The same thing happened to me once, a little puddlejumper from Dallas or Houstan to Austin, I think it was.
Anywho, the pilot revs up the engine, then throttles it back done. Fine, brakes and throttle work. Throttles back up, trips the brakes, and off we go screaming down the runway.
Then the plane slows down, and stops.
Pilot comes on the intercom and says 'Um, folks, you may have noticed, we didn't take off. A warning light has come on in the cockpit, and we don't know why. Until we do, we're going to stay right here.
Now, that's not the bad part. The heat and humidity, and a plane full of sweaty smelly passengers isn't the bad part, either.
No, the bad part was the pair of off duty pilots in the seats next to me who started, in loving detail, discussing every thing that could possibly be wrong.
Q: What was the last major IIS exploit? A: Code Red.
Q: When was that, again? A: Damn, around a year ago?
Q: Was it completely prevented by the most basic of post-install locking down? A: Yes.
Q: How long did all of these servers go unpatched before Code Red hit the wild? A: A month. The patch was available for a month before Code Red EVER hit the scene.
Q: What was the worst part of it for those of us who were immune? A: Ignoring all those damn entries in the logs.
This doesn't apply to most Caucasian Americans, but a good percentage of the world is lactose intolerant. You think the grain lobby got a good deal with the food pyramid? The feds got seriously lobbied by the dairy folks. What other food lobby manages to enlist every elementary school in the county in pushing their product? We need better science in researching dairy food, that's for damn sure.
Lactose intolerance is actually a survival trait in mammals; gets you independant of Mommy and her teats more quickly, which means she can be lunch for the local predators without it affecting you unduly.
But look at it logically; "Milk is designed to promote growth and weight gain in a rapid amount of time, so that babies have a better rate of survival." Lets rephrase that: "Milk is Nature's bulk-up program." So lay off the milk.
As an aside, what do pediatricians tell Mommy to do if Baby is 'underweight' for their age? Drink whole milk!
Aside: forking to uptime probably a bad idea...I suspect GTop.pm (or whatever your system can) might be a less resource hungry resource checker....
Aye, there's all sorts of ways to do it, it all depends on your environment, language, blah blah blah. Point being, it's an easy and off-the-cuff way to determine if you SHOULD run whatever.:-)
Aye, there's all sorts of ways to do it. My example was based on the idea of an 'application server' such as ASP, Tango, ColdFusion, whatever. There'd be differences with perl/CGI apps, but again, at that point, run an 'uptime' system command, and check the appropriate load number. If it's less than a happy threshold, go nuts.
Hell, bugger updating a file. Make a subdir in your temp directory, and drop in a zero-length file, instead of incrementing a variable. Check the file dates, instead of going through an array of timestamps. And so on.
Yes, it would be nice to be warned, but you build your bridge to hold tanks, even if it's only supposed to carry bicycle traffic.:-)
However, I'm a busy person (arn't we all) and half the things I put up on the web (which are intended for a small audience, e.g. a demo of something that we're currntly working on) would never get up there if I had to panic about the whole of slashdot running it.
Then, and pardon my flippancy here, they shouldn't be public.:-)
How you set up a webserver depends very much on the expected audience.
Of course.
You can only produce so much dynamic content per second, so how much dynamic content you create (assuming you're creating as much as possible to enrich the visiting user's experience) depends on how much traffic you're expecting.
Thank you for answering your own question. Let me postulate.
Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that your server can quite happily do five of these things at once. It's breaking a sweat, but it's a good, happy, 'in the zone' sort of sweat. Let us also assume that the demo will run for two minutes.
Also note that this is the 'difficult' way; the 'cheap hack' way would be to check system load at the beginning of the demo, and display a static 'try again later!' page if system load is too high to run the thingy without repercussions.
At the beginning of your app, you check a variable, you run through an array you populate later, checking to see if any timestamp is more than five minutes ago. If so, you clean that entry of the array out, and shift everything up; it's somebody who timed out, or quit halfway through, or something. You also decrement, for each array element you empty out, your 'current number of people watching' variable.
If, after going through the array, your number-of-people-watching variable is less than 4, you increment it, put a timestamp into the above-mentioned array, and proceed to run the demo. At the end of the demo, you remove the timestamp (this can be made easier if you have a two-column array, and also throw in a little unique identifier, which the demo stores in a 'local' variable while it's running), decrement the number-of-people-watching variable, and off you go.
This way, and assuming your webserver itself is set up to handle things properly, the worst thing a slashdoting could ever do to you is chew up your bandwidth. But your application itself will never ever exceed it's own safe running limits.
The real issue here is that the rental company in question is arbitrarily charnging peoples' credit cards with charges they did not agree to pay, nor were they warned about these so-called fees. Budget rental car is committing fraud/theft, so they should be very heavily fined.
If that's the case, all the people need do is dispute the charges.
As far as your assertion that they were breaking their contract thats something you've assumed. If they want to act on that, it's something that should be proven in a court of law. How do you know someone didnt remove the GPS device, throw it in the back of a friends pickup truck, and it was their friend that did the driving in Texas or where-have-you, with the device re-installed before returning the car?
Oooooo-kay. You could have come up with a slightly more plausable excuse. But in this case, it's probably the same logic as parking lots; 'you pay lots of money to park here, but we accept no responsibility for damage, theft, and so on.' You had 'care and control' of the vehicle, and should have noticed if somebody broke into it and took something out, and so informed Budget
This of course is an option, but only if they are given warning.
They can't configure their webserver properly from the get-go? That's like saying 'Sure, they could wear seatbelts, but only if they're warned that they're about to slam into a concrete wall.'
What's more important? Your right to enter into a contract with me, or my right to ignore that contract?
I'd be more sympathetic if these people wern't breaking their contract, them complaining after they got caught. But, hey, obviously it wasn't completely irrational for the rental company to check up on them, was it?
No, the 'division six' thing is a running joke. They'll pick a gov't agency appropriate to their current 'cover' story, and claim to be from 'Division Six' of that agency.
Sure, why not? It's neither encryption nor stego, but it's a great way to leave general instructions.
"In the scene where the guy on stilts kicks some guards in the crotch, count how many guards get kicked. ONE guard means attack on Monday. TWO means attack on Tuesday. THREE means attack on Thursday. FOUR means attack on Friday. FIVE or MORE means attack at your own discretion."
Once you've got an innocuous set of actions and indicators listed, you can throw up a 'student project' with something specific in the title, and live secure in the knowledge that your agents can safely view it, and act upon it.
This is similar to the telltales used by intelligence officers everywhere to send and recieve messages to and from their agents. "If I'm carrying the newspaper folded up in a certain way, the meet is on. If I drop it, it means the meet is off. If I'm carrying it folded a different way, it means get to your bolt hole and leave the country."
One of the most eye-opening experiences of my life was when I was working late one night, at a Gov't office, in a major Canadian city. I went to the washroom, and the paper-towel dispenser happened to be open. Printed on the inside of the dispenser was instructions on how to change the roll. In English, and what looked like Spanish or Portugese. Either way, it was whatever language all of the janitorial staff were speaking.
Lets say you have AppX, which is used to decode, say, Albanian diplomatic encryption schemes. It's traffic is very very distinctive, over the network. Encrypted to hell and back, but very very distinctive.
So, Albania wants to find out if it's ciphers are cracked. So it puts out a red herring, then listens to the network traffic radiating from the NSA building. Sure, it's encrypted, but who cares? They can tell.
This sounds stupid, and contrived, but remember, during the Cold War, the Russians would watch the pizza restaurants local to places of interest. If a bunch of pizzas are delivered to a certain door of the Pentagon at 10 at night, you know something's up.
Similarly, American diplomats in Russia were, and probably still are, told to do wierd things. Why? To mask the signals and dead drops and stuff being done by actual American intelligence officers.
If they're non-networked, then you've answered your own question. You manually schlump around to each individiual machine, and you make the changes. Unless you're looking for somebody to design a Lego robot to do that....?
Assuming that you've an install image that you use to create new machines, you can also throw the changes in there.
But as soon as you say 'non networked' then you quite obviously need to sneakernet it.
This brings to mind, as so many/. posts do, a Dilbert strip. The PHB asks Dilbert to get the new secretary to cut down on the personal phone calls, esp. long distance ones. "...Just be a little more discreet. For example, you could try NOT wearing the traditional costume of the country you're calling...."
Tell that to a pregnant woman, a man in a wheelchair, or an eldery person with a weak heart.
I would, aye. If they are at risk of dying with thirty seconds warning, then they'd best make sure they're within thirty seconds of communication.
Cellphones are not a guarenteed communication method, unlike landlines, which do have uptime guarentees. So don't treat cellphones as such. They're a convenience, but there are times and places they should be off, period. A place where silence is expected, and an admission fee is charged, is such a place. If you can't trust your babysitter to be alone with your kids for two hours, you shouldn't go to the movies. Yes, it sucks, but it's part and parcel of having children. And yes, I have young children. I also have a good home theater setup, and a depressing collection of Disney movies.:-)
If your gf was raped in an underground parking lot, wouldn't you wish they did have phone boosters
No, because she's not exactly going to be able to make a call in the middle of being assaulted.
They don't need to justify it. It's private property, and you do not have the right to send and recieve radio transmissions at will.
Or do you also think you should be allowed to keep your phone on in hospitals, on airplanes, and other places?
Cell phones are pretty convenient, and useful, but they're not an inalienable right. And if you have a medical condition that means you cannot be out of contact, then it's your responsibility to not be out of contact, not random public buildings to make sure you're in contact. Or do you also think that underground parking lots, say, should install cell phone boosters?
Perhaps. It's all in the soundcard. Or, more accurately, the drivers. I actually keep a copy of Privateer, amoung other games, on my laptop, which, admittedly, runs win98, not XP. But I boots it into dos, and the yamaha sound chip in it has KICK ASS pure dos drivers for soundblaster 16(! not pro!) emulation.
That having been said, I also built a P120 with Awe32 for the games that use damn timing loops.
People bitch about microsoft having an 'exploit of the week' and forget that that's what the UNIX world was like, not all that long ago.
People bitch about Microsoft trying to force their way into the console business using unsavoury business tactics, and forget that Nintendo pioneered that particular tactic, and Sony refined it.
People bitch about Intel putting a unique ID into their procs, and forget that most of the other mainstream processors have one already.
People bitch about Microsoft toying with the idea of having security support in hardware, and forget that x86 is one of the few hardware platforms that doesn't already have security provisions.
Slashdot Mirror
The same thing happened to me once, a little puddlejumper from Dallas or Houstan to Austin, I think it was.
Anywho, the pilot revs up the engine, then throttles it back done. Fine, brakes and throttle work. Throttles back up, trips the brakes, and off we go screaming down the runway.
Then the plane slows down, and stops.
Pilot comes on the intercom and says 'Um, folks, you may have noticed, we didn't take off. A warning light has come on in the cockpit, and we don't know why. Until we do, we're going to stay right here.
Now, that's not the bad part. The heat and humidity, and a plane full of sweaty smelly passengers isn't the bad part, either.
No, the bad part was the pair of off duty pilots in the seats next to me who started, in loving detail, discussing every thing that could possibly be wrong.
Just as a further comment to the above poster:
Q: What was the last major IIS exploit?A: Code Red.
Q: When was that, again?
A: Damn, around a year ago?
Q: Was it completely prevented by the most basic of post-install locking down?
A: Yes.
Q: How long did all of these servers go unpatched before Code Red hit the wild?
A: A month. The patch was available for a month before Code Red EVER hit the scene.
Q: What was the worst part of it for those of us who were immune?
A: Ignoring all those damn entries in the logs.
Lactose intolerance is actually a survival trait in mammals; gets you independant of Mommy and her teats more quickly, which means she can be lunch for the local predators without it affecting you unduly.
But look at it logically; "Milk is designed to promote growth and weight gain in a rapid amount of time, so that babies have a better rate of survival." Lets rephrase that: "Milk is Nature's bulk-up program." So lay off the milk.
As an aside, what do pediatricians tell Mommy to do if Baby is 'underweight' for their age? Drink whole milk!
Aye, there's all sorts of ways to do it, it all depends on your environment, language, blah blah blah. Point being, it's an easy and off-the-cuff way to determine if you SHOULD run whatever. :-)
Aye, there's all sorts of ways to do it. My example was based on the idea of an 'application server' such as ASP, Tango, ColdFusion, whatever. There'd be differences with perl/CGI apps, but again, at that point, run an 'uptime' system command, and check the appropriate load number. If it's less than a happy threshold, go nuts.
Hell, bugger updating a file. Make a subdir in your temp directory, and drop in a zero-length file, instead of incrementing a variable. Check the file dates, instead of going through an array of timestamps. And so on.
Yes, it would be nice to be warned, but you build your bridge to hold tanks, even if it's only supposed to carry bicycle traffic. :-)
Then, and pardon my flippancy here, they shouldn't be public. :-)
Of course.
Thank you for answering your own question. Let me postulate.
Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that your server can quite happily do five of these things at once. It's breaking a sweat, but it's a good, happy, 'in the zone' sort of sweat. Let us also assume that the demo will run for two minutes.
Also note that this is the 'difficult' way; the 'cheap hack' way would be to check system load at the beginning of the demo, and display a static 'try again later!' page if system load is too high to run the thingy without repercussions.
At the beginning of your app, you check a variable, you run through an array you populate later, checking to see if any timestamp is more than five minutes ago. If so, you clean that entry of the array out, and shift everything up; it's somebody who timed out, or quit halfway through, or something. You also decrement, for each array element you empty out, your 'current number of people watching' variable.
If, after going through the array, your number-of-people-watching variable is less than 4, you increment it, put a timestamp into the above-mentioned array, and proceed to run the demo. At the end of the demo, you remove the timestamp (this can be made easier if you have a two-column array, and also throw in a little unique identifier, which the demo stores in a 'local' variable while it's running), decrement the number-of-people-watching variable, and off you go.
This way, and assuming your webserver itself is set up to handle things properly, the worst thing a slashdoting could ever do to you is chew up your bandwidth. But your application itself will never ever exceed it's own safe running limits.
If that's the case, all the people need do is dispute the charges.
Oooooo-kay. You could have come up with a slightly more plausable excuse. But in this case, it's probably the same logic as parking lots; 'you pay lots of money to park here, but we accept no responsibility for damage, theft, and so on.' You had 'care and control' of the vehicle, and should have noticed if somebody broke into it and took something out, and so informed Budget
They can't configure their webserver properly from the get-go? That's like saying 'Sure, they could wear seatbelts, but only if they're warned that they're about to slam into a concrete wall.'
What's more important? Your right to enter into a contract with me, or my right to ignore that contract?
I'd be more sympathetic if these people wern't breaking their contract, them complaining after they got caught. But, hey, obviously it wasn't completely irrational for the rental company to check up on them, was it?
No, the 'division six' thing is a running joke. They'll pick a gov't agency appropriate to their current 'cover' story, and claim to be from 'Division Six' of that agency.
Sure, why not? It's neither encryption nor stego, but it's a great way to leave general instructions.
"In the scene where the guy on stilts kicks some guards in the crotch, count how many guards get kicked. ONE guard means attack on Monday. TWO means attack on Tuesday. THREE means attack on Thursday. FOUR means attack on Friday. FIVE or MORE means attack at your own discretion."
Once you've got an innocuous set of actions and indicators listed, you can throw up a 'student project' with something specific in the title, and live secure in the knowledge that your agents can safely view it, and act upon it.
This is similar to the telltales used by intelligence officers everywhere to send and recieve messages to and from their agents. "If I'm carrying the newspaper folded up in a certain way, the meet is on. If I drop it, it means the meet is off. If I'm carrying it folded a different way, it means get to your bolt hole and leave the country."
It wouldn't surprise me.
One of the most eye-opening experiences of my life was when I was working late one night, at a Gov't office, in a major Canadian city. I went to the washroom, and the paper-towel dispenser happened to be open. Printed on the inside of the dispenser was instructions on how to change the roll. In English, and what looked like Spanish or Portugese. Either way, it was whatever language all of the janitorial staff were speaking.
In this case, I'm talking traffic usage patterns.
Lets say you have AppX, which is used to decode, say, Albanian diplomatic encryption schemes. It's traffic is very very distinctive, over the network. Encrypted to hell and back, but very very distinctive.
So, Albania wants to find out if it's ciphers are cracked. So it puts out a red herring, then listens to the network traffic radiating from the NSA building. Sure, it's encrypted, but who cares? They can tell.
This sounds stupid, and contrived, but remember, during the Cold War, the Russians would watch the pizza restaurants local to places of interest. If a bunch of pizzas are delivered to a certain door of the Pentagon at 10 at night, you know something's up.
Similarly, American diplomats in Russia were, and probably still are, told to do wierd things. Why? To mask the signals and dead drops and stuff being done by actual American intelligence officers.
Incorrect. This allows for traffic analysis and other wonderful thingies.
Or, at least, insufficient. It should be enrypted at the app level, then encrypted AGAIN at the transport level.If they're non-networked, then you've answered your own question. You manually schlump around to each individiual machine, and you make the changes. Unless you're looking for somebody to design a Lego robot to do that....?
Assuming that you've an install image that you use to create new machines, you can also throw the changes in there.
But as soon as you say 'non networked' then you quite obviously need to sneakernet it.
This brings to mind, as so many /. posts do, a Dilbert strip. The PHB asks Dilbert to get the new secretary to cut down on the personal phone calls, esp. long distance ones. "...Just be a little more discreet. For example, you could try NOT wearing the traditional costume of the country you're calling...."
I'd respond, but not in a public forum. Suffice it to say that I'm not being flippant or heartless.
I would, aye. If they are at risk of dying with thirty seconds warning, then they'd best make sure they're within thirty seconds of communication.
Cellphones are not a guarenteed communication method, unlike landlines, which do have uptime guarentees. So don't treat cellphones as such. They're a convenience, but there are times and places they should be off, period. A place where silence is expected, and an admission fee is charged, is such a place. If you can't trust your babysitter to be alone with your kids for two hours, you shouldn't go to the movies. Yes, it sucks, but it's part and parcel of having children. And yes, I have young children. I also have a good home theater setup, and a depressing collection of Disney movies. :-)
No, because she's not exactly going to be able to make a call in the middle of being assaulted.
They don't need to justify it. It's private property, and you do not have the right to send and recieve radio transmissions at will.
Or do you also think you should be allowed to keep your phone on in hospitals, on airplanes, and other places?
Cell phones are pretty convenient, and useful, but they're not an inalienable right. And if you have a medical condition that means you cannot be out of contact, then it's your responsibility to not be out of contact, not random public buildings to make sure you're in contact. Or do you also think that underground parking lots, say, should install cell phone boosters?
Yup, why, in the days before mobiles, people would DIE!
Oh, wait, no they wouldn't, somebody would locomote the fifty feet to the nearest landline.
Perhaps. It's all in the soundcard. Or, more accurately, the drivers. I actually keep a copy of Privateer, amoung other games, on my laptop, which, admittedly, runs win98, not XP. But I boots it into dos, and the yamaha sound chip in it has KICK ASS pure dos drivers for soundblaster 16(! not pro!) emulation.
That having been said, I also built a P120 with Awe32 for the games that use damn timing loops.
VERY well done. Kudos to you, good sir.
http://www.lucasarts.com and look in the store, pc/windows, CLASSICS.
Incorrect. Go to the Lucasarts Store, and pretty much all of their old games are happily available for sale.
People bitch about microsoft having an 'exploit of the week' and forget that that's what the UNIX world was like, not all that long ago.
People bitch about Microsoft trying to force their way into the console business using unsavoury business tactics, and forget that Nintendo pioneered that particular tactic, and Sony refined it.
People bitch about Intel putting a unique ID into their procs, and forget that most of the other mainstream processors have one already.
People bitch about Microsoft toying with the idea of having security support in hardware, and forget that x86 is one of the few hardware platforms that doesn't already have security provisions.