I don't think the external renovation of the bunker was an issue, though. Also, depending on what the place looked like before the renovation, it could have been basically like having the shell of a building already built for you. I would also guess that there was plenty of primary power and ventilation already in place as well - and depending on condition, could have equated to a huge savings in not having to redo/replace it.
As you point out, a lot depends on the structure being renovated but in this case I doubt there was much in the way of demolition needed to prepare it for being a data center. It looks very open so they might have essentially only had to run cable trays, elevated floors, and walkways.
Regardless of how we posit how much it cost or what would be the better approach, they deemed it economical to put their data center there.
Care to cite a source for those "falling" global temperatures?
And even though CO2 is not a major component of the atmosphere, it has a very large effect - and where the water comes in is as a multiplier. As the extra CO2 warms the atmosphere and the surface of the planet, more water evaporates. Since water vapor is also a greenhouse gas, more water drives the equation to more retained heat.
It's sad that so many want so desperately to believe they are not causing problems for the planet and every living thing. Wait - scratch that. Some things will love the warmer temperatures. On the other hand, some things won't and as climate regions change location, it will be interesting to see how well people will be able to follow for agriculture.
It's going to suck when the best region for growing wheat shifts northward into Canada. Well, it will suck for the United States...
There is no such thing as clean coal and Chu knows it. The ONLY reason he reversed his position on it was the politics of being the energy secretary. The guy was the director of Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory and steered it to a mission based on alternative energy which is probably what got him the job as energy secretary.
Anyone who thinks he didn't have a clear enough grasp of the pros and cons or the technology of using coal when he openly opposed it a year ago, but somehow has learned enough now to understand how it can actually be "clean" is pretty damn gullible. Chu knows clean coal is an oxymoron and that the USA and the world cannot continue on a path that includes coal without sentencing itself to disaster.
It is bowing to political reality and the determination of man to crap in his own mess kit until it kills him that has forced Chu to now endorse coal. But it's the only way he can actively push for other technologies - technologies that he knows this country and the world really need. Had he not reversed his public position, he would not have been confirmed as secretary and even less progress would be made in moving to alternative energies.
And it is disinformation by the fossil fuel industry that perpetuates the positions of people like "icebike" above. I wish people that don't have a scientific background would realize that they just might not understand the concepts of how greenhouse gasses trap heat and the multiplicative effects that come from that. I wish they could also tell the difference between political hacks and research organizations and scientists that overwhelmingly state that the planet is indeed warming and that CO2 is helping to lead the charge.
Icebike, I don't know what your education level or background is but I sincerely believe you don't know what you are talking about.
Speaking of abuse, when I read the title about Microsoft boasting a 96% netbook penetration, I immediately thought all Ballmer had to do was push a little harder and he could have gotten 100%...
You are very wrong about one thing - earth-penetrating nukes used in the mountains of Afghanistan would collapse their tunnels and entomb quite a few Al Qaeda.
But a 15 kT blast is small these days. I'm sure such weapons are out there - like the mortar-fired one - but there are plenty of larger weapons that wouldn't leave any survivors near ground zero.
I don't know current status, but I believe there were also neutron weapons that were optimized to irradiate an area and essentially sterilize it while not causing too much blast damage.
But a first, offensive, use would set the world on its ear and could easily be the beginning of an all-out nuclear war with the really big bombs getting dusted off. I think Russia tested a 500 megaton weapon during the cold war. That is huge.
But I'm not so sure about defensive use of nukes. It would be a lot more justifiable for a country that was being attacked to whip them out without suffering major consequences.
I don't understand why cory's comment was modded troll. He's right.
Nuclear weapons push things to standoffs and force armies backing down. The consequences are just too great if nukes come out. The Cuban missile crisis is an example of that. And obviously, had things gone differently, the whole world could have become a radioactive smoking cinder.
But nuclear weapons have prevented WWII style wars. Wars now are at least confined to one country's borders instead of spreading.
Why do people think that China hasn't invaded and taken Taiwan back? They have weapons lined up ready to strike but haven't. They are trying to push the USA financially, but ultimately, until they can be assured that we won't defend Taiwan militarily, they won't attack.
But if the USA disarms and China holds onto its nukes, does anyone really think China will continue to hold off enforcing its claim that Taiwan is really a part of China?
Not a chance. They will do as they please and if the USA interferes, all they need to do is threaten our forces with being nuked. End of story. Taiwan becomes part of China and the USA backs down with its tail between its legs.
The reality is that nukes are here and other countries have them. They are all different explosive sizes and they can and will be used by other countries if the USA disarms ours.
I guarantee to you that very few other countries feel the same "moral obligation" to disarm or to not use nuclear weapons in battle.
Bush looked into Vladimir Putin's eyes, saw his soul and saw a friend. Bush was a fool. Russia and China are rebuilding their militaries, with China building faster than anyone knew until recently. Throwing away our only deterrent against these countries is simply giving them the green light to do as they please and use the Cheney salute ("Go F Yourself") to tell us what they think about any intervention.
As they say, when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.
There are all different sizes of nuclear weapons. The "backpack" devices were supposedly a little lower yield than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. Those are the ones that will always be useful in war.
Low yield weapons are easy to carry and deploy. You can see the old film footage of the tests of the artillery and mortar-fired nukes. The "modern" replacement for low-yield weapons is the MOAB - it's a huge weapon that has to be pushed out the back of a lumbering C-130. No nuke stigma to that one, but against any threat but Al Qaeda, expect to lose the 130 before it ever gets near the target.
I think Obama is being especially naive on this one. If he disarms the USA, China and Russia will guaranteed keep a few nukes on hand - just in case. They may not be immediately deployable, but they will have them. They will also use them if they ever feel the need.
And countries with long-standing rivalries like India and Pakistan won't disarm either.
It will take a world government to make nuclear weapons go away. There is just no other solution. As long as there are countries and as long as people are people, governments will want nuclear weapons - and they will get them.
To not keep our own viable stockpile is asking for trouble. As was said above, conventional warefare will make a comeback but a nuke or two is an ace in the hole. If someone is fighting their own Battle of the Bulge, you can bet a nuke will be used to save the day.
Also, people should recognize that nuclear weapons, as terrible and terrifying as they are, have probably saved countless lives. Until nuclear weapons existed, the death toll in wars was climbing exponentially as technology made man more efficient at killing.
Once nuclear weapons were on scene and the consequence of major war became annihilation, there were no more major wars and the number of deaths due to war dropped and leveled off at a sad but low number compared to the wars previous.
Nukes would be very effective militarily in Iraq and Afghanistan and people should be aware that they will be used in war if the perceived consequences go away. A powerful weapon that trumps everything else will definitely be used. The USA not having our own nuclear weapons to counterbalance those of the other countries will more than likely lead to them being used again.
Putting science theory to the test is all well and good when it is scientists that are involved in weighing the evidence to see what fits and what doesn't.
With "intelligent design", you have theologians trying to make scientific decisions.
However, my root powers say that I can modify said magical logs and applications such that my trails are covered like the soft footprints of a ninja in socks.
I will use my +5 stealth rootkit to defeat your magical logs - especially if I have full access to a machine.
Of course, maybe I was just referring to spreading malware and keystroke logging the average doofus' PC.
System administrators should never get so confident that they think their systems cannot be rooted and subverted. It happens all the time. And if you have an insider with root access to set up his/her back door before they get let go, and they have the inclination to do so, it's even harder to prevent.
So, along with your magical log files, do you actually read them or just save them off to backup? Do you run things like logwatch to trigger off certain events and give even earlier notice? Do you run configuration management that checks and verifies system binaries and config files to make sure there have been no unauthorized changes? Do you protect your configuration management server and restrict access even further? Do you run rootkit hunting software to look for any signs of hidden directories and new binaries? Do you run intrusion detection software to see if your systems are being probed? Do you patch critical vulnerabilities immediately and run all of your tests to make sure that nothing happened before you patched? Do you do all of your logging to a remote log server that is also restricted to only security personnel? Is your logging actually configured properly to where it would capture malicious activities? Do you get an alarm if a system stops logging for any reason?
If you aren't doing all of the above, and your computer is attached to a network and has user accounts on it, you can have your magical log files end up being basically worthless. Someone with administrative access can do a lot of things and it not show up in the logs.
Real security isn't easy to do. The trick is to make it cost more to your adversaries than whatever damage they can do to you, information they can steal, etc.
While I value system logs, the real trick is to protect the system so well that you don't have to rely on them exclusively because that's the first place anyone who wants to cover their tracks goes.
Maybe, but incident after incident links IT insiders to malicious activity on the systems they administer.
I would also like to think that IT people are both more honest and less likely to be laid off, but people are people and there are quite a few employers out there who don't really appreciate how valuable their IT people are.
I think many who get laid off will probably be tempted if they don't have luck finding new positions.
You do realize there are consequences from getting your power from nuclear reactors and then wasting it, don't you?
Higher load means more reactors may need to be built, it generates more radioactive waste, heats up more water, raises the risk of accident, etc.
And since you are using nuclear fuel that much faster, more has to be mined and refined which adds to CO2 loading, chemical and radioactive chemical waste streams.
In addition, since the country is on a grid and utilities can flow excess capability into neighboring regions, you reduce that excess capability and therefore increase the amount of CO2 that some coal or natural gas-fired plant generates.
There are consequences for everything.
And sure, your computer or two doesn't make much of a contribution, but the more people that feel like you and also waste power adds up. That is the attitude that got us where we are now.
Why "5 minutes"? I would guess that if you turn off PCs after the workday and don't turn them back on until the next morning you save more like 15 to 16 hours of run time.
That's 960 minutes per day x 230 work days = 220,800 minutes. Or 3,680 hours per desktop per year. That's not counting in the 48 hours every weekend (52) which equals an additional 2496 hours, plus however many holiday days at another 24 hours each. If there are seven for whatever business, that's another 168 hours. And if the worker takes off two weeks each year, that's an additional 336 hours.
Grand total is 6,680 hours of wasted run time as an estimate.
For the people who run the fancy screensavers, the power used is fairly large. A blank screen is the best. That lets the monitor go into low power.
I think this might explain some of Microsoft's buggy code issues.
Every time they see "!=" they interpret is as "bang equals". That sounds like definitely equals, doesn't it? Like, dude, those are so equal it's not even funny, equal.
No wonder they have all those buffer overflow exploits. Their logic checks that include the not modifier are all wrong.
A "science" degree in creationism certainly isn't a degree in science. There is no way I would ever hire anyone with such a degree. If anything, I would see them as potentially being very disruptive in the workplace.
There is another way to filter on this than just schools in Texas since I would bet states like Arkansas are going to join in if it flies in Texas.
Filter on the year the degree was granted.
This might not be a bad idea anyway with all the stories of recent graduates needing to be constantly recognized for their "achievements" which is really nothing more than doing the minimum, their lack of attention to any task, little concern for quality, etc.
I know it's a sweeping generalization, but it would be the deciding factor all other things being equal. Just too many stories on how poor the recent graduates are to ignore. Throw in thinking creationism is a science and that makes them laughable.
Thanks for the clarification. I would still argue that election fraud is such a basic attack on our political system that it should be included in the definition of treason and punishments for those found guilty be as harsh as those currently for treason.
Glad it helped. A number of others also suggested OpenDNS but I didn't see their posts since they were lower so it wasn't just me.
You can also do finer-grained blocking than just low, medium, high, and such - they have a page that lets you choose categories of things to block. You can be a lot more specific.
But I really recommend the hosts file too. It will also speed up your web surfing because it will block all the spurious requests to resolve the ad sites and also block the ads. If you look at the text of the hosts file at the link I gave above, you'll see what kind of sites will get blocked immediately. You can also add in your own "bad actors" if you want.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think the external renovation of the bunker was an issue, though. Also, depending on what the place looked like before the renovation, it could have been basically like having the shell of a building already built for you. I would also guess that there was plenty of primary power and ventilation already in place as well - and depending on condition, could have equated to a huge savings in not having to redo/replace it.
As you point out, a lot depends on the structure being renovated but in this case I doubt there was much in the way of demolition needed to prepare it for being a data center. It looks very open so they might have essentially only had to run cable trays, elevated floors, and walkways.
Regardless of how we posit how much it cost or what would be the better approach, they deemed it economical to put their data center there.
Care to cite a source for those "falling" global temperatures?
And even though CO2 is not a major component of the atmosphere, it has a very large effect - and where the water comes in is as a multiplier. As the extra CO2 warms the atmosphere and the surface of the planet, more water evaporates. Since water vapor is also a greenhouse gas, more water drives the equation to more retained heat.
It's sad that so many want so desperately to believe they are not causing problems for the planet and every living thing. Wait - scratch that. Some things will love the warmer temperatures. On the other hand, some things won't and as climate regions change location, it will be interesting to see how well people will be able to follow for agriculture.
It's going to suck when the best region for growing wheat shifts northward into Canada. Well, it will suck for the United States...
There is no such thing as clean coal and Chu knows it. The ONLY reason he reversed his position on it was the politics of being the energy secretary. The guy was the director of Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory and steered it to a mission based on alternative energy which is probably what got him the job as energy secretary.
Anyone who thinks he didn't have a clear enough grasp of the pros and cons or the technology of using coal when he openly opposed it a year ago, but somehow has learned enough now to understand how it can actually be "clean" is pretty damn gullible. Chu knows clean coal is an oxymoron and that the USA and the world cannot continue on a path that includes coal without sentencing itself to disaster.
It is bowing to political reality and the determination of man to crap in his own mess kit until it kills him that has forced Chu to now endorse coal. But it's the only way he can actively push for other technologies - technologies that he knows this country and the world really need. Had he not reversed his public position, he would not have been confirmed as secretary and even less progress would be made in moving to alternative energies.
And it is disinformation by the fossil fuel industry that perpetuates the positions of people like "icebike" above. I wish people that don't have a scientific background would realize that they just might not understand the concepts of how greenhouse gasses trap heat and the multiplicative effects that come from that. I wish they could also tell the difference between political hacks and research organizations and scientists that overwhelmingly state that the planet is indeed warming and that CO2 is helping to lead the charge.
Icebike, I don't know what your education level or background is but I sincerely believe you don't know what you are talking about.
I just download the ISO... ;-)
I seem to recall... "Tranquility Base, here. The Eagle has landed..."
It was Tranquility.
Speaking of abuse, when I read the title about Microsoft boasting a 96% netbook penetration, I immediately thought all Ballmer had to do was push a little harder and he could have gotten 100%...
The Dude abides... ;-)
You are very wrong about one thing - earth-penetrating nukes used in the mountains of Afghanistan would collapse their tunnels and entomb quite a few Al Qaeda.
That would make you wrong again. In WWII, the USA had a huge involvement - both in terms of weapons supplied to allies and also in terms of soldiers.
But a 15 kT blast is small these days. I'm sure such weapons are out there - like the mortar-fired one - but there are plenty of larger weapons that wouldn't leave any survivors near ground zero.
I don't know current status, but I believe there were also neutron weapons that were optimized to irradiate an area and essentially sterilize it while not causing too much blast damage.
But a first, offensive, use would set the world on its ear and could easily be the beginning of an all-out nuclear war with the really big bombs getting dusted off. I think Russia tested a 500 megaton weapon during the cold war. That is huge.
But I'm not so sure about defensive use of nukes. It would be a lot more justifiable for a country that was being attacked to whip them out without suffering major consequences.
I don't understand why cory's comment was modded troll. He's right.
Nuclear weapons push things to standoffs and force armies backing down. The consequences are just too great if nukes come out. The Cuban missile crisis is an example of that. And obviously, had things gone differently, the whole world could have become a radioactive smoking cinder.
But nuclear weapons have prevented WWII style wars. Wars now are at least confined to one country's borders instead of spreading.
Why do people think that China hasn't invaded and taken Taiwan back? They have weapons lined up ready to strike but haven't. They are trying to push the USA financially, but ultimately, until they can be assured that we won't defend Taiwan militarily, they won't attack.
But if the USA disarms and China holds onto its nukes, does anyone really think China will continue to hold off enforcing its claim that Taiwan is really a part of China?
Not a chance. They will do as they please and if the USA interferes, all they need to do is threaten our forces with being nuked. End of story. Taiwan becomes part of China and the USA backs down with its tail between its legs.
The reality is that nukes are here and other countries have them. They are all different explosive sizes and they can and will be used by other countries if the USA disarms ours.
I guarantee to you that very few other countries feel the same "moral obligation" to disarm or to not use nuclear weapons in battle.
Bush looked into Vladimir Putin's eyes, saw his soul and saw a friend. Bush was a fool. Russia and China are rebuilding their militaries, with China building faster than anyone knew until recently. Throwing away our only deterrent against these countries is simply giving them the green light to do as they please and use the Cheney salute ("Go F Yourself") to tell us what they think about any intervention.
As they say, when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.
There are all different sizes of nuclear weapons. The "backpack" devices were supposedly a little lower yield than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. Those are the ones that will always be useful in war.
Low yield weapons are easy to carry and deploy. You can see the old film footage of the tests of the artillery and mortar-fired nukes. The "modern" replacement for low-yield weapons is the MOAB - it's a huge weapon that has to be pushed out the back of a lumbering C-130. No nuke stigma to that one, but against any threat but Al Qaeda, expect to lose the 130 before it ever gets near the target.
I think Obama is being especially naive on this one. If he disarms the USA, China and Russia will guaranteed keep a few nukes on hand - just in case. They may not be immediately deployable, but they will have them. They will also use them if they ever feel the need.
And countries with long-standing rivalries like India and Pakistan won't disarm either.
It will take a world government to make nuclear weapons go away. There is just no other solution. As long as there are countries and as long as people are people, governments will want nuclear weapons - and they will get them.
To not keep our own viable stockpile is asking for trouble. As was said above, conventional warefare will make a comeback but a nuke or two is an ace in the hole. If someone is fighting their own Battle of the Bulge, you can bet a nuke will be used to save the day.
Also, people should recognize that nuclear weapons, as terrible and terrifying as they are, have probably saved countless lives. Until nuclear weapons existed, the death toll in wars was climbing exponentially as technology made man more efficient at killing.
Once nuclear weapons were on scene and the consequence of major war became annihilation, there were no more major wars and the number of deaths due to war dropped and leveled off at a sad but low number compared to the wars previous.
Nukes would be very effective militarily in Iraq and Afghanistan and people should be aware that they will be used in war if the perceived consequences go away. A powerful weapon that trumps everything else will definitely be used. The USA not having our own nuclear weapons to counterbalance those of the other countries will more than likely lead to them being used again.
For all you know they 'blogging' could be a front for a local child porn ring.
Because I know when I'm doing something very illegal, I'm going to draw as much attention to myself from the authorities as possible...
I think your scenario is kind of unlikely.
If the Phoenix police don't have a very good reason for this raid, the blogger probably won't need a job ever again after he sues the pants off them.
Putting science theory to the test is all well and good when it is scientists that are involved in weighing the evidence to see what fits and what doesn't.
With "intelligent design", you have theologians trying to make scientific decisions.
It doesn't work.
Ahhh, magical logs! I have heard of these things!
However, my root powers say that I can modify said magical logs and applications such that my trails are covered like the soft footprints of a ninja in socks.
I will use my +5 stealth rootkit to defeat your magical logs - especially if I have full access to a machine.
Of course, maybe I was just referring to spreading malware and keystroke logging the average doofus' PC.
System administrators should never get so confident that they think their systems cannot be rooted and subverted. It happens all the time. And if you have an insider with root access to set up his/her back door before they get let go, and they have the inclination to do so, it's even harder to prevent.
So, along with your magical log files, do you actually read them or just save them off to backup? Do you run things like logwatch to trigger off certain events and give even earlier notice? Do you run configuration management that checks and verifies system binaries and config files to make sure there have been no unauthorized changes? Do you protect your configuration management server and restrict access even further? Do you run rootkit hunting software to look for any signs of hidden directories and new binaries? Do you run intrusion detection software to see if your systems are being probed? Do you patch critical vulnerabilities immediately and run all of your tests to make sure that nothing happened before you patched? Do you do all of your logging to a remote log server that is also restricted to only security personnel? Is your logging actually configured properly to where it would capture malicious activities? Do you get an alarm if a system stops logging for any reason?
If you aren't doing all of the above, and your computer is attached to a network and has user accounts on it, you can have your magical log files end up being basically worthless. Someone with administrative access can do a lot of things and it not show up in the logs.
Real security isn't easy to do. The trick is to make it cost more to your adversaries than whatever damage they can do to you, information they can steal, etc.
While I value system logs, the real trick is to protect the system so well that you don't have to rely on them exclusively because that's the first place anyone who wants to cover their tracks goes.
Maybe, but incident after incident links IT insiders to malicious activity on the systems they administer.
I would also like to think that IT people are both more honest and less likely to be laid off, but people are people and there are quite a few employers out there who don't really appreciate how valuable their IT people are.
I think many who get laid off will probably be tempted if they don't have luck finding new positions.
You do realize there are consequences from getting your power from nuclear reactors and then wasting it, don't you?
Higher load means more reactors may need to be built, it generates more radioactive waste, heats up more water, raises the risk of accident, etc.
And since you are using nuclear fuel that much faster, more has to be mined and refined which adds to CO2 loading, chemical and radioactive chemical waste streams.
In addition, since the country is on a grid and utilities can flow excess capability into neighboring regions, you reduce that excess capability and therefore increase the amount of CO2 that some coal or natural gas-fired plant generates.
There are consequences for everything.
And sure, your computer or two doesn't make much of a contribution, but the more people that feel like you and also waste power adds up. That is the attitude that got us where we are now.
Why "5 minutes"? I would guess that if you turn off PCs after the workday and don't turn them back on until the next morning you save more like 15 to 16 hours of run time.
That's 960 minutes per day x 230 work days = 220,800 minutes. Or 3,680 hours per desktop per year. That's not counting in the 48 hours every weekend (52) which equals an additional 2496 hours, plus however many holiday days at another 24 hours each. If there are seven for whatever business, that's another 168 hours. And if the worker takes off two weeks each year, that's an additional 336 hours.
Grand total is 6,680 hours of wasted run time as an estimate.
For the people who run the fancy screensavers, the power used is fairly large. A blank screen is the best. That lets the monitor go into low power.
I think this might explain some of Microsoft's buggy code issues.
Every time they see "!=" they interpret is as "bang equals". That sounds like definitely equals, doesn't it? Like, dude, those are so equal it's not even funny, equal.
No wonder they have all those buffer overflow exploits. Their logic checks that include the not modifier are all wrong.
A "science" degree in creationism certainly isn't a degree in science. There is no way I would ever hire anyone with such a degree. If anything, I would see them as potentially being very disruptive in the workplace.
There is another way to filter on this than just schools in Texas since I would bet states like Arkansas are going to join in if it flies in Texas.
Filter on the year the degree was granted.
This might not be a bad idea anyway with all the stories of recent graduates needing to be constantly recognized for their "achievements" which is really nothing more than doing the minimum, their lack of attention to any task, little concern for quality, etc.
I know it's a sweeping generalization, but it would be the deciding factor all other things being equal. Just too many stories on how poor the recent graduates are to ignore. Throw in thinking creationism is a science and that makes them laughable.
Being hung would be a much, much slower way to die.
Maybe so, but to borrow from Marty Feldman, "He would be very popular."
Thanks for the clarification. I would still argue that election fraud is such a basic attack on our political system that it should be included in the definition of treason and punishments for those found guilty be as harsh as those currently for treason.
I agree completely - this is treason - regardless of the political affiliation of whoever does it.
It all needs to be prosecuted and the guilty dealt with as harshly as possible.
It's that or kiss this country goodbye.
Witness the last eight years as proof of that.
Glad it helped. A number of others also suggested OpenDNS but I didn't see their posts since they were lower so it wasn't just me.
;-)
You can also do finer-grained blocking than just low, medium, high, and such - they have a page that lets you choose categories of things to block. You can be a lot more specific.
But I really recommend the hosts file too. It will also speed up your web surfing because it will block all the spurious requests to resolve the ad sites and also block the ads. If you look at the text of the hosts file at the link I gave above, you'll see what kind of sites will get blocked immediately. You can also add in your own "bad actors" if you want.
Glad it helped, though.
Actually, something like that exists for Linux and any OS that uses DNS - check out OpenDNS.
http://www.opendns.com/
You can configure what levels of filters to use and even customize the page that opendns supplies when a forbidden link is clicked.
They are also working to block some of the botnet phone homes.
All you need to do is use their name servers. You can set up an account and configure what gets blocked and what doesn't.
Also check out an enhanced hosts file at http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm.
That will block a lot of requests from ever leaving the computer. You can also add in whatever others you want as well.