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Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

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Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#221

Post by lbreakjai »

ramon156 wrote: post #29

I can guarantee some dutch banks are also locked into MS. Maybe not the big ones that actually need to care about tech, but the ones that don't care about tech went head-first into Microsoft Suite these last few years. Its' an awful sight. What's worse is that there's no argument for this extra cost (apart from maybe vendor lock-in), and now no one knows who to blame for the big bill that comes in every month.

I worked on the migration to Azure for the big orange one. They absolutely went all-in on it.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#222

Post by mr_mitm »

solid_fuel wrote: post #220
nightfly wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What issues on Linux would this actually solve?

I tried to set up network file sharing with NFS the other day and it was like pulling teeth. You need Kerberos if you want to map user names instead of user ids and still have some security. Ultimately I gave up and used samba instead, but it does seem like there's a big gap in linux offerings for "home/small business network file sharing" with shared auth

sshfs doesn't work for you?

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#223

Post by vanviegen »

dmitrygr wrote: post #176
vanviegen wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't feel true. I've founded several companies and talk to many other founders in the Netherlands. I've never experienced or heard of government regulation (though often somewhat annoying of course) being an inhibiting factor.* Funding opportunities are nearly absent though. And it seems that buying 'local' software has never been a consideration (until now). On the contrary: I've seen many cases where EU/nat…

…and that’s why all the major big tech is dutch. Amazon, google, meta, apple, Netflix, nvidia. All Dutch

Sorry, I really don't understand how your response relates to my earlier comment.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#224

Post by Workaccount2 »

jimbohn wrote: post #73
Workaccount2 wrote: post #2

Europe's failure to facilitate a competitive tech scene in the early 2000's (and even still ongoing today) will haunt them for decades. Such an enormous fumble that people still celebrate as a win.

Along with Europe's incompetence and divisiveness, you must also consider that the US has kept it so tight under its umbrella that it has squeezed it. The US wants a rich market to sell into, a suitable ally for oil campaigns, but not a competitor. The US is also still cultivating divisiveness, at the EU level, they groom a politically aligned minority that conveniently opposes any long-term improvement (Looking at M…

As long as the European psyche is at "40 days PTO, 4 day work weeks, and generous worker protections" the US doesn't have to worry about Europe getting out from under it.

Europe is in the intractable situation of needing to double defense spending, slash taxes, gain energy independence and bankroll it with an aging population skilled in mostly legacy industries. And doing all this with a working population that has only ever known generous work/life conditions.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#225

Post by tfourb »

BenFranklin100 wrote: post #201
seanieb wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you admined a Google Apps account and an MS365 account? I'm curious why you think Microsoft is more secure? For me they are completely different, Google is secure by default, Microsoft is not. Do you have "Direct Send" enabled on your account for example?

Because outside of a handful of nerdy tech companies, all small businesses need to use Microsoft Office. From there, it’s a no brainer to stay in the MS ecosystem and use Sharepoint etc… For a small business without a dedicated IT team, simply hire a IT contractor to harden the tenant (MFA etc…), have them review every six months and be done with it and focus your resources on running your business.

My father’s decidedly non-nerdy logistics consulting business with roughly 20 employees ran (and runs) on Mac OS since the founding of the company in the mid 1990s with my mom being the „IT team“. There are some situations where companies rely on certain compatibilities requiring windows. But most could do completely fine without, especially nowadays.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#226

Post by input_sh »

pessimizer wrote: post #197
input_sh wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that the root issue in America right now is that you have one guy that can pass 200+ executive orders in less than a year completely bypassing the other two supposed branches of government. There's no such position or a branch in the EU. None of the three can make any sort of change of their own.

The executive can't bypass the courts with an executive order, unless you've seen something I haven't. The reason Congress doesn't do anything is because it ceased to be a functioning body sometime around the AUMF. Congresspeople realized that doing anything other than what the donors paid for is fraught with risk. Better to watch things being done and complain about it. The UK went the same way, concentrating all po…

> The reason Congress doesn't do anything is because it ceased to be a functioning body sometime around the AUMF.

That was kind of my point, I just didn't want to write an essay about it. Congress does nothing therefore the only tangible change happens from one guy signing whatever he wants to sign into the law, effectively reducing three branches of government down to one. That said, I sure can point to for example Trump essentially taking over the power to impose tarrifs away from the congress and congress doing absolutely nothing to assert what was previously widely understood to be 100% within their authority. Or dozens of people that were deported despite various courts literally ordering the administration not to do that, Kilmar Abrego Garcia being just the first of them.

> I guess the only thing saving the EU from the same fate is its powerlessness and indecisiveness. The people who run it are certainly insane in the same way as the leaders of the UK and the US.

Now here we vehimently disagree. Nobody "runs" the EU. You need something like 500 people to agree on something for it become a law. Each of those represents their nation, their party, and their EU-level coalition. The biggest countries don't get to impose a change on smaller countries, the smallest countries don't get to do so either.

It is by far the most complex political system we have in the world for a very good reason. It came from decades of negotiating and re-negotiating between countries. It set some base standards that apply equally to otherwise incomparable nations. It is not meant to move fast and break things, it is meant to be slow and ineffective because every decision it makes impacts people that have absolutely nothing in common except the fact that they all volutarily joined the EU. From Finland to Portugal, from Cyprus to Ireland. Seriously, name me one other thing that those four countries have in common. Two of them are not in NATO, one of them is not even in Europe geographically-speaking, but I guess they all kinda like football? The fact that the EU does anything at all is a miracle of human cooperation.

And we're comparing it to one guy with questionable mental capacity (to say the least) signing things into law. Give me a break. The biggest "problem" with the EU is that at least 95% of the population that like to shit on it as an institution haven't invested more than 10 minutes into trying to understand how it works, yourself very much included.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#227

Post by peebee67 »

machomaster wrote: post #210
LPisGood wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of obscure insecure defaults are there?

Obscure from a typical user's POV: the fact that file extensions are not being shown by default. This makes it possible for the user to click on a file that has the extension and the icon of a picture (imbedded inside), but turns out to be an executable file.

They've apparently had a corporate philosophy of obfuscating the underlying system from the end user and deliberately inhibiting their ability to learn how it fits together since at least the early 2000's.

I feel like the current ignorance of the average computer user was a deliberate outcome they've been working towards for more than 20 years. As someone who has been using computers since the late 80's, I find their current offerings harder to use than ever.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#228

Post by vanviegen »

mcv wrote: post #211
wiseowise wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only invasion, or a real threat of invasion, from Russia, US or China can shook Europe into real change.

Threat of invasion from Russia doesn't seem to be doing it. China is too far away. The US? Half of Europe might actually side with them.

> Threat of invasion from Russia doesn't seem to be doing it.

Yes, it does. Sentiment in politics and the population seems to have shifted significantly. And Trump being Trump seems to be helping Europe realize the necessity of this. I'll count that as one useful thing he has accomplished.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#229

Post by vanviegen »

athrowaway3z wrote: post #161
YC398739847 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU politicians are just too dependent on keeping the status quo of the last decade. The status quo is how they got to their position so they have no incentive to change anything (Starmer, Merz, Marcon, Von der Lyen. Yuck). By the time they finally get the shove they need to rapidly decouple, e.g. when America invades The Hague* to rescue Netanyahu from war crimes charges, it will be when they're already on the edge o…

The EU has - just like the US - a generation of boomer senators and presidents in (voting) power for more than 2 decades at this point. In the coming decade, that will change. Hopefully for the better.

Well, at least in the Netherlands, that's not true. Our elected representatives have been rather.. volatile over the past decade. I liked the boomers better.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#230

Post by jcgl »

lokar wrote: post #199
project2501a wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

kerberos solves the problem that you can have short one time tokens using your password. Add public key infrastructure support, make ldap the default store and you got AD. Even better, you can throw all the OAuth crap down the drain. now, starting services with a password becomes an issue of booting the machine.

No one would build KRB4/5 today, it makes no sense. It's only advantage over an X.509 cert based system is speed on really really slow CPUs.

That doesn't seem right to me, assuming you still want the paradigm of one-time principal-to-domain authentication with just-in-time principal-to-resource authentication. While I think you could probably use x509 certs to streamline and modernize the ticket-granting-and-session-key dance, you'd still be doing a lot of the same high-level things.

Depending on the use-case, Kerberos (/this imagined x509 Kerberos) or Oauth2 still seems suitable for single-authenticator/multiple-services paradigm.

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