5 ms·

I don't mean to jump the gun with the profanity here, but this is fucking ridiculous. Anyone who still uses XP but cannot install a third party browser (hint: m

by debacle 14y ago

I don't mean to jump the gun with the profanity here, but this is fucking ridiculous. Anyone who still uses XP but cannot install a third party browser (hint: most of the corporate world) will be 'unsupported' by Google Apps.

MatthewPhillips 14y ago
Chrome doesn't need admin privileges to install.
- eckyptang 14y ago
  On a corporate network, it won't install anyway as it won't go through the firewall and I doubt the IT department will let it be installed. If you do get it through the firewall, you'll probably be removed from the office instantly. Corporates are very protective of their infrastructure and rightfully so.
  - cleverjake 14y ago
    to be fair, this would only really be an issue for companies that use google apps /and/ XP. Therefore, it would behove the company to do what @MatthewPhillips was suggesting.
  - mattmanser 14y ago
    In this day and age this is like sending out a memo saying people can only use Bic pens in the office and anyone bringing a Parker in will be fired. It is, frankly, ridiculous. This is doubly true as the people who want to install these browsers are obviously more computer literate than those without it. You talk about a corporate network as if the people who have these draconian policies are competent, in my experience the very opposite is true, the more incompetent the IT department is, the stricter the policies will be.
    - omh 14y ago
      Some people who have these policies are just lazy and incompetent. But some of us work hard to ensure that we can support all the software our company needs, and this means limiting access to other software that might break things.
    - eckyptang 14y ago
      I love your incredibly naive and arrogant attitude. Everyone has personality flaws and that is what the policies are there to insure against i.e. people like yourself. I used to work in the defence and health sectors in the UK and now work in the financial sector. Everything is locked down for a reason. It's about controlling and partitioning data, not bic vs parker. The tools are entirely irrelevant. If someone sticks a copy of SkyDrive or Dropbox on a PC (both of which do their best to work around your firewall) and uploads some financial or classified documents, then you are simply fucked. Here in the UK, it carries a £30,000 GPB fine at average in the financial sector or 25 years in prison in the defence sector. This is serious stuff and the policies are there for a reason. Most of these places don't even have Internet access on site other than a couple of dedicated machines in the IT department. Enthusiasts are so detached from corporate reality.
      - mattmanser 14y ago
        Firstly, I meant FF and Chrome, not sharing apps. Regardless, I would understand, vaguely understand, that limitation in the DoD, well not really actually, but 99.99% of us aren't working in the DoD or health are we? 99.99% of us are working in situations where the data is highly specific and only useful in an incredibly targeted intrusion that fairly trivial social engineering could access and a much greater attack vector is being exposed in poorly written web apps exposing entire DBs to the world if only anyone could be bothered to hack your local estate agent. But they can't be bothered. Stopping people installing Chrome's not going to change that and you're utterly delusional to think otherwise. Pretending otherwise is pandering to the security theatre that is gripping our country at the moment. If someone wanted into your DB, they will get in. Deep down you know that. And Chrome's not going to be how they do it. No, an employee, someone, somewhere, will give them access. People are you weak point, not the systems. Couple that with massively weak internal controls usually exposing your data to everyone in your company. They might have to sleep with them, they might have to hire a prostitute or something crazy like that, but they'll get in. Sneakers style! China's recent spate of 0-day's has also proven that a determined attacker will get in. Or maybe you'll 'lose' another laptop. Secondly, I am a professional programmer. Not an enthusiast. Grow up with your childish name calling. Thirdly, I have also worked for a wide variety of companies as a drone, a lot, as I temped my way through Uni. At the time in 2000-2003 I didn't realise that being able to program was special. If only I could go back and tell me I would be far richer. Almost in their entirety the IT departments have been incompetent. This was before they even thought of blocking websites. I could regale you with tales of negative gas readings due to estimated bills not resulting in credits to customers at one of the largest energy suppliers in the UK. I could tell you of being given the entire delivery DB of schedules of one of the three collection cash delivery agencies in the UK 3 months before they were hit by a series of robberies just after those deliveries and never, ever getting an interview by the police. Fourth, I have been in contact with hundreds of client IT departments the majority of which couldn't tell their ass from their elbow IT-wise, who didn't know that their servers had become zombies mailers or that something as simple as installing SQL server on a DC was a big no-no. One company I worked had the bright idea of making their programmers first-line support. Eye-opening. Fifth, I have met hundreds of programmers in my time, there are only about 5 I would actually trust to program my toaster, let alone my heart monitor. Most programmers will only have a vague clue who Linus Torvals is. And the sysadmins I've met are often people not good enough to become programmers. Those rare other kind are like finding a diamond! I was chatting to a programmer friend I occasionally go for a pint and a curry with yesterday who works for a 100 person IT department in the NHS and no-one there knows what Github is. Or who Scott Hansleman or Scott Gu were, even though they work entirely in .Net, mainly with web apps. There are a lot of people in IT at the moment who just do not belong here. We're still in the crazy "quack" phrase of our profession where it's hard to tell someone good from someone espousing nonsense. In here, in HN, there's a solace, so many people actually know what they're talking about. It was refreshing when I first found it 4 years ago, and sometimes I forget. Don't forget. Never forget that at the moment most IT people suck. If there's someone detached from reality, it's you. tl;dr Letting your users install Chrome or FF is froody. You're talking to a battle hardened veteran, n00b.
- debacle 14y ago
  That doesn't mean you're allowed to install it.
- jmsduran 14y ago
  A quick Google search shows there are still some methods by which an admin can prevent users from installing Chrome. Chrome Frame on the other hand, at first glance, appears much more difficult to detect/block from an admin perspective.
  - robertshield 14y ago
    Chrome Frame supports exactly the same admin mechanisms as Chrome and can be blocked the same way using Google Update group policy settings.
w1ntermute 14y ago
Install Chrome or Chrome Frame. Problem solved.
eckyptang 14y ago
At risk of starting a flamewar, I'm starting to like Microsoft more and more these days. They have a 100% predictable support lifecycle and don't pull the rug out from under people with virtually no notice. We've literally just got rid of our IE6 support a couple of months back and have IE8 as minimum spec (IE7 is irrelevant as any platform that can run it can take IE8). I doubt we'll see the end of IE8 for a few years which is not a problem for us.
- abraham 14y ago
  > They have a 100% predictable support lifecycle and don't pull the rug out from under people with virtually no notice. Google announced last year that they were only supporting the two most recent stable version of IE. I hardly call that "pulling the rug out".
- lawdawg 14y ago
  And yet you can't install IE9 on Windows XP. You have to wonder why Google should go through the trouble to support users that even Microsoft won't support. Finally, this is not an example of Google pulling "the rug out from under people with virtually no notice." This policy has been in place for over 18 months. I know some of you love to find things to hate on Google for, but this is not one of those times.
untog 14y ago
Most of that corporate world is still using Office and Outlook, though.
- Silhouette 14y ago
  And if this is Google's attitude to supporting organisations who adopt their cloud services, most of the corporate world is going to continue using Office and Outlook. I don't see how this is anything but a huge own goal for Google.
  - tomjen3 14y ago
    Why should google care about traditional enterprises?
    - Silhouette 14y ago
      Presumably converting them them to cloud services would be a financial win, and it would also lend more credibility to those services when marketing them to other types of organisation.
cleverjake 14y ago
neither chrome nor chrome frame require admin permissions.
- eckyptang 14y ago
  Yes they do. They require the permission of your system administrator.
  - vladikoff 14y ago
    No they don't. See: http://www.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/chrome-frame-getting-started/chrome-frame-faq#TOC-Do-I-need-to-be-an-Administrator-to-install-Google-Chrome-Frame- http://www.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/chrome-frame-gett... Thanks!
    - gnaritas 14y ago
      You've missed his point.
    - danielweber 14y ago
      The computer is owned by the company. I can't go running software on it if they don't allow it.
  - sp332 14y ago
    "When we started exploring various options for our installer, we came up with some explicit goals: ...Allow users who are not administrators to install Google Chrome." http://blog.chromium.org/2009/01/google-chrome-installation-and-updates.html http://blog.chromium.org/2009/01/google-chrome-installation-... Non-admin Chrome Frame has been available for more than a year. http://blog.chromium.org/2011/06/introducing-non-admin-chrome-frame.html http://blog.chromium.org/2011/06/introducing-non-admin-chrom...
  - Karunamon 14y ago
    If you've ever been a system administrator for any length of time, the volume of random (non approved) stuff that endusers manage to install on their machines is frankly staggering.
king_magic 14y ago
Is it really? Frankly, I'd love to stop supporting IE8 in the product that I am managing. I can't, but I'd love to.
- lars 14y ago
  You can't stop supporting IE8, but Google can? Everyone would like to not support IE8, but most people still find it benificial to do so. I can't help but think of this as a political move against Microsoft.
  - debacle 14y ago
    I don't think it's a political move against Microsoft. Rather, it just seems like a bad decision coming from Google.
  - tomjen3 14y ago
    Google apps can. If they had dropped support for it on google.com that would be an entirely different kettle of fish.

by debacle 14y ago

MatthewPhillips 14y ago

Chrome doesn't need admin privileges to install.

eckyptang 14y ago
On a corporate network, it won't install anyway as it won't go through the firewall and I doubt the IT department will let it be installed. If you do get it through the firewall, you'll probably be removed from the office instantly. Corporates are very protective of their infrastructure and rightfully so.
- cleverjake 14y ago
  to be fair, this would only really be an issue for companies that use google apps /and/ XP. Therefore, it would behove the company to do what @MatthewPhillips was suggesting.
- mattmanser 14y ago
  In this day and age this is like sending out a memo saying people can only use Bic pens in the office and anyone bringing a Parker in will be fired. It is, frankly, ridiculous. This is doubly true as the people who want to install these browsers are obviously more computer literate than those without it. You talk about a corporate network as if the people who have these draconian policies are competent, in my experience the very opposite is true, the more incompetent the IT department is, the stricter the policies will be.
  - omh 14y ago
    Some people who have these policies are just lazy and incompetent. But some of us work hard to ensure that we can support all the software our company needs, and this means limiting access to other software that might break things.
  - eckyptang 14y ago
    I love your incredibly naive and arrogant attitude. Everyone has personality flaws and that is what the policies are there to insure against i.e. people like yourself. I used to work in the defence and health sectors in the UK and now work in the financial sector. Everything is locked down for a reason. It's about controlling and partitioning data, not bic vs parker. The tools are entirely irrelevant. If someone sticks a copy of SkyDrive or Dropbox on a PC (both of which do their best to work around your firewall) and uploads some financial or classified documents, then you are simply fucked. Here in the UK, it carries a £30,000 GPB fine at average in the financial sector or 25 years in prison in the defence sector. This is serious stuff and the policies are there for a reason. Most of these places don't even have Internet access on site other than a couple of dedicated machines in the IT department. Enthusiasts are so detached from corporate reality.
    - mattmanser 14y ago
      Firstly, I meant FF and Chrome, not sharing apps. Regardless, I would understand, vaguely understand, that limitation in the DoD, well not really actually, but 99.99% of us aren't working in the DoD or health are we? 99.99% of us are working in situations where the data is highly specific and only useful in an incredibly targeted intrusion that fairly trivial social engineering could access and a much greater attack vector is being exposed in poorly written web apps exposing entire DBs to the world if only anyone could be bothered to hack your local estate agent. But they can't be bothered. Stopping people installing Chrome's not going to change that and you're utterly delusional to think otherwise. Pretending otherwise is pandering to the security theatre that is gripping our country at the moment. If someone wanted into your DB, they will get in. Deep down you know that. And Chrome's not going to be how they do it. No, an employee, someone, somewhere, will give them access. People are you weak point, not the systems. Couple that with massively weak internal controls usually exposing your data to everyone in your company. They might have to sleep with them, they might have to hire a prostitute or something crazy like that, but they'll get in. Sneakers style! China's recent spate of 0-day's has also proven that a determined attacker will get in. Or maybe you'll 'lose' another laptop. Secondly, I am a professional programmer. Not an enthusiast. Grow up with your childish name calling. Thirdly, I have also worked for a wide variety of companies as a drone, a lot, as I temped my way through Uni. At the time in 2000-2003 I didn't realise that being able to program was special. If only I could go back and tell me I would be far richer. Almost in their entirety the IT departments have been incompetent. This was before they even thought of blocking websites. I could regale you with tales of negative gas readings due to estimated bills not resulting in credits to customers at one of the largest energy suppliers in the UK. I could tell you of being given the entire delivery DB of schedules of one of the three collection cash delivery agencies in the UK 3 months before they were hit by a series of robberies just after those deliveries and never, ever getting an interview by the police. Fourth, I have been in contact with hundreds of client IT departments the majority of which couldn't tell their ass from their elbow IT-wise, who didn't know that their servers had become zombies mailers or that something as simple as installing SQL server on a DC was a big no-no. One company I worked had the bright idea of making their programmers first-line support. Eye-opening. Fifth, I have met hundreds of programmers in my time, there are only about 5 I would actually trust to program my toaster, let alone my heart monitor. Most programmers will only have a vague clue who Linus Torvals is. And the sysadmins I've met are often people not good enough to become programmers. Those rare other kind are like finding a diamond! I was chatting to a programmer friend I occasionally go for a pint and a curry with yesterday who works for a 100 person IT department in the NHS and no-one there knows what Github is. Or who Scott Hansleman or Scott Gu were, even though they work entirely in .Net, mainly with web apps. There are a lot of people in IT at the moment who just do not belong here. We're still in the crazy "quack" phrase of our profession where it's hard to tell someone good from someone espousing nonsense. In here, in HN, there's a solace, so many people actually know what they're talking about. It was refreshing when I first found it 4 years ago, and sometimes I forget. Don't forget. Never forget that at the moment most IT people suck. If there's someone detached from reality, it's you. tl;dr Letting your users install Chrome or FF is froody. You're talking to a battle hardened veteran, n00b.
debacle 14y ago
That doesn't mean you're allowed to install it.
jmsduran 14y ago
A quick Google search shows there are still some methods by which an admin can prevent users from installing Chrome. Chrome Frame on the other hand, at first glance, appears much more difficult to detect/block from an admin perspective.
- robertshield 14y ago
  Chrome Frame supports exactly the same admin mechanisms as Chrome and can be blocked the same way using Google Update group policy settings.

w1ntermute 14y ago

Install Chrome or Chrome Frame. Problem solved.

eckyptang 14y ago

At risk of starting a flamewar, I'm starting to like Microsoft more and more these days. They have a 100% predictable support lifecycle and don't pull the rug out from under people with virtually no notice. We've literally just got rid of our IE6 support a couple of months back and have IE8 as minimum spec (IE7 is irrelevant as any platform that can run it can take IE8). I doubt we'll see the end of IE8 for a few years which is not a problem for us.

abraham 14y ago
> They have a 100% predictable support lifecycle and don't pull the rug out from under people with virtually no notice. Google announced last year that they were only supporting the two most recent stable version of IE. I hardly call that "pulling the rug out".
lawdawg 14y ago
And yet you can't install IE9 on Windows XP. You have to wonder why Google should go through the trouble to support users that even Microsoft won't support. Finally, this is not an example of Google pulling "the rug out from under people with virtually no notice." This policy has been in place for over 18 months. I know some of you love to find things to hate on Google for, but this is not one of those times.

untog 14y ago

Most of that corporate world is still using Office and Outlook, though.

Silhouette 14y ago
And if this is Google's attitude to supporting organisations who adopt their cloud services, most of the corporate world is going to continue using Office and Outlook. I don't see how this is anything but a huge own goal for Google.
- tomjen3 14y ago
  Why should google care about traditional enterprises?
  - Silhouette 14y ago
    Presumably converting them them to cloud services would be a financial win, and it would also lend more credibility to those services when marketing them to other types of organisation.

cleverjake 14y ago

neither chrome nor chrome frame require admin permissions.

eckyptang 14y ago
Yes they do. They require the permission of your system administrator.
- vladikoff 14y ago
  No they don't. See: http://www.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/chrome-frame-getting-started/chrome-frame-faq#TOC-Do-I-need-to-be-an-Administrator-to-install-Google-Chrome-Frame- http://www.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/chrome-frame-gett... Thanks!
  - gnaritas 14y ago
    You've missed his point.
  - danielweber 14y ago
    The computer is owned by the company. I can't go running software on it if they don't allow it.
- sp332 14y ago
  "When we started exploring various options for our installer, we came up with some explicit goals: ...Allow users who are not administrators to install Google Chrome." http://blog.chromium.org/2009/01/google-chrome-installation-and-updates.html http://blog.chromium.org/2009/01/google-chrome-installation-... Non-admin Chrome Frame has been available for more than a year. http://blog.chromium.org/2011/06/introducing-non-admin-chrome-frame.html http://blog.chromium.org/2011/06/introducing-non-admin-chrom...
- Karunamon 14y ago
  If you've ever been a system administrator for any length of time, the volume of random (non approved) stuff that endusers manage to install on their machines is frankly staggering.

king_magic 14y ago

Is it really? Frankly, I'd love to stop supporting IE8 in the product that I am managing. I can't, but I'd love to.

lars 14y ago
You can't stop supporting IE8, but Google can? Everyone would like to not support IE8, but most people still find it benificial to do so. I can't help but think of this as a political move against Microsoft.
- debacle 14y ago
  I don't think it's a political move against Microsoft. Rather, it just seems like a bad decision coming from Google.
- tomjen3 14y ago
  Google apps can. If they had dropped support for it on google.com that would be an entirely different kettle of fish.