Justin’s Blog to the World!

The last few days I’ve spent some time crawling over my twitter feed looking for funny and hilarious engineers to follow. Turns out, there are more hilarious engineers than you might think!

They all have their own sense of humour and personalities that come across not only in their blogs but in their tweets as well.

@amyengineer – Voice Expert : Just Another Day At The Office – Amy Arnold

networkingnerd:   http://networkingnerd.net/

The last few years have been really interesting for me in terms of Operating Systems and my personal choices. As someone who works in IT I often get a lot of questions around what operating system is the best!

The truth is my only answer to this question is: “What Operating System do you want to use?”

All operating systems have pros and cons. With most applications now available on most if not all popular platforms really I tend to find it comes down to user experience and preference. Users should be able to pick and choose the software they want to run. I personally have more of a preference for Linux but in reality I use Mac, Windows, Linux and Solaris. Linux tends to be my default choice because I am comfortable with it and honestly I just enjoy using it!

Circa 2006 and I would tell you that Windows would have been my first choice and my only choice. At the time Windows was really the only OS that met my needs of needing Enterprise support, scalability and most importantly integration. Despite all the other downfalls that was the important point. What changed? Why the move from a Windows base platform that suited your needs? The truth here is that I changed. I felt the need to do other things and branch off into new things and Windows just wasn’t there to move with me.

Making the move to any OS is all about you! If you want to do it, you can do it! If you don’t want to do it, its going to be darn difficult!

That being said I took a look at the 3 operating systems I use daily and came up with sort of a behavioural analysis between them.

Linux:
On Linux, I feel “at home” I do web and desktop programming building applications that help me get my day-to-day things done or taking care of things that I really have no desire to do! The OS also give me the flexibility to really get deep into the roots of the OS in a way I can’t with other systems. When I want to modify how things start, stop or change the implementation of something I am able to do that with relative ease and customize the OS for me! This may not be important for others but for me it matters because I can now force the system to do what I want which makes it easier to analyze things at various layers. To further support my thought that an OS is a User choice… With Linux I also tend to notice that my music collection, picture collection, web searches and general use is much more broad than any other OS. I get to fully reach the bounds of my creativity and push further if I want or scale back if I need to.

Windows:
Windows is purely a convenience thing for me. Many Enterprise applications take a long time to become platform independent. You can probably make them work but honestly if I’m with customers, partners, colleagues I don’t have time to fiddle or tweak. Furthering that is reliability. Yes, you can make them work and probably make them work well but lets face it you spend the rest of your day stressing if it breaks. Who has time for that?? It needs Windows? Run it on Windows I say! (Yes, I know many IT savvy people are cursing me about this right now… again MY preference.. you can do whatever you want!) Again, on this box I use Windows to get stuff done so my music collection tends to be limited, pictures the same and really I don’t feel totally at home.

Mac:
Now, it is certainly no secret that I have something against Apple. Apple is the company I do not get along with. I feel that it has policies that limit the development of technology and almost a dictatorship attitude when it comes to their software and hardware. I do own a Mac but to say that I love using it is an overstatement and a lie. I feel that if I pay for a $1000-3000 product I should be able to do whatever the heck I want with it! Why are you telling me what I can and cannot do? Why do you insist on making me sign things that say I will do as you wish? That’s not why I own computers I own computers for them to help me. I became and IT person just so that I could push technologies and force the development of new technologies. I use my Mac solely for one thing… Surfing the web.

Well, it seems that IT Security has been at the forefront of the news over the last few months. One of the largest and possibly most publicized security compromise was that of Sony. Following its security compromises and hiring of a new IT Security Exec, Sony has issued new Terms of Service that seemingly is trying to reduce some of the accountability on its part should something go awry. This is a move I strongly disagree with as I believe that companies who require user’s data for business should pony up and attempt to secure the data in the best way possible! By reducing accountability it just makes me feel that you are NOT going to try.

While this story has been highly covered I’ve included a bit of background for those who potentially live without a news source:

Hackers initially compromised Sony’s PlayStation Network exposing customer’s credit card information, addresses and potentially other personal information that was collected. I don’t personally own a Play Station so its difficult for me to say what information exactly was exposed apart from what I have read. While initially this appeared to be the only system compromised initially later news releases indicate that Sony was actually compromised several times following the Play Station Network. These following attacks led to Sony shutting down several of its other online services that were linked to the Play Station Network.

While the security compromise kept Sony’s services offline for months they did make one good change. They hired an IT Security person to sit at the Executive Level of the company. Hopefully this new member to their team will see to it that their networks and user data are much better protected.

Back to the highlights:

My own personal thoughts on this are that Sony didn’t take adequate steps to secure its network nor did it appear to acknowledge that IT Security was an integral component to its network foundation or business continuity planning. While I say this I have never analyzed or discussed with Sony any security counter-measures that were in place so for all we know my thoughts could be hog-wash. However for now, I am yet to see any evidence that puts Sony in a different light.

Sony’s new Terms of Service which they require you to acknolwedge before signing into your PlayStation Network account now clearly states what lawsuits are actionable and permitted and which ones aren’t permitted. In other words if they screw up you might not be able to hold them responsible, thus reducing their accountability. Now, I’m no lawyer and the interpretation of the ToS is my sole opinion. You can formulate your own by following the link below.

Sony’s New ToS: Click Here

Its been a while since I’ve actually built and deployed a Microsoft Server, matter of fact its been so long I think I’d need to mock up the full deployment.

However, latest reviews seem to suggest that Microsoft Server 8 has now moved from GUI to CLI in the form of Power-Shell. While, I’ve never been requried to script in Power-Shell and don’t really know the “ins and outs” around it I am curious to see how this will change user’s preference in the Enterprise.

I also understand that at the heart of MS Server 8 is Hyper-V. Another platform i’m not sure I am crazy about.

Currently waiting on beta announcement so I can test this out.

If anyone has already seen this and taken it for a spin let me know what you think!