UK, so 230-240VAC, not 120. And each rack would have multiple 20 or even 32 amp supplies. Single phase, but not your domestic 10-amp circuit. A rack of traditional spinning rust would need that, perhaps not so much with SSD, but if this organisation has been cutting costs, I suspect SSD is a distant dream.
*IF* one or more mainframes went down because "a contractor turned off the power", then your system design is, shall we say. not best practice. Mainframes are *hard* to shut down, and even a decent minicomputer has enough internal battery to allow a fast flush and preserve state before it goes quiet.
Anyone who's worked with a mainframe and/or big data centre should be familiar with what's needed to 1. keep it running, 2. take it down gracefully and bring it back up, and 3. DON'T LET NON-CORE STAFF, i.e. contractors, anywhere near the core systems. IBM field staff would be the only exception.
I think it got much worse when accountants started calling themselves "management consultants", as if expertise in managing finance somehow magically transferred to all aspects of management.
Instead, the balance sheet became the be-all and end-all for decision-making.
This is British Airways, one of the largest commercial airlines..... in the world/clarkson. They've had a pretty robust system for a long time. I find it hard to believe that there were sufficient failures of multiple systems to lose power.
No, it's not generally scammers or bozos - it's customers who are particular about privacy, or just paranoid about their numbers escaping to the wild, so I have to be able to respond to them. Yes, voicemail service is a cost, but it's tax-deductible for business, so it's not too bad.
It's not useless. If your number is set to "private" or "withheld", then I'm not going to pick up - ever. You need to leave me a message if you want me to contact you.
How much does it cost for a 1-900 number? Or whatever the automatic reverse-charge service is.
I was trying to make the point that "tapping into the audio" from a DCP isn't as simple as it sounds. It's not like you can plug in an "AUX" cord somewhere. Soundtracks for a DCP are supplied as a separate WAV file for each speaker, left front, right front, left rear, right rear, centre, sub, and sometimes a separate channel for dialogue. Tapping into the audio means having to capture and re-mux all those channels somehow. If you miss the centre or dialogue channel, your copy will only be useful to lip-readers.
If the cinema manager and/or staff were involved, I suspect they had a clandestine microphone in the auditorium to capture audio.
You make it sound so simple. Up to seven separate sound channels, just "tap into the audio". How many handycams have 7.1 or even 5.1 recording? So you'll need a separate sound recorder, and mux it all later.
Speaking from experience (projectionist, not pirate), pointing any camera at the screen from the projection room is:
1. Difficult for pirates. It's going to have almost unusable audio. The noise from the projector's cooling fans makes dialogue almost incomprehensible, and low-level subtle sound FX are right out. I suppose the usual glass-shattering shrieks from a bollywood musical would survive. Ditto server noise, if it's a one-screen cinema and the server is in the same room. You'd need to intercept the audio feed from the server to the amps, and that gets a bit complicated with a multi-channel surround-sound mix. Plain old L+R stereo would be easier. You could also have someone in the auditorium recording audio separately, to be muxed later.
2. Difficult for enforcement. It's not going to guarantee a frame-for-frame copy. What's going to make the camera synchronise with the projector, or even guarantee the same frame rate? That would make frame comparisons difficult if not impossible.
An identifier in the metadata runs the risk of a skilled operator being able to remove it, so it needs to be a "visible" thing - perhaps an artifact that looks normal, but can be changed subtly for each copy - perhaps a shadow, or a single frame that has its overall brightness levels reduced below a selected threshold, or play around with RGB values in the deep shadows. Easy to detect programatically - run your ransomed copy through a detector regime, and then you have your source.
That's the part that puzzles me. You can't, without some pretty sophisticated hardware, intercept a DCI-compliant stream. It's encrypted all the way into the projector, and if you open an inspection hatch on the projector, it goes dead until a tech arrives to re-certify it - and no, they won't give you the codes over the phone.
So I guess this film wasn't delivered to the cinema in encrypted form. The distributors must have been trying to save some money, or the distribution system in India isn't set up for encrypted films.
Why would you go all the way with a digital delivery system and *not* secure the last phase?
Will this antivirus follow the route taken by the IT security products industry?
Start off small with a single tool for a single purpose, then grow bloated with "features", until the computer can't even get to a functioning desktop until you've had 2 or 3 cups of coffee and a danish?
Imagine turning your key or pressing the "start" button, and having to wait 10 minutes before you can drive off, and then the car gets slower and slower over the months as more and more features are added.
I anticipate a BIG pushback from corporate interests. Imagine the court cases based on the govt snooping on "commercial in confidence" data being transmitted within the UK and across its borders. Oh, yeah, banks, etc are going to be *real* happy to have their communications monitored and shared.
I'd like to institute a slight modification to our democratic practices: any living politician, in office or not, whose support for something that turns out to be a clusterfuck (like this) gets to face some consequences. Perhaps confiscation of assets. If you want the power to decide these things, you can damn' well face some serious consequences for poor judgement, and not enjoy a post-career joyride on speaking tours and company directorships. Might teach them to think beyond the next election cycle.
1. MS pushing telemetry as updates. 2. W7 updates stuck at "Downloading 0%" for hours and hours, then failing.
So now I use wsusoffline every time a periodic "quality and security rollup" is released. It's not as convenient, but it works. I still have to check for telemetry.
P.S. problem # 2 was actually solved by stopping wuauserv, deleting the contents of %windows%\SoftwareDistribution\datastore and %windows%\SoftwareDistribution\downloads, and starting wuauserv again.
That is the only course of action with a chance of succeeding. Apple and the others have more money for lobbying than any opposition, the only thing that will hurt them is a strike to the hip pocket.
Try this - walk into an Apple retailer, preferably an actual Apple store, ask to see a phone/iPad, then ask if repairs, should they be needed, can be carried by non-apple techs for its expected lifetime (3 years?), then walk out if they won't give you such an undertaking. That kind of feedback will make its way to the genuises back at corporate HQ, and they *might* reconsider their position.
Alas, too few people consider these things. I got stung when Telstra decided to decline any further updates for my Razr HD - it's stuck on 4.4.2 unless I root it. The phone still meets my needs otherwise. I will never buy a phone from a third-party supplier again - it's straight to the google store next time.
And it's not harder to deploy, just more expensive. The fiber backbones are there already IIRC. Exchange-to-exchange has been fiber for a long time now. It's the "last mile" rollout that's expensive - in some case it's last (many) miles. Still, POTS copper pairs were rolled out decades ago - it's not impossible, just expensive.
I think that kind of situation arose because once the govt announced "NBN!!!" years ago, Telstra decided to halt or severely curtail any expenditure on ADSL{2+}. Our exchange in the sunshine coast hinterland has a 6-month waiting list for ADSL because all the ports are occupied - you've got to wait until someone else cancels before you can get in, and they're NOT going to upgrade to a higher capacity DSLAM when the NBN is scheduled to arrive here in August. Also, you'd be lucky if the backup batteries last more than 20 minutes in a power outage.
OTOH, fixed wireless NBN isn't going to work for a lot of people here - it's semi-rural and we like our trees. I'm surrounded by trees so it's likely I'll be offered satellite instead. I'm going to ask if I can keep my ADSL2+ - the speed should get better with less contention and crosstalk on the line.
"Captured", then "ingested", then "post-processed", then "distributed".
Kind of like what happens when humans go to the market and capture their food, then they ingest the food, then they process the food, then they distribute what's left.
Yes, you're correct, but there are other ways to identify infringing material. If you're silly enough to store the original extracted material without a quick pass through ffmpeg to process it through a different codec, and maybe a little compression, you deserve to be "flagged". Of course, as another poster mentioned you can always encrypt it.
I'm more concerned that the terms of service allowing the provider to inspect your content will be accepted by many.
Digital Cinema Packages (DCPs) work like this - you own a cinema, you have 1+n screens, meaning 1+n projectors. To screen most releases (very few are released unencrypted), you have to have a DCI-compliant system. Simply put, this means a server with a serial number, and projectors each with a serial number. Each projector has a decryption board inside (no software decryption here, it's all proprietary hardware, look up "enigma board"), with a serial number. Each film is delivered encrypted (either on HDD or downloaded), and a decryption key is delivered via email. The decryption key authorises *that* server to show *that* film via *that* projector from *this* date to *that* date.
The film (data stream) is encrypted until it hits the decryption board inside the projector. So serial numbers and decryption data have to match up all the way through the delivery system until it becomes glowing light. If you take an inspection cover off the projector, it won't do squat until a tech arrives with another key to re-authorise that machine to show films. Of course it's possible to drill and cut a hole in the metal to bypass the "cover open" switch, but that's also trivial to overcome - light-sensitive switch, perhaps, requiring a dark room to defeat. But I digress.
What part of this makes home viewing of films unworkable? IOW it won't be long before your BD player serial number is tied to your monitor/TV serial number, and you get a one-time key when you purchase a movie on disc or download that ties it forever to *that* BD player connected to *that* monitor. So you'll be back to "pointing a camera at the screen" levels of copying.
The system of selling discs to consumers that will only play if a BD player has an authorised matching key (that is common across brands, and is easily accessed in RAM) is not going to last much longer. The system of encryption in DCPs is orders of magnitude more difficult and complex to defeat, but I can see it coming if the copyright lobby gets its way.
It's not quite that simple, even though what you say is true.
If you get used to a high-salt diet, i.e. from childhood, you'll have difficulty cuttiing down because things just taste bland without the amount of salt you're used to, and it can be difficult to switch to other flavours instead. BTW, you can miss out on a lot of wonderful flavours if your food is overloaded with salt.
Then your taste buds lose sensitivity with age, and you add more salt, lather, rinse, repeat. And that adds to your kidneys' workload. As you lose kidney function with age, you *have* to take steps to lighten the load, e.g. decrease the salt, increase the water.
Personally, I enjoy experimenting with flavour profiles that minimise salt. Roasted potatoes? Definitely benefit from a sprinkle. Boiled egg without salt? Unthinkable. But curries, salads, other roasted vegetables, and even many cooked meats can taste fine when using something else to season them. Try powdered coriander, or ginger, garlic, etc.
Sounds like it might be worth training some new programmers.
You can re-write any or all of your legacy systems in modern languages (if you choose to undertake the cost and risk, of course), but one day they won't be modern any more, and there will be new modern languages, all with their advocates shouting about pieces of the sky falling.
Or you can leave these highly reliable core systems in place and suck up the cost of training new maintainers, and deal with the cost and problems of interfacing them with a "customer-centric" model. Of course, you may have to offer incentives to induce young programmers to use something that's not hip and modern, i.e. $$$
So customers can already do a lot of the work that used to employ bank tellers, billing/accounts staff, and travel agents. None of which changes the fact that "customer-centric" does not and never will have direct access to the core systems. Who cares if the back-end runs COBOL-sourced object code on a mainframe? Methinks people who advocate for C## and Java in core systems have no concept of core systems and their workflows.
My GP said that stopping smoking was the biggest factor in reducing my cardiovascular risk profile, even though I subsequently put on 10 kilos in 6 months. He said (being an ex-smoker himself), that if you're going to smoke - and of course you should *never* start, but if you're going to do it, quit by your 50th birthday. At that point, your body still has the capacity to heal the damage, and he's quite pleased with the sound of my lungs now, four years since my last cigarette. If you keep smoking after 50, it's all downhill - you keep doing damage, and lose the ability to heal it.
Slashdot Mirror
UK, so 230-240VAC, not 120. And each rack would have multiple 20 or even 32 amp supplies. Single phase, but not your domestic 10-amp circuit. A rack of traditional spinning rust would need that, perhaps not so much with SSD, but if this organisation has been cutting costs, I suspect SSD is a distant dream.
*IF* one or more mainframes went down because "a contractor turned off the power", then your system design is, shall we say. not best practice. Mainframes are *hard* to shut down, and even a decent minicomputer has enough internal battery to allow a fast flush and preserve state before it goes quiet.
Anyone who's worked with a mainframe and/or big data centre should be familiar with what's needed to 1. keep it running, 2. take it down gracefully and bring it back up, and 3. DON'T LET NON-CORE STAFF, i.e. contractors, anywhere near the core systems. IBM field staff would be the only exception.
I think it got much worse when accountants started calling themselves "management consultants", as if expertise in managing finance somehow magically transferred to all aspects of management.
Instead, the balance sheet became the be-all and end-all for decision-making.
This is British Airways, one of the largest commercial airlines..... in the world /clarkson. They've had a pretty robust system for a long time. I find it hard to believe that there were sufficient failures of multiple systems to lose power.
So just who is "bringing the jobs back to coal miners"? Trump, or the Chinese wind company?
No, it's not generally scammers or bozos - it's customers who are particular about privacy, or just paranoid about their numbers escaping to the wild, so I have to be able to respond to them. Yes, voicemail service is a cost, but it's tax-deductible for business, so it's not too bad.
It's not useless. If your number is set to "private" or "withheld", then I'm not going to pick up - ever. You need to leave me a message if you want me to contact you.
How much does it cost for a 1-900 number? Or whatever the automatic reverse-charge service is.
I was trying to make the point that "tapping into the audio" from a DCP isn't as simple as it sounds. It's not like you can plug in an "AUX" cord somewhere. Soundtracks for a DCP are supplied as a separate WAV file for each speaker, left front, right front, left rear, right rear, centre, sub, and sometimes a separate channel for dialogue. Tapping into the audio means having to capture and re-mux all those channels somehow. If you miss the centre or dialogue channel, your copy will only be useful to lip-readers.
If the cinema manager and/or staff were involved, I suspect they had a clandestine microphone in the auditorium to capture audio.
You make it sound so simple. Up to seven separate sound channels, just "tap into the audio". How many handycams have 7.1 or even 5.1 recording? So you'll need a separate sound recorder, and mux it all later.
Of course it's possible, just not likely.
Speaking from experience (projectionist, not pirate), pointing any camera at the screen from the projection room is:
1. Difficult for pirates. It's going to have almost unusable audio. The noise from the projector's cooling fans makes dialogue almost incomprehensible, and low-level subtle sound FX are right out. I suppose the usual glass-shattering shrieks from a bollywood musical would survive. Ditto server noise, if it's a one-screen cinema and the server is in the same room. You'd need to intercept the audio feed from the server to the amps, and that gets a bit complicated with a multi-channel surround-sound mix. Plain old L+R stereo would be easier. You could also have someone in the auditorium recording audio separately, to be muxed later.
2. Difficult for enforcement. It's not going to guarantee a frame-for-frame copy. What's going to make the camera synchronise with the projector, or even guarantee the same frame rate? That would make frame comparisons difficult if not impossible.
An identifier in the metadata runs the risk of a skilled operator being able to remove it, so it needs to be a "visible" thing - perhaps an artifact that looks normal, but can be changed subtly for each copy - perhaps a shadow, or a single frame that has its overall brightness levels reduced below a selected threshold, or play around with RGB values in the deep shadows. Easy to detect programatically - run your ransomed copy through a detector regime, and then you have your source.
That's the part that puzzles me. You can't, without some pretty sophisticated hardware, intercept a DCI-compliant stream. It's encrypted all the way into the projector, and if you open an inspection hatch on the projector, it goes dead until a tech arrives to re-certify it - and no, they won't give you the codes over the phone.
So I guess this film wasn't delivered to the cinema in encrypted form. The distributors must have been trying to save some money, or the distribution system in India isn't set up for encrypted films.
Why would you go all the way with a digital delivery system and *not* secure the last phase?
Will this antivirus follow the route taken by the IT security products industry?
Start off small with a single tool for a single purpose, then grow bloated with "features", until the computer can't even get to a functioning desktop until you've had 2 or 3 cups of coffee and a danish?
Imagine turning your key or pressing the "start" button, and having to wait 10 minutes before you can drive off, and then the car gets slower and slower over the months as more and more features are added.
I do hope they have dedicated fibre.
I anticipate a BIG pushback from corporate interests. Imagine the court cases based on the govt snooping on "commercial in confidence" data being transmitted within the UK and across its borders. Oh, yeah, banks, etc are going to be *real* happy to have their communications monitored and shared.
I'd like to institute a slight modification to our democratic practices: any living politician, in office or not, whose support for something that turns out to be a clusterfuck (like this) gets to face some consequences. Perhaps confiscation of assets. If you want the power to decide these things, you can damn' well face some serious consequences for poor judgement, and not enjoy a post-career joyride on speaking tours and company directorships. Might teach them to think beyond the next election cycle.
For 2 reasons:
1. MS pushing telemetry as updates.
2. W7 updates stuck at "Downloading 0%" for hours and hours, then failing.
So now I use wsusoffline every time a periodic "quality and security rollup" is released. It's not as convenient, but it works. I still have to check for telemetry.
P.S. problem # 2 was actually solved by stopping wuauserv, deleting the contents of %windows%\SoftwareDistribution\datastore and %windows%\SoftwareDistribution\downloads, and starting wuauserv again.
That is the only course of action with a chance of succeeding. Apple and the others have more money for lobbying than any opposition, the only thing that will hurt them is a strike to the hip pocket.
Try this - walk into an Apple retailer, preferably an actual Apple store, ask to see a phone/iPad, then ask if repairs, should they be needed, can be carried by non-apple techs for its expected lifetime (3 years?), then walk out if they won't give you such an undertaking. That kind of feedback will make its way to the genuises back at corporate HQ, and they *might* reconsider their position.
Alas, too few people consider these things. I got stung when Telstra decided to decline any further updates for my Razr HD - it's stuck on 4.4.2 unless I root it. The phone still meets my needs otherwise. I will never buy a phone from a third-party supplier again - it's straight to the google store next time.
And it's not harder to deploy, just more expensive. The fiber backbones are there already IIRC. Exchange-to-exchange has been fiber for a long time now. It's the "last mile" rollout that's expensive - in some case it's last (many) miles. Still, POTS copper pairs were rolled out decades ago - it's not impossible, just expensive.
I think that kind of situation arose because once the govt announced "NBN!!!" years ago, Telstra decided to halt or severely curtail any expenditure on ADSL{2+}. Our exchange in the sunshine coast hinterland has a 6-month waiting list for ADSL because all the ports are occupied - you've got to wait until someone else cancels before you can get in, and they're NOT going to upgrade to a higher capacity DSLAM when the NBN is scheduled to arrive here in August. Also, you'd be lucky if the backup batteries last more than 20 minutes in a power outage.
OTOH, fixed wireless NBN isn't going to work for a lot of people here - it's semi-rural and we like our trees. I'm surrounded by trees so it's likely I'll be offered satellite instead. I'm going to ask if I can keep my ADSL2+ - the speed should get better with less contention and crosstalk on the line.
The French are very protective of their film industry - anything that challenges the status quo is generally frowned on.
Regardless of the long-term implications.
"Captured", then "ingested", then "post-processed", then "distributed".
Kind of like what happens when humans go to the market and capture their food, then they ingest the food, then they process the food, then they distribute what's left.
Yes, you're correct, but there are other ways to identify infringing material. If you're silly enough to store the original extracted material without a quick pass through ffmpeg to process it through a different codec, and maybe a little compression, you deserve to be "flagged". Of course, as another poster mentioned you can always encrypt it.
I'm more concerned that the terms of service allowing the provider to inspect your content will be accepted by many.
In such a hurry to get first post, user fails to read article, consequently posts irrelevant complaint.
"Disabling prohibited content and identifying repeat offenders in service provider storage systems"
IOW, not about things done on your own computer.
Lucky I'm still on ADSL2+, then.
6.6 Mbps and proud of it.
Not.
Here's something to think about:
Digital Cinema Packages (DCPs) work like this - you own a cinema, you have 1+n screens, meaning 1+n projectors. To screen most releases (very few are released unencrypted), you have to have a DCI-compliant system. Simply put, this means a server with a serial number, and projectors each with a serial number. Each projector has a decryption board inside (no software decryption here, it's all proprietary hardware, look up "enigma board"), with a serial number. Each film is delivered encrypted (either on HDD or downloaded), and a decryption key is delivered via email. The decryption key authorises *that* server to show *that* film via *that* projector from *this* date to *that* date.
The film (data stream) is encrypted until it hits the decryption board inside the projector. So serial numbers and decryption data have to match up all the way through the delivery system until it becomes glowing light. If you take an inspection cover off the projector, it won't do squat until a tech arrives with another key to re-authorise that machine to show films. Of course it's possible to drill and cut a hole in the metal to bypass the "cover open" switch, but that's also trivial to overcome - light-sensitive switch, perhaps, requiring a dark room to defeat. But I digress.
What part of this makes home viewing of films unworkable? IOW it won't be long before your BD player serial number is tied to your monitor/TV serial number, and you get a one-time key when you purchase a movie on disc or download that ties it forever to *that* BD player connected to *that* monitor. So you'll be back to "pointing a camera at the screen" levels of copying.
The system of selling discs to consumers that will only play if a BD player has an authorised matching key (that is common across brands, and is easily accessed in RAM) is not going to last much longer. The system of encryption in DCPs is orders of magnitude more difficult and complex to defeat, but I can see it coming if the copyright lobby gets its way.
It's not quite that simple, even though what you say is true.
If you get used to a high-salt diet, i.e. from childhood, you'll have difficulty cuttiing down because things just taste bland without the amount of salt you're used to, and it can be difficult to switch to other flavours instead. BTW, you can miss out on a lot of wonderful flavours if your food is overloaded with salt.
Then your taste buds lose sensitivity with age, and you add more salt, lather, rinse, repeat. And that adds to your kidneys' workload. As you lose kidney function with age, you *have* to take steps to lighten the load, e.g. decrease the salt, increase the water.
Personally, I enjoy experimenting with flavour profiles that minimise salt. Roasted potatoes? Definitely benefit from a sprinkle. Boiled egg without salt? Unthinkable. But curries, salads, other roasted vegetables, and even many cooked meats can taste fine when using something else to season them. Try powdered coriander, or ginger, garlic, etc.
Sounds like it might be worth training some new programmers.
You can re-write any or all of your legacy systems in modern languages (if you choose to undertake the cost and risk, of course), but one day they won't be modern any more, and there will be new modern languages, all with their advocates shouting about pieces of the sky falling.
Or you can leave these highly reliable core systems in place and suck up the cost of training new maintainers, and deal with the cost and problems of interfacing them with a "customer-centric" model. Of course, you may have to offer incentives to induce young programmers to use something that's not hip and modern, i.e. $$$
So customers can already do a lot of the work that used to employ bank tellers, billing/accounts staff, and travel agents. None of which changes the fact that "customer-centric" does not and never will have direct access to the core systems. Who cares if the back-end runs COBOL-sourced object code on a mainframe? Methinks people who advocate for C## and Java in core systems have no concept of core systems and their workflows.
My GP said that stopping smoking was the biggest factor in reducing my cardiovascular risk profile, even though I subsequently put on 10 kilos in 6 months. He said (being an ex-smoker himself), that if you're going to smoke - and of course you should *never* start, but if you're going to do it, quit by your 50th birthday. At that point, your body still has the capacity to heal the damage, and he's quite pleased with the sound of my lungs now, four years since my last cigarette. If you keep smoking after 50, it's all downhill - you keep doing damage, and lose the ability to heal it.