seconded. there's horses for courses: i've tried just about all the multitools out there, and if it doesn't fit on my keyring, it's not always with me. having an M4 or leatherman squirt with pliers option in my keyring has got me out of a few holes, whilst my huge (for an office environment) leatherman wave sits at home in a drawer. having said that, being found in a comms cupboard wildly slashing CAT5 with the wave serated 4" blade during a frustrated rewiring clearout *has* stopped people asking me dumb questions...!
leave the keys with security, who are there 24x7. get them to authenticate (i.e. look at their ID card) and unlock the kit.
get them to sign an agreement that their department gets billed if they bring it back late, as well.
a rackmount server in a full rack has bugger-all coolling surface: take a modern 1U server like an HP DL360. stuff it in a populated rack and there's 1U of space at the front, and 90% of that is taken up with floppy, CD, and hard disks. at the rear, there's 1U of space, and 90% of that is taken up with I/O ports.
Just like the Lycos screensaver that strangled spammer's bandwidth by not-quite-DDOS-ing them, this is a stupid idea. Legally you'd be opening yourself up to all kind of problems running this kind of thing: ISPs don't tend to take to kindly to this sort of denial of service attack.
It's not sexy, or headline-grabbing, but the correct way to go about this is the same as it's always been: go after the ISPs to pull their accounts. If they're RFC-ignorant, add their IP blocks to the usual blacklists until they comply or are connected to an intranet.
there are *vast* numbers of people doing this: in clinical trials where electronic data capture systems control dosing, in hospitals using electronic records - all over the place. certianly in the UK, the 30 BILLION POUNDS they're spending on NHS IT systems currently suggests a LOT more people will be doing it in the future.
we thought about this in a ward setting, and the problem is that it doesn't add any value. they can't use gloves, they can't remove and refit biogel gloves quicker than they can type in a simple short password, and it's layering complexity for no good reason. they duplicate the standard windows logon so they still need to know their password in plaintext, so what's the point?
RFID proximity buttons might be useful but it's not really too hard to type in a 5 character password....
you can do this if the machines' encrypted files were encrypted by a local user. this is aimed at corporate work though, where they're domain users. the EBCD and all the other password crackers work on LOCAL accounts, not DOMAIN accounts. if joe blow encrypts his files on his work laptop with his usual domain account, you can't get at them.
opening up the RDP service to the internet? i'm sure you could use ssh etc etc but what'd be really useful is being able to connect to an non-tech savvy users' pc without extra installs on their end...just opening up the ports for RDP on the firewall sounds pretty dangerous...
...from when you were contracting, right?
this is where that self same company makes a bid for data archival and you make double your normal take-home just for walking those DLTs home and back each day...
"It should be company policy to properly pay for and establish a secure off site location for backups that are not in insecure locations like peoples homes."
it IS , man, at any company that takes itself seriously. You get inspected under the FOIA or similar if you're UK based, or the DPA, and you'd be rightly hosed if it turned out your DB's sitting on a few DLTs lying around your admin's squalid bedsit...
it's modded +2 interesting, you see, instead of +2 funny.
just in case it's not a joke, you are aware that a BIOS password does sweet FA if someone has physical access to your disks, or your machine's compromised whilst running, aren't you?
just checking.
ric
no, the point is that all those components are significantly more expensive than commodity-PC equivalents. my point is that it's all well and good selling a cheap entry-level machine, but if you want to do the aforementioned fun stuff, it's not going to be cheap anymore.
* use line in
* get a video card with TV out for HTPC use
* get optical audio out so i can watch DVDs in surround sound
* cheaply add wireless or bluetooth
* add any PCI cards i like
* install a TV tuner card in it
Slashdot Mirror
in that case, do nothing: just wait. give it a few months and there won't BE any kit to loan.
seconded. there's horses for courses: i've tried just about all the multitools out there, and if it doesn't fit on my keyring, it's not always with me. having an M4 or leatherman squirt with pliers option in my keyring has got me out of a few holes, whilst my huge (for an office environment) leatherman wave sits at home in a drawer. having said that, being found in a comms cupboard wildly slashing CAT5 with the wave serated 4" blade during a frustrated rewiring clearout *has* stopped people asking me dumb questions...!
leave the keys with security, who are there 24x7. get them to authenticate (i.e. look at their ID card) and unlock the kit.
get them to sign an agreement that their department gets billed if they bring it back late, as well.
the neighbours will be leaching your juice, otherwise.
closing your mind to an entire idea and calling customers idiots is not good practice in any walk of life.
so attach a 16 port desktop switch. still smaller than this lame effort.
a rackmount server in a full rack has bugger-all coolling surface: take a modern 1U server like an HP DL360. stuff it in a populated rack and there's 1U of space at the front, and 90% of that is taken up with floppy, CD, and hard disks. at the rear, there's 1U of space, and 90% of that is taken up with I/O ports.
Just like the Lycos screensaver that strangled spammer's bandwidth by not-quite-DDOS-ing them, this is a stupid idea. Legally you'd be opening yourself up to all kind of problems running this kind of thing: ISPs don't tend to take to kindly to this sort of denial of service attack.
It's not sexy, or headline-grabbing, but the correct way to go about this is the same as it's always been: go after the ISPs to pull their accounts. If they're RFC-ignorant, add their IP blocks to the usual blacklists until they comply or are connected to an intranet.
there are *vast* numbers of people doing this: in clinical trials where electronic data capture systems control dosing, in hospitals using electronic records - all over the place. certianly in the UK, the 30 BILLION POUNDS they're spending on NHS IT systems currently suggests a LOT more people will be doing it in the future.
we thought about this in a ward setting, and the problem is that it doesn't add any value. they can't use gloves, they can't remove and refit biogel gloves quicker than they can type in a simple short password, and it's layering complexity for no good reason. they duplicate the standard windows logon so they still need to know their password in plaintext, so what's the point? RFID proximity buttons might be useful but it's not really too hard to type in a 5 character password....
jesus people. "security risks"? it's an RF detector. end of (very poor) story.
that genuinely had me laugh out loud.
you can do this if the machines' encrypted files were encrypted by a local user. this is aimed at corporate work though, where they're domain users. the EBCD and all the other password crackers work on LOCAL accounts, not DOMAIN accounts. if joe blow encrypts his files on his work laptop with his usual domain account, you can't get at them.
godwin!
opening up the RDP service to the internet? i'm sure you could use ssh etc etc but what'd be really useful is being able to connect to an non-tech savvy users' pc without extra installs on their end...just opening up the ports for RDP on the firewall sounds pretty dangerous...
clipboard and boilersuit, along with a sh1tty attitude. gets you *anywhere*...
...from when you were contracting, right?
this is where that self same company makes a bid for data archival and you make double your normal take-home just for walking those DLTs home and back each day...
"It should be company policy to properly pay for and establish a secure off site location for backups that are not in insecure locations like peoples homes." ...
it IS , man, at any company that takes itself seriously. You get inspected under the FOIA or similar if you're UK based, or the DPA, and you'd be rightly hosed if it turned out your DB's sitting on a few DLTs lying around your admin's squalid bedsit
10 print "i am networkboy"
20 goto 10
in all those ZX spectrums in shops about 20 years ago?
it's modded +2 interesting, you see, instead of +2 funny.
just in case it's not a joke, you are aware that a BIOS password does sweet FA if someone has physical access to your disks, or your machine's compromised whilst running, aren't you?
just checking.
ric
no, the point is that all those components are significantly more expensive than commodity-PC equivalents. my point is that it's all well and good selling a cheap entry-level machine, but if you want to do the aforementioned fun stuff, it's not going to be cheap anymore.
do VHS video recorders only come with DVI?
...there's a good lad.
XP comes with Movie Maker. There's a free upgrade to version 2.
* use line in
* get a video card with TV out for HTPC use
* get optical audio out so i can watch DVDs in surround sound
* cheaply add wireless or bluetooth
* add any PCI cards i like
* install a TV tuner card in it
shall i go on?