@mmicha other than the obvious reason of not wanting to maintain hardware on premise (maintenance, support, acquisition costs) is there another compelling reason to want to move to a cloud environment - from a technical stand point.

Cloud has these negatives

• Long term cost
• Vendor lock in
• Limited support - support package dependent
• Performance (internet) can be a limiting factor

What are your 2012 servers currently doing for your organization, I assume file and print, domain and email. Anything else?

5TB of space isn't a lot but that is likely the total growth of the company over its life, what is your annual delta?

@irj said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@dustinb3403 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

why haven't you worked to get let go and collect unemployment while you get a better job?

Wow what an idiotic statement, even for you.

Sure, but its better then being brow-beaten for resolving a paying customers issue. He's repeatedly stated the issues he has here. And unemployment would literally force him to find better working conditions.

@wrcombs said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@dustinb3403 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@wrcombs said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Either my boss is having a really bad day and just cant handle it or he is upset that I fixed an issue that he was helping me on and I may or may not have blatantly ignored his suggestion .. although at this point I couldn't tell you.. But what I do know, is I feel pretty good that i got this working and completely fixed.

@wrcombs said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

/Sigh.
FML . Boss lady had a Coin Changer in her office for over 1 year. She gave it to me maybe a month ago. I had the coin changer working on the POS system Lab I have in the office in 45 minutes total (this was 2 weeks ago) so I did some documentation on it and passed it on to the tech i was working with.
We sent them a new cable to put on their existing Coin Changer (same POS system as my lab), 2 weeks ago, Apparently this call was passed onto me without me being on the email that passed the buck to me.
So now I'm putting out a fire on a client I've never worked with directly while taking the responsibility for this issue cause the other tech stopped responding to emails..
am I wrong to be Pissed off at this? - Maybe I'm over reacting to it. .

In any scenario if you're still working for that crappy company, why haven't you worked to get let go and collect unemployment while you get a better job?

why would i want to lose my only source of income ?
I have many things riding on me bringing home a paycheck (like my son and I having a house still)

So you're saying you've not seriously looked at alternatives. In how many months you've not received any offers (or none that match or beat what you're currently making)?

Sounds more like you're comfortable working for this employer and are afraid of something new, and unknown rather than actually embracing that and demanding more money for it.

@wrcombs said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Either my boss is having a really bad day and just cant handle it or he is upset that I fixed an issue that he was helping me on and I may or may not have blatantly ignored his suggestion .. although at this point I couldn't tell you.. But what I do know, is I feel pretty good that i got this working and completely fixed.

@wrcombs said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

/Sigh.
FML . Boss lady had a Coin Changer in her office for over 1 year. She gave it to me maybe a month ago. I had the coin changer working on the POS system Lab I have in the office in 45 minutes total (this was 2 weeks ago) so I did some documentation on it and passed it on to the tech i was working with.
We sent them a new cable to put on their existing Coin Changer (same POS system as my lab), 2 weeks ago, Apparently this call was passed onto me without me being on the email that passed the buck to me.
So now I'm putting out a fire on a client I've never worked with directly while taking the responsibility for this issue cause the other tech stopped responding to emails..
am I wrong to be Pissed off at this? - Maybe I'm over reacting to it. .

Why is your boss upset? Because the issue took 2 weeks with the previous person working on it and simply ghosted the customer?

Or because you were able to get the issue resolved?

In any scenario if you're still working for that crappy company, why haven't you worked to get let go and collect unemployment while you get a better job?

@stacksofplates said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

https://www.the-sun.com/tech/3525714/microsoft-power-apps-exposed-data-leaks/

Kind of click-baity title but power apps automatically makes a database public when you enable an API to interact with the database.

At what point do we hold people (Microsoft) criminally liable who design and implement these systems with such poor security practices, by default the database was public when using an API....

Um my 3 year old would know better than to use that as a default setting.

@irj said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Percentage wise that appears to be huge. I'm not sure $13k is worth loss of a ton of features and productivity.

Well with the paid versions you get access to the developers to get features added, I know one such feature that isn't in LibreOffice Calc is Gant charts, but these are included in Excel. (there may even be a plugin for LBC).

Other than Gant charts I can't really think of any features that I'd miss. And even then I don't use Gant charts at all.

@jaredbusch said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

@dustinb3403 said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

Why the downvote on that @JaredBusch? The issue is clearly how windows supports the elevation and allows a user to select anything outside of the intended purpose.

Plugging an device in while locked will still have the same issue, no matter what.

The issue also clearly involves interaction with the GUI.

Sure, but the issue will still exist no matter what, regardless of the GUI the system is still vulnerable to being owned.

@jaredbusch

Why the downvote on that @JaredBusch? The issue is clearly how windows supports the elevation and allows a user to select anything outside of the intended purpose.

Plugging an device in while locked will still have the same issue, no matter what.

@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

@obsolesce said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

Razor and Asus Windows 10 security bypass...

https://www.pcgamer.com/razer-windows-10-security-flaw-admin/

Well I suppose it's, as it's always been, important to lock your device if you walk away so someone can't sneak over to your chair and "wreak all kinds of havoc" on your computer if you aren't already a local admin lol.

So you are saying that all companies should keep their computers locked and only allow IT staff to use the computers and the entire idea of non-admin users should be abandoned?

All these employees just sitting at locked computers, not allowed to use them.

A locked computer screen wouldn't prevent this elevation from occurring.

@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

Razor and Asus Windows 10 security bypass...

https://www.pcgamer.com/razer-windows-10-security-flaw-admin/

This 100% sounds more like an issue for Windows rather than the hardware manufacturers.

Maybe I'm not considering something, but the article even provides examples of other non Razor devices being able to exploit this process.

@stacksofplates said in DNS Filtering Service:

@dustinb3403 said in DNS Filtering Service:

@voip_n00b said in DNS Filtering Service:

Anyone have a recommendation? Been looking at a bunch of them - looking for some first hand experience. Im looking for a hosted service not a pihole, or something like that.

A hosted service that isn't pihole.... then what is PiHole?

A self hosted application. Idk what you are trying to say here.

You can host it anywhere. Just because You host it on-premise or in AWS, Azure or wherever doesn't make it not hosted.

@voip_n00b said in DNS Filtering Service:

Anyone have a recommendation? Been looking at a bunch of them - looking for some first hand experience. Im looking for a hosted service not a pihole, or something like that.

A hosted service that isn't pihole.... then what is PiHole?

@gjacobse said in Windows 10 Taskbar GPO:

Export-StartLayout - it should still work

It does, just set a path to where you want the xml file to be saved.

On another note this really sounds like a way for HR to not do their jobs...

What is the motivating factor here to standardize the workspace of these workstations?

Worth noting based on this link.

The .xml file with the Start and taskbar layout must be located on shared network storage that is available to the users’ computers when they sign in and the users must have Read-only access to the file. If the file is not available when the first user signs in, Start and the taskbar are not customized during the session, but the user will be prevented from making changes to Start. On subsequent sign-ins, if the file is available at sign-in, the layout it contains will be applied to the user's Start and taskbar.

If these devices are mobile and leave the network when logged out of, it may cause issues as well. . ..

@gjacobse said in Windows 10 Taskbar GPO:

Place holder; I'm just getting started into this process of removing some default applications from the User's Windows Taskbar. MS Mail and Store need to go away by default. I have been doing some reading on the subject and it seems that you need to use an XML file, no biggie -

Remove Microsoft Store and Mail icons for Windows 10 through GPO

At the bottom referenced the XML

Configure Windows 10 taskbar

When I inquired about it, I got this:

IIRC the trick with it was the ID's the XML file uses aren't universal or consistent. I could get some to stick but others not to. I'll see if I can find my old work on it

As near as I can tell - they should be consistent...

While I continue to read the matter, has anyone already implemented this?

Can you no longer remove these programs from the system? That would seem like the better approach so they don't get used.

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@dustinb3403 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Just doing some really simple math on the cost savings of switching to the paid version of LibreOffice compared to Microsoft 365 Apps for Business (literally just the office suite).

$2,720 vs $15,840 annually.

Or simply put for just an office suite $13,120 a year in savings for an office of 160 people.

Mind blown.

There is a paid version?

There is. Its the recommended solution for businesses, specifically to keep the development of LibreOffice going.

And my numbers are actually a bit off, it's ~$19/U/Y for anyone checking my math.

But since the software is FOSS, many organizations are likely using it without support, the LibreOffice team is really urging businesses to get a paid version though.

@gjacobse said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@dustinb3403 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Just doing some really simple math on the cost savings of switching to the paid version of LibreOffice compared to Microsoft 365 Apps for Business (literally just the office suite).

$2,720 vs $15,840 annually.

Or simply put for just an office suite $13,120 a year in savings for an office of 160 people.

Mind blown.

Not leveraging Sharepoint, Teams (yuk), AAD, OneDrive?

No, we are using these solutions but I was simply curious what the savings is.

Just doing some really simple math on the cost savings of switching to the paid version of LibreOffice compared to Microsoft 365 Apps for Business (literally just the office suite).

$2,720 vs $15,840 annually.

Or simply put for just an office suite $13,120 a year in savings for an office of 160 people.

Mind blown.