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Comment Re:unsurprisingly, IT goons don't get it. (Score 1) 443

by ibbieta (#36204982) Attached to: Why IT Needs To Change for Gen Z

Wake up!
You are a cost center.

OK. I've been doing this for almost 20 years and known that bit of info for almost 20 years.

You exist only to enable productive people to produce more efficiently.
You aren't in charge of anything.

Besides the networks, backups, security, servers you mean I'm not in charge of anything?

You work for us.
Continue to annoy us and you will be replaced.

And vice-versa, baby.

Just like the guy in the tool room that used to guard the pin gauges and the hammers like he owned them.
And the facilities guy who refused to add a 30 Amp circuit or run a Nitrogen line.
The IT support model that treats everyone like a serf doing word processing is over.

Um, OK. I figure no matter what happens or how nice I am that eventually most businesses will not have internal IT staff. The march of technology demands this, usually.

The design engineers need nonstandard hardware to do modeling. They might even need multiple computers.

Cool. Not a problem. Give me the money and I'll have that for you. It's always been about the money, you know.

In fact every individual user has specific and unusual needs that they understand better than you do.

I'd love that to be true. Fact is that most of my users don't understand what they need or how to improve the technology. The most I hope for is that they understand their own tools better than I, because they use said tools while I don't, but only a few even manage that.

And it's Not your call. Make it happen or go extinct. Computers aren't a new special thing anymore.
Many of us users understand every aspect of your network as well or better than you do,

Bah hah hah hah!

Hey, this is your turf, and I understand that change is hard, and that you need to grumble, bitch, rant, whatever.
get it all out. It won't change anything though.

Right back at ya', homey. The network is secure because the company's lawyers and the company's insurers demand it. The data is secured for the same reasons. Me, I don't care in the slightest. I do this job for money, not love and certainly not the love of annoying people.

The antonym of "secure" is not "insecure" but instead "accessible". When e-mail became popular it was common practice to have an address that would send a message to everyone in the company -- that was abused so became restricted. Address books were available with everyone's contact information -- that was abused so became restricted. Databases accepted connections with empty "sa" passwords (no joke) -- that was abused so became restricted.

Notice a fucking pattern?

My job boils down to keeping the stuff running and keeping it secure. Someone wants to access the systems with some new toy I only ask two questions -- does it break the systems? does it break security? The business, by the way, asks just one question -- how much?
Television

Confusion Reigns As Analog TV Begins Shutdown 434

Posted by kdawson from the how-not-to-do-it dept.
As TV stations across the country switch off their analog signals, uncertainty reigns. Some 691 stations will have converted to digital broadcasting by midnight tonight (some interpreted the mandate as going digital by Feb. 17, not during Feb. 17, and shut down yesterday). This represents about a third of TV broadcasters nationwide. No one can say how many of the estimated 5.8 million households unready for the transition are in areas served by the stations that are switching now. The FCC added to the uncertainty by imposing extra conditions, making it unclear until last Friday exactly which stations would be switching at the beginning of the transition period. The article quotes a former analyst at Barclays Capital who said the whole process has been "botched politically."
Spam

Verizon.net Finally Moving Email To Port 587 195

Posted by kdawson from the decade-late-and-a-megabuck-short dept.
The Washington Post's Security Fix blog is reporting that Verizon, long identified as the largest ISP source of spam, is moving to require use of the submission port, 587, in outbound mail — and thus to require authentication. While spammers may still be able to relay spam through zombies in Verizon's network, if the victims let their mail clients remember their authentication credentials, at least the zombies will be easily identifiable. Verizon pledges to clean up their zombie problem quickly. We'll see.

Comment Re:And who does this? No one in the data center. (Score 2, Informative) 258

by ibbieta (#18152186) Attached to: VMware-Microsoft Battle Looming

Aside from developers and a tiny group of specialists who need access to a particular app? In the datacenter world this is anathema. No one running a gaggle of boxes would ever seriously consider this and get paid for it. Cheaper and easier by far to throw up one more server and spend the 0.04 FTE (1/25th of a person) it takes to run it.
I assume you mean that you think it irresponsible to be running Windows in a virtuallized environment? If so, I hate to tell you this but I'm seeing more and more companies, some with very large and capable tech staff, doing just that. At first it was for testing and development, true, but it just became easier to copy the image files onto the production VM serves. I even know of one credit union that has ALL production Windows servers as VMs.

The ease of backups-restores is one big reason for the love being directed at VM servers. Just shut the machine down, copy some files, and boom! a point-in-time backup. Moving an application from testing to production, same things as a backup with just loading the files into a new VMWare (banks require physical separation of hardware between development/testing/production so these files are actually copied to a new VMserver).

To be honest, I'm an old systems admin, too, and thought VMs were just for testing and development and was a bit disturbed to see big, careful companies using them for production. Worse, I'm a consultant installing some heavy Windows applications that can overwhelm even beefy machines and virtuallizing my servers just slows them down. I am not privy to the reasons for why the move to VMs but I think management was getting tired of all the problem tickets that amounted to "hardware problem with ServerX, moving to new hardware -- 20 hours". (Yeah, way too long to move a server, but at large institutions everything takes longer than it should; in my network, creating a new VM image takes about 15 minutes, with the procedures and paperwork at the credit union this will take 2 hours and require 5 people be involved.)

--ibbieta
The Courts

Dance Copyright Enforced by DMCA 402

Posted by Zonk from the seventh-layer-of-awesome dept.
goombah99 writes "The "creator" of the Dance move known as the electric slide has filed a DMCA based takedown notice for videos he deems to infringe and because they show "bad dancing". He is also seeking compensation from the use of the dance move at a wedding celebration shown on the Ellen Degeneres Show. Next up, the Funky Chicken, the moonwalk, and the Hustle? More seriously, does the DMCA have any limit on its scope?"

Circuit City Ripping DVDs for Users 467

Posted by Zonk from the this-won't-last-long dept.
Grooves writes "Circuit City is offering a DVD transfer service that's sure to enrage the MPAA. For $10 for 1 DVD or $30 for 5, Circuit City will violate the DMCA and rip commercial DVDs for users to put on their mobile players. From the article: 'This should be a viable market. Software and services are losing out to draconian digital rights management philosophies and anti-consumer technologies aimed at increasing revenues stemming from double-dipping--what I call the industry's penchant for charging twice for the same thing.' They note that fair use backups of DVDs have not been tested in court because all of the attention is focused on the circumvention software itself." Update: 08/04 22:40 GMT by Z : Acererak writes "Red Herring reports that Circuit City isn't offering any DVD-to-DVD copying scheme. The Slashdotted sign was an isolated screwup."

How to Become Invisible 336

Posted by CmdrTaco from the first-paint-yourself-with-invisible-paint dept.
mdm42 writes "Looks like a theoretical physicist at St. Andrews University in Scotland believes that invisibility may be possible. And its not going to be a potion or a cloak, but will come in the form of a device. " Let's just hope that when the invisible woman arrives, she's played more convincingly than Jessica Alba.

What if Game Graphics Never Aged? 398

Posted by Zonk from the everyoung dept.
An anonymous reader writes "If you've heard of Procedural Synthesis, you already think it's amazing. It's been used to create some extraordinary visuals in tiny packages, like .kkrieger, which is less than 96 Kilobytes big but still has graphics that look like like a modern PC title. Beyond that, there's even more that Procedural Synthesis might be able to do; what if your old video games never aged, never looked out-of-date? Imagine putting Halo 2 into your Xbox 360 only to have it automatically upgraded to look like Halo 3 in graphical quality. This article examines the unexpected way that Procedural Synthesis might impact gaming in the generation after the Xbox 360, PS3, and Nintendo Wii."

DHS to Send Widespread Alerts 265

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the ripe-for-exploits dept.
MarsGov writes "The Department of Homeland Security is gearing up to be able to periodic test 'alerts' to cable television stations, satellite radio, as well as any text-capable device — PDAs, cell phones, and web sites." From the article: Some glitches remain as telephone companies and other networks grapple with potentially trying to alert all of their customers at the same time without jamming their systems, Lawson said. But the alerts could be transmitted by text messages, audio recordings, video or graphics, he said, opening the possibility of sending out additional detailed information to specific sectors, like hospitals or emergency responders."

State Department Hit With Many More Break-Ins 143

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the crackers-and-hackers-and-press-oh-my dept.
adjust28 writes to tell us CNN is reporting that the US State Department has been dealing with a number of computer break-ins with regards to their headquarters and offices dealing with China and Korea over the past couple of weeks. From the article: "Investigators believe hackers stole sensitive U.S. information and passwords and implanted backdoors in unclassified government computers to allow them to return at will, said U.S. officials familiar with the hacking."

Things To Download 122

Posted by Hemos from the it's-a-slow-slow-day dept.
I've taken the liberty of combining together a number of different submissions we've received. First off, Network Magic recently came out with a new version of their software (tour on link). It's Windows-based primarily, but having tested it out on Mac/Linux/Windows-mixed network, it's worth checking out. Another individual pointed out that SourceForge Enterprise is now a 15 seat free download; you can also grab the ISO in Torrent form. (SourceForge is made by the other arm of the company that owns Slashdot, VA Software). Lastly, a couple of folks seem to have rediscovered the joy of Audioscrobbler and sharing the stuff via last.fm. Fun stuff.

French Lawmakers Approve 'iTunes Law' 423

Posted by Zonk from the play-together-and-enjoy-it dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Lawmakers in the French government have passed a controversial iTunes law, which has the stated intention of forcing Apple to allow purchased music to be universally useable." From the article: "In a statement issued after lawmakers hashed out the final compromise text last week, Apple said it hoped the market would be left to decide 'which music players and online music stores are offered to consumers.' The final compromise asserts that companies should share the required technical data with any rival that wants to offer compatible music players and online stores, but it toned down many of the tougher measures backed by lower-house lawmakers early on."

The 50 Worst Videogame Names of All Time 220

Posted by Zonk from the avoid-the-noid-indeed dept.
Game Revolution has a great feature looking at fifty of the worst-named games ever to require a controller. They dig deep here, unearthing gems like 'Yo! Noid!', 'Awesome Possum Kicks Dr. Machino's Butt!', and 'Huygen's Disclosure'. From the article: "From Dick Butkus to Hootie and the Blowfish to Lake Titicaca, bad names have been with us forever. But thanks to the inevitable collision of reclusive nerds, bizarre artists and painfully unhip marketing execs, the video game industry enjoys some of the worst names of all. The following list was compiled after hours of lively debate, pages of exhausting science and one actual geek fistfight."

Intel Pushes Back with Xeon 5100 140

Posted by Zonk from the giving-amd-a-gentle-shove dept.
conq writes "BusinessWeek has a piece on Intel's newest chip, the Xeon 5100, which many consider might be the chip that will llow them to stop losing ground to AMD. From the article: 'During the presentation, Intel ran the now-standard comparison test against AMD's highest performing chip, handily beating the system in a speed test. And in a jab at AMD execs, who handed kill-o-watt meters to analysts at the outfit's recent technology day, Intel execs used the same device to measure the new Xeon 5100 system's performance — gauged to be 7 watts better than that of the AMD-based system.'"

Open Source Could Learn from Capitalism 385

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the don't-give-it-away-for-free dept.
ukhackster writes to tell us that Sun's Simon Phipps challenged many open source ideals at a recent open source conference in London. Urging the open source community to look to the lessons of capitalism, Phipps called for "volunteerism" to be replaced with "directed self-interest" and denounced the perceived legal issues surrounding open source. From the article: "Phipps took time out to take a swipe at some of the exhibitors at the conference who were selling professional advice on negotiating the open source 'legal minefield'. 'I disagree with those who say who say open source is a legal minefield,' he said as he threw from the stage a brochure from one firm of lawyers. 'If you think open source is a minefield you're doing it wrong.'"

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