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   RE: [xml-dev] Managing Innovation

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I don't have experience with Red Hat.  My experience with 
MS is improving quickly.  The announcements now come fast 
and the Windows Upgrade process is easy.  That's a desktop 
perspective, but I do have SQL Server running locally, and 
so far, so good.  When the Love bug hit the wires, we had 
some serious problems here.  Since then, our IT department 
has become not politely but strenuously insistent, to the 
point of Draconian measures when needed to get the attention 
of the droid owners.  Hopefully, everyone has gotten the 
message that security is a serious business issue.  But have they?

Here is the kind of thing that frustrates the IT folks:

"It's no secret that the advantages of upgrading operating systems or
application software has diminished quite significantly over the last few
years. If you look back over history, there were great advantages from one
release to another. You just don't get that anymore. You just don't get the
bang for your buck switching from 2000 to XP. 
--Toni Duboise"

It's just dead wrong and spreading the idea contributes to 
the problems by insisting there is no value 
in getting a better operating system.  XP is waaaay better 
than 2000 and one can see that easily by dropping some 
more RAM into the machine and watching what happens. 
Security is better but not perfect.  There is something 
to be said for killing Outlook Express whereever one 
finds it.  Scripting inside mail systems is a bad brew.

So part of the problem is the old legacy not having been 
fully patched, part of it is competence in that sloppy 
code gets released, part of it is institutional in that 
sloppy code isn't discovered early enough, part of it is 
architectural in that the trade offs of ease and security 
aren't fully understood and implemented, and part of 
it is cultural, in that the web culture has yet to 
mature to the point to realize the deep nature of its 
interdependencies and the folly of unsavory or ill-informed 
opportunism.

Everyone is learning.  We need to encourage collboration 
on solving these problems, learn to improvise and work 
together quickly, and stop stomping on each others lines 
or riffs just to get more of the spotlight on ourselves. 
A theatre troup banishes an actor who does that and any
technician that helps them.  A jam band beats them up. ;-)

len


From: Rick Marshall [mailto:rjm@zenucom.com]

that's why i primarily use windows 2000/xp and redhat linux distros -
redhat in particular is very fast at getting fixes out - so they
obviously recognise the problem from a business perspective. ximian has
an alternative that is almost as good. microsoft does the job, but i
find it's response a bit patchy although i haven't done the stats.
basically i watch the announcements from cert and then how long to get a
fix from the vendor.




 

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