Vo0k writes “What are your top ten system administrator truths? We all know them already, but it’s still fun re-telling them. Stuff like “90% of all hardware-related problems come from loose connectors”, even though you already know it’s true, may save you from replacing the “faulty” motherboard if you recall it at the right time.”

A few others my from experience:
1.) Computers don’t delete files, people do.
2.) It’s always your fault.
3.) Money can fix problems.
4.) Working on computers is only fun while they are working.
5.) Marketing people will install spyware.
6.) Sales people will install viruses.
7.) Production people will delete important files.
8.) E-Mail is the most important thing in the world, to everyone except you.
9.) No matter how hard you work it will be there waiting for you in the morning.
10.) Hard drives will die.

Poorly Dressed Anonymous Coward wrote to mention are article run in the Syndney Morning Herald saying that IT workers have been dubbed the worst dressed corporate employees. From the article: “Help-desk staff were named as the worst offenders, followed by those working in technology start-ups, many of whom had continued to wear T-shirts to work as a consequence of the casual web culture of the ’90s. ‘The internet is now such a massive industry but people haven’t caught up in terms of their dress’.”

I am offended! I am willing to admit we’re possibly not the best dressed employees in town, but it could be sugnificately worse. I mean really… I could be a professor!

tomhudson writes “The Register is reporting that IT support people feel abused and frustrated, with 2/3 swearing, almost half being depressed for the rest of the day, and 15% throwing things. Personally, I thinks their stats are off: I’ve thrown a monitor, a laser printer, keyboards, books, CDs, drives, kicked a few chairs, etc. Who hasn’t? What have you thrown lately?”

It takes a special type of person to handle IT. The funny thing is, in my opinion, the best people are those most unlikely to get involved. Keeping your sanity requires a special touch of apathy. You can’t care what people think, or how people feel. I know its been said a million times but you’ll never make everyone happy. Lawyers would make fantastic IT people.

An anonymous reader writes “Combining desktop search and the Google Sidebar, Google Desktop 2 is now available for download. Dozens of new third-party sidebar panels are now available, Google said. Also launched was Google Desktop for Enterprise (free).”

We can only hope this one works better then the last. We have a number of “google-heads” in our office who insist on using all the newest technology, often with huge consciences. I am glaf their making an effort to improve desktop search. I am also extremely excited about the prospect of an enterprise solution. We have a NAS device which is approx 300GB. There is no need for 20 workstations to all individually index this massive network share. Its good to know Google is keeping the system administrator in mind while developing these new applications.

jschauma writes “NetBSD for everyone! Lots of news regarding new NetBSD releases: On October 31st, 2005, NetBSD 2.0.3, a source-only security update of the NetBSD 2.0 release, was announced. Since many people are still somewhat confused by the new versioning scheme used in NetBSD, this release was preceeded by an explanation of the NetBSD branches. Only two days after the 2.0.3 announcement, on November 2nd, 2005, NetBSD 2.1 was released. NetBSD 2.1 is the first maintenance release of the netbsd-2 release branch, and was announced with binary distributions for 54 architectures. Primary means of distribution include bittorrent.”

Although I have never used NetBSD, I have heard good things and really support the principle of their project. One of my clients runs a fairly nice e-commerce web site using a pair of old Sparc workstations. These things are 13MHz beasts. All 8MB of RAM is working on this job. I can tell you however in the 3 years i’ve hosted their servers I have never had a single problem. If NetBSD can offer 3 years of uptime using extremely old equipment its defiantely a contender.

Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes “Ajax, or ‘Asynchronous JavaScript and XML,’ is allowing webpages to update as quickly as desktop software, powering applications like Google Maps and attracting money from Silicon Valley investors, including for a collaboration-software company called Zimbra. The Wall Street Journal reports: ‘Zimbra’s chief executive, Satish Dhamaraj, says that when he started his company in December 2003, “I really thought that Ajax was just a bathroom cleaner.” Now his San Mateo, Calif., business has amassed $16 million in funding from venture-capital firms including Accel Partners, Redpoint Ventures and Benchmark Capital, the firm that famously funded eBay Inc. Peter Fenton, an Accel partner, says Ajax “has the chance to change the face of how we look at Web applications” and could boost technology spending by corporations, because Ajax is also being used to develop software for big companies, not just for consumers.’

AJAX RULES! We have just started to impliment this technology into our new websites. Although there are still a few browsers in the world which do not support this technology, its definately a set in the right direction. Specific we’ve found the original Safari browsers seem to have problems. For the most part no one is using old Internet Explorer 4, but I have noticed the original safari browser is still out there. This technology makes the websites sugnificately more power.

ewuehler writes “I don’t think I’ve ever heard a security application, be it a consumer anti-virus application or an enterprise IPS application, described as “user-friendly” or “easy to use”. When I read the title of the O’Reilly book Security and Usability: Designing Secure Systems That People Can Use, I took the bait and requested a copy for review. The title could also double as my current job description, so I was equally interested from a “job education” point of view. The book is a collection of (mostly) academic articles, grouped in sections and chapters. Each article/chapter is written by different authors; from Bruce Tognazzini who founded Apple’s Human Interface Group to Blake Ross of Firefox fame to names previously unknown to me. Read on for ewuehlers’ review.

Originally by samzenpus from Slashdot: IT on November 2, 2005, 2:24pm

TheRealSlimShady writes “According to a post by Ward Ralston on the Windows server team’s weblog, Vista server is to get symlinks as part of the SMB2 protocol.” From the post: “In Vista/Longhorn server, the file system (NTFS) will start supporting a new filesystem object (examples of existing filesystem objects are files, folders etc.). This new object is a symbolic link. Think of a symbolic link as a pointer to another file system object (it can be a file, folder, shortcut or another symbolic link).”

Originally by Zonk from Slashdot: IT on October 31, 2005, 5:36am