If a seasoned tech can't fiddle with the settings on a PC to determine that there's a setting which can get the thing to boot WinXP, they're (to be frank) worthless. This sounds not so much like a knowledge issue, and more like some "techs" who have poor problem-solving skills and go by the book for their "troubleshooting".
Or like the OP, google the problem and have an answer within a few minutes.
Except the bios tweak was only necessary because they absolutely had to re-image to WinXP. That was the primary failure that snowballed to dicking with BIOS settings. Putting an outdated OS on newer hardware and expecting there to be zero issues is foolish.
The correct course of action moving forward is to create a standard Win7 image and use that instead. Of course, an even better course of action would have been to get a couple test machines in their target hardware configuration and do testing, then create and test a Win7 image when it became apparent that non-standard BIOS settings were required to use their ancient WinXP image.
I'm pretty sure they bought the machines with the intention of using their standard XP image and there was no plan to migrate to Win 7. With no formal plan to migrate the labs to Win7, the correct course of action was not a hasty decision to "throw Win7" on them. The longer term plan would be developing a plan to migrate to Windows7. A plan that should include developing a hardened, testing image, properly licensing the software (versus using the XP VAL license), etc. Keep in mind that Win7 is a rather different animal and you need to do a bit more planning before a mass rollout.
If you're using IE, just click the little padlock and see who signed the certificate. In firefox, you click to the left of the URL. Of course it's a few more clicks to see the actual chain. FF also shows you the intermediate cert and not the root like IE.
You're probably right though, that some quick utility to make it idiot proof would be helpful.
after all their clients are either incompetent or evil....
What would be really interesting would be a simple consumer level tool to detect DPI with crypto interception... So at least you know how much your ISP loves you....
Well the fake certificates will only work if you trust the certificate the box is using to generate the fakes. Seems rather trivial to check your root/trusted certificates, eh?
Something like this would be possible. Don't redirect everything, just a few key sites like facebook and google. Google and facebook would need to have certain IPs setup to direct you to a warning page. Probably complicated though, given the layers of DNS lookups you go through and Akamai providing the back end, etc.
Also, the ISP can easily determine which clients are infected and send them an email. I would think doing so would be in their best interest to avoid the calls to their helpdesk when things break.
Yes and no. Sure the user might be able to cut&paste and get a quicker resolution, but they learn nothing. The next time they have the same problem they are off searching for the commands to resolve the issue again. Now if they know where to find the nice friendly gui, complete with help bubbles or a help button, they stand a good chance of figuring it out without the hand holding.
Okay, you're right I should have clarified by saying Linux desktop users. Ubuntu might be a bad example, since damn near everything in the Ubuntu FAQs starts out with "from a shell prompt..." for doing simple things like adding in codecs to support things like playing MP3s. Don't believe me? Have a stroll through the official Ubuntu beginners FAQ at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Beginners/FAQ. Some of the help sections explain how to use either the gui or cli, but a significant portion of the how-to can only be accomplished from the command line. This is considered one of the most newbie friendly Linux distros!
I'd say that's more an example of using the wrong product. The SBS version makes sense for a small business with a semi-static employee base. Not being able to batch manipulate accounts was Microsoft's way of forcing larger businesses to use the enterprise product.
Now ask yourself what percentage of home users have ever used the command line on their phones. Or have opened up a device to re-soldier parts of it. And when was the LAST time something like that needed to be done.
How many Linux home users are there? I guarantee that the vast majority have had to open a shell to fix something, usually following the instructions some Linux-for-dummies web site. Usually video drivers, or getting yum/rpm/apt-get to pull down and install a package.
I was going about my day until I read this article. Then I had to login to Slashdot just to flame this article.
The #1 desktop OS finally, after years of being predominately GUI only, caved into CLI with powershell. They are now moving in the correct direction and this guy NOW believes a CLI is useless for regular users?
Lets not forget who dominates the computer scene; computer nerds. I could walk grandma through screens of settings... OR I could just send a CLI script to check and/or set any options. Scripting and automation alone make CLI indispensable. And don't think end users won't be using these scripts to simply tasks. They may not be writing these scripts but they sure will be using them!
Powershell is not, nor was it ever intended for the average user. It's there for ease of management in a corporate or enterprise setting. If you're sending your gram scripts, you're doing it wrong. Remote access would be far more effective.
Now which OS often forces the user to pull up a shell to fix things or install drivers. It ain't MS. Which current OS is a GUI grafted on top of a command line base shell? It aint Win3.x/95/98
the difference being this bug was patched already it only affected systems the were not kept up to date.
I would believe that except some of the recent Linux kernels did NOT properly handle the leap second. https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/7/1/19 It was this improper handling of the time change associated with the leap second that sent some software into a tizzy, with the most common side effect being heavy CPU consumption. Some software seems to have have issues regardless of this bug as well.
I agree with the original statement, the if MS had done this the tone of this article would be different.
Or maybe just pick a time standard that doesn't have leap seconds? There's at least 14 different time standards and I believe only UTC uses leap seconds. One or two even track the variations in the rotation of the earth itself (for astronomy stuff).
I don't think they are "sniffing" in the olfactory sense. I think the article just enjoyed a play on words, and the drones are simply looking for heat sources that indicate someone in the woods is cooking up some coke.
The only reason you get hauled into the police dept and told to blow in the machine is when you've already failed the field sobriety test or are obviously under the influence. The machine is just there confirm the circumstantial evidence. All the prosecutor needs it to have the cop testify that the person appeared under the influence and failed the field sobriety test (another test that generally stands up in court).
The courts are reluctant to through out the breathalizer for the same reason they won't toss out radar/lidar guns. The know they aren't foolproof but they accept that the false positive rate is very low.
"On one hand this sucks. The amount of revenue you bring in by making your content accessible is not going to pay the cost of doing so."
HUH? The Subtitles are on the DVD's they are ripping to create their content. It costs them nothing to send a fricking text stream.
Netflix didn't always have the ability to stream the CC information. They do now, and most of the newer hardware players actually support it, which is why Netflix is adding the captions for new stuff. They issue is that they are demanding that Netflix go back and and reprocess all the existing videos for which they might not even have the data. That does cost them money, and the will not see any change in their subscription revenue for that effort.
It's akin to going to the library and bitching that not all of the books have braille.
Not true. I've seen closed captions on several Netflix shows. You need to look at newer shows to get it though, and you need to access it via the apps (I don't think it works via the web).
Netflix has added a lot of closed captioning. Keep in mind that if you're using a hardware player (TV or DVD/BluRay player) that it needs to support it. If you have an older unit with the old style Netflix menus it probably doesn't support it. Also how the captions are presented depends on the player too, and Netflix is just streaming the text separately and not actively adding it to the video.
Keep in mind that non-tech HR types will be happy to call it hacking software if they are trying to fire you.
regardless of how non-tech someone is, if they consider 'following IT policy of not installing things' to be hacking they probably haven't figured out how to make it out of their front door yet, so i wouldn't be scared of them firing you.
I doubt the policy just says "do not install software". More than likely if there is an official user policy it covers surfing inappropriate web sites, installing, software, attempting to bypass security features, personal use, etc. From the question, I assumed the poster didn't have admin rights or didn't want it to be obvious that he was using outside software.
As for the non-tech types twisting things, I have seen someone get canned for surfing ebay because it was they only thing they could make stick. They couldn't fire the guy for being lazy and a jerk, but they had his signature on a computer user agreement that forbid personal use of computer equipment.
You're the one who starting throwing terms like "not being productive" around.
I like how when you do it it's showing initiative but when someone else does it it's playing in work time.
The difference was that I talked to my boss and asked how he wanted me to occupy my idle time. If I decided to learn how to program when my job was boring data entry without talking to my boss, then yes I would call that playing around.
I would be concerned that this would just make them reluctant to call 911 when they accidentally start a fire. We already see this for other accidental (low common sense like burning leaves on a dry windy day) fires. Reasonable fires in the few hundreds would be more appropriate and enforceable,
In your inexplicable urge to sound high and mighty, you totally missed the point. Yes, I read the question, and I totally recognize that some jobs have surges and slow times. Had a few like that myself and had bosses that praised my initiative in learning while idle, and one that told me to go home because he wasn't paying me to fart around.
What I was pointing out was that if he's idle and wants to do something he thinks might be a useful, then he should let his boss know. Particularly if that action could be viewed as violating some IT policy and might be used as an excuse to shitcan him. Keep in mind that non-tech HR types will be happy to call it hacking software if they are trying to fire you.
Bottom line is that being sneaky about this is not a good idea.
But look at how many bureaucrats you're keeping employed.
I'm thinking more alon gthe lines of how many bureaucrats my tax dollars are keeping employed. They micromanage the hell out of little things, yet the gross problems like the GAO office throwing lavish conferences and major contracting fraud go unnoticed.
Moore went on, "Congress was criticized for not being tech savvy, but from a lot of the comments we got it became clear that the people who were calling us did not understand the bill any better than we did."
Now that is is a bizarre statement. Should they have understood the bill better than the people who made it?
The netizens however, listened to experts who explained the bill and told them the risks. Congress only listened to the lobbyists.
Something simple and somewhat context-aware like Notepad++ would satisfy what he needs. Maybe the free version of Komodo, although I've gotten to dislike it's slow load time.
Or his employer might decide he's not being productive if he has time to "play" with non-work related stuff. Why not ask you boss for permission? Otherwise, generally if you're not allowed to install software there is also a policy that you will not run unauthorized software either.
filling out the paperwork to prove that the monitor I'm buying is handicap accessible.
But that's impossible under the ADA since blindness is a recognized disability.
Also deafness and buying computer speakers, but we have to look for products that have been formally evaluated per section 508 of the US Rehabilitation Act for things like whether the buttons have the braille dots, etc. So you recognize the stupidity of this yes? Even worse, the last Obama executive order to control IT spending has resulted in a process where we are spending $100 in labor to justify buying a $5 computer mouse. We're now spending 10% of our IT budget on approvals and paperwork.
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If a seasoned tech can't fiddle with the settings on a PC to determine that there's a setting which can get the thing to boot WinXP, they're (to be frank) worthless. This sounds not so much like a knowledge issue, and more like some "techs" who have poor problem-solving skills and go by the book for their "troubleshooting".
Or like the OP, google the problem and have an answer within a few minutes.
Except the bios tweak was only necessary because they absolutely had to re-image to WinXP. That was the primary failure that snowballed to dicking with BIOS settings. Putting an outdated OS on newer hardware and expecting there to be zero issues is foolish.
The correct course of action moving forward is to create a standard Win7 image and use that instead. Of course, an even better course of action would have been to get a couple test machines in their target hardware configuration and do testing, then create and test a Win7 image when it became apparent that non-standard BIOS settings were required to use their ancient WinXP image.
I'm pretty sure they bought the machines with the intention of using their standard XP image and there was no plan to migrate to Win 7. With no formal plan to migrate the labs to Win7, the correct course of action was not a hasty decision to "throw Win7" on them. The longer term plan would be developing a plan to migrate to Windows7. A plan that should include developing a hardened, testing image, properly licensing the software (versus using the XP VAL license), etc. Keep in mind that Win7 is a rather different animal and you need to do a bit more planning before a mass rollout.
If you're using IE, just click the little padlock and see who signed the certificate. In firefox, you click to the left of the URL. Of course it's a few more clicks to see the actual chain. FF also shows you the intermediate cert and not the root like IE.
You're probably right though, that some quick utility to make it idiot proof would be helpful.
after all their clients are either incompetent or evil....
What would be really interesting would be a simple consumer level tool to detect DPI with crypto interception...
So at least you know how much your ISP loves you....
Well the fake certificates will only work if you trust the certificate the box is using to generate the fakes. Seems rather trivial to check your root/trusted certificates, eh?
Something like this would be possible. Don't redirect everything, just a few key sites like facebook and google. Google and facebook would need to have certain IPs setup to direct you to a warning page. Probably complicated though, given the layers of DNS lookups you go through and Akamai providing the back end, etc.
Also, the ISP can easily determine which clients are infected and send them an email. I would think doing so would be in their best interest to avoid the calls to their helpdesk when things break.
Yes and no. Sure the user might be able to cut&paste and get a quicker resolution, but they learn nothing. The next time they have the same problem they are off searching for the commands to resolve the issue again. Now if they know where to find the nice friendly gui, complete with help bubbles or a help button, they stand a good chance of figuring it out without the hand holding.
Okay, you're right I should have clarified by saying Linux desktop users. Ubuntu might be a bad example, since damn near everything in the Ubuntu FAQs starts out with "from a shell prompt..." for doing simple things like adding in codecs to support things like playing MP3s. Don't believe me? Have a stroll through the official Ubuntu beginners FAQ at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Beginners/FAQ. Some of the help sections explain how to use either the gui or cli, but a significant portion of the how-to can only be accomplished from the command line. This is considered one of the most newbie friendly Linux distros!
I'd say that's more an example of using the wrong product. The SBS version makes sense for a small business with a semi-static employee base. Not being able to batch manipulate accounts was Microsoft's way of forcing larger businesses to use the enterprise product.
Now ask yourself what percentage of home users have ever used the command line on their phones. Or have opened up a device to re-soldier parts of it. And when was the LAST time something like that needed to be done.
How many Linux home users are there? I guarantee that the vast majority have had to open a shell to fix something, usually following the instructions some Linux-for-dummies web site. Usually video drivers, or getting yum/rpm/apt-get to pull down and install a package.
I was going about my day until I read this article. Then I had to login to Slashdot just to flame this article.
The #1 desktop OS finally, after years of being predominately GUI only, caved into CLI with powershell. They are now moving in the correct direction and this guy NOW believes a CLI is useless for regular users?
Lets not forget who dominates the computer scene; computer nerds. I could walk grandma through screens of settings... OR I could just send a CLI script to check and/or set any options. Scripting and automation alone make CLI indispensable. And don't think end users won't be using these scripts to simply tasks. They may not be writing these scripts but they sure will be using them!
Powershell is not, nor was it ever intended for the average user. It's there for ease of management in a corporate or enterprise setting. If you're sending your gram scripts, you're doing it wrong. Remote access would be far more effective.
Now which OS often forces the user to pull up a shell to fix things or install drivers. It ain't MS. Which current OS is a GUI grafted on top of a command line base shell? It aint Win3.x/95/98
the difference being this bug was patched already it only affected systems the were not kept up to date.
I would believe that except some of the recent Linux kernels did NOT properly handle the leap second. https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/7/1/19 It was this improper handling of the time change associated with the leap second that sent some software into a tizzy, with the most common side effect being heavy CPU consumption. Some software seems to have have issues regardless of this bug as well.
I agree with the original statement, the if MS had done this the tone of this article would be different.
Or maybe just pick a time standard that doesn't have leap seconds? There's at least 14 different time standards and I believe only UTC uses leap seconds. One or two even track the variations in the rotation of the earth itself (for astronomy stuff).
I don't think they are "sniffing" in the olfactory sense. I think the article just enjoyed a play on words, and the drones are simply looking for heat sources that indicate someone in the woods is cooking up some coke.
The only reason you get hauled into the police dept and told to blow in the machine is when you've already failed the field sobriety test or are obviously under the influence. The machine is just there confirm the circumstantial evidence. All the prosecutor needs it to have the cop testify that the person appeared under the influence and failed the field sobriety test (another test that generally stands up in court).
The courts are reluctant to through out the breathalizer for the same reason they won't toss out radar/lidar guns. The know they aren't foolproof but they accept that the false positive rate is very low.
"On one hand this sucks. The amount of revenue you bring in by making your content accessible is not going to pay the cost of doing so."
HUH? The Subtitles are on the DVD's they are ripping to create their content. It costs them nothing to send a fricking text stream.
Netflix didn't always have the ability to stream the CC information. They do now, and most of the newer hardware players actually support it, which is why Netflix is adding the captions for new stuff. They issue is that they are demanding that Netflix go back and and reprocess all the existing videos for which they might not even have the data. That does cost them money, and the will not see any change in their subscription revenue for that effort.
It's akin to going to the library and bitching that not all of the books have braille.
Not true. I've seen closed captions on several Netflix shows. You need to look at newer shows to get it though, and you need to access it via the apps (I don't think it works via the web).
Netflix has added a lot of closed captioning. Keep in mind that if you're using a hardware player (TV or DVD/BluRay player) that it needs to support it. If you have an older unit with the old style Netflix menus it probably doesn't support it. Also how the captions are presented depends on the player too, and Netflix is just streaming the text separately and not actively adding it to the video.
Keep in mind that non-tech HR types will be happy to call it hacking software if they are trying to fire you.
regardless of how non-tech someone is, if they consider 'following IT policy of not installing things' to be hacking they probably haven't figured out how to make it out of their front door yet, so i wouldn't be scared of them firing you.
I doubt the policy just says "do not install software". More than likely if there is an official user policy it covers surfing inappropriate web sites, installing, software, attempting to bypass security features, personal use, etc. From the question, I assumed the poster didn't have admin rights or didn't want it to be obvious that he was using outside software.
As for the non-tech types twisting things, I have seen someone get canned for surfing ebay because it was they only thing they could make stick. They couldn't fire the guy for being lazy and a jerk, but they had his signature on a computer user agreement that forbid personal use of computer equipment.
You're the one who starting throwing terms like "not being productive" around.
I like how when you do it it's showing initiative but when someone else does it it's playing in work time.
The difference was that I talked to my boss and asked how he wanted me to occupy my idle time. If I decided to learn how to program when my job was boring data entry without talking to my boss, then yes I would call that playing around.
I would be concerned that this would just make them reluctant to call 911 when they accidentally start a fire. We already see this for other accidental (low common sense like burning leaves on a dry windy day) fires. Reasonable fires in the few hundreds would be more appropriate and enforceable,
In your inexplicable urge to sound high and mighty, you totally missed the point. Yes, I read the question, and I totally recognize that some jobs have surges and slow times. Had a few like that myself and had bosses that praised my initiative in learning while idle, and one that told me to go home because he wasn't paying me to fart around.
What I was pointing out was that if he's idle and wants to do something he thinks might be a useful, then he should let his boss know. Particularly if that action could be viewed as violating some IT policy and might be used as an excuse to shitcan him. Keep in mind that non-tech HR types will be happy to call it hacking software if they are trying to fire you.
Bottom line is that being sneaky about this is not a good idea.
But look at how many bureaucrats you're keeping employed.
I'm thinking more alon gthe lines of how many bureaucrats my tax dollars are keeping employed. They micromanage the hell out of little things, yet the gross problems like the GAO office throwing lavish conferences and major contracting fraud go unnoticed.
Moore went on, "Congress was criticized for not being tech savvy, but from a lot of the comments we got it became clear that the people who were calling us did not understand the bill any better than we did."
Now that is is a bizarre statement. Should they have understood the bill better than the people who made it?
The netizens however, listened to experts who explained the bill and told them the risks. Congress only listened to the lobbyists.
Something simple and somewhat context-aware like Notepad++ would satisfy what he needs. Maybe the free version of Komodo, although I've gotten to dislike it's slow load time.
Or his employer might decide he's not being productive if he has time to "play" with non-work related stuff. Why not ask you boss for permission? Otherwise, generally if you're not allowed to install software there is also a policy that you will not run unauthorized software either.
filling out the paperwork to prove that the monitor I'm buying is handicap accessible.
But that's impossible under the ADA since blindness is a recognized disability.
Also deafness and buying computer speakers, but we have to look for products that have been formally evaluated per section 508 of the US Rehabilitation Act for things like whether the buttons have the braille dots, etc. So you recognize the stupidity of this yes? Even worse, the last Obama executive order to control IT spending has resulted in a process where we are spending $100 in labor to justify buying a $5 computer mouse. We're now spending 10% of our IT budget on approvals and paperwork.