Honestly, just looking at Firefox it really is actually not keeping pace with the rest of the browsers. IE9 might be a big step forward, but MS usually bundles big things together and does a version release rather than beta releases like Chrome. We'll see on that I guess.
As for FF, I'm rather disappointed. It's getting slower and slower in terms of development, and if it weren't for some key extensions I use I'd be using Chrome right now. Some work in Chrome, some aren't there 100%, but when the extensions in Chrome are equal to or better than FF... there's no need to use FF any more.
I mean, I like open source but I honestly don't care what I'm using as long as it works best -- open source or not.
Realistically, if you have only one main source of revenue it is a concern that if you lose your crown there (which is not impossible in the search world), then the rest of your company comes falling down.
For a company like mine who looks at Google apps as a potential for change, we look at profitability of the company. People are enticed by the 'geek friendly' nature of Google, but forget to realize that if their one revenue stream is cut somehow, that it would adversely affect us in a very negative way. Already there has been some downtime, and for our business we'd require a lot of custom work Google has already had to do for others because their product lacked.
When they get profitability on multiple fronts like Apple, or Microsoft, perhaps it is more worth looking at their offerings. But from our point of view right now, the risk is too high, the products too immature, and the benefit not there.
Maybe in another 5 years or so.
But jeez, I really don't want to say "Let me Bing that for you" or "Let me Yahoo that for you" because it just doesn't roll off the tongue the same way.
Can't argue that, but those companies hurt themselves more than anything else. If they limit their options, that's their own problem.
Open source has to compete on multiple levels, including "fighting" for business. If that is not in the OS model, then it falls flat. I like the community around OSS, I like some of the software, but the simple fact is this is a dog eat dog world and no exceptions or passes are going to be given to OSS if they fail to make the cut due to a business decision.
OS has to find the business, the business does not find them. That's why marketing works.
Same here... when a business unit comes and asks how long will it take to develop XYZ, and you give them figures for.NET and for Java, they usually go with.NET because it's cheaper and faster to develop. Not universally true, but we certainly find it the case.
Either way, there's always going to be a war between Microsoft and Open Source... when Open Source offers something that is *better* than closed, then it will be used. It's simple, really. The unfortunate thing is that most open source projects are fragmented and disjointed, and not well funded or organized like Firefox is. And that article from a few days ago pretty much spelled out that Firefox without Google would be yet another disjointed open source project.
I'm not against open source... just use what works best. Usually the cost of the software is far cheaper than the loss of functionality or cohesiveness I'd get if I went with open source.
Couldn't agree more. I love Firefox, I use it daily and the support around it is what makes it great. But Google is making Chrome, which is a faster browser, sandboxed, etc. IE is obviously going down a similar path, and Apple is always out of the running because they don't care about open source unless they can rename it and sell it for profit.
I see a bad future for Mozilla, and for Firefox... it's a great example of WHY open source works, but also an example of what does not work. Look at Chrome -- other than the community support, Firefox pales in comparison to almost everything Chrome does. It's slower, less secure (technically), and not as extensible (Gears and Google APIs). But the community around Firefox developed things like Adblock, Xmarks, Firebug, etc. I live on those things, and love them.
But sadly, Firefox is not necessary in order for me to use those extensions any more. While I still find great utility in the addons Firefox has, I realize more and more than open source does *not* evolve very quickly, or very well. Sure it's open source and you can do whatever you want with it. Great. But as a whole application, Firefox is slowing down while others are speeding ahead (namely Chrome). I worry for its future, but at the same time.... I've never been an O/S proponent more than if it does the job, I'll use it.
When Firefox no longer does the job, or no longer does it best -- I'll move on. Unfortunately for the O/S community, you can't justify the use of O/S just BECAUSE it's O/S. It has to be better, and it has to evolve faster. I simply am not seeing it any more.
Social engineering is the one threat that is probably the most dangerous and least protected against.
I've tried to stress that over and over to higher ups, but they insist on two factor authentication with ridiculously strong passwords AND lockouts, and after I showed them I can create a DOS attack in about 5 minutes using lockout.... they changed their tunes:)
Either way, you can't protect against a user's stupidity and that's the real inherent problem
When most of your "profits" don't come from "open systems" but rather advertising, where you data mine every piece of information and sell it off in order to sustain the rest of the business which is "open". Sure it's open, because if they charged fees for closed programs, nobody would develop for them.
At the moment in a purely IT role (some management, some hands on, etc), I make about the same amount as an average doctor and work less hours. Granted I'm sure that some specialists make a lot more, but the simple fact is that there isn't a motivation to move.
To be honest, I have considered pursuing a medical degree -- not for the money, but for my own interest. Looking at the amount of time I have to invest, looking at the amounts of loans I have to take out, looking at the long term gain -- it's not worth it.
The way government controls behavior is through taxation. If they want people to drive hybrids, they can tax gasoline. That's why europeans drive smaller cars -- because gas costs more due to taxes. If they want people to stop drinking, or stop eating McDonalds or whatever -- they can tax accordingly. But unfortunately in the last few years of our economy, it's become abundantly clear that people with a finance degree and the ability to reap rewards on a short term (bonuses) while screwing other people out of the long term is what is valued in our country. Do we value educators? Do we value doctors? Not really -- many articles surrounding healthcare debate lie in the idea that "doctors make too much", when given the lifestyle and hours they work, they should honestly be paid more.
Making a person like me jump from IT into healthcare or be crosstrained in order to better the country as a whole to me, is a great idea. I just can't burden the expense -- again. I have gone through the system that is there, and wound up many thousands in debt due to school loans. If we want more 'cool nerds', then somebody has to start putting the emphasis back on aspiring to be a doctor, a teacher, a scientist (the kind with beakers, not computers), etc. Not having kids aspire to be the next Michael Jordan or Jay Z.
Unfortunately it's a myth that is perpetuated and we keep buying into it. Sadly, other countries see our folly and already accelerate ahead of us (the US) in many, many areas. We are the best at a lot of things, but for how long? Hopefully our behaviors can change so that a person like myself that actually wants to contribute in a meaningful way, can.
Policies are created for ease of use and broad deployment and management. Not to control idiotic users.
Now if a user has admin rights and tries to disable the refresh on his policy or whatever -- he is free to do that, but the bigger question is why does he have admin rights to begin with? This is a higher level question than just the policy, and one down to the competence of the admin.
So you need to have a second product in order to manage things centrally, and then I assume -- tell it where the files would probably live on each computer. But if it was installed incorrect, and the conf file wound up in a weird location -- you wouldn't get to do anything with it.
At least it works though -- makes life easier.
But that is really all I was arguing, is that it makes things simpler and easier to manage. I think that's better than having thousands of files scattered in lots of places.
Yea, I can do all that stuff, pipe it to something, grep it -- all the fancy bash stuff there is, and then some more.
And yea, it's also fast.
The point about *nix or OSX using the config files and rsync well -- sure you can do it, but you have to write the code. And to that point, I can still do the same thing using Powershell, but it's easier through policy. If I want to deploy software, I can do that through AD as well.
Just because you know one way in *nix doesn't mean it can't be exactly the same in Windows. Most things that *nix does well have been coopted or stolen and put into Windows over time.
Your using antiquated tools and methods to query data when there are faster and easier methods to do the same things now isn't the fault of the OS, it's your fault.
I didn't say it was impossible to edit a remote file. I just said it's easy to do with a centralized repository.
I could write perl scripts that modify remote files of thousands of machines too, but why would I if I have the ability to manage everything from a single console, with NO code, and maybe about 5-10 lines of a template which is easy to create and update on the fly?
I know it's hard to stomach, but the registry is a better idea than having thousands of CONF files. *Nix doesn't do *everything* better. It is that mentality though, that also prevents it from making inroads on the desktop.
Policy runs at elevated priveledges regardless of the user's privledges. So if the user is only a basic user or guest, then they can't modify the policy settings -- they are set by SYSTEM.
If you're a local admin well, sure you can modify the settings but that's like saying you are root and you can modify something -- it's obvious. But you can set defaults and they will always revert on a policy refresh (15 mins or so). So when you set that registry key to be 0 instead of 1, it will change back to a 1 in 15 minutes, even if you're an administrator. The benefit is that I can lock down the registry security through policy as well -- so I can prevent even admins from changing their settings. Though that would be a bad idea, but it is technically possible.
Not to rain on your hate parade, but in addition to the comments about the CONF files, the registry also makes Windows much easier to manage on an enterprise scale.
I can create an application, put its settings in the registry, and boom -- I can manage it through an MMC for thousands of computers with only the creation of a policy template to change settings.
The misunderstanding of the registry's use is always what people hated about it, sadly.
My wife is currently studying to be a dentist, and while that will take a while, I am starting to slowly prepare to go to medical school.
I get such a great high of fixing problems in a technical capacity, I imagine the feeling of saving a life would be an amazing feeling as well. I know it's hard work and long hours and all, but not much unlike what I do now, and I'd feel much more accomplished if I came home and had saved a life, rather than saved irrecoverable data or something to that effect.
I am on a 10 year plan or so, so it will be a while before I make headway into that field, but I intend on doing it, and I'm working slowly towards that goal.
I don't even run an antivirus on my Windows 7 box... if it's just doing idle work like serving something up, I never have any issues with it. XP on the other hand... what's the saying, if you put it on the internet unpatched, it can be compromised in minutes. Granted I believe that with a grain of salt but it's partly true:)
Again, the OP seems to state that the open source stuff doesn't cut the snuff.
If it works better for you, great -- have at it. I am not trying to hold you back.
But if I have a task to accomplish, I'm going to use what gets me there in the most efficient way possible.
Most of the time, that requires not using Linux and not using open source. So I'm not the fanatic about it... big deal? Either Linux and Open source get better, or we continually have people trying to "make it work" and it's a shoddy solution.
That's why Linux never gets anywhere too, but I won't start that can of worms.
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Honestly, just looking at Firefox it really is actually not keeping pace with the rest of the browsers. IE9 might be a big step forward, but MS usually bundles big things together and does a version release rather than beta releases like Chrome. We'll see on that I guess.
As for FF, I'm rather disappointed. It's getting slower and slower in terms of development, and if it weren't for some key extensions I use I'd be using Chrome right now. Some work in Chrome, some aren't there 100%, but when the extensions in Chrome are equal to or better than FF... there's no need to use FF any more.
I mean, I like open source but I honestly don't care what I'm using as long as it works best -- open source or not.
Realistically, if you have only one main source of revenue it is a concern that if you lose your crown there (which is not impossible in the search world), then the rest of your company comes falling down.
For a company like mine who looks at Google apps as a potential for change, we look at profitability of the company. People are enticed by the 'geek friendly' nature of Google, but forget to realize that if their one revenue stream is cut somehow, that it would adversely affect us in a very negative way. Already there has been some downtime, and for our business we'd require a lot of custom work Google has already had to do for others because their product lacked.
When they get profitability on multiple fronts like Apple, or Microsoft, perhaps it is more worth looking at their offerings. But from our point of view right now, the risk is too high, the products too immature, and the benefit not there.
Maybe in another 5 years or so.
But jeez, I really don't want to say "Let me Bing that for you" or "Let me Yahoo that for you" because it just doesn't roll off the tongue the same way.
Don't tell Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy!
Can't argue that, but those companies hurt themselves more than anything else. If they limit their options, that's their own problem.
Open source has to compete on multiple levels, including "fighting" for business. If that is not in the OS model, then it falls flat. I like the community around OSS, I like some of the software, but the simple fact is this is a dog eat dog world and no exceptions or passes are going to be given to OSS if they fail to make the cut due to a business decision.
OS has to find the business, the business does not find them. That's why marketing works.
Same here... when a business unit comes and asks how long will it take to develop XYZ, and you give them figures for .NET and for Java, they usually go with .NET because it's cheaper and faster to develop. Not universally true, but we certainly find it the case.
Either way, there's always going to be a war between Microsoft and Open Source... when Open Source offers something that is *better* than closed, then it will be used. It's simple, really. The unfortunate thing is that most open source projects are fragmented and disjointed, and not well funded or organized like Firefox is. And that article from a few days ago pretty much spelled out that Firefox without Google would be yet another disjointed open source project.
I'm not against open source... just use what works best. Usually the cost of the software is far cheaper than the loss of functionality or cohesiveness I'd get if I went with open source.
Couldn't agree more. I love Firefox, I use it daily and the support around it is what makes it great. But Google is making Chrome, which is a faster browser, sandboxed, etc. IE is obviously going down a similar path, and Apple is always out of the running because they don't care about open source unless they can rename it and sell it for profit.
I see a bad future for Mozilla, and for Firefox... it's a great example of WHY open source works, but also an example of what does not work. Look at Chrome -- other than the community support, Firefox pales in comparison to almost everything Chrome does. It's slower, less secure (technically), and not as extensible (Gears and Google APIs). But the community around Firefox developed things like Adblock, Xmarks, Firebug, etc. I live on those things, and love them.
But sadly, Firefox is not necessary in order for me to use those extensions any more. While I still find great utility in the addons Firefox has, I realize more and more than open source does *not* evolve very quickly, or very well. Sure it's open source and you can do whatever you want with it. Great. But as a whole application, Firefox is slowing down while others are speeding ahead (namely Chrome). I worry for its future, but at the same time.... I've never been an O/S proponent more than if it does the job, I'll use it.
When Firefox no longer does the job, or no longer does it best -- I'll move on. Unfortunately for the O/S community, you can't justify the use of O/S just BECAUSE it's O/S. It has to be better, and it has to evolve faster. I simply am not seeing it any more.
Social engineering is the one threat that is probably the most dangerous and least protected against.
I've tried to stress that over and over to higher ups, but they insist on two factor authentication with ridiculously strong passwords AND lockouts, and after I showed them I can create a DOS attack in about 5 minutes using lockout.... they changed their tunes :)
Either way, you can't protect against a user's stupidity and that's the real inherent problem
Oddly enough, OSX is always the first OS to fall during the Pwn2Own competition.
Security through obscurity is not real protection.
I will however, agree with you on the FreeBSD point.
When most of your "profits" don't come from "open systems" but rather advertising, where you data mine every piece of information and sell it off in order to sustain the rest of the business which is "open". Sure it's open, because if they charged fees for closed programs, nobody would develop for them.
Only Apple can do that lately :(
At the moment in a purely IT role (some management, some hands on, etc), I make about the same amount as an average doctor and work less hours. Granted I'm sure that some specialists make a lot more, but the simple fact is that there isn't a motivation to move.
To be honest, I have considered pursuing a medical degree -- not for the money, but for my own interest. Looking at the amount of time I have to invest, looking at the amounts of loans I have to take out, looking at the long term gain -- it's not worth it.
The way government controls behavior is through taxation. If they want people to drive hybrids, they can tax gasoline. That's why europeans drive smaller cars -- because gas costs more due to taxes. If they want people to stop drinking, or stop eating McDonalds or whatever -- they can tax accordingly. But unfortunately in the last few years of our economy, it's become abundantly clear that people with a finance degree and the ability to reap rewards on a short term (bonuses) while screwing other people out of the long term is what is valued in our country. Do we value educators? Do we value doctors? Not really -- many articles surrounding healthcare debate lie in the idea that "doctors make too much", when given the lifestyle and hours they work, they should honestly be paid more.
Making a person like me jump from IT into healthcare or be crosstrained in order to better the country as a whole to me, is a great idea. I just can't burden the expense -- again. I have gone through the system that is there, and wound up many thousands in debt due to school loans. If we want more 'cool nerds', then somebody has to start putting the emphasis back on aspiring to be a doctor, a teacher, a scientist (the kind with beakers, not computers), etc. Not having kids aspire to be the next Michael Jordan or Jay Z.
Unfortunately it's a myth that is perpetuated and we keep buying into it. Sadly, other countries see our folly and already accelerate ahead of us (the US) in many, many areas. We are the best at a lot of things, but for how long? Hopefully our behaviors can change so that a person like myself that actually wants to contribute in a meaningful way, can.
Seconded. It's simple, the remote isn't too bad, it has a clean UI and a bunch of addons out there (greenbutton.com or something).
Best of luck!
Domain controller is where your policies live and are sent out to client PCs.
Or am I not understanding the question...?
You can have local policies too, but that's kind of pointless to me.
Sure, but root can do that too, right?
Policies are created for ease of use and broad deployment and management. Not to control idiotic users.
Now if a user has admin rights and tries to disable the refresh on his policy or whatever -- he is free to do that, but the bigger question is why does he have admin rights to begin with? This is a higher level question than just the policy, and one down to the competence of the admin.
So you need to have a second product in order to manage things centrally, and then I assume -- tell it where the files would probably live on each computer. But if it was installed incorrect, and the conf file wound up in a weird location -- you wouldn't get to do anything with it.
At least it works though -- makes life easier.
But that is really all I was arguing, is that it makes things simpler and easier to manage. I think that's better than having thousands of files scattered in lots of places.
But hey, that's just me.
You need to read about Powershell.
Yea, I can do all that stuff, pipe it to something, grep it -- all the fancy bash stuff there is, and then some more.
And yea, it's also fast.
The point about *nix or OSX using the config files and rsync well -- sure you can do it, but you have to write the code. And to that point, I can still do the same thing using Powershell, but it's easier through policy. If I want to deploy software, I can do that through AD as well.
Just because you know one way in *nix doesn't mean it can't be exactly the same in Windows. Most things that *nix does well have been coopted or stolen and put into Windows over time.
Your using antiquated tools and methods to query data when there are faster and easier methods to do the same things now isn't the fault of the OS, it's your fault.
I didn't say it was impossible to edit a remote file. I just said it's easy to do with a centralized repository.
I could write perl scripts that modify remote files of thousands of machines too, but why would I if I have the ability to manage everything from a single console, with NO code, and maybe about 5-10 lines of a template which is easy to create and update on the fly?
I know it's hard to stomach, but the registry is a better idea than having thousands of CONF files. *Nix doesn't do *everything* better. It is that mentality though, that also prevents it from making inroads on the desktop.
Policy runs at elevated priveledges regardless of the user's privledges. So if the user is only a basic user or guest, then they can't modify the policy settings -- they are set by SYSTEM.
If you're a local admin well, sure you can modify the settings but that's like saying you are root and you can modify something -- it's obvious. But you can set defaults and they will always revert on a policy refresh (15 mins or so). So when you set that registry key to be 0 instead of 1, it will change back to a 1 in 15 minutes, even if you're an administrator. The benefit is that I can lock down the registry security through policy as well -- so I can prevent even admins from changing their settings. Though that would be a bad idea, but it is technically possible.
Not to rain on your hate parade, but in addition to the comments about the CONF files, the registry also makes Windows much easier to manage on an enterprise scale.
I can create an application, put its settings in the registry, and boom -- I can manage it through an MMC for thousands of computers with only the creation of a policy template to change settings.
The misunderstanding of the registry's use is always what people hated about it, sadly.
But only Google's cloud.
Say what you will about Windows, but I can install Chrome, Gears, and bam -- I can use Google's 'cloud' infrastructure.
ChromeOS? I can only use Google.
I'll stick with Windows for now.
On a related note, this is one of the most underwhelming releases I've ever seen. Way to blow the hype.
To add to that -- report them to the BSA as you've found your new position. You can get a hefty reward, it makes it more worthwhile.
AI can 'cheat'.
The fog of war that applies to you, doesn't apply to them. Also, their micromanagement of resources is impossible to coordinate on a human level.
You don't even have to make AI good, just make it cheat. That's how it is good.
What do I win now?
I am going to use "itoldyouso" as well.
My wife is currently studying to be a dentist, and while that will take a while, I am starting to slowly prepare to go to medical school.
I get such a great high of fixing problems in a technical capacity, I imagine the feeling of saving a life would be an amazing feeling as well. I know it's hard work and long hours and all, but not much unlike what I do now, and I'd feel much more accomplished if I came home and had saved a life, rather than saved irrecoverable data or something to that effect.
I am on a 10 year plan or so, so it will be a while before I make headway into that field, but I intend on doing it, and I'm working slowly towards that goal.
Good luck to you.
I don't even run an antivirus on my Windows 7 box... if it's just doing idle work like serving something up, I never have any issues with it. XP on the other hand... what's the saying, if you put it on the internet unpatched, it can be compromised in minutes. Granted I believe that with a grain of salt but it's partly true :)
Again, the OP seems to state that the open source stuff doesn't cut the snuff.
If it works better for you, great -- have at it. I am not trying to hold you back.
But if I have a task to accomplish, I'm going to use what gets me there in the most efficient way possible.
Most of the time, that requires not using Linux and not using open source. So I'm not the fanatic about it... big deal? Either Linux and Open source get better, or we continually have people trying to "make it work" and it's a shoddy solution.
That's why Linux never gets anywhere too, but I won't start that can of worms.