Changing Lana number
-
One of the major issues that IT pros tend to run into is wanting to excuse incompetence or unethical behaviour in other people. Calling them uneducated, too stupid to understand, not given the budget to do things right, whatever. We are pressured to not be honest and call out unethical or unprofessional behaviour when it happens and this is often our undoing.
There is little you can do here, you aren't in charge, you aren't in the path of authority, and you have little to gain by rocking the boat. But you DO have a chance to grow and learn. But to do so, you have to first not accept this behaviour, not excuse it, not act like someone "didn't know better" or that breaking contracts and risking customer data is okay.
What you need to take away from this is that lots of people in business and IT management are crooks and will do anything to line their own pockets and save their own necks. Identify it for what it is, people putting customers at risk for their own profits. People secretly violating their obligations to credit card processors and banks to make a quick buck. They are bad people, doing bad things. We all deal with this stuff every day. Sometimes we can fix it, sometimes we can't. But the one thing we can always do is understand it and identify it and make sure we never, ever make excuses for it. Making excuses empowers people and makes you not correctly evaluate situations.
-
@scottalanmiller said in Changing Lana number:
@wrcombs said in Changing Lana number:
Thank you for the information, however, not everybody got the memo to quit using LANA and move to IP.
Yes, they did. Don't make excuses for inexcusable behaviour. If there is one lesson to be learned from where you are working now, it's that you have to stop pretending that there are valid reasons or excuses for how things are being done.
They are breaching their PCI contracts, they are putting customers at risk, they are acting incredibly unprofessionally and unethically. There are no excuses for their decisions. They have agree to not do this contractually and have legal obligations to not do this; as IT professionals they have ethical obligations to not do this.
Call it what it is - unethical and inexcusable.
The only reason I post in ML when I have questions or am unclear on things is because of the level of intelligence in the community, it's the only way I can learn. I take what is being told to me here and take it to the table at work during our meetings. I do my best to make the office understand the points being brought up. But they also have a " your new, you don't understand " mantaility. So everything I say goes in one ear and out the other, I understand what your saying, I'm not making excuses , I'm relying information back to as best I can from my chain of command if you will, I get information, I send it up, it gets tossed around and I get an answer back.
-
The most common way that this is done that I see is that it has become the socially accepted approach for IT pros to feel "superior" and call all other people idiots and pretend that they are all totally stupid to the point of having zero knowledge of or control of their own actions. This is, of course, completely absurd. People doing well, making good money, running profitable businesses, feeding themselves, owning nice houses... generally are decently smart.
It makes IT Pros feel good to act like everyone else is "too dumb" to have common sense or any clue what is going on, but in reality this is not even slightly true and is honestly just misplaced elitism. It's two factors - IT pros often feel badly that we aren't earning as much as people doing bad things and want to excuse our own lack of success; while it being socially unacceptable to call out unethical behaviour but acceptable to think that people are walking zombies with no brain functions - especially in America where being uneducated and illiterate is often a badge of honour.
But what is really going on 99% of the time is someone who is very competent and very aware and just unethical. It makes us feel better to excuse people as being idiots compared to being scumbags. But the latter is way, way more common. The average person will steal if they think that they can get away with it, they will take advantage of nearly anyone, they will cheat and do anything for personal gain - as long as the risks are low. And that's what we see here.
No one is going to call them out for even this obvious money grab at customers' expense. There's no cluelessness here, there is just shitty human beings seeing a way to take advantage of people who have no visibility into how they are being cheated.
-
@wrcombs said in Changing Lana number:
@scottalanmiller said in Changing Lana number:
@wrcombs said in Changing Lana number:
Thank you for the information, however, not everybody got the memo to quit using LANA and move to IP.
Yes, they did. Don't make excuses for inexcusable behaviour. If there is one lesson to be learned from where you are working now, it's that you have to stop pretending that there are valid reasons or excuses for how things are being done.
They are breaching their PCI contracts, they are putting customers at risk, they are acting incredibly unprofessionally and unethically. There are no excuses for their decisions. They have agree to not do this contractually and have legal obligations to not do this; as IT professionals they have ethical obligations to not do this.
Call it what it is - unethical and inexcusable.
The only reason I post in ML when I have questions or am unclear on things is because of the level of intelligence in the community, it's the only way I can learn. I take what is being told to me here and take it to the table at work during our meetings. I do my best to make the office understand the points being brought up. But they also have a " your new, you don't understand " mantaility. So everything I say goes in one ear and out the other, I understand what your saying, I'm not making excuses , I'm relying information back to as best I can from my chain of command if you will, I get information, I send it up, it gets tossed around and I get an answer back.
I would not relay information back. Posting here to learn, great. Posting here to bring ethical and technical information back to people who definitely know better and decided to do things badly for unethical reasons does not benefit you nor them. It only puts you in the line of fire.
There is a lot for you to learn here. Some technical (what the heck IS a LANA number), some business (how are they making money by doing things badly and "illegally"), some professional ethics (identifying when people are just scumbags ripping others off) and some pure professional (how does it benefit my career to rock the boat and point out when others are scamming customers and vendors?) Learning is great, definitely learn.
But also be careful. Be tactical, don't expose how much you know of what they are doing. What you say is definitely NOT going in one ear and out the other, you are making yourself as an IT Pro, which is not what they want. They want either a complacent assistant who helps them breach contracts; or they want a scapegoat (this is not very likely, but be careful.)
Telling them that you know that they are doing things wrong (not badly, that's different, this is clear cut ethical breaches that should result in fines or lawsuits) only is logical if you truly believe that they are so dumb that they don't know anything. This isn't plausible, don't even consider that a possibility here. These are people who know darn well what they are doing. So pointing out that they are being bad people isn't going to change them, nor is it going to protect customers, and it definitely won't benefit you.
Identify that they are scum, start looking for another job. Keep quiet until you find it. Call them in once you leave.
-
And THAT ^^^^ I feel is the truly important lesson that you should be learning here (in this one instance.) The technical learning is good, but the tech you are learning in this job is all but useless. Outdated tech to a point that it might actually hurt a resume, it's that old.
Your real benefits are learning about people, ethics, business, professionalism, how to react and what cards to play and which to hold close to your chest. You can't be the social inept bench tech here just pointing out everything that you see wrong, every way that things could be improved. You need to understand that you are stepping into a business, not tech, situation and that you are dealing with people and ethics, not technology.
-
@scottalanmiller said in Changing Lana number:
@wrcombs said in Changing Lana number:
@scottalanmiller said in Changing Lana number:
@wrcombs said in Changing Lana number:
Thank you for the information, however, not everybody got the memo to quit using LANA and move to IP.
Yes, they did. Don't make excuses for inexcusable behaviour. If there is one lesson to be learned from where you are working now, it's that you have to stop pretending that there are valid reasons or excuses for how things are being done.
They are breaching their PCI contracts, they are putting customers at risk, they are acting incredibly unprofessionally and unethically. There are no excuses for their decisions. They have agree to not do this contractually and have legal obligations to not do this; as IT professionals they have ethical obligations to not do this.
Call it what it is - unethical and inexcusable.
The only reason I post in ML when I have questions or am unclear on things is because of the level of intelligence in the community, it's the only way I can learn. I take what is being told to me here and take it to the table at work during our meetings. I do my best to make the office understand the points being brought up. But they also have a " your new, you don't understand " mantaility. So everything I say goes in one ear and out the other, I understand what your saying, I'm not making excuses , I'm relying information back to as best I can from my chain of command if you will, I get information, I send it up, it gets tossed around and I get an answer back.
I would not relay information back. Posting here to learn, great. Posting here to bring ethical and technical information back to people who definitely know better and decided to do things badly for unethical reasons does not benefit you nor them. It only puts you in the line of fire.
There is a lot for you to learn here. Some technical (what the heck IS a LANA number), some business (how are they making money by doing things badly and "illegally"), some professional ethics (identifying when people are just scumbags ripping others off) and some pure professional (how does it benefit my career to rock the boat and point out when others are scamming customers and vendors?) Learning is great, definitely learn.
But also be careful. Be tactical, don't expose how much you know of what they are doing. What you say is definitely NOT going in one ear and out the other, you are making yourself as an IT Pro, which is not what they want. They want either a complacent assistant who helps them breach contracts; or they want a scapegoat (this is not very likely, but be careful.)
Telling them that you know that they are doing things wrong (not badly, that's different, this is clear cut ethical breaches that should result in fines or lawsuits) only is logical if you truly believe that they are so dumb that they don't know anything. This isn't plausible, don't even consider that a possibility here. These are people who know darn well what they are doing. So pointing out that they are being bad people isn't going to change them, nor is it going to protect customers, and it definitely won't benefit you.
Identify that they are scum, start looking for another job. Keep quiet until you find it. Call them in once you leave.
I keep my head low, and only bring up the topic, and that I think there are better ways as a company to do things for example my Windows Firewall thread (forgive me I don't know how to create a short cut URL yet) I simply waited until the topic came up and made a suggestion. That's about the extent of what I send up the ladder at my job.
I do appreciate that I have the opportunity to learn in the community, and you, yourself for being a huge impact on my learning in IT because of your professional experience and your willingness to teach. So thank you
-
All jobs have this, for the most part. There is a lot to potentially learn. Learning to understand corporate politics is hard and takes a lot of exposure.
One thing that is very hard to identify is "where is the ethical breach coming from." Sure you can identify that people are acting badly, but why? Who is authorizing this?
Some examples of where bad things might happen...
- An IT tech wanting a quick fix and hoping no one notices, thinking that they will be long gone before it all falls apart. See: https://mangolassi.it/topic/11852/why-it-builds-a-house-of-cards
- An IT manager who wants his department to show better profits or less cost.
- An executive who doesn't care about ethics and wants to just make money.
- A CEO who sets company policy in this way.
- A Board of Directors that tell the executives to go in this direction.
- Investors who tell the board this is the kind of company that they want to invest in.
As the lowest rung, or near the lowest rung, on the ladder, you might have almost no way to tell if it is your boss, or ten steps above him, causing the issue.
Been through something like this recently (from the other side), where people "in the trenches" saw things and either didn't know that this wasn't how the company behaved or didn't know how to get information up the ladder to the board or investors. Result was a company acting one way when their goals and intent were very different.
In some cases, you can figure out that it is a middle manager and if you can sit down with the CEO you can turn things around because the CEO will be shocked to find out what is happening. But that's rare. It's the CEO's job to know what is going on in his company. That's his role. But anyone can miss things or be fooled, of course.
Sometimes it's having a drink with a board member and saying "is this really the kind of company we intend to be"? Sometimes it's getting the ear of corporate counsel. But generally, it comes from the investors and is just "who the company is."
-
Regards Lana, Netbios is still heavily in use in virtually every Airport in the world.
Although everything is very slowly moving to IP, a lot of Airline checkin - boarding applications (including major operators) hosted on common use platforms still require it for communicating with attached devices, printers, scanners etc.Google Lanacfg, its is a quicker method to see and change Lana, works up to and including windows 7.
Any later windows and you are stuck with the method in your initial post. -
-
@plainfool said in Changing Lana number:
Regards Lana, Netbios is still heavily in use in virtually every Airport in the world.
Although everything is very slowly moving to IP, a lot of Airline checkin - boarding applications (including major operators) hosted on common use platforms still require it for communicating with attached devices, printers, scanners etc.Google Lanacfg, its is a quicker method to see and change Lana, works up to and including windows 7.
Any later windows and you are stuck with the method in your initial post.Im familiar with lanacfg in windows 7, Ive had to change multiple sites lana number back when i first started that were all on windows 7 machines.
-
@scottalanmiller said in Changing Lana number:
have alternatives like Token Ring
I haven't heard that in years! I wired Token Ring before.
-
As far a I know post win7 there is no other way to do it other than how you are at the moment.
fun days ahead when all those xp machines are retired!
-
@plainfool said in Changing Lana number:
As far a I know post win7 there is no other way to do it other than how you are at the moment.
fun days ahead when all those xp machines are retired!
no kidding!
-
@plainfool said in Changing Lana number:
As far a I know post win7 there is no other way to do it other than how you are at the moment.
fun days ahead when all those xp machines are retired!
If they are ever retired, lol.
-
@scottalanmiller said in Changing Lana number:
@plainfool said in Changing Lana number:
As far a I know post win7 there is no other way to do it other than how you are at the moment.
fun days ahead when all those xp machines are retired!
If they are ever retired, lol.
Well they have been around this long. . . Why not another decade with no support? LOL
-
@wrcombs said in Changing Lana number:
@scottalanmiller said in Changing Lana number:
@plainfool said in Changing Lana number:
As far a I know post win7 there is no other way to do it other than how you are at the moment.
fun days ahead when all those xp machines are retired!
If they are ever retired, lol.
Well they have been around this long. . . Why not another decade with no support? LOL
Exactly. At this point, there is no trigger coming down the pike to push people off of them. If you are okay with them today, you'll be okay with them in twenty years.
