It's NOT funny. The same thing happens in my office. The person doing it is the head of IT. Since apparently you can't fire people for pissing all over the floor, they've put up signs that read "please keep restroom clean".
Yea, that should solve it. Cause most people wouldn't realize until they saw that sign that it was wrong to pee on the floor.
I work with a number of schools. Security is just something they don't get, at all. This week, one of my schools had 2 random users suddenly become domain admins. They only had a few days worth of logs, so we don't know who did it, and no one who had administrative access has fessed up. Teachers let students use their accounts, administrators use sticky notes with passwords, we're almost at the point where we'll be forced to disable screen saver lockouts because of the whining.
It isn't just computer security. Physically, they only want to appear to be secure. They make a nice show of forcing visitors to sign in, but I can sign in as Wayne Newton or Ted Bundy and not even get a glance. In any case, you can almost always go in any number of side doors.
I'll be sending this link around to some folks, I'm fairly sure my "obsession" with security garners snickers more often than anything else, but que sera sera.
Windows media player and Realmagic player both suffer from the same dilusional management. Someone believes the player is more important than the media. If I want to watch a DVD or listen to an MP3 all I want is an easy way to find my media, and then to see/view the media itself.
This obsession with skins and enormous toolbars and wasted screen real estate drives me nuts. Winamp was good because there was virtually nothing wasted in the display. iTunes also realizes the media is more important than the player. When will Microsoft and Real catch up?
The "free data engine thingy" is also known as MSDE, and works pretty well, but is limited to databases of less than 2 GB.
You didn't say why Exchange has been ruled out. If it's for stability reasons, you're barking up the wrong tree. Exchange is pretty solid and has gotten more reliable over the years. Same with Windows.
If it's a cost issue, Windows 2003 small business server is $599, which includes Exchange and Outlook 2003 and 5 CALs. If you need the hardware, you can get a cheap http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx ?c=us&cs=04&kc=6W300&l=en&oc=sc430r649&s=bsd>Dell server AND 2003SBS for under 700$. You'll probably want to spring for something more fault tolerant, which could cost you 1000$. Over 5 years, you're talking about an expenditure of $20 per month. That's less than the coffee fund.
You'll need to setup and maintain it, if you don't have a windows background that could prove tough for you. But there are reasons so many places stick with Exchange, shared calendars are high on the list.
Burning Karma, but it's late. Cisco FastHUB 300 100 Mbit Hub. These also had a modular port which you could plug in a management module with a 10 or 100 Mbit switched port. I feel so much better now.
To actually be helpful, the parent is correct, a decent managed switch would be good. Actually being able to measure traffic will help to diagnose problems. In fact you might want to setup performance monitor on any existing PCs and duplicate the production traffic, just to see how much bandwidth you'll actually be using.
Additionally, if you're staying with 98 on these machines, consider something like deepfreeze and/or some strong administrative policies. The last thing you want is dead air while bonzi buddy is sending your credit card numbers to Russia.
I've read comments like this twice this week. Am I as an IT person unfulfilled because I'm not a concert pianist? No, I don't have the desire or ability.
A lot of people just don't have the IQ to do anything more than sling burgers. They do what they can. Maybe they think their job sucks and want to do something else, but that kind of thinking isn't limited to just janitors. Frankly a job I don't ever need to think about unless I'm punched in doesn't sound so bad.
Garbage collector - decent pay, paid overtime, drive to/from work not during rush-hour, no on-call pager, no hair-thinning level of responsibilty. I wear gloves and take a shower end of the day. It's just trash, it won't kill me.
Using a computer is part of any kind of office job, and plenty of other non-office jobs these days. It's along the same lines as using a phone or sorting through a file cabinet or any other common office tool. Think of it this way... Worker is given work -> worker does something -> worker produces finished product. That something might include alphabetizing files, or driving their car, or hammering in nails. If the worker couldn't read, couldn't drive a car, or couldn't use a hammer, we'd call them unqualified to do their job. We'd wonder why they were ever hired and when they'll be canned. How is using a computer different?
The poster points out some of the same frustrations many non-linux people have when they try to use the OS. Keep in mind, that anyone switching to Linux still has to do work. This means any switching to Linux research is going to occupy spare time. That time better be spent getting Linux to do my work better, not me making Linux work at all.
That might be true, but only in very specific classes will they actually be teaching the OS, or PC repair, or trying to show differences between firefox/IE/Safari rendering or something similar. My experience is that you'll see 1 classroom in the high school devoted towards the instructional side of this sort of thing. Which will probably be the base software set all the normal machines get, plus some specific apps for the class. They'll have another pile of machines, or routers, or whatever for the lab portion of the class.
You don't want that lab connected to your normal network. A classroom full of network admins in training on a production network is a bad thing. Also, you want to let the kids do stuff without worrying about breaking anything production.
The vast majority of the classes will be running some app, mavis beacon typing, or whatever. Probably they'll have some sort of educational package like Successmaker CCC or Plato; the point of which is to do computerized testing and teaching, then be able to output metrics on the students' performance.
One of the problems you get into with a diverse lab like this is that usually it comes from a single teacher who has the drive to set this sort of thing up. A lab of macs for the art class, whatever. But when that teacher is no longer able to support their creation, it either becomes an unplanned support expense, or the lab falls into disrepair and is never used.
Very, very few teachers have the tech know-how to handle managing a complex technology setup. Even fewer have the time. One of the problems with technology people trying to develop curriculum is that we tend to view the computer AS the curriculum instead of a tool to present it. With budgets being squeezed and teachers being asked to do more and more, you're unlikely to find much support for such an arrangement in any kind of large scale deployment. BUT, take that same concept and apply it to the "cool" teacher for an informal afterschool program and you'd have a great thing.
I work as a consultant for a systems integration firm. We have a large number of customers who are K-12 schools. Many of the technology coordinators were the technology dude from last school year and need a lot of assistance. This might be a bit of rambling, because I don't have time to make it shorter.
First of all, your budget is going to be limited, while you might be able to get E-rate money to pay for a lot of network gear, and possibly some servers, you can't use erate for staff. You need to standardize so you get work done centrally. This allows you to hire 1 or 2 smart network admins, vs a horde of drones. Hardware, software, processes, etc... all need to be standardized. Get a good handle on what software you own and where it's installed. Put some policies in place to keep teachers from pirating software; which they will do in massive amounts. Make a business case to the administration that you need to have tight control on software and hardware. You can have every l33t tech teacher running around being their own little network admin for their cluster of 30 PCs only for so long, this will fail really, really badly. This isn't just about control, it's about establising a consistent learning environment for students who will switch between classrooms and schools; as well as teachers, some of whom will have little or no technology experience and will be befuddled by 2000 computers that all act a bit different.
If you don't have a centralized imaging system, get one. Altiris is nice, Ghost is nice. CA makes a very nice (but pricy) product that will do scripted Windows installs as well as packaged or scripted app installs. Their best feature is that it will keep track of all your app installs and where they're supposed to be, reinstalling them automatically when you reimage PCs; basically handling all your license tracking for you.
Do you have network monitoring for when an errant broom handle takes out the power to a wiring closet? HP Insight manager will monitor your stuff and is reasonably easy to setup (also free). Obviously there are tons of other options, but you'll probably never find the time to devote a week to setting something (anything, anyplace) up.
Chances are you'll have people from 4 corners writing and being awarded grants that use technology. Get in on the ground floor with these folks, make sure they understand that computers need desks, network ports, AV licensing, etc... Establish an approved hardware list, and make sure people only buy stuff on the list. This reduces the number of types of printer carts you need to stock and PC images to build. Figure out a per PC cost for network support, make sure they build it into their grant.
Realize that the point of the network is to teach, not to push an idealology. Most business use windows, you'll probably be using it too.
Again, centralize. Use login scripts, group policies (time to upgrade from NT to 2003), network based apps, etc... If you don't have some remote control software, at least on all the teacher and admin machines, get some - VNC is great.
Avoid peer-to-peer apps like the plague. One of my customers has a very nice (from a teaching standpoint) app called CCC. From a technology standpoint, it's a total nightmere. It even has a hardcoded backdoor password. To function at all, everyone has to have full control over all the files; guess how often a student nukes the database...
Firefox is good, but chances are, you'll run into at least one app that only works in IE. Do you want to support 2 different browsers? A lot of educational software is poorly written. Your users won't be logging in as local admins, which will break a lot of apps. Make sure you test any apps before you buy them. Again, this goes to making the policies, users shouldn't be buying software until you look over it. Make sure the department heads are with you and can enforce rules with their staff. You don't want each librarian at each school buying different card catalog software.
I own an Empeg. It's now several years old, but at the time, was the best tech out there for putting MP3s into a car. In fact it's still nothing to shake a stick at.
But the empeg folks sold their outfit to rio and started working there. That was pretty much the end of the empeg. It was never really marketed by Rio, and the price never came down much. Rio pretty much let it die. It should have been a really popular product.
You can do something like laptop with wireless card in it.
Or you can hook a NAS box up to a wireless/ethernet bridge. Use an inverter for power.
Heck, you can disconnect your trunk release and hook it up to a relay, so you can turn on the storage with your car's remote control.
Your other worry is going to be speed. Even with 802.11g at 54 MB, you'll never really get more than 34 Mb or so, even if your car is parked literally on top of the AP. How much data are you backing up in what timeframe?
Have you considered removeable media? Like tape? Not as flashy, but much more proven. If you ever NEED those backups and discover problems with them, you'll have an easier time explaining things to the bosses.
Take a look at Smartsight, now owned by Verint. They have networked video transmitters (and recievers if you want them), but typically you'd have the transmitters send video to a PC running their nDVR software. This is a digital solution, so assumes you already have a network in place. If not, you might just be better off with traditional analog.
I've setup their systems a couple times. They work very nicely. One of my customers has p4-1.5 Ghz PC with standard IDE disks for their nDVR server. It supports over 30 cameras.
The transmitters support any kind of camera. You can also get a traditional security camera and have pan/tilt/zoom control.
You can view/control cameras from the server or any PC.
If you want audio, you can do that.
Costs are something like 1500$ for the server software, which supports up to 6 cameras and 2 viewers. More cameras or viewers are 150$ each. The transmitters are about 500$ each. If you have multiple cameras running to the same location, you can get a multiple input transmitter, which reduces the cost somewhat.
If you're reasonably intelligent you don't need to hire anyone to set this stuff up. I did it without any training or support.
you only need to allow in H323. On any recent pix, that's just one ACL entry.
Access-list incoming tcp host blah eq h323 any
if you want to be more secure, change the any to the IP of the device calling you.
I deal with this stuff all the time, it's really no big deal. Some devices, like tandberg, use extra ports (5555) for other purposes. You might also need LDAP for directory services. If you get an appliance based VC unit instead of a PC based one, you'll be slightly more secure.
Additionally, if you want to be more secure, Polycom makes units that use AES encryption for the actual video/audio stream.
On DVD's we wouldn't have to sit thru FBI warnings or have region restrictions, or not allowed to fast forward thru scenes.
That survey is good to make people think they're being listened to. They're not.
Get a copy of Wget for windows and put it in the startup group with the address of your web site, like so...
wget http:/// mysite.com/laptop.htm
that should hit your site and download the file whenever the system is booted.
For more fun, use Srvany and run the little script above as a service. This way the crooks don't even need to login for it to work.
Since I was asked...
My machine is a homebrew Athlon XP 3000+ with 1 GB of memory. Currently using 370 MB memory and 100% cpu (at low priority) by running processes. The OS is Windows XP.
Comparing my machine to his isn't at all scientific, but then again, neither is his review. He doesn't indicate what OS he's using, what other hardware besides CPU and memory, or what other processes are running.
But to be fair, I can look at my work machine via VNC. My work machine is slower than his with the same 512MB memory, but still beats his times by 50%.
I'm just trying to point out that his results aren't even close to reality. If it's not a outright anti-MS troll of an article, then his testing is highly, highly flawed.
From TFA, opening office takes 12 seconds on average, with first startup being over 30 seconds.
I just rebooted my machine and Word 2000 opened in less than 2 seconds. Oh yea, I'm currently ripping a DVD. My machine is faster than the one tested, but not 15 times faster.
I don't know how the testing is done, but all the quoted speeds seem way, way too high for both apps.
I hear the MediaMVP from hauppauge is really nice, especially for 99$ US. A friend of mine has one and streams all his movies from a PC in his house. It does music, video (including divx) and stills. You can skin the interface if you don't like the canned one.
On the downside, it requires you to install software on your PC, which I think is windows only, don't know if there is a OSS server yet for it. Also, if you intend to watch divx movies, you'll need a 1.8 Ghz CPU or better. Apparently the box is some type of VNC client, and the software turns your PC into a VNC server.
I believe this is true, though it's not spikes they look for. Apparently the plants grow better with more light, the growers leave plant lights on 24/7. So they're looking for someone using an unusual constant level of power, not the typical power usage you see in a normal household.
I'm not also sure if power companies even care, but the police might subpoena this type of information in an investigation.
I can tell you what they do.
Left to their own devices, students surf the web, play flash games, and watch music videos. Top web site at one of my schools is google images.
When there is actual school work involved, it's a word document or maybe excel spreadsheet.
And here is where OSS fails... The rest of the work uses applications that fall into 3 categories.
- Apps teachers know
- Apps that don't exist for anything but windows.
- Administrative apps that will never change.
In the first case, we're talking about things like Photoshop, and while I've never used the gimp, I'm sure it's great. But try getting a pile of teachers retrained on the gimp. Now try getting a pile of change-resistant teachers with a powerful teachers union behind them retrained. Their teaching resources are all based on photoshop, most every transferred art student knows photoshop, and any plugin or class or grant they might get will depend on photoshop.
The second case is worse. Much of the educational software is available only for windows. It's usually poorly written, most often the assumption is still that it's 1986 and it will be installed on 1 stand alone PC in a classroom. UNC paths for app data storage? Proper use of per user or per machine registry paths? Runs without local admin?? no, no and umm, no way.
Finally you have the administratrive apps. The programs for keeping track of attendance and student discipline. These things won't be changed for anything. I have a school that just threw out their mainframe a couple years ago. Another still has an old DEC ultrix box. These people have 2 line printers, they print out everything and hand it out. Nevermind that everyone already has a PC and instant access to the data. They need reams of form-feed printouts to cope. Any change for these folks would be brutal.
Linux on the desktop makes sense for secretaries and generic pencil pushing type office workers. 95% of these folks use the web, email, write documents and use spreadsheets. I'd have a tough time making it work in education.
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It's NOT funny. The same thing happens in my office. The person doing it is the head of IT. Since apparently you can't fire people for pissing all over the floor, they've put up signs that read "please keep restroom clean".
Yea, that should solve it. Cause most people wouldn't realize until they saw that sign that it was wrong to pee on the floor.
Yes, it's here. It's still in alpha. Last update was July of 2005
I work with a number of schools. Security is just something they don't get, at all.
This week, one of my schools had 2 random users suddenly become domain admins. They only had a few days worth of logs, so we don't know who did it, and no one who had administrative access has fessed up.
Teachers let students use their accounts, administrators use sticky notes with passwords, we're almost at the point where we'll be forced to disable screen saver lockouts because of the whining.
It isn't just computer security. Physically, they only want to appear to be secure. They make a nice show of forcing visitors to sign in, but I can sign in as Wayne Newton or Ted Bundy and not even get a glance. In any case, you can almost always go in any number of side doors.
I'll be sending this link around to some folks, I'm fairly sure my "obsession" with security garners snickers more often than anything else, but que sera sera.
Windows media player and Realmagic player both suffer from the same dilusional management. Someone believes the player is more important than the media. If I want to watch a DVD or listen to an MP3 all I want is an easy way to find my media, and then to see/view the media itself.
This obsession with skins and enormous toolbars and wasted screen real estate drives me nuts. Winamp was good because there was virtually nothing wasted in the display. iTunes also realizes the media is more important than the player. When will Microsoft and Real catch up?
The "free data engine thingy" is also known as MSDE, and works pretty well, but is limited to databases of less than 2 GB. You didn't say why Exchange has been ruled out. If it's for stability reasons, you're barking up the wrong tree. Exchange is pretty solid and has gotten more reliable over the years. Same with Windows. If it's a cost issue, Windows 2003 small business server is $599, which includes Exchange and Outlook 2003 and 5 CALs. If you need the hardware, you can get a cheap http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx ?c=us&cs=04&kc=6W300&l=en&oc=sc430r649&s=bsd>Dell server AND 2003SBS for under 700$. You'll probably want to spring for something more fault tolerant, which could cost you 1000$. Over 5 years, you're talking about an expenditure of $20 per month. That's less than the coffee fund.
You'll need to setup and maintain it, if you don't have a windows background that could prove tough for you. But there are reasons so many places stick with Exchange, shared calendars are high on the list.
Burning Karma, but it's late. Cisco FastHUB 300 100 Mbit Hub. These also had a modular port which you could plug in a management module with a 10 or 100 Mbit switched port. I feel so much better now.
To actually be helpful, the parent is correct, a decent managed switch would be good. Actually being able to measure traffic will help to diagnose problems. In fact you might want to setup performance monitor on any existing PCs and duplicate the production traffic, just to see how much bandwidth you'll actually be using.
Additionally, if you're staying with 98 on these machines, consider something like deepfreeze and/or some strong administrative policies. The last thing you want is dead air while bonzi buddy is sending your credit card numbers to Russia.
I've read comments like this twice this week. Am I as an IT person unfulfilled because I'm not a concert pianist? No, I don't have the desire or ability.
A lot of people just don't have the IQ to do anything more than sling burgers. They do what they can. Maybe they think their job sucks and want to do something else, but that kind of thinking isn't limited to just janitors. Frankly a job I don't ever need to think about unless I'm punched in doesn't sound so bad.
Garbage collector - decent pay, paid overtime, drive to/from work not during rush-hour, no on-call pager, no hair-thinning level of responsibilty. I wear gloves and take a shower end of the day. It's just trash, it won't kill me.
To each their own.
Using a computer is part of any kind of office job, and plenty of other non-office jobs these days. It's along the same lines as using a phone or sorting through a file cabinet or any other common office tool.
Think of it this way... Worker is given work -> worker does something -> worker produces finished product. That something might include alphabetizing files, or driving their car, or hammering in nails. If the worker couldn't read, couldn't drive a car, or couldn't use a hammer, we'd call them unqualified to do their job. We'd wonder why they were ever hired and when they'll be canned. How is using a computer different?
It's interesting because it's true.
The poster points out some of the same frustrations many non-linux people have when they try to use the OS. Keep in mind, that anyone switching to Linux still has to do work. This means any switching to Linux research is going to occupy spare time. That time better be spent getting Linux to do my work better, not me making Linux work at all.
That might be true, but only in very specific classes will they actually be teaching the OS, or PC repair, or trying to show differences between firefox/IE/Safari rendering or something similar.
My experience is that you'll see 1 classroom in the high school devoted towards the instructional side of this sort of thing. Which will probably be the base software set all the normal machines get, plus some specific apps for the class. They'll have another pile of machines, or routers, or whatever for the lab portion of the class.
You don't want that lab connected to your normal network. A classroom full of network admins in training on a production network is a bad thing. Also, you want to let the kids do stuff without worrying about breaking anything production.
The vast majority of the classes will be running some app, mavis beacon typing, or whatever. Probably they'll have some sort of educational package like Successmaker CCC or Plato; the point of which is to do computerized testing and teaching, then be able to output metrics on the students' performance.
One of the problems you get into with a diverse lab like this is that usually it comes from a single teacher who has the drive to set this sort of thing up. A lab of macs for the art class, whatever. But when that teacher is no longer able to support their creation, it either becomes an unplanned support expense, or the lab falls into disrepair and is never used.
Very, very few teachers have the tech know-how to handle managing a complex technology setup. Even fewer have the time.
One of the problems with technology people trying to develop curriculum is that we tend to view the computer AS the curriculum instead of a tool to present it. With budgets being squeezed and teachers being asked to do more and more, you're unlikely to find much support for such an arrangement in any kind of large scale deployment. BUT, take that same concept and apply it to the "cool" teacher for an informal afterschool program and you'd have a great thing.
I work as a consultant for a systems integration firm. We have a large number of customers who are K-12 schools. Many of the technology coordinators were the technology dude from last school year and need a lot of assistance. This might be a bit of rambling, because I don't have time to make it shorter.
First of all, your budget is going to be limited, while you might be able to get E-rate money to pay for a lot of network gear, and possibly some servers, you can't use erate for staff. You need to standardize so you get work done centrally. This allows you to hire 1 or 2 smart network admins, vs a horde of drones. Hardware, software, processes, etc... all need to be standardized. Get a good handle on what software you own and where it's installed. Put some policies in place to keep teachers from pirating software; which they will do in massive amounts. Make a business case to the administration that you need to have tight control on software and hardware. You can have every l33t tech teacher running around being their own little network admin for their cluster of 30 PCs only for so long, this will fail really, really badly. This isn't just about control, it's about establising a consistent learning environment for students who will switch between classrooms and schools; as well as teachers, some of whom will have little or no technology experience and will be befuddled by 2000 computers that all act a bit different.
If you don't have a centralized imaging system, get one. Altiris is nice, Ghost is nice. CA makes a very nice (but pricy) product that will do scripted Windows installs as well as packaged or scripted app installs. Their best feature is that it will keep track of all your app installs and where they're supposed to be, reinstalling them automatically when you reimage PCs; basically handling all your license tracking for you.
Do you have network monitoring for when an errant broom handle takes out the power to a wiring closet? HP Insight manager will monitor your stuff and is reasonably easy to setup (also free). Obviously there are tons of other options, but you'll probably never find the time to devote a week to setting something (anything, anyplace) up.
Chances are you'll have people from 4 corners writing and being awarded grants that use technology. Get in on the ground floor with these folks, make sure they understand that computers need desks, network ports, AV licensing, etc... Establish an approved hardware list, and make sure people only buy stuff on the list. This reduces the number of types of printer carts you need to stock and PC images to build. Figure out a per PC cost for network support, make sure they build it into their grant.
Realize that the point of the network is to teach, not to push an idealology. Most business use windows, you'll probably be using it too.
Again, centralize. Use login scripts, group policies (time to upgrade from NT to 2003), network based apps, etc... If you don't have some remote control software, at least on all the teacher and admin machines, get some - VNC is great.
Avoid peer-to-peer apps like the plague. One of my customers has a very nice (from a teaching standpoint) app called CCC. From a technology standpoint, it's a total nightmere. It even has a hardcoded backdoor password. To function at all, everyone has to have full control over all the files; guess how often a student nukes the database... Firefox is good, but chances are, you'll run into at least one app that only works in IE. Do you want to support 2 different browsers? A lot of educational software is poorly written. Your users won't be logging in as local admins, which will break a lot of apps. Make sure you test any apps before you buy them. Again, this goes to making the policies, users shouldn't be buying software until you look over it.
Make sure the department heads are with you and can enforce rules with their staff. You don't want each librarian at each school buying different card catalog software.
Obviously you h
I own an Empeg. It's now several years old, but at the time, was the best tech out there for putting MP3s into a car. In fact it's still nothing to shake a stick at.
But the empeg folks sold their outfit to rio and started working there. That was pretty much the end of the empeg. It was never really marketed by Rio, and the price never came down much. Rio pretty much let it die. It should have been a really popular product.
You can do something like laptop with wireless card in it.
Or you can hook a NAS box up to a wireless/ethernet bridge. Use an inverter for power.
Heck, you can disconnect your trunk release and hook it up to a relay, so you can turn on the storage with your car's remote control.
Your other worry is going to be speed. Even with 802.11g at 54 MB, you'll never really get more than 34 Mb or so, even if your car is parked literally on top of the AP. How much data are you backing up in what timeframe?
Have you considered removeable media? Like tape? Not as flashy, but much more proven. If you ever NEED those backups and discover problems with them, you'll have an easier time explaining things to the bosses.
Take a look at Smartsight, now owned by Verint. They have networked video transmitters (and recievers if you want them), but typically you'd have the transmitters send video to a PC running their nDVR software. This is a digital solution, so assumes you already have a network in place. If not, you might just be better off with traditional analog.
I've setup their systems a couple times. They work very nicely. One of my customers has p4-1.5 Ghz PC with standard IDE disks for their nDVR server. It supports over 30 cameras.
The transmitters support any kind of camera. You can also get a traditional security camera and have pan/tilt/zoom control.
You can view/control cameras from the server or any PC.
If you want audio, you can do that.
Costs are something like 1500$ for the server software, which supports up to 6 cameras and 2 viewers. More cameras or viewers are 150$ each. The transmitters are about 500$ each. If you have multiple cameras running to the same location, you can get a multiple input transmitter, which reduces the cost somewhat.
If you're reasonably intelligent you don't need to hire anyone to set this stuff up. I did it without any training or support.
you only need to allow in H323. On any recent pix, that's just one ACL entry.
Access-list incoming tcp host blah eq h323 any
if you want to be more secure, change the any to the IP of the device calling you. I deal with this stuff all the time, it's really no big deal. Some devices, like tandberg, use extra ports (5555) for other purposes. You might also need LDAP for directory services. If you get an appliance based VC unit instead of a PC based one, you'll be slightly more secure.
Additionally, if you want to be more secure, Polycom makes units that use AES encryption for the actual video/audio stream.
On DVD's we wouldn't have to sit thru FBI warnings or have region restrictions, or not allowed to fast forward thru scenes.
That survey is good to make people think they're being listened to. They're not.
In spanish there are different words for free.
Libre = free as in Freedom
Gratis = free as in beer
This might play havoc with acronyms though, Goodbuy FSF, Hello LSF.
For the same reason people still remember Robin Hood and his legend of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor*
*whatever the actual truth about Robin Hood, this is what people remember.
Heck, you don't even need to program.
Get a copy of Wget for windows and put it in the startup group with the address of your web site, like so...
wget http:/// mysite.com/laptop.htm
that should hit your site and download the file whenever the system is booted.
For more fun, use Srvany and run the little script above as a service. This way the crooks don't even need to login for it to work.
Since I was asked... My machine is a homebrew Athlon XP 3000+ with 1 GB of memory. Currently using 370 MB memory and 100% cpu (at low priority) by running processes. The OS is Windows XP.
Comparing my machine to his isn't at all scientific, but then again, neither is his review. He doesn't indicate what OS he's using, what other hardware besides CPU and memory, or what other processes are running.
But to be fair, I can look at my work machine via VNC. My work machine is slower than his with the same 512MB memory, but still beats his times by 50%.
I'm just trying to point out that his results aren't even close to reality. If it's not a outright anti-MS troll of an article, then his testing is highly, highly flawed.
From TFA, opening office takes 12 seconds on average, with first startup being over 30 seconds.
I just rebooted my machine and Word 2000 opened in less than 2 seconds. Oh yea, I'm currently ripping a DVD. My machine is faster than the one tested, but not 15 times faster.
I don't know how the testing is done, but all the quoted speeds seem way, way too high for both apps.
I hear the MediaMVP from hauppauge is really nice, especially for 99$ US. A friend of mine has one and streams all his movies from a PC in his house. It does music, video (including divx) and stills. You can skin the interface if you don't like the canned one.
On the downside, it requires you to install software on your PC, which I think is windows only, don't know if there is a OSS server yet for it. Also, if you intend to watch divx movies, you'll need a 1.8 Ghz CPU or better. Apparently the box is some type of VNC client, and the software turns your PC into a VNC server.
I believe this is true, though it's not spikes they look for. Apparently the plants grow better with more light, the growers leave plant lights on 24/7. So they're looking for someone using an unusual constant level of power, not the typical power usage you see in a normal household.
I'm not also sure if power companies even care, but the police might subpoena this type of information in an investigation.
Yes, but Windows has Find and find /?, which works ok.
oh yea and Grep for windows.
I can tell you what they do.
Left to their own devices, students surf the web, play flash games, and watch music videos. Top web site at one of my schools is google images.
When there is actual school work involved, it's a word document or maybe excel spreadsheet.
And here is where OSS fails... The rest of the work uses applications that fall into 3 categories.
- Apps teachers know
- Apps that don't exist for anything but windows.
- Administrative apps that will never change.
In the first case, we're talking about things like Photoshop, and while I've never used the gimp, I'm sure it's great. But try getting a pile of teachers retrained on the gimp. Now try getting a pile of change-resistant teachers with a powerful teachers union behind them retrained. Their teaching resources are all based on photoshop, most every transferred art student knows photoshop, and any plugin or class or grant they might get will depend on photoshop.
The second case is worse. Much of the educational software is available only for windows. It's usually poorly written, most often the assumption is still that it's 1986 and it will be installed on 1 stand alone PC in a classroom. UNC paths for app data storage? Proper use of per user or per machine registry paths? Runs without local admin?? no, no and umm, no way.
Finally you have the administratrive apps. The programs for keeping track of attendance and student discipline. These things won't be changed for anything. I have a school that just threw out their mainframe a couple years ago. Another still has an old DEC ultrix box. These people have 2 line printers, they print out everything and hand it out. Nevermind that everyone already has a PC and instant access to the data. They need reams of form-feed printouts to cope. Any change for these folks would be brutal.
Linux on the desktop makes sense for secretaries and generic pencil pushing type office workers. 95% of these folks use the web, email, write documents and use spreadsheets. I'd have a tough time making it work in education.