In the US, Homeowners can do their own wiring if they get it inspected and follow the code. I don't have a problem with that. What I DO have a problem with, is that I can't work on my parent's house, get it inspected, etc. What's the difference?
I looked into the requirements to become a licensed electrician for my brother who was looking at changing careers... They include some classroom requirements and that you pass a test, but more importantly, you need to be an apprentice with a union shop for many years (as they are the only ones that have a "qualified program".) This does two things: it keeps the number of electricians down as only a few people are accepted for these programs, and guarantees cheap labor for at least 5 years. Are the apprentices getting valuable on the job training? Nope - they are the ones doing all the major grunt work of digging ditches, drilling holes, bending conduit, pulling cable, etc. while the senior guys do all the connection work, etc. It's a racket. You could have a degree in electrical engineering, pass any test with a perfect score, be more competernt in practice than any current master electrician out there but you can't get licensed without going through the apprentice program. I've known a couple good people who started down that path and got totally fed up with ONLY doing the crap work. Damn unions. There was a time and a place for them. No longer.
While you were modded funny, this is the REAL problem. Parents are disconnected with their kids. Too many kids grow up with both parents working full time (or only have one parent since our society seems to promote that situation today) and end up being raised by daycare / teachers / the street. Parents don't want to hear bad things about their kids. Parents don't discipline their kids. Parents let their kids do whatever they want.
We also have tied the hands of public education - we can't discipline problem kids in any way. Bullying, taunting, etc. goes on everywhere and frequently gets out of control. Nothing ever happens until someone gets seriously injured or killed.
While they may be some minute measurable difference using very expensive test equipment in lab conditions, the human ear can't tell the difference no matter how well "trained" it is. In a double-blind test, nobody is going to be able to hear the difference between a $4000 cable and a good quality $15 speaker cable. What's that quote? "A fool and his money..."
Um, yes, a connector rated at 30A is going to handle more current, but you don't run ANY WHERE NEAR that much current through a speaker. You are much more likely to run multiple amps and multiple speakers.
As for loss, it's not going to be measurable without Very expensive test equipment (if there is any at all,) and definately not something anyone could ever perceive.
XLR's can used in both balanced unbalanced situations. They also handle quite high current, are shielded, MUCH less expensive and are designed for audio applications (Romex and twistlock connectors are not.) True, they are not available at home despot, but you can still probably find them locally.
First, as far as email is concerned (one of the largest sources of malware) if you reject certain file types such as exe, vbs, hta, bat, pif, com, cmd, etc., most viruses just bounce off the mailserver outright.
Second, using spamassassin and common RBL's to block dynamic IP space and known compromised machines, you cut down on another large hunk of crap (both malware and spam.)
ClamAV does a great job on modern viruses. Commercial products have large databases of ancient viruses that died out years ago, so counting the size of the database is pointless.
Dansgardian can handle filtering nicely, and yes, you can run clamav with it - however: this isn't going to cut down on spyware much (if that is your goal.)
Keep in mind that this setup can have a pretty sigificant performance impact, although you will only be scanning "download" file types for the most part. Getting off IE / outlook is your best line of defense frankly, since they are the most targeted apps.
Snort does just fine at detecting probes and compromized machines (by their network activity), and with some scripting and proper network hardware, you can isolate a compromized machine almost instantly before it causes much damage.
But again, the best thing is to try it. We don't know your detailed requirements, or the details of your network. Nobody can tell you for sure whether this solution is right for you.
Just curious - why the LMTP step and not integrated into the SMTP server? Do you Accept and bounce, or reject at initial SMTP reception? If clamav is down you can always defer (4xx) and have the sender retry...
I've been running scanning from within exim for well over a year. Never had an issue with the setup handling 5K users...
You mean, other than "apt-get install exim-heavy dansguardian clamav"? (sarge or newer of course...) And configuring them according to the instructions?
It's not hard. Try it. Shouldn't take more than a few hours. Then come back and give us your report later tonight...
There are REALLY cheap generic s-video cables that use very little shielding, and there are Good generic s-video cables where there is no difference between them and monster other than about a 10x difference in price. I think that's what is important. "Monster" brand cables are not measurably better than normal good quality cables, but are definately better than crappy cables.
Pro amps / speakers generally use 1/4" or XLR connectors. Some use Speakon, or banana. Why go with some bizzare setup that's designed for some other use?
That's all fine and good until you realize that monster cables wholesale for much higher. Doesn't mean that there is any more money put into the physical product - just more profit for monster and money for the huge ad budget.
It may cost monster $1.75 for the cable, they sell it to the store for $40, and the store sells it to you for $60. Compare that with the generic "better quality" cable which costs $1.50, sold to the store for $2, and to you at $15.
Best yet, go online and find great quality non-monster cables for good prices and tell the local store to go pound sand.
Um, coax cable IS generally shielded. In fact, the modern standard for Sat / cable is RG6U quadshield. RG6Uqs with the proper adaptors make wonderful inexpensive component video cable. If you mean running "RF signals" over coax, then yes - the bandwidth in NTSC RF is really low (channel 3/4 out on a VCR for example..) Composite is higher, s-video higher still since the chroma/luminance is separated, and component the highest of analog technology. Beyond that and you go digital for the "ultimate" connection.
If you REALLY want to laugh your ass off, check out the price list where you can buy a four foot speaker cable for $4000!
OK, now that I've stopped laughing enough to sit back down and type, I'll just chime in that normal good quality cables are just fine, and you will NOT hear / see any difference. Good shielding, cood connectors, good solder joints are really the most important characteristics.
Monster speaker cable is just silly. Just use any normal 14 gauge fine-stranded speaker wire. I bought a bulk reel of riser-rated (for use in a wall) speaker cable when I wired my house. Home Depot sells it. Works just great.
For (component or composite) video, just use RG6U Quadshield with RCA (phono) connectors, or F to RCA adaptors. RG6UQS is Very low-noise, has the correct impedance, is fairly inexpensive when purchased in bulk etc. Using a dual-RCA to s-video mini-din adaptor, you can use a pair of RG6U to send s-video over fairly long distances (too long and you need a video amp.)
I've also used cat-5 cable for video, and it seems to work fine too - after all it's designed to deliver very high bandwidth data over long distances... Leviton sells wall jacks for this application. I prefer RG6U though as I believe the impedance on cat-5 is wrong.
For audio, just don't get the bottom of the line and it's fine.
Administering a headless XServe for example. Most of the "server level" apps need hand tuning / config. Apache, Bind, the firewall, LDAP, Postfix, Samba, NFS... Need I go on?
I must say, Apache needs the most hand-config of any app on the system. The gui totally blows.
The FA is F-ing all wrong. They got very little right in fact. Go to the IBM website and read the faq. It does not DDOS the sending PC. It does a Challenge / reponse if the mail looks like it was spoofed / forged (using fairly comprehensive tests.) Even collateral C/R spam can be eliminated with SPF records.
Frankly, when you get down to the REAL details, this system addresses MOST of my complaints about C/R systems.
ANSI, ISO, ITU, etc. charge for standards. It's common in the industry. I have no problem with MS charging something for the standards, but what they are proposing is insane, AND has an added "per unit" fee which should NOT be allowed.
IMHO, MS gave up the right to charge a per-unit royalty when they engaged in illegal anti-competitive behavior. Hopefully the EU will see it that way too.
Um, as I said, I don't WANT to edit them with some bizzaro configuration / XML editor. I want to be able to make quick manual changes through a text interface. I want to be able to easily cut and paste these changes, do global search and replace, add descriptive comments, easily comment out sections, etc. Configuration editors don't allow you to do that. The last thing I would want in Unix is anything resembling regedit whether it be a GUI or curses style text.
I've seen dozens of configuration editors for Apache for example. NONE of them are as quick and easy to use as vi (or emacs). NONE of them allow you full control over all options. None that I saw have the ability to "comment out" a section, and very few create backup files. Even fewer allow you to create multiple backup files and specify a descriptive name for it.
Gnome is a prime example. Many settings have custom GUI's to edit them, but when the option isn't in the gui you need to drop down to gconf-editor or worse, gconftool. No thanks, I'll just hand edit the conf files. Easier to find, make backups, etc.
Ditto for sendmail, exim, proftpd, sshd, named, ldap, samba, and so on. You cannot escape manual file editing unless you are dealing with simplistic configurations. Despite the 400-level deep GUI options for networking in Windows, you still need to drop down to the abortion-of-an-interface regedit waaaayyyy too frequently as everyone knows. Scripting mass changes is a nightmare.
Just give me "easy to read" plain text files any day. Let me see all the comments including the ones *I* put in there.
I got some inexpensive plastic storage boxes that hold 150 CD's each at one of those stores that sells nothing but storage solutions. 5 of them hold my music collection which were all ripped to MP3. Another 2 hold various software. I use jewel cases for frequently used disks, and paper envelopes with windows for archival since they take up MUCH less room that way. I get about 1000 CD's in those 2 boxes (never counted...)
For more frequently used media, I have a custom-sized drawer in my desk that fits them perfectly (woodworking is one of my hobbies...)
For home-entertainment media, I built-in a 24"x24"x84" cabinet with pull out trays for various electronic components and media (DVD's and old video tapes.) Dividers hold everything nicely.
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Another word: bandwidth. Or lack of it with wireless. Bandwidth on wireless is like the local cable-modem segment - shared among all users.
Furthermore, wireless doesn't work well in practice for VoIP - especially if you want to use any encryption.
In the US, Homeowners can do their own wiring if they get it inspected and follow the code. I don't have a problem with that. What I DO have a problem with, is that I can't work on my parent's house, get it inspected, etc. What's the difference?
It's quite simple. Protectionism by the unions.
I looked into the requirements to become a licensed electrician for my brother who was looking at changing careers... They include some classroom requirements and that you pass a test, but more importantly, you need to be an apprentice with a union shop for many years (as they are the only ones that have a "qualified program".) This does two things: it keeps the number of electricians down as only a few people are accepted for these programs, and guarantees cheap labor for at least 5 years. Are the apprentices getting valuable on the job training? Nope - they are the ones doing all the major grunt work of digging ditches, drilling holes, bending conduit, pulling cable, etc. while the senior guys do all the connection work, etc. It's a racket. You could have a degree in electrical engineering, pass any test with a perfect score, be more competernt in practice than any current master electrician out there but you can't get licensed without going through the apprentice program. I've known a couple good people who started down that path and got totally fed up with ONLY doing the crap work. Damn unions. There was a time and a place for them. No longer.
Hmm, parents are the problem(hint)?
While you were modded funny, this is the REAL problem. Parents are disconnected with their kids. Too many kids grow up with both parents working full time (or only have one parent since our society seems to promote that situation today) and end up being raised by daycare / teachers / the street. Parents don't want to hear bad things about their kids. Parents don't discipline their kids. Parents let their kids do whatever they want.
We also have tied the hands of public education - we can't discipline problem kids in any way. Bullying, taunting, etc. goes on everywhere and frequently gets out of control. Nothing ever happens until someone gets seriously injured or killed.
It's important to know that Impedance != resistance. Speaker ratings list impedance. Your formula is for resistance.
While they may be some minute measurable difference using very expensive test equipment in lab conditions, the human ear can't tell the difference no matter how well "trained" it is. In a double-blind test, nobody is going to be able to hear the difference between a $4000 cable and a good quality $15 speaker cable. What's that quote? "A fool and his money..."
Um, yes, a connector rated at 30A is going to handle more current, but you don't run ANY WHERE NEAR that much current through a speaker. You are much more likely to run multiple amps and multiple speakers.
As for loss, it's not going to be measurable without Very expensive test equipment (if there is any at all,) and definately not something anyone could ever perceive.
XLR's can used in both balanced unbalanced situations. They also handle quite high current, are shielded, MUCH less expensive and are designed for audio applications (Romex and twistlock connectors are not.) True, they are not available at home despot, but you can still probably find them locally.
Yes, they are VERY effective.
First, as far as email is concerned (one of the largest sources of malware) if you reject certain file types such as exe, vbs, hta, bat, pif, com, cmd, etc., most viruses just bounce off the mailserver outright.
Second, using spamassassin and common RBL's to block dynamic IP space and known compromised machines, you cut down on another large hunk of crap (both malware and spam.)
ClamAV does a great job on modern viruses. Commercial products have large databases of ancient viruses that died out years ago, so counting the size of the database is pointless.
Dansgardian can handle filtering nicely, and yes, you can run clamav with it - however: this isn't going to cut down on spyware much (if that is your goal.)
Keep in mind that this setup can have a pretty sigificant performance impact, although you will only be scanning "download" file types for the most part.
Getting off IE / outlook is your best line of defense frankly, since they are the most targeted apps.
Snort does just fine at detecting probes and compromized machines (by their network activity), and with some scripting and proper network hardware, you can isolate a compromized machine almost instantly before it causes much damage.
But again, the best thing is to try it. We don't know your detailed requirements, or the details of your network. Nobody can tell you for sure whether this solution is right for you.
Just curious - why the LMTP step and not integrated into the SMTP server? Do you Accept and bounce, or reject at initial SMTP reception? If clamav is down you can always defer (4xx) and have the sender retry...
I've been running scanning from within exim for well over a year. Never had an issue with the setup handling 5K users...
"Most versions only go to ten, but mine goes to eleven. It's one higher."
blatently ripped off from Spinal Tap
You mean, other than "apt-get install exim-heavy dansguardian clamav"? (sarge or newer of course...) And configuring them according to the instructions?
It's not hard. Try it. Shouldn't take more than a few hours. Then come back and give us your report later tonight...
There are REALLY cheap generic s-video cables that use very little shielding, and there are Good generic s-video cables where there is no difference between them and monster other than about a 10x difference in price. I think that's what is important. "Monster" brand cables are not measurably better than normal good quality cables, but are definately better than crappy cables.
Pro amps / speakers generally use 1/4" or XLR connectors. Some use Speakon, or banana. Why go with some bizzare setup that's designed for some other use?
That's all fine and good until you realize that monster cables wholesale for much higher. Doesn't mean that there is any more money put into the physical product - just more profit for monster and money for the huge ad budget.
It may cost monster $1.75 for the cable, they sell it to the store for $40, and the store sells it to you for $60. Compare that with the generic "better quality" cable which costs $1.50, sold to the store for $2, and to you at $15.
Best yet, go online and find great quality non-monster cables for good prices and tell the local store to go pound sand.
Um, this is what phase locked loop circuits are for... Very simple, been around for decades.
Um, coax cable IS generally shielded. In fact, the modern standard for Sat / cable is RG6U quadshield. RG6Uqs with the proper adaptors make wonderful inexpensive component video cable. If you mean running "RF signals" over coax, then yes - the bandwidth in NTSC RF is really low (channel 3/4 out on a VCR for example..) Composite is higher, s-video higher still since the chroma/luminance is separated, and component the highest of analog technology. Beyond that and you go digital for the "ultimate" connection.
OMFG!!!
If you REALLY want to laugh your ass off, check out the price list where you can buy a four foot speaker cable for $4000!
OK, now that I've stopped laughing enough to sit back down and type, I'll just chime in that normal good quality cables are just fine, and you will NOT hear / see any difference. Good shielding, cood connectors, good solder joints are really the most important characteristics.
Monster speaker cable is just silly. Just use any normal 14 gauge fine-stranded speaker wire. I bought a bulk reel of riser-rated (for use in a wall) speaker cable when I wired my house. Home Depot sells it. Works just great.
For (component or composite) video, just use RG6U Quadshield with RCA (phono) connectors, or F to RCA adaptors. RG6UQS is Very low-noise, has the correct impedance, is fairly inexpensive when purchased in bulk etc. Using a dual-RCA to s-video mini-din adaptor, you can use a pair of RG6U to send s-video over fairly long distances (too long and you need a video amp.)
I've also used cat-5 cable for video, and it seems to work fine too - after all it's designed to deliver very high bandwidth data over long distances... Leviton sells wall jacks for this application. I prefer RG6U though as I believe the impedance on cat-5 is wrong.
For audio, just don't get the bottom of the line and it's fine.
Administering a headless XServe for example. Most of the "server level" apps need hand tuning / config. Apache, Bind, the firewall, LDAP, Postfix, Samba, NFS... Need I go on?
I must say, Apache needs the most hand-config of any app on the system. The gui totally blows.
but what about the vast majority of spam that's sent from zombied PCs and open relays instead of from the spammer's own mail servers?
It handles those Very well. BTW, the FA is totally wrong. The author obviously doesn't know squat about this app.
No.
Read why this is different.
The FA is F-ing all wrong. They got very little right in fact. Go to the IBM website and read the faq. It does not DDOS the sending PC. It does a Challenge / reponse if the mail looks like it was spoofed / forged (using fairly comprehensive tests.) Even collateral C/R spam can be eliminated with SPF records.
Frankly, when you get down to the REAL details, this system addresses MOST of my complaints about C/R systems.
ANSI, ISO, ITU, etc. charge for standards. It's common in the industry. I have no problem with MS charging something for the standards, but what they are proposing is insane, AND has an added "per unit" fee which should NOT be allowed.
IMHO, MS gave up the right to charge a per-unit royalty when they engaged in illegal anti-competitive behavior. Hopefully the EU will see it that way too.
Factory CD's don't use "burned pits" either, and never did. Please stop spewing bogus information. Do a little research next time.
Um, as I said, I don't WANT to edit them with some bizzaro configuration / XML editor. I want to be able to make quick manual changes through a text interface. I want to be able to easily cut and paste these changes, do global search and replace, add descriptive comments, easily comment out sections, etc. Configuration editors don't allow you to do that. The last thing I would want in Unix is anything resembling regedit whether it be a GUI or curses style text.
I've seen dozens of configuration editors for Apache for example. NONE of them are as quick and easy to use as vi (or emacs). NONE of them allow you full control over all options. None that I saw have the ability to "comment out" a section, and very few create backup files. Even fewer allow you to create multiple backup files and specify a descriptive name for it.
Gnome is a prime example. Many settings have custom GUI's to edit them, but when the option isn't in the gui you need to drop down to gconf-editor or worse, gconftool. No thanks, I'll just hand edit the conf files. Easier to find, make backups, etc.
Ditto for sendmail, exim, proftpd, sshd, named, ldap, samba, and so on. You cannot escape manual file editing unless you are dealing with simplistic configurations. Despite the 400-level deep GUI options for networking in Windows, you still need to drop down to the abortion-of-an-interface regedit waaaayyyy too frequently as everyone knows. Scripting mass changes is a nightmare.
Just give me "easy to read" plain text files any day. Let me see all the comments including the ones *I* put in there.
I got some inexpensive plastic storage boxes that hold 150 CD's each at one of those stores that sells nothing but storage solutions. 5 of them hold my music collection which were all ripped to MP3. Another 2 hold various software. I use jewel cases for frequently used disks, and paper envelopes with windows for archival since they take up MUCH less room that way. I get about 1000 CD's in those 2 boxes (never counted...)
For more frequently used media, I have a custom-sized drawer in my desk that fits them perfectly (woodworking is one of my hobbies...)
For home-entertainment media, I built-in a 24"x24"x84" cabinet with pull out trays for various electronic components and media (DVD's and old video tapes.) Dividers hold everything nicely.