I used to work for an IT consulting company, and for most of our clients, the key was sitting down with them at yearly meetings and having planning meetings and discussions with senior management. We too are victim to executives that want to cut every corner, but since our name is ultimately attached to the level of service being provided, we have to make sure it's done right. We sit down and have basic SLA discussions, and we ask the senior management exactly what they want their technology to provide and in what manner. We tell them, 'If you want your internet and email to be like the power coming out of the wall, simply 'working all the time', this is what it's going to take to get you there...'.
People here have said much about what management thinks of IT, and what IT thinks of management, but I know in so, so many companies there's never really any high-level sit-downs with the IT manager and senior systems admin and senior management. Before you get stingy on budgets, you have to at least establish a few basic covenants of what the IT strategy is and what you want your IT infrastructure to look like and perform like. With that, 'nines come with a price tag'. Personally, I think this is the responsbility of the IT manager, not necessarily senior management. If the IT manager is running the shop without these levels of understanding, I would first look to them.
To management, I always liken it to purchasing a basic service for your home, like cable TV. You don't go out and pay a random amount of money for a service which you have no idea as to how many channels you getting and which channels they are. Our society and culture simply can't run that blindly. From the onset, the cable company has fairly straight forward information as to what levels of TV service they're offering, and for what price. With that, there's a basic understanding that the service will be reasonably available with decent quality for most of the time (gripes about Cable companies and Telco's aside). There's a basic understanding of what you're paying for and what you're getting - essentially, an implied SLA. The problem is in IT in business, both sides tend to have a completely opposite picture of what is implied. IT thinks they're going to get a reasonable budget for whatever they need, whilst management might think that can give IT a minimal budget and in return they provide systems with zero downtime.
You really need to sit down and discuss the basic facets from the onset. With that, the IT department has a responsibility to have a good idea as to what budgets they need and what is needed to privde certain levels of service. That's part of proper IT and business management.
This is also the root of my frustrations. Specifically, it angers me when employers who are looking to fill non-programming positions (i.e. Network Administration / Systems Admin, help desk, hardware support, etc) are looking for people with B.Sc's and CompEng degrees. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against a Bachelor of Computer Science degree nor those who hold them, but it's a freakin' programming degree people. Yes, I know, there's 1 or 2 courses in networking and the OSI model and such, but a B.Sc/CompEng is essentially a programming degree. Let's not kid ourselves.
I've told several employers and HR people during interviews that they're misguided in their job descriptions. I actually just went through an interview for a general Systems Admin / Systems analyst position, and this is pretty much how it went:
"So... You don't have a bachelors in computer science or computer engineering, I see..." (although I do have a BA)
"Nope, I'm not a programmer"
"I don't understand...?"
"Those degrees you mentioned are programming degrees. Perhaps it is I who am confused. Are you looking to hire a programmer?"
"No... We're looking for xyz"
"So if you don't mind my asking, why are you looking for someone who hold a B.Sc or a CompEng degree, which are programming degrees?"
You get the picture, totally pisses me off. That and people who want an experienced jack of all trades who MUST have experience with various things that a jack of all trades / generalist wont. i.e. 'Must have experience in Exchange, Server 2003, WhateverSpamProgram 3.2, VB,.NET, C#, TOAD, must know SQL too'. And all of this for $30k a year, too?
Funny how this post has basically turned into an argument for efficiency and lay-offs, but in the real world, this is not really the case. Yeah sure, we can all envision the scene from 'The Office', when the Bobs come in and everyone looks worried, but in the real world, companies that truly have a grip on things tend to have good process documentation in place, and the major stakeholders in the business understand and support its needs and purpose.
Technology, in-and-of-itself isn't really a huge barrier. There are a ton of solutions like Wiki systems, Sharepoint, etc. Picking the actual technology to drive the system is - at least in my opinion - trivial. Lots of good FOSS solutions, and lots of good solutions otherwise. A good, properly maintained sharepoint system has the potential be be excellent.
It really is a matter of getting buy-in from all levels, and selling it to all employees. The wrong thing to do is have a big staff meeting in a common area and say "This is Bob. He's going to be doing some consulting for the HR department. He's going to help us see where we can tune things up.". You need to start right from the top, and work your way down. It's very easy to rationally sell the concept on employees, just as long as its explained clearly and properly. Communication is the key.
And communication has to be two-way. As another user pointed out, you can too easily make the mistake of implementing 'the-big-thick-binder-which-no-one-reads-and-is-not-kept-up-to-date-anyways' approach. Everyone understands and accepts that to a certain point, there must be process and documentation behind their positions. If they understand that, they can be a much greater help instead of a barrier. If there's a big worry that the process is going to 'more easily make people replacable', than you need to tackle that objection head on. Don't avoid it, address it and discuss it.
If everyone is on the same page to begin with, it will make the whole process actually happen, and happen (relatively) easily. Getting everyone on the same page might be 90% of the battle in some cases. That should be best practice #1.
Slashdot comments aside, I think most reasonable people understand that in order to organizations to function properly and efficiently, there needs to be a certain level of documentation and process behind everything that's done.
Sounds like you're knocking on IM's door. People have recommended a few solutions here like Jabber, Skype, etc. All can help to keep the email trails clean. It is also quite convenient to have company wide IM.
If you're not tied to any sort of email provider or system currently, Google Apps (gmail for your domain) could be a good solution. I implemented it at my last shop (40 people, young, technology oriented company), and it proved fairly useful.
Beyond that, no technology will ever replace good, thoughtful policies regarding email communication. There's always something to be said about implementing company wide policies regarding proper communication (i.e. no reply-to-all one liners like "sound good"). You'll always have a group of people who communicate in their own ways, but even making mention of how messy it gets starts to remind people to be a little more thoughtful of what they send. Often, the act of merely mentioning 'more thoughtful communication' is a big start.
Also, depending on your needs, perhaps some sort of Wiki / Sharepoint collaboration system might be what's needed. I implemented a Sharepoint / Intranet solution for a client and email communication went way down, simply from people having a common internal intranet solution for company communication.
There's no one magical bullet, but there are definitely some proven techniques to keep things clean.
Agreed. I actually work for an IT outsourcing company. We don't gauge by any means, but we always come to the table with the 'top drawer solution' right off the mark. If the customer wants XYZ results, we tell what exactly what they need to get there and stay there for a 3 year period. If they don't like the costs, fine by us, we'll put in whatever they want or can afford. But if they come back to us in 6 months or a year and say the solution isn't delivering the expected results, we can always fall back on our initial recommendation. We always say, IT costs money and you have to pay the piper eventually. I actually deal with this a fair bit, and my best recommendation would be to spec out the best and most appropriate solution, costs complete aside. Think of it like 'if I was responsible for the whole setup, and cost wasn't as issue, how would it be done'. Then, present it to management as 'This is how it should be done. Period. Here's the costs.' It's not rocket science.
Don't let yourself get caught up in the financials and politics of it before you begin. Simply spec out what is needed given the demands and needs. If the management isn't comfortable with the costs, fine, but at least you can now rest on the laurels of having recommended what was needed in the first place.
More specifically, a basic server in each branch office with DFS over Win2K3 is a good starting point. DFS has decent WAN optimization technologies out of the box, so it's usually a good starting point. Either way, there will be an investment at either end, be it a server at each office or a big data center at the middle of it with a decently fat pipe to each office.
I've read article after article after article on whether premium (montser) cables or even higher end cables make any sort of matter or difference. What pretty much ever article and review boils down to in saying is that 'it's all about the length of the cable run'.
For 95% of consumers, their A/V equipment will typically be 5-10ft. away from each other. In which case, which every review will speak to, it doesn't matter what cabling you use. Providing you use at least half decent cabling, you would never notice the difference between a $10 HDMI cable and a $400 Monster HDMI cable. However, if you're doing a 50ft. run through a wall to an electronics cabinet or a projector or something, there is something to be said for the higher end monster cabling. However, there were still cases where the differences weren't always noticable. If you're cabling through walls, it's probably better to spend a bit more on cabling anyways, as you'll have more interference, and you don't want to start ripping cabling out of the walls and replacing it in 10 years. So, there is something to be said for premium cabling (I'm talking monster, not the stupidly stupid $9000 athena cabling or stuff like that). But again, for 95% of consumers, it's hogwash. I used to work at a big-box electronics retailer many years ago, and all these cables boil down to is profit. Huge profit. And huge commissions. All so customers can get a cable that they really, truly don't need.
Basically the only time when you would need to use cables like that is if you're installing a multi-million dollar home theater or audio system for a rich audiophile. Audiophiles don't listen to music, they listen to the stereo. Then, and only then, would someone notice a difference (and I'm not saying that they would actually notice the difference, it would be in their head...).
A friend of mine who's a professional electrician who specialized in home automation installs used to work for a company that did only $500,000+ installs for rich clients. His advice - 'Only rich people and rich audiophiles need these kinds of cables - and they don't need them.'
All you really need to do is to buy a good quality bulk cable for most things, and make your own cable. You can buy a very good quality, quad-sheilded, FT4 rated coax that is on par with anything monster sells, and for a lot cheaper. For the cost of 2 or 3 monster cables, you can buy 500ft. of bulk cable plus the few tools you need for crimping, etc. Major home improvement stores typically don't sell the 'really good' bulk cables, but most specialty electronics stores will, or can order some for you. You can even order bulk cable that has all the same fancy wire-mesh shielding of the monsters. The only real time when you can't make your own cables easily is cases like HDMI. For that, buy pre-made. Beyond that, coax, Cat5/6, and simple paired wiring (speaker wire) will take care of 99% of anything you might need in your house. Coax, Cat5, and speaker wire is the mother of all cabling in the home - it can be used for virtually all things in a home.
Sure, maybe the small mom-and-pop ship business might go for it, but larger businesses would be hard pressed to do it. Besides, the costs of having a building wired with Cat5/6 is fairly small, even for retrofit, so I don't see the business case. Not to mention that with even the best Wireless N (or G for that matter) gear, there's always drop outs in connectivity, interference, and the whole nine yards. Yes, a true 'proper' wireless deployment eliminates most of it, but I've worked in places where there was lots of money spent on proper wireless deployments with commercial gear, and I'm just still not sold.
Yes, it will fit the case for some businesses, but not most. It's not to say that a good wireless A/G/N deployment is horrible, for 98% of typical businesses, there's just no point of going wireless over wired.
Don't forget that 80% of businesses in N. America are small businesses - under 500 people. And the majority of those businesses are under 75 people.
The whole point of this whole discussion is that relatively inexpensive NAS solutions are becoming a huge competitor to traditional SAN setups. Yes, FC/SCSI are likely more reliable than a plain-jane SATA setup, but often the cost just isn't justified in a smaller business.
I do IT consulting for the SMB market in Canada - companies ranging from 50 to 500 employees, and in many cases (not all) $20k - $50k is a lot of $$ to shell out for a couple TB of storage. Granted, the performance of a SATA NAS product isn't on par with a FC SAN product, but all things considered, for 10% the cost, you can have a decently reliable NAS product in place, and considering how cheap SATA drives are, you can have half a dozen spares sitting there, ready to go, for only a couple hundred bucks.
It all depends on the businesses needs at the end of the day. If a business can afford to spend $50,000 on a FC/SAN product, they're probably in a situation where they can't afford not to.
I can see where you're coming from. I do some IT consulting work for a professional photographer who explains it exactly as you do. She literally has about 8 hard drives inside her computer and another 5 external, and she's still running out of space.
What I did for her was basically what this guy is doing - building a cheap NAS box. I just got an off-the-shelf Thecus N-5200R NAS appliance and threw in 5x 500GB hard drives. For about $2100CAD ($1850US), we had a 2TB RAID-5 enclosure set up and running within an hour.
I'm a network admin for a small-medium sized company, about 40 - 50 people. We are pretty liberal about our IT security policies. We're still at the size where we can place a great deal of trust in our staff, and they don't abuse it. For the most part, we don't block virtually any content. We've never had problems, but we're at a growth stage where we're needing to tighten up security a bit.
My girlfriend's company, which is a larger energy company of about 250 people, does however block some webmail content, as they recently had an employee download material that caused a security concern.
Personally, I don't think it's unreasonable to block web-based mail. However, since email is such a common place in daily life now, if I was to do that, I would make sure there were a few computers in a staff room where people could freely check their email, outside the companies' proxies and firewalls.
Once additional comment I should make regarding linux and the business world. A lot of these comments are assuming that the business user is just running run-of-the-mill desktop apps, like Word or Excel. But...
A big problem which a lot of businesses face is the myriad of 'other' 3rd party apps which rely on windows. Many businesses could go to Linux, but many can't. Even if IT is on the bandwagon, you now have to get accounting, payroll, and various other departments on the bandwagon, and hope they don't use software which runs on Microsoft OS's, which the vast majority do, and will have virtually non-existent Linux portability. This is what starts to become the big problem, based on my past experience - there will likely be some app hidden in the deep dark recesses of some employee's computer which the business is reliant upon.
This is not to say that there isn't ways around this. Often times a few minutes on WINE and all is solved, but there's a lot of extensive testing that needs to go into it first. There is an incredible amount of planning, testing, and more testing that would need to go into a Linux move.
But yes - in general for a pretty static windows/office based business, the Linux transition could be doable.
Yes, I've also heard that. 7.04 (Fiesty Fawn) is touting much better support for 'consumer technologies' and such out of box. I've heard wireless and Beryl are supposed to be getting big boosts because of this. Ubuntu's wireless support isn't horrible out of the box, but there's no WPA support, not to mention no GUI front-end for said WPA support. Having to edit configuration files and fire off a series of commands to get something as simple as wireless working is not a good thing for an easy-to-use distro. But let's hope there's indeed improvement in Fiesty.
And don't even get me started on the giant gong-show of installing beryl and getting it to work properly on various cards....
As a windows System Admin (although I run Ubuntu personally), I can finally say that Linux is starting to get there, albeit slowly. I would definately say that linux is ready for a corporate IT envrionment.
It's still going to take a bit of time before it's fully ready for the home desktop though. I use 802.11 wireless as a perfect example of that - amongst the 'warm and fuzzy' distro's (SuSe, Ubuntu, Mandrake, Lycoris), I have yet to be able to set up a system where there wasn't a fairly significant amount of rigmoral to get something as simple as wireless with basic encryption running. It wasn't really 'hard' for me to get the wireless running, but in each case, it required editing of text files, and typically no less that 7 or 8 CLI entries. Linux has come a long ways, even in the past 2 or 3 years. I think Ubuntu is a great example of a good, easy to use OS. However, there's still a few dark and nasty corners of Linux which need polishing before it's ready for the masses. And let's not mention games and brand name apps which only run under windows.
Overall, it is exiting to see and watch. For the first time ever in the past few months, I've been able to recommend Ubuntu to begginner and novice users, as an easy-to-use alternative to Macs or Windows, with a straight face.
Agreed. With the advent of cheap, public Wifi, it's incredibly easy to go sit outside someone's house for a while whilst you surf. At best, all that might be traced in a SOHO router is your MAC and your computer's network name. Even then, most network card's drivers come with MAC spoofers built right in, and naming your computer to something benign is easy. If I really wanted to surf anonymously, this would probably be my method of choice.
I might be a little hesitant to do it at a Starbucks or a public library or something, as they would likely have slightly better means of tracking and logging. Anywhere 'public' and you might risk putting your face on a camera.
Personally, I don't have anything to hide, but I still set Firefox to delete all private data upon close.
My family has been working in HR for 40 years. I'm not in HR specifically (IT, actually), but I've learned a few things over the years.
First of all, knowing what your worth, and what the market is paying for your skills is never, ever a bad thing - nor should it be scary or bad for your employer. You should not shy away from your employer in asking for what you're worth. If market demand for your skill-set is low, you might not get what you're worth. But at minimum, knowing what you're worth is important. Personally, I live in a white-hot job market (Calgary, AB), so I am fortunate in that I can extremely easily get what I'm worth. Plus, here in Calgary, it takes employers months and months to find replacements, as the unemployement rate is effectively '0', so if you expect to survive in a job market like this, as en employer you do your darndest to keep the people you have, chances are you can't replace them.
Employee turnover costs approximately 150% - 200% of your annual salary. In other words, if you're making $50,000 a year as a round number, it would cost your employer approximately $75k to $100k to replace you. It seems rather high and bloated when you think about it, but when you factor in hiring costs, recruitment costs, lost productivity, lost time (training, interviews) - it really does add up. Even on the low end, you're employer would be 'lucky' to get away with 50% turnover costs. Therefore, asking for what often only amounts to a few percent raise, is peanuts compared to what it would cost if you were to leave. What's an extra $5000/yr if it would cost 5 or 10 times that just to replace you?
Bottom line is, find out what you're worth and make sure you're getting it. Salary.com and other sites are OK, but more times than not if you're in a job market of over 250k people, there will be very specific job market information for your particular city. See an HR consultant in your city, and believe me, it's well worth spending an hour or two with them for them to show you what you're worth. A good HR person will have access to all kinds of salary information for your city - and should be able to give you a whole gambit of information about how you're paid.
Any reasonable employer (which is about 98% of them) are always willing to have a sit down and chat about your salary (minimum wage and retail environments are slightly different). If you're not getting what you're worth, it typically wont hurt you to intelligently talk to your employer and ask for more.
...As most people know is that you're trying to copy protect an inherently open media format. Even in theory it's very difficult to copy protect media in a widely open, public format.
Until vastly different technology is available 20 or 30 years down the road, all that DRM is going to amount to doing is preventing the 'average joe' from copying en-mass. They just have to make it difficult enough for the casual user to be deterred from copying the content. Look at the copy protection scheme on the iPod - it's basically useless, but it prevents grandma from copying bulk amounts on content. It's like how photocopiers are not a danger to printed media, as it's just 'too' difficult to walk up to a copier and copy things on mass. The industry just has to make it hard enough to deter joe user.
The real problem for the recording industry comes in when now people are getting more and more saavy at copying content, and it's becoming more and more common place, and digital media sharing is now common place and digital media is now common place in the living room now. 10 years ago MP3's were just making there way on the scene and basically only very saavy users knew what an MP3 was, let alone what to do with it. What happens when 10 years from now mobile HD video players are just as common as MP3 players, and your average iPod video has a half a TB of flash storage? Copying (High-Def) DVD's at that point will be common place like MP3's are relatively common place now.
I wouldn't necessarily say there's a bias. The thing is here this guy had a very very simple problem, and most people on this site know what the solution is. Most windows people probably wont have the first clue about Linux, but due to the hobbyist nature of Linux, most Linux people will know there way around Windows, so in this case a simple problem (the guy didn't have a clue what he's doing), will afford a lot of pro MS replies on/.
Quite frankly, the guy was an idiot and I question why someone is paying this guy for tech services. He's a "Windows" tech and he doesn't even know the difference between CD versions. Yikes.
I've been working on Windows boxes for quite a while, both in my own company, as a tech for a larger company, and now a network administrator. The problem this guy ran into was actually quite simple. There are several versions of Windows XP (OEM, VL, Retail, AP, etc). You can't use one disk with another, period. No big deal, tons of ways to get your hands on the various version discs.
I question what the heck this guy is doing and thinking. If he has the ability to set up an Ubuntu box, heck if he even knows how to set up a basic RAID 1 array, I'm baffled as to why he doesn't know the answer to his own question. Anyone who reads this article who themselves is tech saavy knows this guy is a bit of a dolt. How on earth he got his story published on anything other than his blog is beyond me.
And in response to a lot of peoples' jargon about an XP Pro box not being able to make a good server - why not?? I've worked as an independent contractor for small business IT needs for half a dozen years, and there's no reason why a simple XP pro box can't make a decent, cost effective server. Albiet, it all boils down to the clients' needs, but for a typical small business (and by small business I mean less than 30 employees), like the one mentioned here, all they typically need is something decent that will host files where their files are reasonable safe. An XP pro box set up properly can make for an appropriate server. RAID 1, backup scripts (or 3rd party programs), a UPS, a couple network shares is what half of the world runs on. Remember, 80% of business in North America is small business (sub 30 people).
All of this doesn't change the fact that quite clearly this guy doesn't know what he's doing. 2 minutes on google would have answered his question.
I'm a network admin for a company of about 45 people. We recently moved from a hosted exchange service (costing us about $700us a month), to gmail for your domain, and it works great.
Given how many people loose all their email per year on services like Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, etc, the chances of anything happening are almost slim to none. Sure, bad things can happen, but bad things can happen with any type of email system you use. Not to mention, saving us almost $10,000US per year is a big plus, and a fraction of that can go towards occasionally backing up gmail (via POP download).
Personally, I think this is a whole lot of hype about nothing. And as people have said, it's 'BETA'. Anyone who chooses to use it and rely on it should be aware of the risks. At my company, we are keenly aware that at any point in time, we could get an email from Google saying 'We're discontinuing GAFYD, your email service will be shit down in 24 hours'. However, all risks considered, we're willing to mitigate that chance in foresight of google doing very well, which it is.
TCO, hmm probably not much more than the song itself. Seeing as the best anti-DRM software is free, it's really only a few minutes of your time on top of downloading the song. Im not going to factor a few minutes of time into it, because them to be fair and do a true TCO, you'd have to factor in hundreds of other things.
Although DRM is a pain in the ass, at this point it's not too troublesome in all reality. I would conclude that about 95% of users either dont even know what DRM is, and therefore it's probably not affecting them, or people are just finding some way around it. So currently, I just can't buy into the argument that DRM is such a big deal.
As long as an inherently non-DRM format (MP3) is dominant, I wont be worrying. It's been almost 10 years now since MP3 went mainstream and took off, and to this day, the RIAA types still have virtually no real control over digitized music. Anyone out there who wants non-DRM music can get it easily. The iTunes/iPod system prevents the casual ID10T from copying, but who are we kidding, the real security behind the 'i' music world is a joke.
I think that's all the control the industry will ever have, control over the ID10T masses who dont know how to turn on hidden files/folders and dont now how to put 'Convert M4A into MP3' into google.
For just about every music service out there, 5 minutes on google will show you precisely and easily how to strip the DRM off the music and convert the song into a regular MP3. I pity the people who download lots of music and keep it in the native DRM format (M4A for example).
Just strip the DRM off, convert it into a regular MP3, and be done with it. No biggy for now.
I love firefox for a great many things, but I'm not your average user (neither is 99.9% of slashdot readers). I think for Joe user, there is less of a case for Firefox than before, now that IE7 is out. I still definately think there is a case to move to Firefox, but now that IE7 has tabs, it's a tougher sell. I recommend all my users/friends/etc to switch to Firefox, but now that IE7 is out, it will be a harder sell once IE7 makes it's way on most machines. Security, functionality, and ease of use are all as high as ever on IE7.
I think with IE7 the ball is back in Firefox's court to try to convice Joe User why Firefox is better. Before IE7, this was a no-brainer.
Yes, over the past year I have very quickly come to learn this. We do use hardphones whenever possible. Given our particular office setup, it was preferable to have some of our users on softphones. But most of them didn't even like the whole concept anyways, and we got such a backlash, that we bought a few extra hardphones.
And yes, I've tried xten/eyebeam. It was our favorite amongst the SIP softphones, but the issue of SIP not being very firewall-friendly stopped us from adopting it for mainstream use.
My business of approx. 40 people recent moved from a fancy, very expensive centrex phone system to a Asterisk based IP phone system. Overall, our results have been very positive. Part of our plans, however, were to have approx. half of our users use Softphones. We have tried probably about 2 dozen IAX, SIP, and proprietary softphones, and to this day we had not found a single one that worked very well, exactly how we wanted it to. Our requirements were fairly simple:
1. Had to be able to connect to outside phone numbers, not just other clients on the network.
2. Had to work with our IP-PBX (Asterisk). This ruled out alot of the good, proprietary clients like Gizmo, Skype.
3. Since alot of our users travel ALOT, the phone had to work flawlessly through firewalls. Although we can configure the firewall on our end, when our users are at hotels, etc, they couldn't connect. This pretty much ruled out SIP altogether in favor of firewall-friendly IAX..
4. Voice quality had to be excellent. Too many users would be using it as a primary phone.
5. Cost wasn't an issue, if the phone was good.
6. The phone would be used by ID10T's. It had to be simple and intuitive.
All I want to say is that although there are a ton of them out there, finding a good softphone is harder than you think. There's lots that fit indivdual users needs very well (I use skype with skype-out and it works great). The best we had found overall was idefisk (asteriskguru.com). Although, it leaved alot to be desired as far as voice quality goes. Still, we're searching for a good softphone for our mobile users.
People dont want to care about package X not working with distribution Y. People want to know or care about dependancies. People want to double click or insert the CD and the program installs. People dont want to compile anything. Compiling things scares people. No matter how 'easy' the command (line) might be, the very fact it's a command is already too much for most people. People dont care about what program they're using is installing packages or rpms. Folders named/bin/etc/home/usr scare people. The warm and fuzzy names of 'My Computer' and 'Documents and Settings' dont scare people. Being able to SSH in to your terminal is not something people care about. People want thier warm and fuzzy GUI when they log in remotely. All of these things which linux is admittedly very good at and very flexible, the average person doesn't want to even know about.
It's been argued here at length an infinite amount of times, but the very things that Linux is good at is also what holds it back from mainstream adoption (or at least slows it down a great deal). The power and flexibility that linux offers will always far surpass anything that Microsoft can throw at the OSS community. However, people here are missing the bigger point. Microsoft succeeds (for an number of reasons, but) because what they do is warm and fuzzy, and familiar. Im a linux advocate, but I;m not going to kid myself and start to think "Hey, maybe the command line IS something that the average person should use" .
All Im saying is alot of you I think are missing the point. Until Linux gets a whole lot more warm and fuzzy, it wont be stepping on MS's toes too much in the home-user sphere.
Slashdot Mirror
I used to work for an IT consulting company, and for most of our clients, the key was sitting down with them at yearly meetings and having planning meetings and discussions with senior management. We too are victim to executives that want to cut every corner, but since our name is ultimately attached to the level of service being provided, we have to make sure it's done right. We sit down and have basic SLA discussions, and we ask the senior management exactly what they want their technology to provide and in what manner. We tell them, 'If you want your internet and email to be like the power coming out of the wall, simply 'working all the time', this is what it's going to take to get you there...'.
People here have said much about what management thinks of IT, and what IT thinks of management, but I know in so, so many companies there's never really any high-level sit-downs with the IT manager and senior systems admin and senior management. Before you get stingy on budgets, you have to at least establish a few basic covenants of what the IT strategy is and what you want your IT infrastructure to look like and perform like. With that, 'nines come with a price tag'. Personally, I think this is the responsbility of the IT manager, not necessarily senior management. If the IT manager is running the shop without these levels of understanding, I would first look to them.
To management, I always liken it to purchasing a basic service for your home, like cable TV. You don't go out and pay a random amount of money for a service which you have no idea as to how many channels you getting and which channels they are. Our society and culture simply can't run that blindly. From the onset, the cable company has fairly straight forward information as to what levels of TV service they're offering, and for what price. With that, there's a basic understanding that the service will be reasonably available with decent quality for most of the time (gripes about Cable companies and Telco's aside). There's a basic understanding of what you're paying for and what you're getting - essentially, an implied SLA. The problem is in IT in business, both sides tend to have a completely opposite picture of what is implied. IT thinks they're going to get a reasonable budget for whatever they need, whilst management might think that can give IT a minimal budget and in return they provide systems with zero downtime.
You really need to sit down and discuss the basic facets from the onset. With that, the IT department has a responsibility to have a good idea as to what budgets they need and what is needed to privde certain levels of service. That's part of proper IT and business management.
This is also the root of my frustrations. Specifically, it angers me when employers who are looking to fill non-programming positions (i.e. Network Administration / Systems Admin, help desk, hardware support, etc) are looking for people with B.Sc's and CompEng degrees. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against a Bachelor of Computer Science degree nor those who hold them, but it's a freakin' programming degree people. Yes, I know, there's 1 or 2 courses in networking and the OSI model and such, but a B.Sc/CompEng is essentially a programming degree. Let's not kid ourselves.
.NET, C#, TOAD, must know SQL too'. And all of this for $30k a year, too?
I've told several employers and HR people during interviews that they're misguided in their job descriptions. I actually just went through an interview for a general Systems Admin / Systems analyst position, and this is pretty much how it went:
"So... You don't have a bachelors in computer science or computer engineering, I see..." (although I do have a BA)
"Nope, I'm not a programmer"
"I don't understand...?"
"Those degrees you mentioned are programming degrees. Perhaps it is I who am confused. Are you looking to hire a programmer?"
"No... We're looking for xyz"
"So if you don't mind my asking, why are you looking for someone who hold a B.Sc or a CompEng degree, which are programming degrees?"
You get the picture, totally pisses me off. That and people who want an experienced jack of all trades who MUST have experience with various things that a jack of all trades / generalist wont. i.e. 'Must have experience in Exchange, Server 2003, WhateverSpamProgram 3.2, VB,
Funny how this post has basically turned into an argument for efficiency and lay-offs, but in the real world, this is not really the case. Yeah sure, we can all envision the scene from 'The Office', when the Bobs come in and everyone looks worried, but in the real world, companies that truly have a grip on things tend to have good process documentation in place, and the major stakeholders in the business understand and support its needs and purpose.
Technology, in-and-of-itself isn't really a huge barrier. There are a ton of solutions like Wiki systems, Sharepoint, etc. Picking the actual technology to drive the system is - at least in my opinion - trivial. Lots of good FOSS solutions, and lots of good solutions otherwise. A good, properly maintained sharepoint system has the potential be be excellent.
It really is a matter of getting buy-in from all levels, and selling it to all employees. The wrong thing to do is have a big staff meeting in a common area and say "This is Bob. He's going to be doing some consulting for the HR department. He's going to help us see where we can tune things up.". You need to start right from the top, and work your way down. It's very easy to rationally sell the concept on employees, just as long as its explained clearly and properly. Communication is the key.
And communication has to be two-way. As another user pointed out, you can too easily make the mistake of implementing 'the-big-thick-binder-which-no-one-reads-and-is-not-kept-up-to-date-anyways' approach. Everyone understands and accepts that to a certain point, there must be process and documentation behind their positions. If they understand that, they can be a much greater help instead of a barrier. If there's a big worry that the process is going to 'more easily make people replacable', than you need to tackle that objection head on. Don't avoid it, address it and discuss it.
If everyone is on the same page to begin with, it will make the whole process actually happen, and happen (relatively) easily. Getting everyone on the same page might be 90% of the battle in some cases. That should be best practice #1.
Slashdot comments aside, I think most reasonable people understand that in order to organizations to function properly and efficiently, there needs to be a certain level of documentation and process behind everything that's done.
Sounds like you're knocking on IM's door. People have recommended a few solutions here like Jabber, Skype, etc. All can help to keep the email trails clean. It is also quite convenient to have company wide IM.
If you're not tied to any sort of email provider or system currently, Google Apps (gmail for your domain) could be a good solution. I implemented it at my last shop (40 people, young, technology oriented company), and it proved fairly useful.
Beyond that, no technology will ever replace good, thoughtful policies regarding email communication. There's always something to be said about implementing company wide policies regarding proper communication (i.e. no reply-to-all one liners like "sound good"). You'll always have a group of people who communicate in their own ways, but even making mention of how messy it gets starts to remind people to be a little more thoughtful of what they send. Often, the act of merely mentioning 'more thoughtful communication' is a big start.
Also, depending on your needs, perhaps some sort of Wiki / Sharepoint collaboration system might be what's needed. I implemented a Sharepoint / Intranet solution for a client and email communication went way down, simply from people having a common internal intranet solution for company communication.
There's no one magical bullet, but there are definitely some proven techniques to keep things clean.
Agreed. I actually work for an IT outsourcing company. We don't gauge by any means, but we always come to the table with the 'top drawer solution' right off the mark. If the customer wants XYZ results, we tell what exactly what they need to get there and stay there for a 3 year period. If they don't like the costs, fine by us, we'll put in whatever they want or can afford. But if they come back to us in 6 months or a year and say the solution isn't delivering the expected results, we can always fall back on our initial recommendation. We always say, IT costs money and you have to pay the piper eventually. I actually deal with this a fair bit, and my best recommendation would be to spec out the best and most appropriate solution, costs complete aside. Think of it like 'if I was responsible for the whole setup, and cost wasn't as issue, how would it be done'. Then, present it to management as 'This is how it should be done. Period. Here's the costs.' It's not rocket science.
Don't let yourself get caught up in the financials and politics of it before you begin. Simply spec out what is needed given the demands and needs. If the management isn't comfortable with the costs, fine, but at least you can now rest on the laurels of having recommended what was needed in the first place.
More specifically, a basic server in each branch office with DFS over Win2K3 is a good starting point. DFS has decent WAN optimization technologies out of the box, so it's usually a good starting point. Either way, there will be an investment at either end, be it a server at each office or a big data center at the middle of it with a decently fat pipe to each office.
I've read article after article after article on whether premium (montser) cables or even higher end cables make any sort of matter or difference. What pretty much ever article and review boils down to in saying is that 'it's all about the length of the cable run'.
For 95% of consumers, their A/V equipment will typically be 5-10ft. away from each other. In which case, which every review will speak to, it doesn't matter what cabling you use. Providing you use at least half decent cabling, you would never notice the difference between a $10 HDMI cable and a $400 Monster HDMI cable. However, if you're doing a 50ft. run through a wall to an electronics cabinet or a projector or something, there is something to be said for the higher end monster cabling. However, there were still cases where the differences weren't always noticable. If you're cabling through walls, it's probably better to spend a bit more on cabling anyways, as you'll have more interference, and you don't want to start ripping cabling out of the walls and replacing it in 10 years. So, there is something to be said for premium cabling (I'm talking monster, not the stupidly stupid $9000 athena cabling or stuff like that). But again, for 95% of consumers, it's hogwash. I used to work at a big-box electronics retailer many years ago, and all these cables boil down to is profit. Huge profit. And huge commissions. All so customers can get a cable that they really, truly don't need.
Basically the only time when you would need to use cables like that is if you're installing a multi-million dollar home theater or audio system for a rich audiophile. Audiophiles don't listen to music, they listen to the stereo. Then, and only then, would someone notice a difference (and I'm not saying that they would actually notice the difference, it would be in their head...).
A friend of mine who's a professional electrician who specialized in home automation installs used to work for a company that did only $500,000+ installs for rich clients. His advice - 'Only rich people and rich audiophiles need these kinds of cables - and they don't need them.'
All you really need to do is to buy a good quality bulk cable for most things, and make your own cable. You can buy a very good quality, quad-sheilded, FT4 rated coax that is on par with anything monster sells, and for a lot cheaper. For the cost of 2 or 3 monster cables, you can buy 500ft. of bulk cable plus the few tools you need for crimping, etc. Major home improvement stores typically don't sell the 'really good' bulk cables, but most specialty electronics stores will, or can order some for you. You can even order bulk cable that has all the same fancy wire-mesh shielding of the monsters. The only real time when you can't make your own cables easily is cases like HDMI. For that, buy pre-made. Beyond that, coax, Cat5/6, and simple paired wiring (speaker wire) will take care of 99% of anything you might need in your house. Coax, Cat5, and speaker wire is the mother of all cabling in the home - it can be used for virtually all things in a home.
Sure, maybe the small mom-and-pop ship business might go for it, but larger businesses would be hard pressed to do it. Besides, the costs of having a building wired with Cat5/6 is fairly small, even for retrofit, so I don't see the business case. Not to mention that with even the best Wireless N (or G for that matter) gear, there's always drop outs in connectivity, interference, and the whole nine yards. Yes, a true 'proper' wireless deployment eliminates most of it, but I've worked in places where there was lots of money spent on proper wireless deployments with commercial gear, and I'm just still not sold.
Yes, it will fit the case for some businesses, but not most. It's not to say that a good wireless A/G/N deployment is horrible, for 98% of typical businesses, there's just no point of going wireless over wired.
Wireless is no where near this point yet.
Don't forget that 80% of businesses in N. America are small businesses - under 500 people. And the majority of those businesses are under 75 people.
The whole point of this whole discussion is that relatively inexpensive NAS solutions are becoming a huge competitor to traditional SAN setups. Yes, FC/SCSI are likely more reliable than a plain-jane SATA setup, but often the cost just isn't justified in a smaller business.
I do IT consulting for the SMB market in Canada - companies ranging from 50 to 500 employees, and in many cases (not all) $20k - $50k is a lot of $$ to shell out for a couple TB of storage. Granted, the performance of a SATA NAS product isn't on par with a FC SAN product, but all things considered, for 10% the cost, you can have a decently reliable NAS product in place, and considering how cheap SATA drives are, you can have half a dozen spares sitting there, ready to go, for only a couple hundred bucks.
It all depends on the businesses needs at the end of the day. If a business can afford to spend $50,000 on a FC/SAN product, they're probably in a situation where they can't afford not to.
I can see where you're coming from. I do some IT consulting work for a professional photographer who explains it exactly as you do. She literally has about 8 hard drives inside her computer and another 5 external, and she's still running out of space.
What I did for her was basically what this guy is doing - building a cheap NAS box. I just got an off-the-shelf Thecus N-5200R NAS appliance and threw in 5x 500GB hard drives. For about $2100CAD ($1850US), we had a 2TB RAID-5 enclosure set up and running within an hour.
I'm a network admin for a small-medium sized company, about 40 - 50 people. We are pretty liberal about our IT security policies. We're still at the size where we can place a great deal of trust in our staff, and they don't abuse it. For the most part, we don't block virtually any content. We've never had problems, but we're at a growth stage where we're needing to tighten up security a bit.
My girlfriend's company, which is a larger energy company of about 250 people, does however block some webmail content, as they recently had an employee download material that caused a security concern.
Personally, I don't think it's unreasonable to block web-based mail. However, since email is such a common place in daily life now, if I was to do that, I would make sure there were a few computers in a staff room where people could freely check their email, outside the companies' proxies and firewalls.
Once additional comment I should make regarding linux and the business world. A lot of these comments are assuming that the business user is just running run-of-the-mill desktop apps, like Word or Excel. But...
A big problem which a lot of businesses face is the myriad of 'other' 3rd party apps which rely on windows. Many businesses could go to Linux, but many can't. Even if IT is on the bandwagon, you now have to get accounting, payroll, and various other departments on the bandwagon, and hope they don't use software which runs on Microsoft OS's, which the vast majority do, and will have virtually non-existent Linux portability. This is what starts to become the big problem, based on my past experience - there will likely be some app hidden in the deep dark recesses of some employee's computer which the business is reliant upon.
This is not to say that there isn't ways around this. Often times a few minutes on WINE and all is solved, but there's a lot of extensive testing that needs to go into it first. There is an incredible amount of planning, testing, and more testing that would need to go into a Linux move.
But yes - in general for a pretty static windows/office based business, the Linux transition could be doable.
Yes, I've also heard that. 7.04 (Fiesty Fawn) is touting much better support for 'consumer technologies' and such out of box. I've heard wireless and Beryl are supposed to be getting big boosts because of this. Ubuntu's wireless support isn't horrible out of the box, but there's no WPA support, not to mention no GUI front-end for said WPA support. Having to edit configuration files and fire off a series of commands to get something as simple as wireless working is not a good thing for an easy-to-use distro. But let's hope there's indeed improvement in Fiesty.
And don't even get me started on the giant gong-show of installing beryl and getting it to work properly on various cards....
I am indeed looking forward to 7.04.
As a windows System Admin (although I run Ubuntu personally), I can finally say that Linux is starting to get there, albeit slowly. I would definately say that linux is ready for a corporate IT envrionment.
It's still going to take a bit of time before it's fully ready for the home desktop though. I use 802.11 wireless as a perfect example of that - amongst the 'warm and fuzzy' distro's (SuSe, Ubuntu, Mandrake, Lycoris), I have yet to be able to set up a system where there wasn't a fairly significant amount of rigmoral to get something as simple as wireless with basic encryption running. It wasn't really 'hard' for me to get the wireless running, but in each case, it required editing of text files, and typically no less that 7 or 8 CLI entries. Linux has come a long ways, even in the past 2 or 3 years. I think Ubuntu is a great example of a good, easy to use OS. However, there's still a few dark and nasty corners of Linux which need polishing before it's ready for the masses. And let's not mention games and brand name apps which only run under windows.
Overall, it is exiting to see and watch. For the first time ever in the past few months, I've been able to recommend Ubuntu to begginner and novice users, as an easy-to-use alternative to Macs or Windows, with a straight face.
Agreed. With the advent of cheap, public Wifi, it's incredibly easy to go sit outside someone's house for a while whilst you surf. At best, all that might be traced in a SOHO router is your MAC and your computer's network name. Even then, most network card's drivers come with MAC spoofers built right in, and naming your computer to something benign is easy. If I really wanted to surf anonymously, this would probably be my method of choice.
I might be a little hesitant to do it at a Starbucks or a public library or something, as they would likely have slightly better means of tracking and logging. Anywhere 'public' and you might risk putting your face on a camera.
Personally, I don't have anything to hide, but I still set Firefox to delete all private data upon close.
My family has been working in HR for 40 years. I'm not in HR specifically (IT, actually), but I've learned a few things over the years.
First of all, knowing what your worth, and what the market is paying for your skills is never, ever a bad thing - nor should it be scary or bad for your employer. You should not shy away from your employer in asking for what you're worth. If market demand for your skill-set is low, you might not get what you're worth. But at minimum, knowing what you're worth is important. Personally, I live in a white-hot job market (Calgary, AB), so I am fortunate in that I can extremely easily get what I'm worth. Plus, here in Calgary, it takes employers months and months to find replacements, as the unemployement rate is effectively '0', so if you expect to survive in a job market like this, as en employer you do your darndest to keep the people you have, chances are you can't replace them.
Employee turnover costs approximately 150% - 200% of your annual salary. In other words, if you're making $50,000 a year as a round number, it would cost your employer approximately $75k to $100k to replace you. It seems rather high and bloated when you think about it, but when you factor in hiring costs, recruitment costs, lost productivity, lost time (training, interviews) - it really does add up. Even on the low end, you're employer would be 'lucky' to get away with 50% turnover costs. Therefore, asking for what often only amounts to a few percent raise, is peanuts compared to what it would cost if you were to leave. What's an extra $5000/yr if it would cost 5 or 10 times that just to replace you?
Bottom line is, find out what you're worth and make sure you're getting it. Salary.com and other sites are OK, but more times than not if you're in a job market of over 250k people, there will be very specific job market information for your particular city. See an HR consultant in your city, and believe me, it's well worth spending an hour or two with them for them to show you what you're worth. A good HR person will have access to all kinds of salary information for your city - and should be able to give you a whole gambit of information about how you're paid.
Any reasonable employer (which is about 98% of them) are always willing to have a sit down and chat about your salary (minimum wage and retail environments are slightly different). If you're not getting what you're worth, it typically wont hurt you to intelligently talk to your employer and ask for more.
...As most people know is that you're trying to copy protect an inherently open media format. Even in theory it's very difficult to copy protect media in a widely open, public format.
Until vastly different technology is available 20 or 30 years down the road, all that DRM is going to amount to doing is preventing the 'average joe' from copying en-mass. They just have to make it difficult enough for the casual user to be deterred from copying the content. Look at the copy protection scheme on the iPod - it's basically useless, but it prevents grandma from copying bulk amounts on content. It's like how photocopiers are not a danger to printed media, as it's just 'too' difficult to walk up to a copier and copy things on mass. The industry just has to make it hard enough to deter joe user.
The real problem for the recording industry comes in when now people are getting more and more saavy at copying content, and it's becoming more and more common place, and digital media sharing is now common place and digital media is now common place in the living room now. 10 years ago MP3's were just making there way on the scene and basically only very saavy users knew what an MP3 was, let alone what to do with it. What happens when 10 years from now mobile HD video players are just as common as MP3 players, and your average iPod video has a half a TB of flash storage? Copying (High-Def) DVD's at that point will be common place like MP3's are relatively common place now.
I wouldn't necessarily say there's a bias. The thing is here this guy had a very very simple problem, and most people on this site know what the solution is. Most windows people probably wont have the first clue about Linux, but due to the hobbyist nature of Linux, most Linux people will know there way around Windows, so in this case a simple problem (the guy didn't have a clue what he's doing), will afford a lot of pro MS replies on /.
Quite frankly, the guy was an idiot and I question why someone is paying this guy for tech services. He's a "Windows" tech and he doesn't even know the difference between CD versions. Yikes.
I've been working on Windows boxes for quite a while, both in my own company, as a tech for a larger company, and now a network administrator. The problem this guy ran into was actually quite simple. There are several versions of Windows XP (OEM, VL, Retail, AP, etc). You can't use one disk with another, period. No big deal, tons of ways to get your hands on the various version discs.
I question what the heck this guy is doing and thinking. If he has the ability to set up an Ubuntu box, heck if he even knows how to set up a basic RAID 1 array, I'm baffled as to why he doesn't know the answer to his own question. Anyone who reads this article who themselves is tech saavy knows this guy is a bit of a dolt. How on earth he got his story published on anything other than his blog is beyond me.
And in response to a lot of peoples' jargon about an XP Pro box not being able to make a good server - why not?? I've worked as an independent contractor for small business IT needs for half a dozen years, and there's no reason why a simple XP pro box can't make a decent, cost effective server. Albiet, it all boils down to the clients' needs, but for a typical small business (and by small business I mean less than 30 employees), like the one mentioned here, all they typically need is something decent that will host files where their files are reasonable safe. An XP pro box set up properly can make for an appropriate server. RAID 1, backup scripts (or 3rd party programs), a UPS, a couple network shares is what half of the world runs on. Remember, 80% of business in North America is small business (sub 30 people).
All of this doesn't change the fact that quite clearly this guy doesn't know what he's doing. 2 minutes on google would have answered his question.
I'm a network admin for a company of about 45 people. We recently moved from a hosted exchange service (costing us about $700us a month), to gmail for your domain, and it works great.
Given how many people loose all their email per year on services like Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, etc, the chances of anything happening are almost slim to none. Sure, bad things can happen, but bad things can happen with any type of email system you use. Not to mention, saving us almost $10,000US per year is a big plus, and a fraction of that can go towards occasionally backing up gmail (via POP download).
Personally, I think this is a whole lot of hype about nothing. And as people have said, it's 'BETA'. Anyone who chooses to use it and rely on it should be aware of the risks. At my company, we are keenly aware that at any point in time, we could get an email from Google saying 'We're discontinuing GAFYD, your email service will be shit down in 24 hours'. However, all risks considered, we're willing to mitigate that chance in foresight of google doing very well, which it is.
TCO, hmm probably not much more than the song itself. Seeing as the best anti-DRM software is free, it's really only a few minutes of your time on top of downloading the song. Im not going to factor a few minutes of time into it, because them to be fair and do a true TCO, you'd have to factor in hundreds of other things.
Although DRM is a pain in the ass, at this point it's not too troublesome in all reality. I would conclude that about 95% of users either dont even know what DRM is, and therefore it's probably not affecting them, or people are just finding some way around it. So currently, I just can't buy into the argument that DRM is such a big deal.
As long as an inherently non-DRM format (MP3) is dominant, I wont be worrying. It's been almost 10 years now since MP3 went mainstream and took off, and to this day, the RIAA types still have virtually no real control over digitized music. Anyone out there who wants non-DRM music can get it easily. The iTunes/iPod system prevents the casual ID10T from copying, but who are we kidding, the real security behind the 'i' music world is a joke.
I think that's all the control the industry will ever have, control over the ID10T masses who dont know how to turn on hidden files/folders and dont now how to put 'Convert M4A into MP3' into google.
For just about every music service out there, 5 minutes on google will show you precisely and easily how to strip the DRM off the music and convert the song into a regular MP3. I pity the people who download lots of music and keep it in the native DRM format (M4A for example).
Just strip the DRM off, convert it into a regular MP3, and be done with it. No biggy for now.
I love firefox for a great many things, but I'm not your average user (neither is 99.9% of slashdot readers). I think for Joe user, there is less of a case for Firefox than before, now that IE7 is out. I still definately think there is a case to move to Firefox, but now that IE7 has tabs, it's a tougher sell. I recommend all my users/friends/etc to switch to Firefox, but now that IE7 is out, it will be a harder sell once IE7 makes it's way on most machines. Security, functionality, and ease of use are all as high as ever on IE7.
I think with IE7 the ball is back in Firefox's court to try to convice Joe User why Firefox is better. Before IE7, this was a no-brainer.
Yes, over the past year I have very quickly come to learn this. We do use hardphones whenever possible. Given our particular office setup, it was preferable to have some of our users on softphones. But most of them didn't even like the whole concept anyways, and we got such a backlash, that we bought a few extra hardphones.
And yes, I've tried xten/eyebeam. It was our favorite amongst the SIP softphones, but the issue of SIP not being very firewall-friendly stopped us from adopting it for mainstream use.
My business of approx. 40 people recent moved from a fancy, very expensive centrex phone system to a Asterisk based IP phone system. Overall, our results have been very positive. Part of our plans, however, were to have approx. half of our users use Softphones. We have tried probably about 2 dozen IAX, SIP, and proprietary softphones, and to this day we had not found a single one that worked very well, exactly how we wanted it to. Our requirements were fairly simple:
1. Had to be able to connect to outside phone numbers, not just other clients on the network.
2. Had to work with our IP-PBX (Asterisk). This ruled out alot of the good, proprietary clients like Gizmo, Skype.
3. Since alot of our users travel ALOT, the phone had to work flawlessly through firewalls. Although we can configure the firewall on our end, when our users are at hotels, etc, they couldn't connect. This pretty much ruled out SIP altogether in favor of firewall-friendly IAX..
4. Voice quality had to be excellent. Too many users would be using it as a primary phone.
5. Cost wasn't an issue, if the phone was good.
6. The phone would be used by ID10T's. It had to be simple and intuitive.
All I want to say is that although there are a ton of them out there, finding a good softphone is harder than you think. There's lots that fit indivdual users needs very well (I use skype with skype-out and it works great). The best we had found overall was idefisk (asteriskguru.com). Although, it leaved alot to be desired as far as voice quality goes. Still, we're searching for a good softphone for our mobile users.
People dont want to care about package X not working with distribution Y. People want to know or care about dependancies. People want to double click or insert the CD and the program installs. People dont want to compile anything. Compiling things scares people. No matter how 'easy' the command (line) might be, the very fact it's a command is already too much for most people. People dont care about what program they're using is installing packages or rpms. Folders named /bin /etc /home /usr scare people. The warm and fuzzy names of 'My Computer' and 'Documents and Settings' dont scare people. Being able to SSH in to your terminal is not something people care about. People want thier warm and fuzzy GUI when they log in remotely. All of these things which linux is admittedly very good at and very flexible, the average person doesn't want to even know about.
It's been argued here at length an infinite amount of times, but the very things that Linux is good at is also what holds it back from mainstream adoption (or at least slows it down a great deal). The power and flexibility that linux offers will always far surpass anything that Microsoft can throw at the OSS community. However, people here are missing the bigger point. Microsoft succeeds (for an number of reasons, but) because what they do is warm and fuzzy, and familiar. Im a linux advocate, but I;m not going to kid myself and start to think "Hey, maybe the command line IS something that the average person should use" .
All Im saying is alot of you I think are missing the point. Until Linux gets a whole lot more warm and fuzzy, it wont be stepping on MS's toes too much in the home-user sphere.