Don't forget that IBM demo'd a Beowulf at LinuxWorld Expo in March, using 17 IBM Netfinity servers ($150,000-worth) and a copy of Linux they'd bought in the local bookstore the previous day, which matched the performance of a $5.5m Cray supercomputer.
Raises some interesting prospects, like the possibility of IBM becoming a supplier of Beowulf systems... After all, didn't a Beowulf cluster replace an IBM supercomputer at that oil company a few weeks back? You know the old saying - if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. IBM's execs might be thinking to themselves that, if their supercomputers are going to be supplanted by Beowulf clusters, those Beowulf clusters might as well run on IBM machines.
>5. No high availability clustering (Beowolf is cool but completely unrelated to this)
HA clustering, load balancing, hot swapping of nodes, etc. using Linux boxen is something I've been looking into recently. I'm currently having wet dreams about hierarchical, infinitely-scalable Linux clusters, using SAN technology...
The very fact that compulsory key escrow will almost certainly be dropped has been rather overlooked, I feel. This is a major victory for advocates of privacy in the UK.
So, you're saying that Windows source code is worth something?!
I beg to differ, old chap - I don't think it's worth warm spit! If I got my hands on it, I wouldn't even attempt to sell it to anyone - I'd feel too guilty about ripping them off. I'd just post it online.:)
Where someone can be imprisoned, without bail or trial for over four years, and without being allowed access to the evidence against him.
I'd always know that the American legal system was a little strange, but at the same time, I'd always kind of admired the US Constitution, with it's 1st and 5th Amendments, and it's insistence upon a speedy trial and freedom of information, et cetera.
Now I realise that it's all just a sham - the Government can do what they like. They can trample all over a man's rights, treat a man who's crime was nothing more than hacking into computers and stealing source code (he didn't even try to sell it!) worse than they treat rapists, drug dealers and the rest of the scum they release on bail and give suspecnded sentences to.
And what do you all do? You say "So what! He's a criminal. He can hang for all we care." Wonder how long it'll be before someone who loses control of their car whilst speeding and crashes into something, causing more than $5k of damage is imprisoned without trial for over four years, under charges of speeding.
Sooner or later, you guys are going to wake up and discover that you Constitution is no more than a piece of paper. They'll keep taking more and more of your rights until you have to get a licence to fart.
I bet they weren't asked "how much damage did Mitnick do?". I'll bet they were asked "How much did it cost to develop the software which Mitnick stole copies of?"
Look at the letters - "A rough estimate of the development costs of stolen software and tools...", "..the cost associated with the development of the source code...", "Software development expenses.. Research & development expenses.."
They're just answering the question they were asked, and that question was designed to throw up answers of millions of dollars.
I don't think there's any doubt that the prosecution in the Mitnick case went all out to make an example of him. There is sooo much dodgy stuff about the case, from John Markoff portraying him as some hugely significant darkside evil hacker, through his alleged hacks on Shimomura's systems (and they remain alleged - he was never charged with any attacks on Shimomura), through the way in which Markoff and Shimomura made a bucketload of money from Takedown, to the way he was held without bail for so long and refused access to the evidence against him...
Yeah, sure, Mitnick broke the law, he broke into computers that he wasn't allowed access to, and he took source code, but there is no way he intended to profit from it in any way. He never tried to sell the source code on to anyone - he just wanted it so that he could look for bugs to exploit.
I think even Mitnick would agree that, if you do the crime, you do the time, but the only crimes he's guilty of are hacking. They're just out to make an example of him by putting him away for as long as possible. They did something TPTB didn't like, so they've decided that they're going to make sure that they send a message to everyone else - hey, it's okay to assault people, steal cars, carry out money laundering, forgery or counterfeiting, commit burglay or even manslaughter, but if you hack, we'll put you away for longer than the average sentence for any of these crimes - and that's BEFORE you get to trial!
America's meant to be the Land of the Free and you guys are always rabbitting on about how the Consitution, the First Amendment and all your freedom, but I'll tell you this - when your Government tramples all over someone like they've done with Kevin Mitnick and you all stand idly by and say "But he's a nasty hacker! We don't care if he gets imprisoned without trial, on trumped-up charges for over four years!?", it makes me realise that you've only got as much freedom as the Government over there wants you to have.
Talk about sheep. You guys take the biscuit. I'm disgusted, and I'm glad I don't live in your country. The only difference between Mitnick and political prisoners in the former Soviet Union, is that someone's able to speak out or Mitnick. It's just a pity they're reduced to being forced to query why these losses weren't reported to the shareholders, SEC, etc. If you Americans valued your constitutional rights as much as you claim to, you'd be beating down the doors of your local Senators, demanding to know why this guy's rights are being violated.
He never released it, but other people did. Tar'd and gzip'd, the Solaris 2.5 source code takes up ninety-odd megabytes - perfect size for a Zip disk. If each copy of the source code represents millions of lost revenue for Sun, then Sun should have gone under years ago.
The funny thing is that, eventually, Sun themselves released the source code to educational institutions for free.
In my case, disk takes two slots - I like having dual-redundant alternate paths to my A5000s, so that if a board or GBIC on either the server or the array fails, I have another completely redundant path to the data.
The server has two I/O boards (S1 and S2) and each A5000 has two boards (A1 and A2 on the first, B1 and B2 on the mirror). Links go as follows:
S1 -> A1 S1 -> B1 S2 -> A2 S2 -> B2
And because array 'B' is a mirror of array 'A', the chances of not being able to get to your data because of multiple board failures become very slim indeed.
That's what I call high availability. Costs a shitload, but it's not my money - it's our client's - so I don't really care.:)
...and point out that the E4500 can only handle a maximum of 14 CPUs. I suppose you _could_ fill all 8 slots with CPU/memory boards, but you wouldn't have any disk storage or network connectivity...:)
I bow to your superior experience in this field, having never actually run SparcLinux (it's on my todo list, somewhere around #2471).
One minor concern I would have about running SparcLinux would be being able to get hardware support - Knowing Sun, I can imagine phoning up their Support line and getting told that I've invalidated my support contract by running an OS other than Solaris....:)
One of the main reasons the company I work for isn't moving from Sun towards Linux is because most of the systems we install are rather large - for example, I'm getting a Sun E4500 w/ 4 x 400 MHz/4MB CPUs, a silly amount of RAM and a pair of fully populated mirrored A5000 fibre channel arrays, ready at the moment which will have a HP 330fx magneto-optical jukebox hitched to the back of it.
You could try to persuade me to replace the 4500 with a Linux box(es), but you'd have a hard time of it.
A lot of media hype surrounding Linux doesn't make sense because nobody really understands it. Linux was almost completely unknown this time last year, even though companies like Oracle were already working on porting their software to it. Suddenly, it's become this huge bandwagon, which noone really understands, because there's been nothing like it before, and the media end up listening to so-called experts like Matrin Butler, who really know damn-all about Linux and it's capabilities.
There's been so much hype thrown about by the media, presenting it as the Microsoft-killer and so on. For example, Linux is now being touted as a viable alternative to Windows on the desktop.
Bollocks, I say. Linux is nowhere near the point where it can compete with Windows on the desktop. It can compete with Windows NT in the server market, yes - As someone else pointed out above, Linux+Samba kicks NT's ass into a sling. In fact, Linux+netatalk also kicks Apple appleshare servers into touch. But, bring Linux to the desktop in the same way as Microsoft managed to do with Windows, will be a long, long haul.
The fact is, that, on the ground, people are going ahead, implementing Linux as a server for a variety of purposes, and ignoring all the hype. I've installed Linux machines as file, print, mail, web, and database servers. They require a fraction of the administration required by NT and are more stable and more powerful.
However, would I reccomend a Linux installation for the desktop or for a high-performance mission-critical server? No. I'd reccomend Windows NT workstation (or MacOS) on the desktop and a Sun Enterprise server for the mission-critical stuff.
In the future, this might change. Linux definitely has a future. At the moment, I'm doing some R&D into Linux/Beowulf/Clustering/High-Availability/distrib uted-database stuff, and it's all very cool. The reduced reliability of Linux on PC hardware is offset by it's lower cost.
Anyway, the point is that there's no point in trying to predict what's going to happen with Linux. To forecast where something's going to go, you must know from whence it came, and Linux came out of nowhere, so the statisticians don't have any historical data. Add to that the fact that it's a completely new phenomenon - a free operating system hasn't never attained this position in the past, so the statisticians don't even have anything similar that they can use to make a model.
Everybody's getting all worked up, but it doesn't matter what anyone says - Linux is going where it's going and noone can really influence what happens to it, because noone controls it.
The Grid isn't going to be a private data network that companies subscribe to. It'll be a public data network that anyone can join by becoming a shareholder in. In other words, it'll be owned by the companies who use it.
Now I know that this whole idea of co-operatively owned, non-profit companies is probably quite foreign to you Yanks, but just think of it as being a bit like Socialism.
At the moment, the Internet is merely a bunch of private data networks which are hooked together at peering points. Administratively, it's a fucking disaster, as this whole domains issue amply illustrates. The lack of a centralised controlling authority for the Internet is a major problem. The Grid solves this problem by having the main backbone network owned and operated by a single company (let's call it "GridCorp"). Therefore, there'll be no need for peering. Except for peering with the Internet, which will be handled by the GridCorp.
Now, in terms of the Grid, GridCorp will have a monopoly. But, because it's a co-operatively-owned company, noone will give a shit, and because it owns the network, over which it has the monopoly, there's no legal issues involved. If people don't like it, they can fuck off and set up their own hugely expensive private network.
If they do like it, they can join the network, become a shareholder in GridCorp and have a say in how the network is run.
Gee, you know, I think this could almost be described as "democracy"!!!!
...except for the power we allow them to have. The whole domain name service is a de facto standard, not a de jure one. The main reason it's still in place is because it's big, it's established and people don't really know how to go about overthrowing it. But that _will_ change, sooner or later.
For example, over the past six months or so, I've been involved in a discussion between representatives of a number of major international corporations, mostly in the financial services sector, who are considering building a kind of a next-generation Internet, co-operatively owned and operated (similar to the UK's NIC), based upon IPv6, with all of the advantages that entails. The Project is referred to as the Grid.
From what I've heard in the meetings I've attended, they plan to build an intial backbone around the world, centred and controlled from London, linking to Dublin, Paris, Frankfurt, Berlin, Moscow, Hong Kong, Tokyo and a couple of cities in the United States. It would initially only be used by the companies involved in initially setting it up, but, later, anyone would be allowed to join and become equal shareholders in the non-profit company which will own and operate the backbone (and the DNS system), as long as they pay their share of the cost of maintaining the backbone. Any profits would be ploughed back into improving the network.
The technical details aren't really an issue at the moment. One of the committee invited me along after hearing me speak at a conference and I've been advising them as to what's possible and what's not.
It's all quite interesting. Whether it'll actually pan out is another matter, but their reasons for wanting to do this (dissatisfaction with the current ownership and administration of the Internet and with it's security) aren't exactly unreasonable.
Funnily enough, the main things they end up discussing in their meetings are related to the administration of Grid - i.e. how the administrating company would be set up and owned, whether all the stakeholders should have an equal vote or not, how to ensure that no one company or organisation can gain too much power, etc. They're not all that worried about the technical side, because it's all pretty much possible - or rather will be when IPv6-capable networking equipment and operating systems become available.
It's a lot of fun sitting there and watching them all get into seriously deep legal discussions and so on... It's even more fun imagining the upheaval that will occur when it launches.
The Dodger Hacker & International Network Architect ;)
Agreed. However, these sort of things are easier said than done. The fact is that the whole issue of domain names has been managed really badly and it really ought to be taken out of the private sector altogether.
As for replacing BIND, what happens if you give named a root-servers file with different root servers in it?
For the past six months or so, I've been involved in a discussion between representatives of a number of major international corporations, mostly in the financial services sector, who are considering building a kind of a next-generation Internet, called the Grid, co-operatively owned and operated (similar to the UK's NIC), based upon IPv6, with all of the advantages that entails.
From what I've heard in the meetings I've attended, they plan to build an intial backbone around the world, centred and controlled from London, linking to Dublin, Paris, Frankfurt, Berlin, Moscow, Hong Kong, Tokyo and a couple of cities in the United States. It would initially only be used by the companies involved in initially setting it up, but, later, anyone would be allowed to join and become equal shareholders in the non-profit company which will own and operate the backbone, as long as they pay their share of the cost of maintaining the backbone.
The technical details aren't really an issue at the moment. One of the committee invited me along after hearing me speak at a conference and I've been advising them as to what's possible and what's not. What you've outlined above is the sort of thought process I had to go through to figure out how the Grid's DNS system could interface with the exiting Internet's.
It's all quite interesting. Whether it'll actually pan out is another matter, but their reasons for wanting to do this (dissatisfaction with the current ownership and administration of the Internet and with it's security) aren't exactly unreasonable.
Funnily enough, the main things they end up discussing in their meetings are related to the administration of Grid - i.e. how the administrating company would be set up and owned, whether all the stakeholders should have an equal vote or not, how to ensure that no one company or organisation can gain too much power, etc. They're not all that worried about the technical side, because it's all pretty much possible - or will be when IPv6-capable networking equipment and operating systems become available.
It's a lot of fun sitting there and watching them all get into seriously deep legal discussions and so on...
As for replacing BIND, what happens if you give named a root-servers file with different root servers in it?
For the past six months or so, I've been involved in a discussion between representatives of a number of major international corporations, mostly in the financial services sector, who are considering building a kind of a next-generation Internet, called the Grid, co-operatively owned and operated (similar to the UK's NIC), based upon IPv6, with all of the advantages that entails.
From what I've heard in the meetings I've attended, they plan to build an intial backbone around the world, centred and controlled from London, linking to Dublin, Paris, Frankfurt, Berlin, Moscow, Hong Kong, Tokyo and a couple of cities in the United States. It would initially only be used by the companies involved in initially setting it up, but, later, anyone would be allowed to join and become equal shareholders in the non-profit company which will own and operate the backbone, as long as they pay their share of the cost of maintaining the backbone.
The technical details aren't really an issue at the moment. One of the committee invited me along after hearing me speak at a conference and I've been advising them as to what's possible and what's not. What you've outlined above is the sort of thought process I had to go through to figure out how the Grid's DNS system could interface with the exiting Internet's.
It's all quite interesting. Whether it'll actually pan out is another matter, but their reasons for wanting to do this (dissatisfaction with the current ownership and administration of the Internet and with it's security) aren't exactly unreasonable.
Funnily enough, the main things they end up discussing in their meetings are related to the administration of Grid - i.e. how the administrating company would be set up and owned, whether all the stakeholders should have an equal vote or not, how to ensure that no one company or organisation can gain too much power, etc. They're not all that worried about the technical side, because it's all pretty much possible - or will be when IPv6-capable networking equipment and operating systems become available.
It's a lot of fun sitting there and watching them all get into seriously deep legal discussions and so on...
The Dodger Hacker & International Network Architect ;)
..but at the weekend, I'm an adrenalin-junkie. And I'm not talking about Quake or HalfLife.
Sure I'll wear the cybershades Monday to Friday, but, come the weekend, off they come, on go the Oakleys, I'm swinging over a thousand-foot drop by three fingers and fibre-channel disk arrays, TCP/IP routing and FDDI interfaces are definitely NOT on my mind.
Adrenalin. Either you choke on it or thirst for it!
3Com don't exactly ignore Linux at the moment, but it will be nice if they confirm this story with a press release.
Also on that site is an interview with Martin Butler (a well-known UK Linux basher/FUD-flinger/agent of influence for M$) entitled Lambasting Linux. I've got to admit that I'm actually beginning to look forward to this guy's comments - he's continually predicting Bad Things for Linux and of all the things he's said over the last year, the exact opposite has happened. Keep up the good work, Butler!:-)
This is bad. Network Solutions will still have total control of the TLD's, which is an intolerable situation, in my opinion.
Alternic is looking like a better and better idea the whole time, and I'm happy to say that the Brits have got it right - check out what sort of company the.uk domain registrar, Nominet, is at http://www.nic.uk/
Control of the Internet should be vested in an international ITU-style organisation. This US-centric attitude is annoying.
I'll tell you something - if all five new domain registrars are American, they and NetSol had better consider every single move they make in the future, because it'll turn into open season and the fact is, boys and girls, they ain't secure.
I was an operator on #earthquake during the California earthquake (look for Corax in the logs). My "job" was to stop channel takeovers and, boy, was I kept busy.
IRC was an important source of information during and immediately after the quake. I can remember chatting to guy from AP and CNN. Ham radio operators set up a channel and news was getting passed back and forth via ham radio and across IRC.
I spent two years at University, studying Management Science (I think you Yanks call it Operations Research), but spending way too much time on the Uni's computer systems resulted in me failing the exams and being asked very politely to leave.
I spent a year DJ'ing in clubs to earn money and hacking most of the rest of the time, before deciding that it was time for a change and to make a long story short, ended up working for a small ISP which got taken over by a telco. Not looking like a geek (i.e. looking good in a suit) and my natural talen for social engineering got me promoted to a position which had "manager" at the end of it, "technical" at the start and "sales" in the middle.
I rapidly became majorly bored and demanded that I be given something more technical to do, so I got called a Project Manager and given projects to, err, manage, funnily enough. However, I ended up quitting and taking a job as a systems engineer for a digital multimedia asset management solutions provider, which is much more fun than falling asleep in meetings all day.
Anyway, I love my job. I do the sort of things and learn the sort of stuff that I used to have to hack in order to do. On top of that, I'm earning more than a lot of the guys I know who actually graduated with a degree and, to a certain extent, I have better career prospects.
I didn't need a piece of paper with "BSc" on it to get myself a decent career. However, I learnt a lot during my two years at University - some was part of my course (project management, the application of scientific/logical methodology to solving management problems, crisis management, etc.) and some wasn't (Unix, TCP/IP networking, shell scripting). But, the fact is, I reckon I came out of Uni with the equivalent of a degree in terms of knowledge and skills and all that stuff I learnt at Uni has contributed towards my success so far.
The piece of paper doesn't really matter. The telco's CEO, when he promoted me to Technical Sales Manager, said to me that he regarded a degree as proof that there was something holding a person's ears apart, nothing more. And surveys of IT managers have shown that on-the-job experience counts for more than a computer science degree.
I believe that an idiot with a degree won't be as successful as someone who has natural talent but who couldn't afford to go to Uni.
>"Is Microsoft *really* liable for their products?".
Have you ever read the Microsoft licence? It basically says (and please do correct me if I'm wrong) that MS don't guarantee that this software will work and, if it doesn't, they aren't liable.
With open source software, you take real responsibility for the software you're running - if you don't trust it, you can hire a programmer to check it out. If you don't like something about it, you change it. You can't do that with proprietary software. And that is why open source software is more secure that proprietary software, no matter what that lame lawyer guy says.
Okay, so I think it's safe to say that Microsoft shares at least some of the blame for the Melissa virus. But who's going to actually stand up and say it? Apart from Emmanuel, who speaks out in defence of hackers who are arrested, imprisoned or charged on flimsy/circumstantial evidence made viable by hype and hysteria? Who has stood up and demanded to know why Kevin Mitnick has been imprisoned for four years without trial?
The media aren't interested - they lap up what they're told by so-called "experts", whether they're law-enforcement officials or Microsoft hacks. When it comes down to it, the news media's main objective isn't to report the news anymore, but to gain the largest audience share. Hype and hysteria sell to the uninformed masses, who then become the misinformed masses.
It's merely another facet of the increasingly commercialistic society we live in. I remember when the Internet was about knowledge and learning. Now it's about Porn and making money. Sooner or later, a group of people are going to get pissed off and embark on a campaign of info-terrorism which will make the whole "Free Kevin Mitnick" thing look like a fucking walk in the park.
Ideological terrorist groups used to have to align themselves with countries like Iran and Libya in order to gain the resources to make an impact. And then they had to face public hostility in the face of innocent deaths, and the prospect of a bloody demise on the wrong end of an MP5 held by an SAS or GSG-9 trooper.
Now, all we need is a computer and a modem. Noone's going to get hurt and, believe me, conventional law-enforcement organisations will be powerless to stop a dedicated info-terrorist (not these lame script kiddies). l0pht weren't bullshitting when they said that it's possible to crash the Internet. The only reason it hasn't been done so far is because the people with the skills and knowledge aren't lame enough to do it. Sooner or later, someone's going to decide that the 'Net's just not fucking worth it and it'll be a fucking disaster - we'll see billions wiped off the US stock markets as.coms go under and I wouldn't be willing to bet against another Black Monday. Or how about someone gets control of something like DNS or whatever and holds the US Govt. to ransom, demanding the release of Jack Hacker?
Y'know something? I hope I'm totally wrong. I really hope that none of this comes to pass and that it can be dismissed as Dodger in one of his infocalyptic moods.
But just imagine if Melissa's creator had more malicious and destructive intentions. Just imagine if that Alternic guy who redirected visitors to internic.net hadn't been so harmless. And how many Americans expected the World Trade Centre or Oklahoma bombings?
The Dodger
Wanna read Stephenson? Check out 'Interface' too!
on
Tuesday Quickies
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And don't even bother wasting bandwidth telling that 'Interface' wasn't written by N.S....
Slashdot Mirror
Don't forget that IBM demo'd a Beowulf at LinuxWorld Expo in March, using 17 IBM Netfinity servers ($150,000-worth) and a copy of Linux they'd bought in the local bookstore the previous day, which matched the performance of a $5.5m Cray supercomputer.
Raises some interesting prospects, like the possibility of IBM becoming a supplier of Beowulf systems... After all, didn't a Beowulf cluster replace an IBM supercomputer at that oil company a few weeks back? You know the old saying - if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. IBM's execs might be thinking to themselves that, if their supercomputers are going to be supplanted by Beowulf clusters, those Beowulf clusters might as well run on IBM machines.
Dodger
>5. No high availability clustering (Beowolf is cool but completely unrelated to this)
HA clustering, load balancing, hot swapping of nodes, etc. using Linux boxen is something I've been looking into recently. I'm currently having wet dreams about hierarchical, infinitely-scalable Linux clusters, using SAN technology...
Dodger
aka Mad Systems Engineer-type person.
So, you're saying that Windows source code is worth something?!
:)
I beg to differ, old chap - I don't think it's worth warm spit! If I got my hands on it, I wouldn't even attempt to sell it to anyone - I'd feel too guilty about ripping them off. I'd just post it online.
The Big D.
Where someone can be imprisoned, without bail or trial for over four years, and without being allowed access to the evidence against him.
I'd always know that the American legal system was a little strange, but at the same time, I'd always kind of admired the US Constitution, with it's 1st and 5th Amendments, and it's insistence upon a speedy trial and freedom of information, et cetera.
Now I realise that it's all just a sham - the Government can do what they like. They can trample all over a man's rights, treat a man who's crime was nothing more than hacking into computers and stealing source code (he didn't even try to sell it!) worse than they treat rapists, drug dealers and the rest of the scum they release on bail and give suspecnded sentences to.
And what do you all do? You say "So what! He's a criminal. He can hang for all we care." Wonder how long it'll be before someone who loses control of their car whilst speeding and crashes into something, causing more than $5k of damage is imprisoned without trial for over four years, under charges of speeding.
Sooner or later, you guys are going to wake up and discover that you Constitution is no more than a piece of paper. They'll keep taking more and more of your rights until you have to get a licence to fart.
Dodger
I bet they weren't asked "how much damage did Mitnick do?". I'll bet they were asked "How much did it cost to develop the software which Mitnick stole copies of?"
Look at the letters - "A rough estimate of the development costs of stolen software and tools...", "..the cost associated with the development of the source code...", "Software development expenses.. Research & development expenses.."
They're just answering the question they were asked, and that question was designed to throw up answers of millions of dollars.
I don't think there's any doubt that the prosecution in the Mitnick case went all out to make an example of him. There is sooo much dodgy stuff about the case, from John Markoff portraying him as some hugely significant darkside evil hacker, through his alleged hacks on Shimomura's systems (and they remain alleged - he was never charged with any attacks on Shimomura), through the way in which Markoff and Shimomura made a bucketload of money from Takedown, to the way he was held without bail for so long and refused access to the evidence against him...
Yeah, sure, Mitnick broke the law, he broke into computers that he wasn't allowed access to, and he took source code, but there is no way he intended to profit from it in any way. He never tried to sell the source code on to anyone - he just wanted it so that he could look for bugs to exploit.
I think even Mitnick would agree that, if you do the crime, you do the time, but the only crimes he's guilty of are hacking. They're just out to make an example of him by putting him away for as long as possible. They did something TPTB didn't like, so they've decided that they're going to make sure that they send a message to everyone else - hey, it's okay to assault people, steal cars, carry out money laundering, forgery or counterfeiting, commit burglay or even manslaughter, but if you hack, we'll put you away for longer than the average sentence for any of these crimes - and that's BEFORE you get to trial!
America's meant to be the Land of the Free and you guys are always rabbitting on about how the Consitution, the First Amendment and all your freedom, but I'll tell you this - when your Government tramples all over someone like they've done with Kevin Mitnick and you all stand idly by and say "But he's a nasty hacker! We don't care if he gets imprisoned without trial, on trumped-up charges for over four years!?", it makes me realise that you've only got as much freedom as the Government over there wants you to have.
Talk about sheep. You guys take the biscuit. I'm disgusted, and I'm glad I don't live in your country. The only difference between Mitnick and political prisoners in the former Soviet Union, is that someone's able to speak out or Mitnick. It's just a pity they're reduced to being forced to query why these losses weren't reported to the shareholders, SEC, etc. If you Americans valued your constitutional rights as much as you claim to, you'd be beating down the doors of your local Senators, demanding to know why this guy's rights are being violated.
The Dodger
He never released it, but other people did. Tar'd and gzip'd, the Solaris 2.5 source code takes up ninety-odd megabytes - perfect size for a Zip disk. If each copy of the source code represents millions of lost revenue for Sun, then Sun should have gone under years ago.
The funny thing is that, eventually, Sun themselves released the source code to educational institutions for free.
Dodger
Of course it doesn't - in fact, I agree. :)
:)
In my case, disk takes two slots - I like having dual-redundant alternate paths to my A5000s, so that if a board or GBIC on either the server or the array fails, I have another completely redundant path to the data.
The server has two I/O boards (S1 and S2) and each A5000 has two boards (A1 and A2 on the first, B1 and B2 on the mirror). Links go as follows:
S1 -> A1
S1 -> B1
S2 -> A2
S2 -> B2
And because array 'B' is a mirror of array 'A', the chances of not being able to get to your data because of multiple board failures become very slim indeed.
That's what I call high availability. Costs a shitload, but it's not my money - it's our client's - so I don't really care.
Dodge
...and point out that the E4500 can only handle a maximum of 14 CPUs. I suppose you _could_ fill all 8 slots with CPU/memory boards, but you wouldn't have any disk storage or network connectivity... :)
Dodger
I bow to your superior experience in this field, having never actually run SparcLinux (it's on my todo list, somewhere around #2471).
:)
One minor concern I would have about running SparcLinux would be being able to get hardware support - Knowing Sun, I can imagine phoning up their Support line and getting told that I've invalidated my support contract by running an OS other than Solaris....
One of the main reasons the company I work for isn't moving from Sun towards Linux is because most of the systems we install are rather large - for example, I'm getting a Sun E4500 w/ 4 x 400 MHz/4MB CPUs, a silly amount of RAM and a pair of fully populated mirrored A5000 fibre channel arrays, ready at the moment which will have a HP 330fx magneto-optical jukebox hitched to the back of it.
You could try to persuade me to replace the 4500 with a Linux box(es), but you'd have a hard time of it.
Dodge
A lot of media hype surrounding Linux doesn't make sense because nobody really understands it. Linux was almost completely unknown this time last year, even though companies like Oracle were already working on porting their software to it. Suddenly, it's become this huge bandwagon, which noone really understands, because there's been nothing like it before, and the media end up listening to so-called experts like Matrin Butler, who really know damn-all about Linux and it's capabilities.
b uted-database stuff, and it's all very cool. The reduced reliability of Linux on PC hardware is offset by it's lower cost.
:)
There's been so much hype thrown about by the media, presenting it as the Microsoft-killer and so on. For example, Linux is now being touted as a viable alternative to Windows on the desktop.
Bollocks, I say. Linux is nowhere near the point where it can compete with Windows on the desktop. It can compete with Windows NT in the server market, yes - As someone else pointed out above, Linux+Samba kicks NT's ass into a sling. In fact, Linux+netatalk also kicks Apple appleshare servers into touch. But, bring Linux to the desktop in the same way as Microsoft managed to do with Windows, will be a long, long haul.
The fact is, that, on the ground, people are going ahead, implementing Linux as a server for a variety of purposes, and ignoring all the hype. I've installed Linux machines as file, print, mail, web, and database servers. They require a fraction of the administration required by NT and are more stable and more powerful.
However, would I reccomend a Linux installation for the desktop or for a high-performance mission-critical server? No. I'd reccomend Windows NT workstation (or MacOS) on the desktop and a Sun Enterprise server for the mission-critical stuff.
In the future, this might change. Linux definitely has a future. At the moment, I'm doing some R&D into Linux/Beowulf/Clustering/High-Availability/distri
Anyway, the point is that there's no point in trying to predict what's going to happen with Linux. To forecast where something's going to go, you must know from whence it came, and Linux came out of nowhere, so the statisticians don't have any historical data. Add to that the fact that it's a completely new phenomenon - a free operating system hasn't never attained this position in the past, so the statisticians don't even have anything similar that they can use to make a model.
Everybody's getting all worked up, but it doesn't matter what anyone says - Linux is going where it's going and noone can really influence what happens to it, because noone controls it.
In fact, it's all rather cool.
Jack
..coz you obviously don't understand.
The Grid isn't going to be a private data network that companies subscribe to. It'll be a public data network that anyone can join by becoming a shareholder in. In other words, it'll be owned by the companies who use it.
Now I know that this whole idea of co-operatively owned, non-profit companies is probably quite foreign to you Yanks, but just think of it as being a bit like Socialism.
At the moment, the Internet is merely a bunch of private data networks which are hooked together at peering points. Administratively, it's a fucking disaster, as this whole domains issue amply illustrates. The lack of a centralised controlling authority for the Internet is a major problem. The Grid solves this problem by having the main backbone network owned and operated by a single company (let's call it "GridCorp"). Therefore, there'll be no need for peering. Except for peering with the Internet, which will be handled by the GridCorp.
Now, in terms of the Grid, GridCorp will have a monopoly. But, because it's a co-operatively-owned company, noone will give a shit, and because it owns the network, over which it has the monopoly, there's no legal issues involved. If people don't like it, they can fuck off and set up their own hugely expensive private network.
If they do like it, they can join the network, become a shareholder in GridCorp and have a say in how the network is run.
Gee, you know, I think this could almost be described as "democracy"!!!!
Dodge
For example, over the past six months or so, I've been involved in a discussion between representatives of a number of major international corporations, mostly in the financial services sector, who are considering building a kind of a next-generation Internet, co-operatively owned and operated (similar to the UK's NIC), based upon IPv6, with all of the advantages that entails. The Project is referred to as the Grid.
From what I've heard in the meetings I've attended, they plan to build an intial backbone around the world, centred and controlled from London, linking to Dublin, Paris, Frankfurt, Berlin, Moscow, Hong Kong, Tokyo and a couple of cities in the United States. It would initially only be used by the companies involved in initially setting it up, but, later, anyone would be allowed to join and become equal shareholders in the non-profit company which will own and operate the backbone (and the DNS system), as long as they pay their share of the cost of maintaining the backbone. Any profits would be ploughed back into improving the network.
The technical details aren't really an issue at the moment. One of the committee invited me along after hearing me speak at a conference and I've been advising them as to what's possible and what's not.
It's all quite interesting. Whether it'll actually pan out is another matter, but their reasons for wanting to do this (dissatisfaction with the current ownership and administration of the Internet and with it's security) aren't exactly unreasonable.
Funnily enough, the main things they end up discussing in their meetings are related to the administration of Grid - i.e. how the administrating company would be set up and owned, whether all the stakeholders should have an equal vote or not, how to ensure that no one company or organisation can gain too much power, etc. They're not all that worried about the technical side, because it's all pretty much possible - or rather will be when IPv6-capable networking equipment and operating systems become available.
It's a lot of fun sitting there and watching them all get into seriously deep legal discussions and so on... It's even more fun imagining the upheaval that will occur when it launches.
The Dodger
Hacker & International Network Architect
Agreed. However, these sort of things are easier said than done. The fact is that the whole issue of domain names has been managed really badly and it really ought to be taken out of the private sector altogether.
Dodger
..eventually.
As for replacing BIND, what happens if you give named a root-servers file with different root servers in it?
For the past six months or so, I've been involved in a discussion between representatives of a number of major international corporations, mostly in the financial services sector, who are considering building a kind of a next-generation Internet, called the Grid, co-operatively owned and operated (similar to the UK's NIC), based upon IPv6, with all of the advantages that entails.
From what I've heard in the meetings I've attended, they plan to build an intial backbone around the world, centred and controlled from London, linking to Dublin, Paris, Frankfurt, Berlin, Moscow, Hong Kong, Tokyo and a couple of cities in the United States. It would initially only be used by the companies involved in initially setting it up, but, later, anyone would be allowed to join and become equal shareholders in the non-profit company which will own and operate the backbone, as long as they pay their share of the cost of maintaining the backbone.
The technical details aren't really an issue at the moment. One of the committee invited me along after hearing me speak at a conference and I've been advising them as to what's possible and what's not. What you've outlined above is the sort of thought process I had to go through to figure out how the Grid's DNS system could interface with the exiting Internet's.
It's all quite interesting. Whether it'll actually pan out is another matter, but their reasons for wanting to do this (dissatisfaction with the current ownership and administration of the Internet and with it's security) aren't exactly unreasonable.
Funnily enough, the main things they end up discussing in their meetings are related to the administration of Grid - i.e. how the administrating company would be set up and owned, whether all the stakeholders should have an equal vote or not, how to ensure that no one company or organisation can gain too much power, etc. They're not all that worried about the technical side, because it's all pretty much possible - or will be when IPv6-capable networking equipment and operating systems become available.
It's a lot of fun sitting there and watching them all get into seriously deep legal discussions and so on...
The Dodger
Hacker & International Network Architect
As for replacing BIND, what happens if you give named a root-servers file with different root servers in it?
For the past six months or so, I've been involved in a discussion between representatives of a number of major international corporations, mostly in the financial services sector, who are considering building a kind of a next-generation Internet, called the Grid, co-operatively owned and operated (similar to the UK's NIC), based upon IPv6, with all of the advantages that entails.
From what I've heard in the meetings I've attended, they plan to build an intial backbone around the world, centred and controlled from London, linking to Dublin, Paris, Frankfurt, Berlin, Moscow, Hong Kong, Tokyo and a couple of cities in the United States. It would initially only be used by the companies involved in initially setting it up, but, later, anyone would be allowed to join and become equal shareholders in the non-profit company which will own and operate the backbone, as long as they pay their share of the cost of maintaining the backbone.
The technical details aren't really an issue at the moment. One of the committee invited me along after hearing me speak at a conference and I've been advising them as to what's possible and what's not. What you've outlined above is the sort of thought process I had to go through to figure out how the Grid's DNS system could interface with the exiting Internet's.
It's all quite interesting. Whether it'll actually pan out is another matter, but their reasons for wanting to do this (dissatisfaction with the current ownership and administration of the Internet and with it's security) aren't exactly unreasonable.
Funnily enough, the main things they end up discussing in their meetings are related to the administration of Grid - i.e. how the administrating company would be set up and owned, whether all the stakeholders should have an equal vote or not, how to ensure that no one company or organisation can gain too much power, etc. They're not all that worried about the technical side, because it's all pretty much possible - or will be when IPv6-capable networking equipment and operating systems become available.
It's a lot of fun sitting there and watching them all get into seriously deep legal discussions and so on...
The Dodger
Hacker & International Network Architect
..but at the weekend, I'm an adrenalin-junkie. And I'm not talking about Quake or HalfLife.
Sure I'll wear the cybershades Monday to Friday, but, come the weekend, off they come, on go the Oakleys, I'm swinging over a thousand-foot drop by three fingers and fibre-channel disk arrays, TCP/IP routing and FDDI interfaces are definitely NOT on my mind.
Adrenalin. Either you choke on it or thirst for it!
The Dodger
This is bad. Network Solutions will still have total control of the TLD's, which is an intolerable situation, in my opinion.
.uk domain registrar, Nominet, is at http://www.nic.uk/
Alternic is looking like a better and better idea the whole time, and I'm happy to say that the Brits have got it right - check out what sort of company the
Control of the Internet should be vested in an international ITU-style organisation. This US-centric attitude is annoying.
I'll tell you something - if all five new domain registrars are American, they and NetSol had better consider every single move they make in the future, because it'll turn into open season and the fact is, boys and girls, they ain't secure.
The Dodger
I was an operator on #earthquake during the California earthquake (look for Corax in the logs). My "job" was to stop channel takeovers and, boy, was I kept busy.
IRC was an important source of information during and immediately after the quake. I can remember chatting to guy from AP and CNN. Ham radio operators set up a channel and news was getting passed back and forth via ham radio and across IRC.
That was a lot more significant, in my opinion.
Dodge
I spent two years at University, studying Management Science (I think you Yanks call it Operations Research), but spending way too much time on the Uni's computer systems resulted in me failing the exams and being asked very politely to leave.
I spent a year DJ'ing in clubs to earn money and hacking most of the rest of the time, before deciding that it was time for a change and to make a long story short, ended up working for a small ISP which got taken over by a telco. Not looking like a geek (i.e. looking good in a suit) and my natural talen for social engineering got me promoted to a position which had "manager" at the end of it, "technical" at the start and "sales" in the middle.
I rapidly became majorly bored and demanded that I be given something more technical to do, so I got called a Project Manager and given projects to, err, manage, funnily enough. However, I ended up quitting and taking a job as a systems engineer for a digital multimedia asset management solutions provider, which is much more fun than falling asleep in meetings all day.
Anyway, I love my job. I do the sort of things and learn the sort of stuff that I used to have to hack in order to do. On top of that, I'm earning more than a lot of the guys I know who actually graduated with a degree and, to a certain extent, I have better career prospects.
I didn't need a piece of paper with "BSc" on it to get myself a decent career. However, I learnt a lot during my two years at University - some was part of my course (project management, the application of scientific/logical methodology to solving management problems, crisis management, etc.) and some wasn't (Unix, TCP/IP networking, shell scripting). But, the fact is, I reckon I came out of Uni with the equivalent of a degree in terms of knowledge and skills and all that stuff I learnt at Uni has contributed towards my success so far.
The piece of paper doesn't really matter. The telco's CEO, when he promoted me to Technical Sales Manager, said to me that he regarded a degree as proof that there was something holding a person's ears apart, nothing more. And surveys of IT managers have shown that on-the-job experience counts for more than a computer science degree.
I believe that an idiot with a degree won't be as successful as someone who has natural talent but who couldn't afford to go to Uni.
The Dodger
>"Is Microsoft *really* liable for their products?".
Have you ever read the Microsoft licence? It basically says (and please do correct me if I'm wrong) that MS don't guarantee that this software will work and, if it doesn't, they aren't liable.
With open source software, you take real responsibility for the software you're running - if you don't trust it, you can hire a programmer to check it out. If you don't like something about it, you change it. You can't do that with proprietary software. And that is why open source software is more secure that proprietary software, no matter what that lame lawyer guy says.
Dodge
Okay, so I think it's safe to say that Microsoft shares at least some of the blame for the Melissa virus. But who's going to actually stand up and say it? Apart from Emmanuel, who speaks out in defence of hackers who are arrested, imprisoned or charged on flimsy/circumstantial evidence made viable by hype and hysteria? Who has stood up and demanded to know why Kevin Mitnick has been imprisoned for four years without trial?
The media aren't interested - they lap up what they're told by so-called "experts", whether they're law-enforcement officials or Microsoft hacks. When it comes down to it, the news media's main objective isn't to report the news anymore, but to gain the largest audience share. Hype and hysteria sell to the uninformed masses, who then become the misinformed masses.
It's merely another facet of the increasingly commercialistic society we live in. I remember when the Internet was about knowledge and learning. Now it's about Porn and making money. Sooner or later, a group of people are going to get pissed off and embark on a campaign of info-terrorism which will make the whole "Free Kevin Mitnick" thing look like a fucking walk in the park.
Ideological terrorist groups used to have to align themselves with countries like Iran and Libya in order to gain the resources to make an impact. And then they had to face public hostility in the face of innocent deaths, and the prospect of a bloody demise on the wrong end of an MP5 held by an SAS or GSG-9 trooper.
Now, all we need is a computer and a modem. Noone's going to get hurt and, believe me, conventional law-enforcement organisations will be powerless to stop a dedicated info-terrorist (not these lame script kiddies). l0pht weren't bullshitting when they said that it's possible to crash the Internet. The only reason it hasn't been done so far is because the people with the skills and knowledge aren't lame enough to do it. Sooner or later, someone's going to decide that the 'Net's just not fucking worth it and it'll be a fucking disaster - we'll see billions wiped off the US stock markets as
Y'know something? I hope I'm totally wrong. I really hope that none of this comes to pass and that it can be dismissed as Dodger in one of his infocalyptic moods.
But just imagine if Melissa's creator had more malicious and destructive intentions. Just imagine if that Alternic guy who redirected visitors to internic.net hadn't been so harmless. And how many Americans expected the World Trade Centre or Oklahoma bombings?
The Dodger
And don't even bother wasting bandwidth telling that 'Interface' wasn't written by N.S....
Tha Big D.