I've been the internet cop is several organizations during my employment history and have seen administrators (not IT people) declare everything from "ALL shall be free!" to "Don't let them do anything more than their job" as a standard to use for filtering. Most likely what is happening is that someone, not in IT, has the list of "categories" from the filter service provider, be it Dan's Guardian or a big company like Websense, and have picked the usual suspects of Adult, Security, Malware, and Offensive, along with Hate Speech, Violence, and IT related" and flipped the filter on. The University Administration will ask you one question and one question only, "What part of your EDUCATION" is being effected by this? AND remember these people have fairly well tuned BS detectors. This isn't your parents' basement, they have the right to do what they will to reduce costs (your tuition) by protecting their network and reducing bandwidth use. If you don't like the on campus connection then move off campus and PAY for your own net connection where you can surf to your heart's content and waste your parents' money on reading hackaday instead of getting the Business Degree your parents are paying for by working overtime. And if you want REALLY draconian, they know eveery website you attempt to go to, whether it's blocked or not, and with the newest tech, they are doing a man in the middle on all SSL traffic so they know what you are doing there as well.
A similar large vendor tried this near me. they said for X we will deliver A, B &C. simple
We pony up X..... quick implementation ensues
1. The techie they sent us has never worked with an environment like ours
2 The internal geeks stated "this crap stinks, doesn't work and will break things"
3.The salesman precedes to distract management with concert and sports tickets
4. Project is getting near deadline, A, B & C not working
5. We report that A B & C aren't working and that "this crap stinks, doesn't work and will break things"
6. The salesman precedes to distract management with concert and sports tickets
7. Project finally stalls
8.A B & C aren't working and "this crap stinks, doesn't work and will break things"
9 Salesman says "throw 5x at problem and that will fix it
10. Management balks because A B & C aren't working and "this crap stinks, doesn't work and will break things"
11. Suddenly Salesman isn't taking calls
This is the pattern of business, it doesn't matter if something actually works, it matters that it makes a sale.
We got in front of the iDevice train, followed by the Android train.....
99% of our people requested email access, not problem. We're still a Groupwise shop, it was a simple matter to stand up a Novell Datasync server and provide all them with calendar and email access on iDevices and Android. We'll even put a bullet in their phone if they lose it. Our restriction? pin code instead of swipe to open and the agreement that when they leave our employ we will be sending the bullet out to their phone and they will need to reconnect it to their pc (iDevice) or go through the registration process (Android) to get use of it again. We don't allow personal devices on our core network, but we do provide a wireless access ( low bandwidth, no access to the core network) to these devices. We may actually sponsor iPads someday for certain users AND we do give them the option of a blackberry or iphone if they are issued work cell phones.
Has anyone been arrested by the BSA? no. They aren't the government. Does anyone know if any of their shenanigans ever made it to court? I wouldn't turn my network over without a warrant to the government, I sure as hell won't to some "Alliance" who has no authority to compel me to do anything.....
Of course, my business runs on Linux and our desktops come with windows licenses from the factory. We were accused by them of pirating office software. We met with them offsite, I showed them our desktop software manifest, which states the following :
OpenOffice vX.X
Firefox vX.X
end of statement
and asked them who we needed to pay for freely available software.
they walked slowly away....apparently our disgruntled jackass former co-worker didn't know that openoffice was free and assumed it was an pirated software since we said to her "we don't need a licence, just installed it"......
ifolder, from Novell, but open sourced now. secure and encrypted and you can make it as big or small as you want. And it has a web interface.....
ifolder.com
the cam app was only activated after inventories revealed that laptops were missing....as in , laptop 434556 is missing, activate the cam software and find out who has it, this wasn't some pervert randomly surfing the cams, these were turned on in situations where SCHOOL owned property valued at over $1000 USD was missing and needs to be located.
No different that the people who send pictures to the police of the people who stole their mac laptops using the same cam software.
1. Yes there was "spy cam" software
2. Yes, it has been removed from all equipment during the last refresh (summer 2010)
3. The spy cam photos were taken on laptops that were ILLEGALLY REMOVED FROM THE SCHOOL in an attempt to recover them, so this is no different than the people who post pictures from their Macs of the people who stole them.
4. The PARENTS of the children involved refused to pay the insurance on the laptops that most parents do pay (50USD per school year), so the children were not supposed to remove the laptops from school.They did anyway
My son has one of these laptops, my daughter will next year, they have the option of taping over the cam anytime they want to cover it.
Give IT their login and pray it doesn't go farther.......in my HOSPITAL environment you'd pretty much be hauled in front of the CIO, HR, and your dept chair to have a career education session....
1. Most Likely, your hospital has an email system
2. Most Likely your hospital has a web portal to said email system
3. Most Likely, your email system has a calendar available on the portal
4. Most Likely, you over engineered this....
Tacobell programing...aka don't reinvent the wheel to do everything
COBOL is still the basis of MANY financial systems, even Lawson which runs on websphere with a metric ton of java applets has cobol running under AIX as the backend
Cheaper than Microsoft, Support from the vendor and it does everything you need, email, collaboration, messaging, security, and VPN. The latest running on Suse Linux called OES2 SP2 is amazing. AND it comes with free virtualization in the form of XEN. Not to forget the best Directory structure, eDirectory (8.8.6 is current)
GM makes too much money from OnStar and Ford's "Sync" also uses cell phone tech. also "can't call 911 when car jacked and trapped in trunk stories" will be hot news items....
1. Why are you using your personal equipment to do hospital work. If they are a major hospital then acquiring equipment, even older used equipment is no big deal
2. Yes they can be draconian about network connections, because we have to be, HIPAA fines can run into thew tens of millions of dollars easily.
3. if they want you to check email at home, then THEY need to provide you with the equipment.
all that aside, I have a cartoon in my cube from XKCD about how stupid laptop encryption is. I
Novell does, it's a service offering...
you can effectively hire a MCNE to oversee your shop remotely for 150k per year, and he will basically do whatever you want, remotely....
or
you hire novell consulting who will come to your site and do whatever....
Facts:
1. the school told students who did not pay the laptop fee to not remove the laptops from school
2. the kid's parents did not pay the fee
3. kide removed laptop
4. school staff randomly inventoried laptops
5. school staff discovered laptop missing
6. staff activated anti theft program...
Student broke rules and got busted, doesn't matter if it was a laptop or getting caught smoking on school surveilance web cam.
how is this any different than someone using MoblieMe to find their missing iphones??
Slashdot Mirror
The Verizon "Select" bundle has been ESPN free (sports tier free actually) for over 2 years, so ESPN wasn't paying attention before?
http://www.gutenberg.org/files...
I've been the internet cop is several organizations during my employment history and have seen administrators (not IT people) declare everything from "ALL shall be free!" to "Don't let them do anything more than their job" as a standard to use for filtering. Most likely what is happening is that someone, not in IT, has the list of "categories" from the filter service provider, be it Dan's Guardian or a big company like Websense, and have picked the usual suspects of Adult, Security, Malware, and Offensive, along with Hate Speech, Violence, and IT related" and flipped the filter on. The University Administration will ask you one question and one question only, "What part of your EDUCATION" is being effected by this? AND remember these people have fairly well tuned BS detectors. This isn't your parents' basement, they have the right to do what they will to reduce costs (your tuition) by protecting their network and reducing bandwidth use. If you don't like the on campus connection then move off campus and PAY for your own net connection where you can surf to your heart's content and waste your parents' money on reading hackaday instead of getting the Business Degree your parents are paying for by working overtime. And if you want REALLY draconian, they know eveery website you attempt to go to, whether it's blocked or not, and with the newest tech, they are doing a man in the middle on all SSL traffic so they know what you are doing there as well.
I was going to say exactly that, I work in a Novell based environment and work on SUSE most the day.
A similar large vendor tried this near me. they said for X we will deliver A, B &C. simple We pony up X..... quick implementation ensues 1. The techie they sent us has never worked with an environment like ours 2 The internal geeks stated "this crap stinks, doesn't work and will break things" 3.The salesman precedes to distract management with concert and sports tickets 4. Project is getting near deadline, A, B & C not working 5. We report that A B & C aren't working and that "this crap stinks, doesn't work and will break things" 6. The salesman precedes to distract management with concert and sports tickets 7. Project finally stalls 8.A B & C aren't working and "this crap stinks, doesn't work and will break things" 9 Salesman says "throw 5x at problem and that will fix it 10. Management balks because A B & C aren't working and "this crap stinks, doesn't work and will break things" 11. Suddenly Salesman isn't taking calls This is the pattern of business, it doesn't matter if something actually works, it matters that it makes a sale.
We got in front of the iDevice train, followed by the Android train..... 99% of our people requested email access, not problem. We're still a Groupwise shop, it was a simple matter to stand up a Novell Datasync server and provide all them with calendar and email access on iDevices and Android. We'll even put a bullet in their phone if they lose it. Our restriction? pin code instead of swipe to open and the agreement that when they leave our employ we will be sending the bullet out to their phone and they will need to reconnect it to their pc (iDevice) or go through the registration process (Android) to get use of it again. We don't allow personal devices on our core network, but we do provide a wireless access ( low bandwidth, no access to the core network) to these devices. We may actually sponsor iPads someday for certain users AND we do give them the option of a blackberry or iphone if they are issued work cell phones.
Has anyone been arrested by the BSA? no. They aren't the government. Does anyone know if any of their shenanigans ever made it to court? I wouldn't turn my network over without a warrant to the government, I sure as hell won't to some "Alliance" who has no authority to compel me to do anything. ....
Of course, my business runs on Linux and our desktops come with windows licenses from the factory. We were accused by them of pirating office software. We met with them offsite, I showed them our desktop software manifest, which states the following :
OpenOffice vX.X
Firefox vX.X
end of statement
and asked them who we needed to pay for freely available software.
they walked slowly away....apparently our disgruntled jackass former co-worker didn't know that openoffice was free and assumed it was an pirated software since we said to her "we don't need a licence, just installed it"......
built my own using iFolder from Novell and then open sourced, works great, and yes I did it myself.... http://ifolder.com/
storage is never "free" (in terms of beer or speech) but rolling this onto your own Amazon boxen might not be a bad idea
ifolder, from Novell, but open sourced now. secure and encrypted and you can make it as big or small as you want. And it has a web interface..... ifolder.com
the cam app was only activated after inventories revealed that laptops were missing....as in , laptop 434556 is missing, activate the cam software and find out who has it, this wasn't some pervert randomly surfing the cams, these were turned on in situations where SCHOOL owned property valued at over $1000 USD was missing and needs to be located. No different that the people who send pictures to the police of the people who stole their mac laptops using the same cam software.
1. Yes there was "spy cam" software 2. Yes, it has been removed from all equipment during the last refresh (summer 2010) 3. The spy cam photos were taken on laptops that were ILLEGALLY REMOVED FROM THE SCHOOL in an attempt to recover them, so this is no different than the people who post pictures from their Macs of the people who stole them. 4. The PARENTS of the children involved refused to pay the insurance on the laptops that most parents do pay (50USD per school year), so the children were not supposed to remove the laptops from school.They did anyway My son has one of these laptops, my daughter will next year, they have the option of taping over the cam anytime they want to cover it.
I lost the ability to hibernate my machines in the last few kernels, how about fixing that?
Exchange, natively supported by the iPhone Groupwise, supportepd by Novell Datasync, free if you have groupwise Notes; Active Sync
Give IT their login and pray it doesn't go farther.......in my HOSPITAL environment you'd pretty much be hauled in front of the CIO, HR, and your dept chair to have a career education session.... 1. Most Likely, your hospital has an email system 2. Most Likely your hospital has a web portal to said email system 3. Most Likely, your email system has a calendar available on the portal 4. Most Likely, you over engineered this.... Tacobell programing...aka don't reinvent the wheel to do everything
with Novell selling the Patent portfolio off, we might need groklaw again......
eDir stores passwords in non-reversible encrypted hashes, No way to get the passwords out of there.
COBOL is still the basis of MANY financial systems, even Lawson which runs on websphere with a metric ton of java applets has cobol running under AIX as the backend
best game from 80's.... The Fire Wall Gun was almost as good as the BFG9000
Cheaper than Microsoft, Support from the vendor and it does everything you need, email, collaboration, messaging, security, and VPN. The latest running on Suse Linux called OES2 SP2 is amazing. AND it comes with free virtualization in the form of XEN. Not to forget the best Directory structure, eDirectory (8.8.6 is current)
GM makes too much money from OnStar and Ford's "Sync" also uses cell phone tech. also "can't call 911 when car jacked and trapped in trunk stories" will be hot news items....
nope, inkjet ink! 8000 a gallon!
1. Why are you using your personal equipment to do hospital work. If they are a major hospital then acquiring equipment, even older used equipment is no big deal 2. Yes they can be draconian about network connections, because we have to be, HIPAA fines can run into thew tens of millions of dollars easily. 3. if they want you to check email at home, then THEY need to provide you with the equipment. all that aside, I have a cartoon in my cube from XKCD about how stupid laptop encryption is. I
Novell does, it's a service offering... you can effectively hire a MCNE to oversee your shop remotely for 150k per year, and he will basically do whatever you want, remotely.... or you hire novell consulting who will come to your site and do whatever....
Facts: 1. the school told students who did not pay the laptop fee to not remove the laptops from school 2. the kid's parents did not pay the fee 3. kide removed laptop 4. school staff randomly inventoried laptops 5. school staff discovered laptop missing 6. staff activated anti theft program... Student broke rules and got busted, doesn't matter if it was a laptop or getting caught smoking on school surveilance web cam. how is this any different than someone using MoblieMe to find their missing iphones??