At my work we didn't even have the scanning electron microscope connected to it because of this.
Because.... ???
Oh! That's right! Because most SEMs are run by Windows XP or older...
- It's Windows - It's OLD Windows - It's maintained by some retired IT guy - It's got an inch of dust inside - There's a serial port with a badly-hand-soldered connection involved somewhere, I'm sure - The retired IT guy still blames everything on the "one stop bit or two" conundrum.
What I mean by "flip the kill switch" - of course - is not to take the repos and documentation offline. But simply to state - officially and unequivocally - that it is a Dead Parrot.
jQuery Mobile is definitely in this state. jQuery UI is probably close to it. I am making the assumption that there are other dead birds littering the floor of the cage.
But... can somebody over there find the time to flip the kill switch on jQuery Mobile, and other abandoned projects? So that developers don't keep starting projects with libraries that haven't been updated in years?
So, just make it impossible for even the vendor to read the (unencrypted) data. The most the vendor could do is hand over encrypted data, leaving authorities to try to decrypt it without the key. Or try to force the owner to give up the key.
IBM® hosts your databases in a highly available and secure environment:
The underlying technologies prevent IBM or a third party from being able to access your data. The IBM Secure Service Container technology protects the system via a tamper-proof environment. Access to the system is restricted and is only enabled through well-defined RESTful APIs.
Data is encrypted at rest and in flight. The system hardware, the system configuration, and the database setup ensure high availability.
BTW, this doesn't run on Intel hardware. It runs on IBM Z hardware, on dedicated cores per instance, which should minimize the potential for Spectre-type attacks.
IBM is rolling this out aggressively. How aggressively?
For now, they are handing out well-provisioned Postgres (8G memory, 80G data) and MongoDB (8G memory, 40G data) experimental instances for free. Only reason I am not taking them up on this is that I know we won't be able to afford the price, once it is not free. I'll stick with out 1G memory Databases for PostgreSql instance for our little educational app.
The place I worked did a wholesale forklift to an AWS VPC, and are slowly moving to AWS applications. They are saving tons of money by doing this.
Oversimplification.
The place I worked 2008-ish (the console-gaming part of a large international corporation) did this. They had a problem that when a new console game came out, it might be a huge hit or a flop. They either wound-up scouring sales channels in desperation trying to get more servers STAT, or else have depreciating assets collecting dust.
So, they moved game backends to AWS. For a while.
Subsequently - I've heard - they've built their own internal cloud.
And thus saving another ton of money.
I'd imagine they still use AWS for peaking, unexpected successes, etc.
This is a smart way for larger organizations to use cloud services. (Not that this is the very smartest of organizations.... there WAS that thing with the Koreans...)
The open source community is founded by a group of volunteers. They choose, of their own free will, to create stuff without pay and give it away to the rest of the world.
That's a naive statement.
FOUNDED... yes... in some cases.
But on an ongoing basis, most big/useful open source projects are funded primarily by corporate sponsors, who contribute money, talent, or both. Many companies contribute in-kind services, by assigning personnel either part or full-time to open-source projects.
Another similar funding model is having a corporate parent that does consulting, hand-holding, hosting, etc. while opening the source for all. Yet another is the spin-off project that a parent organization needs for their own purposes, but is unrelated to their primary business. By open-sourcing, they get extra eyes on the project to find bugs, round-out capabilities, discover new use cases, etc.
FEW important open-source projects are purely or even primarily volunteer indie projects!
Unfortunately, this means that open source projects often have to kowtow to their corporate sponsors, and can suffer a sudden loss of talent and viability when they are "cut off" by a corporate sponsor.
A good example of this is jQuery Mobile, which the jQuery Foundation still refuses to declare dead. Adobe pulled the plug years ago, it is Dead, Jim! A distant memory in the rearview mirror, but a ghost repo and ghost website remains, sitting there snagging unwitting third-world developers who think that it is still A Thing.
It is the easy choice for management, because "everybody uses AWS".
I've had to constantly defend my decision to use IBM Cloud as backend for an educational app. Because "everybody else" uses AWS. And this is in a primarily academic setting and background (spinoff from a project originally developed at a major U.S. university). We faced some issues with learning curve and the fact that you can't easily find consultants with IBM Cloud experience, and the "everybody" argument came up. It was eventually resolved, we got over the learning curve, and IBM has great support if you are willing to pony-up a modest $200/month for support.
It boggles my mind that so many small/medium/large businesses in retail, wholesale, transportation, distribution, etc. are trusting their data and IT to and funding a company that is out to put them out of business. AWS is the ONLY real money-maker at Amazon. Their online retail operation is FINALLY making a 2% profit!
IBM Cloud and Microsoft Azure are the RATIONAL choices right now if you want to use "big cloud" for critical infrastructure. We did not go with Azure because we do not have a Windows-based infrastructure, not into ASP, etc. etc. Though I realize that Azure has more Linux servers than Windows and offers the same open-source Linux-based solutions as the other cloud services. I think Azure would be a FINE choice for any company that is already bought-in to the Microsoft infrastructure, as they offer many unique services that would allow companies with in-house Windows-based server to move some or all to the cloud.
Neither IBM nor Microsoft is interested in putting your retail business out of business.
People have the freedom to shop for food they can afford and big gov says no.
This isn't about "big government", thought. It's about LOCAL government having some say about the merchants in their community. It is about "small gov".
Not that far removed from Long Island City's recent successful rejection of Amazon.
You go, L.I. City! They did it without even having to have useless community "listening sessions" where nobody listens, and they just allow residents to vent, and then the developer gets their way.
We've had some battles in some smaller San Diego Communities (notably Ocean Beach) trying to prevent e.g. Target and other large chains from coming in and changing the small-town local merchant ecosystem. In the case of OB, though, the people lost. Developers control San Diego real estate and land use, not the city. The city just kow-tows to them.
I know that L.I. City/Amazon and Ocean Beach/big chain stores aren't quite the same issue but it is the same principal. Local governments have the right on behalf of the people to control land use and types of commerce.
I do hope they are careful to NOT exclude real do-gooders in adjoining sectors, such as Grocery Outlet. I love GO! They do something similar to the original Trader Joe's concept - they buy overstock, changed packaging, discontinued, (and sometimes) expiring but not expired goods directly from the manufacturer. (NOT from other stores, like the Dollars).
My nearly GO in downtown San Diego is shopped by downtown residents of all income groups, millennials shopping for a deal, and the homeless. It is one of the few stores that doesn't shoo them away (but they aren't allowed to loiter, either). It's nearly all high-quality merchandise. They are famous for their wine deals. The frozen section has amazing bargains - same upscale brands as Whole Foods at typically 1/3 to 1/2 the price. (Sadly, I see the lower-income patrons often making poor choices - Banquet over Amy's when Amy's might actually CHEAPER at their prices, and certainly healthier... They have been entrained.)
Sounds like they are just making APIs available offsite, so that you can ship requests/responses from your apps hosted at another cloud provider to/from Watson services.
I use IBM Cloud for some backend services for mobile apps, but we don't currently have any need for Watson. Surprised, though, this wasn't already possible, as it is for most other IBM Cloud services. (e.g. various database servers, COS (=S3), etc.
FWIW, super happy with IBM's latest iteration of PostgreSql as a service - Databases for PostgreSql (stupid name, I know - they are coming out with new offerings "Databases for this", "Databases for that", plug in your favorite database server name...) vs their previous offering Compose for PostgreSql. They fixed the pricing model - was based solely on storage with memory scaled with storage - dumb! Now it auto-scales for storage (duh) and you choose memory size. Much more performant, much lower pricing at least for our use case. (We need more RAM and less storage.) It's now built internally using Kubernetes, but that's all hands-off as it's a service. Just works, I've seen ours fail-over successfully to backup server in cluster once due to a hardware failure - with some latency for a while - and back after replacement of the hardware. Just works.
My snarky and I suppose mildly-offensive comment about sloppy/. authors gets modded up.
Yet a reasonable response pointing out the confusion amongst the public about the difference between a VPN and a VPN SERVICE gets modded down to zero, while an obscenity-laced response re-obfuscating the issue and mis-quoting gets modded up.
Russian/Chinese/N. Korean bots have/. mod points.
---- Back to the subject, yes, Apple has been hiring in San Diego, trying to snap-up modem chip designers. They are tired of dealing with Qualcomm demands and so they have come to the fountainhead to hire-up their designers. I wouldn't assume anything deeper than that.
Interesting how a reasonable post with a reasonable opinion, not flame bait, got modded to 0. While an obscenity-laced response that shows lack of comprehension gets modded up.
Presume it was done by bots from hostile countries. I now have to presume the existence of a hostile bot net with/. mod points.
Any local VPN will get a national security letter, and hence be utterly useless
Useless for what? Evading the law?
MOST users are not evading the law. For MOST users, this is not a concern. I would be more concerned about somebody in a foreign country scraping credit cards, personal details with which to commit financial fraud. Unfriendly countries building up databases of personal details of the general public that can be banked and used in the future to create disruption.
I question the motivations of those who argue against VPNs
I don't see anybody here arguing against VPNs. I argued against VPN SERVICES. Even though I put SERVICES in caps, some people still didn't get it.
YOU DON'T NEED TO USE A VPN "SERVICE" TO USE A VPN! The VPN Service companies have thoroughly muddled the minds of the public.
For most use cases, there is no need to involve a third-party SERVICE. Certainly, for work-related stuff - which is what the article was about - the workplace should install a VPN server. The article didn't say WHY government workers were using VPN services. (Indeed, it didn't even say that they ARE...) It is an investigation.
OK, I get it about the sadsacks who are stuck with cable companies that spy on them for the sake of advertising dollars. If that's you're situation - and you are paranoid - fine. Go ahead and tunnel through a proven liar to an unproven liar. But let me ask them - are you on Facebook? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Most of the paranoids that are worried about their cable company spying on them - FOR THE PURPOSE OF PROFIT, SO REALLY WHO GIVES A SHIT - have almost certainly already given their privacy away to others.
I have to guess that it's been discovered that government workers are inadvertently using the VPN services that they use to hide their pr0n browsing - or guard against being inundated with advertising for products they've already bought - to access work/government websites.
I tend to agree with the parent, though we do use VPN services for testing how our site looks from other countries/regions. For access to our corporate systems, we have our own on-site vpn server
Testing how your site looks from other countries/regions is a good use case of a VPN service. But MOST users do not need this.
On-site VPN server for access to corporate systems is the right way to go for remote access.
Trusting a third party who un-encrypts and re-encrypts for anything that you need/want to be secure is not.
I'm guessing my original post got modded down to 0 by Russian/Chinese/North Korean operatives.
VPN's being inexpensive has no bearing on the motivations of the end users
1. Learn to read and parse English. 2. Wash your mouth out with soap.
I never said anything about the motivations of the ends users. "their" clearly refers to the VPN services. I question to motivations of the services that give services away for free. How are they making money?
There seems to be widespread confusion about VPNs, to the point where the vast majority of the public thinks that VPNs have to be a hosted service
The services have the public confused and hoodwinked. Since most are either free or insanely cheap, it does make one question their motivations.
There are no good reasons for anybody to be using a VPN SERVICE to access their home/office/work resources. They should be using a VPN server installed in their home/office/work. For home, it's a easy as enabling the VPN feature present in most home routers. (Better and probably more trustworthy to use third-party router firmware...)
For safe mobile connections, there may be some use for a service. For example, your home Internet connection has asymmetrical bandwidth (e.g. cable) with poor uplink bandwidth.
I do have a VPN service subscription (OpenVPN). So far, I've used it for one thing and one thing only.... sneaking across the Brexit Border to view the Monty Python video library via iPlayer. I think the services are safe for that purpose.;)
... is what could result, because cnn.com is not compliant.
Testing completed: cnn.com: Minor problems detected!
This domain is going to work after the 2019 DNS flag day BUT it does not support the latest DNS standards. As a consequence this domain cannot support the latest security features and might be an easier target for network attackers than necessary, and might face other issues later on. We recommend your domain administrator to fix issues listed in the following technical report https://ednscomp.isc.org/ednsc...
- implementing 19th Century technology - albeit late and... - making a big hoopla and getting consumers excited about it
Geezus, it's a frickin' coil of wire! How hard can this be?
I think the concerns about efficiency are overblown, though. Transformers (and this is basically a transformer, formed between the "charger" and a coil in the charged device) can be as high as 98%.
Slashdot Mirror
No, thanks.
I don't care about the children. OR your $3.
And, I WAS having a great day! Until you got in my way.
Now, can you please step aside so I can get into Whole Foods before they raise the avocado prices?
Because.... ???
Oh! That's right! Because most SEMs are run by Windows XP or older...
- It's Windows
- It's OLD Windows
- It's maintained by some retired IT guy
- It's got an inch of dust inside
- There's a serial port with a badly-hand-soldered connection involved somewhere, I'm sure
- The retired IT guy still blames everything on the "one stop bit or two" conundrum.
Great.
Google has brought meaning to the term "living in a bubble".
What I mean by "flip the kill switch" - of course - is not to take the repos and documentation offline. But simply to state - officially and unequivocally - that it is a Dead Parrot.
jQuery Mobile is definitely in this state. jQuery UI is probably close to it. I am making the assumption that there are other dead birds littering the floor of the cage.
Good. Or not. I guess. Yawn.
But... can somebody over there find the time to flip the kill switch on jQuery Mobile, and other abandoned projects? So that developers don't keep starting projects with libraries that haven't been updated in years?
So, just make it impossible for even the vendor to read the (unencrypted) data. The most the vendor could do is hand over encrypted data, leaving authorities to try to decrypt it without the key. Or try to force the owner to give up the key.
One such new offering is IBM Hyper Protect DBAAS:
Hyper Protect DBaaS: the evolution of cloud databases
Getting started with IBM Cloud Hyper Protect DBaaS
BTW, this doesn't run on Intel hardware. It runs on IBM Z hardware, on dedicated cores per instance, which should minimize the potential for Spectre-type attacks.
IBM is rolling this out aggressively. How aggressively?
For now, they are handing out well-provisioned Postgres (8G memory, 80G data) and MongoDB (8G memory, 40G data) experimental instances for free.
Only reason I am not taking them up on this is that I know we won't be able to afford the price, once it is not free. I'll stick with out 1G memory Databases for PostgreSql instance for our little educational app.
Hyper Protect DBaaS (pricing)
Not an IBM shill. Just happy to not be drinking the AWS kool aid.
Oversimplification.
The place I worked 2008-ish (the console-gaming part of a large international corporation) did this. They had a problem that when a new console game came out, it might be a huge hit or a flop. They either wound-up scouring sales channels in desperation trying to get more servers STAT, or else have depreciating assets collecting dust.
So, they moved game backends to AWS. For a while.
Subsequently - I've heard - they've built their own internal cloud.
And thus saving another ton of money.
I'd imagine they still use AWS for peaking, unexpected successes, etc.
This is a smart way for larger organizations to use cloud services. (Not that this is the very smartest of organizations.... there WAS that thing with the Koreans...)
That's a naive statement.
FOUNDED... yes... in some cases.
But on an ongoing basis, most big/useful open source projects are funded primarily by corporate sponsors, who contribute money, talent, or both. Many companies contribute in-kind services, by assigning personnel either part or full-time to open-source projects.
Another similar funding model is having a corporate parent that does consulting, hand-holding, hosting, etc. while opening the source for all. Yet another is the spin-off project that a parent organization needs for their own purposes, but is unrelated to their primary business. By open-sourcing, they get extra eyes on the project to find bugs, round-out capabilities, discover new use cases, etc.
FEW important open-source projects are purely or even primarily volunteer indie projects!
Unfortunately, this means that open source projects often have to kowtow to their corporate sponsors, and can suffer a sudden loss of talent and viability when they are "cut off" by a corporate sponsor.
A good example of this is jQuery Mobile, which the jQuery Foundation still refuses to declare dead. Adobe pulled the plug years ago, it is Dead, Jim! A distant memory in the rearview mirror, but a ghost repo and ghost website remains, sitting there snagging unwitting third-world developers who think that it is still A Thing.
Fixed it for you:
"MariaDB CEO Accuses Oracle and AWS of Strip-Mining Open Source"
Can we at least get the title right? The article said NOTHING about "large cloud vendors". Only Oracle and AWS specifically.
It is the easy choice for management, because "everybody uses AWS".
I've had to constantly defend my decision to use IBM Cloud as backend for an educational app. Because "everybody else" uses AWS. And this is in a primarily academic setting and background (spinoff from a project originally developed at a major U.S. university). We faced some issues with learning curve and the fact that you can't easily find consultants with IBM Cloud experience, and the "everybody" argument came up. It was eventually resolved, we got over the learning curve, and IBM has great support if you are willing to pony-up a modest $200/month for support.
It boggles my mind that so many small/medium/large businesses in retail, wholesale, transportation, distribution, etc. are trusting their data and IT to and funding a company that is out to put them out of business. AWS is the ONLY real money-maker at Amazon. Their online retail operation is FINALLY making a 2% profit!
IBM Cloud and Microsoft Azure are the RATIONAL choices right now if you want to use "big cloud" for critical infrastructure. We did not go with Azure because we do not have a Windows-based infrastructure, not into ASP, etc. etc. Though I realize that Azure has more Linux servers than Windows and offers the same open-source Linux-based solutions as the other cloud services. I think Azure would be a FINE choice for any company that is already bought-in to the Microsoft infrastructure, as they offer many unique services that would allow companies with in-house Windows-based server to move some or all to the cloud.
Neither IBM nor Microsoft is interested in putting your retail business out of business.
This isn't about "big government", thought. It's about LOCAL government having some say about the merchants in their community. It is about "small gov".
Not that far removed from Long Island City's recent successful rejection of Amazon.
You go, L.I. City! They did it without even having to have useless community "listening sessions" where nobody listens, and they just allow residents to vent, and then the developer gets their way.
We've had some battles in some smaller San Diego Communities (notably Ocean Beach) trying to prevent e.g. Target and other large chains from coming in and changing the small-town local merchant ecosystem. In the case of OB, though, the people lost. Developers control San Diego real estate and land use, not the city. The city just kow-tows to them.
I know that L.I. City/Amazon and Ocean Beach/big chain stores aren't quite the same issue but it is the same principal. Local governments have the right on behalf of the people to control land use and types of commerce.
I do hope they are careful to NOT exclude real do-gooders in adjoining sectors, such as Grocery Outlet. I love GO! They do something similar to the original Trader Joe's concept - they buy overstock, changed packaging, discontinued, (and sometimes) expiring but not expired goods directly from the manufacturer. (NOT from other stores, like the Dollars).
My nearly GO in downtown San Diego is shopped by downtown residents of all income groups, millennials shopping for a deal, and the homeless. It is one of the few stores that doesn't shoo them away (but they aren't allowed to loiter, either). It's nearly all high-quality merchandise. They are famous for their wine deals. The frozen section has amazing bargains - same upscale brands as Whole Foods at typically 1/3 to 1/2 the price. (Sadly, I see the lower-income patrons often making poor choices - Banquet over Amy's when Amy's might actually CHEAPER at their prices, and certainly healthier... They have been entrained.)
Sounds like they are just making APIs available offsite, so that you can ship requests/responses from your apps hosted at another cloud provider to/from Watson services.
I use IBM Cloud for some backend services for mobile apps, but we don't currently have any need for Watson. Surprised, though, this wasn't already possible, as it is for most other IBM Cloud services. (e.g. various database servers, COS (=S3), etc.
FWIW, super happy with IBM's latest iteration of PostgreSql as a service - Databases for PostgreSql (stupid name, I know - they are coming out with new offerings "Databases for this", "Databases for that", plug in your favorite database server name...) vs their previous offering Compose for PostgreSql. They fixed the pricing model - was based solely on storage with memory scaled with storage - dumb! Now it auto-scales for storage (duh) and you choose memory size. Much more performant, much lower pricing at least for our use case. (We need more RAM and less storage.) It's now built internally using Kubernetes, but that's all hands-off as it's a service. Just works, I've seen ours fail-over successfully to backup server in cluster once due to a hardware failure - with some latency for a while - and back after replacement of the hardware. Just works.
So, this was an interesting experiment...
My snarky and I suppose mildly-offensive comment about sloppy /. authors gets modded up.
Yet a reasonable response pointing out the confusion amongst the public about the difference between a VPN and a VPN SERVICE gets modded down to zero, while an obscenity-laced response re-obfuscating the issue and mis-quoting gets modded up.
Russian/Chinese/N. Korean bots have /. mod points.
----
Back to the subject, yes, Apple has been hiring in San Diego, trying to snap-up modem chip designers. They are tired of dealing with Qualcomm demands and so they have come to the fountainhead to hire-up their designers. I wouldn't assume anything deeper than that.
Wish authors would learn to write headlines...
Interesting how a reasonable post with a reasonable opinion, not flame bait, got modded to 0. While an obscenity-laced response that shows lack of comprehension gets modded up.
Presume it was done by bots from hostile countries. I now have to presume the existence of a hostile bot net with /. mod points.
Useless for what? Evading the law?
MOST users are not evading the law. For MOST users, this is not a concern. I would be more concerned about somebody in a foreign country scraping credit cards, personal details with which to commit financial fraud. Unfriendly countries building up databases of personal details of the general public that can be banked and used in the future to create disruption.
I don't see anybody here arguing against VPNs. I argued against VPN SERVICES. Even though I put SERVICES in caps, some people still didn't get it.
YOU DON'T NEED TO USE A VPN "SERVICE" TO USE A VPN! The VPN Service companies have thoroughly muddled the minds of the public.
For most use cases, there is no need to involve a third-party SERVICE. Certainly, for work-related stuff - which is what the article was about - the workplace should install a VPN server. The article didn't say WHY government workers were using VPN services. (Indeed, it didn't even say that they ARE...) It is an investigation.
OK, I get it about the sadsacks who are stuck with cable companies that spy on them for the sake of advertising dollars. If that's you're situation - and you are paranoid - fine. Go ahead and tunnel through a proven liar to an unproven liar. But let me ask them - are you on Facebook? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Most of the paranoids that are worried about their cable company spying on them - FOR THE PURPOSE OF PROFIT, SO REALLY WHO GIVES A SHIT - have almost certainly already given their privacy away to others.
I have to guess that it's been discovered that government workers are inadvertently using the VPN services that they use to hide their pr0n browsing - or guard against being inundated with advertising for products they've already bought - to access work/government websites.
Testing how your site looks from other countries/regions is a good use case of a VPN service. But MOST users do not need this.
On-site VPN server for access to corporate systems is the right way to go for remote access.
Trusting a third party who un-encrypts and re-encrypts for anything that you need/want to be secure is not.
I'm guessing my original post got modded down to 0 by Russian/Chinese/North Korean operatives.
1. Learn to read and parse English.
2. Wash your mouth out with soap.
I never said anything about the motivations of the ends users. "their" clearly refers to the VPN services. I question to motivations of the services that give services away for free. How are they making money?
There seems to be widespread confusion about VPNs, to the point where the vast majority of the public thinks that VPNs have to be a hosted service
The services have the public confused and hoodwinked. Since most are either free or insanely cheap, it does make one question their motivations.
There are no good reasons for anybody to be using a VPN SERVICE to access their home/office/work resources. They should be using a VPN server installed in their home/office/work. For home, it's a easy as enabling the VPN feature present in most home routers. (Better and probably more trustworthy to use third-party router firmware...)
For safe mobile connections, there may be some use for a service. For example, your home Internet connection has asymmetrical bandwidth (e.g. cable) with poor uplink bandwidth.
I do have a VPN service subscription (OpenVPN). So far, I've used it for one thing and one thing only.... sneaking across the Brexit Border to view the Monty Python video library via iPlayer. I think the services are safe for that purpose. ;)
Do you know that for certain?
A lot of this stuff is more smoke and mirrors than you might think. They may well feel that a rough classification is better than nothing.
Female voice and they know the account holder is male? Reject!
British accent, and they know (from voice analysis) the account holder has a Valley Girl accent? Reject, fershure!
A very reasonable approach, really. Don't assume that this stuff is doing sophisticated voice prints.
They probably trained this on their full-time development staff.
They should have included warehouse staff, and then a double measure of cleaning/maintenance staff.
There. Fixed that.
... is what could result, because cnn.com is not compliant.
https://ednscomp.isc.org/ednsc...
Congratulations, Apple, on both:
- implementing 19th Century technology - albeit late and...
- making a big hoopla and getting consumers excited about it
Geezus, it's a frickin' coil of wire! How hard can this be?
I think the concerns about efficiency are overblown, though. Transformers (and this is basically a transformer, formed between the "charger" and a coil in the charged device) can be as high as 98%.
See subject.