Seriously: good IT policy uniformly set across the network (no exceptions for VIPs, the CEO, or the CIO), quality standard hardware, the best software products, and a liberal amount of scripting, testing, and process management. That's all it takes.
I keep seeing this.
Just do the legwork of downloading all the patches first and building a custom, patched windows install so it's patched before you connect it to the internet
Buy some decent virus software and make sure it's up to date and hasn't been turned off by malware
Download a couple of spyware checkers and make sure you run them regularly
Go through your system and configure this and that. Turn off this. Firewall that
Don't surf to any sites that might be "dodgy"
Download and install Fire Fox and make sure you use it instead of IE
Be carefull when checking email. Don't even open email if you aren't 110% sure of what it is. Just delete it, if it's important enough, they'll call you to make sure you got it OK and send it again
Just buy and configure a big corporate firewall and install perimiter virus filters on all traffic
See, it's easy. You too can use Windows safely!
Let me see, on OS X you...
Turn it on
Seriously, I'm obviouly being a bit dramatic, but really. This guy needs his people to do some basic things with their computers. By moving to Macs he greatly simplifies "all the other stuff" that needs to be done to "just get work done".
Besides, if I were going to outfit a firm I'd recommend Macs for almost all their clients anyway. Why?
If there is a Mac-only program that does the job best, use it
If there is a Windows-only program that does the job best, connect to the Windows 2k3 terminal server and run it
If there is a Linux/Unix-only program that does the job best, X11 into the Linux/Unix Terminal Server and run it (or if you don't need the window manager, just run it through X11 locally)
There is no other client that can do all these things. Linux is close (it can run Linux and Windows (through rdesktop), but not OS X apps (APPLE, I WANT TIGER TERMINAL SERVER!!!!). Windows, OTOH, can only do windows (unless you do backflips with cygwin or purchase expensive X11 software) and it can't run Mac Apps either.
Chances are, most users will be able to most, if not all their daily tasks on the Mac. Those that can't can connect to the resource they need with X11 or rdesktop and do what little they need to do that way. We are finding that ThinClients (netbooting to Linux ThinStation) rdesktop'ing to one or more Win2K3 Terminal servers allows a vast majority of our users to do everything they need to do. And I only have to patch, configure, update and monitor a few high-end servers. But even in this situation, having a Mac on the desktop would solve the same problem and give the added bonus of being able to choose best-of-breed software for ANY platform, including OS X.
My friends are always reminding me how easy it is to keep their systems running, you just have to follow these 25 simple rules twice a day and reboot every week with bi-monthly re-installs and your all set. I don't get it. I do some routine maintenance on my Mac at home, but my wife and kids don't. I never turn my machine off. I have virus software installed (clamAV) but I only use it to scan attachments that my friends send me ("I didn't dare open this, d'ya thinks it's a virus?").
Windows users have gotten so used to buying special software for protecting against that, downloading special software to protect against this and messing with all these settings and tweaking all these permissions, and... That they really don't know what to do with at system that just works securely out of the box.
Remember the commercial Apple had for the original iMacs where Jeff Goldblum said something like "Step one, plug in the power cord. Step two plug in the phone cord. Step three... there is no step three". Although not quite what we are talking about, I think it has the same ring to it.
It's not a choice of which one is 'better' (for one of any number of reasons) but which one works best for us.
My parents had 2 windows PC's. They were constantly infected with viruses, pop-ups and other problems that caused my father, in particular, a lot of data loss. Every couple of months they'd take it in to the local repair shop. There, they would either re-install the OS (blowing away any data my dad forgot to back up) or occasionally sell my dad an "upgraded component" like more RAM, faster CPU, etc. "to help with the speed problems".
For years I tried to get my parents to buy a Mac. 90% of what they do is platform agnostic and they aren't gamers. For years my dad kept saying, "yeah, macs might be pretty good - I've heard good things about them, but this works better for me". WTF? How is it working better for you, dad? What you mean is that you are familiar with it. You fear change. The thought of a little pain for a world of gain frightens you, and besides, you have all this money and time invested in your current equipment. Which, by the way, you've paid for 10 times over in repair/upgrade fees, lost productivity, and heartache.
Two years ago I bit the bullet and paid for a G4 iBook out of my own pocket. I configured everything for what I knew they would need including VPC for the one PC-only, gotta-have app my dad uses. I gave it to them to as a gift, spent a few hours with them walking them through the differences to make sure they could do some basic troubleshooting, etc. and sent them on their way. About 6 months later I got a call from my dad saying he was having problems. I thought "crap! this wasn't supposed to happen". It turned out that his virtual PC image had gotten infected with malware (I told him not to surf from within VPC!) and it was "having the same problems his other computers were".
Phew! Fortunately, I had made a backup image of his VPC drive and had configured all his PC apps to use shared space (on the mac volume for saving data). I old him to drag the bad image to the trash, go to the "backups" folder and Option-drag the Windows2K file back into the VPC Folder. He was impressed. Now he does all his "critical windows stuff" on his mac. I've almost even got him convinced to install Linux (either Xandros or Kubuntu) on his PC's.
How does this relate to the Parent Poster? All my dad knew, all he'd invested in financially, time-wise, pain-wise, was Windows. And he said "It works better for me". What is that supposed to mean? Better than what? Does my daughter's Daewoo Nubira work better than my Mercedes? Just how would you have to define "better" to make it fit. She's never even driven my Mercedes. Does her car work for her? Yes. Does that mean that, if I were to give her my car, and let her get a chance to get used to it that it wouldn't in the long term work better for her? What are the chances that 10 years down the road she'd be still driving the Nubira? How about the Mercedes (well, assuming I gave it to her:-)?
At work we still have several servers running RH 6.2 on old, but high-quality hardware. I keep them patched, almost never have to re-boot them (except for the occasional kernel patch), keep the firewalls tuned, and forget them. BTW, they were my first Linux boxes, coming from an all-Windows background. It was a steep learning curve (especially back then, before the simple, graphical installation we have now. But I made the choice to take the risk and it has paid off in spades. 75% of our critical infrastructure has been migrated away from windows. We still use windows where it makes sense. We still have an Active Directory Domain which we will be upgrading to Win2K3 this summer. But, we are beginning to implement OpenLDAP and plan on letting that slowly take over the AD duties wherever we can. We are rolling out OpenOffice/NeoOffice and FireFox on all new computers by default.
It's really simple. By reversing the fermionic tachyon waves of the Bose-Einstein condensation, they'll create bosonic quarks which will reveal, through quantum entanglement of anti-protons, the supersymetry of n-dimensional strings!
Oh. Now why couldn't they have said that to begin with?
Didn't Jennifer Wilbanks break the law by filing a false claim with law enforcement? Didn't she kick off a multi-state man(woman)-hunt, distressing and inconveniencing many in her family, friends and law enforcement? How much money, time and effort on the part of all those who took part in trying to locater her did she cost? We know all about her and her family because it was related to the story.
Tell me again, how does PJ's (para)-legal collection and analysis off documents relating to the SCO case have anything to do with her religion, address, phone numbers, her car, her mother? Has PJ violated the law in anything she has done? When you become a criminal you lose many rights (like the right to some of your privacy - see the police report section of your local paper). When you become a "journalist" you lose some right to privacy as well, but that does not extend to things which are not related to your role as a journalist.
Jennifer violated the law, therefore previous criminal behavior can be argued to be relevant. She and her entire family became the center of media attention over this. She ran away from her own wedding which brings in the relevance of her relationship with her fiancé (not that I give a rip, personally).
When you say "All she did was go for a walk one night three days before her wedding and not come back." you're full of shit. She got cold feet before the wedding (big deal), but instead of handling like a mature adult she claimed to have been kidnapped. That's not only despicable, it's illegal. I'd have thrown the book at her. I have no sympathy for her at all.
I feel sorry for the pain her infantile actions had on her family, friends and community. As someone who has had a family member (my son) disappear before I can tell you that it was the worst time of my life during the searching, the waiting, wondering if he was alright (he was found safe and sound, thank God). During that time all the people who volunteered to help search, all the law enforcement who were mobilized and took time away from their families to search, were affected. Jennifer didn't "just go for a walk" she tore up people's lives - and then she lied about it!
I want my reporters being willing to call bullshit on Clinton as well as Bush.
Ah, I think this is the rub. In many other posts we keep referring to these people as journalists. I think this is the problem with the media today. Everyone wants to be a "journalist" and no one wants to be a "reporter". What's the difference? Let's look at the two words: Journal and Report. When I write a journal I am perhaps discussing factual occurrences, but usually in a heavily personal (and therefore from a potentially personally biased) viewpoint. On the other hand when I write a report, I am simply collecting, organizing and analyzing facts. I should be including in my report where I got those facts and how reliable those facts are.
I feel that there are far too many journalists in the media today. They all want to present every story in such a manner that in reenforces their personal, political and/or social world view. There always seems to be an agenda. This is true whether it's MSNBC, CNN or Fox News. We as a society have become so inured to listening to journalists, editorializing (journalizing?) that we don't even realize it any more unless we hear a journalist from "the other camp" and then we just assume that "our" journalists are just giving us the facts and that "their" journalists are heavily biased.
All-in-all, my sense is that PJ does a good job of presenting the facts (she provides publicly verifiable sources) and when she provides opinions, I can usually tell they are opinions. But then again, maybe it's just because she's a journalist in "my" camp...
You know, just give me a good old-fashioned reporter and let me figure out where I stand on an issue. I'm a big boy, I think I can handle it.
Remember the good old days when viruses did real damage? Remember when they actually did format your hard drive or screw up you boot sector? That made people sit up and take notice.
If virus writers ever changed their tactics from one of "sneak in and just borrow their CPU cycles and bandwidth for my bot-net" to one of "let's infect, spread, then kick them in the nuts" people would take notice once again.
Several years ago there was a virus that went around replacing jpegs with copies of itself (or something). My friend had a struggling web-hosting business where he hosted websites for about 100 different small mom-and-pop shops. Even though I warned him about the risks of viruses and that he should run his site with Linux/Apache he didn't listen. That virus wiped him out.
No, he didn't have up-to-date backups. But guess what? He keeps meticulous backups now and keeps his computers patched with up-to-date virus software and only connects to his web server via ftp (no mounted shares any more).
Alas, he still hasn't embraced Linux or OS X, but at least he's not part of the problem any more.
Just think what would happen if a virus spread around and just looked for.xls files and quietly changed all the 3's to 7's? How far back would companies have to go into their backups to be sure they had a known-good copy? D'ya think they might take viruses and security more seriously then?
The last major hassle we had with a worm was primarily due to the enormous amount of traffic it generated, bringing our networks to their knees. That was an annoyance to management, but they saw it as a network problem - not a virus/worm/security problem.
One of these days some one or some group is going to unleash a virus that really IS going to do real damage. Maybe then people will realize that they aren't sitting in front of an internet toaster, but sophisticated computing device that has a tremendous impact on many aspects of all of our lives.
With 10.2 and Panther, getting client to successfully bind and work with Active Directory to something akin to VooDoo and several other flavors of black magic. That being said, when we did a thorough audit and clean up of Active Directory (Sites and Services, DNS, etc.) most of the problems disappeared, but there were often little things we did to increase our odds of things working smoothly.
The other day a colleague of mine installed Tiger on his laptop (he never had it bound before, just connected to whatever shares with Cmd-K, etc.). He asked about using his AD credentials to log on. I told him "Sure, we just need to bind it to AD, do a few tweaks and anyone with an AD account could log in, just like Windows." Meanwhile, I was mentally crossing my fingers that there wouldn't be any new tweaks that needed to be learned.
So I pointed him to Utilities/Directory Access and had him click the Active Directory option, put in his domain (this is where I would usually start my VooDoo dances with the "advanced" options -- but I thought, "what the hell, lets give it a shot") click on Bind. It asked for a domain admin account, which I entered, and it bound without a hitch (I about fainted). I had him reboot (just to make sure) and then had him log in with his AD account. I worked beautifully, including mounting his home directory off our Win2K server. This had NEVER worked without tweaking for us under panther (although with a little tweaking under 10.2.8+ it worked fine). We transfered files, which went smoothly and quickly, and we looked around the network a bit.
Although I haven't thoroughly tested it yet, I'd say my initial experience with Tiger and SMB/AD has been great. That being said, MOST of our problems with Macs using our AD domain has been Windows-related (missing DNS entries, Sites-and-Services borked, or WINS not working/configured right, etc). Hearing about problems like this after a major change doesn't exactly surprise me, and I'm willing to cut Apple a bit of slack here. They are dealing with a reverse-engeneered protocol on networks where it is very likely that AD isn't in pristine or "best-practices" condition.
We have 35 sites using AD right now in our domain, and the migration from NT4 to Win2K/AD was a learning experience, to say the least. We've learned a lot in the process and, we've found that if you mess up something in AD in the beginning, it's damn near impossible to cleanly remove or fix it. I suspect that there are a lot of installations out there that still have AD ghosts hanging around that make 3rd-party integration a crap-shoot at best. What apple needs to work on is improving their tolerance for broken AD implementations, like windows does.
Of course, if MS would publish the full SMB/AD protocol it would be easier.
First we all whine about obtrusive ads 'invading' our surf-experience.
The key word for me being "obtrusive" (intrusive?). Please, by all means, feel free to put ads on your web page. I have no problem with that. But, when the ads pop up in front of what I'm trying to look at, are so large they force the other text into a one-inch column that's impossible to read, or worst of all, are those fucking, annoying, jumping, hand-waving, pay-attention-to-me, animated flash ads, I lose it.
If your site has content worth taking my time to seek out and read, and you have tasteful ads which are related to the content (thereby presupposing I'd be interested in what you're peddling), I'm more than happy to look at them (and I've even been known to follow their links occasionally). But, if i have to look a some stupid, flashing animation out of the corner of my eye while I'm trying to concentrate on the content of an article, I get annoyed very quickly. It would be one thing if I could "unclick" the Play or Loop option for those things but somehow they still play and loop. I've been known to print the article out just to read it without distractions before.
I am your customer. If you treat me with disrespect, I will move on and not come back *cough*Real Player*cough*. The reason I paid for Pithhelmet was so that I could go out of my way to block ads when I'm using Safari. The reason I downloaded AdBlock was so I could go out of my way to block ads when I'm using FireFox. The reason I go out of my way (and am willing to pay for ad blocking software, it that web sites have abused advertising (and me) to such and extent that I will do almost anything to avoid it.
There would be no need for these types of measures if advertisers and site-owners had respect for me as their customer. If they now feel they must charge for content, fine. I am your customer, set the pricing respectfully. I'm not stupid, I can buy the whole paper with current news for a buck fifty. You want to charge me $3 for an oudated article that cost $.000002 to manage, store and retrieve? I'll go elsewhere, thanks.
Why would Microsoft, who already have the lion's share of the office market include this format?
I agree that MS has the "lion's chare" of the office market, but how, exactly, is that determined?
Lets assume (for the moment) that we aren't counting Works (which is often bundled for free). How are we accounting for the other players?
With WordPerfect, it'd be easy, just look at sales figures. But then again, I know several law firms and our own purchasing department who are happy with the version of WP they bought years ago and are still using it, while others in our company have upgraded Office at least 4 times. Does going by the sales figures for Office give them 4 times the WP share based solely on this fact?
We are changing the policy at our school district: All computers will be delivered with OpenOffice/NeoOffice. Only those who can demonstrate a specific need will be allowed to purchase MS Office. This could potentially be tens of thousands of systems by next year. How are these accounted for? Downloads? We only download once per platform. Registrations? We select "I already registered".
It's the same way with looking at Mac marketshare. We still have entire labs in some of our schools with LCIII's! Why replace them? They's running OS 8.6 and do what they do just fine. We touch them once a year when we re-image them. Meanwhile, we are constantly replacing PC's - mostly because we get great deals from Dell so an "upgrade" is only about $600. And since registry degradation, malware, and app bloat steadily degrade performance, departments "just upgrade". We have a 10:1 Mac:PC ratio, but if you look at the pallets destined for surplus, you see about a 1:1 Mac:PC ratio. But market share in the hardware world is by units sold. Go figure.
Back on topic, I think if government agencies were to insist on OASIS formating for official/archived documents, MS would be forced into supporting it. Yes, they may do it badly, but given enough time people will realize that they have choices. I know our district is going to be churning out thousands of graduates a year that are going to know there are legal alternatives to pirating Office. We will be making OpenOffice/NeoOffice CDs available to all students to take home so they can be assured of having their homework compatible with their school work. When they get out into the work force they will bring with them the confidence and experience with "alternative" software that will allow them to work out of the "MS Comfort Zone".
Hey, it's working with FireFox. It will work with OpenOffice - it will just take longer.
Also, this morning I realized that the only damn reason to keep Windows now that I've discovered Ubuntu is iTunes.
I've tried Ubuntu and liked it. It's very polished. I still chose Xandros though for several reasons, which I won't get into here, but one of them is that iTunes runs great on the "Pro" version.
Xandros (and to a lesser extent Ubuntu) is a Linux distro that I'd have no qualms at all about giving to my mother to install on her (remaining) Windows PC.
We do use "plain old X" in the form of Xandros Terminal Servers (with OpenOffice 2beta) in some limited applications. One of the issues we have with that situation though is that, for some strange reason, Xandros will NOT mount an SMB share off an Xserve that is using the Active Directory plugin. It will mount SMB off a Windows file server and Win2K3 TS can mount SMB shares off the Xserves, but Xandros refuses. We could NFS mount network shares this way, but then those users which have home directories on Windows would be out of luck.
One of Xandros' strengths as a Terminal Server is that it can be configured to authenticate off AD, auto-create a home directory for a new user and auto-mount the user's "H" drive in a folder called "DriveH" in their home folder. This makes it great because you don't have to pre-create and configure users on a Terminal Server. They can just log in. If we could get it to be able to mount home shares off an Xserve, it would be an excellent solution, as we have about 25 locations with Xserve running Panther as the local fileserver. We are hoping moving to Tiger Server and Open Directory this summer will help that.
We have one location with over 200 thin-clients on a 100Mb network. The impact is minimal. With QoS and propper VLANing you can to much more than that. Just web-surfing and email take up more bandwidth than the thin-client traffic on that network.
We use Thinstation thin-clients here connecting to either Win2k3 Terminal servers or Xandros Terminal Servers.
The benefits of thin-clients are many. First, the client can be really bare bones (i.e. no HD, minimal RAM, low-end graphics, low processesor speeds, etc) so they can be cheap ($170 + monitor from WalMart or donated machines). Second, to upgrade all your workstations (perfomrance-wise) all you need to do is upgrade or add another server - not hundreds of workstations. Third, to upgrade all you clients (software-wise), you just upgrade the software on a few servers. Managing one or two Win2K3 servers for viruses, patches, malware, etc, beats the hell out of 200 WinXP workstations!
There are other benefits, but these are the ones that have really made a difference for us. Don't get me wrong, thin-clients aren't the answer for everything. There are many situations where you need to have a fully functioning workstation. However, with the money you save on thin-clients, you can afford to get really good workstations, which in turn can be turned into thin-clients when they are needing to be upgraded.
Most of our users simply need a means of doing basic office tasks like word-processing, spreadsheets, email, web-surfing, etc. Those are perfect for thin-clients.
What would I want to have to make it better? Easy. First, get OpenOffice to work properly on a Win2K3 terminal server, It's not real good in a multi-user environment like that (unless I'm doing something wrong - possible). And the number 1 thing that would make it better: can you say "Tiger Terminal Server Edition"?
Yes, one could do the stone-age thing and do a piss-poor export to some graphics format first, and then embed that. And pray to the dark gods that you don't end with some piss-poor conversion and/or scaling artefacts when printing. Just like in the bad old days.
This is the part that really pisses me off about idiots who use computers and just assume that Microsoft == Computer. What if I CAN open your document, maybe I even have a copy of MS Office running in CrossOver, but what if I don't have your particular CAD software or proprietary mapping software or stupid fucking MS DRM CODEC for that video clip? Now I have a document with a bunch of stupid broken data in it!
My mother-in-law is famous for this. She downloads Neto-Keen PhotoGallery Maker (tm), sets up a photo album and sends it to everyone in the family. Everyone goes WTF is a.nkpg document?! She just assumes everyone can read it because she can. She also loves to send out.doc files. Why? 'Cause Pimply Face, the local guru, installed MS Stolen Office on her computer, furrthering the myth that "everyone uses Word"!
Where I work we are required by law to archive most of our official documents for a minimum of 80 years! WTF! I've already got archived documents in Works, ClarisWorks, WordPerfect, MS Word (all flavors), etc. I've tried to stress to management that we MUST choose an open standard (at least for archival copies) or we'll be in deep shit when, 30 years from now, we can't read any of the old formats. I've also stated that we pretty much have to have all of our archive ON LINE. Why? What format should we archive to that will be readable in 80 years (besides microfiche or paper?). We have a whole rack in a storage room of, what, those old 9660 reel-to-reel tapes? Hmmm... I don't have a reader for that. I don't even have a reader for 5.25 or 8-inch floppys any more! At least with all data online we can migrate it to the new drive arrays and have a chance at reading it with some archaic piece of software running in VMWare or something.
The "Information Age" only really kicked in about 10 years ago. We are still really new at all this 'Letrconic Data stuff. Already we are seeing valuable information lost because it's published to the web and then removed to make room for more content. Effectively (except for the way-back machine) it's lost forever. Do you think the person or company that posted that will give it to the local library or make their backup tapes available upon request? Of course not.
Back when people carved their data in stone or baked-clay tables, it lasted damn near forever. Then they moved to papyrus and it rotted easier, but still could be rolled and stored for thousands of years. We moved to paper and celluloid which maybe last a couple hundred years it properly stored. The future will be digital. I've got data at home on ZIP and Jazz discs I know I'll never be able to get off because my reader died and I'm not about to go buy another one just to get it off. Is that data critical? No. If that data was on paper, would I have kept it? Probably not for much longer, but if I had waned to, I could at least be able to save it and read it without having to hunt down a data archeologist with and archaic set of hardware and software to decode it.
DRM will cause even more problems in the future. Even if you were to archive everything on line in a format that is still supported, if it is DRM'd will you be able to read it? Will all future software be 100% backward compatible with all the previous DRM models? We should be thinking about this BEFORE we choose a file format.
I believe, in the long run, we will be doing more harm to the human race in the form of lost history and information by choosing closed standards as the way to store data now, than the burning of the Library in Alexandria ever did. We are turning information in to the tower of babel.
This is exactly why it will never happen until we have completely automated (as in you have almost no control over the vehicle, so you might as well consider it public transportation), computer controlled aircraft. As an ultra-light pilot (and that is basically what this particular "flying car" is) I know how important it is to make sure my aircraft is in perfect mechanical condition before every flight. I do a thorough preflight which often takes 10 to 15 minutes or more even on my relatively simple aircraft. In addition, I know how important it is for me to be physically and mentally ready for my flight. This means that I've done my homework before I've even left the house. Even if I'm just going for a 10-minute ride.
Now, I take good care of my cars, but most days I just hop in and take off without so much as a second thought. There have been a few occasions when I've suddenly looked down and noticed I was almost out of gas (in my car). Worst case scenario? I have to pull to the side of the road and call a tow truck or flag down another driver to get a ride to the gas station. How many cars have you seen every day along the side of the road? Do we really expect people to prefight their flying cars every time they want to head out for a gallon of milk? What about checking NOTAMs, the weather forecast, etc? Never happen!
When you are in the air and something goes wrong, you have severely limited choices. A competent pilot is constantly aware of [crash]landing spots and always tries to have alternates available to him. Ya think Joe-commuter is going to be paying attention to that while talking on his cell or arguing with his wife? Maybe the first few dozen trips until the novelty wears off, after that he will blithely putter around with his fuel low, his oil pressure non-existent on an engine thats way over hours not noticing that the slight vibration of his out-of-balance prop has been wearing the bearings down in his engine/transmission/reduction case.
My point is, flying is completely different than "driving a car". The old saw the take-off is optional, but landings are mandatory is more true that most people really take time to consider. Once you've made the good/bad/otherwise decision to leave terra firma you are 100% committed to putting that thing back on the ground one way or another.
My IP told me that there are 3 things that are absolutely useless to a pilot: the amount of altitude above him, the length of runway behind him, and the fuel remaining in the gas can back on the ground. There are good reasons that a good pilot uses a checklist, even though he's been flying for years. There are some things that are just too important to leave to chance. Flying isn't necessarily any more dangerous than driving, but it's damn sure more unforgiving. You don't get too many second chances up there (as my lovely wife found out).
I'm not any smarter than the next guy, and I'm not any more responsible. I know what kind of focussed attention to every detail is necessary before, during, and after flight. I know how distracted I can be after a bad day at work. I'd hate to even think about having to fly home under those circumstances, let alone the thought of sharing the sky with thousands of other distracted, pissed-off pilots.
I just got a donated 1GHz PIII Dell laptop. It came with Win2K on it, but no documentation or Licenses that proved it was supposed to be there - perfect excuse to load Linux. I've switched from Fedora/Gnome to Xandros/KDE on my primary workstation (still use RHEL3 on my servers) because everything "just works" with our large Active Directory domain out of the box.
I installed Xandros on the laptop and it was a thing of beauty. I had two PCMCIA wireless cards (a Cisco and an older one that slips my mind - I'm at home posting this before work). I put the Cisco one in first and configured it to connect to our wireless network (through the nice GUI interface). It auto-detected the card upon insertion, grabbed an IP address and we were off and running. Then, just for kicks, while in the middle of a surfing session, I yanked the Cisco card our and popped the other one in. The system chirped upon removal and insertion and my surfing continued unhindered! I couldn't believe it.
It's working so well, that I'm even loaning it to someone from another department (with no Linux background) to take with her on a business trip so she can do some work while she's at her convention. She said she's sick of dealing with all the "problems" her employees have been having with their Windows stations, and if this does everything she needs, she'll switch her department too. Since it's just basic WordProcessing/Spreadsheet, Email and web access they need, I'm sure she'll find this a great alternative.
I thought ThinkSecret was getting "sued" to get the names of the person(s) who gave them the secrets. Everyone is making is sound like Apple is asking ThinkSecret to shut down, pay millions, or some other onerous thing. This is not the case. Apple asked ThinkSecret for a name. ThinkSecret said "No". Apple then asked the court to compell ThinkSecret to give them the name. After careful consideration of the case the court said "yes". NOW, if ThinkSecret STILL refuses, the court might impose a penalty, such as fines or jail time.
Apple wants the name(s) of those who violated the law and broke their NDA (so they can go after them for actual damages, etc.). The courts ruled (this is my translation/interpretation) that ThinkSecret IS/ARE journalists. However, even journalists don't have the right to withhold the identity of a source who has violated the law by giving the journalist the information in the first place. The idea that journalists can protect their sources is a good one, because is allows them to break stories about "public interest" (not "things that interest the public" - there's a difference). Things like whistle-blowing (which, although might really piss off the company, is NOT illegal to do).
If ThinkSecret had instead run a "leaked" story that MacMini's were produced by indentured 6-year-olds and were made of Soilent Green, they would NOT have been ordered to give up their sources. NDA's do not cover releasing information about violations of the law or dangers to the public. They DO cover releasing information that is a trade secret or other proprietary information that you have signed a contract to NOT give out.
Journalists, like ThinkSecret, do NOT have carte-blanch for releasing any information they want and STILL protecting their sources. I don't even think the court has said that ThinkSecret was wrong to release the information they did. They just know now that they can't LEGALY protect their sources in these type of situations. Does this make it harder to get "credible" information in the future? You bet. That sucks for them. Their sources will have to give them information REALLY anonymously and ThinkSecret will have to guess which ones are real/likely, with the rest of us. Their free-ride is over.
I dunno where Intel is going with this, but I don't think that specialized technology is needed for it. MythTV or other offerings (for all sorts of platforms) are all that's really required.
Yes, but if it's all "integrated" by Intel, DRM works a lot better.
This fact (IMHO) is more dangerous than not being able to make the setting at all. At least with Safari (et al) I know that I always have to be vigilant, instead of being lulled into a false sense of security.
Clearly, Firefox has a major BUG in it. Fortunately, they seem to be pretty quick to fix these sort of things.
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- Just do the legwork of downloading all the patches first and building a custom, patched windows install so it's patched before you connect it to the internet
- Buy some decent virus software and make sure it's up to date and hasn't been turned off by malware
- Download a couple of spyware checkers and make sure you run them regularly
- Go through your system and configure this and that. Turn off this. Firewall that
- Don't surf to any sites that might be "dodgy"
- Download and install Fire Fox and make sure you use it instead of IE
- Be carefull when checking email. Don't even open email if you aren't 110% sure of what it is. Just delete it, if it's important enough, they'll call you to make sure you got it OK and send it again
- Just buy and configure a big corporate firewall and install perimiter virus filters on all traffic
See, it's easy. You too can use Windows safely!Let me see, on OS X you...
- Turn it on
Seriously, I'm obviouly being a bit dramatic, but really. This guy needs his people to do some basic things with their computers. By moving to Macs he greatly simplifies "all the other stuff" that needs to be done to "just get work done".Besides, if I were going to outfit a firm I'd recommend Macs for almost all their clients anyway. Why?
- If there is a Mac-only program that does the job best, use it
- If there is a Windows-only program that does the job best, connect to the Windows 2k3 terminal server and run it
- If there is a Linux/Unix-only program that does the job best, X11 into the Linux/Unix Terminal Server and run it (or if you don't need the window manager, just run it through X11 locally)
There is no other client that can do all these things. Linux is close (it can run Linux and Windows (through rdesktop), but not OS X apps (APPLE, I WANT TIGER TERMINAL SERVER!!!!). Windows, OTOH, can only do windows (unless you do backflips with cygwin or purchase expensive X11 software) and it can't run Mac Apps either.Chances are, most users will be able to most, if not all their daily tasks on the Mac. Those that can't can connect to the resource they need with X11 or rdesktop and do what little they need to do that way. We are finding that ThinClients (netbooting to Linux ThinStation) rdesktop'ing to one or more Win2K3 Terminal servers allows a vast majority of our users to do everything they need to do. And I only have to patch, configure, update and monitor a few high-end servers. But even in this situation, having a Mac on the desktop would solve the same problem and give the added bonus of being able to choose best-of-breed software for ANY platform, including OS X.
My friends are always reminding me how easy it is to keep their systems running, you just have to follow these 25 simple rules twice a day and reboot every week with bi-monthly re-installs and your all set. I don't get it. I do some routine maintenance on my Mac at home, but my wife and kids don't. I never turn my machine off. I have virus software installed (clamAV) but I only use it to scan attachments that my friends send me ("I didn't dare open this, d'ya thinks it's a virus?").
Windows users have gotten so used to buying special software for protecting against that, downloading special software to protect against this and messing with all these settings and tweaking all these permissions, and... That they really don't know what to do with at system that just works securely out of the box.
Remember the commercial Apple had for the original iMacs where Jeff Goldblum said something like "Step one, plug in the power cord. Step two plug in the phone cord. Step three... there is no step three". Although not quite what we are talking about, I think it has the same ring to it.
My parents had 2 windows PC's. They were constantly infected with viruses, pop-ups and other problems that caused my father, in particular, a lot of data loss. Every couple of months they'd take it in to the local repair shop. There, they would either re-install the OS (blowing away any data my dad forgot to back up) or occasionally sell my dad an "upgraded component" like more RAM, faster CPU, etc. "to help with the speed problems".
For years I tried to get my parents to buy a Mac. 90% of what they do is platform agnostic and they aren't gamers. For years my dad kept saying, "yeah, macs might be pretty good - I've heard good things about them, but this works better for me". WTF? How is it working better for you, dad? What you mean is that you are familiar with it. You fear change. The thought of a little pain for a world of gain frightens you, and besides, you have all this money and time invested in your current equipment. Which, by the way, you've paid for 10 times over in repair/upgrade fees, lost productivity, and heartache.
Two years ago I bit the bullet and paid for a G4 iBook out of my own pocket. I configured everything for what I knew they would need including VPC for the one PC-only, gotta-have app my dad uses. I gave it to them to as a gift, spent a few hours with them walking them through the differences to make sure they could do some basic troubleshooting, etc. and sent them on their way. About 6 months later I got a call from my dad saying he was having problems. I thought "crap! this wasn't supposed to happen". It turned out that his virtual PC image had gotten infected with malware (I told him not to surf from within VPC!) and it was "having the same problems his other computers were".
Phew! Fortunately, I had made a backup image of his VPC drive and had configured all his PC apps to use shared space (on the mac volume for saving data). I old him to drag the bad image to the trash, go to the "backups" folder and Option-drag the Windows2K file back into the VPC Folder. He was impressed. Now he does all his "critical windows stuff" on his mac. I've almost even got him convinced to install Linux (either Xandros or Kubuntu) on his PC's.
How does this relate to the Parent Poster? All my dad knew, all he'd invested in financially, time-wise, pain-wise, was Windows. And he said "It works better for me". What is that supposed to mean? Better than what? Does my daughter's Daewoo Nubira work better than my Mercedes? Just how would you have to define "better" to make it fit. She's never even driven my Mercedes. Does her car work for her? Yes. Does that mean that, if I were to give her my car, and let her get a chance to get used to it that it wouldn't in the long term work better for her? What are the chances that 10 years down the road she'd be still driving the Nubira? How about the Mercedes (well, assuming I gave it to her :-)?
At work we still have several servers running RH 6.2 on old, but high-quality hardware. I keep them patched, almost never have to re-boot them (except for the occasional kernel patch), keep the firewalls tuned, and forget them. BTW, they were my first Linux boxes, coming from an all-Windows background. It was a steep learning curve (especially back then, before the simple, graphical installation we have now. But I made the choice to take the risk and it has paid off in spades. 75% of our critical infrastructure has been migrated away from windows. We still use windows where it makes sense. We still have an Active Directory Domain which we will be upgrading to Win2K3 this summer. But, we are beginning to implement OpenLDAP and plan on letting that slowly take over the AD duties wherever we can. We are rolling out OpenOffice/NeoOffice and FireFox on all new computers by default.
I can say which OS's in which
Tell me again, how does PJ's (para)-legal collection and analysis off documents relating to the SCO case have anything to do with her religion, address, phone numbers, her car, her mother? Has PJ violated the law in anything she has done? When you become a criminal you lose many rights (like the right to some of your privacy - see the police report section of your local paper). When you become a "journalist" you lose some right to privacy as well, but that does not extend to things which are not related to your role as a journalist.
Jennifer violated the law, therefore previous criminal behavior can be argued to be relevant. She and her entire family became the center of media attention over this. She ran away from her own wedding which brings in the relevance of her relationship with her fiancé (not that I give a rip, personally).
When you say "All she did was go for a walk one night three days before her wedding and not come back." you're full of shit. She got cold feet before the wedding (big deal), but instead of handling like a mature adult she claimed to have been kidnapped. That's not only despicable, it's illegal. I'd have thrown the book at her. I have no sympathy for her at all.
I feel sorry for the pain her infantile actions had on her family, friends and community. As someone who has had a family member (my son) disappear before I can tell you that it was the worst time of my life during the searching, the waiting, wondering if he was alright (he was found safe and sound, thank God). During that time all the people who volunteered to help search, all the law enforcement who were mobilized and took time away from their families to search, were affected. Jennifer didn't "just go for a walk" she tore up people's lives - and then she lied about it!
I feel that there are far too many journalists in the media today. They all want to present every story in such a manner that in reenforces their personal, political and/or social world view. There always seems to be an agenda. This is true whether it's MSNBC, CNN or Fox News. We as a society have become so inured to listening to journalists, editorializing (journalizing?) that we don't even realize it any more unless we hear a journalist from "the other camp" and then we just assume that "our" journalists are just giving us the facts and that "their" journalists are heavily biased.
All-in-all, my sense is that PJ does a good job of presenting the facts (she provides publicly verifiable sources) and when she provides opinions, I can usually tell they are opinions. But then again, maybe it's just because she's a journalist in "my" camp...
You know, just give me a good old-fashioned reporter and let me figure out where I stand on an issue. I'm a big boy, I think I can handle it.
If virus writers ever changed their tactics from one of "sneak in and just borrow their CPU cycles and bandwidth for my bot-net" to one of "let's infect, spread, then kick them in the nuts" people would take notice once again.
Several years ago there was a virus that went around replacing jpegs with copies of itself (or something). My friend had a struggling web-hosting business where he hosted websites for about 100 different small mom-and-pop shops. Even though I warned him about the risks of viruses and that he should run his site with Linux/Apache he didn't listen. That virus wiped him out.
No, he didn't have up-to-date backups. But guess what? He keeps meticulous backups now and keeps his computers patched with up-to-date virus software and only connects to his web server via ftp (no mounted shares any more).
Alas, he still hasn't embraced Linux or OS X, but at least he's not part of the problem any more.
Just think what would happen if a virus spread around and just looked for .xls files and quietly changed all the 3's to 7's? How far back would companies have to go into their backups to be sure they had a known-good copy? D'ya think they might take viruses and security more seriously then?
The last major hassle we had with a worm was primarily due to the enormous amount of traffic it generated, bringing our networks to their knees. That was an annoyance to management, but they saw it as a network problem - not a virus/worm/security problem.
One of these days some one or some group is going to unleash a virus that really IS going to do real damage. Maybe then people will realize that they aren't sitting in front of an internet toaster, but sophisticated computing device that has a tremendous impact on many aspects of all of our lives.
The other day a colleague of mine installed Tiger on his laptop (he never had it bound before, just connected to whatever shares with Cmd-K, etc.). He asked about using his AD credentials to log on. I told him "Sure, we just need to bind it to AD, do a few tweaks and anyone with an AD account could log in, just like Windows." Meanwhile, I was mentally crossing my fingers that there wouldn't be any new tweaks that needed to be learned.
So I pointed him to Utilities/Directory Access and had him click the Active Directory option, put in his domain (this is where I would usually start my VooDoo dances with the "advanced" options -- but I thought, "what the hell, lets give it a shot") click on Bind. It asked for a domain admin account, which I entered, and it bound without a hitch (I about fainted). I had him reboot (just to make sure) and then had him log in with his AD account. I worked beautifully, including mounting his home directory off our Win2K server. This had NEVER worked without tweaking for us under panther (although with a little tweaking under 10.2.8+ it worked fine). We transfered files, which went smoothly and quickly, and we looked around the network a bit.
Although I haven't thoroughly tested it yet, I'd say my initial experience with Tiger and SMB/AD has been great. That being said, MOST of our problems with Macs using our AD domain has been Windows-related (missing DNS entries, Sites-and-Services borked, or WINS not working/configured right, etc). Hearing about problems like this after a major change doesn't exactly surprise me, and I'm willing to cut Apple a bit of slack here. They are dealing with a reverse-engeneered protocol on networks where it is very likely that AD isn't in pristine or "best-practices" condition.
We have 35 sites using AD right now in our domain, and the migration from NT4 to Win2K/AD was a learning experience, to say the least. We've learned a lot in the process and, we've found that if you mess up something in AD in the beginning, it's damn near impossible to cleanly remove or fix it. I suspect that there are a lot of installations out there that still have AD ghosts hanging around that make 3rd-party integration a crap-shoot at best. What apple needs to work on is improving their tolerance for broken AD implementations, like windows does.
Of course, if MS would publish the full SMB/AD protocol it would be easier.
If your site has content worth taking my time to seek out and read, and you have tasteful ads which are related to the content (thereby presupposing I'd be interested in what you're peddling), I'm more than happy to look at them (and I've even been known to follow their links occasionally). But, if i have to look a some stupid, flashing animation out of the corner of my eye while I'm trying to concentrate on the content of an article, I get annoyed very quickly. It would be one thing if I could "unclick" the Play or Loop option for those things but somehow they still play and loop. I've been known to print the article out just to read it without distractions before.
I am your customer. If you treat me with disrespect, I will move on and not come back *cough*Real Player*cough*. The reason I paid for Pithhelmet was so that I could go out of my way to block ads when I'm using Safari. The reason I downloaded AdBlock was so I could go out of my way to block ads when I'm using FireFox. The reason I go out of my way (and am willing to pay for ad blocking software, it that web sites have abused advertising (and me) to such and extent that I will do almost anything to avoid it.
There would be no need for these types of measures if advertisers and site-owners had respect for me as their customer. If they now feel they must charge for content, fine. I am your customer, set the pricing respectfully. I'm not stupid, I can buy the whole paper with current news for a buck fifty. You want to charge me $3 for an oudated article that cost $.000002 to manage, store and retrieve? I'll go elsewhere, thanks.
Lets assume (for the moment) that we aren't counting Works (which is often bundled for free). How are we accounting for the other players?
With WordPerfect, it'd be easy, just look at sales figures. But then again, I know several law firms and our own purchasing department who are happy with the version of WP they bought years ago and are still using it, while others in our company have upgraded Office at least 4 times. Does going by the sales figures for Office give them 4 times the WP share based solely on this fact?
We are changing the policy at our school district: All computers will be delivered with OpenOffice/NeoOffice. Only those who can demonstrate a specific need will be allowed to purchase MS Office. This could potentially be tens of thousands of systems by next year. How are these accounted for? Downloads? We only download once per platform. Registrations? We select "I already registered".
It's the same way with looking at Mac marketshare. We still have entire labs in some of our schools with LCIII's! Why replace them? They's running OS 8.6 and do what they do just fine. We touch them once a year when we re-image them. Meanwhile, we are constantly replacing PC's - mostly because we get great deals from Dell so an "upgrade" is only about $600. And since registry degradation, malware, and app bloat steadily degrade performance, departments "just upgrade". We have a 10:1 Mac:PC ratio, but if you look at the pallets destined for surplus, you see about a 1:1 Mac:PC ratio. But market share in the hardware world is by units sold. Go figure.
Back on topic, I think if government agencies were to insist on OASIS formating for official/archived documents, MS would be forced into supporting it. Yes, they may do it badly, but given enough time people will realize that they have choices. I know our district is going to be churning out thousands of graduates a year that are going to know there are legal alternatives to pirating Office. We will be making OpenOffice/NeoOffice CDs available to all students to take home so they can be assured of having their homework compatible with their school work. When they get out into the work force they will bring with them the confidence and experience with "alternative" software that will allow them to work out of the "MS Comfort Zone".
Hey, it's working with FireFox. It will work with OpenOffice - it will just take longer.
Xandros (and to a lesser extent Ubuntu) is a Linux distro that I'd have no qualms at all about giving to my mother to install on her (remaining) Windows PC.
You can email me at kevin at northstar.k12.ak.us
One of Xandros' strengths as a Terminal Server is that it can be configured to authenticate off AD, auto-create a home directory for a new user and auto-mount the user's "H" drive in a folder called "DriveH" in their home folder. This makes it great because you don't have to pre-create and configure users on a Terminal Server. They can just log in. If we could get it to be able to mount home shares off an Xserve, it would be an excellent solution, as we have about 25 locations with Xserve running Panther as the local fileserver. We are hoping moving to Tiger Server and Open Directory this summer will help that.
We have one location with over 200 thin-clients on a 100Mb network. The impact is minimal. With QoS and propper VLANing you can to much more than that. Just web-surfing and email take up more bandwidth than the thin-client traffic on that network.
The benefits of thin-clients are many. First, the client can be really bare bones (i.e. no HD, minimal RAM, low-end graphics, low processesor speeds, etc) so they can be cheap ($170 + monitor from WalMart or donated machines). Second, to upgrade all your workstations (perfomrance-wise) all you need to do is upgrade or add another server - not hundreds of workstations. Third, to upgrade all you clients (software-wise), you just upgrade the software on a few servers. Managing one or two Win2K3 servers for viruses, patches, malware, etc, beats the hell out of 200 WinXP workstations!
There are other benefits, but these are the ones that have really made a difference for us. Don't get me wrong, thin-clients aren't the answer for everything. There are many situations where you need to have a fully functioning workstation. However, with the money you save on thin-clients, you can afford to get really good workstations, which in turn can be turned into thin-clients when they are needing to be upgraded.
Most of our users simply need a means of doing basic office tasks like word-processing, spreadsheets, email, web-surfing, etc. Those are perfect for thin-clients.
What would I want to have to make it better? Easy. First, get OpenOffice to work properly on a Win2K3 terminal server, It's not real good in a multi-user environment like that (unless I'm doing something wrong - possible). And the number 1 thing that would make it better: can you say "Tiger Terminal Server Edition"?
I think I know you... You're that tall, skinny greater with the bow-tie!
Have you seen this?
This is the part that really pisses me off about idiots who use computers and just assume that Microsoft == Computer. What if I CAN open your document, maybe I even have a copy of MS Office running in CrossOver, but what if I don't have your particular CAD software or proprietary mapping software or stupid fucking MS DRM CODEC for that video clip? Now I have a document with a bunch of stupid broken data in it!
My mother-in-law is famous for this. She downloads Neto-Keen PhotoGallery Maker (tm), sets up a photo album and sends it to everyone in the family. Everyone goes WTF is a .nkpg document?! She just assumes everyone can read it because she can. She also loves to send out .doc files. Why? 'Cause Pimply Face, the local guru, installed MS Stolen Office on her computer, furrthering the myth that "everyone uses Word"!
Where I work we are required by law to archive most of our official documents for a minimum of 80 years! WTF! I've already got archived documents in Works, ClarisWorks, WordPerfect, MS Word (all flavors), etc. I've tried to stress to management that we MUST choose an open standard (at least for archival copies) or we'll be in deep shit when, 30 years from now, we can't read any of the old formats. I've also stated that we pretty much have to have all of our archive ON LINE. Why? What format should we archive to that will be readable in 80 years (besides microfiche or paper?). We have a whole rack in a storage room of, what, those old 9660 reel-to-reel tapes? Hmmm... I don't have a reader for that. I don't even have a reader for 5.25 or 8-inch floppys any more! At least with all data online we can migrate it to the new drive arrays and have a chance at reading it with some archaic piece of software running in VMWare or something.
The "Information Age" only really kicked in about 10 years ago. We are still really new at all this 'Letrconic Data stuff. Already we are seeing valuable information lost because it's published to the web and then removed to make room for more content. Effectively (except for the way-back machine) it's lost forever. Do you think the person or company that posted that will give it to the local library or make their backup tapes available upon request? Of course not.
Back when people carved their data in stone or baked-clay tables, it lasted damn near forever. Then they moved to papyrus and it rotted easier, but still could be rolled and stored for thousands of years. We moved to paper and celluloid which maybe last a couple hundred years it properly stored. The future will be digital. I've got data at home on ZIP and Jazz discs I know I'll never be able to get off because my reader died and I'm not about to go buy another one just to get it off. Is that data critical? No. If that data was on paper, would I have kept it? Probably not for much longer, but if I had waned to, I could at least be able to save it and read it without having to hunt down a data archeologist with and archaic set of hardware and software to decode it.
DRM will cause even more problems in the future. Even if you were to archive everything on line in a format that is still supported, if it is DRM'd will you be able to read it? Will all future software be 100% backward compatible with all the previous DRM models? We should be thinking about this BEFORE we choose a file format.
I believe, in the long run, we will be doing more harm to the human race in the form of lost history and information by choosing closed standards as the way to store data now, than the burning of the Library in Alexandria ever did. We are turning information in to the tower of babel.
To get back on topi
Now, I take good care of my cars, but most days I just hop in and take off without so much as a second thought. There have been a few occasions when I've suddenly looked down and noticed I was almost out of gas (in my car). Worst case scenario? I have to pull to the side of the road and call a tow truck or flag down another driver to get a ride to the gas station. How many cars have you seen every day along the side of the road? Do we really expect people to prefight their flying cars every time they want to head out for a gallon of milk? What about checking NOTAMs, the weather forecast, etc? Never happen!
When you are in the air and something goes wrong, you have severely limited choices. A competent pilot is constantly aware of [crash]landing spots and always tries to have alternates available to him. Ya think Joe-commuter is going to be paying attention to that while talking on his cell or arguing with his wife? Maybe the first few dozen trips until the novelty wears off, after that he will blithely putter around with his fuel low, his oil pressure non-existent on an engine thats way over hours not noticing that the slight vibration of his out-of-balance prop has been wearing the bearings down in his engine/transmission/reduction case.
My point is, flying is completely different than "driving a car". The old saw the take-off is optional, but landings are mandatory is more true that most people really take time to consider. Once you've made the good/bad/otherwise decision to leave terra firma you are 100% committed to putting that thing back on the ground one way or another.
My IP told me that there are 3 things that are absolutely useless to a pilot: the amount of altitude above him, the length of runway behind him, and the fuel remaining in the gas can back on the ground. There are good reasons that a good pilot uses a checklist, even though he's been flying for years. There are some things that are just too important to leave to chance. Flying isn't necessarily any more dangerous than driving, but it's damn sure more unforgiving. You don't get too many second chances up there (as my lovely wife found out).
I'm not any smarter than the next guy, and I'm not any more responsible. I know what kind of focussed attention to every detail is necessary before, during, and after flight. I know how distracted I can be after a bad day at work. I'd hate to even think about having to fly home under those circumstances, let alone the thought of sharing the sky with thousands of other distracted, pissed-off pilots.
I don't see it happening.
I installed Xandros on the laptop and it was a thing of beauty. I had two PCMCIA wireless cards (a Cisco and an older one that slips my mind - I'm at home posting this before work). I put the Cisco one in first and configured it to connect to our wireless network (through the nice GUI interface). It auto-detected the card upon insertion, grabbed an IP address and we were off and running. Then, just for kicks, while in the middle of a surfing session, I yanked the Cisco card our and popped the other one in. The system chirped upon removal and insertion and my surfing continued unhindered! I couldn't believe it.
It's working so well, that I'm even loaning it to someone from another department (with no Linux background) to take with her on a business trip so she can do some work while she's at her convention. She said she's sick of dealing with all the "problems" her employees have been having with their Windows stations, and if this does everything she needs, she'll switch her department too. Since it's just basic WordProcessing/Spreadsheet, Email and web access they need, I'm sure she'll find this a great alternative.
Don't waste your time with an old G3. The Mac Mini rocks - I'm picking up a second one to run headless for the family server.
Of course I also just bought a new G5 iMac for my son, a g4 powerbook for my wife and a Dual G5 tower for me. (I have an old Dual G4/500 for sale ;-)
Seriously, take the plunge with the Mini. If for some strange reason you don't like it you can always sell it on eBay in a heartbeat!
I thought ThinkSecret was getting "sued" to get the names of the person(s) who gave them the secrets. Everyone is making is sound like Apple is asking ThinkSecret to shut down, pay millions, or some other onerous thing. This is not the case. Apple asked ThinkSecret for a name. ThinkSecret said "No". Apple then asked the court to compell ThinkSecret to give them the name. After careful consideration of the case the court said "yes". NOW, if ThinkSecret STILL refuses, the court might impose a penalty, such as fines or jail time.
Apple wants the name(s) of those who violated the law and broke their NDA (so they can go after them for actual damages, etc.). The courts ruled (this is my translation/interpretation) that ThinkSecret IS/ARE journalists. However, even journalists don't have the right to withhold the identity of a source who has violated the law by giving the journalist the information in the first place. The idea that journalists can protect their sources is a good one, because is allows them to break stories about "public interest" (not "things that interest the public" - there's a difference). Things like whistle-blowing (which, although might really piss off the company, is NOT illegal to do).
If ThinkSecret had instead run a "leaked" story that MacMini's were produced by indentured 6-year-olds and were made of Soilent Green, they would NOT have been ordered to give up their sources. NDA's do not cover releasing information about violations of the law or dangers to the public. They DO cover releasing information that is a trade secret or other proprietary information that you have signed a contract to NOT give out.
Journalists, like ThinkSecret, do NOT have carte-blanch for releasing any information they want and STILL protecting their sources. I don't even think the court has said that ThinkSecret was wrong to release the information they did. They just know now that they can't LEGALY protect their sources in these type of situations. Does this make it harder to get "credible" information in the future? You bet. That sucks for them. Their sources will have to give them information REALLY anonymously and ThinkSecret will have to guess which ones are real/likely, with the rest of us. Their free-ride is over.
Doesn't work so well now, does it?
This fact (IMHO) is more dangerous than not being able to make the setting at all. At least with Safari (et al) I know that I always have to be vigilant, instead of being lulled into a false sense of security.
Clearly, Firefox has a major BUG in it. Fortunately, they seem to be pretty quick to fix these sort of things.