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Comment Re:Simple (but not easy) solution (Score 1) 140

by Sot32 (#34269302) Attached to: 50 ISPs Harbor Half of All Infected Machines
Filtering port 25 isn't a bad idea, but it treats a symptom, not a problem. There seems to be a business opportunity here, and I wish I could figure out how to make it work. The ISPs should certainly have enough information in their logs to identify the infected machines. There is a benefit to the public to get those machines repaired. There are many qualified but unemployed IT professionals available. How can we put these puzzle pieces together and "create jobs" without creating another government agency? I mean sure, you can force the ISPs to deal with it, and then we'll all end up paying for it in our broadband bill. Maybe it would be better if the ISPs were forced to cut off their service and refer them to the local repair shop. Let the people with a problem pay to fix the problem rather than taxpayers or the other subscribers of that ISP.

Comment Re:not enough recording (Score 1) 329

by Sot32 (#33033146) Attached to: The End of Forgetting

Perhaps one day a student union of a first tier college will be enlightened and recommend that all its members take one photo of themselves naked cuddling a blow-up doll and holding a bottle of vodka. If this practice spreads like the spawn of Satan that was Facebook, suddenly employers will find that all their candidates have the naked-sheep-vodka pose. Demand > supply of Chrisian virgin angels. Attitude readjusted.

There are blow-up sheep dolls now?? Holy crap!

Comment Re:Tax Credit? (Score 1) 577

by Sot32 (#31337908) Attached to: Microsoft VP Suggests 'Net Tax To Clean Computers

People who do not have children to send to school, or oppose the wars, or do not drive cars do not get a tax credit.

Taxes are a collective action, not an individual purchase.

Then again, I wouldn't be surprised to see that happen given our legislators' feigned misunderstanding of progressive taxation or Keynesian spending.

Excellent points. I agree wholeheartedly that something must be done to clean up the infected PCs, and that that is going to cost money and the money must come from somewhere. It makes no sense to tax internet access across the board but, as you point out, that may be the end result. Since the creator of Windows is clearly admitting that their OS is the problem, it makes more sense to tax purchases of Windows OR to tax internet access involving Windows-based systems. Maybe both.

But I'm more interested to hear where that tax money would go. Is the government going to establish a cleanup organization? I hope not. Will the money go to ISPs so that they can monitor for malicious activity and go door to door? Will the ISPs just dispatch repair tickets to the local geek squad? If you think about it, this could actually be a really cool opportunity to create some jobs.

At least until everyone decides that $3000 is too much to pay for an OS that's br0kun.

Comment Re:My perspective after 20 years (Score 1) 364

by Sot32 (#30827320) Attached to: Why "Running IT As a Business" Is a Bad Idea

The biggest payback from IT is saving money. A dollar saved is better than a dollar earned. A dollar saved is pure profit. A dollar earned you have to subtract the cost of overhead and doing business.

But in most companies, IT is not leveraged as a partner of the business who can help to increase efficiencies and reduce cost. IT is a department that's considered overhead and they get cost savings out of it by asking them to make it smaller year over year. Over year.

The time to upgrade to Windows 7 is not when SP 1 comes out, it's when upgrading saves the company money. A service mentality does not try to force-fit technology where it doesn't belong.

Case in point. Where do you expect Windows 7 to save the company money? Those commercials raving about the revolutionary technology to snap two pages together don't have me convinced. Mass operating system upgrades are usually undertaken only to maintain support. There is rarely a cost justification.

Maybe not everyone in the company needs Windows 7. Maybe the call center can use Ubuntu workstations, maybe the graphics departments work more efficiently with Macs. A service mentality focuses on what works best for the company and saves money, not what your technical people know and where they've invested their training. Yet I see that a lot. Not what works best, but what the techs know. Their expertise limits their technology choices instead of expanding them.

Or maybe supporting everything under the sun increases IT cost immensely. See paragraph 1.

Comment Re:Anti-business ? (Score 1) 607

by Sot32 (#25026265) Attached to: Tech Vs. Business?
That's a pretty simplistic view, IMO. IT is paid for by the business, and therefore should be driven by the business. But therein lies the rub.... The business wants IT cost to be as low as possible. IT knows that the best way to reduce cost is to introduce hardware and software standards in order to minimize complexity: fewer variations means fewer support difficulties. But to the business, standards mean fewer options and less computing freedom: they're easily interpreted as "anti-business". Another item that surprisingly hasn't been mentioned is the impact of Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX). In many companies SOX has transformed IT into something completely different from what it was a few years ago. New requirements for "IT Controls" and the beaurocracy of change management have made IT organizations appear nearly impossible to work with while absorbing even more money than they did before. Does that make them "anti-business"? Well, let's just say that those things are required by law but contribute zero to profits.

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