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Comment Knowledge Base (Score 1) 348

by Paralizer (#26078953) Attached to: Best Open Source Alternatives To Enterprise Apps
I'd like to set something up internal to IT (8-10 users, possibly more) to use as a Knowledge Base. We do not really have a formal place to put centralized documents for processes and a Knowledge Base would be very beneficial. I thought Mediawiki, but that requires MySQL and MSSQL (which is currently setup) is already enough of a headache to manage. What are other people using?

Comment Re:Differential Pricing? (Score 4, Informative) 144

by Paralizer (#25916059) Attached to: HP Seeks to Block Competitor From Revealing Its Pricing
You're right, except I don't think making their list price public makes a whole lot of a difference. No one pays full price, it's just like a car dealership. So if a particular vendor has a higher price but a good product, you're probably still going to at least look at that product and get a custom quote. From there you decide if the product itself is a good match for you, and if it is then you can start working with the vendor to reduce the price.

I just got my first IT job about a year ago fresh out of college. One of my first projects was to research, recommend, buy, and implement a particular product. I did some research and ended up being convinced this certain vendor has the best product for our needs. Their list price on their website was $29,000, +25% for each additional CPU over one, +20% support per year. I then called them, had a couple web demos, and began exchanging phone calls with the sales rep. What we wanted came out to about $75,000 with a 5 year support contract. Within a couple weeks (hey, this was my first time so it took a while) I had talked him down ~$40,000 with a 5 year support contract. It was easy, it didn't take a lot of negotiating, and I think I could have got him down more if I really wanted.

My point is they will lower their prices without so much as you asking them to, and that is what they are counting on -- you get interested in the product, they sell it to you for less than list price, and you're a happy customer who hopefully has repeat business based on your positive experience. List price means very little.
Networking

Has HavenCo's Data Haven Shut Down? 287

Posted by CmdrTaco from the where-will-i-keep-my-secrets-now dept.
secmartin writes "HavenCo, the self-proclaimed data haven located on the micronation Sealand, appears to be offline. Their website is down, and there have been no announcements from either HavenCo or Sealand. HavenCo has been covered here before; it was mostly known for offering hosting of content that might be illegal in other countries. Does anyone have news about what happened to them?"
The Courts

The Shady Business Practices of Classmates.com 275

Posted by timothy from the let-her-stalk-you-for-a-change dept.
eldavojohn writes ""Some of your classmates are trying to contact you!" reads one e-mail. Attempts to remove yourself from the mailing list may only result in more mailings from the site of ill repute. Well, Ars Techica brings us news of a suit against Classmates.com. You don't need to look far for anti-classmates.com sentiment spreading like wild fire across the tubes." Good next target: ads that say "you've already won" some expensive toy.
Security

DNS Inventor Tackles Flaw 101

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the always-evolving dept.
nk497 writes "Dr Paul Mockapetris is looking to fix the flaws in the Domain Name System he helped invent. 'It was never meant to be the only security mechanism for naming data on the internet, but was intended for additional security measures to be added to it later.' The flaws, first uncovered by security researcher Dan Kaminsky over the summer, lets attackers redirect genuine URLs to malicious ones — a problem Mockapetris believes could be solved using digital signatures."

Comment Re:I'm going to ignore your question entirely (Score 1) 303

by Paralizer (#25663569) Attached to: How To Verify CD-R Data Retention Over Time?
Use tapes, hard drives fail all the time. Or you could get a nice NAS with a bunch of hdd's in some ultra redundant RAID configuration. Personally I would go with the NAS, but now you're getting into the couple hundred dollars range and it's not as portable as CD-R's or tapes.

Backing up from one hdd to another is a silly idea. If that's the most viable solution for you you might as well go RAID-1 so at least you always have a mirrored copy (I do this on my home machine and it works fine for me).
United States

Barack Obama Wins US Presidency 3709

Posted by CmdrTaco from the enough-of-that-now-this dept.
Last night, around 11pm, all the major networks announced that Senator Barack Obama had won the election. Soon after, Senator McCain conceded. There were no crazy partisan court hearings, just a simple election. This is your chance to talk about it and what it means for the future of our nation.
Windows

Microsoft to Issue Emergency Patch For File-Sharing Hole 348

Posted by timothy from the safest-version-of-windows-ever dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft said late Wednesday that it plans to release a critical security update today to plug a security hole present in all supported versions of Windows. The company hasn't released any details about the patch yet, which is expected to be pushed out at 1 p.m. PT. Normally, Redmond issues security updates on Patch Tuesday, the second Tuesday of each month. The Washington Post's Security Fix blog notes that each of the three times in the past that Microsoft has departed from its patch cycle, it was to fix some really nasty vulnerability that criminals already were exploiting to break into Windows PCs." Reader filenavigator points out an article which describes the hole as an SMB vulnerability, and says it "allows anyone to access a Windows machine remotely without any user name or password. Any machine that exposes Windows file sharing is vulnerable." Update: 10/23 17:42 GMT by T : Reader AngryDad adds a link to Microsoft's more detailed memo.
Communications

Handling Caller ID Spoofing? 556

Posted by timothy from the advocate-violence-in-this-case dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A nice little old lady I know has had her number spoofed by some car warranty scammers. They're calling hundreds of potential victims per day pretending to use her phone number, and the angry ones call her back; some of them have even left death threats. She's terrified. Some well-intending anti-telemarketing folks have posted her address on the 'net as well. How can we figure out where these scammer bastards are, and what's the state of the current legislation to prevent caller ID spoofing? I called the FBI in Boston (near where she lives) and they said they can't help. She's called her phone company, but they said they can't help either. She's had the same number for over 50 years and doesn't want to change it." If the Feds can't or won't handle it, what's the best approach here?
Television

B&W TV Generation Has Monochrome Dreams 343

Posted by kdawson from the horse-of-a-different-color dept.
Ant writes "The Telegraph reports that people over 55 who were brought up watching a monochrome TV set are more likely to dream in black and white, even years later. New research suggests that the type of television you watched as a child has a profound effect on the color of your dreams. While almost all under-25s dream in color, many over-55s, all of whom were brought up with B&W sets, often still dream in monochrome. The study, out ot Dundee University, used a small number of subjects under 25 or over 55 and the results suggest that '... there could be a critical period in our childhood when watching films has a big impact on the way dreams are formed ... [B]efore the advent of black and white television all the evidence suggests we were dreaming in color.'"
The Almighty Buck

Report Indicates Widespread H-1B Visa Fraud 397

Posted by kdawson from the imagine-our-surprise dept.
Vrst1013 notes a Business Week account of a government report examining fraud in the H-1B program. The US Citizenship and Immigration Services just released a report to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee examining issues with fraud and technical violations within this program. Based on a sample size of 246 H-1B petitions, 13.4 percent showed fraud and 7.3 percent showed technical violations, for an overall violation rate of 20.7 percent. There was slso evidence of payment below the prevailing wage, offers of non-existent jobs, and fraudulent documentation. "'The report makes it clear that the H-1B program is rife with abuse and misuse,' says Ron Hira, [a professor] at the Rochester Institute of Technology ... However, both Presidential candidates, Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain, have said they support expanding the program."
Bug

Alarm Raised For "Clickjacking" Browser Exploit 308

Posted by timothy
Shipment Date writes "ZDNet's Zero Day blog has some new information on what looks like a scary new browser exploit/threat affecting all the major desktop platforms — Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Adobe Flash. The threat, called Clickjacking, was to be discussed at the OWASP conference but was nixed at the last minute at hte request of affected vendors. From the article: 'In a nutshell, it's when you visit a malicious website and the attacker is able to take control of the links that your browser visits. The problem affects all of the different browsers except something like lynx. The issue has nothing to do with JavaScript so turning JavaScript off in your browser will not help you.'"

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