How To Reduce Microsoft Costs Inside Your Small Business
Came across this article form 2004 about a small business that dumped Microsoft after the BSA showed up and discovered 8 installed, but not used, pieces of software on their systems. Keeping up with software licenses is tough. The software marshals arrived, closed his business for the audit and found about 8 pieces of unlicensed software. $65K in fines and $35K in legal fees forced him to settle rather than fight.
The CEO got mad and told his IT guys to dump Microsoft. This was back in 2004. Back then, things were harder than today. That company doesn’t use any Microsoft products anymore, but they do use proprietary tools. Redhat Linux was their choice back then. I’d be curious to find out whether they’ve changed to CentOS on their servers or a different desktop.
Key Takeaways
Top 5 Clever Uses for the Cloud
Stolen from my comment over at LH …
- Launch a Distributed Denial Of Service attack, DDoS
- Setup your own botnet
- Spread spyware
- Release huge password databases
- Release hacks for PS3s
Most of the time, Cloud Computing = Careless Computing.
Just because something is free and easy, doesn’t mean you should actually use it.
OTOH, there are times where using the Cloud makes perfect sense. When you want the widest distribution of data/info possible. In that case, remote, carefree computing is perfect.
When in doubt, don’t put it into the cloud because you can never get it back regardless of what the ToS say. IT security professionals are split on whether anything can be secured in the cloud. Certainly there are ways to accomplish it, but those methods are probably out of reach for individuals. I would have zero expectation of any real security on shared hosts or shared storage, but many people consider me paranoid. If it were your corporate data in the cloud, wouldn’t you want someone who is paranoid validating the security architecture?
Cloud Computing is Careless Computing
I was listening to a Linux Outlaws podcast where I heard a quote from Mr. Richard Stallman that caught me as true. I looked up the real quote.
“I suppose many people will continue moving towards careless computing, because there’s a sucker born every minute. The US government may try to encourage people to place their data where the US government can seize it without showing them a search warrant, rather than in their own property. However, as long as enough of us continue keeping our data under our own control, we can still do so. And we had better do so, or the option may disappear.” Here’s the source link.
Careless Computing. Your data is stored someplace else and no longer under your control. A good, clear, and accurate term.
There are good uses of Cloud Computing, but not without lots of very careful thought.
Simple Shipment Tracking CGI Script 1
Over the years, I’ve used a few different techniques to track UPS, USPS, and FedEx shipments. I’ve tried direct links to the shipper’s website, email status updates with cron, and just using the store’s shipment tracking. The email tracking interfaces have changed to be less-than-useful to me. Logging into the shipper’s website just to track a shipment became a hassle. No thanks.
None of these made me happy, so this morning I created a trivial CGI script + data file to track shipments. It isn’t anything too fancy and you need to edit the data file manually, but it feels better than the other alternatives.
Rdiff-backup vs Duplicati on Windows 2
I like backups. I like them more since losing many, many GBs of data over a decade ago – before I got backup religion.
Many of the long term readers know that I’m always looking for a better backup method.
I’ve been using rdiff-backup for about 3 years on Linux systems and mostly like it, but it isn’t perfect. Yesterday, I decided to check out a new way to backup my Windows7 laptop, Duplicati. I’d seen a few GUI tools for Windows that use the back end Duplicity tool. I’d always been interested in Duplicity because it does things that many other free tools do not. Things like encryption and networked backups to lots of services (Amazon S3) or just over ssh/sftp.
Keep reading for more on the different experience with Duplicati vs rdiff-backup.
Tips for Digital Photo Organization, Storage and Archival
By some standards, my 10,000+ digital photo collection is either very large or trivial. I suspect that professional photographers probably have hundreds of thousands of photos. Many of those will have different post-processing.
Organizing, backing up and archiving digital photos and images doesn’t have to be complicated to do well.
Organization
As you take the photos, place them into your organization. If you delay more than a week after returning from that once-in-a-lifetime vacation to Africa, then you probably will never perform any useful organization. Below are 8 steps to help you organize your photos efficiently.
Skype from Regular Phones at Home 8
Last year I found a few articles on how to setup Skype to work with a PBX like Asterisk or FreeSWITCH. This last weekend, I finally got Skype working using my home phones. The solution was tested on Windows and deployed on a Linux PC. I’ve deployed it on Linux as a replacement to expensive home phone service. Using Windows introduces many undesired issues for me (stability, license costs, etc).
I wanted the ability to extend this solution beyond a simple 1 line phone in the future, possibly adding a PBX and other PBX capabilities around this Skype-at-home use.
Features
- Use normal home phones just like regular phones. Making and receiving calls like you’d expect. Visitors to your home don’t need any instructions to make phone calls (except 911).
- Setup speed dial entries to both Skype and normal telephones. It would probably be useful to create 911 speed dial entries to your local police or fire department switchboards
- Cheapest home phone solution that I’ve discovered that doesn’t demand tracking of your web traffic.
- Voicemail
2010 Article Summary
I was going to create a Top 10 List of 2010 here. Then started looking through the articles and some constant themes can out.
- Virtualization For Desktops and Servers
- Disk Encryption
- Backups Rock!
- Risks and Concerns for Cloud Computing
- Quicken Runs on Linux – ’nuf said.
- Security Isn’t Easy
- Passwords – Never the Same and Use a Password Manager
- Desktop Security Tips
- Browser Security Settings
- WiFi Router Security Checklist
- Privacy Is Gone Online
- Don’t Use Adobe Software
- Windows Software to Avoid
- Free Security Tips Ebook
- Dealing with Computer Viruses
- Been Hacked?
- How To Build A Home Server – Cheap
Previous Best Articles Here
Happy New Year!
New Toy-Thermaltake BlacX Duet eSATA Dual Dock
I received a Thermaltake BlacX Duet eSATA USB Dual Hard Drives Docking Station for Xmas. I’d asked for it since almost no non-nerd would have known what it was. Today was the first day that I got a chance to plug this baby in.
First Impressions
Ultimate OSS List-2010
Datamation has published their Ultimate Open Source Software List of 2010
Lots of good things in there for anyone that likes Open Source Software – OSS. Just to clarify, they seem to mix OSS, FLOSS and even some closed source things. More than a few in the 14 page article are not free and there are huge gaps in some of the categories where the best FLOSS tool is not mentioned at all.
The list has desktop and server software.
The list has trivial things like IM software and EBR software for medium-sized businesses.
There appear to be formatting errors in the article, so some of the lists aren’t split into new paragraphs, but those are fairly minor. The article is filled with jewels worthy of the 5 minutes to scan it for new stuff.
Related, I always perform a freshmeat query when looking for software to do X. There are thousands and thousands of FLOSS projects there.
