I think there is a subtle but significant difference. One has to do with protection of critical information and/or being motivated to do so whereas the other speaks to authentication of the individual in critical identity bound (particularly financial) transactions.
This is one of my pet issues to debate, yet I find myself often torn. On the one hand side I agree with those saying we need better recourse against those companies who sometimes outright blatantly disregard what some may argue is common sense in protecting our information. Then I find myself looking at this from the other perspective. Why is it so easy to steal an identity ? When was the last time somebody asked to see your ID when you used a check and actually compared the information on your ID to your check ? Why can somebody get a bank account, credit card, loan in my name by simply knowing a number ? Does anybody find this disturbing ?
Like I said, I'm mostly torn on this still, but I am increasingly convinced that the ease at which the information can be used plays a major role in why identity theft is thriving.
As already mentionned one of the alternatives is (on the extreme end) multiple daily releases that may or may not work well. The other is that it works like most commercial software where the bug fix is written, but because the release cycle doesn't have another release for 3 months you won't see it unless you manage to beg and plead so much that they give you access to it with a legal disclaimer that might as well be a book (ok, I'm exaggerating a bit, but I've been frustrated many a times talking with dev engineers at a company who said the fix I need is done, but that it won't be out for a while). Personally I'd rather have the option of grabbing a bleeding edge off CVS that has a bug fix and see how I fare with it than having to deal with constant upgrading or not getting anything for a while.
Living in the Chicagoland area where air quality is more a mocking term than something to brag about, I seem to remember during my stints in europe several years ago that everybody seemed to be a lot more concerned with things like air quality, environmental impact. I remember there being a law severely restricting output of several chemicals in germany as early as ten years ago whereas some of those are still being thrown in the air happily every day around here. that's just one of several items where laws and regulations are a lot tougher in europe when it comes to the environment and keeping it healthy.
Okay, now that I have you w/ the subject line let me start by saying that there is a very faint point somewhere in the article. I work for a smaller private university and we quite frequently make up for shortcomings in terms of staff hours by relying on vendors for extensive support. In that respect there are probably aspects of our operation where OSS unless stellar vendor support exists would not be considered. That said, we have been using OSS for many years (way before it was "cool" to have open source software) and are quite fond of the products we use. It is probably fair to say that we couldn't do provide as many services as we do w/o OSS, because the money wouldn't be available to do so. - In reality we do what every intelligent business should do when making a software purchasing decision. We compare the benefits and downsides of the various software choices (OSS & commercial) along with what it will cost us to run each option in our environment and given our performance & reliability expectations. We've always found a good argument in one direction or another. In addition, one of the nice things about this environment is that we usually are not afraid to change if the factors change and it is viable to do so. We are actually in the process of transitionning a service from commercial to OSS simply because it is now far more viable and more cost effective to use OSS.
I've worked with the Divar System from Bosch Security. I don't believe they are windows based and seem to work quite well. They have some nice features and are pretty well scalable from what I've seen.
I think this hits the nail on the proverbial head. The only thing that is scary to me about it is that your documents/data (depending on your gullibility which is probably reasonable for most readers of this but goes to infinity in quite a few specimens) if analyzed correctly probably can tell one more about you than you realize yourself. With the right data mining you can likely create a rather detailed and revealing profile of anybody. I don't buy much into conspiracy theories, but let's not forget that google knows better than most that information is power. You're giving them the key and I could quite quickly create a long list of people who will see this and say: "oh cool, I can get to my stuff remotely, let me just set that up for everything, never know when you might need something".
An interesting question: Whose fault is it ? Google's for offering a service that has this potential or the countless number of people who like sheep would give them access to their info without discrimination.
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I think there is a subtle but significant difference. One has to do with protection of critical information and/or being motivated to do so whereas the other speaks to authentication of the individual in critical identity bound (particularly financial) transactions.
This is one of my pet issues to debate, yet I find myself often torn. On the one hand side I agree with those saying we need better recourse against those companies who sometimes outright blatantly disregard what some may argue is common sense in protecting our information. Then I find myself looking at this from the other perspective. Why is it so easy to steal an identity ? When was the last time somebody asked to see your ID when you used a check and actually compared the information on your ID to your check ? Why can somebody get a bank account, credit card, loan in my name by simply knowing a number ? Does anybody find this disturbing ?
Like I said, I'm mostly torn on this still, but I am increasingly convinced that the ease at which the information can be used plays a major role in why identity theft is thriving.
As already mentionned one of the alternatives is (on the extreme end) multiple daily releases that may or may not work well. The other is that it works like most commercial software where the bug fix is written, but because the release cycle doesn't have another release for 3 months you won't see it unless you manage to beg and plead so much that they give you access to it with a legal disclaimer that might as well be a book (ok, I'm exaggerating a bit, but I've been frustrated many a times talking with dev engineers at a company who said the fix I need is done, but that it won't be out for a while). Personally I'd rather have the option of grabbing a bleeding edge off CVS that has a bug fix and see how I fare with it than having to deal with constant upgrading or not getting anything for a while.
Living in the Chicagoland area where air quality is more a mocking term than something to brag about, I seem to remember during my stints in europe several years ago that everybody seemed to be a lot more concerned with things like air quality, environmental impact. I remember there being a law severely restricting output of several chemicals in germany as early as ten years ago whereas some of those are still being thrown in the air happily every day around here. that's just one of several items where laws and regulations are a lot tougher in europe when it comes to the environment and keeping it healthy.
Okay, now that I have you w/ the subject line let me start by saying that there is a very faint point somewhere in the article. I work for a smaller private university and we quite frequently make up for shortcomings in terms of staff hours by relying on vendors for extensive support. In that respect there are probably aspects of our operation where OSS unless stellar vendor support exists would not be considered. That said, we have been using OSS for many years (way before it was "cool" to have open source software) and are quite fond of the products we use. It is probably fair to say that we couldn't do provide as many services as we do w/o OSS, because the money wouldn't be available to do so. - In reality we do what every intelligent business should do when making a software purchasing decision. We compare the benefits and downsides of the various software choices (OSS & commercial) along with what it will cost us to run each option in our environment and given our performance & reliability expectations. We've always found a good argument in one direction or another. In addition, one of the nice things about this environment is that we usually are not afraid to change if the factors change and it is viable to do so. We are actually in the process of transitionning a service from commercial to OSS simply because it is now far more viable and more cost effective to use OSS.
I've worked with the Divar System from Bosch Security. I don't believe they are windows based and seem to work quite well. They have some nice features and are pretty well scalable from what I've seen.
I think this hits the nail on the proverbial head. The only thing that is scary to me about it is that your documents/data (depending on your gullibility which is probably reasonable for most readers of this but goes to infinity in quite a few specimens) if analyzed correctly probably can tell one more about you than you realize yourself. With the right data mining you can likely create a rather detailed and revealing profile of anybody. I don't buy much into conspiracy theories, but let's not forget that google knows better than most that information is power. You're giving them the key and I could quite quickly create a long list of people who will see this and say: "oh cool, I can get to my stuff remotely, let me just set that up for everything, never know when you might need something".
An interesting question: Whose fault is it ? Google's for offering a service that has this potential or the countless number of people who like sheep would give them access to their info without discrimination.