobody said you have to stop using proprietary software in the short term.
All of the OSS consultants I'm aware of will accept the use of proprietary software for short-term and critical business needs - such as the need to deal with a partner company that only uses such.
This does NOT mean there isn't a solution for that situation. But nobody said you have to hold the company in stasis while that solution is found or implemented.
This stuff is, as I've said, all excuses to make up for lack of imagination in IT management (and higher management).
A good deal of what is done in business is not done for any rational reasons at all. Big surprise. Businesses consistently piss money and time and people away for no reason. Of course, there's an excuse for every time it happens if management gets called on it. They trot out some "reason" without any effort to justify that "reason's" actual relative importance in terms of actual cost and effectiveness.
Almost twenty years ago at Bank of America, I watch BoFA dump its entire cash management software strategy because they didn't have the nerve to re-engineer their product with superior tools, instead opting to contract with a third party for a bug-ridden piece of crap that was unsellable. Everybody except management got fired or laid off. The excuse was that the "market was saturated". Anybody with a brain knows that the software market is NEVER "saturated". You just upgrade and sell to the same people all over again. This is the entire basis of the software market (and today people are getting tired of it, which is one more reason OSS is of interest). BoFA management simply didn't comprehend this because they were not people who understood the software industry.
The same applies to OSS. People with a mindset of proprietary software simply can't understand that OSS is a complete shift in how business is done. So they make decisions based on erroneous concepts like "we have to go out and 'shop' for OSS." They also don't understand the principles of proper IT infrastructure in the first place. OSS merely points these failings out.
You're not telling me anything I don't know.
And there are solutions to absolutely every single thing you've said.
All you've done is demonstrate exactly why people have problems converting to OSS - and none of them are the fault of OSS.
They are ALL the fault of short-term, narrow-minded, incompetent thinking on the part of management of virtually every corporation in existence.
I agree - OSS has no chance in this climate.
Except for one thing - there do seem to be exceptions to the rule - and they are proving everything I've said.
Which means sooner or later, even the idiots will have to come around (or go out of business) when these others point out to them how stupid and expensive their systems are and how little competitive advantage they have in comparison with those who went OSS.
I'm not going to argue the point anymore with people who can't think logically - which is the vast majority of people here and in business. I'm simply going to keep pointing out the logical way to go and get my clients from people who CAN comprehend. There are quite a few other open source consultants doing the same thing - and they seem to be making a living. It's fairly easy when you can bid, as in one example, a $20,000 system based on OSS against a $60,000 based on Windows.
So everybody else can just go on their merry lemming way, making Bill the richest guy in the world, and dealing with the crashes, viruses, expense, inflexibility, etc., etc. I'm sure companies run by people like that have worse problems than their IT systems anyway.
"Thanks for visiting, come again."
Okay, I will, moron.
First of all, I've seen a Windows XP system go down the tubes within 24 hours of unpacking the Dell box, simply by uninstalling McAfee. After that, it was unable to communicate to a Linksys router - three tech "geniuses" - me, SBC and Geek Squad - couldn't solve the problem. Why? Because there was nothing to look at - everything was buried in the fucking Registry. Reloading the system fixed the problem. Windows score: 0.
"Smart about what you install?" Oh, right, don't install anything - that will work. You work for Microsoft, by any chance? I install what I NEED to install, just like everybody else. I don't install crap just to be installing stuff. I don't install spyware, crappy calendars, sports games, or other drivel.
Text files vs Registry. Look, stupid, when I talk about not updating a text file except by hand, I'm talking about not having a half dozen different programs updating the same configuration - which is what the Registry does. And in fact, I HAVE had problems with Mandriva doing exactly that - their goddamn menu editor is a disaster (and that's not just my opinion.) The more Linux emulates Windows by making the configuration of subsystems more complex, the more problems Linux will have. A GUI that updates a single text file is no problem - all it does it act as your "hand".
As for the Registry being easy to copy, export and update, gimme a break. Most users can't even fucking FIND the thing (not that finding Linux text files is any easier.) There's no difference between Windows and Linux in ease of copying, exporting or updating anything - except Linux doesn't allow any Tom, Dick and Harry program to update its system files.
The rest of your post is meaningless ranting - especially your claim that you use Linux every day. Billshit (I didn't mispell "bullshit", BTW) - you're a Windows shill running off at the mouth.
"No way you can beat me. Give it up. Give...it...up."
Why wait? While this will generate some heat, their EXCUSE will be that "Well, it's a beta, we didn't tell you to put into production."
Meanwhile they get to damage Norton for tons of people who won't know what the problem is.
This sets the stage for their marketing later: "Gee, you know how Norton conflicts with everything including our antispyware? Better buy everything from us, so you won't have conflicts with other software. "
I can see the ads now, touting how wonderfully integrated with the OS their AV suite is...
In other words, you have a bunch of Windows morons trying to run a Linux-based system without apparently spending any effort to set it up correctly. Apparently, there was no training, no effort to integrate the system with the employees old ways of working, no nothing, in fact. You obviously just dumped Linux on a bunch of Windows guys and expected it to be seamless.
And then you blame Linux.
Smart, really smart.
I predict your job is pretty shaky at the moment.
I was right - you're clueless about how IT should be run.
And anybody who says they had nothing to do once a Windows system was set up is simply a liar.
None of this is true.
Look, sooner or later you WILL move from the software you have. Either because the company that makes it goes out of business or is bought by another company that discontinues the product because it doesn't fit their marketing goals, or because the business needs of your organization changes, or some other reason that the product either is no longer supported, doesn't work any more for some technical or business reason, or simply disappears.
The issue is whether your management is planning NOW for that inevitable eventuality. And the way to do that and minimize the costs and disruption is to start pursuing - over time - a planned OSS migration.
Nobody says you have to migrate to OSS overnight. That's a red herring. It's also a red herring to say that your company has to do it alone.
I didn't even know what you meant by CATI, so I Googled. This isn't rocket science software, apparently. It's no more involved than any other enterprise software and probably less so. There's no reason a bunch of open source guys who know the tools couldn't be commissioned to design and buld the thing over time as a low-cost, budgeted project that wouldn't cost more annually than your current license fees, most likely.
The issue remains the same: no matter WHAT the cost of conversion, sooner or later you will have paid more for proprietary licenses than you will for conversion. And if you don't convert, sooner or later you will HAVE TO convert.
It's really that simple.
The idea that one migrates to OSS by running out and just "finding" a replacement program that happens to be OSS is an example of the "proprietary mindset". It doesn't work like that. Unfortunately a lot of OSS evangelists act like it does, making up lists of "comparable" OSS programs - GIMP matches Photoshop (which as Photoshop know, it doesn't), etc.
That's not how to go about this. The key is to use the existing tools and infrastructure products available now to build the next generation enterprise apps for your industry in an OSS development manner.
Meanwhile, considerable conversion could be done in other areas where the software functionality is more "commodity".
"a bunch of kids"?
Have you worked anywhere or ever been in any human institution whatever?
"Pecking order" exists as an inbuilt humam mechanism. Humans are primates. Primates have hierarchical behavior patterns. So humans do, too.
And they express it in EVERY social situation: business, home, church, society, individual friendships, you name it.
It is the second dominant flaw in humans. The first is the fear of death - which is the motivation for the second flaw.
All human psychology can be summed up as: "If you're right, I'm wrong - and if I'm wrong, I'm dead - and that can't be allowed. So you're wrong, and I'm right."
It's merely the expression of this primitive, pre-rational, primate fear that gets complex in humans due to their conceptual processing ability which has led to more complex social structures than a bonobo chimp troop.
But the bottom line is the same:
You humans are all going to die. We Transhumans aren't.
Have a nice day.
An alternative to this chemical is a good combat handgun, an assault rifle with a grenade launcher, and body armor - and of course the training to use them. And if they don't work, a sniper rifle, an IED, or poison can also be made to work well.
I see - you wouldn't be part of the "faith-based" reality of the Bush administration, would you?
It's easy to cover incompetence by saying everybody else does it this way, so we should, too.
That's a reality I expect you aren't able to face.
And it's not a question of "geeks vs everybody else" - I can't stand most geeks, either, since they use technical expertise to cover their incompetence at everything else. the issue is whether the things management thinks are important are actually relevant to the bottom line of the business. In fact, whether management even understands what the "bottom line" is - since most of the time, it appears to them to be office politics, insuring that the employees kowtow to their random decisions, and taking care of their perks. Actually supporting the company's purported reason for existence - supplying something to customers and hopefully making a profit doing so - takes a back seat - in the trunk, most of the time - to these other issues.
And if you can't understand that, you either have never worked in a corporate, or for that matter, large educational, or government, environment, or you are simply too low on the totem pole to see the forest for the trees of your little cubicle.
I HATE EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!
There - that make you feel better?
And your response is from someone who, in order to avoid criticism of an underlying issue, decides to treat the topic as narrow to avoid discussion of the underlying issues.
Yes, it is relevant to the death of US troops that they are in Iraq because of the policies of the moron in office and the fact that morons voted to put him there.
And yes, Windows is the bottom line cause of this problem. No Windows = fewer (if not no) viruses = no AV software to have conflicts with or eat up system resources.
Now, I'll grant you that I'm not currently running the plethora of computer security tools available for Linux. If I was running a server, I would, and I would have to take the performance impact. But these same TYPES of tools need to be run on any corporate Windows server - AS WELL AS the antivirus stuff. So in the end, the issue is: if you have to run computer security software - and you do - pick an OS that doesn't need to run every type of security tool under the sun because it limits certain risks by design.
"users flock to use Windows because in a real working environment it delivers what users need with a level of usability and stability that is entirely acceptable."
BULLSHIT!
They don't "flock" - they are HERDED. By accident of history, and the stupidity of AT&T for keeping the price of UNIX so high during the eighties, Microsoft built an OS empire on crap. The average corporate exec is a moron who only buys what the vendors tell him to buy and the vendors were bought and sold by Gates and his restrictive contracts. The vendors didn't care what they sold to the corporations as long as the corporations paid them.
Nowadays, Windows is known for being such shit that people who do switch to Linux cite it as the number one reason for doing so - to get out from under Microsoft's monopoly.
The level of usability and stability of Windows is NOT acceptable to anyone who wants to get a job done without the corporate politics preventing him from doing so.
I finally switched my day to day work from Windows XP to Mandriva 2006 over the last month. Except for the times I have to boot into Windows for client purposes, I have had to reboot Linux ONCE in over a month - yesterday when the stupid Pan newsreader apparently hosed its socket file and couldn't download any news articles or start its queue. If I'd known how to fix it, I wouldn't have had to reboot, but rebooting seemed the quickest way to fix the problem. Whereas with Windows XP, I would have had to reboot at least once every two days or daily to fix some equally stupid problem of OS or application.
At work, the Windows XP workstation is fairly stable - except that almost every day Winlogon.exe has a problem logging me on, or McAfee has a problem shutting down when Windows shuts down. On the other hand, I haven't installed much personal software on that system.
Windows is unreliable because it uses a Registry - an updateable Registry at that. That was the worst design decision Microsoft ever made. Linux uses text config files that are never updated except by hand. Almost by itself this accounts for the phenomenable stability of Linux. You simply can't trust an OS to third party programmers updating your system.
The second and third worst design decisions made by MS were to try to make the system "simple" by hiding the complexity inside more complexity, and by "featuritis". Unfortunately I see more and more of that being adopted by Linux. Adding more "features" does not make a system easier to use - it makes it harder, and more complex, and the complexity eventually breaks the system entirely requiring a total redesign.
The only two issues facing Linux adoption in the marketplace are the current lack of enterprise level applications, and the incompetence of IT management in being unable to discern what is important and what is not in deploying IT infrastructure.
The former will be resolved as more enterprise class applications are built using the OSS tools currently being built.
The latter problem will remain forever, apparently.