Actually, it's quite easy to draw lines. Things line Demilitarized network zones, staging servers and protocol filters can do an excellent job of deciding what information goes in what direction. Actually bothering to design and implement them is, unfortunately, beyond the interest (and knowledge) of your average factory operator. (Yes, I have worked for one)
They will happily say: 80% of MD's in the US use a MS SBS server. I say: 80% of MD's in the US don't know the difference between a modem, a router and a firewall. They just want to be able to work from home.
To top it off: I just had to reinstall a Windows XP x64 machine with all the updates and everything. Now it warns me about -every- file I try to open from the internet or from my LAN. See: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/303650 WHY ME?
Racks are cheap, but have you ever seen the bill for floor space?
From what I read, Google uses simple desktop computers. These machines have been designed to sit idle 99.9% of the time and they have been designed with that in mind. If you ramp up the load on such a machine, things start to get real noisy real quick. If you keep them at such a high load for a long time, they simply break. (IBM Netvista comes to mind...)
Trouble is, buying machines designed with such a load in mind costs twice as much and the failure rate of the PCs is reasonably below 50%.
As a Linux user, I have to point out one thing in Microsoft's defense: Lately, it seems to tag executables that have been downloaded and warns you about it when you try to run them. Apparently, Safari does not have this mechanism, so users might assume it's a valid local icon.
And the/. users still don't RTFA... That 'some guy' was the person that discovered the vulnerability and sent it to Apple. How much more authoritative do you want it w.r.t. the bug in question?
The Register itself may not profile itself as a NYT-level news site, but they do occasionally have good articles.
I meant 'not from the BIOS itself'. You had to install a special (Windows) HWSETUP program in order to set the more interesting BIOS options.
The BIOS itself is not exactly easily found: http://support.toshiba-tro.de/kb0/FAQ6401G1000DR01.htm Esc key method (Toshiba BIOS):
1. Press and hold the Esc key.
2. Turn on the notebook.
3. Press the F1 key when prompted.
4. The first page of the BIOS Setup screen appears.
You do have a point there. Maybe you can get a power adapter or a used iPod for that kind of money;-)
About interfaces: - For those that know what they're doing, a text-based system might be easiest, because -everything- can be looked into, poked at and made visible. - GUIs tend to hide the 'scary bits' from the user, so they can get on with their lives, as long as everything works the way you expect it to. I remember reading a paper about how the command-line comtains simple, easy-to-understand metaphors, whilst people keep looking for the right button or tick box in a GUI. (can't find it, though)
Hardware has come a long way the past 10 years. It's been a while since I had to change the address of my printer port to make my sound card do something. USB has already standardized a lot of hardware 'classes' (pointer device, mass storage, sound device) and more 'standardization' may still be ahead. Maybe the future of comfortable computing lies in a metaphor that has not been invented yet (or that a PARC employee junked before anyone else stole it).
Oh, and I seriously dislike the way Toshiba laptops need a userland program to change BIOS settings. It's a pain in the behind, especially when you need to change a setting in order to fix the O/S.
seriously How is Microsoft getting their numbers?!? The few millions of gamers across the globe con't compare to the hundreds of millions of professionals that have some spare time to kill at the office. THAT is how Solitaire gets played.
Also, I recall the games were added to promote hand-eye co-ordination because, back when they were written, a mouse was a novel thing to have on a computer.
You pay a premium for less functionality, but is Just Works.
*) I don't own one, but a lot of people I know do, even some that work as sysadmin during the day. **) I own a console for that exact reason. FPS games are a dream on a PC, but all the rest is played on console.
I hate to rain on your parade here, but the HOWTO scene and TLDP seem to have died a slow death the past 3 years... On one side, this was because of professional-quality white papers and on the other side because good 'starting with Linux' books have become available.
Whilst I know my way around google and can discern good sites from bad ones, this relies on knowledge accumulated in 12 years of systems administration.
Finding answers is still, generally, easier for Windows software than for Un*x software.
Keep in mind that the article analyzes the style quality of the code, not the functionality the code represents: - You can write a beautiful piece of code that still fails (improper dimensioning, faulty speficication). - You can also write downright ugly (Daily-WTF style) code that simply Just Works.
I have known Windows Servers that have run for years one end without rebooting or strange occurrences. I have also known Linux Servers that simply died after a large file transfer (something about NFS and Gigabit).
Also: Windows' instability is not all caused by the kernel, but also largely by the other software that runs on it. Because it allows for a lot of backwards compatibility, lots of people will still run stone-age crap on it until it breaks.
Actually, a number of prominent hackers (yes, real Hackers), were made to do exactly that. I seem to recall some Real Big Guys were forced to tour schools and tell the little kiddies that Hacking is Bad.
You make an interesting point, but you forget one thing: efficient software died in the 90s. Even microcontrollers these days have more processing power than a PC in the early 90s.
I've seen tightly-coded, efficient applications turn into giant memory-hogs with a release update. (Now with support for MS SQL Server!)
With processing power this cheap, vendors simply tell the customer to spend an extra $5000 on processing power, instead of hiring better programmers for an order of magnitude more. This used to be called 'the microsoft approach' (just install more memory), but even M$ these days is going back to its roots with Windows Core Server.
Yes, SANs are expensive. On the other hand, how many people need to administer one (or two) SAN(s) and how many people do you need to replace/upgrade parts in local servers.
I was talking about Datacenters, where Numbers start playing a very big part of the equation. - Centralised storage with ACLs means cluster-disks without having to buy a cluster storage box per server cluster. - On-the-fly disk upgrades mean you don't have to take down your server for disk upgrades. Also, your admins won't order servers with 2TB internal storage at 15K RPM, because they might need it later on. - Automatic file backups (previous versions) and 'disk freezing' provide great backup solutions (it can even integrate into Oracle, so you don't have to dump your entire database). - Shared storage for VMWare makes for very fast VMotions
BTW, Really smart SANs don't need to have everything placed on 15K RPM disks. They can run everything off slower, bigger disks and 'promote' high-traffic data to faster disks.
Indeed, it is not. But it can seriously reduce maintenance, power and cooling cost.
Most of the heavy programming I run is actually CPU-bound (simulation and prediction on a national scale). Those servers are not consolidated, but are parked in a separate High-Power Cluster. Aside from that, I/O architecture is still changing as we speak. SANs can deliver I/O at speeds local disks can only dream of. Some Blade architectures allow you to plug a seperate fibrechannel interface into the blade itself, giving you all the I/O you can use (set-up is a pain in the *ss, though).
The other half of the servers in my server room were put there because someone needed a 'special server', to run a particular set of programs. Naturally, most of them are EOL because they were never handed over to a Sysadmin group. Part of my job is to find a way to either consolidate or replace the machines.
Security-wise, you might not want to put your DMZ servers in your internal VMWare farm, but you can also make a DMZ VMWare farm. (Yes, we have one of those as well).
Before that (Iraq vs. US), the USA was arming Iraq to fight Iran. Some time prior to that, Iraq went through numerous coups, a British invasion, two monarchies and a partridge in a pear tree. Prior to the pear tree, Iraq was owned by the British. Actually, two distinct regions (Basra and Baghdad) were owned by the British. To save on ink, when drawing maps, they called the group "Iraq". Before that was the Ottoman Empire, who - ultimately - can be blamed quite reasonably for most of the current blood-feuds in Europe and the Middle East. Before that were the Mongols, who can be blamed for just about everything else. Before that, the Islamic forces of Khalid ibn al-Walid decimated the area and took it out of Persian control, who in turn invaded before they even became Persians. Nothing like getting ahead of themselves! Some time before that, Alexander the Great made a royal mess of the area. Before that, there were endless wars between the Assyrians, the Akkadians, the Sumerians (who were largely obliterated), assorted other nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes, and whatever culture lived there first of which there is almost no trace left.
In other words, there is no meaningful "first", unless you want to go back around 10,000 years. Almost everything that happened after that point was in direct retribution to what had happened before. That's one reason it will take a lot of effort to calm the region down - ten thousand years is a long time to build up grdudges and resentments -- and don't think a single one of them has been forgotten.
Did you experience the Cold War? There was a lot of threatening going on, whilst the leaders themselves were on the phone, trying to work everything out.
Propaganda is just a tool to win the hearts and minds of the masses. When was the last time your elected official actually did what he/she promised?
I just replaced 3 9-year-old servers with bvrand-new hardware and the temperature in the server room actually dropped a few degrees. (each of those 3 servers consumed more than the 4 new ones combined)
New cars pollute a LOT less than old ones. If you want to stop carbon emissions, you would rip out the engine of the very old cars and put in a new, efficient one. Maybe install a a catalyst in your old car or carbon filter on that old Diesel. Failing that, return the old car and make sure your manufacturer recycles the old car. (there are ways) That new car may even save you enough on fuel cost to earn back its cost in a few years.
Or, you could install virtualization on that super-fast machine end consolidate all your servers onto it. Modern datacenters sell either tiles (to place a rack), rackspace (for a few servers) or virtual computing power.
The cost of each is reflected in the price so smart customers will move away from discrete hardware and towards virtual servers. That way you can literally run hundreds of low-power servers on one high-power machine. Low-power servers are nice, but they're not failure-resistant and the sheer number of them means even a small percentage of failure leads to high maintenance cost.
AMD are in an efficiency race for the hearts and minds of datacenter operators. Just wait and see what's coming in the future...
If your entire security depends on the guard not being on a break, you should have at least two guards, so they can take -SEPERATE- breaks. They way, your system is still fully operational.
Also, modern security systems don't fully rely on a guard being present. Motion sensors and logging, closed-circuit cameras can alert a guard of any suspicious activity.
If your system depends on a password, don't write it down on a sticky note on the side of your screen. Use moderately-complex, easy-to-remember passwords (so you don't have to write them down) and keep a sealed emergency envelope in a manager's safe.
If your system depends on a central database and a website, put a separate computer between the two that makes sure the webserver,
even when compromised, cannot request sensitive data or write into the public records.
If you want to see how good security systems are made, look at SSH, IPsec and PKI. The encryption technique is public, yet the system is completely safe. The entire security of those systems depends on you safely guarding your encryption keys. If the system is well-designed, knowing the system simply means the attacker can compute the amount of time required to break it.
Shows what I know about PowerShell... Being a UN*X admin and a reasonably-competent scripter, I tried looking into it and my brain had trouble grasping how this is supposed to be a shell.
From what I can see, Bourne and other UN*X shells are stream-oriented and PS seems object-oriented. I see LDAP as a flat text-based database with Organizational Units, not as a magical forest with trees, domains and groups.
This is, most likely, because UN*X admins are used to modifying and/or generating configuration files,
whilst Windows admins have spent the last 13 years ticking tickboxes and, lately, dragging objects.
(does knowing win.ini and system.ini make me l33t or simply a dinosaur? I fled the Windows scene when 2003 came out...)
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, it's quite easy to draw lines.
Things line Demilitarized network zones, staging servers and protocol filters can do an excellent job of deciding what information goes in what direction.
Actually bothering to design and implement them is, unfortunately, beyond the interest (and knowledge) of your average factory operator.
(Yes, I have worked for one)
They will happily say:
80% of MD's in the US use a MS SBS server.
I say:
80% of MD's in the US don't know the difference between a modem, a router and a firewall. They just want to be able to work from home.
To top it off:
I just had to reinstall a Windows XP x64 machine with all the updates and everything.
Now it warns me about -every- file I try to open from the internet or from my LAN.
See: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/303650
WHY ME?
So the danger lies in the fact that Windows will warn you about files downloaded with IE, but not about files downloaded with Safari?
Racks are cheap, but have you ever seen the bill for floor space?
From what I read, Google uses simple desktop computers.
These machines have been designed to sit idle 99.9% of the time and they have been designed with that in mind. If you ramp up the load on such a machine, things start to get real noisy real quick. If you keep them at such a high load for a long time, they simply break. (IBM Netvista comes to mind...)
Trouble is, buying machines designed with such a load in mind costs twice as much and the failure rate of the PCs is reasonably below 50%.
As a Linux user, I have to point out one thing in Microsoft's defense:
Lately, it seems to tag executables that have been downloaded and warns you about it when you try to run them.
Apparently, Safari does not have this mechanism, so users might assume it's a valid local icon.
I still run Firefox, though.
And the /. users still don't RTFA...
That 'some guy' was the person that discovered the vulnerability and sent it to Apple.
How much more authoritative do you want it w.r.t. the bug in question?
The Register itself may not profile itself as a NYT-level news site, but they do occasionally have good articles.
Meh.
2 hands - 26 fingers: http://biphome.spray.se/masterlink/pics/scrsh/handy.jpg
I meant 'not from the BIOS itself'.
You had to install a special (Windows) HWSETUP program in order to set the more interesting BIOS options.
The BIOS itself is not exactly easily found:
http://support.toshiba-tro.de/kb0/FAQ6401G1000DR01.htm
Esc key method (Toshiba BIOS):
1. Press and hold the Esc key.
2. Turn on the notebook.
3. Press the F1 key when prompted.
4. The first page of the BIOS Setup screen appears.
You do have a point there. ;-)
Maybe you can get a power adapter or a used iPod for that kind of money
About interfaces:
- For those that know what they're doing, a text-based system might be easiest, because -everything- can be looked into, poked at and made visible.
- GUIs tend to hide the 'scary bits' from the user, so they can get on with their lives, as long as everything works the way you expect it to.
I remember reading a paper about how the command-line comtains simple, easy-to-understand metaphors, whilst people keep looking for the right button or tick box in a GUI. (can't find it, though)
Hardware has come a long way the past 10 years.
It's been a while since I had to change the address of my printer port to make my sound card do something.
USB has already standardized a lot of hardware 'classes' (pointer device, mass storage, sound device) and more 'standardization' may still be ahead. Maybe the future of comfortable computing lies in a metaphor that has not been invented yet (or that a PARC employee junked before anyone else stole it).
Oh, and I seriously dislike the way Toshiba laptops need a userland program to change BIOS settings. It's a pain in the behind, especially when you need to change a setting in order to fix the O/S.
THAT is how Solitaire gets played.
Also, I recall the games were added to promote hand-eye co-ordination because, back when they were written, a mouse was a novel thing to have on a computer.
In that case: Get a Mac.
You pay a premium for less functionality, but is Just Works.
*) I don't own one, but a lot of people I know do, even some that work as sysadmin during the day.
**) I own a console for that exact reason. FPS games are a dream on a PC, but all the rest is played on console.
I hate to rain on your parade here, but the HOWTO scene and TLDP seem to have died a slow death the past 3 years...
On one side, this was because of professional-quality white papers and on the other side because good 'starting with Linux' books have become available.
Whilst I know my way around google and can discern good sites from bad ones, this relies on knowledge accumulated in 12 years of systems administration.
Finding answers is still, generally, easier for Windows software than for Un*x software.
Keep in mind that the article analyzes the style quality of the code, not the functionality the code represents:
- You can write a beautiful piece of code that still fails (improper dimensioning, faulty speficication).
- You can also write downright ugly (Daily-WTF style) code that simply Just Works.
I have known Windows Servers that have run for years one end without rebooting or strange occurrences.
I have also known Linux Servers that simply died after a large file transfer (something about NFS and Gigabit).
Also: Windows' instability is not all caused by the kernel, but also largely by the other software that runs on it.
Because it allows for a lot of backwards compatibility, lots of people will still run stone-age crap on it until it breaks.
Actually, a number of prominent hackers (yes, real Hackers), were made to do exactly that.
I seem to recall some Real Big Guys were forced to tour schools and tell the little kiddies that Hacking is Bad.
You make an interesting point, but you forget one thing: efficient software died in the 90s.
Even microcontrollers these days have more processing power than a PC in the early 90s.
I've seen tightly-coded, efficient applications turn into giant memory-hogs with a release update.
(Now with support for MS SQL Server!)
With processing power this cheap, vendors simply tell the customer to spend an extra $5000 on processing power,
instead of hiring better programmers for an order of magnitude more.
This used to be called 'the microsoft approach' (just install more memory), but even M$ these days is going back to its roots with Windows Core Server.
Yes, SANs are expensive.
On the other hand, how many people need to administer one (or two) SAN(s) and how many people do you need to replace/upgrade parts in local servers.
I was talking about Datacenters, where Numbers start playing a very big part of the equation.
- Centralised storage with ACLs means cluster-disks without having to buy a cluster storage box per server cluster.
- On-the-fly disk upgrades mean you don't have to take down your server for disk upgrades.
Also, your admins won't order servers with 2TB internal storage at 15K RPM, because they might need it later on.
- Automatic file backups (previous versions) and 'disk freezing' provide great backup solutions (it can even integrate into Oracle, so you don't have to dump your entire database).
- Shared storage for VMWare makes for very fast VMotions
BTW, Really smart SANs don't need to have everything placed on 15K RPM disks.
They can run everything off slower, bigger disks and 'promote' high-traffic data to faster disks.
Indeed, it is not.
But it can seriously reduce maintenance, power and cooling cost.
Most of the heavy programming I run is actually CPU-bound (simulation and prediction on a national scale).
Those servers are not consolidated, but are parked in a separate High-Power Cluster.
Aside from that, I/O architecture is still changing as we speak. SANs can deliver I/O at speeds local disks can only dream of.
Some Blade architectures allow you to plug a seperate fibrechannel interface into the blade itself, giving you all the I/O you can use
(set-up is a pain in the *ss, though).
The other half of the servers in my server room were put there because someone needed a 'special server', to run a particular set of programs.
Naturally, most of them are EOL because they were never handed over to a Sysadmin group.
Part of my job is to find a way to either consolidate or replace the machines.
Security-wise, you might not want to put your DMZ servers in your internal VMWare farm, but you can also make a DMZ VMWare farm.
(Yes, we have one of those as well).
And who owned that land before that?
And before that?
How many different groups people have actually owned that land in the last, say, 3000 years?
How will you decide who is the actual owner of that land?
From a semi-unrelated earlier
post about Iraq :
Before that (Iraq vs. US), the USA was arming Iraq to fight Iran. Some time prior to that, Iraq went through numerous coups, a British invasion, two monarchies and a partridge in a pear tree. Prior to the pear tree, Iraq was owned by the British. Actually, two distinct regions (Basra and Baghdad) were owned by the British. To save on ink, when drawing maps, they called the group "Iraq". Before that was the Ottoman Empire, who - ultimately - can be blamed quite reasonably for most of the current blood-feuds in Europe and the Middle East. Before that were the Mongols, who can be blamed for just about everything else. Before that, the Islamic forces of Khalid ibn al-Walid decimated the area and took it out of Persian control, who in turn invaded before they even became Persians. Nothing like getting ahead of themselves! Some time before that, Alexander the Great made a royal mess of the area. Before that, there were endless wars between the Assyrians, the Akkadians, the Sumerians (who were largely obliterated), assorted other nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes, and whatever culture lived there first of which there is almost no trace left.
In other words, there is no meaningful "first", unless you want to go back around 10,000 years. Almost everything that happened after that point was in direct retribution to what had happened before. That's one reason it will take a lot of effort to calm the region down - ten thousand years is a long time to build up grdudges and resentments -- and don't think a single one of them has been forgotten.
Did you experience the Cold War?
There was a lot of threatening going on, whilst the leaders themselves were on the phone, trying to work everything out.
Propaganda is just a tool to win the hearts and minds of the masses.
When was the last time your elected official actually did what he/she promised?
Not quite.
I just replaced 3 9-year-old servers with bvrand-new hardware and the temperature in the server room actually dropped a few degrees.
(each of those 3 servers consumed more than the 4 new ones combined)
New cars pollute a LOT less than old ones.
If you want to stop carbon emissions, you would rip out the engine of the very old cars and put in a new, efficient one.
Maybe install a a catalyst in your old car or carbon filter on that old Diesel.
Failing that, return the old car and make sure your manufacturer recycles the old car. (there are ways)
That new car may even save you enough on fuel cost to earn back its cost in a few years.
Or, you could install virtualization on that super-fast machine end consolidate all your servers onto it.
Modern datacenters sell either tiles (to place a rack), rackspace (for a few servers) or virtual computing power.
The cost of each is reflected in the price so smart customers will move away from discrete hardware and towards virtual servers.
That way you can literally run hundreds of low-power servers on one high-power machine.
Low-power servers are nice, but they're not failure-resistant and the sheer number of them means even a small percentage of failure leads to high maintenance cost.
AMD are in an efficiency race for the hearts and minds of datacenter operators.
Just wait and see what's coming in the future...
If your entire security depends on the guard not being on a break, you should have at least two guards, so they can take -SEPERATE- breaks.
They way, your system is still fully operational.
Also, modern security systems don't fully rely on a guard being present.
Motion sensors and logging, closed-circuit cameras can alert a guard of any suspicious activity.
If your system depends on a password, don't write it down on a sticky note on the side of your screen.
Use moderately-complex, easy-to-remember passwords (so you don't have to write them down) and keep a sealed emergency envelope in a manager's safe.
If your system depends on a central database and a website, put a separate computer between the two that makes sure the webserver,
even when compromised, cannot request sensitive data or write into the public records.
If you want to see how good security systems are made, look at SSH, IPsec and PKI.
The encryption technique is public, yet the system is completely safe.
The entire security of those systems depends on you safely guarding your encryption keys.
If the system is well-designed, knowing the system simply means the attacker can compute the amount of time required to break it.
About sound:
http://www.plathome.com/products/microserver/oms/faq.html#faq-367
Seeing as the device is supported by Debian and netbsd,
you can probably 'emerge' a Ogg support package and player.
Seeing as it has USB, I'm pretty sure you can plug a $5 USB soundcard into it.
But can it make toast?
Shows what I know about PowerShell...
Being a UN*X admin and a reasonably-competent scripter, I tried looking into it and my brain had trouble grasping how this is supposed to be a shell.
From what I can see, Bourne and other UN*X shells are stream-oriented and PS seems object-oriented.
I see LDAP as a flat text-based database with Organizational Units, not as a magical forest with trees, domains and groups.
This is, most likely, because UN*X admins are used to modifying and/or generating configuration files,
whilst Windows admins have spent the last 13 years ticking tickboxes and, lately, dragging objects.
(does knowing win.ini and system.ini make me l33t or simply a dinosaur? I fled the Windows scene when 2003 came out...)