Personal computing discussed

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RAMBO
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Re: The best anti virus program

Thu Sep 08, 2011 12:51 pm

just brew it! wrote:
thegleek wrote:
Not kidding, why else would a "Fortune 200" corporation install it on 10's of thousands of computers?

The willingness of a corporate IT department to do/buy/install something isn't necessarily an indication that it is a good idea. As far as being a "Fortune 200" company goes... meh. Enron ranked 7th (and Fortune named them "Most Innovative Company" for six years in a row) before they imploded.


Why do so many companies go with MacFee if malwarebytes or Kaperspy or MSE is better? Why do these heads of IT departments go with something that is clearly not as good as these others? If the general world of IT (from their experience) has better solutions then why haven't they switched?
Last edited by RAMBO on Thu Sep 08, 2011 10:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
 
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Re: The best anti virus program

Thu Sep 08, 2011 12:52 pm

RAMBO wrote:
MS forefront is a business antivirus deal or something right? Its the only one that you have to pay for isn't it? MSE is free and Defender.

Yeah, Forefront is essentially the enterprise version of MSE. It uses the same engine, but has additional management tools. Windows Defender is obsolete; you're supposed to use MSE now.
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Re: The best anti virus program

Thu Sep 08, 2011 1:02 pm

RAMBO wrote:
Why do so many companies go with MacFee if malwarebytes or Kaperspy or MSE is better? Why do these heads of IT departments go with something that is clearly not as good as these others? If the general world of IT (from experience) has better solutions then why haven't they switched?

McAfee is geared towards corporate environments, and historically has provided the sort of central management tools that corporate IT departments want. Aside from that, I think it mostly comes down to inertia. When dealing with any large bureaucracy, you should *never* underestimate the power of the simple phrase "because that's how we've always done it" -- it can easily trump all other arguments!
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RAMBO
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Re: The best anti virus program

Thu Sep 08, 2011 1:07 pm

just brew it! wrote:
RAMBO wrote:
Why do so many companies go with MacFee if malwarebytes or Kaperspy or MSE is better? Why do these heads of IT departments go with something that is clearly not as good as these others? If the general world of IT (from experience) has better solutions then why haven't they switched?

McAfee is geared towards corporate environments, and historically has provided the sort of central management tools that corporate IT departments want. Aside from that, I think it mostly comes down to inertia. When dealing with any large bureaucracy, you should *never* underestimate the power of the simple phrase "because that's how we've always done it" -- it can easily trump all other arguments!


Thats disgusting. Is Norton also geared twords corporate environments or is it more for the home user?
 
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Re: The best anti virus program

Thu Sep 08, 2011 1:10 pm

I personally have been using Zone alarm as a firewall, MSE & Malwarebytes for malware and antivirus. End result, nice smooth system with good security.
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Re: The best anti virus program

Thu Sep 08, 2011 1:13 pm

RAMBO wrote:
Thats disgusting. Is Norton also geared twords corporate environments or is it more for the home user?

It's disgusting until some cluser infects the entire network because they had the power to turn off real-time scanning because there was no central management tool stopping them from doing so. BT, DT, have the coffee mug.

Norton = Home
Symantec = Corporate
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Re: The best anti virus program

Thu Sep 08, 2011 1:17 pm

RAMBO wrote:
Thats disgusting. Is Norton also geared twords corporate environments or is it more for the home user?

You haven't worked much (if at all) out in the corporate world, have you? :lol:

Both McAfee and Symantec (Norton) have products geared towards home users as well as corporate users. As Ned has noted, it is a matter of branding -- Symantec sells their home products under the Norton name.
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RAMBO
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Re: The best anti virus program

Thu Sep 08, 2011 1:23 pm

Captain Ned wrote:
RAMBO wrote:
Thats disgusting. Is Norton also geared twords corporate environments or is it more for the home user?

It's disgusting until some cluser infects the entire network because they had the power to turn off real-time scanning because there was no central management tool stopping them from doing so. BT, DT, have the coffee mug.

Norton = Home
Symantec = Corporate


But there are setting passwords on most antivirus and malware programs right? If not they could make it like that so only the IT head, security or whoever is in charge could stop real time scanning or change how the program works so the average worker doesn't have that capability, that would solve that particular worry. Feels like I am missing something though.
 
RAMBO
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Re: The best anti virus program

Thu Sep 08, 2011 1:27 pm

just brew it! wrote:
RAMBO wrote:
Thats disgusting. Is Norton also geared twords corporate environments or is it more for the home user?

You haven't worked much (if at all) out in the corporate world, have you? :lol:

Both McAfee and Symantec (Norton) have products geared towards home users as well as corporate users. As Ned has noted, it is a matter of branding -- Symantec sells their home products under the Norton name.


Not at all, just a kid going to school right now so my questions might be "I haven't plugged it in, why doesn't it work" LOL Heard from tech help depts that this is something they fear will never go away-god that would suck going through that every day.
 
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Re: The best anti virus program

Thu Sep 08, 2011 1:59 pm

RAMBO wrote:
But there are setting passwords on most antivirus and malware programs right? If not they could make it like that so only the IT head, security or whoever is in charge could stop real time scanning or change how the program works so the average worker doesn't have that capability, that would solve that particular worry. Feels like I am missing something though.

Yeah, it goes beyond not letting individual users change settings. Enterprise solutions also provide additional centralized control and monitoring capabilities.
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Captain Ned
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Re: The best anti virus program

Thu Sep 08, 2011 2:02 pm

RAMBO wrote:
Heard from tech help depts that this is something they fear will never go away-god that would suck going through that every day.

Well, most IT staffers fall for the conceit that they're smart enough that they should not be subject to the same central controls as Sally from Accounting. When the corporate network goes down, start your forensics with the exempt list.
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Re: The best anti virus program

Thu Sep 08, 2011 10:14 pm

just brew it! wrote:
In my experience, McAfee isn't just a memory pig; it also thrashes the hard drive and noticeably slows down access to files. Sometimes even to the point where accessing a large file over the network will time out. Totally unacceptable.

Maybe newer versions don't have these issues, but we've already moved on (switched to MS Forefront).

SO what yer implying (along with the rest of the masses) is because of their failed past with those issues, their current product isn't up to par?

Low impact on performance — New for 2011, VirusScan Enterprise has been redesigned for performance, from startup to on-demand and on-access scanning. Independent tests show industry-leading performance of two to four times faster than the competition.

Eat EGG JBI! :P

http://www.mcafee.com/us/products/virus ... prise.aspx

Why do corporations use McAfee? Easy, centralized management — The McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator (ePO) platform is the centralized management console for deploying policies, managing security alerts, and viewing automated reports.
 
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Re: The best anti virus program

Thu Sep 08, 2011 10:20 pm

thegleek wrote:
Why do corporations use McAfee? Easy, centralized management — The McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator (ePO) platform is the centralized management console for deploying policies, managing security alerts, and viewing automated reports.

Actually, the enterprise product I see most often in the financial industry (and on my work laptop) is Sophos. Security-wise it's a great product, but it does hog CPU when it's on an update cycle. Scheduled scan usage isn't too bad (the boffins in the office schedule it to run noon to 1PM). Remote updates have been an issue, but I lay that at the feet of Itchy & Scratchy (my group's name for our IT boffins).
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Re: The best anti virus program

Thu Sep 08, 2011 10:28 pm

thegleek wrote:
Maybe newer versions don't have these issues, but we've already moved on (switched to MS Forefront).

SO what yer implying (along with the rest of the masses) is because of their failed past with those issues, their current product isn't up to par?

I'm not *implying* anything. I'm saying flat-out that we ditched it because the version we were using sucked! (And I don't particularly *care* whether they've fixed it in the new version.)

I even acknowledged (in the part you quoted!) that the new version may be fine. Fact of the matter is, it used to suck. That marketing blurb you quoted might as well be saying, "Hey everyone... guess what? We don't suck any more!"

I dunno about you, but when a vendor makes me waste time and pisses me off, I tend to take my business elsewhere. They'll need to not suck for a few years before I will trust them again.

Oh, and I forgot to mention... it had an unacceptably high false-positive rate too. Kept disabling/quarantining tools which were legitimately installed on several of our workstations and lab PCs, even when we told it to add them to its exception list. :roll:
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Re: The best anti virus program

Thu Sep 08, 2011 10:50 pm

just brew it! wrote:
I'm not *implying* anything. I'm saying flat-out that we ditched it because the version we were using sucked! (And I don't particularly *care* whether they've fixed it in the new version.)

I even acknowledged (in the part you quoted!) that the new version may be fine. Fact of the matter is, it used to suck. That marketing blurb you quoted might as well be saying, "Hey everyone... guess what? We don't suck any more!"

I dunno about you, but when a vendor makes me waste time and pisses me off, I tend to take my business elsewhere. They'll need to not suck for a few years before I will trust them again.

Oh, and I forgot to mention... it had an unacceptably high false-positive rate too. Kept disabling/quarantining tools which were legitimately installed on several of our workstations and lab PCs, even when we told it to add them to its exception list. :roll:

It's impossible to win anything against ya'll... It doesn't matter if McAfee is the worst anti-virus in the world or the best in the world. The POINT here is the corporation that I am employed with forces us to use that software, so why should I care either way? I don't.
 
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Re: The best anti virus program

Thu Sep 08, 2011 11:03 pm

thegleek wrote:
just brew it! wrote:
I'm not *implying* anything. I'm saying flat-out that we ditched it because the version we were using sucked! (And I don't particularly *care* whether they've fixed it in the new version.)

I even acknowledged (in the part you quoted!) that the new version may be fine. Fact of the matter is, it used to suck. That marketing blurb you quoted might as well be saying, "Hey everyone... guess what? We don't suck any more!"

I dunno about you, but when a vendor makes me waste time and pisses me off, I tend to take my business elsewhere. They'll need to not suck for a few years before I will trust them again.

Oh, and I forgot to mention... it had an unacceptably high false-positive rate too. Kept disabling/quarantining tools which were legitimately installed on several of our workstations and lab PCs, even when we told it to add them to its exception list. :roll:

It's impossible to win anything against ya'll... It doesn't matter if McAfee is the worst anti-virus in the world or the best in the world. The POINT here is the corporation that I am employed with forces us to use that software, so why should I care either way? I don't.


That sucks if it gives you trouble, they must have a deal with MacFee saving them money or it could be that "we have always done it this way" thinking as someone else suggested.
 
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Re: The best anti virus program

Thu Sep 08, 2011 11:06 pm

thegleek wrote:
It's impossible to win anything against ya'll... It doesn't matter if McAfee is the worst anti-virus in the world or the best in the world. The POINT here is the corporation that I am employed with forces us to use that software, so why should I care either way? I don't.

We all understand the bad decisions forced down upon us by the PHBs of the world. I work for gov't, JBI has directly in the past and indirectly now, so we really do grok PHBs. All we're saying is that if you can get a bug in the ear of someone with some pull in your IT world you could possibly move to a centralized management solution that might not have as many potential downsides. As much as I jokingly deride my 2 IT boffins I also realize that most of what I bitch about is settled several layers above them. I've pointed them to several freeware solutions to pressing issues over the years (mostly using the SysInternals tools), they've responded positively, and I don't get hassled over things that I should get hassled for (involving the use of CHNTPW). Cultivate the relationship and you run a decent chance of changing things. Rail blindly and it's a no-go.

That said, years of posting here and dealing with friend/family computers brought to me tell me that McAfee is really good at sales, not so good at support, and downright crappy on delivery. First thing I did when my daughter's new ThinkPad arrived was to wipe all of the bloatware, including McAfee, in favor of MSE and MBAM.
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Re: The best anti virus program

Thu Sep 08, 2011 11:16 pm

RAMBO wrote:
That sucks if it gives you trouble, they must have a deal with MacFee saving them money or it could be that "we have always done it this way" thinking as someone else suggested.

On the contrary... It doesn't give me trouble or any other employees trouble.

The ONLY trouble I have with my company is all the background **** they install to protect their assets... meh

* Big brother software to spy on employee's software installations, files, email text, anything!

* Lotus Notes (for email) and Sametime (for internal instant messaging) = WORST ANNOYING SOFTWARE IN THE WORLD!

* software to control the distribution of software (basically they force updates of windows software, 3rd party apps, encryption, anything!)

* software for full disk encryption - so the drive is rendered useless when it is loaded outside the laptop.
 
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Re: The best anti virus program

Thu Sep 08, 2011 11:49 pm

thegleek wrote:
On the contrary... It doesn't give me trouble or any other employees trouble.

The ONLY trouble I have with my company is all the background **** they install to protect their assets... meh

* Big brother software to spy on employee's software installations, files, email text, anything!

* Lotus Notes (for email) and Sametime (for internal instant messaging) = WORST ANNOYING SOFTWARE IN THE WORLD!

* software to control the distribution of software (basically they force updates of windows software, 3rd party apps, encryption, anything!)

* software for full disk encryption - so the drive is rendered useless when it is loaded outside the laptop.

[day job]

As a state-level IT/Bank Examiner (for financial institutions, but the concepts don't change based on line of business) any company that was not doing these things would receive poor grades in my examination report. I expect large enterprises to have all of these controls and more, including remote kill of laptops and smartphones allowed to sync to corporate e-mail. I expect that any decent IT shop will have exercised & implemented sufficient enterprise controls over the user environment so that users cannot do anything that is not authorized by corporate policy. Users need to understand that the box they use at work is a work box, not a personal communications device. That's what your home box is for. Harsh? No doubt. But it's the only way to go for heavily regulated industries such as finance and health care, not to mention any company in any industry that's publicly-traded.

[/day job]

One of my regulated institutions still runs two physically-separate networks. One internal, which goes to everyone, and one external, which is accessible in-office only by senior management. Those allowed to access both have two completely separate boxes, monitors, and keyboards in their offices; no KVM, no nothing. There is not a single electrical connection between the internal and external networks. Internal network-only users are locked out of the web and locked out of external e-mail because the internal network simply isn't allowed to leave the building. To get external e-mail, they must all take turns on a single box with external-only access. I'm sure this concept rings a bell with Vrock & Tanker27 given their pasts (maybe JBI as well) and I can only surmise that someone there has worked for a 3-letter agency.
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thegleek
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Re: The best anti virus program

Fri Sep 09, 2011 12:03 am

Oh I know... I totally keep my personal life far from the work laptop! Other software I forgot includes:

* Power Management software to shutdown the laptop at a certain hour (usually set to 19:00).

* "help desk" software; so if you -do- call help, they can immediately logon to your computer via the backdoor for this VNC/RDP type software.

* VPN client software to obtain internal IP

Other the all that and the massive "block" list from websites... We can still use youtube and stream music via playlists - YAY!
 
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Re: The best anti virus program

Fri Sep 09, 2011 12:06 am

thegleek wrote:
On the contrary... It doesn't give me trouble or any other employees trouble.

The ONLY trouble I have with my company is all the background **** they install to protect their assets... meh

* Big brother software to spy on employee's software installations, files, email text, anything!

Well... legally, they're allowed to do this. But it definitely sends a message of "We don't trust you and we are watching you!"

thegleek wrote:
* Lotus Notes (for email) and Sametime (for internal instant messaging) = WORST ANNOYING SOFTWARE IN THE WORLD!

Can't say I've had the (dis)pleasure of using either of these recently. Used Lotus Notes a long time ago at another job, and didn't like it. We've had Sharepoint shoved down our throats, and that's been a bit of a train wreck.

thegleek wrote:
* software to control the distribution of software (basically they force updates of windows software, 3rd party apps, encryption, anything!)

When you've got hundreds of desktops, you really *don't* want everyone's system downloading Windows updates individually; Patch Tuesday would totally swamp the company's Internet connection. In a large organization, pushing updates out from a local server is the only sensible way to do things when dealing with common software that is used by a large percentage of your users.

thegleek wrote:
* software for full disk encryption - so the drive is rendered useless when it is loaded outside the laptop.

If the data is potentially sensitive, this sounds like a *good* idea to me?
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Captain Ned
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Re: The best anti virus program

Fri Sep 09, 2011 12:14 am

thegleek wrote:
Oh I know... I totally keep my personal life far from the work laptop! Other software I forgot includes:

* Power Management software to shutdown the laptop at a certain hour (usually set to 19:00).

* "help desk" software; so if you -do- call help, they can immediately logon to your computer via the backdoor for this VNC/RDP type software.

* VPN client software to obtain internal IP

Other the all that and the massive "block" list from websites... We can still use youtube and stream music via playlists - YAY!

I'm surprised that you expect something different for a corporate laptop. Everything you've listed is applied to the ancient Gateway I use every day and I can't even get to YouTube or streaming sites. I gave up fighting that battle years ago.

Oh, and whole-disk encryption is no longer an option for anyone, corporate or personal. If you bring a computer outside of your house or place of business, no matter who owns it, it had best be whole-disk encrypted.
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Re: The best anti virus program

Fri Sep 09, 2011 12:16 am

just brew it! wrote:
Well... legally, they're allowed to do this. But it definitely sends a message of "We don't trust you and we are watching you!"

Yeah it's fine. They can search away all they want. But I have a feeling this is only installed for when something DOES occur that's bad and needs to be investigated, they have the means to do it easily and unobtrusively (without the user knowing someone else is grepping around!)

just brew it! wrote:
We've had Sharepoint shoved down our throats, and that's been a bit of a train wreck.

I LOVE SharePoint... I even get to be the Administrator of it on our intranet. We use 2007 right now... I looked at the complexity and numerous pages to migrate to 2010 and I said eff that. Why break what works! yanno?

just brew it! wrote:
When you've got hundreds of desktops, you really *don't* want everyone's system downloading Windows updates individually; Patch Tuesday would totally swamp the company's Internet connection. In a large organization, pushing updates out from a local server is the only sensible way to do things when dealing with common software that is used by a large percentage of your users.

True. I don't mind it at all, but so many employee's ignore the forced prompts, shutdown the process (via Administrative task manager) - so funny!

just brew it! wrote:
If the data is potentially sensitive, this sounds like a *good* idea to me?

Yup. Very good idea. But we all went through a very painful process in the interim. Most developers use MSVS2010 and local vm's via VMWare Workstation and the encryption software caused A LOT of issues with the vm's! Also, still to this day, they haven't figured out a way to make the encryptiom software work with a 64-bit version of Windows 7 Enterprise, so the SOE we're all stuck with is 32-bit Windows 7 - and that sucks to be limited to 3.25gb of ram! :evil:
 
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Re: The best anti virus program

Fri Sep 09, 2011 12:18 am

Captain Ned wrote:
One of my regulated institutions still runs two physically-separate networks. One internal, which goes to everyone, and one external, which is accessible in-office only by senior management. Those allowed to access both have two completely separate boxes, monitors, and keyboards in their offices; no KVM, no nothing. There is not a single electrical connection between the internal and external networks. Internal network-only users are locked out of the web and locked out of external e-mail because the internal network simply isn't allowed to leave the building. To get external e-mail, they must all take turns on a single box with external-only access. I'm sure this concept rings a bell with Vrock & Tanker27 given their pasts (maybe JBI as well) and I can only surmise that someone there has worked for a 3-letter agency.

We've had some dealings with organizations using this kind of setup, but haven't had to implement it ourselves. Given the nature of the business we're in, I suspect we'll be required to do so eventually though. The unwritten motto (or maybe it is written somewhere?) seems to be "you can't be too paranoid".
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Re: The best anti virus program

Fri Sep 09, 2011 12:20 am

Captain Ned wrote:
I'm surprised that you expect something different for a corporate laptop. Everything you've listed is applied to the ancient Gateway I use every day and I can't even get to YouTube or streaming sites. I gave up fighting that battle ears ago.

It's only surprising to me cuz most of ALL this stuff happened recently... 4 years ago NONE of the above software mentioned was installed (with the exception of Lotus Notes/Sametime, CA eTrust antivirus, and the VPN software), no encryption was forced, no background spy software was installed, and no forced power management software was installed, and no help-desk vnc proprietary software was installed either! IT dept had to use windows RDC.

Captain Ned wrote:
Oh, and whole-disk encryption is no longer an option for anyone, corporate or personal. If you bring a computer outside of your house, no matter who owns it, it had best be whole-disk encrypted.

Oh I agree with the concept behind it as long as it WORKS and doesn't mess your stuff up!
 
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Re: The best anti virus program

Fri Sep 09, 2011 12:28 am

thegleek wrote:
It's only surprising to me cuz most of ALL this stuff happened recently... 4 years ago NONE of the above software mentioned was installed (with the exception of Lotus Notes/Sametime, CA eTrust antivirus, and the VPN software), no encryption was forced, no background spy software was installed, and no forced power management software was installed, and no help-desk vnc proprietary software was installed either! IT dept had to use windows RDP.

Since we work collaboratively with Federal agencies their security standards tend to become our security standards and yes, this started in the last 3-4 years. If anything your company does intersects with Federal gov't, you're seeing the same effects I did because they're saying (and enforcing): our way, highway, make your choice.

I don't have to deal with the hell desk VNC/RDP stuff because the guy is across the hall, and we're on Outlook/Exchange, but otherwise we're in the same boat. For those of us subject to Federal regulations or SEC reporting rules, it's only going to get worse.

When at the office I just whip out the Droid, hook up to the open wireless in the coffee shop directly under my cube, and don't look back.
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Re: The best anti virus program

Fri Sep 09, 2011 12:29 am

thegleek wrote:
just brew it! wrote:
We've had Sharepoint shoved down our throats, and that's been a bit of a train wreck.

I LOVE SharePoint... I even get to be the Administrator of it on our intranet. We use 2007 right now... I looked at the complexity and numerous pages to migrate to 2010 and I said eff that. Why break what works! yanno?

I suppose part of the problem may be that we're just not using it correctly, and/or that our SharePoint admins are incompetent. But to me, it just seems like a disorganized mash-up of a CMS, Wiki, and version control system that does none of those tasks particularly well. After getting burned multiple times, the software development group has recently taken to tracking all of our own specification and design documents internally (using Subversion running on our own server), and uploading to the corporate SharePoint site only when someone from outside the group complains that the version of a document in SharePoint is out-of-date.
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Re: The best anti virus program

Fri Sep 09, 2011 12:33 am

Captain Ned wrote:
Since we work collaboratively with Federal agencies their security standards tend to become our security standards and yes, this started in the last 3-4 years. If anything your company does intersects with Federal gov't, you're seeing the same effects I did because they're saying (and enforcing): our way, highway, make your choice.

For those of us subject to Federal regulations or SEC reporting rules, it's only going to get worse.

So that explains everything. Yes, of course we deal with the Federal Government! Name 1 company in the Fortune 500 that doesn't? Hard to do, eh?

just brew it! wrote:
I suppose part of the problem may be that we're just not using it correctly, and/or that our SharePoint admins are incompetent. But to me, it just seems like a disorganized mash-up of a CMS, Wiki, and version control system that does none of those tasks particularly well. After getting burned multiple times, the software development group has recently taken to tracking all of our own specification and design documents internally (using Subversion running on our own server), and uploading to the corporate SharePoint site only when someone from outside the group complains that the version of a document in SharePoint is out-of-date.

I guess we have it made then since we use Microsoft's TFS for our control system and it integrates with Sharepoint like pancake and syrup. So we never run into any out-of-date discrepancies.
 
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Re: The best anti virus program

Fri Sep 09, 2011 12:44 am

thegleek wrote:
I guess we have it made then since we use Microsoft's TFS for our control system and it integrates with Sharepoint like pancake and syrup. So we never run into any out-of-date discrepancies.

I would be thrilled to pieces if anyone outside the software group had even a shred of a clue regarding what a real version control system is, or how to use one. Since we don't administer the SharePoint server, that side of things is out of our hands.

We're trying to get the EE people in our office to use Subversion to control their VHDL models. It's an uphill battle (but one I think we are winning).
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
 
thegleek
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Re: The best anti virus program

Fri Sep 09, 2011 12:53 am

just brew it! wrote:
I would be thrilled to pieces if anyone outside the software group had even a shred of a clue regarding what a real version control system is, or how to use one.

We're trying to get the EE people in our office to use Subversion to control their VHDL models. It's an uphill battle (but one I think we are winning).

Yeah been through many over the years.. The first one I recall using was something in FreeBSD called RCS. Then got some experience with CVS, Subversion, Vault, and SourceSafe. Most recent experience has been with TFS, Git, and Mercurial (used for development in the Bukkit project for Minecraft plugins).

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