IRS - passwords will always be a problem

Having worked for the IRS for a season, I was very much interested in reading the report. I was familiar with quite a few of the issues mentioned, and to a worker, there are only a few that really matter when it comes to doing one's job.

Passwords have been and always will be a problem. If you put too many password hurdles into a system, you get people that have to write down account ids and passwords because they can't remember them all, and then for an inside-hacker it becomes a matter of searching for where they wrote it down.

At the IRS there were many people in the section that I worked in who were concerned about security, and who made suggestions about improvements that could be put in place, but for some reason (we never knew why) those changes were never made. It was irritating and even de-motivating, to listen to the excuses our supervisors had to pass on to us about why this or that improvement was rejected.

After a certain point it makes a person just shake their head and ascribe it all to stupid government bureaucracy.

As for putting measures into place so that employees are prevented from making inappropriate and unauthorized changes and deletions, I know exactly what their talking about, but putting in controls in certain places would mean you would end up hiring 2 people - one to do the job and one to watch over their shoulder. They already do so much of that as it is.

On the bright side, such efficiencies are inherent in America's government, and that's the way it should be. Because the government is accountable to the people, there are countless watchdog groups and people checking people checking people checking people to make sure power isn't abused. It makes for paranoid government workers and an inefficient system, but by golly, when it gets done, it gets done!! If the government workers weren't paranoid doing their jobs right, then we'd know there are inadequate controls in place. ;-)

Name, email address supplied

HP's just a company, OpenVMS is a relic
If OpenVMS is profitable, where's the money going

I find your article on OpenVMS rather below TheInq's standard.

The sad fact is that no ad campaign is going to make me, or any other IT manager seriously consider OpenVMS. This is not born of ignorance, since I've actually been a techie on it, but simply that it represents in everyone's eyes a bit of the past. A nice bit of the past, perhaps a bit like a British classic car, but not a thing to expand your business into.

I cannot believe that you don't know this.

Where this article gets bizarre is the "where has all the money gone" question. HP/Compaq is a business, the idea is to get more money out than you put in. Loadsamoney was put into creating the VMS family, and now it is paying off. Think of it like a pension. Once you've retired you stop saving for your retirement, and live off the fruits of your labours. With Linux, Windows or any number of other platforms, even OS/400 or HP/UX I can pick my service supplier from a long list, and my choice of applications from a vastly longer one than for OpenVMS.

These days HP is effectively a monopoly supplier of hard care support for VMS users. That means they have to take whatever combination of cost and service level HP thinks best. It is very very unlikely that this is the level they actually want. HP is not being mean, or stupid, just rational. Selling OpenVMS would not be rational for HP. There is almost no money to be made from selling VMS licences, the money being in services. Given that HP desperately needs to keep its services people attached to revenue streams that doesn't strike me as a good move. (Doesn't mean it won't happen of course).

Each day a VMS user decides to give up and move to a mainstream system. Unless they play the game dumb, HP will be the first they call to do the move. Thus they will rake off money for the conversion and the new system. A 3rd party specialising in VMS won't be in that position, unless HP decides to sell it to a big enemy/competitor like IBM. Thus the only firms who could make a go of OpenVMS are the firms HP won't sell it to.

There is obviously a rational level of development to keep it ticking over, but only someone who thinks the media is the true reality could be so deluded as to think that an ad campaign will budge VMS from its genteel decline.

Regards,
Dominic Connor
Email address supplied

Hot Review Mobos for Hacks
Asus accused of tweaking Springdale boards for press

Mageeky

I pointed out several years ago that Anandtech and THG always received "hot" review Mobos from the likes of Asus and numerous other mfgs. Most people didn't look at real World results vs. Anandtech/THG results close enough to notice the small but consistent performance difference, but as an R & D engineer it didn't escape my eyes... This benchmark cheating nonsense is just another example of the extremes mfgs. employ to convince naive consumers their product is superior. For the most part the only people foolish enough to use a benchmark difference of .00000000000001 percent as a convincing sales argument are gamers and nobody trusts those people anyway!

Randy
Email address supplied