You should look into System Center 2012 Configuration Manager and User State Migration - we migrated 1200+ desktops from XP to 7 in about a month.
Resilient actually.
Firefox doesn't support the OS's built in certificate stores, which makes it a really big pain in the ass to manage certs yourself (like if your managing certs for firefox users at your company) - you basically have to compile certutil and write all kinds of fun scripts for client devices.
If firefox let me co-manage certs I could just re-add the deprecated cert
Case in point:
I should add - people give away all kinds of important information on where they are on twitter at any given time. I mean just watch this video:
Its pretty easy - Smeadly said he was going offline on a flight that had no wifi on twitter and that he was heading back to San Diego - he also said this on twitter. So all you have to do is figure out what convention Smeadly was at yesterday - so you know the originating city - and I'm guessing maybe there were a couple flights a day from there to SD.
Its a guess, but its a pretty educated one.
This is like first level private eye stuff here - people really assume everything they do is private, and then they give people clues publicly where they are without a second thought - and then it looks all hackerish like these guys have l33t skills.
What he didn't say - this data center is actually in a primate research lab - the entire campus is surrounded by 20 foot high electrified fence with mesh so tight it makes it difficult to scale.
Plus the entire place is coated in surveillance cameras (like every fence pole had a cluster of several sort of thing). I suspect you could leave the doors unlocked and it would probably more secure than many data centers you read about.
No I don't work for OHSU, but I live close to this campus.
Since version 9 (they are up to version 14 if you haven't been keeping track) all code that runs in Flash is sandboxed.
Still doesn't prevent security problems though.
I think it goes without saying - if the blood is in the water (meaning your product is heavily targeted) there really is no such thing as a totally secure product.
I read somewhere that the average wal-mart relies on over $420,000 dollars a month of public assistance for each store for their employees.
As someone who manages about 1500+ Mac's with JAMF Casper (and another 6000+ windows machines with System Center) - you are talking out of your arse.
In my experience - MS actually issues more patches and actually has a better track record than Apple - for example I've seen them issue firmware patches that have bricked machines (to the point where they had to be repaired) - its enough of a problem I actually now wait a month before releasing firmware patches Apple delivers to see if any issues arise. I've also seen them release patches that break core OS functionality like SMB, and printing - or release patches that seemingly munged Wifi prefs.
Last year I recall one patch MS released that could cause some machines to stop booting. So far this year is the only warning I've seen from any patch they've released.
Considering the kinds of hardware MS has to support - I think thats a pretty darn good track record.
I'm sure there are. One thing I noticed though when they were ramping up this initiative (and I was foolishly training them) is they hated to tell anyone - "no" or "sorry thats a bug we'll fix in a patch" or "sorry thats not our issue - its a bug with the xyz driver" - they would drag these customers on for months trying various work-arounds to solve a problem - then when they did seek my advice it look me less than 15-30 minutes to deduce it was a bug - here's when we think a patch might come out.
Oddly enough I worked at adobe as a TAM (technical account manager) - they let me go and replaced me with 7 Indian employees. The director there was pleased as punch. I heard within a year they lost every support contract I owned - and plenty were worth millions. Funny too - he still works there.
I'm a software packager and I'm represented by a union. I work along side a bunch of programmers, dba's, unix and windows admins - and we are all represented.
I like to think of our union as a catch all - they blow the whistle and step in when management fucks up. A good example of this is they screwed up the budget for raises this year - our representatives stepped in and worked with management to fix that.
I guess if you work somewhere where your managers aren't a bunch of fuckups - you probably don't need a union. For everyone else - don't kid yourself.
Well yeah - if they could figure out how to screw it up I wouldn't have to support it anymore. I work with a bunch of Oracle developers and I think Oracle are trying their hardest to screw up Java, but the problem is - all the universities teach Java and there are so many Java developers out there.
Scientists will study your brain to learn more about your distant cousin, Man.
