I suspect that managability means that someone (who is familiar with group policy objects) can manage a myriad of IE settings and restrictions across many machines in one go.

To do this with Firefox (and someone please correct/confirm me), you need to push a firefox configuration file to many machines at once & lock it down.

In the case of my office, we lock every IE user to machine configuration registry keys, and set those with a GPO. End users cannot reconfigure their IE settings to allow things like active-x,

With Firefox, while I suspect it's just as configurable - I also suspect that it's slightly more difficule, and less documented.

$.02

"certs for linux but anyone who knows anything in HR will sneer at them as the meaningless drivel they are."

Anyone who knows anyone in HR is nobody. I work for a fairly savy IT company, and have worked for several other IT companies. The percentage of people in HR who know about technology close to 0%.

If those people knew about IT, they woule be called managers, not HR. In their defense have to know a verly little bit about a wide variety of work sectorys, and a lot about HR.

Take a look at some of the postings out there: "We want a MCSE/MCITS certified administrator, who is also AIX certified and certified as a CCIE. Pay

If you really want to move from help desk to a *glorified position track*, figure out which one you want. You want to be a MS admin, figure out which technologies sound interesting to you. Then figure out how to get your MSITS (or whatever they are calling MCSE these days.) Get your company to *lend* you a good computer or two to set up a virtual environment to test this. If you want to do Linux admin, try the same cert BS with Linux stuff.

As a techie,I may think that certifications are bogus, and only serve to tell you what advertized features actually work - but they tell a HR drone something else: 1)You know enough about the tech to have passed a vendor test. 2)The vendor *may* help you more than some uncertified schmuck. 3) You *may* know how to learn, and be able to apply it in a beneficial way to the company.

Personally, as a SR Sys Support Specialist (Dealing with MS, VMware, and Citrix mostly), I find that I have help desk zombies interrupting me every five minutes with issues that they should have done themselves...

Actually, from work on IE7 Slashdot looks almost as bad. Half the time I can't see response titles.

It sounds like you want a backup to store the drive allready in the computer, although it could be you don't have enough storage and are just storing files on external drives. (Say movies ripped from DVD or so...)

In either case, it's probably easiest to make a network attached storage device (aka Linux server) to copy everything to.

Computer1: Primary use computer

OldComputer2: NAS in closet... You can get an old P3 (low heat producing) with a bunch of drive bays, and a PCI SATA card ($50). Use a junky IDE drive for the OS, and make a raid5 of several large capacity drives.

The advantage of this is that you can synch your existing "workstation" to the NAS, and get the files you were considering on external HD's on the fly. Moving HDs around is not really recommended, as there is a good chance you will damage them. There are many guides to configuring this, which you can find via google.

Note: a PCI SATA adaptor will limit you to about 1Gb/s throughput. Convient as a Gb Ethernet is the current networking standard.

I call bogus question.

In a environment as described, everyone knows to buy one of what allready exists. In my office it's a Latitude e6400 (latest and heaviest;). With a PKI card reader. This configuration unit is a US government special. The "Secure Offices" poster is going to have an equilivent set of Super Sucky Specials.

However, the key is not the purchasing what everyone else has - it's that the question is relatively bogus: In most secure environments, you have to use company equipment, and have papers stating you are allowed to take it out of the building. In the few courthouses I've been in (DC, Ohio; Federal) I was not allowed to bring in electronics. It may be that poster has a specific ? regarding courts - but the question is overgeneralized to the point of misleading: Secure US government facilities don't let you use your own equipment. (My insecure one will let you bring it in, but no touching the network: The night security guys have EEEs with wireless modems for between log checks.)

Mod parent up.

You need DOS and Win96 compatibility: You can virtualize the existing system into a new system, and make it portible; back-up-able (as a Virtual Machine) by virtualizing it.

As an aside, I always thought Win95 was a dog. You may wish to check to see if XP compatibility mode will work, or check (ha ha) to see if WINE will work. (Actually, trying the application set with WINE is not a bad idea - it should be compatible with Windows 95 by now.)

Remember it could be worse: I have a friend who deals with Vet who has an old Xenix system - they buy parts of ebay in bulk;)

The VMWare Player is free, as is VMWare Converter.

1)Create new image on box (smallish disk). Update same
2)Create an image of that box's C: Drive, place on another drive
3)Make copy of that image file/folder
3)Run that image, throw away when done.

VMWare server is also free, and not hard to get running on Linux.. on WinServer 2k3 it's a doddle.

This was about 1998:

Went through initial check at counter, went through security, got to gate..
adroid: Do you have any weapons or explosives?
me: Just some nitroglyceryn (sp?) that I drove from DC (about 40 miles), through every pothole I could find.
adroid: proceeds to call FBI
paraphrased FBI: Why are you an ass
me: dude, you are the jerk being an ass. The security here is asstastic: An idiot could drive through that chain link fence and blow up a few planes on the runway. Or just ship bombs with altitude detonaitors: plane goes up, bomb goes off. People and their stuff are only 1/3rd of the "cargo" on a typical us airliner...
paraphrased FBI: Dude, you are so going to jail....

There are a few different solutions to your question, and many of them depend in the Webserver used.

For Windows, you do not need to use clustering for the webserver: you can use Network Load Balancing. If you have a SQL back-end, then you will need clustering...

To explain:

Clustering is used for programs that can only be run in single instance (Exchange, SQL, etc...)
IIS (Microsoft's Web Server) can be run in multiple instances. Therefore you can use Network Load Balancing (NLB). With NLB, the request will be directed to any available server, if one goes down - the other is available.

NLB can be implemented (badly) with round-robin DNS - which will send the request to each server in sequence.

These same techniques can be used in Linux (see thread), and other Unices. For the Web-Front-end, use some form of NLB. For the back-end, use clustering.

At this point, I should point out that eventually you will have a single point of failure-unless you are very careful. (Do you have a redundant SAN? Are all etherent paths seperate and redundant? How about power to your server space?)
I should also point out that everything above is overly simplified.

Actually, I have been arrested for being that obnoxious at the airport...

The washington city paper has a story on the waste of resources, known as the survelience cameras in DC.

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/display.php?id=36798

I certainly know that they have not helped with murders around the block from my house. Essentially, the cameras are never pointed in the right direction at the right time, and have never had the tape used as evidence for court purposes.

The last time I looked at Haiku/BeOS it required a PPC computer, long after they were generally available. (I'm not sure Mac's even used them any more.) Looking at the website (http://www.haikuware.com) it looks like they are shooting for i586+ hardware, and the supported stuff is a bit .. older.

Perhaps I could try it, but I'll need a better hardware database before I take the time. There are 0 systems that are well rated (of 5), and few motherboards. Let me know when more hardware works: If it does not mostly work with stuff in my junk drawer - I'm not buying a new system to test it. Even if it was the bees knees fifteen years ago.

However,
Good work guys!

Don't know, all my posts don't get modded up...

This depends on the products your clients are using:

1) You might preface with a list of MS vulnerabilities in comparative products: (This should be easy to find on the net. Does not need to be recent.)
Do you use MySql or Postgres: make a brief paper of vulnerabilities against Access + MySQL
Linux (Core) vs MS Windows X, Y; Z
Office suite vs. Office suite(s)

2) Then you might want to prepare a (preliminary) cost estimate to convert to Microsoft Products. (Seat of pants will do.)

3) Estimate how much it will cost to prepare a "good" version of 1;2 above.

Go to Client meeting;

a) You understand your clients concerns with security, and are more than willing to work with them to address these concerns.
b) You have brought with you a comparison of known vulnerabilities between some relivant products, which will naturally show that your product is more secure (use total number of vulnerabilities found, average time from vuln found to patch, whatever makes it look good for you) - which you don't really want to discuss, since they are reprints from the net.
c) If they want to go to MS, you are willing to help them - you estimate it will cost $hardware+$oftware+$time, which may be a lot but security is worth it.
d) You have been a trusted IT advisor/implementor for years, and really want to address their concerns raised by this marketing tactic.
e) If they are willing to use open source code backed by Microsoft, and the NSA is willing to use OpenSource - you don't have concerns about it, at least with the products your clients are using - other open source products will have to be re$earched.
f) Exactly what are their concerns, and how much time (Money) would they like to have you spend researching it to create proper documentation to address exactly those concerns.
g) Obviously, you are not too concerned about the system security - or you would not have implemented it that way, without caveats up front.
h) If they are really concerned, they can caugh up several thousand for penitration testing from $buddy-of-yours.
i) btw. anyone can disassemble microsoft's code with an open source disassembler as well ... looking at MS code is more profitable for bad guys, but hey ... you will get them the results they authorized expendatures for.
j) You are always happy to meet with client$ to address their concerns.

d)