With eight IT dudes running around fixing all of the Wintel systems that's eight grand worth of new Macs that will have much better uptime and lower costs just from the last three days alone.
So you just bought 3 new Macs. What about the other 2997 Windows systems?
Yes, that last paragraph was an insult to the parents obvious troll-paragraph. I run a SuSE server and an XP box. Both have been up the same length of time without a crash.
I'm more impressed with a gamer's PC that is stable for a month than a Linux web/mail server that has been up for 2 years. Gamers beat the shit out of their computers and many are overclocked on top of it. Running a mail or web server is nothing compared to the abuse an average 3D game puts a PC through.
Hard on the outside, soft & crunchy in the middle? The safety monitoring computer for a power system should be accessible only by floppy disk through a terminal in a locked room with pressure sensitive floors, a sound monitor, body heat detectors *AND* laser trip wires on all the ventilation grates. (The floppy disk should be run through a demagnitizer before and after each use.)
I saw a documentary on that once. Apparently that's EXACTLY how the CIA headquarters mainframe at Langley is setup! OH wait, no, that was Mission Impossible. Forget it.
I'm keeping my BitTorrent window open for as long as possible. It only took me two minutes to download, but that's because I beat the rush because I'm a Slashdot Subscriber.;-)
That's not really a valid reason to be a Slashdot Subscriber. The way Bittorrent works, it makes more sense to wait longer until more people have started downloading the trailer. I'm getting it now 8 hours later and saturating my DSL's download speed.
Yes, but their bodies don't pump blood like you or I. Their bodies circulate a thick black oil-like substance. In the place of their heart stands a putred feces-encrusted vessel containing their law degree.
The fact of the matter is, wether or not you like HAM radio, the public should *NOT* have to depend on private citizens to get the help they need in the event of an emergency.
You really are clueless aren't you? Of course the public has to depend on private citizens. We all have to depend on ourselves and our neighbors in a disaster. If you expect some knight on a shining white horse to come galloping to your rescue in a tornado or earthquake within minutes you're seriously kidding yourself. Emergency workers have a shitload more to worry about than going around checking your suburban house that has collapsed to see if anyone is inside. Your neighbors on the other hand might be courteous enough to check.. if you're not such an asshole.
Not all of it is good, but if BPL can help bring cheap, fast, internet access to the masses, it's *my* opinion that HAM radio is an acceptable sacrifice.
We already have ways to bring fast, cheap, internet access to the masses: DSL and cable modems. If you're in a rural enough area that you can't get them then I guarentee you you damn well better be relying on the help of private citizens in a disaster since your local fire department is probably volunteer, your local phone service would be cut off easily, and your neighbors may be the only people to save your ass. Don't even get me started on the spoiled little rich kids in Silicon Valley who for some reason can't get broadband. That's the stupidity of the phone/cable companies. They COULD easily get them access, but they won't invest money to do it. You think power companies will be any more willing? They won't even upgrade their 1950's era power grid for Pete's sakes.
Anyway, with that rant said, when the power went out I was damn proud my fellow hams were out there listening for emergencies if we needed them. Health and welfare communications is one of the primary purposes of amateur radio communications even existing. As we saw, in a disaster your cell phone is a worthless paper weight since the phone system gets overloaded quickly and is spotty at best. It's pretty hard to call 911 when you have no dialtone.
Their software is obviously poorly designed and developed compared to other alternatives such as Apple and Linux
Maybe they're just slowing down to retool and get some advise on how to make secure scalable enterprise operating systems from their good friends at SCO. Afterall, if it wasn't for SCO there would be no enterprise-class operating systems.
Then again, if you ain't at home, what are the odds you'll be back before your 2 hours is up?
Even the cheapest UPS systems I've seen have a USB or serial cable you can plug in to your computer to alert it to shut down at a low battery condition. apcupsd shutdown my server at home just fine.
That's the whole problem. It is illegal to just "download it for free".
It's also illegal to jay walk, speed, and smoke marijuana, but you can see how well we've conquered those horrible offenses. Frankly anyone that wants to download music is already doing it and I don't see the recording companies declaring bankruptcy do you? Even if they lost 50% of their income they'd still be making billions in profits. Clearly many people buy CDs whether they can get the songs free or not, so why can't both co-exist? Leave P2P networks alone, let the kids share their music, and keep raking in your billions of dollars and STFU.
While it's a simple rule to always update Windows to the latest patch, it can be troublesome when mission critical applications fail as a result. And when you're in the healthcare business, failure is not an option.
We weren't infected and I'm certain our system aren't patched. A simple firewall would have prevented all these problems. It's amazing how many people rely on host-based security alone to protect their systems on the Internet apparently. Microsoft file sharing and RPC services should never be open to the Internet for any reason. If you need to do it between offices then fine, that's bad, but an acceptable risk. Otherwise firewall it off to everyone else.
My point is that we can't keep up with the patch load. Each has to be tested and validated in our environment. Life would obviously be better if there were better QA from Microsoft.
OK, that's a fair answer. So are you even affected by this then? Surely your Citrix farm wouldn't be on the wide open Internet right? Last time I checked, Citrix only needed a couple of ports open through a firewall to operate even if you did have to allow external access to it from offsite.
Why didn't I install the patch? Because, quite frankly, I don't want to spend a couple hours a week patching my machines.
Don't be ridiculous. For one thing it doesn't take that long to run Windows Update once a week, and for another you could just use auto update if you're that lazy. Have it run at 3am and download+update any new critical patches. Hopefully on newer versions of Windows they will make that the default so Mom and Pop don't have to even worry about it.
When your computer connects to the Internet it'll automatically download patches and apply them. In fact, you shouldn't have a choice whether it does it or not. Maybe make it a complicated registry hack to shut it off. Too many people are lazy or inept and don't apply patches which results in worms like this spreading.
Its damn near impossible to test and apply all the hotfixes, especially when they have a tendancy to break something else. I'd love to choose another platform, but that isn't happening anytime soon.
Why is it like that anyway? I've always downloaded the latest and greatest service pack and have never had a problem (okay, once, but it was VMware's incompatibility with SP3) on standalone systems. Are problems really that bad that people would delay patching for critical vulnerabilities? Seems like a QA problem at Microsoft is they can release service packs that break major apps.
SUCKERS. I really want to put some sort of useful comment in this post but that word just keeps repeating.
I would imagine this "Fortune 500 Company" has a CIO that buys penis pills via spammers as well. There's a sucker born every minute. For god's sake, at least wait 5 or 6 years until the court decides whether SCO even had a case before you go throwing away your money. Don't forget to send your bank account info to that nice Nigerian gentlemen to recoup your licensing costs. The money you make on helping him smuggle his millions out of there will more than cover them.
Why print them in (bar)code? It's more important that people be able to unambiguously determine if it's a vote for candidate "A" or "B". If that means the computers have to work a little harder at counting them, so what?
Because you get a fiasco like what happened in Florida during the last Presidential election. How about we compromise and print the bar code AND the candidate's name on the receipt?
Do you think a 13 year old who started using alcohol would meet his/her potential?
Also, ask a 13 year old which is easier to get: illegal marijuana or legal beer? Sometimes making something legal helps.
Ummm, beer is probably much easier to get. I'm a grown adult and have no idea even today where I would go to get marijuana. Beer however was freely available in my parents' fridge. Anyway, if beer and marijuana is bad for a 13 year old, why isn't it bad for a 21 year old? Could it be that being drunk and/or stoned off your ass most of the time could have a negative impact on your growth potential as a human being?
Do you think you stand a chance against Arnold? If so, why?
Of course not. She doesn't even have a chance against Gray Davis, and they hate him! Arnold will be California's next governor. He has superior experience as 2 time reigning Mr. Universe. What is HER political experience?
Why not just install cheapo receipt printers into the voting machines and keep a paper tally that would be easily verifiable if need be.
Why keep the votes in electronic form at all? Just print them out on the receipt printer with a bar code. Take all the receipts from the election day, run them through a reader and tally the votes. It'd let people verify their vote and be in the most computer readable format without relying on electronic storage.
Yes, but common knowledge tells everyone what the brakes do in a car. You do a driving test that requires the use of the brake.
You also need to pass a test to get an amateur radio license and are restricted in your privileges based on the skill level you have achieved. You can't kill anyone by using a radio, but it's strictly regulated. Why can't we do the same for the Internet? That was the biggest mistake in history: allowing Joe user unrestricted access to the Internet without a license.
Who here hasn't been asked to help a friend with a troublesome system, that was found to contain all maner of trojans and ad-ware?
Yes, those same people should not have been allowed near an Internet connection. If you want to own a standalone computer and infect yourself, so be it. Don't bring it on the net.
Cisco gave me.bin files for all of them. Since these came directly from Cisco, aren't these now arguably licensed?
Probably. That was an embarassing bug for Cisco. I imagine it was cheaper to just give everyone a free license to use than to get bad publicity. If you remember it didn't matter where you bought the router, you just needed to contact the TAC for the updated IOS image.
No fool! You're supposed to stick the drive in the computer and drop the whole thing off the table. A good 1-2 meter drop should be sufficient to unstick that pesky drive. This works best if you balance the monitor on top of the whole thing before you drop it.
But no matter what you tell them, they refuse to put down their precious script and accept that maybe, just maybe, I'm not running windows.
I've always believed computers should require a license to use them like driving a car or operating an amateur radio. If you've got a more advanced license (and the tech support can verify it by checking a database) then that should shove you to the third level engineers instead so you don't need to deal with the scripts the riff-raff do.
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So you just bought 3 new Macs. What about the other 2997 Windows systems?
I'm more impressed with a gamer's PC that is stable for a month than a Linux web/mail server that has been up for 2 years. Gamers beat the shit out of their computers and many are overclocked on top of it. Running a mail or web server is nothing compared to the abuse an average 3D game puts a PC through.
I saw a documentary on that once. Apparently that's EXACTLY how the CIA headquarters mainframe at Langley is setup! OH wait, no, that was Mission Impossible. Forget it.
That's not really a valid reason to be a Slashdot Subscriber. The way Bittorrent works, it makes more sense to wait longer until more people have started downloading the trailer. I'm getting it now 8 hours later and saturating my DSL's download speed.
$7.5B wouldn't fund NASA for 6 months, much less colonize the moon.
Yes, but their bodies don't pump blood like you or I. Their bodies circulate a thick black oil-like substance. In the place of their heart stands a putred feces-encrusted vessel containing their law degree.
You really are clueless aren't you? Of course the public has to depend on private citizens. We all have to depend on ourselves and our neighbors in a disaster. If you expect some knight on a shining white horse to come galloping to your rescue in a tornado or earthquake within minutes you're seriously kidding yourself. Emergency workers have a shitload more to worry about than going around checking your suburban house that has collapsed to see if anyone is inside. Your neighbors on the other hand might be courteous enough to check.. if you're not such an asshole.
Not all of it is good, but if BPL can help bring cheap, fast, internet access to the masses, it's *my* opinion that HAM radio is an acceptable sacrifice.
We already have ways to bring fast, cheap, internet access to the masses: DSL and cable modems. If you're in a rural enough area that you can't get them then I guarentee you you damn well better be relying on the help of private citizens in a disaster since your local fire department is probably volunteer, your local phone service would be cut off easily, and your neighbors may be the only people to save your ass. Don't even get me started on the spoiled little rich kids in Silicon Valley who for some reason can't get broadband. That's the stupidity of the phone/cable companies. They COULD easily get them access, but they won't invest money to do it. You think power companies will be any more willing? They won't even upgrade their 1950's era power grid for Pete's sakes.
Anyway, with that rant said, when the power went out I was damn proud my fellow hams were out there listening for emergencies if we needed them. Health and welfare communications is one of the primary purposes of amateur radio communications even existing. As we saw, in a disaster your cell phone is a worthless paper weight since the phone system gets overloaded quickly and is spotty at best. It's pretty hard to call 911 when you have no dialtone.
Maybe they're just slowing down to retool and get some advise on how to make secure scalable enterprise operating systems from their good friends at SCO. Afterall, if it wasn't for SCO there would be no enterprise-class operating systems.
Every software company I've ever had to deal with. Companies operate on fiscal years not calendar years.
Even the cheapest UPS systems I've seen have a USB or serial cable you can plug in to your computer to alert it to shut down at a low battery condition. apcupsd shutdown my server at home just fine.
It's also illegal to jay walk, speed, and smoke marijuana, but you can see how well we've conquered those horrible offenses. Frankly anyone that wants to download music is already doing it and I don't see the recording companies declaring bankruptcy do you? Even if they lost 50% of their income they'd still be making billions in profits. Clearly many people buy CDs whether they can get the songs free or not, so why can't both co-exist? Leave P2P networks alone, let the kids share their music, and keep raking in your billions of dollars and STFU.
We weren't infected and I'm certain our system aren't patched. A simple firewall would have prevented all these problems. It's amazing how many people rely on host-based security alone to protect their systems on the Internet apparently. Microsoft file sharing and RPC services should never be open to the Internet for any reason. If you need to do it between offices then fine, that's bad, but an acceptable risk. Otherwise firewall it off to everyone else.
OK, that's a fair answer. So are you even affected by this then? Surely your Citrix farm wouldn't be on the wide open Internet right? Last time I checked, Citrix only needed a couple of ports open through a firewall to operate even if you did have to allow external access to it from offsite.
Don't be ridiculous. For one thing it doesn't take that long to run Windows Update once a week, and for another you could just use auto update if you're that lazy. Have it run at 3am and download+update any new critical patches. Hopefully on newer versions of Windows they will make that the default so Mom and Pop don't have to even worry about it.
When your computer connects to the Internet it'll automatically download patches and apply them. In fact, you shouldn't have a choice whether it does it or not. Maybe make it a complicated registry hack to shut it off. Too many people are lazy or inept and don't apply patches which results in worms like this spreading.
Why is it like that anyway? I've always downloaded the latest and greatest service pack and have never had a problem (okay, once, but it was VMware's incompatibility with SP3) on standalone systems. Are problems really that bad that people would delay patching for critical vulnerabilities? Seems like a QA problem at Microsoft is they can release service packs that break major apps.
I would imagine this "Fortune 500 Company" has a CIO that buys penis pills via spammers as well. There's a sucker born every minute. For god's sake, at least wait 5 or 6 years until the court decides whether SCO even had a case before you go throwing away your money. Don't forget to send your bank account info to that nice Nigerian gentlemen to recoup your licensing costs. The money you make on helping him smuggle his millions out of there will more than cover them.
Because you get a fiasco like what happened in Florida during the last Presidential election. How about we compromise and print the bar code AND the candidate's name on the receipt?
Ummm, beer is probably much easier to get. I'm a grown adult and have no idea even today where I would go to get marijuana. Beer however was freely available in my parents' fridge. Anyway, if beer and marijuana is bad for a 13 year old, why isn't it bad for a 21 year old? Could it be that being drunk and/or stoned off your ass most of the time could have a negative impact on your growth potential as a human being?
Of course not. She doesn't even have a chance against Gray Davis, and they hate him! Arnold will be California's next governor. He has superior experience as 2 time reigning Mr. Universe. What is HER political experience?
Why keep the votes in electronic form at all? Just print them out on the receipt printer with a bar code. Take all the receipts from the election day, run them through a reader and tally the votes. It'd let people verify their vote and be in the most computer readable format without relying on electronic storage.
You also need to pass a test to get an amateur radio license and are restricted in your privileges based on the skill level you have achieved. You can't kill anyone by using a radio, but it's strictly regulated. Why can't we do the same for the Internet? That was the biggest mistake in history: allowing Joe user unrestricted access to the Internet without a license.
Who here hasn't been asked to help a friend with a troublesome system, that was found to contain all maner of trojans and ad-ware?
Yes, those same people should not have been allowed near an Internet connection. If you want to own a standalone computer and infect yourself, so be it. Don't bring it on the net.
Probably. That was an embarassing bug for Cisco. I imagine it was cheaper to just give everyone a free license to use than to get bad publicity. If you remember it didn't matter where you bought the router, you just needed to contact the TAC for the updated IOS image.
Of course you can. Go right ahead. Just don't call it a NetApp or you'd get sued.
No fool! You're supposed to stick the drive in the computer and drop the whole thing off the table. A good 1-2 meter drop should be sufficient to unstick that pesky drive. This works best if you balance the monitor on top of the whole thing before you drop it.
I've always believed computers should require a license to use them like driving a car or operating an amateur radio. If you've got a more advanced license (and the tech support can verify it by checking a database) then that should shove you to the third level engineers instead so you don't need to deal with the scripts the riff-raff do.