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It's magic!(Well, sort of)A sage for your screen, a mentor for your monitor, a guru for your... oh, you get the idea. Caffeine Crazy"Hardly anyone gives me credit for the work I do. Praise? Forget it. Complaints and moaning? As soon as the smallest pixel pops out of place. To all intents and purposes for 363 days of the year they don't even know I exist." quotation of Joe - Sysadmin Time somebody put a stop to all this!
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You're interesting. You're different. You prefer Friday lunchtime backups to Friday evening tailbacks. You know that ADS, NIS, NDS and LDAP aren't nasty medical conditions. For you, proper lobbying would start with a petition for user rights and data control. Idling and stalling is not about skiving out of a meeting. Anti-hot locking has nothing to do with curling tongs. When it comes to systems: you're the hero.
Become a System Hero!Heroes are invincible - we always know the answers. But are they coded into our DNA or is there some place we find things out. Create your new HERO Profile to stay in the know and no luser will get the better of you. (feed me) BOFH – I’m back onboard I totally forgot about the BOFH archives. I have to admit to sympathising with the minority of Sysadmins who abuse their beloved Lusers – we all know tough love is so much more character building for our victims in the long term so its nice to have it all documented. My favourite quote this week from BOFH has got to be this - “You’ve got to think of it in terms of sticks and carrots,” I say to the PFY, “because users are complex - but stupid - stubborn animals, like donkeys.”The good news is that most Sysadmin folks are normally ‘people people’ who don’t like to play the ‘blame game’ or get dragged into bureaucratic arguments when the health & safety Anyhoo, BOFH – Its worth rediscovering Is XP enough?
Wi-Fi pinching
Here’s my solution – every wireless router should come pre-installed with a unique password as standard. We already do this for software, whereby a unique serial number is needed to unlock the software – why not replicate this on wireless emitting devices? On the packaging of every wi-fi router would be a unique 16 digit code that relates back to that device only. Obviously, passwords and encrypted codes can be changed but initially the device would be secure from the start. I am not saying this is exactly how it should be done but the bottom line is – securing wireless internet connections should be made compulsory. Dishonestly obtaining free internet access is technically an offence under the Communication Act 2003. If the administration is keen to enforce this law then the router manufacturers are ultimately making us all victims until we read the technical support manual. The minor involved was eventually let off after it was revealed he already had his own internet connection and accidentally clicked on the wrong wireless signal. Combine this with the high volume of illegal file sharers hijacking other connections – things need to change! Secure wireless routers straight out the box – who said change had to be complicated? Bring your own laptop to work - could it catch on?
The integrity of this scheme regarding the boundaries of work and home life are definitely up for debate. As much as it’s unhealthy to bring work home during personal hours, it could also prove to be unproductive for employees to bring personal media centres into work during office hours. Workers who are taking part in BYOC are apparently lapping up the chance to be able to express their geek cred at work and use devices they feel most comfortable with. Bearing in mind the company involved estimate it will reduce their IT costs by 20% a year, it has all the hallmarks of a mastermind manoeuvre. Reduce costs, encourage employees to work out of hours and bill it as a perk – that’s genius. Battling the CrunchWatching the news headlines over the last few days, one can’t help feeling not that things are just bad at the moment, but rather that our very existence is at stake (with a little over-active imagination, maybe). I’m sure there are plenty of people out there having flashbacks to the post 2000 dot-com bubble burst and trying to think what the battle plan should be as budgets are cut. So how does the IT pro stay alive in a recession, how do you stop your job being outsourced? How can one point out the savings, the efficiency and productivity gains and the future business opportunities to the directors, keen to cut heads and keen to cut spending on kit. It’s a tricky one, but an essential skill to be mastered nonetheless, not taught in a manual or training course. One shouldn’t assume anything and especially one shouldn’t assume anything isn’t worth communicating, but as we battle against the crunch, will our standards start to slide as we struggle to stay alive? Are we all destined to become the sneaky smeagol administrators, jumping to the attention of the chiefs, but neglecting our colleagues and systems in turn? We shall see. Slimming Down With Thin ClientsEnvironmentally, thin clients use a lot less power, so they’re nice and green for the business. If they develop into the home, I suppose we’d probably end up installing terminals in every room, so we might end up burning the same, but it’s still miles better than evolving with the desktop or laptop. For some system administrators, thin-clients computing could be the Holy Grail they have been searching for, representing the total disarmament of the user and the total empowerment to themselves. It’s certainly something I’ll be looking into further. Keyboard Sniffers
I can’t help thinking that this story has been released without anybody actually typing at a normal speed. Let’s redo the research whilst typing at the usual 20-30 words per minute and include some typos. I would also suggest we incorporate keyboard sniffing technology with some sound word processing software to correct any grammatical mistakes. While were at it, let’s also This is definitely James Bond territory and as with all stories of this nature, I am surprised it ended up on a BBC news website to be made public. The whole idea of spy technology is to be low key and covert. As keyboard sniffing evolves, so too will ‘Keyboard Handkerchiefing’ to combat the issue. Keyboard Handkerchiefing is a relatively new term made up this morning by System Hero to describe the reaction of suspicious looking characters who will inevitably devise new technology to wipe the noses of keyboard sniffers. I could go on but you get my drift!. Kettle Hacking
External Phishing is here
I am not sure if it’s the new tactic or the blatant cheek that gets me here – I expect we will see a few more ‘real world’ lures hitting us in the next few years – the innovative little skamps. Up, up and away…
Whether we manage to avoid all one-on-one communication with users is perhaps on the horizon as virtual meetings & remote desktops are replacing the need for physical presence. I’d personally prefer not to webcam and would be quite happy presenting end user with an avatar, perhaps of an axe wielding dwarf or like, but that’s another story. So the question is for me is not if it will happen, but how long will it take? Sometimes I think an overnight solution will have been created to usurp the whole current framework of the way we work in one fell swoop. Scrap the Ethernet network and replace it with mobile 3G at ever increasing speeds. Stop spending thousands on office software and let us all use free online document solutions (just a case of them all working together). Ship off the email system and let someone else worry about our anti-virus and delivery issues. Then there’s the CRM and other solutions, there are plenty of providers out there ready to do the jobs at a lower cost. Once all that’s out the way all we’re down to is backups which we don’t need any more as that’s all handled by the solution providers – hopefully, so they can go too. Blackberries and mobile From now on all new IT workers will still start off their careers on the office floor, learning about how user’s logic works. After 2 years of hell, they will be saved by the mothership in the cloud and deposited safely into the strong-hold of technology control-centres, ever to be thankful and swearing never to go back. System Heroes guide to a more productive work environment
Officially, government ministers are considering plans to spend an estimated 12 billion on a database to monitor and store Britain’s emails, texts and calls in order to fight terrorism. I definitely think they have missed a trick with this - let’s go one step further and start charging an ‘email tax’ on all personal and commercial emails. If they are going to monitor every piece of dialogue that goes on in the UK, why not tax it as well - that way the governing bodies responsible will have ongoing and potentially In all seriousness, the problem of terrorism is no laughing matter. On the other hand, a huge database containing masses of potentially sensitive information is also nothing short of a terrorist blackmailing time bomb. The very fact this initiative has been publically documented will have already compromised national security should this scheme become reality. The big hitters in the organised crime and terrorist world will find new ways to communicate, while the rest of us become increasingly at risk from government related data security breaches. Enter the grid
There are plenty of projects going on. The Worldwide Large Hadron Collider Grid (WLCG), is using 140 computer centres around the world from 33 countries. Biological scientists are using grid computing to work on research projects in parallel. SAFE have recently announced a distributed computing grid system for comparing software intellectual property using its CodeSuite of tools, dramatically increasing the speed at which comparisons can be done. A sysadmin recently used a grid of 75 computers to find the largest ever prime number, with 13 million digits. Not sure what we’re going to do with it, but clever stuff all the same. The mind only boggles at the exponential speed that grid computing can and is already making for discoveries, such as analysing the data from the genome project. One day perhaps we’ll have collected so much data; we’ll be able to use the grids to tell us what to do with our lives and what to buy for our wives. gmail no barrier to languageJust when you thought you’d have to learn a different language to do business in a foreign country, Gmail puts in a translator, putting us a step closer to breaking down one of the biggest barriers in the world - language. What may just get thrown in as a small press announcement may one day be hailed as an evolutionary step for humankind. You only have to go one step further and get the voice to text technology working properly and although it may be a bit messy, we are surely only a few steps short of live universal translation services (well, maybe not quite universal - if we’re not alone on this planet I haven’t tried it out yet, but one things for sure - it’s a dream for spammers all over the world. UK Workers want to flex
Anyhoo, the seamless remote collaboration is becoming increasingly attractive although there are a few security issues to overcome before we all set up shop in the spare room. I am just gutted the fourth national work from home day was kept such a good secret. European Sun WorkEver since I read this article about Eutelsat launching it’s satellite broadband across Europe over the next year, I’ve been thinking about buying a cheap run-down old villa somewhere in Europe. Certainly this service has the potential to open up teleworking from anywhere. All you’ll need is an electricity supply, your EU passport and a shelter and you could be sunning it up working remotely in a villa while servicing your office via remote access and Skype. OK, £400 set-up is a bit of a hit, but £30 a month certainly brings the costs into the realms of reality for all who want to take to the hills and ditch the UK’s extortionate housing market. At last, there’s no real excuse to work in concrete cities, choking on car exhaust fumes and getting mugged by urban lunatics. Get ready to pack your bags and go! How important is your business card?If you have never thought about it – you need to see this Possibly the best pitch ever The big squeeze
Mexico’s 5 day Lock-inAnd so, it’s happened already. The government is now telling Mexicans to stay indoors for the next five days. Presumably, this step is one short of ‘ordering’, but still pretty crazy stuff. In the UK, we’re still in our tough-nut laugh at anything mode, more interested in making jokes about swine flu than taking it seriously yet. We’ll just wait until the day that everyone takes it seriously and then panic. 5 days in doors, eh? That would drive most of us nuts, although WOW fans probably won’t notice the difference. Get a few tubs of ice cream and a few pizzas and wait it out. What would the traditional Brit’s do? Stack up on lager, vodka and chips for the week? Let’s just hope we don’t have to do this. Pirate Bay v Car manufacturer irresponsibility
![]() Sun Try & Buy Program
Walk this way for some genuine HeroInput and more info on the Try & Buy Program. World of Sun
Urban legends uncovered - the full monty on Sun products, upgrades, announcements, ![]()
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