News from PANUG/BizNix - September 19, 2002
http://panug.org - http://biznix.org

PANUG MEETING
The PANUG user group's monthly meeting is tonight.


SP6 AND EULA
Martha Tucker responded to last week's call for information
about Microsoft Service Packs and End User License Agreements
(EULA) with these links to articles by Brian Livingston:

http://www.infoworld.com/articles/op/xml/02/08/26/020826opwinman.xml

http://www.infoworld.com/articles/op/xml/02/09/16/020916opwinman.xml

This seems like a very serious problem. Many companies will be
unable to comply with the terms of the EULA for legal reasons.
Many won't comply because they don't want to compromise the
security of their computing facilities. They'll have to run
their computers without the service packs applied, which will
leave security holes open with no way to plug them.

Has the cost of using commercial software finally become
too hogh?
Let us know what you think: info@panug.org  


CUSTOM VS. CANNED SOLUTIONS
by Ed Sawicki - Accelerated Learning Center / Tailored Computers

Most of you reading this probably work in environments
where canned software is used for the bulk of all your
computing needs. If, for example, you need to backup your
data, you shop around for commercial software that you
think will do the job. Sometimes the software works as you
expect and sometimes it doesn't. When it doesn't, you
shop around for other products. You do this until you
find something that you can live with.

In almost all cases, the software doesn't do everything
you'd like it to do or makes you jump through hoops that
you'd prefer not to. In most cases, asking the vendor to
change the way the software behaves is in vain.

With canned software, you must live within the confines of
the product's feature set and limitations. If you need to
go beyond the capabilities of the product in the future,
the impact of converting to something else may be great. 

There's another way to implement solutions that you should
consider. Custom solutions. If you've been involved in
custom solutions in the past, you know that it can be a
minefield of trouble. But that was then and this is now.
The plethora of well-written, Open Source software and the
flexibility of open operating systems makes custom
solutions much more attractive these days.

Suppose you're looking for a solution that will make
nightly backups of files on a server at a remote sales
office. You want to move the remote data to a computer
at your site where it will automatically be written to
optical media - say, a CDR/W. You want to encrypt the
data so it can't be captured and examined when it's sent
over the Internet. What does it take to implement a
custom solution to do this? How much time would it take
and how much would it cost?

Less than you may think - maybe far less. This is easily
implemented by anyone with knowledge of cron jobs,
ssh/scp, certificates, rsync, and CDR/W utilities - all
well-written, existing software. Just connect the programs
together with a bit of glue logic (I call this plumbing)
and you have a robust, efficient, and secure remote backup
solution that can be changed or scaled to fit the
environment. The additional benefit is that you better
understand your solution and you've likely learned a few
things along the way.

Since Open Source software is open, there's no shortage
of people who can help you implement these solutions and
support you over the long haul. My company is one of many
that do this: http://www.alcpress.com