Maybe, it depends on how long you're thinking they have left. I'm guessing they'll probably be around for at least another decade aside from unforeseen or legal risks. I wouldn't call it official until their profits turn to losses (not happening soon with their profit margin), and even then they could draw it out for decades with zero revenue if they thought there was a chance of getting a second wind.
And with that bandaid theory, I can imagine that it's hard to patch security vulnerabilities when the software is insecure by design. The only ways to really secure their products would often break compatibility, so no doubt you're correct.
I've read descriptions of people having sex with livestock here on Slashdot.
But most of those are modded down because they're sick and inappropriate. On a _real_ farm they do castration, artificial insemination, tail removal (pigs), beak cutting (chickens), and to save money and improve meat tenderness pack all the animals into small crates to reduce movement. To counter the infections caused by all these, heavy amounts of antibiotics are used, which means that if they do ever get sick it's because you've created a new strain of superbacteria.
I bought a PC World this month, just to see how it's evolved since I last read it perhaps 8 years ago. It was $7, about 80% advertisements, and the real articles were clearly tainted by marketting as well, or at least I strongly disagreed with many of their opinions, which appeared to me to favor products in most dire need of a good review. The word "Linux" appeared in only one place I could find, in a web hosting advertisement. And I didn't see the words "open source" anywhere. Nothing Microsoft wouldn't have wanted a consumer to hear. So I basically bought a catalog, which maybe it's supposed to be nowadays but I was expecting more, based on past experience.
The USAPATRIOT act reworded to wiretap laws so that stored electronic communications are no longer protected, as in emails or depending on how you read it, even packets in a queue. The suspected purpose of this is to enable interception of data on a network by law enforcement without the need for a wiretap. This effectly renders the entire wiretap law null, so long as law enforcement is willing to jump through the right hoops, which are now technical rather than judicial. The couple sentences of the Patriot act that did this were perhaps the most significant in the entire document, but so benign in appearance that they would be overlooked by many and the act would be passed by congress. Today in the USA, protections against nearly all the forms of privacy invasion that we had just 5 years ago are now mostly just illusions. Every privacy law I know of now has some loophole which allows the government to circumvent requirements of probable cause and judicial approval. This is why we should not reelect Bush. I was a registered Republican in 2000, but they are not looking out for any of us.
Notice that many router manufactures (eg Cisco) have plans to integrate lawful interception features into their products, in anticipation of future demands of the US or other governments.
Though I wouldn't recommend it, I've seen 30 systems all accessing the internet behind a $30 linksys router (appears to belong in a home network) with zero complaints. It was configured to work as a NAT and also provided port forwarding and log streaming. Though I doubt it could handle much more, it worked well for the given workload and setup needs.
So I don't think a cisco router is necessary for every network. For small networks, cheaper solutions work fine. Just remember that if you underestimate your future needs, it can cost you dearly later. But I've heard even cisco zealots talk about the routers crashing under load, which obviously should be unacceptable for any hardware of "enterprise" quality, but I haven't been around them long enough to see it for myself.
Search google for 'cisco "lawful interception"' if you like a good scare. Also, the fact that their IOS source code was recently stolen is another thing to be concerned about.
But what do I know? My experience with cisco routers is limited to a single class on network security. They're very flexible and featureful routers, certainly top quality even if not bug free, but whether you need one is highly dependent on what you'd want it to do for you.
There are several predefined security templates you could try. Some come with windows, others are created by third parties. They may be a helpful starting point for creating your own template, so long as you don't turn your pc into a brick, which is little more secure but not too useful.
I know of a company that had similar email problems, like 2 hour waits and other unreliabilities, and the problem was that spam to no longer existing email addresses was being bounced back and forth between their server and whatever fake server was specified in the return address. Email would pile up into the thousands and they'd have to log into the server and delete the bad messages from the queue.
Basically, the problem may be a full smtp queue, possibly either by bouncing messages or spammers using your server.
If you're losing emails entirely, that's generally supposed to be nearly impossible unless the messages are being filtered, they're being deleted manually (lazy solution to full queue problem), the server is full, or the receiving server was unreachable for every delivery attempt.
To uncheck the "enable third party browser extensions" box in your Internet Explorer properties, if you must use Internet Explorer. This fixes most of the Internet Explorer problems that people ever experience and blame on Microsoft.
There is the slight problem that malware can silently reenable it when they run, but I doubt many do.
Yeah, those Windows machines practically break themselves. They're a gold mine for techs. Everything could be going just fine and then -BAM!-... "My email won't work" "My computer won't boot" "I can't access the network drives" "I think I got a virus" "What does this error mean?" "Our website is down" "I can't get online" "I can't log in" "All my documents are gone" "Office keeps crashing" "Windows keeps crashing" "Internet Explorer is taking forever" "It says the connection limit has been reached" "My system is running slow" "Our database is corrupted" "All is lost! All is lost!!!"
With Linux it's like: "How do I do this?" "I want to be root" "I'm having hardware problems" "My windows programs won't run" "I can't find Solitaire"
I'm waiting for the professional edition to reach $25, and remove the activation feature and license related performance caps, at least before I install it again at home. Not gonna happen I know, but I'm tired of supporting the Microsoft monopoly and getting back an inferior product. At work things are different, whereby if you need a particular piece of software, you WILL pay the price as long as it's profitable or you're a foolish zealot. But at home, I don't need any more Microsoft software, nor am I strongly tempted by it.
I have a copy of XP already (Visual Studio and Office XP too), but on only one system, which is 5 years older than my current one, and I'm fairly respectful of licensing terms. I turn it on every few weeks but generally avoid it. Since they would rather me solely use Linux than install XP on 2 systems, I must agree and obey.
Windows XP Home is pretty stripped down as it is. If they intend for this to compete with Linux, why strip it down at all? Linux is still free, and is usually distributed with 90% of the software you'll ever need.
This is one of Microsoft's big problems. You ask how much for a FULL, unrestricted version of Windows to put on a single DESKTOP system, and the answer is in the thousands of dollars, because they only expect enterprise users to need such functionality, and only on dedicated servers. If you buy XP home or professional, and install 3rd party server software to handle a peak of over 10 users (5 for home), you are violating the EULA.
Linux and similar operating systems give you the freedom to do whatever you damn well please with your system, something that Microsoft is incapable of offering without cutting deeply into their profits, because of their high market share.
If your driver is pretty generic, it may just be sending a raw bitmap to the printer, rather than a compressed or vector image. Whereas the windows driver would have been written specifically for that printer taking advantage of all its features. If you have it connected to a parallel port, try USB since that's much faster. Also try printing at a lower DPI. And try different encoding options if they're offered.
He's paying you. So you're sort of obligated to tolerate him. Occasionally my boss buys unusual things but never like that. The best you can do is to educate him and do a good job despite his mistakes.
Maybe ask for an IT budget whereby you and the others get a fixed amount of cash to spend on hardware, since he's obviously paranoid about spending (forgetting that he pays you tons more to deal with the crap he buys) and wants to avoid getting something more expensive than it needs to be, and you want to avoid spending on things that don't meet your needs. Even a measly $500 can go a long way when you, the expert, has to do the shopping.
I mostly do it for fun, for freedom, for exposure, and for education.
I know that "for money" is a motivation for many of those who actually depend on open source in their work environment. If the software doesn't meet their needs, they have to make it meet their needs, or lose money, and that's where the financial motivation exists. With closed source they'd just have to take their losses, which is rarely a big problem but it happens, moreso for some than others.
I'm not yet at a point in my career where money has directly motivated me to produce open source, but the exposure and education is profitable. It's like an investment.
Document everything out of the ordinary. Summarize the rest, the obvious. Assume they know or can quickly figure out the basics and tell them everything you expect to give them trouble. And attach your email address to the documentation.
While they're at it, why not go all the way? </obligatory>
That does seem like a lot to expect out of students. I hate to have very much running on my own PC, and it's likely to cause more trouble than it's worth. They could probably reduce their demands to automatic updates, and use snort to tell them when someone's been infected. They don't have to write the snort rules themselves. There are a variety of people who publish them whenever something major comes out.
Being a college nerd with poor social skills, I'm tempted to say yes to just about anything if there was a good chance of getting laid with a healthy member of the opposite sex. But I'm sure I'd regret it as I die in the vacuum of space. So no, I probably wouldn't even under such ideal conditions as I've only imagined but were not mentioned as perks.
I won a stuffed monkey at treeloot.com. Now I only get a few spams a week, though partly because I abandoned the address I gave them after the spam load exceeded 100 a day. I was young, foolish. "A little's not going to hurt" I told myself.
Now using Thunderbird to catch the rare spams to my new addresses, which I think come from accidently using my real address on a list I've been posting to since '97. Giving throwaway email addresses to every site that wants one. Blocking remote images in email to stop address verifiers. And using email obfuscation scripts in my pages containing email addresses.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft's days are numbered at this point.
Maybe, it depends on how long you're thinking they have left. I'm guessing they'll probably be around for at least another decade aside from unforeseen or legal risks. I wouldn't call it official until their profits turn to losses (not happening soon with their profit margin), and even then they could draw it out for decades with zero revenue if they thought there was a chance of getting a second wind.
And with that bandaid theory, I can imagine that it's hard to patch security vulnerabilities when the software is insecure by design. The only ways to really secure their products would often break compatibility, so no doubt you're correct.
In an emergency, WINE runs some of the programs I try.
I've read descriptions of people having sex with livestock here on Slashdot.
But most of those are modded down because they're sick and inappropriate. On a _real_ farm they do castration, artificial insemination, tail removal (pigs), beak cutting (chickens), and to save money and improve meat tenderness pack all the animals into small crates to reduce movement. To counter the infections caused by all these, heavy amounts of antibiotics are used, which means that if they do ever get sick it's because you've created a new strain of superbacteria.
I get most of my information online now.
I bought a PC World this month, just to see how it's evolved since I last read it perhaps 8 years ago. It was $7, about 80% advertisements, and the real articles were clearly tainted by marketting as well, or at least I strongly disagreed with many of their opinions, which appeared to me to favor products in most dire need of a good review. The word "Linux" appeared in only one place I could find, in a web hosting advertisement. And I didn't see the words "open source" anywhere. Nothing Microsoft wouldn't have wanted a consumer to hear. So I basically bought a catalog, which maybe it's supposed to be nowadays but I was expecting more, based on past experience.
The USAPATRIOT act reworded to wiretap laws so that stored electronic communications are no longer protected, as in emails or depending on how you read it, even packets in a queue. The suspected purpose of this is to enable interception of data on a network by law enforcement without the need for a wiretap. This effectly renders the entire wiretap law null, so long as law enforcement is willing to jump through the right hoops, which are now technical rather than judicial. The couple sentences of the Patriot act that did this were perhaps the most significant in the entire document, but so benign in appearance that they would be overlooked by many and the act would be passed by congress. Today in the USA, protections against nearly all the forms of privacy invasion that we had just 5 years ago are now mostly just illusions. Every privacy law I know of now has some loophole which allows the government to circumvent requirements of probable cause and judicial approval. This is why we should not reelect Bush. I was a registered Republican in 2000, but they are not looking out for any of us.
Notice that many router manufactures (eg Cisco) have plans to integrate lawful interception features into their products, in anticipation of future demands of the US or other governments.
I noticed it has livestock. Does it get into all the icky details of raising livestock that would be inappropriate to describe in detail on slashdot?
Though I wouldn't recommend it, I've seen 30 systems all accessing the internet behind a $30 linksys router (appears to belong in a home network) with zero complaints. It was configured to work as a NAT and also provided port forwarding and log streaming. Though I doubt it could handle much more, it worked well for the given workload and setup needs.
So I don't think a cisco router is necessary for every network. For small networks, cheaper solutions work fine. Just remember that if you underestimate your future needs, it can cost you dearly later. But I've heard even cisco zealots talk about the routers crashing under load, which obviously should be unacceptable for any hardware of "enterprise" quality, but I haven't been around them long enough to see it for myself.
Search google for 'cisco "lawful interception"' if you like a good scare. Also, the fact that their IOS source code was recently stolen is another thing to be concerned about.
But what do I know? My experience with cisco routers is limited to a single class on network security. They're very flexible and featureful routers, certainly top quality even if not bug free, but whether you need one is highly dependent on what you'd want it to do for you.
There are several predefined security templates you could try. Some come with windows, others are created by third parties. They may be a helpful starting point for creating your own template, so long as you don't turn your pc into a brick, which is little more secure but not too useful.
You have email server problems.
I know of a company that had similar email problems, like 2 hour waits and other unreliabilities, and the problem was that spam to no longer existing email addresses was being bounced back and forth between their server and whatever fake server was specified in the return address. Email would pile up into the thousands and they'd have to log into the server and delete the bad messages from the queue.
Basically, the problem may be a full smtp queue, possibly either by bouncing messages or spammers using your server.
If you're losing emails entirely, that's generally supposed to be nearly impossible unless the messages are being filtered, they're being deleted manually (lazy solution to full queue problem), the server is full, or the receiving server was unreachable for every delivery attempt.
I envy user37.net1361.fl.sprint-hsd.net at 69.69.13.37. Maybe I could pay him to ask the courts to force Sprint to redirect it to me.
To uncheck the "enable third party browser extensions" box in your Internet Explorer properties, if you must use Internet Explorer. This fixes most of the Internet Explorer problems that people ever experience and blame on Microsoft.
There is the slight problem that malware can silently reenable it when they run, but I doubt many do.
For those who didn't get it, David Boise is SCO's star lawyer.
Yeah, those Windows machines practically break themselves. They're a gold mine for techs. Everything could be going just fine and then -BAM!-...
"My email won't work"
"My computer won't boot"
"I can't access the network drives"
"I think I got a virus"
"What does this error mean?"
"Our website is down"
"I can't get online"
"I can't log in"
"All my documents are gone"
"Office keeps crashing"
"Windows keeps crashing"
"Internet Explorer is taking forever"
"It says the connection limit has been reached"
"My system is running slow"
"Our database is corrupted"
"All is lost! All is lost!!!"
With Linux it's like:
"How do I do this?"
"I want to be root"
"I'm having hardware problems"
"My windows programs won't run"
"I can't find Solitaire"
I'm waiting for the professional edition to reach $25, and remove the activation feature and license related performance caps, at least before I install it again at home. Not gonna happen I know, but I'm tired of supporting the Microsoft monopoly and getting back an inferior product. At work things are different, whereby if you need a particular piece of software, you WILL pay the price as long as it's profitable or you're a foolish zealot. But at home, I don't need any more Microsoft software, nor am I strongly tempted by it.
I have a copy of XP already (Visual Studio and Office XP too), but on only one system, which is 5 years older than my current one, and I'm fairly respectful of licensing terms. I turn it on every few weeks but generally avoid it. Since they would rather me solely use Linux than install XP on 2 systems, I must agree and obey.
Windows XP Home is pretty stripped down as it is. If they intend for this to compete with Linux, why strip it down at all? Linux is still free, and is usually distributed with 90% of the software you'll ever need.
This is one of Microsoft's big problems. You ask how much for a FULL, unrestricted version of Windows to put on a single DESKTOP system, and the answer is in the thousands of dollars, because they only expect enterprise users to need such functionality, and only on dedicated servers. If you buy XP home or professional, and install 3rd party server software to handle a peak of over 10 users (5 for home), you are violating the EULA.
Linux and similar operating systems give you the freedom to do whatever you damn well please with your system, something that Microsoft is incapable of offering without cutting deeply into their profits, because of their high market share.
Sounds reasonable and likely to be a big contributing factor. Mod up.
If your driver is pretty generic, it may just be sending a raw bitmap to the printer, rather than a compressed or vector image. Whereas the windows driver would have been written specifically for that printer taking advantage of all its features. If you have it connected to a parallel port, try USB since that's much faster. Also try printing at a lower DPI. And try different encoding options if they're offered.
He's paying you. So you're sort of obligated to tolerate him. Occasionally my boss buys unusual things but never like that. The best you can do is to educate him and do a good job despite his mistakes.
Maybe ask for an IT budget whereby you and the others get a fixed amount of cash to spend on hardware, since he's obviously paranoid about spending (forgetting that he pays you tons more to deal with the crap he buys) and wants to avoid getting something more expensive than it needs to be, and you want to avoid spending on things that don't meet your needs. Even a measly $500 can go a long way when you, the expert, has to do the shopping.
What'll cost us 10 years and $10,000,000,000 to build, some crazy extremist will bust down in 10 seconds with $10,000.
I mostly do it for fun, for freedom, for exposure, and for education.
I know that "for money" is a motivation for many of those who actually depend on open source in their work environment. If the software doesn't meet their needs, they have to make it meet their needs, or lose money, and that's where the financial motivation exists. With closed source they'd just have to take their losses, which is rarely a big problem but it happens, moreso for some than others.
I'm not yet at a point in my career where money has directly motivated me to produce open source, but the exposure and education is profitable. It's like an investment.
Document everything out of the ordinary. Summarize the rest, the obvious. Assume they know or can quickly figure out the basics and tell them everything you expect to give them trouble. And attach your email address to the documentation.
While they're at it, why not go all the way?
</obligatory>
That does seem like a lot to expect out of students. I hate to have very much running on my own PC, and it's likely to cause more trouble than it's worth. They could probably reduce their demands to automatic updates, and use snort to tell them when someone's been infected. They don't have to write the snort rules themselves. There are a variety of people who publish them whenever something major comes out.
Being a college nerd with poor social skills, I'm tempted to say yes to just about anything if there was a good chance of getting laid with a healthy member of the opposite sex. But I'm sure I'd regret it as I die in the vacuum of space. So no, I probably wouldn't even under such ideal conditions as I've only imagined but were not mentioned as perks.
I won a stuffed monkey at treeloot.com. Now I only get a few spams a week, though partly because I abandoned the address I gave them after the spam load exceeded 100 a day. I was young, foolish. "A little's not going to hurt" I told myself.
Now using Thunderbird to catch the rare spams to my new addresses, which I think come from accidently using my real address on a list I've been posting to since '97. Giving throwaway email addresses to every site that wants one. Blocking remote images in email to stop address verifiers. And using email obfuscation scripts in my pages containing email addresses.
This school lab computer I'm using that's supposedly locked down has a lot of adware and spyware. Maybe a lab aide downloaded it.