We have volume license keys for each site. There is a person in the department who is dedicated to ensuring all software is correctly licensed for use. We simply have to ask him if we have enough licenses to install more clients at a certain site. If not, more can be ordered easily.
Where I used to work, we solved the problem by running with a solution that reinstalls the software on the machine remotely.
We used a Windows domain and DFS to ensure the users did not lose their data when rebuilding a machine. We then sent an OS image to the system remotely and remotely installed all the software on the system. We would regularly update our image to include all security patches. This was also complemented by a Windows Update Server to push security patches to deployed systems. This was complimented by antivirus and safer policies enforced on the systems. The system also scaled well to several thousand computers.
This may seem like a lot of work, but there are several turn key solutions to do this. (e.g. we used altiris). In addition, the work we did upfront saved us an immense amount of time later on. We were able to reinstall the software on hundreds of computers in 30 minutes. Every now and then we would get a straggler but dealing with 2 or 3 stragglers is much easier than trying to fix or reinstall all the computers by hand. It also allowed us to recover from major virus-related disasters. It wouldn't be difficult to fix 2000 computers and have time to enjoy lunch. (If you are wondering where the bandwidth comes from, we multicast.)
Sometimes I wonder if this is exactly what companies *want*. They don't want people to use outside e-mail (especially ones running over https) because then they can't easily monitor what their staff is doing.
This is exactly what that company wants. How would you feel about your bank if they allowed their employees to send encrypted information to and from their desk while working on your personal information?
Moving on to other posts:
The comment "I'm not allowing Skype because I don't know what it does" by Bill Rocholl does not do justice to the dangers of Skype in such an environment (he works at a bank). A better comment would of been "I am unable to monitor what information the Skype user sends and I am unable to ensure that Skype doesn't have a backdoor in it." Again, remember we are dealing with what may be your bank with your money.
However, do not take this as a message that all employers do not want you to phone home to speak to your wife or spend some leisure time looking websites (even those this may be the case in some companies). They simply want to ensure you aren't giving away company secrets or financial information (again, remember your bank details).
And do you think that they are going to give you the option to not buy a car without RFID capabilities? This is something that will probably be pushed onto us with or without our consent.
I agree with you on the privacy issues, I just don't think we will be given much of a choice on whether these go into cars or not (unless you can successfully lobby the government not to).
The point I was trying to make is that these types of problems are not linux specific only. I've had similar things happen to me with RAID before. Had you been running windows, would the same problem of occured (considering it is at the controller level)? I agree with the fact that one can never have too much data protection, especially on mission critical devices.
Google: No human reads your mail to target ads or other information without your consent
What about programs that target ads to you based on your email or ``other'' information? The way the article is worded infers that this is happening. What is to prevent google from coming up with human-readable statistics of what email messages a person or group of people are receiving or sending?
Forrester's right, you know:
For the most part, Linux is used in the back rooms for such things as fileserving, printserving, and (especially critical for many companies) webserving. A failure on any one of these machines results in a significant risk of loss of data, company secrets, and company network infrastructure.
How is a windows machine different if windows is the server? The system goes down and you loose all data. You can run RAID in linux just like you can with a Win server. You can do tape backups as well. You can distribute servers so that each piece of information is not held exclusively on one database. These are not linux specific problems or windows specific solutions.
Linux and Redhat confusion
on
Red Hat Recap
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Many PHBs think that Redhat and Linux are the same thing. They do not know that Redhat is a distribution of linux and that other distributions such as debian, slackware, and SuSE exist. Ask several PHBs what version of linux is ran in their offices and they will say Linux 9.
Forbes: "Most open source is imitation," Carey says. "Linux is an imitation of an operating system. If these [Linux] companies are going to create a price point that is significant enough that they are approaching the same pricing model as the innovation premium, why pay a premium for imitation when I can pay a premium and get innovation?"
This comment is a prime example of such a case. They see the cost of Linux going up when the cost of Linux never went up in the first place. They fail to see that they are paying for the support that Redhat provides, not for linux itself. In order to push linux in the business world, it is important that PHBs understand that linux does not come from a single company. They must understand how the liscencing works, and that they can always just hire a few admins to update their boxes -- not just rely on Redhat to do it for them.
Another thing that should be mentioned is it is very easy to forge an email address. I am able to run my own SMTP server and send forged emails to whomever I want (I don't, so don't flame me for that).
Having the WHOIS access, as mentioned on the parent, allows spammers to grab our contact information and use their forged email systems to send out spam. I have heard of cases where an SMTP server will bounce a message back saying to resend in three hours. If the mail is resent in 3 hours, the mail is allowed back through. Similar systems exists that do similar mail authentication. However, I should not have to go through the trouble of going through all these security measures just to keep a person from sending me an email I do not want.
Back to the original context, I believe that WHOIS information should be kept accurate and private. This will allow me, as a user, to run a website on a controvertial topic if I chose to, allows me to be and feel safer from disgruntles readers, and allow authorities to crack down on websites with illegal content.
A Cell Phone advertisement may increase the amount of deadly car wrecks, especially in larger cities.
Cell phone users are already dangerous enough on the road when they are speaking to their step mother's sisters's daughter's best friend about what colour they should get their nail polish.
Example:
A person is in their car driving happily along, paying attention to the road and making a slight effort at being a safe and defensive driver. They drive right past their favourite McDonalds restaurant and their cell phone begins to beep off the hook. They rush through their stuff (females through their purse, even scarier!) and take their eyes off the road. Someone in front of them slams on their brake and their nice ride ends in a catastrophic crash over an ad about a $.99 value meal.
There are some good points to it... but I honestly hope that I have the option to disable the GPS or whatever system they use in the phones they give us. The benefits do not outweigh the risks.
15 seconds
300k file size
Full screen
Plays between pages during consumer transition
300KB/7KBps == 42+ seconds of *extra* download time, presuming the user is downloading at a full 56kbps. Just think, if every page has this ad technology, this is going to make for some very long browsing sessions for modem users. I don't know about the rest of you, but I never was able to reach a full 56kbps when I used to be on modem. It always dropped back down to 26kbps or a similar speed.
Imho, it is advertising suicide. Then again, not every user knows there are alternatives to MSN, ESPN, etc...
Slashdot Mirror
We have volume license keys for each site. There is a person in the department who is dedicated to ensuring all software is correctly licensed for use. We simply have to ask him if we have enough licenses to install more clients at a certain site. If not, more can be ordered easily.
Where I used to work, we solved the problem by running with a solution that reinstalls the software on the machine remotely.
We used a Windows domain and DFS to ensure the users did not lose their data when rebuilding a machine. We then sent an OS image to the system remotely and remotely installed all the software on the system. We would regularly update our image to include all security patches. This was also complemented by a Windows Update Server to push security patches to deployed systems. This was complimented by antivirus and safer policies enforced on the systems. The system also scaled well to several thousand computers.
This may seem like a lot of work, but there are several turn key solutions to do this. (e.g. we used altiris). In addition, the work we did upfront saved us an immense amount of time later on. We were able to reinstall the software on hundreds of computers in 30 minutes. Every now and then we would get a straggler but dealing with 2 or 3 stragglers is much easier than trying to fix or reinstall all the computers by hand. It also allowed us to recover from major virus-related disasters. It wouldn't be difficult to fix 2000 computers and have time to enjoy lunch. (If you are wondering where the bandwidth comes from, we multicast.)
This is exactly what that company wants. How would you feel about your bank if they allowed their employees to send encrypted information to and from their desk while working on your personal information?
Moving on to other posts:
The comment "I'm not allowing Skype because I don't know what it does" by Bill Rocholl does not do justice to the dangers of Skype in such an environment (he works at a bank). A better comment would of been "I am unable to monitor what information the Skype user sends and I am unable to ensure that Skype doesn't have a backdoor in it." Again, remember we are dealing with what may be your bank with your money.
However, do not take this as a message that all employers do not want you to phone home to speak to your wife or spend some leisure time looking websites (even those this may be the case in some companies). They simply want to ensure you aren't giving away company secrets or financial information (again, remember your bank details).
This leaves us with 24 more states that have not come to any decision or have not gone after Microsoft.
Minnesota's citizens were overcharged between $10 to $70 a year. 9.7 million licenses were overcharged from 1994 to 2001. Silicon Valley
And do you think that they are going to give you the option to not buy a car without RFID capabilities? This is something that will probably be pushed onto us with or without our consent.
I agree with you on the privacy issues, I just don't think we will be given much of a choice on whether these go into cars or not (unless you can successfully lobby the government not to).
The point I was trying to make is that these types of problems are not linux specific only. I've had similar things happen to me with RAID before. Had you been running windows, would the same problem of occured (considering it is at the controller level)? I agree with the fact that one can never have too much data protection, especially on mission critical devices.
Google:
No human reads your mail to target ads or other information without your consent
What about programs that target ads to you based on your email or ``other'' information? The way the article is worded infers that this is happening. What is to prevent google from coming up with human-readable statistics of what email messages a person or group of people are receiving or sending?
Many PHBs think that Redhat and Linux are the same thing. They do not know that Redhat is a distribution of linux and that other distributions such as debian, slackware, and SuSE exist. Ask several PHBs what version of linux is ran in their offices and they will say Linux 9.
Forbes:
"Most open source is imitation," Carey says. "Linux is an imitation of an operating system. If these [Linux] companies are going to create a price point that is significant enough that they are approaching the same pricing model as the innovation premium, why pay a premium for imitation when I can pay a premium and get innovation?"
This comment is a prime example of such a case. They see the cost of Linux going up when the cost of Linux never went up in the first place. They fail to see that they are paying for the support that Redhat provides, not for linux itself. In order to push linux in the business world, it is important that PHBs understand that linux does not come from a single company. They must understand how the liscencing works, and that they can always just hire a few admins to update their boxes -- not just rely on Redhat to do it for them.
Another thing that should be mentioned is it is very easy to forge an email address. I am able to run my own SMTP server and send forged emails to whomever I want (I don't, so don't flame me for that).
Having the WHOIS access, as mentioned on the parent, allows spammers to grab our contact information and use their forged email systems to send out spam. I have heard of cases where an SMTP server will bounce a message back saying to resend in three hours. If the mail is resent in 3 hours, the mail is allowed back through. Similar systems exists that do similar mail authentication. However, I should not have to go through the trouble of going through all these security measures just to keep a person from sending me an email I do not want.
Back to the original context, I believe that WHOIS information should be kept accurate and private. This will allow me, as a user, to run a website on a controvertial topic if I chose to, allows me to be and feel safer from disgruntles readers, and allow authorities to crack down on websites with illegal content.
Just wait until something like MyDoom or Sobig hits it, considering it is running Windows XP ;) especially if it is controlling your security bot.
A Cell Phone advertisement may increase the amount of deadly car wrecks, especially in larger cities.
Cell phone users are already dangerous enough on the road when they are speaking to their step mother's sisters's daughter's best friend about what colour they should get their nail polish.
Example:
A person is in their car driving happily along, paying attention to the road and making a slight effort at being a safe and defensive driver. They drive right past their favourite McDonalds restaurant and their cell phone begins to beep off the hook. They rush through their stuff (females through their purse, even scarier!) and take their eyes off the road. Someone in front of them slams on their brake and their nice ride ends in a catastrophic crash over an ad about a $.99 value meal.
There are some good points to it... but I honestly hope that I have the option to disable the GPS or whatever system they use in the phones they give us. The benefits do not outweigh the risks.
According to Unicast, each advertisement is aprox
15 seconds
300k file size
Full screen
Plays between pages during consumer transition
300KB/7KBps == 42+ seconds of *extra* download time, presuming the user is downloading at a full 56kbps. Just think, if every page has this ad technology, this is going to make for some very long browsing sessions for modem users. I don't know about the rest of you, but I never was able to reach a full 56kbps when I used to be on modem. It always dropped back down to 26kbps or a similar speed.
Imho, it is advertising suicide. Then again, not every user knows there are alternatives to MSN, ESPN, etc...