I'm biased but this is a high level Linux based storage system done right. It's not easy to create a coherent storage system out of lots of separate machines, the software that runs on this cluster does a lot of work. This thing fully redundant with no single point of failure, dynamically expandable without even taking it offline, it scales to 100's of terabytes and manages all that content continuously (scanning for corruption and fixing it, garbage collecting, etc..). The cluster has redundant backend networks and parallel paths everywhere, it even uses reiserfs to store the data. There's a lot of good engineering in this unit and they sell it at a decent price compared to NAS boxes.
Storage clustering is simply hard to do while still presenting a low level filesystem interface. Tossing that out and creating file storage as a high level service with a richer interface seems like the right approach to me. Show me a storage clustering solution that doesn't do that and I'll show you something full of bugs, expandability issues, limitations, and pain points.
The really toublesome thing I see here is the simple fact that the doctors don't know what they are talking about! They are making STRONG recommendations and have been for years based on some simple rules that are backed up by little or no real science:
Being fat makes you die faster
Eating fat makes you fat
Eating fat ruins your heart health
Lowering cholesterol will make you live longer
Medicine is about as much a science as Voodoo! (I think that was from Stargate Atlantis.. not sure)
The fact is that there is little to no credible science behind these recommendations. It's based on untested theories, speculation, and industry funded semi-science (now we'll hear about a study from a Mazola rep showing that butter is really bad for you and Margerine is much better.) Doctors, news programs, magazines, books are all making huge sweeping recomendations (cut all fat out of your diet, drop those cholesterol levels, get rid of that nasty butter and replace it with new Promise HeartSmart death sticks.) They make these recomendations based on tiny bits of inconclusive evidence and, while they usually include little disclaimer words like "some studies show" and "recent theories suggest" they then procede to hand out recomendations like this stuff is known fact and people follow it as gospel. This is because doctors have the most powerful motivator of all time, "or you will (possibly) die"
This would all be fine.. unless the recomendations are just plain flat out wrong, and as time goes on it looks like this may be the case way more often than it should be. The truely criminal part showed its face when the low carb diet got popular. Suddenly, there was mountans of evidence that "Eating fat makes you fat" and "Eating fat ruins your heart healt" were flat out BS. According to the popular medical theory of the day this diet should have made you pack on pounds like mad and throw your cholesterol through the roof which would clog your arteries at a record pace. This was obviosuly not the case, and should have propted serious soul searching from doctors everywhere about the flaws in the recomendations they have been making and what was broken in the medical system had caused them to make such serious errors. But what did you see on TV... doctors everywhere warning that you lost weight too fast on it which was bad for your kidnees so everyone should stay away from it! Ignore the fact that completely untested theories had been treated as fact for 30 years. Ignore that it was probably industry sponsored science that was allowed to inject and continually defend the incorrect theories. Pay no attention to Dr Atkins "or you will die."
The medical profession was established to fix things that were broken, not to keep things from breaking. You cut your head open, we can stitch it back up; Your heart stopped, we can get it going again; Your leg is broken, here's a cast; and the reaserch is all setup along the same lines, here's a problem, figure out how to fix it. Making recomendations for good health is different though. It requires different scientific methods than break/fix does and the medical community isn't setup to work that way.
The other big issue is that the whole system is setup to favor research which will increase income for doctors and medical companies and to leave unfunded research that would cheeply and easily help patients. If some fruit, say for example blueberries, could be used to lower cholesterol how much money do you think would go into the research of that vs the ammount that went into a copycat drug like Zocor? Is that really the right thing to do?
If doctors really made us healthy, they'd reduce their business and while I trust that MY doctor genuinely has my best interest in mind, I also trust that his boss doesn't and neither does the boss of the reasearch doctor working for Merck who assigns him to projects. Trust your doctor, but don't trust the guy who gives him his information, t
Better yet, explain that 2 weeks is really all you want to give because of the risk of making a bad impression at the new job. Explain you will only do more if he makes it worth your while. As stated elsewhere, get it in writing, establish that the new job takes precedent at all times. It's going to be inconvenient so don't do it unless you get paid enough to make it worth it.
Worth it should probably mean 2-3x what you are making now (i.e. 50K salary -> $50 - $75 per hour.) Less than that it's probably not worth it to you to jeopardize your new companie's opinion of you. Just walk away politely. This is not unprofessional.
Two weeks notice is being reasonable. Four weeks notice is being professional.
Actually, four weeks may be unprofessional depending on the needs of your new employer. The first few weeks and months at a new job are critical to making a good impression. Not being there is lousy way to make a good impression. It will likely cost you oportunity in your new job so make sure your old employer makes it worth your while.
Now my boss wants 6 weeks notice plus on call service for another 3 months at subsidized rates.
6 weeks is totally unreasonable. The good news is, you are holding all the cards here. They want something from you, you want nothing from them. Absolutely support them however much they want, but the proper payment for work like this is triple your full time rate. It keeps you motivated to help and them motivated to get someone else and not treat you like a doormat. If you need the money, they may be able to bargain you down a bit but remember, every amount of time you help them is time you are making a bad impression at your new job. Make sure its well worth it for both of you or just don't do it at all.
If by "even playing field" you mean one where kids who can play 95 hours/week can pwn me because they're level 72 and I'm only level 25 because I have a job and can't, then yes... they are making things more "even".
The fact is, as long as you put barriors in place that can only be overcome with the investment of time, there will be people who pay someone else to overcome them. A game built around skill instead of time investment doesn't have this problem. You don't see this issue in any of the UT's or Quakes do you?
Whenever a post about inexpensive Linux based RAID storage comes up on slasodot there is a flurry of:
"You know why it costs more, right?"
"if you want easy, you pay for it, if you want cheap, you work for it"
"if it's important, then $$ shouldn't matter"
and other nonsense excuses for not answering the question.
I'm guessing people have spent a LOT of money on reliable storage solutions and tend to be irrationally dismissive of the possibility of inexpensive redundant storage.
The fact is, if you know Linux well, maintaining a Linux based RAID array for home use is perfectly reasonable and generally quite painless. I build an inexpensive 4 drive 480GB RAID array a few years ago that I've been delighted with since. I have survived a disk failure with minimal downtime and no data loss.
"And when the house burns down?"
I'm so tired of this stupid argument. Data loss due to fire will happen with or without RAID. The fact is, losing a disk is much more likely than having your house burn down by a very large margin (I'd take a rough guess that disk loss in a 8 disk system is about 10,000 times more likely than disk loss from fire). But even if they happened with the same frequency you'd still be reducing your exposure by 50% by eliminating data loss from disk failure with RAID.
I have yet to find an online company selling properly configured systems for a reasonable price.
I thought about building a standalone storage server recently and saved my design in a newegg wishlist
For rack mount RAID systems I like the design cases they have at www.rackmountpro.com but I've never dealt with them personally so I can't say how well they work.
This was not a technology article. That was a "I for one, welcome our new cell processor overlords.." article.
I don't see anything in the cell arcitecure that would fundamentally make the same number of transistors at the same speed operate faster. I see lots of bottlenecks, IO overhead and wastet transistors. If there is some magical powerful thing that these can do SO much better than the current X86 instruction set and hardware, guess what, it'll adapt.
x86 adapted to RISC being "wildly faster" and, in the end, became better RISC than RISC was by translating more memory efficent X86 instruction onto a RISC backend. It adapted to SIMD (Single Instruciton, Multiple Data) efficiency issues by adding MMX/MMX2/SSD/SSD2 and 3DNow. It adapted to the reality of 64 bit address space and the need for more registers with the new X64 instruction set extensions. AMD and Intel could add cell hardware and instructions too if they offered anything special, which I highly doubt they will.
Only in trivial situations will the implications for the security be obvious.
I'd argue that 90% of standard business employees will fall under this category of "trivial" situations. Most of the rest fall under SEC or military requirements where the security repercussions are obvious to those involved and the option to not have dedicated security personell doesn't really exist.
Security for cars requires an ongoing assessment of risk and selection of appropriate mechanisms to mitigate that risk.
"Could benefit from" is not the same as "requires". There are lots of things you could do to better secure your car. Should you? Probably not because the 3,000 multi-camera recording system/gps tracking unit you could install still wouldn't stop the window from breaking and you'd be out 3K plus the cost of reparing your window.
I can sympathise with what I see is your frustration: self-appointed "security professionals" using fear and misinformation to encourage inappropriate risk assessment to bolster their own positions. I feel this (prevalent) practice is despicable - but this does not mean the ongoing nature of security can be ignored - either in the real world or in the rarefied realm of software.
I'm not trying to ignore the nature of computer security, I'm trying to de-spin it. It is currently something that needs constant attention but the issues we have now are not inevitable. The software we use is insecure and broken. The right answer is to fix the insecure and broken software and that will happen in time. Eventually, security will be simple and more or less happen by default.
But security guards aren't in charge of identity, they are in charge of who get's in to a building. To fool a guard into letting you in a building, you usually just need a piece of plastic with a picture of you and a company logo. It's a hell of a lot easier to get past a security guard than it is to get past a login prompt. Riskier, yes, but definitely easier and it requires much less knowledge.
Ok. You're probably right about the grammar breakdown but you get my point.
"Theoretically impossible to automate" is far stronger a constraint than is necessary to justify human involvement.
Absolutely, and that was intentional. Many people view security professionals as impossible to do without (this view seems to be especially popular among security professionals). That may be true now, but it will be less so in the future. The reason I pull out the big guns of "theoretically impossible" is because humans suck at doing things like security. If the computers can do it for us, someone will figure out a way to make them and odds are it will do a better job for less.
Explaining to people the importance and relevance of the security measures.
If there is no way around the security measures then why do they need to know why they are doing them? They are doing them to get their work done.
Taking decisions to mitigate risk where tradeoffs must be made between productivity and security.
What if the options are wildly easy to understand and come pre-implemented. Think: car alarms. Fifteen years ago, someone could convince you to spend a lot of money on auto security and it was a complicated business. Today, while the president's limo has upgraded security most of us live with what comes with our cars because it's good enough.
Identifying real-world business practices which can enhance security without negative effects on legitimate interaction.
Again, you are assuming that this is a complicated thing. Managers don't have security professionals to help them decide who to give keys to the front door of the building. Computer security is a giant mess right now. It won't stay that way.
The risk in hiring a computer security person is that they will cost more than the problems they solve. As software bugs get worked out and security is more automated and automatic, that risk increases.
For the same reason you don't see armed guards x-raying everyone going in and out of a Walmart you will see fewer computer security people at companies. At some point, it's cheaper to deal with the issue than hire security people to lessen it.
Any security made by a person and implemented on a computer can be broken by a person with a computer.
It sure does seem that way these days but this is completely incorrect. The situation we have now results from bugs and design flaws in rapidly chaning and expanding software. Software without bugs and design flaws is possible. Software with no secuirty holes is possible. Security systems will always be able to be defeated, but one without holes can only be defeated by satisfying the requirements designed into the system.
Wrong. Security is a state. Securing is a proces. Look them up, they're in the dictionary.
I usually hear that quote from people who want to make a living out of implementing security. The fact is, with the current state of systems, a lot of time needs to go in to creating a secure system and keeping it secure. This is not inevitable however. As time goes on, computer systems and networks will simply be more secure by default, especially thanks to all the hackers out there that find the holes and let us know about them (often times via the always funny "I infected you with a virus" method.
software monoculture is BAD
There are huge powerful upsides to a monoculture. Sure there are downsides too but I think in the end we will have one and it will be a huge benefit, even to security.
... without adequate, highly trained and proficient personell it will always be near impossible to achieve truly secure (whatever THAT means) solutions.
And 640K should be enough for anyone.
If you really think that it is impossible for security to happen automatically, ask your self exactly what is it that a security professional can do that it is theoretically impossible to automate.
Rather than feeling obligated to spend yourself into bankruptcy ever holiday season, you could be saving for your future.
Remember though, when someone else spends themselves into a massive debt hole it's good for you. It makes them easier to influence, cheaper to hire and, in general, less threatening. Debt is also where the money comes from that people without debt have. Your debt is bad for you, but everyone else's debt is good for you.
So. On that note: You all need to go spend every last dime you have on gifts for your friends and relatives or you'll go to hell.:)
The worst aspect of the H1B program is that it is not an imigration program but nearly a form of indentured servitude.
EXACTLY. If these people have the kind of skill to be necessary in the US work force, let them imigrate. Let them become Americans. Forcing them into these indentured servitute rolls and then putting them next to highly educated free Americans pisses us off. We should be pissed of FOR these people though, not AT them. H1B is an abomination. It's a way for a company to wield dramatic unnatural power over their employees and it should be stopped.
prison isn't supposed to rehabilitate anyone. It's supposed to serve as a deterrent to crime
It serves both rolls although the effectiveness of it as a deterrent is questionable.
Prisons are around so that personal level revenge-type justice doesn't come into prominence
The "Justice" system is designed to try to make things fair for the people. Getting your credit rating ruined isn't fair but getting shot for ruining someone's credit isn't either. It was designed with great care to instill a sense of justice in society and it does a very good job it.
And like I said before, this isn't justice. This is paranoid reactionist law making which is counterproductive to the overall goal of keeping data secure. People need to see these crimes for what they are... modern forms of a very old crime. Stealing. There's a reason we don't put people in prison for 9 years for stealing. There's a reason we shouldn't put this guy in prison for 9 years.
The punishment needs to fit the crime. We let rapists go with less than that.
These people need to be punished for attempting to steal. This is like catching someone with a CD in their pocket walking out of the store. Nobody got hurt. Nobody's dead. Nobody is wounded. Nobody is emotionally or physically scared for life. In the grand scheme of things, their crime is minor an unimportant. Sure, they used their professional skills to perpetrate a crime but so does a CEO lending himself interest free money. That, in my opinion, is a much worse violation of the public's trust than these little wannabe scammers.
I'd give them 30 days in jail and a cartload of public service and stuff like that.
Prison is not to punish the guilty (at least it's not supposed to be), it is to rehabilitate someone who has gone astray and make them productive members of society, or, if that is impossible, keep the public safe from them. I don't see any goals like that being accomplished by putting this guy behind bars for 9 years. That's just dumb.
How right they are about Wing Commander 2 and the sound card. I remember working to get a friends brand new SoundBlaster 16 working with Wing Commander 2. I listened to the opening enough that I now have engrained in my brain the phrase "How goes the war against the humans?" which almost always meets with puzzled looks when used. It's especially funny when talking to people who deal with desktop support.
The war in Iraq was to remove a madman who was in control of a country and billions of dollars in assets (mostly from oil money) and trillions of dollars of oil.
This is the prime difference between Iraq and North Korea (the place most people site when saying things like "there were many better choices." This guy had lots of money (not tied up in hard to use places, hard US currency) and was using it to lash out against people. He was publicly giving rewards to suicide bombers in Israel which is bad for both sides of that conflict.
The Iraq war was a diversion, done for reasons other than ones we were told, was mishandled, and is a complete mess. The Bush administration has done a lot wrong here but to argue it's for the oil is stupid. The Bushes are friends of the Saudi's and US oil companies who lose money when the supply goes up and the price goes down, something that freeing iraq inevitably will do. The argument that this is for oil just doesn't hold up.
Sometimes when you are incapable of arguing against the point made it's tempting to argue a different one. If you have a real argument, by all means, make it.
Your argument was that part of the cost of oil was the Iraq war. That's just not true.
The war in Iraq was to remove a madman who was in control of a country and billions of dollars in assets (mostly from oil money) and trillions of dollars of oil. Sadaam Hussein would still have those things whether we use the oil or not. You could argue that the oil would be worth less if we used less but we were using none of it (because of the sanctions) and he still was able to make good money from it.
Using renewable energy would not have changed the problem in Iraq. The war may not have been the right thing to do but that has nothing to do with our oil use.
The "stupid liberals" slam was my way of saying there are real issues that should be looked at and instead liberals waste time whining about fake issues like "blood for oil". If we took more time to understand a situation and whine about the real issues instead of rushing to judge mostly based on what we see on TV, maybe we'd be making better progress. I'm not saying we should blindly follow a path that our leaders say is the right one like conservatives do, but we should put a little more thought into our independent thinking.
Did I somehow tickle some kind of nerve..
Yes. Stupid liberals piss me off even more than stupid conservatives. It's like that guy on your team in UT who keeps shooting you... really annoying.
The cost of petro fuels includes bills for things like Iraq wars
Just because we don't use as much oil doesn't mean oil isn't valuable. Using wind power doesn't change the fact that a madman sitting on billions of dollars can do a lot more damage than a madman with nothing.
A stupid liberal is just as stupid as a stupid conservative.
That's a tough position. It's nice to see opinion starting to shift away from the "We must do everything we can to help these poor people" to something more sane and balanced. My wife is a kindergarten teacher and the needs of the few are definitely outweighing the needs of the many in her school. Inclusion is being stretched to the absurd and they are throwing tons of money at anything special. The only things in the school district that aren't strapped for resources and being squeezed for every dime are special-ed related. I would like to see the same priority put on educating every child as what is put on dumb/messed up/disabled kids now. (Yes, there are dumb kids and yes they do get services unavailable to smart kids.)
I would say that it is not appropriate, however, to simply baby-sit dumb/messed up/disabled kids. It's appropriate to teach them to the extent they can be taught. It's also appropriate to teach the smart kids to the extent they can be taught and it's not fair to put the needs of the special kids ahead of the needs of the smart kids.
Not educating "special" kids is just wrong though. It's not an economic efficiency thing, it's a fairness/human rights thing. If we were purely going for economic efficiency, we would grind up dumb people for food. I wouldn't want to live in a society that operated purely for economic efficiency.
Slashdot Mirror
Get A Centera.
I'm biased but this is a high level Linux based storage system done right. It's not easy to create a coherent storage system out of lots of separate machines, the software that runs on this cluster does a lot of work. This thing fully redundant with no single point of failure, dynamically expandable without even taking it offline, it scales to 100's of terabytes and manages all that content continuously (scanning for corruption and fixing it, garbage collecting, etc..). The cluster has redundant backend networks and parallel paths everywhere, it even uses reiserfs to store the data. There's a lot of good engineering in this unit and they sell it at a decent price compared to NAS boxes.
Check it out:
http://www.emc.com/products/systems/centera.jsp
I do work for EMC (like I said.. I'm biased) but I don't speak for them, my opinions are my own.
Storage clustering is simply hard to do while still presenting a low level filesystem interface. Tossing that out and creating file storage as a high level service with a richer interface seems like the right approach to me. Show me a storage clustering solution that doesn't do that and I'll show you something full of bugs, expandability issues, limitations, and pain points.
Medicine is about as much a science as Voodoo! (I think that was from Stargate Atlantis.. not sure)
The fact is that there is little to no credible science behind these recommendations. It's based on untested theories, speculation, and industry funded semi-science (now we'll hear about a study from a Mazola rep showing that butter is really bad for you and Margerine is much better.) Doctors, news programs, magazines, books are all making huge sweeping recomendations (cut all fat out of your diet, drop those cholesterol levels, get rid of that nasty butter and replace it with new Promise HeartSmart death sticks.) They make these recomendations based on tiny bits of inconclusive evidence and, while they usually include little disclaimer words like "some studies show" and "recent theories suggest" they then procede to hand out recomendations like this stuff is known fact and people follow it as gospel. This is because doctors have the most powerful motivator of all time, "or you will (possibly) die"
This would all be fine.. unless the recomendations are just plain flat out wrong, and as time goes on it looks like this may be the case way more often than it should be. The truely criminal part showed its face when the low carb diet got popular. Suddenly, there was mountans of evidence that "Eating fat makes you fat" and "Eating fat ruins your heart healt" were flat out BS. According to the popular medical theory of the day this diet should have made you pack on pounds like mad and throw your cholesterol through the roof which would clog your arteries at a record pace. This was obviosuly not the case, and should have propted serious soul searching from doctors everywhere about the flaws in the recomendations they have been making and what was broken in the medical system had caused them to make such serious errors. But what did you see on TV... doctors everywhere warning that you lost weight too fast on it which was bad for your kidnees so everyone should stay away from it! Ignore the fact that completely untested theories had been treated as fact for 30 years. Ignore that it was probably industry sponsored science that was allowed to inject and continually defend the incorrect theories. Pay no attention to Dr Atkins "or you will die."
The medical profession was established to fix things that were broken, not to keep things from breaking. You cut your head open, we can stitch it back up; Your heart stopped, we can get it going again; Your leg is broken, here's a cast; and the reaserch is all setup along the same lines, here's a problem, figure out how to fix it. Making recomendations for good health is different though. It requires different scientific methods than break/fix does and the medical community isn't setup to work that way.
The other big issue is that the whole system is setup to favor research which will increase income for doctors and medical companies and to leave unfunded research that would cheeply and easily help patients. If some fruit, say for example blueberries, could be used to lower cholesterol how much money do you think would go into the research of that vs the ammount that went into a copycat drug like Zocor? Is that really the right thing to do?
If doctors really made us healthy, they'd reduce their business and while I trust that MY doctor genuinely has my best interest in mind, I also trust that his boss doesn't and neither does the boss of the reasearch doctor working for Merck who assigns him to projects. Trust your doctor, but don't trust the guy who gives him his information, t
2-3x what you are making now (i.e. 50K salary -> $50 - $75 per hour.)
:)
Unless I've completely missed something. Like... maybe... the multiplying by 2 and 3?
Better yet, explain that 2 weeks is really all you want to give because of the risk of making a bad impression at the new job. Explain you will only do more if he makes it worth your while. As stated elsewhere, get it in writing, establish that the new job takes precedent at all times. It's going to be inconvenient so don't do it unless you get paid enough to make it worth it.
Worth it should probably mean 2-3x what you are making now (i.e. 50K salary -> $50 - $75 per hour.) Less than that it's probably not worth it to you to jeopardize your new companie's opinion of you. Just walk away politely. This is not unprofessional.
Two weeks notice is being reasonable. Four weeks notice is being professional.
Actually, four weeks may be unprofessional depending on the needs of your new employer. The first few weeks and months at a new job are critical to making a good impression. Not being there is lousy way to make a good impression. It will likely cost you oportunity in your new job so make sure your old employer makes it worth your while.
Now my boss wants 6 weeks notice plus on call service for another 3 months at subsidized rates.
6 weeks is totally unreasonable. The good news is, you are holding all the cards here. They want something from you, you want nothing from them. Absolutely support them however much they want, but the proper payment for work like this is triple your full time rate. It keeps you motivated to help and them motivated to get someone else and not treat you like a doormat. If you need the money, they may be able to bargain you down a bit but remember, every amount of time you help them is time you are making a bad impression at your new job. Make sure its well worth it for both of you or just don't do it at all.
If by "even playing field" you mean one where kids who can play 95 hours/week can pwn me because they're level 72 and I'm only level 25 because I have a job and can't, then yes... they are making things more "even".
The fact is, as long as you put barriors in place that can only be overcome with the investment of time, there will be people who pay someone else to overcome them. A game built around skill instead of time investment doesn't have this problem. You don't see this issue in any of the UT's or Quakes do you?
and other nonsense excuses for not answering the question.
I'm guessing people have spent a LOT of money on reliable storage solutions and tend to be irrationally dismissive of the possibility of inexpensive redundant storage.
The fact is, if you know Linux well, maintaining a Linux based RAID array for home use is perfectly reasonable and generally quite painless. I build an inexpensive 4 drive 480GB RAID array a few years ago that I've been delighted with since. I have survived a disk failure with minimal downtime and no data loss.
"And when the house burns down?"
I'm so tired of this stupid argument. Data loss due to fire will happen with or without RAID. The fact is, losing a disk is much more likely than having your house burn down by a very large margin (I'd take a rough guess that disk loss in a 8 disk system is about 10,000 times more likely than disk loss from fire). But even if they happened with the same frequency you'd still be reducing your exposure by 50% by eliminating data loss from disk failure with RAID.
I have yet to find an online company selling properly configured systems for a reasonable price.
I thought about building a standalone storage server recently and saved my design in a newegg wishlist
For rack mount RAID systems I like the design cases they have at www.rackmountpro.com but I've never dealt with them personally so I can't say how well they work.
This was not a technology article. That was a "I for one, welcome our new cell processor overlords.." article.
I don't see anything in the cell arcitecure that would fundamentally make the same number of transistors at the same speed operate faster. I see lots of bottlenecks, IO overhead and wastet transistors. If there is some magical powerful thing that these can do SO much better than the current X86 instruction set and hardware, guess what, it'll adapt.
x86 adapted to RISC being "wildly faster" and, in the end, became better RISC than RISC was by translating more memory efficent X86 instruction onto a RISC backend. It adapted to SIMD (Single Instruciton, Multiple Data) efficiency issues by adding MMX/MMX2/SSD/SSD2 and 3DNow. It adapted to the reality of 64 bit address space and the need for more registers with the new X64 instruction set extensions. AMD and Intel could add cell hardware and instructions too if they offered anything special, which I highly doubt they will.
Only in trivial situations will the implications for the security be obvious.
I'd argue that 90% of standard business employees will fall under this category of "trivial" situations. Most of the rest fall under SEC or military requirements where the security repercussions are obvious to those involved and the option to not have dedicated security personell doesn't really exist.
Security for cars requires an ongoing assessment of risk and selection of appropriate mechanisms to mitigate that risk.
"Could benefit from" is not the same as "requires". There are lots of things you could do to better secure your car. Should you? Probably not because the 3,000 multi-camera recording system/gps tracking unit you could install still wouldn't stop the window from breaking and you'd be out 3K plus the cost of reparing your window.
I can sympathise with what I see is your frustration: self-appointed "security professionals" using fear and misinformation to encourage inappropriate risk assessment to bolster their own positions. I feel this (prevalent) practice is despicable - but this does not mean the ongoing nature of security can be ignored - either in the real world or in the rarefied realm of software.
I'm not trying to ignore the nature of computer security, I'm trying to de-spin it. It is currently something that needs constant attention but the issues we have now are not inevitable. The software we use is insecure and broken. The right answer is to fix the insecure and broken software and that will happen in time. Eventually, security will be simple and more or less happen by default.
But security guards aren't in charge of identity, they are in charge of who get's in to a building. To fool a guard into letting you in a building, you usually just need a piece of plastic with a picture of you and a company logo. It's a hell of a lot easier to get past a security guard than it is to get past a login prompt. Riskier, yes, but definitely easier and it requires much less knowledge.
"Theoretically impossible to automate" is far stronger a constraint than is necessary to justify human involvement.
Absolutely, and that was intentional. Many people view security professionals as impossible to do without (this view seems to be especially popular among security professionals). That may be true now, but it will be less so in the future. The reason I pull out the big guns of "theoretically impossible" is because humans suck at doing things like security. If the computers can do it for us, someone will figure out a way to make them and odds are it will do a better job for less.
If there is no way around the security measures then why do they need to know why they are doing them? They are doing them to get their work done.
What if the options are wildly easy to understand and come pre-implemented. Think: car alarms. Fifteen years ago, someone could convince you to spend a lot of money on auto security and it was a complicated business. Today, while the president's limo has upgraded security most of us live with what comes with our cars because it's good enough.
Again, you are assuming that this is a complicated thing. Managers don't have security professionals to help them decide who to give keys to the front door of the building. Computer security is a giant mess right now. It won't stay that way.
The risk in hiring a computer security person is that they will cost more than the problems they solve. As software bugs get worked out and security is more automated and automatic, that risk increases.
For the same reason you don't see armed guards x-raying everyone going in and out of a Walmart you will see fewer computer security people at companies. At some point, it's cheaper to deal with the issue than hire security people to lessen it.
It's a lot easier to fool a login prompt than to fool a security guard.
You really think so?
Any security made by a person and implemented on a computer can be broken by a person with a computer.
It sure does seem that way these days but this is completely incorrect. The situation we have now results from bugs and design flaws in rapidly chaning and expanding software. Software without bugs and design flaws is possible. Software with no secuirty holes is possible. Security systems will always be able to be defeated, but one without holes can only be defeated by satisfying the requirements designed into the system.
Wrong. Security is a state. Securing is a proces. Look them up, they're in the dictionary.
I usually hear that quote from people who want to make a living out of implementing security. The fact is, with the current state of systems, a lot of time needs to go in to creating a secure system and keeping it secure. This is not inevitable however. As time goes on, computer systems and networks will simply be more secure by default, especially thanks to all the hackers out there that find the holes and let us know about them (often times via the always funny "I infected you with a virus" method.
software monoculture is BAD
There are huge powerful upsides to a monoculture. Sure there are downsides too but I think in the end we will have one and it will be a huge benefit, even to security.
And 640K should be enough for anyone.
If you really think that it is impossible for security to happen automatically, ask your self exactly what is it that a security professional can do that it is theoretically impossible to automate.
Rather than feeling obligated to spend yourself into bankruptcy ever holiday season, you could be saving for your future.
:)
Remember though, when someone else spends themselves into a massive debt hole it's good for you. It makes them easier to influence, cheaper to hire and, in general, less threatening. Debt is also where the money comes from that people without debt have. Your debt is bad for you, but everyone else's debt is good for you.
So. On that note: You all need to go spend every last dime you have on gifts for your friends and relatives or you'll go to hell.
The worst aspect of the H1B program is that it is not an imigration program but nearly a form of indentured servitude.
EXACTLY. If these people have the kind of skill to be necessary in the US work force, let them imigrate. Let them become Americans. Forcing them into these indentured servitute rolls and then putting them next to highly educated free Americans pisses us off. We should be pissed of FOR these people though, not AT them. H1B is an abomination. It's a way for a company to wield dramatic unnatural power over their employees and it should be stopped.
prison isn't supposed to rehabilitate anyone. It's supposed to serve as a deterrent to crime
It serves both rolls although the effectiveness of it as a deterrent is questionable.
Prisons are around so that personal level revenge-type justice doesn't come into prominence
The "Justice" system is designed to try to make things fair for the people. Getting your credit rating ruined isn't fair but getting shot for ruining someone's credit isn't either. It was designed with great care to instill a sense of justice in society and it does a very good job it.
And like I said before, this isn't justice. This is paranoid reactionist law making which is counterproductive to the overall goal of keeping data secure. People need to see these crimes for what they are... modern forms of a very old crime. Stealing. There's a reason we don't put people in prison for 9 years for stealing. There's a reason we shouldn't put this guy in prison for 9 years.
The punishment needs to fit the crime. We let rapists go with less than that.
These people need to be punished for attempting to steal. This is like catching someone with a CD in their pocket walking out of the store. Nobody got hurt. Nobody's dead. Nobody is wounded. Nobody is emotionally or physically scared for life. In the grand scheme of things, their crime is minor an unimportant. Sure, they used their professional skills to perpetrate a crime but so does a CEO lending himself interest free money. That, in my opinion, is a much worse violation of the public's trust than these little wannabe scammers.
I'd give them 30 days in jail and a cartload of public service and stuff like that.
Prison is not to punish the guilty (at least it's not supposed to be), it is to rehabilitate someone who has gone astray and make them productive members of society, or, if that is impossible, keep the public safe from them. I don't see any goals like that being accomplished by putting this guy behind bars for 9 years. That's just dumb.
That was a good quote too.
How right they are about Wing Commander 2 and the sound card. I remember working to get a friends brand new SoundBlaster 16 working with Wing Commander 2. I listened to the opening enough that I now have engrained in my brain the phrase "How goes the war against the humans?" which almost always meets with puzzled looks when used. It's especially funny when talking to people who deal with desktop support.
For those who don't remember it I found an mp3 of the opening.
You somehow think the price of oil has gone down, when it's higher than it's ever been, and will obviously remain at those heights until it runs out
So your argument is that invading Iraq and having it's supply of oil returned to the world market won't lower oil prices?
And your argument is that those prices will stay this high until all the oil runs out?
When history proves you wrong, will you admit it?
Like I've said before. There are issues with the Iraq war. This isn't one of them. The others may be less sexy, but there is more substance there.
Nice straw man. The argument was:
The war in Iraq was to remove a madman who was in control of a country and billions of dollars in assets (mostly from oil money) and trillions of dollars of oil.
This is the prime difference between Iraq and North Korea (the place most people site when saying things like "there were many better choices." This guy had lots of money (not tied up in hard to use places, hard US currency) and was using it to lash out against people. He was publicly giving rewards to suicide bombers in Israel which is bad for both sides of that conflict.
The Iraq war was a diversion, done for reasons other than ones we were told, was mishandled, and is a complete mess. The Bush administration has done a lot wrong here but to argue it's for the oil is stupid. The Bushes are friends of the Saudi's and US oil companies who lose money when the supply goes up and the price goes down, something that freeing iraq inevitably will do. The argument that this is for oil just doesn't hold up.
Sometimes when you are incapable of arguing against the point made it's tempting to argue a different one. If you have a real argument, by all means, make it.
I can't decipher your post.
I'll go over it a little more verbosely.
Your argument was that part of the cost of oil was the Iraq war. That's just not true.
The war in Iraq was to remove a madman who was in control of a country and billions of dollars in assets (mostly from oil money) and trillions of dollars of oil. Sadaam Hussein would still have those things whether we use the oil or not. You could argue that the oil would be worth less if we used less but we were using none of it (because of the sanctions) and he still was able to make good money from it.
Using renewable energy would not have changed the problem in Iraq. The war may not have been the right thing to do but that has nothing to do with our oil use.
The "stupid liberals" slam was my way of saying there are real issues that should be looked at and instead liberals waste time whining about fake issues like "blood for oil". If we took more time to understand a situation and whine about the real issues instead of rushing to judge mostly based on what we see on TV, maybe we'd be making better progress. I'm not saying we should blindly follow a path that our leaders say is the right one like conservatives do, but we should put a little more thought into our independent thinking.
Did I somehow tickle some kind of nerve..
Yes. Stupid liberals piss me off even more than stupid conservatives. It's like that guy on your team in UT who keeps shooting you... really annoying.
The cost of petro fuels includes bills for things like Iraq wars
Just because we don't use as much oil doesn't mean oil isn't valuable.
Using wind power doesn't change the fact that a madman sitting on billions of dollars can do a lot more damage than a madman with nothing.
A stupid liberal is just as stupid as a stupid conservative.
That's a tough position. It's nice to see opinion starting to shift away from the "We must do everything we can to help these poor people" to something more sane and balanced. My wife is a kindergarten teacher and the needs of the few are definitely outweighing the needs of the many in her school. Inclusion is being stretched to the absurd and they are throwing tons of money at anything special. The only things in the school district that aren't strapped for resources and being squeezed for every dime are special-ed related. I would like to see the same priority put on educating every child as what is put on dumb/messed up/disabled kids now. (Yes, there are dumb kids and yes they do get services unavailable to smart kids.)
I would say that it is not appropriate, however, to simply baby-sit dumb/messed up/disabled kids. It's appropriate to teach them to the extent they can be taught. It's also appropriate to teach the smart kids to the extent they can be taught and it's not fair to put the needs of the special kids ahead of the needs of the smart kids.
Not educating "special" kids is just wrong though. It's not an economic efficiency thing, it's a fairness/human rights thing. If we were purely going for economic efficiency, we would grind up dumb people for food. I wouldn't want to live in a society that operated purely for economic efficiency.