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Comment Re:Not sure why this is a question (Score 2) 246

by Cheerio Boy (#47590275) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: IT Personnel As Ostriches?

I treat everyone's email the same: I don't read it. I may see subject lines but I don't see the technical reason requiring you to read them.

What happens when you get a request from management to help them identify/bring to their attention people potentially 'abusing' the e-mail system, such as by e-mailing sensitive information out of the organization, or by identifying employee(s) sending e-mail that are obscene, abusive, harrassing, or contain inappropriate language?

That's an official request from management and is part of your job at that point even if it wasn't before. Inform HR of what you've been asked to do and if there's a conflict let them hash it out. Document everything and keep a personal copy of the documentation in a safe offline place. If you get fired for doing your job you either have enough documentation to take legal action (if you can afford it) or enough to clear your name if it becomes necessary.

Comment Re:Our local department has this (Score 1) 320

by Cheerio Boy (#43889231) Attached to: Montreal Union Wants a Camera On Every Policeman's Uniform

Started about a year ago. They are turned on when the shift starts and can't be turned off until the shift has ended.

Mounted on a hat above the right ear and they have sound.

Indiana, by the way.

This is absolutely needed. The powers that be forget far too often that they themselves are human and not only make mistakes but are corruptible as well. Kudos to your locals for doing this!

Of course this wouldn't stop a sudden application of silly putty on the lense and/or microphone. The mic would be the better choice there - "I'm sorry sir but we seemed to have had audio transmission issues during that incident."

Comment Re:I've been designing/building a 3D printer for (Score 1) 348

by Cheerio Boy (#43575097) Attached to: What's Holding Back 3-D Printing

I guess what I'm saying is, get an stm32. Or msp430 if you're ok writing in windows only.

And MPS430 actually has support in Linux now. Google for "mps430 linux" and you'll find a host of options. One of those is a port of the Arduino IDE called Energia. Though that one is not ready completely yet. (I had trouble getting it to run on Mint13.)

Regardless the TI Launchpad stuff is supported well enough outside of Windows.

Comment Re:Nonsense (Score 1) 348

by Cheerio Boy (#43574687) Attached to: What's Holding Back 3-D Printing

No. You can make a zipgun out of a ball point pen. Everyone has the ability to make a weapon; most people simply don't have the need, desire, or psychosis to do so.... and admittedly, many don't have the imagination for it either.

Technically a zipgun is made from plumbing parts: http://www.scribd.com/doc/23323372/Zipguns-Pipe-Guns-Silencers

But you're right about the imagination.

Comment Re:What a surprise! (Score 5, Insightful) 214

by Cheerio Boy (#39694467) Attached to: The Digital Differences In Americans
First - the internet doesn't immediately rank as a survival item. Not even close.

BUT I agree with your point that it should be very close after satisfying those needs.

The problem is that a great many companies want to lock down what you can and can't learn on the Internet. They want you to be nice little servants and only learn those things that don't open the doors to you thinking about things other than those immediate survival things.

The more you educate people in how to think and what's available outside their front door the more free they become. The more free they become the less they wonder why they should pay heed to those in power.

And to those in power that's a dangerous thing. And until we fix the system (not likely any time soon) you will see them clamp down and clamp down hard on anything they consider a threat to their nice cushy positions.

Comment Nothing truly worth it digitally... (Score 1) 86

by Cheerio Boy (#39606391) Attached to: Data Safety In a Time of Natural Disasters
I have nothing digitally worth risking the life or myself or my family.

Really when you come down to it a disaster is just that and keeping the people around you safe is a million times more important than anything else you may have.

That said my choice of solutions would be a FedEx box full of hard drives to a friend across the country or a good tape safe that is water and fire resistant.

Of course like most I/T people I don't back up nearly enough. ^_^

'Scuse me....something I gotta go do...

Comment Re:Sigh (Score 4, Insightful) 348

by Cheerio Boy (#38483788) Attached to: Sorry, IT: These 5 Technologies Belong To Users

Better than, I'm supposed to use this dingly dangly to do work, but the tools I'm allowed to use don't quite do what I need. If I could just use this app I could increase productivity, but IT has the system so locked down that to even think about using a different app is grounds for termination. Face it, IT's job is to facilitate the rest of the company's performance of the real purposes of the company. IT doesn't make money for the company it enables the money making areas to make the money. A wise IT dept allows users to add additional tools, but with the caveat that the only fix available is a system wipe and restore to original configuration. The Users are responsible for keeping their data backed up. As to the Gadget aspect, if the company didn't buy it, the company isn't responsible to fix it. If the company did, the company should have an extra stockpile, and any broken gadget is simply replaced with a baseline new one, again leaving it up to the employee to restore the apps and data they want. And it's the employee's job if their failure to maintain a backup causes critical data to be lost. Okay, everybody tell me how wrong I am.

You're not wrong. But neither is the parent. And this is all known by anyone that's been in the I/T field for any serious length of time. It's all a balancing act. And since you have to balance security with efficiency your friend through all the pitfalls (besides common sense) is documentation. Make the end user sign a piece of paper saying the device is his and will only be supported for X purpose and only to Y point.

When the user breaks something you told them is unsupported past a certain point that documentation will help point the user in the right direction and keep both yourself and the company safe from rampant I broke my $device while doing company work on it! Fix it or get me a new one!

Comment Oracle needs to be less stupid and less greedy... (Score 1, Insightful) 307

by Cheerio Boy (#38416296) Attached to: Canonical To Remove Sun Java From Repositories, Users' Machines
First - I want to see in the license where it requires them to pull it off systems.

Second - What the hell are they going to replace it with? Are they saying you have to download and install Java manually? OpenJDK supposedly doesn't work with all things.

Third - What does this mean for Ubuntu derivatives like Mint? Are they going to have to pull the jdk as well?

Forth - Can we _please_ take up a collection to have the Oracle execs framed for terrorism and shipped off to Gitmo?

Honestly this is just stupid.

Comment Re:DO NOT WANT! (Score 1) 357

by Cheerio Boy (#38066954) Attached to: <em>Doctor Who</em> To Become Hollywood Feature Film

The first two Doctor Who feature films weren't so bad. Why do you think this one will be?

Because this director specifically says he wants to completely depart from the existing Doctor Who. In the hands of Hollywood that can only mean a disastrous big budget action film that means nothing to existing fans and would be Doctor Who only in name.

It would be a large-scale train wreck similar to the US version of Top Gear.

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