[ngw] Google and Mcafee

[Paul Caron]

I'm of the opinion that much of the "testing" that goes on in a lot of places is done on the developer's machine.  Typically testing is done on the high end workstations and is not inclusive of all of their clients.  
 
<rant on>
For example, the developer is probably running Windows 7, got maybe 2-4 Gig of RAM, 30-50Gig free disk space on C: drive.  Low end schmuck in the field (large company) may still be running Windows 2000 (machine is slated for replacement this year), has 512MB of RAM and has probably a Gig or two free disk space on C: drive.  One such example was one of our developers including some Microsoft feature that took the GroupWise Trifold function we've developed internally from a 12MB product to a 250MB product!  
 
In my previous life, the development team of 18 developed this wonderful fix-it-all software solution that required us to replace all of our laptops and 60% of our monitors - all because the developers were given nice large screens to develop their software.  They never ran their software on what the rest of the population was running on and would have seen that 1/2 of their screen output was pushed off the monitor and not visible to the end user.
 
Am I saying that the developer should be coding on a Windows 2000 PC running a VGA Monitor - heck no.  But be aware of the limitations of all of your users, test on like hardware to ensure that your upgrade, patch or software will not cripple the workstation and runs as you expect it to.  Then when you roll out the software, get off your butt and go out in the field and see how the deployment actually went and make notes to improve your future rollouts.
<rant off>
 
So there.
 


Paul Caron, CNE, MCSE | Messaging Architect 
Maine Medical Center | http://www.mmc.org ( http://www.mmc.org/ )
NOMOREcaronp at SPAMmmc.org | 207-662-6666
 
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>>> 

From: "Tim Jackson" <tjackson at baltimorecountymd.gov>
To:<ngw at ngwlist.com>
Date: 4/21/2010 8:22 PM
Subject: Re: [ngw] Google and Mcafee
We were hit by the McAfee issue here. We'll see what happens when all of our machines get turned on tomorrow.

>>> "Gregg A. Hinchman" <Gregg at HinchmanConsulting.com> 4/21/2010 8:19 PM >>>
I thought these were both interesting.
 
First -Google and its continue non-protection of privacy.
 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/7612988/Google-not-interested-in-privacy.html 
 
My opinion:
I am not a fan of the 'cloud' mentality because no one can protect a companies -let alone a persons data as well as the individual person or corporation -because they have 'skin' in the game.  And then there is the 'connection' issue.  When an organization jumps on the path to 'cloud' all data so they can eliminate IT -or much of it- they forget that in an outage of the Internet -they have lost all communication both to the outside world and between their own employees.  Now I know my opinion will sound like its old fashion but let me ask -have we ever had internet outages? Or, complete air traffic outages?  Thinking the unthinkable seems to be what takes place more often then not these days.  Consider back a few years when the Internet DNS servers had a 'hack' built into them that would have easily exposed us all. Or now - http://news.techworld.com/security/3218219/domain-registrars-lagging-behind-over-dnssec-security/?olo=rss .
 
Second -Mcafee -can you say 'Ooops!'
 
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100421/ap_on_hi_te/us_tec_mcafee_antivirus_flaw .
 
Limited Opinion here: You need AV but yet a company should do better testing before releasing.  You cannot tell me this could not have been caught in the lab long before release.
 
Just two interesting events.
 
 
Take Care.
 
Gregg A. Hinchman 
Consultant
Gregg at HinchmanConsulting.com ( mailto:Gregg at HinchmanConsulting.com )
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