Text 53929, 84 rader
Skriven 2009-03-07 11:37:50 av Alan Zisman (1:123/789.0)
  Kommentar till text 53923 av Jean Parrot (1:123/789.0)
Ärende: IT techies.
===================
Jean Parrot -> Alan Zisman wrote:
 JP>  Alan, good morning again.

 AZ>> Well, there was certainly a lot of (well-earned) overtime paid out
 JP> over
 AZ>> that period.

 JP>     Well, we sure wait a lot of minutes even hours in toto, when doing
 JP> maintenance on any machine, my SiL who works for CAE now, lets his
 JP> machine run for 20+ hours at times, to recompile some minor correction
 JP> in his coding. Here, just doing a TI clone is alike watching grass grow.

Note that in order to try to deal with 10,000 computers of a wide range of ages
and conditions, the technicians developed a time management routine where they
took a quick look at each- if it was too old (P2, etc) or running a Win9x
operating system (unsupported by their AV application), they simply 'red-dotted
it'- places a red sticker on it, noting that it should not be used, and moved
on to one that they could deal with more easily. They would start up the AV
application on a bunch of systems, then move on to another school, coming back
the next day. Relatively efficient use of time.

 JP>> How would one know that downadup is present ?  What
 JP>> does it do or prevent doing ? I should Google for it.

 JP>     Jeff would be happy today, I did Google for it and filled my eyes. I
 JP> also ran it on the Vista yesterday, nothing found. There is an opinion
 JP> that the pirated copies of XP or Vista, that do not get updated are a
 JP> great cause of this spread. All my systems are updated to the max, save
 JP> for SP2 or SP3 on the Athlons, all the other updates are accepted.


Downadup makes use of the vulnerability that MS patched last October. Note that
this is post-SP3... so if you had installed SP3 but hadn't been running Windows
Update regularly, your systems would still be vulnerable.

 AZ>> There's a lot of discussion that it seems to be setting up a
 JP> network of
 AZ>> infected systems for an attack on various corporations and other
 AZ>> websites later in March.

 JP>     Like Gibson's DoS of a few years back ?


More or less... SouthWest Airlines is apparently one of a number of targets. (I
don't know why).

 AZ>> I had been holding out for a 160 GB HD version, but the 16 GB flash
 JP> one
 AZ>> seemed cheap enough to be worth the experiment... and really, what
 JP> is a
 AZ>> netbook for? It's for easy portability, web access, minimal data
 AZ>> storage. So I'm hopeful that the flash-drive version will let me do
 AZ>> that. I wouldn't be storing the 50 GB of music and video files that
 JP> sit
 AZ>> on my iMac on it... and if needed (which I doubt), it can always be
 AZ>> connected to an external HD.

 JP>     I have not really looked at these, are you saying that the 16 GB
 JP> flash is built-in or is it added, USB, when needed. Can it run on it ? I
 JP> think that U'u can boot off a USB key. My daughter runs a heavy PRG and
 JP> elected to pay for the 160 G HD, I wonder how she makes out on that
 JP> small screen.

That's right... no traditional hard drive, no optical drive. The only built-in
storage is the flash drive. Dell (like other manufacturers) offers solid state
drive sizes ranging from 4 GB  to 64 GB, along with traditional hard drives of
varying sizes with their various netbook models.

I'll report in with comments when I (eventually) receive it... on the ferry
yesterday, as I walked around I kept a mental note of the number of notebooks I
saw people using... I counted 3 15-17" models in use, and two people using
netbooks... so they are starting to become popular. (Note that there is no
Internet connectivity on the ferry, though some netbook models are being sold
with the ability to connect to cell phone mobile data networks if a user has an
account).

-- 
==================================
- email: alan (at) zisman (dot) ca
- website: http://www.zisman.ca
(running on Mac OS X)

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