Comment Dinner. (Score 1) 673
Well, its 7pm local time here in Western Australia now on May 21. I'm thinking "dinner". Same as yesterday. And the day before, Probably be the same tomorrow...
Comment Standards. (Score 1) 600
Use standards for everything you can. Don't use some product because some propreietry feature is a must-have, or you'll be locked in to that vendor for ever, and if they go away, then you're stuck. And dont just go with what one company calls their "standard", but something that is common and interoperates between vendors.
Design your corporate network with some level of security; know your risks, compromise to make things work smoothly for staff, but understand the compromise. Give people the "least surprise" when having to get on your WiFI, use your printers, etc.
I think a core is to get some central authentiation. Look at LDAP. Then look at using that LDAP data for building an authenticated Wiki. Consider using radius fed from LDAP to secure your ethernet ports (802.1x) - so get a managed switch that supprots that. Its a standard, so you dont HAVE to go for Cisco - I had a lot of joy with the now very old DLink business class gigabit swiches (GDS3224 I think they were) - but don't use propriatry stacking as you'd be stuck to always using that switch/firmware - use LACP and MSTP.
Encourage yourself to have an always-accurate LDAP. Make an internal directory that is auto populated with all relevent fields from LDAP. Extend your LDAP to contain everythign needed. If you find someone in some department is copying all the names to excel to make a phone directory, try and ind out what your current online phone directory doesnt give them, and fix it. Up to them if they want a printed hard copy - but that should be just a case of hitting print in a browser.
Put two Wireless networks in each office - one that uses certiicate based WPA as a secured network for staff, and one that is protected by a simple shared password for guests. Put up signs so that guests are welcomed to use your guest wifi, more than using a wireed ethernet port (which would also, as above be protected with 802.1x - except that's not always possible with ports for printers, etc - but even still you can MAC address lock those ports).
Design your VLANs into areas of shared security risk. Printers. Finance Staff workstations. Common File Servers. Tech Admins. HR. Bridge these staff VLANs to wireless using cert-WPA so that people aren't having to circumvent your security.
Put in a Jabber server, authenticated using LDAP. Let your Jabber server talk out to other networks. Encrypt your internal IMs via your Jabber server.
Put in a SIP server, and use softphones for most people.
The exception to using standards and doing it yourself: Offload email to GMail or similar. Use their calendaring. Get android phones and be done with it. Then use Thunderbid to work with your GMail accounts and calendars... using STANDARD protocols, such as ICAL, IMAPS, etc.
But, use Standards where you can.
Comment Re:MythTV (Score 1) 516
2nd'ed. Great little box. The originalk Atom 220 CPU on the original Revos are a little slow on true 1080p at times (though the video is off-loaded to the GPU for decoding); the followup Atom 330 based units were a dual core CPU. I've been using mine as combined backend & front end for some time - plus file server, NTP, DNS server, IPv6 gateway and tunnel endpoint, music DAAP server, and DLNA server (mediatomb).
Was wondering what the product line is for this small form factor from Acer. Atom has continued to evolve, but I havent seen any more products....
Google Tweaks Buzz To Tackle Privacy Concerns 153
CWmike writes "Just two days after launching its Buzz social networking tools, Google said Thursday night that it had tweaked the technology to address early privacy concerns. Google said in a blog post that the quick updates makes it easier for users to block access to their pages and eases the path to finding two privacy features. 'We've had plenty of feature requests, and some direct feedback,' wrote Todd Jackson, a product manager for Gmail and Google Buzz, in the blog post. 'In particular there's been concern from some people who thought their contacts were being made public without their knowledge (in particular the lists of people they follow, and the people following them). In addition, others felt they had too little control over who could follow them and were upset that they lacked the ability to block people who didn't yet have public profiles from following them.'"
Submission + - Swine Flu May Be Human Error.
Tom DBA writes: The swine flu could have been accidentally made in a lab, says the World Health Organization in Bloomberg.com News.
Swine Flu May Be Human Error, Scientist Says; WHO Probes Claim. "The World Health Organization is investigating an Australian researcher's claim that the swine flu virus circling the globe may have been created as a result of human error.
Adrian Gibbs, 75, who collaborated on research that led to the development of Roche Holding AG's Tamiflu drug, said in an interview today that he intends to publish a report suggesting the new strain may have accidentally evolved in eggs scientists use to grow viruses and drugmakers use to make vaccines. Gibbs said that he came to his conclusion as part of an effort to trace the virus's origins by analyzing its genetic blueprint."
Time to drag out the conspiracy theories about how HIV/AIDS came into the world?
Time to drag out the conspiracy theories about how HIV/AIDS came into the world?
Submission + - Have Sockets Run Their Course?
ChelleChelle writes: As can be inferred from the title, this article examines the limitations of the sockets API. The Internet and the networking world in general have changed in very significant ways since the sockets API was first developed, but in many ways the API has had the effect of narrowing the way in which developers think about and write networked applications. This article discusses the history as well as the future of the sockets API, focusing on how "high bandwidth, low latency and multihoming are driving the development of new alternatives.
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Larger iPod Touch In Apple's Future? 197
Ender_Stonebender writes "TechCrunch is reporting that three independent sources have mentioned to them a large form factor version of the iPod Touch, with either a 7- or 9-inch screen, to be released fall of 2009. The device is expected to have access to the iTunes App Store. Beyond that, everything about it appears to be pure speculation."
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