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User: lanner

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  1. Fired for fraud on Yahoo CEO Wrongly Claimed To Have Degree In Computer Science · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Failure for Yahoo's board to terminate his employment with cause for fraud would be a clear indication of corruption at the highest levels in the organization.

    I would not be surprised if he were to stay. That's just how those people think. It's basically the good 'ol boy system in the modern day.

  2. Question: Why does this guy live in Belize? on Antivirus Pioneer John McAfee Arrested In Belize · · Score: 5, Informative
  3. Re:The stages of life. on Nokia Sues HTC, RIM and Viewsonic · · Score: 1

    I guess I forgot about Initiate. How could I have missed that?

  4. Re:The stages of life. on Nokia Sues HTC, RIM and Viewsonic · · Score: 1

    FYI I totally crapped this out in about fifteen seconds. Please feel free to continue with my poem or change it. It certainly seems applicable though.

  5. The stages of life. on Nokia Sues HTC, RIM and Viewsonic · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Imitate
    Innovate
    Litigate
    Disintegrate

  6. Re:Experience says you are a noob on Ask Slashdot: Building A Server Rack Into a New Home? · · Score: 1

    Ortronics part # PMP5E12H

  7. Experience says you are a noob on Ask Slashdot: Building A Server Rack Into a New Home? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I am some guy who has done stuff like this, including oversaw the construction of a custom condo where I directed certain changes be made to accommodate data networking and a little server room. For my day job, I sysadmin and have directed the construction of a modern mid-size data center (30 racks) and multiple office environments. I oversee lots of structured cabling installations.

    I have beat my head against the wall many times, over stupid stuff. So, let me give you some advice.

    For example, the fact that you want a 4U rackmount anything in your home is just crazy. Knock it off. You really don't want anything rackmount in your home, though that is the only form factor you are going to find larger switches in.

    No professional sysadmin or programmer would put a rackmount server in his home because he knows it is stupid. There is a reason you put computer guts into that form factor and those same reasons do not apply in your home. Get over it.

    You are using the logic of "Penguins are Black and White. Some Old TV Shows are Black and White. Therefore, Some Penguins are Old TV Shows" . Just because professionals use rack servers in data centers doesn't mean you are a professional when you put one in your home.

    You almost certainly do not want a rackmount chassis for your server. Instead, use a desktop chassis which meets your needs (or whatever is cheapest). The only time you might use a rackmount chassis would be for mounting it directly onto a wall using the ears, but even then, I would never use a 4U height chassis.

    Same thing goes for the patch panels. You don't need a rack at all. Ortronics makes a nice little 12-port wall-mounter patch panel which is perfect for home use. I have exactly 24 cat5e runs in my home, so two of them were perfect. FYI Ortronics also makes pretty good jacks and plates too -- get a catalog and call your local Anixter or Graybar for an order.

    In my particular case, I have a single do-it-all server with five internal SATA disk drives for primary storage, an old SCSI card which attaches to an external DLT tape drive for backups, and I have an external 5-disk SATA enclosure which is inside of a fire-proof enclosure in case the place burns down. I have a bunch of old APC UPS units in the home which all have network cards in them. I use wireless only for my laptop and phone, where every room has at least two network jacks and as many as eight.

    The biggest issues in this server closet are air flow for heat removal, and noise isolation. I live in the southwest where it gets really hot in the summer and the closet where I keep my gear is next to the garage, where it gets warm. I had to cut a vent into the door near the bottom so fresh/cool air could enter the closet, and I have a small fan which blows the old/hot air into the garage. The little 'server closet' has that do-it-all server with the ten disk drives, a cable modem, a 24-port switch, an APC UPS, an APC per-port controlled PDU, and sometimes I keep a second little cheapy server in there for experiments. So I need a little bit of air flow to keep it at a reasonable temperature in there.

    However, all of these fans and junk make noise, which is bad. My old switch was the worst offender and I had to ditch it for a different switch. I also found that wall-mounting the switch caused vibrations to go through the wall, so I had to solve that problem by putting it on a small shelf with a layer of foam underneath.

    Cat5e cable is probably fine for now. I like Berk-Tek brand riser/plenum cable as an intermediate of price and quality. If you really want to be able to do 10GBASE-T some day, you will have to go with Cat6a, which is crazy expensive. FYI, the current 10GBASE-T spec calls for spans of something like 25 meters with Cat5e, so you might be able to do 10GBASE-T over the Cat5e anyway.

    Get over it, stop rack mounting things in your house, and get someone who knows structured cabling in there to help you pick some good cable, jacks, and the patch panels. I already told you about Ortronics and Berk-Tek. A clueful person could go from there.

  8. RIM is so dead on RIM's Future Hangs On Developer Support For 'New BlackBerry' · · Score: 1

    RIM is so dead that posting on this story isn't worth anyone's time.

  9. Re:You have to be kidding on Accountability, Not Code Quality, Makes iOS Safer Than Android · · Score: 2

    First off, I want to say that I own a Nexus One and really like my Android phone. I have no intention of going iPhone. I get to hands-on with iPhones all the time and I still like Android better. I both iPhone and Android to everyone, they are both awesome compared to old stupid phones and Blackdeathberry.

    That being said, the truth is that Apple does a much better job at releasing updates and supporting older phones than ANY Android phone manufacture out there.

    Obviously, Apple has a much much easier time since they have fewer phone models than you do fingers, where the various Android manufactures have hundreds if not more than a thousand phones to choose from. Those manufactures do a very poor job of releasing updates for their phones.

    The last update Google/HTC released for the Nexus One was 2.3.6 (GRK39F) in September of 2011. The phone is not yet three years old now and it's basically dead from a development standpoint. I have to go to community mods and rooting my phone for a better experience.

    Meanwhile, Apple releases updates for three years. The 3GS, which came out before the Nexus One, is still fully supported by the latest iOS!

    Reference: http://theunderstatement.com/post/11982112928/android-orphans-visualizing-a-sad-history-of-support

    I want everyone to know this because it will force the Android phone makers to shape up. Why buy an Android, which will barely get one year of feature updates, if ANY OS feature updates, when an iPhone will last you three years (assuming you don't break it first).

  10. Re:Not really bothered, tbh on Expect Mandatory 'Big Brother' Black Boxes In All New Cars From 2015 · · Score: 1

    The problem is that the information isn't for you, for your interest, and is out of your control. You don't have access to it and everything will be done to make sure that insurance companies and the government have access to this data while you don't.

  11. Re:Bad Press or Bad Behavior? on GSA Emails Recount Inside Story of Exploding Toilets · · Score: 0

    That sentence is totally incomprehensible, and it was modded +3?

  12. Re:Who knew on IBM Sells Point-Of-Sale Business To Toshiba · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Because of smartphones and tablets. Or, more specifically, the miniaturization and commercialization of the components. It is the same reason you are seeing things like the Ecobee thermostat. The price of POS equipment is really high, but super-cheap commodity tablets could be used to replace almost all of that. You still need the cash drawer and some other accessories, but IBM has wisely seen that POS is being threatened by software replacements on tablets.

    As an example, there is a hot dog stand that I go eat at once or twice a week and the guy takes credit cards via his iPhone and a Square CC reader. He has no POS gear. That's today. In ten years, those POS equipment vendors could be very disrupted by newcomers to that industry.

  13. Troll story on Assessing Media Bias: Microsoft Vs. Everyone Else · · Score: 1

    Troll story. Nothing else to say. I wish I could vote for a tag, but it's already there.

  14. Not apropriate for slashdot on Zimmerman Charged With 2nd-Degree Murder · · Score: -1, Redundant

    Sorry, this isn't Slashdot worthy. There are some things that affect lots of people that are sometimes slashdot worthy, but this isn't one of them. This story is about media baiting the gullible public (and how they are) into following a story. This is just another OJ.

  15. Bait and switch on Ask Slashdot: At What Point Has a Kickstarter Project Failed? · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    The headline asks one question, but it's pretty clear that you just want to learn how to be an investor. Why don't you google it or ask the question you really want answered instead of not asking it.

  16. TURRURISTSTST!@!@!!@ on NASA Shuttle Discovery Set To Buzz Washington, DC · · Score: 1

    We know how well this went last time somebody wanted a photo shoot.

    http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/air-force-one-backup-rattles-new-york-nerve/

    Create a nation of terrorized went-panty self-entitled anti-intellectuals and you get what you get.

  17. Misunderstanding on Ask Slashdot: Experience Handling DDoS Attacks On a Mid-Tier Site? · · Score: 4, Informative

    The mere question of how to mitigate a DDOS indicates a fundamental lack of understanding of how IP networking and DDOS works.

    You (the ISP customer) have no ability to control what packets are sent to you over your uplink circuits. You can control what you send, but you have no ability to control what you receive.

    Read the sentence above. Repeat as necessary.

    Even if you knew with 100% certainty which packets were "bad" packets and which were "good" packets, if your uplink is saturated, dropping them on your edge router/firewall/whatever is 100% ineffective.

    The best mitigating strategy is that you need to have an agreement with your ISP and plan in place prior to an attack. Identify the hostile addresses, give them to your ISP, and they will null-route those sources either within their core or even at the edges of their networks to prevent entry. Your ISP has the capacity to mitigate a DDOS attack, you as the little customer do not.

  18. Slashdot is the new Digg 4.0 suckfest, apparently on Slashdot Coming Attractions · · Score: 1

    I've noticed that you are taking the Digg 4.0 route of pissing off your readers, ignoring what the really want, pushing up the ads, all the while talking smack about how big your dick is.

    Even the recent "we are listening" post made it pretty clear that you don't care what the community thinks, listening or not.

  19. Re:Zoneminder sucks on Ask Slashdot: A Cheap, DIY Home Security and Surveillance System? · · Score: 1

    Oh yea, one more thing.

    I had a huge problem: false positives. How do you keep the system from sending out notifications when you are home and it's you on camera? Well, zoneminder has no way to easily turn that on/off. There is a switch on the main user interface that does it, but I'm not going to break out my web browser every night when I go to sleep or when I go to work. There is no concept of "operating hours" for when notification should and should not be sent.

  20. Re:Zoneminder sucks on Ask Slashdot: A Cheap, DIY Home Security and Surveillance System? · · Score: 1

    About two years ago I bought a new home and started looking for ways to set up an IP camera system. I had an old Axis IP camera and started to use that to test Zoneminder with.

    Zoneminder appeared to be just about the only open-source linux-based solution out there. Unfortunately, Zoneminder is really not a great product. I wish it was.

    Occasionally, the zm process would just start leaking memory until everything was consumed and the kernel killed it.

    Configuration options are very complicated, and they make an effort to be generic with their camera support, but in turn, the support for ALL cameras is generic. Much customization and configuration was required for even basic operation.

    Terminology and the user interface was very confusing, and the documentation was not a huge help.

    Finally, the Debian package, which I tried to use at first, was something like six months out of date when I first started. Then, after they finally updated it, the update completely broke my system and I had to ditch it and start over with the raw project tarball.

    I just gave up. I am in the process of moving again and I will probably look for some commercial solution next time, because Zoneminder just didn't work.

  21. Family background questioning on Ask Slashdot: How Have You Handled Illegal Interview Topics? · · Score: 3, Informative

    Let's name some names here. I don't have any particular beef with this company or individual. It's just what came to mind when the question came up.

    Back in 2006 or so, I was looking for a new job and pegged an interview with a company called 41st Parameter. They were an financial anti-fraud company. Kind of like credit card fraud detection sort of stuff.

    I had an interview with Ori Eisen, their founder. He didn't seem too terribly interested in my job-related abilities so much as my background and personal family situation. He asked about my marital status, parents, current family situation, where I had lived previously, personal life stuff. He focused in on ethnicity and all kinds of shit you just don't do. He went there. I seem to remember that he might of been Israeli and asked me something about my ethnicity related to that, but I don't recall exactly. I just remember that he basically was not interested in my technical abilities and just wanted to know about my family background and personal details.

    In summary the guy when into HR no-no territory.

    I obliged the man on some questions where I just didn't mind, but I refused to answer other questions. That seemed to piss him off. He was a very forceful and fast-paced guy. He wanted to know all about me but wasn't willing to answer any of my very basic questions about the company.

    After that first interview, I wasn't interested in the job and I ended up working somewhere else soon after.

    I can't say that I had another interview where I had been asked such inappropriate and career-irrelevant questions.

  22. Re:Citizenship on Ask Slashdot: How Have You Handled Illegal Interview Topics? · · Score: 0

    I like how when you saw the word "illegal" you put "immigrant" behind it. It's not the subject at hand and has nothing to do with the discussion.

  23. LTO and standardization on After 60 Years, Tape Reinserts Itself · · Score: 2

    For those who are not familiar with tape, LTO is the current technology. It is a vendor neutral/open standard, unlike DLT (Compaq), AIT (Sony), DAT (sucked), Mammoth (Exabyte), and others. Basically, it got commoditized after a long long fight to keep prices high and customers locked in to certain vendor technology.

    I would really like to hear what people know about this process of standardization with tapes. It took forever for this to happen.

    Because every tape and autoloader has been so different, it has been really hard for software vendors to write applications to support this huge number of libraries. Just as an example, Bacula, one of the most popular open-source backup apps out there has no support to eject a tape. I kid you not, if you use Bacula, you gotta bust out the mt eject command after telling Bacula to release the tape.

    The great thing about LTO is that they recently added hardware encryption and partitioning in LTO5, along with a density increase. I don't know what the current status on LTO6 is, but I don't expect to see anything for another year or two. LTO5 just came out one year ago.

    DLT S4 was keeping the density war up with DLT4 (800GB native), but Quantum killed it back in 2007 and there will not be a DLT S5. Anecdotally, I have a lot of trouble with my at-home DLT S4 drive that I've never seen with LTO3/4 drives. The problem seems to be that some tapes just go bad after awhile and despite Quantum's "lifetime guarantee", they will tell you to go f-- yourself if you try to RMA a two year old tape with four or five writes on it.

    The one notable exception to this commoditization is Sun/Oracle's StorageTek T10000 tapes, which are something like 5TB. However, Oracle is not a research company; they will eventually just go LTO too is my guess. They already make LTO stuff.

    Personally, I have a Quantium DLT S4 drive for my home backups, along with a small software RAID array that does nightlies. It has the benefit of being able to store everything I've got on a single tape. I use a custom script with GNU tar.

  24. It is a social test: If you can't behave, GTFO on Maybe the FAA Gadget Ban On Liftoff and Landing Isn't So Bad · · Score: 1

    This is just an idea, so maybe it's not a great one.

    The electronic equipment test has turned into a bit of a social test. If you can't behave and follow instructions for five minutes, it is probably a liability to keep you on a plane with 200+ other people for a three or twelve hour flight, where, should you throw a temper tantrum, it can have serious consequences. If you can't shut up and pay attention while the flight attendant explains how to use a seat belt and jump out of a burning plane for the whole 120 seconds or so it takes, then chances are you have a personal discipline or disrespect problem and you might be better off being walked off the plane by security. That goes for screaming two-year-olds, two-year-old teenagers, and two-year-old forty-year-old drunk guys who want to pick a fight with other passengers.

    I think if the FAA was honest: This is a social test to see if you can behave for 120 seconds, then people would be a little more understanding. Of course, there needs to be exceptions for those with behavioral and mental disabilities but who are otherwise non-disruptive or dangerous.

    There is no technical justification why electronic items need to be powered off, other than a failure for the FAA to make intellectual decisions and be properly managed.

    FYI, I am against the TSA and their security theater, so don't think I am an authoritarian or anything. Sometimes, however, we do need to cooperate together, shut up, sit down, and pay attention.

  25. Re:Common Carrier on US ISPs Become 'Copyright Cops' July 12th · · Score: 1

    Someone mod this up since I can not.