Analysis of Locky ransomware
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@wirestyle22 said:
You never watched the Screen Savers with Leo Laporte? Gah! I loved that show when I was younger.
Um, no. I think we had a thread recently where we discussed that he was a consumer presenter or something. I can't remember what was determined. Oh yeah, he's a journalist and radio personality and not a tech guy. Very end user, media sensational stuff. Not IT. Not sure why you'd expect me to have watched him. Seems like an odd thing for IT people to have seen. Not odd that some have, but no more than normal people. He does content for non-IT.
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Leo was/is definitely more gadgets and consumer hobbyists. But I still loved TSS and they did a reboot of it on his site. I don't have enough time to keep up with it but I think it is still going on.
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@wrx7m said:
Leo was/is definitely more gadgets and consumer hobbyists. But I still loved TSS and they did a reboot of it on his site. I don't have enough time to keep up with it but I think it is still going on.
That's my understanding. I'm sure if you are into gadgets and consumer / prosumer digital gear that it's a great show. I'm oddly not one of those people. I can to IT from the business side, not the tech side, and actually am not into those aspects that people often associate with IT.
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@scottalanmiller That is interesting, for sure. I think a ton of IT people are into gadgets and most technology in their non-professional lives as well. I sure as hell am.
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@wrx7m said:
@scottalanmiller That is interesting, for sure. I think a ton of IT people are into gadgets and most technology in their non-professional lives as well. I sure as hell am.
It's not that I dislike gadgets, but to a massively lower degree than most any IT people that I meet. But on the other hand, I've always had enterprise servers and a networking rack in my home even in the 1990s. I live the IT stuff, but I have loved it as a business tool, even going back to being a kid. When I learned programming, it wasn't to make games someday, it was because I wanted to do database drive business applications.
That's why a Fortune 100 picked me up at 13. I was doing database work, not just fiddling around.
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For example, I like a new, fast desktop just like everyone else. But I really get excited about cost effective desktop purchasing and long term support and stuff.
I don't have a Raspberry Pi, even thought I love RISC and alternative architectures. No business use case for it, so I don't get excited about it.
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@scottalanmiller said:
For example, I like a new, fast desktop just like everyone else. But I really get excited about cost effective desktop purchasing and long term support and stuff.
I don't have a Raspberry Pi, even thought I love RISC and alternative architectures. No business use case for it, so I don't get excited about it.
Yeah, I drool when I see datacenters but still love consumer gadgets.
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@wrx7m said:
Yeah, I drool when I see datacenters but still love consumer gadgets.
See and just that term "consumer gadget" turns me off to them. Even stuff that I do as a consumer, like photography and audiophilia I don't use consumer gear, never have. My first camera was a pro rig (got me a newspaper job!!) for example.
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@scottalanmiller said:
I'm saying that small companies need to be realistic and not think that what they perceive as big is what enormous vendors will also perceive as big. Yes, O365 is crippled here to get bigger customers to spend more, which is probably way more important to MS than the sales of the lesser product to smaller firms. It only takes one large sale to make up for the loss of a great any small ones.
It's not perception, it's an accepted definition of SMB or SME. I find it hard to believe that Microsoft has little interest in the SME market, given that it accounts for half of the UK economy, half of the population, and 99.9% of UK businesses. It may only take one large sale, but there are only 7,000 large companies in the UK (I looked it up). You seem to be basing your opinion on a single conversation with an ignorant IBM employee years ago.
But really what it comes down to is that the more I look into O365, the more it stinks, and the more attractive sticking to old-skool volume licences and on-premise servers becomes. It doesn't matter whether I complain about it on here or keep my mouth shut, it is what it is. It's certainly not the no-brainer that you keep suggesting.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
It's not perception, it's an accepted definition of SMB or SME. I find it hard to believe that Microsoft has little interest in the SME market, given that it accounts for half of the UK economy, half of the population, and 99.9% of UK businesses. It may only take one large sale, but there are only 7,000 large companies in the UK (I looked it up). You seem to be basing your opinion on a single conversation with an ignorant IBM employee years ago.
SMB's might account for half the population, but I be it accounts for less than 30% of the money spent, and it's probably under 20%. SMBs are historically cheap - unwilling to spend money on solutions, where large companies know they need to spend money to make money - spend wisely, but still spend.
And even if that wasn't true, the costs to cater to 7,000 companies versus 100,000 SMBs is significantly lower, driving profits even higher for the vendor.
You ask nearly any sales person, would they rather make $1000 from 1 customer or $1 from 1000 customers, most will tell you the 1 customer, it takes less effort on their part.
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@Dashrender said:
SMB's might account for half the population, but I be it accounts for less than 30% of the money spent, and it's probably under 20%. SMBs are historically cheap - unwilling to spend money on solutions, where large companies know they need to spend money to make money - spend wisely, but still spend.
Where do you get that idea from? It's not been my experience. I've worked for large and medium sized companies and have never seen much difference. I supposed SMBs can find it harder to access credit, so have less money for investment.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
But really what it comes down to is that the more I look into O365, the more it stinks, and the more attractive sticking to old-skool volume licences and on-premise servers becomes. It doesn't matter whether I complain about it on here or keep my mouth shut, it is what it is. It's certainly not the no-brainer that you keep suggesting.
What is it about O365 that you think stinks compared to VL?
Benefits I see off the cuff:
- world class DC (HVAC/Power/air filtering/secure access/multi ISPs)
- backups
- anywhere access
- security
- single panel logon for email/ODfB/SharePoint, etc
- spam filtering
Of course you can get all of these things in a local install as well, but at what cost? At what upgrade cycle?
Picking on one aspect of O365, 50 GB of email storage per user. For my company of 88 employees, would require 4.4 TB of storage. Assuming I did a RAID 6 array for Exchange would require 5x 2 TB drives, $600/drive MSRP = $3000.Assuming this server lasts me 5 years, that's $0.57/person/month.
I currently pay $1.25/person/month for spam/virus filtering.
You start adding all this nickle and dime stuff up and you quickly come over $4/person/month just for hosted exchange. You add in the other benefits of Business edition at $5/person/month - that becomes a non brainer. Getting to E1 is definitely more challenging at $8/person/month for mainly the same features as Business edition - but the potential real win is $20/person/month with E3, assuming you need full local office.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@Dashrender said:
SMB's might account for half the population, but I be it accounts for less than 30% of the money spent, and it's probably under 20%. SMBs are historically cheap - unwilling to spend money on solutions, where large companies know they need to spend money to make money - spend wisely, but still spend.
Where do you get that idea from? It's not been my experience. I've worked for large and medium sized companies and have never seen much difference. I supposed SMBs can find it harder to access credit, so have less money for investment.
I have friends who work in fortune 1000 companies, they spend 10's of millions a year in IT. I work for a SMB of 88 people, not counting my salary, we've spent on average around $10,000 a year (counting buying new PCs, servers, switches, etc).
And when I ran a tiny consulting shop... I had places that would spend next to nothing unless they absolutely had to because something died, etc. It was crazy that they would be willing to pay my fee instead of buying a new PC at times.
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@Dashrender said:
What is it about O365 that you think stinks compared to VL?
I just think it stinks. Not O365 in general, but the Business plan. It might be better than VL but it's not the no-brainer some would have me believe.
"You want to use Group Policy? Sorry, you can't"
"You want to run standalone Access? Sorry, you can't"
And that's just this week! I worry what else I can't do (and aren't allowed to complain about), since you don't find out about these things until you try and use them.It's tempting to forget about the Business plans and work on the basis that E3 is the only solution.
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The Access thing I personally have less of an issue with, but the no GPOs for Business plan O365 - yeah that is BS!
I don't know if you need to jump directly to the E3 plan - do you really need local office for everyone?
we have around 20 people who edit Excel files on a regular basis, but the online version will do everything they need. Assuming we can get the files into SharePoint easy enough - teach the users how to use it, that would be all they would need.
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Well, if it was up to me I'd just use Google Apps. I'd miss Excel and to a lesser extent Outlook and Access, but I'd be get used to it. I think most of the people I work with who are under the age of 30 would feel the same.
It's the oldies that would struggle.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
Well, if it was up to me I'd just use Google Apps. I'd miss Excel and to a lesser extent Outlook and Access, but I'd be get used to it. I think most of the people I work with who are under the age of 30 would feel the same.
Since wiping my machine and starting fresh last week, I've been trying to toll with LibreOffice and OWA.
What you said is true. Its fine, it's just you have to get used to it.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
Well, if it was up to me I'd just use Google Apps. I'd miss Excel and to a lesser extent Outlook and Access, but I'd be get used to it. I think most of the people I work with who are under the age of 30 would feel the same.
It's the oldies that would struggle.
That's still not free - but if you're willing to deal with Google Docs, what's wrong with O365 Business non local install? They are a tit for tat, more or less. And the nice thing about O365, MS is continuing to work on Online Office to add greater and greater capabilities.
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@Dashrender said:
@Carnival-Boy said:
Well, if it was up to me I'd just use Google Apps. I'd miss Excel and to a lesser extent Outlook and Access, but I'd be get used to it. I think most of the people I work with who are under the age of 30 would feel the same.
It's the oldies that would struggle.
That's still not free - but if you're willing to deal with Google Docs, what's wrong with O365 Business non local install? They are a tit for tat, more or less. And the nice thing about O365, MS is continuing to work on Online Office to add greater and greater capabilities.
What is O365 not capable of doing that a local install is?
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@Dashrender said:
@Carnival-Boy said:
Well, if it was up to me I'd just use Google Apps. I'd miss Excel and to a lesser extent Outlook and Access, but I'd be get used to it. I think most of the people I work with who are under the age of 30 would feel the same.
It's the oldies that would struggle.
That's still not free - but if you're willing to deal with Google Docs, what's wrong with O365 Business non local install? They are a tit for tat, more or less. And the nice thing about O365, MS is continuing to work on Online Office to add greater and greater capabilities.
Zoho can be free depending on the number of people.
