[R] R licensing query

[Marc Schwartz]

On Jun 17, 2010, at 11:46 AM, Barry Rowlingson wrote:

> On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 5:11 PM, Frank E Harrell Jr
> <f.harrell at vanderbilt.edu> wrote:
>> Pardon my english but you're working for idiots.  I'd look elsewhere if
>> there are other options.  IT departments should be here to help get things
>> done, not to help prevent good work from being done.
> 
> Just because the IT security guys are idiots doesn't mean you're
> working for idiots. It's possible that this is just IT security being
> idiots, but the OP doesn't work for them. It's highly possible that
> the bosses are idiots though, and we won't know this.
> 
> I've worked with UK NHS in the past (and still do) and they do have
> some (probably justified) paranoia about networks. To get data from
> the NHS to me required our NHS contact to get special permission to
> have an NHS-Net socket and an Internet-Net socket in the same room.
> Even then that still required one computer to be connected to each
> socket. Data was taken from the NHS-Net PC on floppy disk (remember
> those, kids?) and put into the adjacent Internet-Net PC, and then it
> was emailed to me. We used GPG with my public key to encrypt the data
> after I pointed out that zip file encryption wasn't a good idea.
> 
> Enough anecdotes. OP Gina should just make something up, or google
> for Windows/IE/Flash security problems, and then email those to the
> boss.
> 
> Barry

But Baz, most of those are information security issues, not strictly speaking, network integrity issues, which is what I believe Gina's IT folks are more concerned with. I mean, heck, if they are going to let her use Excel, even with password protected XLS files, data security is not their primary concern...  :-)

We have the same healthcare related data security issues here in the States (called HIPAA). It's why the internal hard drive on my MacBook Pro (and my external back up drive) are both encrypted with PGP Whole Disk Encryption (256 bit AES).

Floppy disks? You mean "Sneaker Net"?  :-)

Regards,

Marc