Actually, Texas and Oklahoma would be red states, not blue. Blue state would be something like California or New York, where people predominately vote Democrat.
I have strong feelings against the Chinese government because of the way that they try to control their population. Does that mean that I can never talk about why I don't like George Bush? Just because there are worse things out there doesn't mean that people can't complain about this Google deal. Maybe, if people pay attention like this, we can make sure that Google never becomes a monopoly like MS is. What if people had been more critical of how MS operated in the eighties and early nineties when they were just starting to get established?
The problem is that most of the commercial software companies won't do this for a lot of their existing products. Instead, they'll tell you to pay an assload of money and upgrade to the new version of the software, which doesn't do anything except add compatibility with Vista, instead of actually fixing their existing software.
That might be the case in central Africa, but I would think that it might be a little different in more industrialized nations like Egypt and South Africa. I've heard of bloggers in Egypt several times (one that got arrested IIRC), so I'm assuming that the Internet is atleast somewhat common there.
I don't love MS, especially not the way in which their company operates, but it is certainly possible to have secure network running mostly MS software. The fact that some people can't do it is just a sign that they are not competent enough to do their jobs. No different than if someone running a Linux network that doesn't know what iptables is. Regardless of what tools they use, people need to be knowledgeable in them. Stupid people will make stupid decisions that will compromise security - whether they're using Windows, Linux, OS X, or OpenVMS.
If anything, the government doing a piss poor job of security probably stems from the fact that it's the government. While a lot of the people working for them do a great job and really care about their work, a lot of others don't. And typically government pay is going to be quite a bit less than in the private sector. It's going to be harder for them to get a lot of skilled network security people. And that does nothing to stop administrators from making brain-dead policies or users from giving out their passwords.
Congress gaining a bit of power would probably help to balance out some of the power that the Executive Branch has gained recently. I'm not necessarily saying that the Democrat's are investigating this just out of the kindness of their hearts - but the end result will be a good thing.
Good point. Honestly, though, I have a lot more respect for Bush Sr. than I do for Bush Jr. Maybe if Sr. had gotten two terms my opinion would be different, but Bush Sr. wasn't all that bad of a President, better IMO than his predecessor(Reagan) or successor (Clinton).
the majority of minors lack the competence level and full knowledge of whats going on, and what is good for the country to vote.
While I don't necessarily disagree with that (I do strongly disagree with raising the voting age though), do you actually think that most adults have a clue? Yeah, I'm sure some are competent (as some minors are competent), but a lot of them (the think-of-the-children, bible-belt, "I have the right to be a lazy American" people) are just as clueless as they were when they were minors. People do not automatically gain wisdom when they turn eighteen.
I see your point about the fasten-seatbelt sign, though it has usually been switched off at cruising altitude on all of the flights that I can remember. What I find to be really useless is the no-smoking sign. How many years has smoking on commercial airline flights been banned? I'm pretty sure since atleast before I was born (1989). It's not like that light is ever going to be turned off, so wtf is the purpose of it? I've seen them on Airtrain 717's that couldn't have been made before 2000-ish. It's not like its a huge deal, but when I see them I always think "well no *shit* you can't smoke".
How many consumers update Windows on a regular basis? And regardless, most consumers have their computers set up so insecure that a patch like this is the least of their worries. Also, large corporations have a helluva lot more to lose than grandma who struggles to send an email. And they also pay more. Why shouldn't MS care more about their large customers?
You don't have to install the Key Management Server. That's one of the two options for VLK licenses with Vista, but you can also have it activate with MS's servers.
Since you're using hardware RAID controllers I'm assuming you're not talking about some little desktop systems, so my question would be, why on earth are you rebooting servers so often?
I mean, I honestly wouldn't care if it takes 5 extra seconds when booting, having it tell me what key I need to press to configure it would save me a lot of time. I don't want to have to spend twenty minutes of my time looking for documentation for some obscure RAID controller in order to configure it. Its not like most people are going to be staring at a monitor connected to a server every day while they turn it on. If it wastes five or ten seconds of the computer's time when it reboots once in a blue moon, I really don't care. If five or ten seconds is a big deal to you as far as uptime goes, then you'll be using something like clustering anyway.
Again, I would agree with that. *I* personally wouldn't hire someone who I didn't feel was responsible enough to do that. But IT deparments generally aren't going to be able to overrule HR in most companies and have much of a say in who is hired outside IT.
To a large extent, I agree with you. IT people have a responsibility to ensure that their systems are as secure as is reasonably possible. The only thing that I might disagree with is personal equipment on the corporate network. Personally, I think I would just create a separate VLAN/wireless SSID mapped to a VLAN for visitors/guests/personal equipment, and basically block most communication between the guest network and the real corporate network. Stuff from that VLAN could also be treated differently by an Internet-side firewall, and maybe forced through a proxy and limited bandwidth wise. (And of course, use 802.1x for the real corporate network, probably authenticating with computer accounts, so users can't easily connect their personal equipment to them).
Security is important, and taking steps like what you said make a network easier to manage/expand/control, and makes sure that people can't screw too much stuff up, either by malice or by ignorance.
Daylight savings: Someone at my place applied a few patches, and time got changed -twice-. 2 hours forward. Nobody in the -whole- place couldn't change their system time (they're not -allowed- to do it). For 2 days, everyone's time was off by an hour. I thought that was rather stupid.
So, what would you do? Give users admin rights on their computers so that they can change the time? Great, now they can install malware (but I really like WeatherBug!), as well as fsck up their entire install, as opposed to just their profile. Now, they should have probably prepared a bit more - I'm not sure how on earth they could have managed to have the time rolled two hours forward, short of applying a patch and then maybe manually changing the time via a script or something, but giving everyone local admin rights is not a good solution.
Anything that deals with email, etc., is best handled by educating users (and firing those who don't learn). If a user works with a computer for a few weeks, and doesn't know what a ``Command Prompt'' is, or doesn't know how to rename a file, or change file's extension, or the difference between a text file and a word document, fire them. The organization will be better without such `users' (I don't care if they're business folk, if they use a computer, they must be computer literate---otherwise don't let'em use a computer, or fire'em).
While I would personally agree with that, try running that by a group of executives(who probably don't even know what half of the stuff you're talking about is) and see where that gets you. Short of killing off large numbers of people, there will always be stupid people. It's our job to protect networks and computers from fscking stupid people, and limit the damage they can do. Personally, I think the best solution would be let user's use their company email account for personal use. With limits on the size/type of attachments, and possible content filtering, etc. That way, they can still send their little stupid jokes to all their little stupid friends, and the company can easily monitor and secure what they're doing.
Isn't it ironic - not only that a very large number of people will see his picture because he was an &^*hole, but also that the site that he apparently tried to have taken down, is offline (presumably due to the/. effect or because it was linked to by other sites).
I don't know if it would be suitable for the sort of thing you're talking about, but HP has (or atleast they had it a year or so ago), a thing where you can telnet into a variety of different systems they had. Mostly OpenVMS and HP-UX running a a few different architectures. I know that you didn't have network access from the box that you telnetted into, but I don't know what other restrictions there were. It might be something to check out if you're interested in making software for some of HP's higher-end stuff, but don't have the hardware to run OpenVMS or HP-UX.
Exactly, Apple does not get enterprise IT. Apple Remote Desktop and OS X Server are half-assed attempts at this sort of thing - and may work OK in a small workgroup but not in a real Enterprise. Apple has a long way to go before they start attract lots of corporate customers.
Actually that's not quite true. Outlook can connect directly to an Exchange frontend or backend server server. (I can't remember which. I have the frontend and backend on a single box, but I think I remember reading that a frontend server is only needed for IMAP/POP/SMTP connections in Exchange 2007.)
Exchange frontend servers handle the connections, while backend servers store the mailboxes. Evolution connects to Exchange via OWA (Outlook Web Access), which can be installed on yet another server. The same way MS's own client on Mac (Entourage) does, amusingly enough.
In a lot of (smaller) companies, the frontend, backend, and OWA may be running on the same box. But that is not necessarily true. Its not uncommon for OWA to be on a separate box in a DMZ or something.
So, in the case of a small company, the Exchange server's (acting as a frontend, backend, and OWA server) address could be mail.companyname.com. In that case the address for Outlook Web Access would be http://mail.companyname.com/exchange. But that would not be the case if they had OWA running on another server.
Funny you mention that, my English 12 class just finished 1984 today. I think all English 12 classes read it at my school, I don't know if its required by the state or anything though. While I think it was a good book, I don't think that merely reading the book is terribly useful. Granted, we are in neocon Kansas, my English class is first block (read: everyone is practically asleep), and my English teacher isn't great at getting people enthused. It was interesting when she had us read articles about the increasing surveillance in society today (once of which I had even seen on/.). Most of my classmates were very offended that anyone would dare question their beloved leader Bush. After all, Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia. And then there was the time that someone mentioned they didn't believe in an afterlife in a presentation about fears. While nobody said anything, I definately got the feeling that they did not like it.
Reminds me of something my parents have told me I did, except mine isn't nearly as dangerous. My parents had these "child-proof" locks or handles or something put on all the cabinets in the kitchen when I was a baby (yeah, they're really over-protective). Anyways, I had seen them open them enough, that one day they saw me just go over to a cabinet and open it up. Apparently I just thought that was how you opened up cabinets.
Exactly. A lot of people *think* they know what they're doing, but they don't. For example, a few weeks ago I was in a "focus group" (whatever that means) that discussed technology usage in my school district. One of the parents said something about how all of the kids these days know how to do everything with technology. Posting on myspace != doing something useful with technology. Yeah, there are some kids that know what they're doing (and I would be one of those), but there are far more that would struggle if they had to actually use real business technology (ie a spreadsheet, or a calendar, or document management system, etc) w/o someone holding their hand.
Installing things per-user would be a pain in the ass to maintain. If IT needed to update an application on a computer, or change a setting for the application, and that application was installed separately for each user, how would they do that without logging in as each individual user? What about the additional space that it would take up? Sure, that may not matter for little things like GAIM or a text editor or something, but I would rather not having 10 copies of Adobe CS2, Microsoft Office, and Visual Studio/MSDN sitting on computers.
And each user *does* have their own registry - its loaded into HKEY_CURRENT_USER, and is located at %USERPROFILE%\NTUSER.DAT. HKLM (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE) holds the per-machine registry settings.
Also, in Microsoft.NET 2.0, it is relatively easy to create a per-user configuration for an application. It will automatically create the file in their user profile.
The people who reported them - and even more so the police - should be held "responsible". I'm not saying they should be punished, but if anyone is responsible it is them for overreacting without any real evidence of a threat. OMG, there's some lights - it must be a bomb. Lets evacuate the entire city just in case!!! Things like this remind me of how stupid people are. It's kind of depressing in a way. I can understand people reporting something if there was any remote reason to think that it was a bomb. And perhaps I guess it isn't surprising that one or two people reported them. But the police should have been able to quickly determine that they weren't threats in any way shape or form. Granted, maybe that did happen, but the media just blew it out of proportion.
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Actually, Texas and Oklahoma would be red states, not blue. Blue state would be something like California or New York, where people predominately vote Democrat.
I have strong feelings against the Chinese government because of the way that they try to control their population. Does that mean that I can never talk about why I don't like George Bush? Just because there are worse things out there doesn't mean that people can't complain about this Google deal. Maybe, if people pay attention like this, we can make sure that Google never becomes a monopoly like MS is. What if people had been more critical of how MS operated in the eighties and early nineties when they were just starting to get established?
The problem is that most of the commercial software companies won't do this for a lot of their existing products. Instead, they'll tell you to pay an assload of money and upgrade to the new version of the software, which doesn't do anything except add compatibility with Vista, instead of actually fixing their existing software.
That might be the case in central Africa, but I would think that it might be a little different in more industrialized nations like Egypt and South Africa. I've heard of bloggers in Egypt several times (one that got arrested IIRC), so I'm assuming that the Internet is atleast somewhat common there.
I don't love MS, especially not the way in which their company operates, but it is certainly possible to have secure network running mostly MS software. The fact that some people can't do it is just a sign that they are not competent enough to do their jobs. No different than if someone running a Linux network that doesn't know what iptables is. Regardless of what tools they use, people need to be knowledgeable in them. Stupid people will make stupid decisions that will compromise security - whether they're using Windows, Linux, OS X, or OpenVMS. If anything, the government doing a piss poor job of security probably stems from the fact that it's the government. While a lot of the people working for them do a great job and really care about their work, a lot of others don't. And typically government pay is going to be quite a bit less than in the private sector. It's going to be harder for them to get a lot of skilled network security people. And that does nothing to stop administrators from making brain-dead policies or users from giving out their passwords.
Congress gaining a bit of power would probably help to balance out some of the power that the Executive Branch has gained recently. I'm not necessarily saying that the Democrat's are investigating this just out of the kindness of their hearts - but the end result will be a good thing.
Good point. Honestly, though, I have a lot more respect for Bush Sr. than I do for Bush Jr. Maybe if Sr. had gotten two terms my opinion would be different, but Bush Sr. wasn't all that bad of a President, better IMO than his predecessor(Reagan) or successor (Clinton).
the majority of minors lack the competence level and full knowledge of whats going on, and what is good for the country to vote.
While I don't necessarily disagree with that (I do strongly disagree with raising the voting age though), do you actually think that most adults have a clue? Yeah, I'm sure some are competent (as some minors are competent), but a lot of them (the think-of-the-children, bible-belt, "I have the right to be a lazy American" people) are just as clueless as they were when they were minors. People do not automatically gain wisdom when they turn eighteen.
I'm an 18 year old American in Kansas.
I see your point about the fasten-seatbelt sign, though it has usually been switched off at cruising altitude on all of the flights that I can remember. What I find to be really useless is the no-smoking sign. How many years has smoking on commercial airline flights been banned? I'm pretty sure since atleast before I was born (1989). It's not like that light is ever going to be turned off, so wtf is the purpose of it? I've seen them on Airtrain 717's that couldn't have been made before 2000-ish. It's not like its a huge deal, but when I see them I always think "well no *shit* you can't smoke".
Wow, thanks for the tip. I'll have to remember that when I go through there next month.
How many consumers update Windows on a regular basis? And regardless, most consumers have their computers set up so insecure that a patch like this is the least of their worries. Also, large corporations have a helluva lot more to lose than grandma who struggles to send an email. And they also pay more. Why shouldn't MS care more about their large customers?
You don't have to install the Key Management Server. That's one of the two options for VLK licenses with Vista, but you can also have it activate with MS's servers.
Since you're using hardware RAID controllers I'm assuming you're not talking about some little desktop systems, so my question would be, why on earth are you rebooting servers so often?
I mean, I honestly wouldn't care if it takes 5 extra seconds when booting, having it tell me what key I need to press to configure it would save me a lot of time. I don't want to have to spend twenty minutes of my time looking for documentation for some obscure RAID controller in order to configure it. Its not like most people are going to be staring at a monitor connected to a server every day while they turn it on. If it wastes five or ten seconds of the computer's time when it reboots once in a blue moon, I really don't care. If five or ten seconds is a big deal to you as far as uptime goes, then you'll be using something like clustering anyway.
Again, I would agree with that. *I* personally wouldn't hire someone who I didn't feel was responsible enough to do that. But IT deparments generally aren't going to be able to overrule HR in most companies and have much of a say in who is hired outside IT.
To a large extent, I agree with you. IT people have a responsibility to ensure that their systems are as secure as is reasonably possible. The only thing that I might disagree with is personal equipment on the corporate network. Personally, I think I would just create a separate VLAN/wireless SSID mapped to a VLAN for visitors/guests/personal equipment, and basically block most communication between the guest network and the real corporate network. Stuff from that VLAN could also be treated differently by an Internet-side firewall, and maybe forced through a proxy and limited bandwidth wise. (And of course, use 802.1x for the real corporate network, probably authenticating with computer accounts, so users can't easily connect their personal equipment to them).
Security is important, and taking steps like what you said make a network easier to manage/expand/control, and makes sure that people can't screw too much stuff up, either by malice or by ignorance.
Daylight savings: Someone at my place applied a few patches, and time got changed -twice-. 2 hours forward. Nobody in the -whole- place couldn't change their system time (they're not -allowed- to do it). For 2 days, everyone's time was off by an hour. I thought that was rather stupid.
So, what would you do? Give users admin rights on their computers so that they can change the time? Great, now they can install malware (but I really like WeatherBug!), as well as fsck up their entire install, as opposed to just their profile. Now, they should have probably prepared a bit more - I'm not sure how on earth they could have managed to have the time rolled two hours forward, short of applying a patch and then maybe manually changing the time via a script or something, but giving everyone local admin rights is not a good solution.
Anything that deals with email, etc., is best handled by educating users (and firing those who don't learn). If a user works with a computer for a few weeks, and doesn't know what a ``Command Prompt'' is, or doesn't know how to rename a file, or change file's extension, or the difference between a text file and a word document, fire them. The organization will be better without such `users' (I don't care if they're business folk, if they use a computer, they must be computer literate---otherwise don't let'em use a computer, or fire'em).
While I would personally agree with that, try running that by a group of executives(who probably don't even know what half of the stuff you're talking about is) and see where that gets you. Short of killing off large numbers of people, there will always be stupid people. It's our job to protect networks and computers from fscking stupid people, and limit the damage they can do. Personally, I think the best solution would be let user's use their company email account for personal use. With limits on the size/type of attachments, and possible content filtering, etc. That way, they can still send their little stupid jokes to all their little stupid friends, and the company can easily monitor and secure what they're doing.
Isn't it ironic - not only that a very large number of people will see his picture because he was an &^*hole, but also that the site that he apparently tried to have taken down, is offline (presumably due to the /. effect or because it was linked to by other sites).
I don't know if it would be suitable for the sort of thing you're talking about, but HP has (or atleast they had it a year or so ago), a thing where you can telnet into a variety of different systems they had. Mostly OpenVMS and HP-UX running a a few different architectures. I know that you didn't have network access from the box that you telnetted into, but I don't know what other restrictions there were. It might be something to check out if you're interested in making software for some of HP's higher-end stuff, but don't have the hardware to run OpenVMS or HP-UX.
Exactly, Apple does not get enterprise IT. Apple Remote Desktop and OS X Server are half-assed attempts at this sort of thing - and may work OK in a small workgroup but not in a real Enterprise. Apple has a long way to go before they start attract lots of corporate customers.
Actually that's not quite true. Outlook can connect directly to an Exchange frontend or backend server server. (I can't remember which. I have the frontend and backend on a single box, but I think I remember reading that a frontend server is only needed for IMAP/POP/SMTP connections in Exchange 2007.)
Exchange frontend servers handle the connections, while backend servers store the mailboxes. Evolution connects to Exchange via OWA (Outlook Web Access), which can be installed on yet another server. The same way MS's own client on Mac (Entourage) does, amusingly enough.
In a lot of (smaller) companies, the frontend, backend, and OWA may be running on the same box. But that is not necessarily true. Its not uncommon for OWA to be on a separate box in a DMZ or something.
So, in the case of a small company, the Exchange server's (acting as a frontend, backend, and OWA server) address could be mail.companyname.com. In that case the address for Outlook Web Access would be http://mail.companyname.com/exchange. But that would not be the case if they had OWA running on another server.
Funny you mention that, my English 12 class just finished 1984 today. I think all English 12 classes read it at my school, I don't know if its required by the state or anything though. While I think it was a good book, I don't think that merely reading the book is terribly useful. Granted, we are in neocon Kansas, my English class is first block (read: everyone is practically asleep), and my English teacher isn't great at getting people enthused. It was interesting when she had us read articles about the increasing surveillance in society today (once of which I had even seen on /.). Most of my classmates were very offended that anyone would dare question their beloved leader Bush. After all, Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia. And then there was the time that someone mentioned they didn't believe in an afterlife in a presentation about fears. While nobody said anything, I definately got the feeling that they did not like it.
Reminds me of something my parents have told me I did, except mine isn't nearly as dangerous. My parents had these "child-proof" locks or handles or something put on all the cabinets in the kitchen when I was a baby (yeah, they're really over-protective). Anyways, I had seen them open them enough, that one day they saw me just go over to a cabinet and open it up. Apparently I just thought that was how you opened up cabinets.
Exactly. A lot of people *think* they know what they're doing, but they don't. For example, a few weeks ago I was in a "focus group" (whatever that means) that discussed technology usage in my school district. One of the parents said something about how all of the kids these days know how to do everything with technology. Posting on myspace != doing something useful with technology. Yeah, there are some kids that know what they're doing (and I would be one of those), but there are far more that would struggle if they had to actually use real business technology (ie a spreadsheet, or a calendar, or document management system, etc) w/o someone holding their hand.
Installing things per-user would be a pain in the ass to maintain. If IT needed to update an application on a computer, or change a setting for the application, and that application was installed separately for each user, how would they do that without logging in as each individual user? What about the additional space that it would take up? Sure, that may not matter for little things like GAIM or a text editor or something, but I would rather not having 10 copies of Adobe CS2, Microsoft Office, and Visual Studio/MSDN sitting on computers.
.NET 2.0, it is relatively easy to create a per-user configuration for an application. It will automatically create the file in their user profile.
And each user *does* have their own registry - its loaded into HKEY_CURRENT_USER, and is located at %USERPROFILE%\NTUSER.DAT. HKLM (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE) holds the per-machine registry settings.
Also, in Microsoft
The people who reported them - and even more so the police - should be held "responsible". I'm not saying they should be punished, but if anyone is responsible it is them for overreacting without any real evidence of a threat. OMG, there's some lights - it must be a bomb. Lets evacuate the entire city just in case!!! Things like this remind me of how stupid people are. It's kind of depressing in a way. I can understand people reporting something if there was any remote reason to think that it was a bomb. And perhaps I guess it isn't surprising that one or two people reported them. But the police should have been able to quickly determine that they weren't threats in any way shape or form. Granted, maybe that did happen, but the media just blew it out of proportion.