Not likely, more like a raise. They managed to slip this in and get it posted as an article on/.
"You've probably been told to dump Internet Explorer for a Mozilla browser before, by the same propeller-head geek who wants you to delete Windows from your hard drive and install Linux. You've ignored him, and good for you. "
Microsoft 0wnz Slate and uses it as one of their information outlets.
OS upgrade went OK, only 13 diskettes. Thought I would go have a beer and a smoke while the tape restored DB files. uh-oh proprietary program with special config files....in the root partition... I only had a tape backup of/u.... "MMM Hello Mr. Smarty pants consultant from St. Louis? Ah yes, got a problem here with one of these systems......" Got off lightly with a "Never come back here again!"
A verylarge fleet services company, with whose verylarge Oracle database I work, uses the VIN as a variable chararacter field. It is not a key field but is indexed. The point being that the VIN was a secondary means of identifying a vehicle outside of Fleet and Unit number. I say: blow 'er wide open.
"Sorry, no help for you. The computer has determined that the price for natural gas has caused the heating cost to exceed budget for this month. The next budget cycle starts in two days. Can you put on more clothing?"
XML saves the world again!
BTW, cannot RTF summary because weblogs.com is blocked by company proxy. Had to go off other article.
Say what you want about FreeDOS, and Free software in general. But FreeDOS has won. No one need ever pay for MSDOS, DRDOS, or PCDOS again. Those programs are dead. Surprisingly, a 25 year old operating system (even older if you count predecessors like CP/M, TRSDOS, and VTOS) still has uses.
While not 1000x better, as a previous AC posted, ReactOS is taking up where the FreeDOS project left off. If completed, it will replace more Windows and OS/2 systems than it's nearest free competitor.
Who get stock options? That's the better question. I know accountants and CEOs are nerds too. But, how many CEOs or memebers of the FASB read Slashdot?
It's hard to/. at home. That's what my computer spends a goodly amount of time doing at work. That and providing - repetitive exercises (Solitaire up, Solitaire down, and 3 and 4). It enjoys its job too much to call in sick.
MS has $40,000,000,000 USD in cash still before all the lawsuit dust has settled. Certainly they are not going to spend it all buying schools new computers. The noise is only going to grow louder about TCO from them. The open source distro community has to pull together and face them head-on. Eroding into the AIX, HP-UX, and Solaris market share is going to help MS because these companies all have big marketing dollars too.
A contractor using the guest offices brought Blaster inside. His laptop infected the security-counter image-storage system, which then found its way to the HR server. That in turn spawned the infections to the HR XP laptops where the patch failed.
The first thing you learn in ANY security job is that most breaches are from the inside.
As someone standing right behind the front lines, I will tell you that employees with laptops are the worst. Most end up with administrator access (not that hard to crack if you don't have it). And the fact that they bring their computers home and on the road makes them feel a certain entitlement to install whatever they feel like. Contractors are even worse, since most of the time these laptops ARE their personal PCs. Desktops and servers inside the DMZ are the least likely originators of malware. (Not to say you couldn't surf pr0n on the company mail server as an admin. But then you deserve what you get.)
Network admins need to lock down MAC addresses and start treating their network like the PBX folks. Nothing gets wired except approved company equipment.
Excellent article. And this is the number one article on the sans.org reading list.... Couldn't help noticing number three with its provocative title: Penetration 101.
Cookies are used by large marketing firms to track your viewing habits at popular web sites. The spying can only be done if a particular PC's browsing habits can be traced to a particular registered user. It is no different than collecting credit card information, phone numbers, and zip codes at retail stores. However, if you value your privacy (And who doesn't on/.),then you need to reduce the number of cookies your browser (Mozilla, Opera, IE) accepts. IMHO cookies do not CONTROL or FORCE your computer to do anything.
The more insidious forms of spyware such as "coolwebsearch" exploit IE browser holes and redirect your browsing. Microsoft, Opera, and Mozilla coders have been patching lots of different security exploits. Some might argue that Mozilla and Opera a farther ahead in this game.
I did not notice how much he said about battery life on a car-powered 230vac computer system. But you probably do not want to be playing the music without the engine running...(Not that you could hear the engine over the sound of the E450 anyway)
But that does not include installation, administration and infrastructure costs.
Those costs exist in any upgrade scenario. Take the balance and give each PC the remaining 1000 Euro.
allowing better alternatives in, where they exist, is crucial to saving time, money and aggravation.
No doubt about it. You should always have the best solution, and pay for it. If that means replacing green screens, java desktop, linux distro, or Windows, then do it right.
14,000,000 extra Euro are seen as an investment for long term savings
Capital expenditures for PCs are not investment vehicles. CFOs despise capital expenditures. Software licensing and maintenance is accounted differently and is much easier to approve. No cost licensing always looks better no matter what. There will be annual costs, call it maintenance or licensing if you will, but they both are accounted the same. On top of that, any investment advisor will tell you to keep emotion (hatred) out of any any business decision.
I will let the MS Salespeople shill for their licensing agreement. Other OS distros are making big strides. The best ones are never going to be free. If Mandrake or SUSE or Knoppix emerges as a superior distro, they are not going to give it away. Their prices will rise as Microsoft's falls. So in my mind, the future cost savings is speculation.
I am with you on the database heavy apps. But they are commercial database apps. Only an odd few cities have an in-house or contract staff of programmers. Other commercial apps include document management/imaging, GIS, desktop publishing, and desktop database apps (Paradox, Access, Foxpro, powerbuilder, or Visual Studio). None of these are light conversions. And 2005 is right here as far as converting goes. I agree that browser apps are the way to go. I am working on some of these projects myself. Our schedule is running past 2006 on some apps, others we will not even convert.
The typical large city IT department is mostly concerned with running the server apps. The desktops are left to the support staff.
thousands of big fat desktops
The Linux distros with desktops like KDE or GNOME have not exactly skipped any meals!;-)
2,000 Euro is quite a hefty sum to consider when "No decision" would have meant no upgrade (stick with the current set of computers). Or "remain with Windows but get new machines" would have come in less as well, when 1,000 Euro will get you a name brand PC with monitor and MS operating system and Office licenses. Certainly 16,000 machines qualifies for MS discount licensing. You have to really build up a lot of hatred for a vendor to consider paying maybe 14,000,000 Euro over the top to oust said vendor with 6,000,000 Euro (at most) licensing costs in place.
I will take you up on that bet. I will even tell you that none of those four applications: e-mail, browsing, word processing, and spreadsheets are enough to place a computer on a municipal employee's desk. The government killer app varies by department. But each department most likely has a client server application related to providing city services: Water billing, tax collection, property records, etc. None of these would need the above mentioned 4 apps.
The overall IT scenario is a mix of Telnet/Terminal emulation, Windows desktop apps (VB/VC++/FoxPro/Office VBA), Intranet applications, DOS (yea really!) apps, and maybe even some desktop java. Can you migrate most of these to _Insert OS Distribution Here_? Sure, Why not. That is your decision. However, some groups are going to have a specific piece of commercial software that just will not convert easily or work with VMWare, WINE, or your emulator of choice.
This article is a rather scathing condemnation of the camera operation.
While I don't agree with the author's statement that it is part of a class war, I do think one of the article snippets provides humorous insight:
During my time in the control room, from 9 p.m. to midnight, I experienced firsthand a phenomenon that critics of CCTV surveillance have often described: when you put a group of bored, unsupervised men in front of live video screens and allow them to zoom in on whatever happens to catch their eyes, they tend to spend a fair amount of time leering at women. "What catches the eye is groups of young men and attractive, young women," I was told by Clive Norris, the Hull criminologist. "It's what we call a sense of the obvious." There are plenty of stories of video voyeurism: a control room in the Midlands, for example, took close-up shots of women with large breasts and taped them up on the walls. In Hull, this temptation is magnified by the fact that part of the operators' job is to keep an eye on prostitutes. As it got late, though, there weren't enough prostitutes to keep us entertained, so we kept ourselves awake by scanning the streets in search of the purely consensual activities of boyfriends and girlfriends making out in cars. "She had her legs wrapped around his waist a minute ago," one of the operators said appreciatively as we watched two teenagers go at it. "You'll be able to do an article on how reserved the British are, won't you?" he joked.
Here is the list. Throw out Sprint, Charter, and Comcast. These dogs are skewing the numbers.
Easier way to block content than DMCA letter
on
Testing ISP Censorship
·
· Score: 3, Funny
You could quite effectively put most web sites out of commission by using a method detailed here.Anecdotal evidence shows that an increase in traffic can effectivly deny viewing of content and, in fact, bring a monetary burden to the web host customer. The results are almost immediate compared to action from a DMCA letter.
In a huge piece of bloat- (and until a couple of years ago vapor-) ware running on top of what is already purported to be bloatware. MS was wise to stay away from that. The Great Plains (now Microsoft CRM) does not have a ton of visibility yet. Oracle is bidding on the plum piece of CRM software in my opinion (JD Edwards snapped up by Peoplesoft!). Now who is going to pick up Lawson?
A very successful integrated solution salesman, with whom I once had the pleasure of working, had a very relevant quote for here:
"Do a demo, lose a sale."
The deeper explanation is that so many salespeople come to call with "gadgety" demos and slides. The really successful salesperson LISTENS to a customer's problems and tries to work out a solution in common.
how he magically copied his files from his old MS system to his new Mac. (Despite the fact that he gets to bloviate on this topic a second time.) He sure made it sound like it would be an impossible task going from old Windows (98?) machine to new Windows (XP?) machine.
Slashdot Mirror
Not likely, more like a raise. They managed to slip this in and get it posted as an article on /.
"You've probably been told to dump Internet Explorer for a Mozilla browser before, by the same propeller-head geek who wants you to delete Windows from your hard drive and install Linux. You've ignored him, and good for you. "
Microsoft 0wnz Slate and uses it as one of their information outlets.
OS upgrade went OK, only 13 diskettes. Thought I would go have a beer and a smoke while the tape restored DB files. uh-oh proprietary program with special config files....in the root partition... I only had a tape backup of /u.... "MMM Hello Mr. Smarty pants consultant from St. Louis? Ah yes, got a problem here with one of these systems......" Got off lightly with a "Never come back here again!"
Plus look at the fact the "Beowulf Cluster" made it right into the introductory paragraph. I couldn't even RTFA after that.
A verylarge fleet services company, with whose verylarge Oracle database I work, uses the VIN as a variable chararacter field. It is not a key field but is indexed. The point being that the VIN was a secondary means of identifying a vehicle outside of Fleet and Unit number. I say: blow 'er wide open.
"Sorry, no help for you. The computer has determined that the price for natural gas has caused the heating cost to exceed budget for this month. The next budget cycle starts in two days. Can you put on more clothing?"
XML saves the world again!
BTW, cannot RTF summary because weblogs.com is blocked by company proxy. Had to go off other article.
Say what you want about FreeDOS, and Free software in general. But FreeDOS has won. No one need ever pay for MSDOS, DRDOS, or PCDOS again. Those programs are dead. Surprisingly, a 25 year old operating system (even older if you count predecessors like CP/M, TRSDOS, and VTOS) still has uses.
While not 1000x better, as a previous AC posted, ReactOS is taking up where the FreeDOS project left off. If completed, it will replace more Windows and OS/2 systems than it's nearest free competitor.
Who get stock options? That's the better question. I know accountants and CEOs are nerds too. But, how many CEOs or memebers of the FASB read Slashdot?
It's hard to /. at home. That's what my computer spends a goodly amount of time doing at work. That and providing - repetitive exercises (Solitaire up, Solitaire down, and 3 and 4). It enjoys its job too much to call in sick.
MS has $40,000,000,000 USD in cash still before all the lawsuit dust has settled. Certainly they are not going to spend it all buying schools new computers. The noise is only going to grow louder about TCO from them. The open source distro community has to pull together and face them head-on. Eroding into the AIX, HP-UX, and Solaris market share is going to help MS because these companies all have big marketing dollars too.
A contractor using the guest offices brought Blaster inside. His laptop infected the security-counter image-storage system, which then found its way to the HR server. That in turn spawned the infections to the HR XP laptops where the patch failed.
The first thing you learn in ANY security job is that most breaches are from the inside.
As someone standing right behind the front lines, I will tell you that employees with laptops are the worst. Most end up with administrator access (not that hard to crack if you don't have it). And the fact that they bring their computers home and on the road makes them feel a certain entitlement to install whatever they feel like. Contractors are even worse, since most of the time these laptops ARE their personal PCs. Desktops and servers inside the DMZ are the least likely originators of malware. (Not to say you couldn't surf pr0n on the company mail server as an admin. But then you deserve what you get.)
Network admins need to lock down MAC addresses and start treating their network like the PBX folks. Nothing gets wired except approved company equipment.
Excellent article. And this is the number one article on the sans.org reading list. ... Couldn't help noticing number three with its provocative title: Penetration 101.
Cookies are used by large marketing firms to track your viewing habits at popular web sites. The spying can only be done if a particular PC's browsing habits can be traced to a particular registered user. It is no different than collecting credit card information, phone numbers, and zip codes at retail stores. However, if you value your privacy (And who doesn't on /.) ,then you need to reduce the number of cookies your browser (Mozilla, Opera, IE) accepts. IMHO cookies do not CONTROL or FORCE your computer to do anything.
The more insidious forms of spyware such as "coolwebsearch" exploit IE browser holes and redirect your browsing. Microsoft, Opera, and Mozilla coders have been patching lots of different security exploits. Some might argue that Mozilla and Opera a farther ahead in this game.
I did not notice how much he said about battery life on a car-powered 230vac computer system. But you probably do not want to be playing the music without the engine running...(Not that you could hear the engine over the sound of the E450 anyway)
But that does not include installation, administration and infrastructure costs.
Those costs exist in any upgrade scenario. Take the balance and give each PC the remaining 1000 Euro.
allowing better alternatives in, where they exist, is crucial to saving time, money and aggravation.
No doubt about it. You should always have the best solution, and pay for it. If that means replacing green screens, java desktop, linux distro, or Windows, then do it right.
14,000,000 extra Euro are seen as an investment for long term savings
Capital expenditures for PCs are not investment vehicles. CFOs despise capital expenditures. Software licensing and maintenance is accounted differently and is much easier to approve. No cost licensing always looks better no matter what. There will be annual costs, call it maintenance or licensing if you will, but they both are accounted the same. On top of that, any investment advisor will tell you to keep emotion (hatred) out of any any business decision.
I will let the MS Salespeople shill for their licensing agreement. Other OS distros are making big strides. The best ones are never going to be free. If Mandrake or SUSE or Knoppix emerges as a superior distro, they are not going to give it away. Their prices will rise as Microsoft's falls. So in my mind, the future cost savings is speculation.
I am with you on the database heavy apps. But they are commercial database apps. Only an odd few cities have an in-house or contract staff of programmers. Other commercial apps include document management/imaging, GIS, desktop publishing, and desktop database apps (Paradox, Access, Foxpro, powerbuilder, or Visual Studio). None of these are light conversions. And 2005 is right here as far as converting goes. I agree that browser apps are the way to go. I am working on some of these projects myself. Our schedule is running past 2006 on some apps, others we will not even convert.
;-)
The typical large city IT department is mostly concerned with running the server apps. The desktops are left to the support staff.
thousands of big fat desktops
The Linux distros with desktops like KDE or GNOME have not exactly skipped any meals!
2,000 Euro is quite a hefty sum to consider when "No decision" would have meant no upgrade (stick with the current set of computers). Or "remain with Windows but get new machines" would have come in less as well, when 1,000 Euro will get you a name brand PC with monitor and MS operating system and Office licenses. Certainly 16,000 machines qualifies for MS discount licensing. You have to really build up a lot of hatred for a vendor to consider paying maybe 14,000,000 Euro over the top to oust said vendor with 6,000,000 Euro (at most) licensing costs in place.
I will take you up on that bet. I will even tell you that none of those four applications: e-mail, browsing, word processing, and spreadsheets are enough to place a computer on a municipal employee's desk. The government killer app varies by department. But each department most likely has a client server application related to providing city services: Water billing, tax collection, property records, etc. None of these would need the above mentioned 4 apps.
The overall IT scenario is a mix of Telnet/Terminal emulation, Windows desktop apps (VB/VC++/FoxPro/Office VBA), Intranet applications, DOS (yea really!) apps, and maybe even some desktop java. Can you migrate most of these to _Insert OS Distribution Here_? Sure, Why not. That is your decision. However, some groups are going to have a specific piece of commercial software that just will not convert easily or work with VMWare, WINE, or your emulator of choice.
This article is a rather scathing condemnation of the camera operation.
While I don't agree with the author's statement that it is part of a class war, I do think one of the article snippets provides humorous insight:
During my time in the control room, from 9 p.m. to midnight, I experienced firsthand a phenomenon that critics of CCTV surveillance have often described: when you put a group of bored, unsupervised men in front of live video screens and allow them to zoom in on whatever happens to catch their eyes, they tend to spend a fair amount of time leering at women. "What catches the eye is groups of young men and attractive, young women," I was told by Clive Norris, the Hull criminologist. "It's what we call a sense of the obvious." There are plenty of stories of video voyeurism: a control room in the Midlands, for example, took close-up shots of women with large breasts and taped them up on the walls. In Hull, this temptation is magnified by the fact that part of the operators' job is to keep an eye on prostitutes. As it got late, though, there weren't enough prostitutes to keep us entertained, so we kept ourselves awake by scanning the streets in search of the purely consensual activities of boyfriends and girlfriends making out in cars. "She had her legs wrapped around his waist a minute ago," one of the operators said appreciatively as we watched two teenagers go at it. "You'll be able to do an article on how reserved the British are, won't you?" he joked.
Here is the list. Throw out Sprint, Charter, and Comcast. These dogs are skewing the numbers.
You could quite effectively put most web sites out of commission by using a method detailed here. Anecdotal evidence shows that an increase in traffic can effectivly deny viewing of content and, in fact, bring a monetary burden to the web host customer. The results are almost immediate compared to action from a DMCA letter.
You should have stuck with your initial gut reaction. It was probably right.
In a huge piece of bloat- (and until a couple of years ago vapor-) ware running on top of what is already purported to be bloatware. MS was wise to stay away from that. The Great Plains (now Microsoft CRM) does not have a ton of visibility yet. Oracle is bidding on the plum piece of CRM software in my opinion (JD Edwards snapped up by Peoplesoft!). Now who is going to pick up Lawson?
A very successful integrated solution salesman, with whom I once had the pleasure of working, had a very relevant quote for here:
"Do a demo, lose a sale."
The deeper explanation is that so many salespeople come to call with "gadgety" demos and slides. The really successful salesperson LISTENS to a customer's problems and tries to work out a solution in common.
While the Slashdot crowd argued about what is or isn't technically or legally possible,
He's right, the revolution will not be slashdotted...
how he magically copied his files from his old MS system to his new Mac. (Despite the fact that he gets to bloviate on this topic a second time.) He sure made it sound like it would be an impossible task going from old Windows (98?) machine to new Windows (XP?) machine.