Windows is whats best for me, why should I not use whats best. Actually the point was, why not use whatever is best of you. If that happens to be windows (and often it does) then so be it.
Obviously in such context you will never be wrong, since pleasing you has become the sole (and arbitrary) criteria. Arbitrary??
Who is an individual user suppoed to please -- themselves, or you? Each user has to see what meets their requirements best. You would have everyone running office in a VM. I would have everyone doing whatever they please.
First, let me forgive your sarcasm. You might not be used to rational discourse. It doesn't facilitate communication, however, and I thought it worth pointing out. After talking about me being hit on the head with a clue stick, its a bit rich of you to whine like this. Having said that keeping it civil would be nice, so no more sarcasm from me.
Being able to boot into Linux and run photoshop inside an x-window lets you operate in a manner that dual-booting doesn't allow. Where did dual booting even get into the picture? We're not talking about keeping a windows partition around for the sake of photoshop. We're talking about photoshop (for example - we could use other applications) being someone's main scenario -- if that's the case, windows meets that requirement, and all the other things (email, browsing, multimedia functions) work just fine (as they do), then why would this person not just use windows?
Again, absolutely no reason to not use linux if you want to -- but there's no strong case for abandoning windows if it meets your needs.
Your paragraph about OneNote Please note the sarcasm in your response there.
In any case -- you clearly have no need for onenote. I shall not badger you to use it. I am a 'power user' for OneNote. I and other people who rely on it, find it one of the greatest productivity-boosting applications, second only to email. And we tend to not use paper any more. We also never have to replicate stuff from written notes into emails. We are also able to capture notes from the web, docs, screen captures, mockups and so much more it isn't even funny. If you have a tablet, add sketches/diagrams, handwritten notes, *excellent* handwriting recognition to the list. One man's toy is another man's critical app.
Apparently you have tried OneNote, and don't find it useful. I respect that. You prefer running Linux, and using VM for some windows app. I don't have any problem with you doing that, and if you read my responses you'll notice that at no time have I tried to convince you to stop doing that (I am merely sticking up for people who prefer windows for whatever reason). Why are you so determined to prove that the solution that works for you should be used by everybody else, when that's clearly not the case?
You're just badgering me because you think you'll prove my answer is wrong. You won't, because the question wasn't "how do I run these programs without Windows?" He could have asked that but he didn't. His whole point was that there isn't a good alternative to running that stuff on Windows -- that's why he didn't ask the question you want him to ask. I'm not badgering you into running windows -- I'm telling you to stop badgering people about running linux at any cost.
You don't have quit Windows cold turkey You don't have to quit windows at all if it meets your needs.
Now the whole point of this thread is that XP is dying, Vista is a horror soon to end and we have no clue whether the next version of Windows is better or worse. The whole point of the article was a chance for you (and many more) to trot out the usual "Vista is a nightmare" lines. I run Vista (64-bit) on 2 desktops and a laptop and it's brilliant. I use linux too, but Vista is by far my OS of choice. To each their own though -- you won't catch me badgering anyone into running Vista -- you will however see me defend anybody being badgered about not running it, especially when they're being offered crazy solutions to problems that don't exist.
The answer lies within the question. The reason you're not getting an answer from anyone here is because it's answered by the question.
It's obvious to everybody else here. Examine the question again and you might see it now. If not there's nothing anybody here can do to help you see it. Oh good grief -- stop taking yourself so seriously!
The question was, "what was the problem you are trying to solve by using VMs, Citrix clients, etc." -- your answer is that you see Windows as the problem. And that's exactly my point -- you are on a crusade to get rid of windows, hence the impractical solutions to problems that don't exist. OP's point was simply that there are some fairly important apps on windows for which there aren't good alternatives on other OSes. He's got a valid point, but people keep replying with completely impractical 'solutions'. If your objective is to 'get stuff done' -- you'll just choose whatever platform and do it -- be it windows/linux/os-x whatever. If you're on a mission to run one OS at any cost, don't expect other people to run VMs and hosted apps etc.
And please spare me the answer-lies-within-the-questionno-one-here-can-help-you psychobabble!
Yeah, I know what they are, how they work, and I've used them many many times. There are valid reasons you would want to use a Citrix type thin-client approach, but avoiding windows isn't one of them. The question remains -- what problem did you have in the first place, that the citrix client is solving?
I only mentioned cygwin because someone else on the thread had mentioned it. I have no idea what that was gonna achieve, but the Citrix and VMWare sessions suggested on this thread aren't solving any problem either.
What was the solution for photoshop? GIMP?? Oh no -- let me guess -- we're supposed to run photoshop in a VM or using Wine..
btw: I'm still waiting for your response on OneNote.
You ask me to stop ruling out choices for pragmatic reasons, when here people are suggesting VMWare/Citrix as a solution!! What's pragmatic about that?
most users will want to not be compromised, and will thus start securing their machines. The naive assumption is that most users will know how to do this.
I'm also assuming that the more sensitive stuff is stored on the network (where it should be anyway) If you just prepared a strategy/vision doc. or new marketing plans for a clinet, or million other such things that you need to email to people as attachments, they will end up on laptops/desktops instead of servers.
It's not that I want that, it's that I don't care. IT doesn't have that luxury. Your machines might not always be confined to your network. Blocking port 25 is not the final answer.
....I'm suggesting giving them enough responsibility, clearly spelled out.... If you hire someone at $75,000 per year, for accounting/martketing/whatever non-IT job, you don't want them spending cycles and getting context-switched by having to manage their machines. Many of them only understand computers in a very basic way.
<rock star analogy, everyone is a "computer person" etc..> *rolls eyes*
By this definition, you have to be working at Taco Bell (and not at the cash register) to not be responsible for maintaining a computer. To your drivers ed anology, if you need excel for accounting purposes, you need to know how to use excel, launch excel, close excel, check email, start/shutdown your pc, etc.
And as a developer, I tend to prefer very minimal AV, yes to patches, no to blacklists. If Flash 8.x has some vuln and you haven't updated your flash plugin forever, a script checking for blacklisted apps is the safety net.
....your specific scenario in your small company.... ..is completely irrelevant (as you yourself realize). Developers are not the ones who need IT support. We need only the most minimal stuff (AV, patches, blacklists, as I mentioned earlier), and even that is optional depending on the size of the company. You do realize that most companies are not like this right? Your expectation that average people can maintain their own workstations is actually unreasonable. You completely underestimate what it takes to keep data secure, and what responsibilities companies have to shareholders/customers/partners to pursue this security beyond an approach like "let the users handle it, and we'll just give them a pamphlet, send them to a class, and pray nothing goes wrong". Even flexibility in languages/frameworks/tools means nothing -- coders always have this. Flexibility in IT means, if someone needs just MS office for their job, are they able to install this cool new freeware (potentially malware) office plugin that makes xyz task easier, or do they not have the privilege to do that? That's where you end up making a decision which is essentially a balance between flexibility and security, get it?
Office 2007 and VS 2008 are Microsoft apps, written by Microsoft for Microsoft operating systems, dependent on Microsoft protocols and which write Microsoft formats that aren't open for other platforms.
DAldredge, as usual, is shilling for Microsoft. If he was anything other than an obvious troll, he would not have used intentionally platform-specific examples. VS 2008 is the developer platform for windows -- why on earth would you want to run it on any other platform? Office 2008 was recently released for the Mac, replacing office 2003 for the Mac. The linux desktop numbers simply do not justify the cost of porting office to linux yet. What was your point?
If this isn't an answer to your question, then face it: you don't have a question, you have a bias. Nice soundbite, but it suffers from a serious case of, er.. bias:)
If you need ms office, open office isn't a good solution. Neither is running ms office in a VM. Some people actually just need to get stuff done, and a $200-400 suite every 3 or 4 years is a reasonable fee for the productivity it provides them. They aren't on a crusade for or against any particular OS -- that's what lack of bias looks like -- just using whatever OS/app meets your criteria the best. For many people, that just happens to be windows/office/visual studio/firefox/itunes/acrobat/picasa/divx etc. See the multitude of companies and proprietary/open-source in that list? That's what real choice looks like. Obviously this is just one example, but suggesting that GP is biased because he doesn't accept a VM and Cygwin as answers is ridiculous.
today the "critical app" fallacy is too transparently propaganda to be taken seriously Consider OneNote or Photoshop -- if either of these applications are critical to you, some OS choices get eliminated. Just two random examples - how can you not take this point seriously?
The thing is, a lot of responses on this thread seem to view running linux as the final goal. That's not how the world functions. The world in general sees PC/OS/Apps as a means to an end. How can you expect them to use Cygwin/Wine/VMWare and then call them biased?
And finally, the mandatory disclaimer -- yes, I do use linux. Yes, I do use windows as well.
Dear God not the shareholders!!! Honestly, if a "threat to shareholders" is the only offensive weapon Microsoft has, Microsoft may as well give up. Heh.. that's backwards dude.. MS isn't threatening the shareholders -- indications are that the shareholders are in favor of this takeover.
If your network can be hosed by a single misbehaving machine, you have bigger problems. IT is tasked with more than this -- network security, data security, and workforce productivity for starters. If you leave users to manage their own machines, why do you think just one single machine will get compromised? How do you know the value of the documents on that one compromised machine? Even if no data is lost, and your network stays up, why would you want any of your machines turned into botnets?
Or make it clear to users just how big a lawsuit they have coming their way if their laptop should be compromised. Users are not the enemy. They don't want to screw up their machines - most of them just don't know what the safe choices are. In a corporation, you hire people for their domain-knowlege. Marketing/accounts/finance/HR etc. aren't expected to be IT experts. IT staff are, hence IT should be the ones to deal with this.
Not really. It may make sense according to some abstract ideal, but you end up saving on IT costs -- and, well, putting large chunks of IT out of a job -- even if the machine is in a relatively limited role. Abstract ideal??
Consider an informational kiosk in a bookstore. It runs a single application 100% of the time. Lock the damn thing down. Consider a POS (point of sale) system -- it does sales and inventory functions 100% of the time -- lock it down. Consider a consultant working at customer sites most of the time - don't even accidentally lock their laptop down. Consider a desktop for somebody in accounts -- this is a grey area between the kiosk and consultant situations. Might need some policy enforced, and might warrant some flexibility. Different strokes for different folks -- got it? The ideal scenario is to divvy up the workforce into roles, and have images and policies that apply based on membership to these 'roles' groups. Many companies already do this.
Now if you're approaching this as a developer who's used to knowing everything that happens on his machine, and considers IT to be very much less skilled/knowledgeable than yourself, well, understand that most of the working world is not in your situation. Developers will always want to have completely unfettered access to their machines, with minimal (but some) policy enforced -- AV, patches, blacklists..
That is, flexibility is only part of the benefit. The other part of it is, your helpdesk has a lot less work to do. It's always a balance dude -- you always want 100% security (for your data/network/servers). You always want 100% flexibilty. You always want to spend $0.0 on IT. You can never achieve any of these goals - you can only balance them as best as you can for your organization.
How else would you explain the incompetence galore at implementing it? Nobody ever designs a DRM system intending to make it unhackable/perfect. It's always assumed that there are going to be regular, successful hacks, and you need to have a team that's dedicated to making patches that make the hacks not work anymore. This essentially explains the never-ending update cycle for iTunes. Next, you need to generate enough revenue to make sustaining such a team worth it.
For security reasons its always important to manage the AV, updates, etc. on the machine.
If you have important IP on laptops, it becomes even more important to have a good policy to manage machine health, rather than leaving it to individual discretion.
And finally, if you have well-defined and relatively narrow roles for which machines are required, again it makes sense to lock them down.
So depending on how much of the above is true, the answer will vary, but in general IT shops should not trust users to manage their own machines especially because users really don't know much when it comes to keeping a machine secure.
Office 2007 but it is a pain in the ass to teach people to use.... Open Office is going to get my vote when it comes time to upgrade here. I would think the ribbon is a lot easier to teach than telling people when they need to use Save As, and when they don't etc. and which file-format to pick under Save As etc.
Reality will disappoint morons. I'm really surprised how often you manage to get away with rude stuff like that without getting modded a Troll
While the quick win makes for a perfect headline and reflects the Hollywood image of "hackers" that twiddle on a keyboard and almost instantly "access the mainframe" while a counter runs in the background, a more intelligent question is: why did the Mac get hacked first, and why was the attack so quick? No - that's not the more intelligent question. There are many, much more intelligent questions that were asked/answered/debated in a civil way on this thread without requiring conspiracy theories and things like that.
CanSecWest and Swiss Federal Institute of Tech Deliver Attacks on the Reality of Mac Security (link to dufflydrafted) For the love of all that is good and pure, please spare us the links to your site. I've mentioned this to you before -- you are not an unbiased sourse, so you cannot use your own links to backup the points you make here. The only people that will read and agree with your points are the ones who you don't need to sell your point to in the first place. The rest of us actually know a thing or two..
LMAO.. I think you got everything right except the last question:
Why is the sky blue? Do I look like Einstein? Apparently the sky is blue because of some phenomenon called Raman Spectroscopy. I tried real hard to understand it while studying physics and ended up with a headache.
I actually had this same thought a while back when about QuickTime being a required install for iTunes. I mean, Quicktime has more holes than swiss cheese. And if there's some part of it that's needed for iTunes, the right thing to do is just ship it as a library. Safari is just adding to the mess -- if Apple doesn't fix that default, we'll have to remember to uncheck that option every time there's a new version of iTunes released!
I used to be a happy iTunes user until now. I hope Apple stops doing this so I can become one again..
But until that moment (which is always "later"), it's pure FUD If you choose to see it that way, there's not much anybody can do to convince you otherwise.
If you choose though, it could be somebody just presenting the results of their study.
In fact, you could choose to see it this way too -- using the FUD label on any article that suggests Apple (or someone other than MS) might have a security problem, is FUD -- it's just being flung in the other direction.
So while FUD definitely gets flung around a lot, this article certainly didn't seem to have any, and we certainly don't need to contribute to it..
If you make a blanket statement like "any buffer overrun bug in an included package is a 'serious' vulnerability", which I suspect is likely, but Apple doesn't run the service by default and/or has another layer of protection behind it then it's unlikely that the vulnerability would turn into an actual exploit. TFA states that the study "looked at only high- and medium-risk bugs, according to the classification used by the National Vulnerability Database". Generally, the service being on by default (exposure), and exploitability are taken into consideration when assigning a risk-level to an exploit. Plus, TFA did not make the general statement that you quoted!!
It's early days still in Apple's second-coming. There's no denying that their market share will only increase for the next few years. There's also no denying that at the moment their installed base is still trivial. Mind share for people making exploits will also take time to get to the same level on the Mac as what it is for PCs.
This is fairly obvious stuff -- history has shown that no software developer takes security seriously unless they have absolutely no option. MS crossed that threshold a long time ago and really got their shit together. Apple hasn't reached the threshold yet, but all indications are that its just a matter of time. There's a world of AJAX apps out there waiting for their trial by fire too..
Apple just didn't want to miss out on 85% of the computer market. If Microsoft didn't have a near-monopoly, there wouldn't be iTunes for PC. I don't think iTunes is a good anology in BluRay vs. HD-DVD.
The HD-DVD standard was abandoned by Toshiba in mid-Feb '08. This thread exists in mid-March '08. In one month, MS has not yet released a BluRay add-on for the 360 -- is it a surprise that it takes longer than one month for them to do this?
MS has not even announced their intentions to release a BluRay add-on. Companies usually don't announce such things to avoid jeopardising current sales, so this is par for the course. There are exceptions, and this might well qualify -- so maybe MS will make an announcement if they decide that the lack of said add-on is hurting 360 sales, which by all indications, it is.
Since BluRay interactive features require a JVM and HDi did not, it's quite likely that the dashboard software for the 360 also needs to be updated for said add-on to work (unless this can be handled completely in the add-on's firmware). Anyway, if this is the case, it's unlikely that MS will respond before September at the earliest, since they release dashboard updates every 6 months, and it's probably too late for the April dashboard update.
The electorate is so stupid about some things. Strongly agreed. I have a very hard time believing some of the issues that get discussed ad-infinitum that are quite simply irrelevant.
I would consider Clinton to be the worst candidate of the three at the moment, for a couple of reasons:
Her vote on Iraq. Any democrat (any senator at all, but especially the democrats) that voted for the war basically have no credibility, and no spine to do the right/difficult thing
She keeps saying things like "We have given the Iraqis the gift of freedom" -- this is staggeringly unethical. Iraqis have been displaced by the millions, killed by the 100s of thousands, and thier country is reduced to rubble, by a war they had no say in. To pretend that this is what they wanted and that they should be grateful is just shocking.
Her 3am phone call ads prove that tactically speaking, she's not all that different from Bush.
I consider McCain a bad candidate purely because he comes from the Republican party (admittedly his affiliation is looser than the average Republican though):
They all voted for the war. If their ideology is so flawed that the entire lot of them voted for going into a completely needless war, anybody that subscribes to this ideology is just plain bad for America.
Republicans claim to stand for small government. I don't see what difference small government makes when we bleed $12Bn/month in an unecessary war.
I understand there are other issues like healthcare, the sub-prime crisis, the economy etc., but the war is just so much bigger. I'd make a case that if we hadn't bled over 500 billion dollars (!!) on the war over 5 years, the economy/housing crisis/VA-issues/healthcare issues would be nowhere near as dire as they are right now. And we'd have a lot more allies in the world than we do now. And there would be a lot less anti-american resentment fuelling terrorist group recruitment.
The sad part for us is -- Iraq is truly reduced to rubble now. We cannot leave until we repair the damage. It's gonna cost more troops lives, and more than another 500 billion dollars most likely. But its our cross to bear now -- we broke it, and we gotta fix it.
If a user cannot call the Hyper-V tech support regarding an issue they are having running RHEL on Hyper-V and receive a proper response other than "we don't support that," then it is effectively useless and cannot form any part of that company's virtualization strategy. It may work just fine, but there are many companies with specific corporate policies prohibiting use of unsupported software, and in some cases, running into a serious problem with unsupported software can be seen as a violation of Sarbanes-Oxley and may be construed as negligence. You're correct that for most companies, not supported = cannot use.
You're not correct in assuming that MS can take the lead in supporting RHEL (and other linuxes) on Hyper-V.
To support something, you need to test it thoroughtly and be sure yourself that it works. Then at least when a customer calls with an issue, you know that their scenario is supposed to work.
Now Novell has been partnering with MS for about 2 years now. One of the things they will have done, is to run the gamut of their test automation on Hyper-V virtualized instances of SUSE. Based on this they will give MS the 'green-light' saying 'you are ok to support SuSE on Hyper-V'.
RH has no such working relationship with MS. They may want to (I have no idea), but based on the community reaction to Novell's partnership, I doubt they would enter into one even if they wanted to. Without that, how is MS supposed to validate RHEL?
That's not MS-bashing or Linux-fanboyism, it's just plain fiscal responsibility. I understand. And I'll point out that this isn't MS-fanboyism either (since I'll probably get crucified if I don't). It's just reality -- to support s/w you need to test it first. RH is in the best position to test RHEL.
It is that Microsoft's arrogance to think that they don't have to support other distros is exactly a fall back to their old ways. Arrogance?
Supporting a platform is a two-way street y'know. If RHEL works smoothly on Hyper-V it's because of the effort Novell and MS have put in.
There will still be corner cases where things don't work. It's impossible to nail them without having Red Hat on board working with MS to do that -- they know their own OS better than MS, they have the test automation etc., and know their scenarios. But Red Hat won't work with MS on this, because even if they wanted to they'd get crucified by the Open Source community (and especially by/.)
For this fight of the hypervisor (essentially the new OS of the data center), VMWare has all the market share and lock in. Is this a good thing?
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Obviously in such context you will never be wrong, since pleasing you has become the sole (and arbitrary) criteria. Arbitrary??
Who is an individual user suppoed to please -- themselves, or you? Each user has to see what meets their requirements best. You would have everyone running office in a VM. I would have everyone doing whatever they please.
Again, absolutely no reason to not use linux if you want to -- but there's no strong case for abandoning windows if it meets your needs.
Your paragraph about OneNote Please note the sarcasm in your response there.In any case -- you clearly have no need for onenote. I shall not badger you to use it. I am a 'power user' for OneNote. I and other people who rely on it, find it one of the greatest productivity-boosting applications, second only to email. And we tend to not use paper any more. We also never have to replicate stuff from written notes into emails. We are also able to capture notes from the web, docs, screen captures, mockups and so much more it isn't even funny. If you have a tablet, add sketches/diagrams, handwritten notes, *excellent* handwriting recognition to the list. One man's toy is another man's critical app.
Apparently you have tried OneNote, and don't find it useful. I respect that. You prefer running Linux, and using VM for some windows app. I don't have any problem with you doing that, and if you read my responses you'll notice that at no time have I tried to convince you to stop doing that (I am merely sticking up for people who prefer windows for whatever reason). Why are you so determined to prove that the solution that works for you should be used by everybody else, when that's clearly not the case?
It's obvious to everybody else here. Examine the question again and you might see it now. If not there's nothing anybody here can do to help you see it. Oh good grief -- stop taking yourself so seriously!
The question was, "what was the problem you are trying to solve by using VMs, Citrix clients, etc." -- your answer is that you see Windows as the problem. And that's exactly my point -- you are on a crusade to get rid of windows, hence the impractical solutions to problems that don't exist. OP's point was simply that there are some fairly important apps on windows for which there aren't good alternatives on other OSes. He's got a valid point, but people keep replying with completely impractical 'solutions'. If your objective is to 'get stuff done' -- you'll just choose whatever platform and do it -- be it windows/linux/os-x whatever. If you're on a mission to run one OS at any cost, don't expect other people to run VMs and hosted apps etc.
And please spare me the answer-lies-within-the-question no-one-here-can-help-you psychobabble!
Yeah, I know what they are, how they work, and I've used them many many times. There are valid reasons you would want to use a Citrix type thin-client approach, but avoiding windows isn't one of them. The question remains -- what problem did you have in the first place, that the citrix client is solving?
I only mentioned cygwin because someone else on the thread had mentioned it. I have no idea what that was gonna achieve, but the Citrix and VMWare sessions suggested on this thread aren't solving any problem either.
What was the solution for photoshop? GIMP?? Oh no -- let me guess -- we're supposed to run photoshop in a VM or using Wine..
btw: I'm still waiting for your response on OneNote.
You ask me to stop ruling out choices for pragmatic reasons, when here people are suggesting VMWare/Citrix as a solution!! What's pragmatic about that?
....I'm suggesting giving them enough responsibility, clearly spelled out.... If you hire someone at $75,000 per year, for accounting/martketing/whatever non-IT job, you don't want them spending cycles and getting context-switched by having to manage their machines. Many of them only understand computers in a very basic way. <rock star analogy, everyone is a "computer person" etc..> *rolls eyes*By this definition, you have to be working at Taco Bell (and not at the cash register) to not be responsible for maintaining a computer. To your drivers ed anology, if you need excel for accounting purposes, you need to know how to use excel, launch excel, close excel, check email, start/shutdown your pc, etc. And as a developer, I tend to prefer very minimal AV, yes to patches, no to blacklists. If Flash 8.x has some vuln and you haven't updated your flash plugin forever, a script checking for blacklisted apps is the safety net.
....your specific scenario in your small company.... ..is completely irrelevant (as you yourself realize). Developers are not the ones who need IT support. We need only the most minimal stuff (AV, patches, blacklists, as I mentioned earlier), and even that is optional depending on the size of the company. You do realize that most companies are not like this right? Your expectation that average people can maintain their own workstations is actually unreasonable. You completely underestimate what it takes to keep data secure, and what responsibilities companies have to shareholders/customers/partners to pursue this security beyond an approach like "let the users handle it, and we'll just give them a pamphlet, send them to a class, and pray nothing goes wrong". Even flexibility in languages/frameworks/tools means nothing -- coders always have this. Flexibility in IT means, if someone needs just MS office for their job, are they able to install this cool new freeware (potentially malware) office plugin that makes xyz task easier, or do they not have the privilege to do that? That's where you end up making a decision which is essentially a balance between flexibility and security, get it?DAldredge, as usual, is shilling for Microsoft. If he was anything other than an obvious troll, he would not have used intentionally platform-specific examples. VS 2008 is the developer platform for windows -- why on earth would you want to run it on any other platform? Office 2008 was recently released for the Mac, replacing office 2003 for the Mac. The linux desktop numbers simply do not justify the cost of porting office to linux yet. What was your point?
If you need ms office, open office isn't a good solution. Neither is running ms office in a VM. Some people actually just need to get stuff done, and a $200-400 suite every 3 or 4 years is a reasonable fee for the productivity it provides them. They aren't on a crusade for or against any particular OS -- that's what lack of bias looks like -- just using whatever OS/app meets your criteria the best. For many people, that just happens to be windows/office/visual studio/firefox/itunes/acrobat/picasa/divx etc. See the multitude of companies and proprietary/open-source in that list? That's what real choice looks like. Obviously this is just one example, but suggesting that GP is biased because he doesn't accept a VM and Cygwin as answers is ridiculous.
today the "critical app" fallacy is too transparently propaganda to be taken seriously Consider OneNote or Photoshop -- if either of these applications are critical to you, some OS choices get eliminated. Just two random examples - how can you not take this point seriously?
The thing is, a lot of responses on this thread seem to view running linux as the final goal. That's not how the world functions. The world in general sees PC/OS/Apps as a means to an end. How can you expect them to use Cygwin/Wine/VMWare and then call them biased?
And finally, the mandatory disclaimer -- yes, I do use linux. Yes, I do use windows as well.
For proof, look at the change list for XP-SP1 and SP2, and SP3 as well when that gets released later this year.
I'm not sure I get your point.
If your network can be hosed by a single misbehaving machine, you have bigger problems. IT is tasked with more than this -- network security, data security, and workforce productivity for starters. If you leave users to manage their own machines, why do you think just one single machine will get compromised? How do you know the value of the documents on that one compromised machine? Even if no data is lost, and your network stays up, why would you want any of your machines turned into botnets? Or make it clear to users just how big a lawsuit they have coming their way if their laptop should be compromised. Users are not the enemy. They don't want to screw up their machines - most of them just don't know what the safe choices are. In a corporation, you hire people for their domain-knowlege. Marketing/accounts/finance/HR etc. aren't expected to be IT experts. IT staff are, hence IT should be the ones to deal with this. Not really. It may make sense according to some abstract ideal, but you end up saving on IT costs -- and, well, putting large chunks of IT out of a job -- even if the machine is in a relatively limited role. Abstract ideal??Consider an informational kiosk in a bookstore. It runs a single application 100% of the time. Lock the damn thing down. Consider a POS (point of sale) system -- it does sales and inventory functions 100% of the time -- lock it down. Consider a consultant working at customer sites most of the time - don't even accidentally lock their laptop down. Consider a desktop for somebody in accounts -- this is a grey area between the kiosk and consultant situations. Might need some policy enforced, and might warrant some flexibility. Different strokes for different folks -- got it? The ideal scenario is to divvy up the workforce into roles, and have images and policies that apply based on membership to these 'roles' groups. Many companies already do this.
Now if you're approaching this as a developer who's used to knowing everything that happens on his machine, and considers IT to be very much less skilled/knowledgeable than yourself, well, understand that most of the working world is not in your situation. Developers will always want to have completely unfettered access to their machines, with minimal (but some) policy enforced -- AV, patches, blacklists.. That is, flexibility is only part of the benefit. The other part of it is, your helpdesk has a lot less work to do. It's always a balance dude -- you always want 100% security (for your data/network/servers). You always want 100% flexibilty. You always want to spend $0.0 on IT. You can never achieve any of these goals - you can only balance them as best as you can for your organization.
So the answer is basically, "it depends".
For security reasons its always important to manage the AV, updates, etc. on the machine.
If you have important IP on laptops, it becomes even more important to have a good policy to manage machine health, rather than leaving it to individual discretion.
And finally, if you have well-defined and relatively narrow roles for which machines are required, again it makes sense to lock them down.
So depending on how much of the above is true, the answer will vary, but in general IT shops should not trust users to manage their own machines especially because users really don't know much when it comes to keeping a machine secure.
Hmm.. good point! :)
Nothing like a 'why is the sky blue' tangent to remind me what got me hooked to this site
LMAO.. I think you got everything right except the last question:
Why is the sky blue? Do I look like Einstein? Apparently the sky is blue because of some phenomenon called Raman Spectroscopy. I tried real hard to understand it while studying physics and ended up with a headache.I actually had this same thought a while back when about QuickTime being a required install for iTunes. I mean, Quicktime has more holes than swiss cheese. And if there's some part of it that's needed for iTunes, the right thing to do is just ship it as a library. Safari is just adding to the mess -- if Apple doesn't fix that default, we'll have to remember to uncheck that option every time there's a new version of iTunes released!
I used to be a happy iTunes user until now. I hope Apple stops doing this so I can become one again..
If you choose though, it could be somebody just presenting the results of their study.
In fact, you could choose to see it this way too -- using the FUD label on any article that suggests Apple (or someone other than MS) might have a security problem, is FUD -- it's just being flung in the other direction.
So while FUD definitely gets flung around a lot, this article certainly didn't seem to have any, and we certainly don't need to contribute to it..
It's early days still in Apple's second-coming. There's no denying that their market share will only increase for the next few years. There's also no denying that at the moment their installed base is still trivial. Mind share for people making exploits will also take time to get to the same level on the Mac as what it is for PCs.
This is fairly obvious stuff -- history has shown that no software developer takes security seriously unless they have absolutely no option. MS crossed that threshold a long time ago and really got their shit together. Apple hasn't reached the threshold yet, but all indications are that its just a matter of time. There's a world of AJAX apps out there waiting for their trial by fire too..
The HD-DVD standard was abandoned by Toshiba in mid-Feb '08. This thread exists in mid-March '08. In one month, MS has not yet released a BluRay add-on for the 360 -- is it a surprise that it takes longer than one month for them to do this?
MS has not even announced their intentions to release a BluRay add-on. Companies usually don't announce such things to avoid jeopardising current sales, so this is par for the course. There are exceptions, and this might well qualify -- so maybe MS will make an announcement if they decide that the lack of said add-on is hurting 360 sales, which by all indications, it is.
Since BluRay interactive features require a JVM and HDi did not, it's quite likely that the dashboard software for the 360 also needs to be updated for said add-on to work (unless this can be handled completely in the add-on's firmware). Anyway, if this is the case, it's unlikely that MS will respond before September at the earliest, since they release dashboard updates every 6 months, and it's probably too late for the April dashboard update.
I would consider Clinton to be the worst candidate of the three at the moment, for a couple of reasons:
I consider McCain a bad candidate purely because he comes from the Republican party (admittedly his affiliation is looser than the average Republican though):
I understand there are other issues like healthcare, the sub-prime crisis, the economy etc., but the war is just so much bigger. I'd make a case that if we hadn't bled over 500 billion dollars (!!) on the war over 5 years, the economy/housing crisis/VA-issues/healthcare issues would be nowhere near as dire as they are right now. And we'd have a lot more allies in the world than we do now. And there would be a lot less anti-american resentment fuelling terrorist group recruitment.
The sad part for us is -- Iraq is truly reduced to rubble now. We cannot leave until we repair the damage. It's gonna cost more troops lives, and more than another 500 billion dollars most likely. But its our cross to bear now -- we broke it, and we gotta fix it.
You're not correct in assuming that MS can take the lead in supporting RHEL (and other linuxes) on Hyper-V.
To support something, you need to test it thoroughtly and be sure yourself that it works. Then at least when a customer calls with an issue, you know that their scenario is supposed to work.
Now Novell has been partnering with MS for about 2 years now. One of the things they will have done, is to run the gamut of their test automation on Hyper-V virtualized instances of SUSE. Based on this they will give MS the 'green-light' saying 'you are ok to support SuSE on Hyper-V'.
RH has no such working relationship with MS. They may want to (I have no idea), but based on the community reaction to Novell's partnership, I doubt they would enter into one even if they wanted to. Without that, how is MS supposed to validate RHEL?
That's not MS-bashing or Linux-fanboyism, it's just plain fiscal responsibility. I understand. And I'll point out that this isn't MS-fanboyism either (since I'll probably get crucified if I don't). It's just reality -- to support s/w you need to test it first. RH is in the best position to test RHEL.Supporting a platform is a two-way street y'know. If RHEL works smoothly on Hyper-V it's because of the effort Novell and MS have put in.
There will still be corner cases where things don't work. It's impossible to nail them without having Red Hat on board working with MS to do that -- they know their own OS better than MS, they have the test automation etc., and know their scenarios. But Red Hat won't work with MS on this, because even if they wanted to they'd get crucified by the Open Source community (and especially by /.)
For this fight of the hypervisor (essentially the new OS of the data center), VMWare has all the market share and lock in. Is this a good thing?