Well said! For a long time, administrators heard security consultants saying "network security is a process, not a product." We recognized that, in fact, it was a process involving the integration of several products and procedures. So we began doing all the things we could do within budget and personnel limits to batten down the hatches. Firewall management, spam filtering, OS security updates, and virus containment were big parts of the security pie. Now, when someone says they can improve my network's security at the workstation OS level, I pretty much take it to be marketing fluff.
The quasi-monopoly power that data service providers have across the US is indisputable. Sure, you have your avenues of protest. If a rep from the service provider has to speak before, say, the city council, their message will be delivered in such a way as to paint "power users" as a nuisance or degraders of service for the more typical user, who has every right to fast service when s/he needs it.
I see the day coming when Comcast and their ilk will fearlessly boot heavy-duty users unless they are interested in tiers of service similar to what my local water authority imposes. Once my usage passes a certain gallonage provided in the base service, an additional charge is applied for any portion of the next tier I consume. In other words, one gallon of usage beyond the base and I pay for an additional several thousand gallons whether I use them or not. It would seem to encourage either conservation or increased consumption, depending on what your average usage really is. Evidently, though, someone is crunching the numbers and finding that this achieves the desired result for the regional service. One can easily see how this would be attractive to ISPs, who will likely not have a hard time selling it to the local officials who award exclusive contracts. I'm sure this is being done somewhere already. Can you say "IP accounting?" and "pay to play?"
Holy Smokes - - that is one of the most absurd things I've ever read.
You know what? There needs to be a mailing list of people who buy into this kind of crap. I want to sell these people all kinds of wonders of technology. Hey, once my mother-in-law got on the philanthropy "sucker list," we had to hide her checkbooks. We were inundated with begging letters from organizations ranging from Native American youth camps to puppy mill liberators. But people who believe that their audio cables need to be "broken in" electromechanically should be separated from more of their money as soon as possible.
Another "me too" on the good feeling one gets from having legal machines. I haven't used an MS product on my home workstation in many years - - strictly Linux. Although I must admit that I use rdesktop and VNC to remotely manage MS servers at work. The Citrix client for Linux is pretty spiffy these days. I'm a Centos fan and $upporter and just can't get over the sheer versatility and power that can be had from current Linux distributions in general. I love the looks on the faces of Windows dudes when I use Yum to pull down new software or updates on the fly. OpenOffice is outrageously good, regardless of being free. No more pirated MS Office for me. It's just the right thing to do, not to mention fiscally satisfying. And family members don't ask to "borrow" installation disks anymore, either.:)
I've been with Backup Exec since the early NT4 days. I can tell you that Veritas support wasn't all that slick back then. The thing is, the software works. It takes some tweaking, but the scope of options is impressive. It's not cheap. Back before people knew that running Norton Antivirus client on MS Exchange would completely hose the database, I had to do bare-metal restores from Backup Exec tapes, and the product never let me down. Now that Symantec has taken over, phone support is phenomenally pathetic, but the product is still very capable. If you're doing backup-to-disk-to-tape using libraries, BE 11d is a peach. The Linux client works quite well. Bottom line: you hope the product doesn't malfunction, requiring you to go beyond the online knowledge base. Symantec has too many products and nowhere near enough trained support. I'm willing to bet the product line will slim down eventually, and the support crew will grow to nearly-appropriate levels.
Yes, yes. I was going to post, but you said it well enough. I will add only that some IT Managers continue to have skills, hone them, and share them generously with the company. It's a business deal: they treat me right, I treat them as if my life depended on it. Given the importance of good health insurance, my life may well depend on what I give back. Being an involved manager is a good thing. It can keep you on the roster when other people are being cut loose.
If a server is behind application-layer switches, firewalls, VLANs, and multiple NAT layers, and the DMZ is well configured, how much more risk does X introduce? Just wondering - - I though X had been cleaned up fairly well for server usage.
My favorite remark concerning Windows Vista was that the product will bring "new revenue generation dialogues with end users." I can imagine the revenue generation dialogue that might occur with IT managers: "Hello, this is Mr. X calling on behalf of Microsoft. Would you like to discuss a voluntary licensing audit at your company, or could I take a minute of your time to tell you about the new features in Vista?" IT Manager: "Do we get a price break on quantities of more than 50?"
Ask any Zen master: every view of reality is unique, yet there is only one reality. It is the way that each person senses reality that makes us different, and yet the same, all at once.
When people offer their viewpoint as being unbiased or "fair and balanced," we should understand that this is "branding." It is up to us to be intelligent enough to hear what our news sources are not saying about themselves or their agenda. We may choose to say that a news source such as Fox, or, by extension, Rush Limbaugh, is ridiculously slanted. But here's what's important to remember: the most honest person is one who tells you up front he's a conservative, a liberal, a socialist, a radical muslim, and so on. Rush Limbaugh lets us know just who he is so that we immediately use a different filter when we listen to him. Fox makes little, if any, effort to cover their agenda. If a news agency is to be denigrated, it should be one that portrays itself as white while subtly delivering black. Network TV news has been rather adept at doing this for many years, and people figured it out. Thus, the move to Fox, which makes its position clear. You might not agree with a lot that, say, Fox News delivers, but you know who's bringing it to you, and that helps you get closer to the truth.
Hmmm . . . not sure I'm getting the whole picture. Sounds like Citrix Presentation Server, with the twist that it can deliver apps simultaneously from multiple OS platforms. Citrix on steroids I guess.
Sounds like you have a bunch of people who don't understand the meaning of "corporate assets." If people are concerned about what administrators can access on their computers, they should use a standalone computer that doesn't connect to the network. Administrators have to be able to do what they need to do for the good of all users on the network. The school's IT policy should have made this very clear.
Do you even work in this industry? Right tool, right job. MySQL a toy? Tell that to NASA.
MS Has Gone Backwards Since Windows 2000
on
Buy Vista or Else
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
The saddest aspect of Vista's arrival, as far as I'm concerned, is that XP technology has been no improvement over Win2k Pro or Win2k Server in our company. And now we get another scary OS release from MS as the end-of-life date for 2000 products draws near. After SP4 came out for the 2000 products, the only real annoyance was the constant stream of critical updates, some of which unleashed mayhem on our network until we got a handle on update management. Otherwise, the Windows 2000 servers have been rock solid. Meanwhile, XP and Server 2003 have been insufferable turkeys, making me regret every installation. The memory leaks that have plagued Server 2003 should be getting a lot more attention than they've been getting in the tech press. I suspect Microsoft would say that hardware vendors have delivered faulty drivers, but we never saw the random crashes and reboots in Windows 2000 Server that we see in our 2003 servers. I can't trust the 2003 platform anymore - - we moved everything of importance back to Win2k. Service Pack 1 for 2003 Server was about as helpful as a broken ankle. I understand we might see SP2 in 2007. Wow, that's encouraging. Who here wants to dive for Vista? Thank the gods for Linux, Apache, and MySQL . . . .
Between home and work, I've done three setups like this. One has the optional battery backup module, which I think is worth it if you have the extra $100/US. All have been solid as rocks. I use Lian Li drive drawers and Silverstone black aluminum cases for eye candy. The drawers are a nice touch. Thus far I've used Windows 2000 as the OS, AMD processors, Seagate drives (5-year warranty!)and Abit NF7-S mainboards. Lots of bang for the buck, and nice to look at as well. At some point, I want to see how the 3ware cards do under Linux - - I hear that they are fully supported, just haven't gotten around to trying it yet. On the 8-port cards, I use a mirror for the OS and the remaining six ports for a RAID5 setup. The fans should be of good quality, as the heat is substantial. You can use multiple 3Ware/AMCC Escalade cards in one installation for really big storage.
Indeed - - it was once said that if one were bitten by a mad dog, the cure was to ingest some of his (the dog's) hair. Which led, of course, to the contention that for a hangover, the best medicine is "the hair of the dog that bit you" - - or, a swig or two of alcohol to relieve the symptoms of alcohol withdrawal. I can attest to the fact that this works, based on recollections of my wedding day. Without those morning shots, I'd have been a goner.
Now why would you assume I'm a beer drinker? After about age 40, it was liquor all the way for me, usually a good Bombay Sapphire Martini with olives. But I've recently acquired a taste for Ciroc vodka. Come to think of it, I believe I'll have one now . . . .
That's admirable - - I salute you. I would like to be able to say honestly that our disaster recovery plan has been given a truly realistic test, but I can't. Judging from the articles that appear regularly in IT management journals, I can't help but feel this is commonplace. I'm curious - - what is the size of your operation, and in what industry do you work? I think my outfit is pretty typical of companies of fewer than 500 employees, but that's only a gut feeling. Talking to other front-line IT managers in conference settings, I've heard (from those who felt they could speak openly) that their plan boils down to storing tapes offsite and occasionally testing their backup/restore software. That kind of "preparedness" doesn't begin to address a situation where one's data center is wiped out, leaving branch operations orphaned until a new termination point for all those T1 and VPN connections can be brought online. How many small- to medium-size businesses have a stand-by data center with WAN terminations ready to go? How many go through the exercise of activating the stand-by facility? And who thinks consultants could come in under fire to do this work? My opinion is that good documentation of processes and topology and proper attention to data preservation are the key ingredients to recovery. An in-house team - - one that's reasonably well compensated and not overloaded to the point of burnout - - can perform in a way that no outsiders can.
Your point is well made, and I certainly agree with most of your statements. Regarding disaster recovery, though, I'm reminded of that old saying about bad weather: everyone complains about it, but nobody does anything to change it.
DR is one of those fuzzy, mysterious areas of the business plan on which most execs hate to spend money. After all, they reason, the chances of needing to rebuild from it are miniscule. Laughably (or sadly, depending on the circumstances), the half-baked DR plan usually gets past the auditors and then is treated with reverence, like some sort of talisman, despite its being out of date and ridiculously optimistic.
So, the chances of consultants 1) being available when you need them, and 2) being able to work from the nominal recovery plan you've handed them after the flood are probably not confidence inspiring. I must say also that I've watched consultants descend upon our network to do "turnkey installations" on a few occasions, and the people sent to do the job would have been lost without the babysitting and total cooperation of my team. I maintain that nothing beats your in-house team of experts - - it can take days for outsiders to get their bearings on a strange network, especially if your network configuration, fault tolerance and data management schemas, etc., are highly proprietary or complex.
Slashdot Mirror
Scary in some ways, perhaps, but at least it explains the Obama phenomenon.
Sorry, I couldn't resist. : )
Next thing you know, people will . . . will . . . maybe I will . . . I WILL vote for Obama. Yes, I WILL vote for Obama . . . .
Ruler. Penis. Done. And don't start with all the "Which do we measure, the underside or top?" stuff.
Does anybody really care? If so I can't imagine why, We've all got time enough to cry . . . . (For all the oldsters out there)
Well said! For a long time, administrators heard security consultants saying "network security is a process, not a product." We recognized that, in fact, it was a process involving the integration of several products and procedures. So we began doing all the things we could do within budget and personnel limits to batten down the hatches. Firewall management, spam filtering, OS security updates, and virus containment were big parts of the security pie. Now, when someone says they can improve my network's security at the workstation OS level, I pretty much take it to be marketing fluff.
The quasi-monopoly power that data service providers have across the US is indisputable. Sure, you have your avenues of protest. If a rep from the service provider has to speak before, say, the city council, their message will be delivered in such a way as to paint "power users" as a nuisance or degraders of service for the more typical user, who has every right to fast service when s/he needs it.
I see the day coming when Comcast and their ilk will fearlessly boot heavy-duty users unless they are interested in tiers of service similar to what my local water authority imposes. Once my usage passes a certain gallonage provided in the base service, an additional charge is applied for any portion of the next tier I consume. In other words, one gallon of usage beyond the base and I pay for an additional several thousand gallons whether I use them or not. It would seem to encourage either conservation or increased consumption, depending on what your average usage really is. Evidently, though, someone is crunching the numbers and finding that this achieves the desired result for the regional service. One can easily see how this would be attractive to ISPs, who will likely not have a hard time selling it to the local officials who award exclusive contracts. I'm sure this is being done somewhere already. Can you say "IP accounting?" and "pay to play?"
Holy Smokes - - that is one of the most absurd things I've ever read.
You know what? There needs to be a mailing list of people who buy into this kind of crap. I want to sell these people all kinds of wonders of technology. Hey, once my mother-in-law got on the philanthropy "sucker list," we had to hide her checkbooks. We were inundated with begging letters from organizations ranging from Native American youth camps to puppy mill liberators. But people who believe that their audio cables need to be "broken in" electromechanically should be separated from more of their money as soon as possible.
They'll never miss it.
Another "me too" on the good feeling one gets from having legal machines. I haven't used an MS product on my home workstation in many years - - strictly Linux. Although I must admit that I use rdesktop and VNC to remotely manage MS servers at work. The Citrix client for Linux is pretty spiffy these days. I'm a Centos fan and $upporter and just can't get over the sheer versatility and power that can be had from current Linux distributions in general. I love the looks on the faces of Windows dudes when I use Yum to pull down new software or updates on the fly. OpenOffice is outrageously good, regardless of being free. No more pirated MS Office for me. It's just the right thing to do, not to mention fiscally satisfying. And family members don't ask to "borrow" installation disks anymore, either. :)
I've been with Backup Exec since the early NT4 days. I can tell you that Veritas support wasn't all that slick back then. The thing is, the software works. It takes some tweaking, but the scope of options is impressive. It's not cheap. Back before people knew that running Norton Antivirus client on MS Exchange would completely hose the database, I had to do bare-metal restores from Backup Exec tapes, and the product never let me down. Now that Symantec has taken over, phone support is phenomenally pathetic, but the product is still very capable. If you're doing backup-to-disk-to-tape using libraries, BE 11d is a peach. The Linux client works quite well. Bottom line: you hope the product doesn't malfunction, requiring you to go beyond the online knowledge base. Symantec has too many products and nowhere near enough trained support. I'm willing to bet the product line will slim down eventually, and the support crew will grow to nearly-appropriate levels.
Yes, yes. I was going to post, but you said it well enough. I will add only that some IT Managers continue to have skills, hone them, and share them generously with the company. It's a business deal: they treat me right, I treat them as if my life depended on it. Given the importance of good health insurance, my life may well depend on what I give back. Being an involved manager is a good thing. It can keep you on the roster when other people are being cut loose.
If a server is behind application-layer switches, firewalls, VLANs, and multiple NAT layers, and the DMZ is well configured, how much more risk does X introduce? Just wondering - - I though X had been cleaned up fairly well for server usage.
/. Kills.
My favorite remark concerning Windows Vista was that the product will bring "new revenue generation dialogues with end users." I can imagine the revenue generation dialogue that might occur with IT managers: "Hello, this is Mr. X calling on behalf of Microsoft. Would you like to discuss a voluntary licensing audit at your company, or could I take a minute of your time to tell you about the new features in Vista?" IT Manager: "Do we get a price break on quantities of more than 50?"
Ask any Zen master: every view of reality is unique, yet there is only one reality. It is the way that each person senses reality that makes us different, and yet the same, all at once.
When people offer their viewpoint as being unbiased or "fair and balanced," we should understand that this is "branding." It is up to us to be intelligent enough to hear what our news sources are not saying about themselves or their agenda. We may choose to say that a news source such as Fox, or, by extension, Rush Limbaugh, is ridiculously slanted. But here's what's important to remember: the most honest person is one who tells you up front he's a conservative, a liberal, a socialist, a radical muslim, and so on. Rush Limbaugh lets us know just who he is so that we immediately use a different filter when we listen to him. Fox makes little, if any, effort to cover their agenda. If a news agency is to be denigrated, it should be one that portrays itself as white while subtly delivering black. Network TV news has been rather adept at doing this for many years, and people figured it out. Thus, the move to Fox, which makes its position clear. You might not agree with a lot that, say, Fox News delivers, but you know who's bringing it to you, and that helps you get closer to the truth.
Hmmm . . . not sure I'm getting the whole picture. Sounds like Citrix Presentation Server, with the twist that it can deliver apps simultaneously from multiple OS platforms. Citrix on steroids I guess.
A little humor never hurts us here at /.
. . . . the porn industry.
Sounds like you have a bunch of people who don't understand the meaning of "corporate assets." If people are concerned about what administrators can access on their computers, they should use a standalone computer that doesn't connect to the network. Administrators have to be able to do what they need to do for the good of all users on the network. The school's IT policy should have made this very clear.
Do you even work in this industry? Right tool, right job. MySQL a toy? Tell that to NASA.
The saddest aspect of Vista's arrival, as far as I'm concerned, is that XP technology has been no improvement over Win2k Pro or Win2k Server in our company. And now we get another scary OS release from MS as the end-of-life date for 2000 products draws near. After SP4 came out for the 2000 products, the only real annoyance was the constant stream of critical updates, some of which unleashed mayhem on our network until we got a handle on update management. Otherwise, the Windows 2000 servers have been rock solid. Meanwhile, XP and Server 2003 have been insufferable turkeys, making me regret every installation. The memory leaks that have plagued Server 2003 should be getting a lot more attention than they've been getting in the tech press. I suspect Microsoft would say that hardware vendors have delivered faulty drivers, but we never saw the random crashes and reboots in Windows 2000 Server that we see in our 2003 servers. I can't trust the 2003 platform anymore - - we moved everything of importance back to Win2k. Service Pack 1 for 2003 Server was about as helpful as a broken ankle. I understand we might see SP2 in 2007. Wow, that's encouraging. Who here wants to dive for Vista? Thank the gods for Linux, Apache, and MySQL . . . .
Between home and work, I've done three setups like this. One has the optional battery backup module, which I think is worth it if you have the extra $100/US. All have been solid as rocks. I use Lian Li drive drawers and Silverstone black aluminum cases for eye candy. The drawers are a nice touch. Thus far I've used Windows 2000 as the OS, AMD processors, Seagate drives (5-year warranty!)and Abit NF7-S mainboards. Lots of bang for the buck, and nice to look at as well. At some point, I want to see how the 3ware cards do under Linux - - I hear that they are fully supported, just haven't gotten around to trying it yet. On the 8-port cards, I use a mirror for the OS and the remaining six ports for a RAID5 setup. The fans should be of good quality, as the heat is substantial. You can use multiple 3Ware/AMCC Escalade cards in one installation for really big storage.
Indeed - - it was once said that if one were bitten by a mad dog, the cure was to ingest some of his (the dog's) hair. Which led, of course, to the contention that for a hangover, the best medicine is "the hair of the dog that bit you" - - or, a swig or two of alcohol to relieve the symptoms of alcohol withdrawal. I can attest to the fact that this works, based on recollections of my wedding day. Without those morning shots, I'd have been a goner.
Now why would you assume I'm a beer drinker? After about age 40, it was liquor all the way for me, usually a good Bombay Sapphire Martini with olives. But I've recently acquired a taste for Ciroc vodka. Come to think of it, I believe I'll have one now . . . .
I'll take a couple of shots right now, straight up.
That's admirable - - I salute you. I would like to be able to say honestly that our disaster recovery plan has been given a truly realistic test, but I can't. Judging from the articles that appear regularly in IT management journals, I can't help but feel this is commonplace. I'm curious - - what is the size of your operation, and in what industry do you work? I think my outfit is pretty typical of companies of fewer than 500 employees, but that's only a gut feeling. Talking to other front-line IT managers in conference settings, I've heard (from those who felt they could speak openly) that their plan boils down to storing tapes offsite and occasionally testing their backup/restore software. That kind of "preparedness" doesn't begin to address a situation where one's data center is wiped out, leaving branch operations orphaned until a new termination point for all those T1 and VPN connections can be brought online. How many small- to medium-size businesses have a stand-by data center with WAN terminations ready to go? How many go through the exercise of activating the stand-by facility? And who thinks consultants could come in under fire to do this work? My opinion is that good documentation of processes and topology and proper attention to data preservation are the key ingredients to recovery. An in-house team - - one that's reasonably well compensated and not overloaded to the point of burnout - - can perform in a way that no outsiders can.
Your point is well made, and I certainly agree with most of your statements. Regarding disaster recovery, though, I'm reminded of that old saying about bad weather: everyone complains about it, but nobody does anything to change it.
DR is one of those fuzzy, mysterious areas of the business plan on which most execs hate to spend money. After all, they reason, the chances of needing to rebuild from it are miniscule. Laughably (or sadly, depending on the circumstances), the half-baked DR plan usually gets past the auditors and then is treated with reverence, like some sort of talisman, despite its being out of date and ridiculously optimistic.
So, the chances of consultants 1) being available when you need them, and 2) being able to work from the nominal recovery plan you've handed them after the flood are probably not confidence inspiring. I must say also that I've watched consultants descend upon our network to do "turnkey installations" on a few occasions, and the people sent to do the job would have been lost without the babysitting and total cooperation of my team. I maintain that nothing beats your in-house team of experts - - it can take days for outsiders to get their bearings on a strange network, especially if your network configuration, fault tolerance and data management schemas, etc., are highly proprietary or complex.