I just put Vista SP1 on an older tablet and I am really, really happy with its performance and stability - no bugchecks, no major appcompat issues, only minor difficulties tracking down drivers. With the OEM's XP/Tablet PC 2005 install, I had significant problems with the input panel, suspend/hibernate, and offline files - all of which are working perfectly in Vista on the same hardware. I can't get the light sensor or the fingerprint scanner to work, and the built in STAC97 audio device won't switch off the laptop's speakers when I connect headphones - but for real work, this tablet is working much better with Vista than with XP.
We could both rant about bloat, but hey, this is Windows - seriously, what do you expect? If I wanted light, lean, and mean, I'd run FreeBSD, with none of that X Windows crap, either - GUIs on Unix are for weenies.;)
At work, I'm pushing to upgrade just because of UAC. I would have revoked admin rights from our XP users if Run As wasn't such a total pain in the ass. Of course, driver hell isn't worth it, so we're only going to phase Vista in as we replace hardware.
As far as I'm concerned, this bill has now made it too risky to run a Tor exit node. I don't want to be accused of possible copyright infringement and lose an my stuff forever just because J. Random Idiot downloaded a movie through my proxy.
Which sucks for the freedom-loving types out there.
I'm not impressed with Ekiga's SIP implementation. Audio is usually fine but video is inevitably corrupted, at least when talking to the Polycom and Tandberg gear at work. I'd second the suggestion to use Skype, even though it's proprietary. It pretty much just works.
On the other hand, if I had to choose between a self-signed certificate and transmitting login information in plain-text, there's no contest.
This is a false dilemma. If your bank's web site presents a self-signed certificate, then you shouldn't log into your account.
If anything, this BGP hack highlights the importance of out-of-band (i.e., non-network) management protocols for keying material, including self-signed certificates (which would include all CA certificates in addition to personal or test certificates). One shouldn't deploy services that depend on cryptographic protocols without addressing key exchange.
However, many people seem not to like hugging. I think that people "simply" have a subconscious fear of fully giving and fully accepting love.
On the contrary, I think that some people naturally avoid insincere affection as a defensive mechanism, to avoid being manipulated or otherwise taken advantage of. Hugs invoke a degree of physical intimacy that isn't always appropriate (especially in professional, as opposed to recreational or religious, contexts).
We're adopting the LOCATION-DOMAIN-TYPE-INDEX naming convention outlined in Microsoft's Account Management solution accelerator for all infrastructure systems, including servers and network devices. For the location code, we're using the code name of the nearest airport, so names look something like dca-ex-dc-01.int.example.com (a domain controller). When the interface name is significant - we want it to show up in traceroutes, for instance - we put the interface information in DNS with the server/device name as a subdomain, which gives us FQDNs such as ser-0-0.sfo-ex-rtr-01.int.example.com (a serial interface on a router) or v10.fa-0-1.sfo-ex-rtr-01.int.example.com (VLAN 10 on router interface FastEthernet0/1 - perhaps there are more elegant ways to convey this info).
Where our servers have ILO interfaces, we add "-c" (for "console") to the server host name to come up with the ILO host name. We also set the ILO IP address to be the server's primary management address plus 1, e.g., if the server is 192.0.2.15, then the ILO is 192.0.2.16.
We have received conflicting advice regarding domain names: using a non-existent TLD (such as.local or.lan), creating a private subdomain (e.g., corp.example.com), or registering the domain in an alternate TLD but never using it publicly (e.g., example.net). Using a non-existent TLD seems dangerous, especially with recent activity by ICANN on the topic of alternate global TLDs, but I don't know what the administrative or security implications of using private domains/subdomains are. For my own personal network, I've registered a second domain, but for the businesses we manage, I think we'll create private sub-domains instead (mostly because it doesn't cost any money).
I used to like thematic names (space ships/movie characters/authors/whatever), but I have come to appreciate encoding certain kinds of information in the host name itself (i.e., approximate location, owner/operator, and role), especially when a hardware inventory isn't available. Plus, nothing says "unprofessional dork" like showing your boss's boss network diagrams with tags like "fruitfucker.example.com".
Guess I should have said "Council of Elders" (get it? the guy quoted in Tripmaster Monkey's post was called Elder.) Oh well. Too bad the joke fell flat.:(
When asked if the initiation a program of information warfare against the invaders was wise, given their existing foothold in orbit and on the Plains Of Qtx, K'breel, Speaker for the Council, stressed that there was no cause for alarm:
"While it is true that the sinister blue planet continues to attack our information systems using the spy satellites and military drones that it has sent thus far, we are confident that we can deal with the situation. We have always been able to alter the telemetry data returned by the drones, and when the invaders foolishly integrate their in-orbit weapons platforms with their global data network, we will crush their puny countermeasures and turn their own defensive mechanisms against themselves."
When questioned whether rumors about improprieties in Mars' recent ratification of the OOXML standard had any validity, K'breel declined to comment.
My guess is that it is Darth Vader's operating system of FORCE. (Now there is a real BOF. None of this what's-your-user-name-clickety-clickety BS - he can read your mind and crush your throat before you even have a chance to complain about that missed email from an important colleague on Alderaan.)
The TED talk is well done at multiple levels. Not only is the material interesting, but the performance itself is also very polished and engaging. I suspect this combination's rare in military circles, but that's probably because I can only compare Barnett to IOSS D*I*C*E briefings (esp. presentations on computer/network OPSEC which are not unlike Vogon poetry in terms of what they do to individuals with Functioning Cerebrums and Bugtraq subscriptions). Maybe someone with real.mil presentation experience can tell us whether Barnett's speaking style is the exception or the norm.
Strangely enough, Barnett strikes me as being somewhat conservative. Aside from recent comments on his blog about Obama, he doesn't seem to be very political, which is probably necessary given his position and audiences.
To provide a more general answer to your question, check out Sun Blueprints' Enterprise Data Center Design and Methodology. It's by no means complete, but it's a great starting point. We used it when we planned the deployment of a data center in Mali last year.
Is a land-line telephone available? If so, use it.
We could argue over definitions of availability. I would argue that a cell phone is a more efficient emergency communications mechanism than the house phone, in that someone with a cell phone is more likely to be physically proximate to people administering first aid (thus reducing the risk that information about the emergency or suggested responses are misstated by the person making the emergency call), and that someone with a cell phone can make the emergency call faster than someone who has to search for the house phone (thus reducing the risk of further injury to someone experiencing a medical emergency).
Another argument in this whole debate is that technical countermeasures to undesirable social behaviors feel oppressive. I believe that it is better to encourage "good behavior" than to punish bad behavior punitively. I know that I would prefer to live in a society where everyone is encouraged to do their best. That attitude seems to be a lot more constructive and egalitarian to me.
The sad truth is that when no economical options exist, you have to go with one of the uneconomical ones. In your case, that's probably some form of leased line. Alternatively, you can try to rig up your own wireless links, but unless you have clear line of sight to any prospective POPs (if heavily forested then probably not), you shouldn't waste your time or money on antennas and access points. If it were me, I'd probably provision 4 B channels (256kbps) and negotiate a better rate by agreeing to some level of over-subscription by the ISP/telco, say 2:1.
I'd love to know the legal distinction between a right and an affirmative defense. The author of the CNET article might be making a legally accurate point, much to our collective consternation.
This of course assumes, as all selfish greedy self-absorbed people always do...
Arguments from both sides of the so-called political spectrum appear to devolve so quickly into ad hominem attacks and other logical absurdities, that it is difficult to evaluate, rationally, the arguments made for one policy decision or the other. (Except when, of course, it's obvious that a politician's supporters are being repaid, very handsomely and not for any reasons involving merit, out of the public treasury.) Brand me a cynic, but I call bullshit on everyone in the American political space today. How can they assert that they know best? Our policy makers are guessing (I'll be charitable) - there is no control group, no blinding, no error discussion (except to sweep those under the rhetorical rug), no repeatable results, etc. If politicians of any stripe were really serious about running this country and changing it (and the world in which we live) for the betterment of its citizens and, eventually, all mankind, they'd be acting less like power-mad, greedy, oversexed warlords and a little more like careful experimentalists, every step tentative, every belief acknowledged as unsubstantiated pending further evidence (and more likely untrue or invalid in real-world testing), assumptions explicitly stated, critical reviews given and accepted openly, and results presented with a view towards repeatability and (eventually) mass production. I guess all I can do is continue to call into question the politicians' methods, and to try to choose the people who will do the least amount of damage when given the reigns of power, but I'd prefer to exercise some real choice - not the machine politics of the American two-party system that you two advocate. So shut the hell up and let us sheep go back to sleep, or if you are going to be so rude as to bother us with your noise, at least take the time to come up with something worth hearing (instead of regurgitating the same bullshit press releases that pass for political journalism these days).
Would someone please mod the parent up? This is the first time I've seen a Slashdot commenter abbreviate "the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act" correctly.
(What with all this talk about audit logs eating up tons of disk space, I find myself wanting to play "Hungry Hungry HIPAAs"! *rimshot*)
I'm not sure to what nefarious purpose Microsoft's web server and firewall logs will be put, but if you consider the routine kinds of activity tracking performed by the average web farm, of course Microsoft will have your IP address and user agent information when you or the Automatic Updates client hits https://updates.microsoft.com/. That's the way the web works! The same goes for things like the time synchronization service - this is a client/server technology, so of course the other end will have your IP address.
Now, what's strange is how things like the IPv6 tunneling driver, the IME, etc. talk back to Microsoft. I'm willing to bet that its almost all performance-related logging, but it'd be nice to see a detailed dump of all of it.
Actually, custom kernel configuration is even easier than editing the GENERIC config file, which changes from time to time in ways that one may want to port to one's custom configurations. My custom config for Nokia IP440s looks something like this:
include GENERIC ident NOKIA-IP440 nocpu I486_CPU nocpu I586_CPU nodevice eisa nodevice ahb # EISA AHA1742 family nodevice ahc # AHA2940 and onboard AIC7xxx devices nodevice ahd # AHA39320/29320 and onboard AIC79xx dev
And so forth. This takes out the drivers I don't need, but if some kernel option or device driver gets added to GENERIC in the mean time, my config doesn't break. It beats the hell out of the Linux kernel build configuration especially since it's moderately future-proof and human-readable, and on the rare occasion when a particular option or driver doesn't have a manual page, there's at least a line or two in src/sys/conf/LINT or src/sys/<arch>/conf/LINT that will clue you in. I hate building custom kernels on Linux because it's such a pain compared to the BSD's kernel build system (and yes, I know about "make reconfigure").
Slashdot Mirror
http://code.google.com/p/vmware-view-open-client/
You'd think that at least one of the technology news sites reporting this would link directly to the code, but you'd be wrong.
Exactly. Goats are only sacrificed when terminating SCSI chains.
And to think people complain about just texting while driving! Thank ${DEITY} I work from home and don't have to share the road with the likes of you.
I just put Vista SP1 on an older tablet and I am really, really happy with its performance and stability - no bugchecks, no major appcompat issues, only minor difficulties tracking down drivers. With the OEM's XP/Tablet PC 2005 install, I had significant problems with the input panel, suspend/hibernate, and offline files - all of which are working perfectly in Vista on the same hardware. I can't get the light sensor or the fingerprint scanner to work, and the built in STAC97 audio device won't switch off the laptop's speakers when I connect headphones - but for real work, this tablet is working much better with Vista than with XP.
We could both rant about bloat, but hey, this is Windows - seriously, what do you expect? If I wanted light, lean, and mean, I'd run FreeBSD, with none of that X Windows crap, either - GUIs on Unix are for weenies. ;)
At work, I'm pushing to upgrade just because of UAC. I would have revoked admin rights from our XP users if Run As wasn't such a total pain in the ass. Of course, driver hell isn't worth it, so we're only going to phase Vista in as we replace hardware.
Of course, this is all just my opinion.
As far as I'm concerned, this bill has now made it too risky to run a Tor exit node. I don't want to be accused of possible copyright infringement and lose an my stuff forever just because J. Random Idiot downloaded a movie through my proxy.
Which sucks for the freedom-loving types out there.
I'm not impressed with Ekiga's SIP implementation. Audio is usually fine but video is inevitably corrupted, at least when talking to the Polycom and Tandberg gear at work. I'd second the suggestion to use Skype, even though it's proprietary. It pretty much just works.
This is a false dilemma. If your bank's web site presents a self-signed certificate, then you shouldn't log into your account. If anything, this BGP hack highlights the importance of out-of-band (i.e., non-network) management protocols for keying material, including self-signed certificates (which would include all CA certificates in addition to personal or test certificates). One shouldn't deploy services that depend on cryptographic protocols without addressing key exchange.
On the contrary, I think that some people naturally avoid insincere affection as a defensive mechanism, to avoid being manipulated or otherwise taken advantage of. Hugs invoke a degree of physical intimacy that isn't always appropriate (especially in professional, as opposed to recreational or religious, contexts).
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/solutionaccelerators/bb892167.aspx
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/solutionaccelerators/cits/dsd/acctmgmt/default.mspx
We're adopting the LOCATION-DOMAIN-TYPE-INDEX naming convention outlined in Microsoft's Account Management solution accelerator for all infrastructure systems, including servers and network devices. For the location code, we're using the code name of the nearest airport, so names look something like dca-ex-dc-01.int.example.com (a domain controller). When the interface name is significant - we want it to show up in traceroutes, for instance - we put the interface information in DNS with the server/device name as a subdomain, which gives us FQDNs such as ser-0-0.sfo-ex-rtr-01.int.example.com (a serial interface on a router) or v10.fa-0-1.sfo-ex-rtr-01.int.example.com (VLAN 10 on router interface FastEthernet0/1 - perhaps there are more elegant ways to convey this info).
Where our servers have ILO interfaces, we add "-c" (for "console") to the server host name to come up with the ILO host name. We also set the ILO IP address to be the server's primary management address plus 1, e.g., if the server is 192.0.2.15, then the ILO is 192.0.2.16.
We have received conflicting advice regarding domain names: using a non-existent TLD (such as .local or .lan), creating a private subdomain (e.g., corp.example.com), or registering the domain in an alternate TLD but never using it publicly (e.g., example.net). Using a non-existent TLD seems dangerous, especially with recent activity by ICANN on the topic of alternate global TLDs, but I don't know what the administrative or security implications of using private domains/subdomains are. For my own personal network, I've registered a second domain, but for the businesses we manage, I think we'll create private sub-domains instead (mostly because it doesn't cost any money).
I used to like thematic names (space ships/movie characters/authors/whatever), but I have come to appreciate encoding certain kinds of information in the host name itself (i.e., approximate location, owner/operator, and role), especially when a hardware inventory isn't available. Plus, nothing says "unprofessional dork" like showing your boss's boss network diagrams with tags like "fruitfucker.example.com".
Guess I should have said "Council of Elders" (get it? the guy quoted in Tripmaster Monkey's post was called Elder.) Oh well. Too bad the joke fell flat. :(
When asked if the initiation a program of information warfare against the invaders was wise, given their existing foothold in orbit and on the Plains Of Qtx, K'breel, Speaker for the Council, stressed that there was no cause for alarm:
When questioned whether rumors about improprieties in Mars' recent ratification of the OOXML standard had any validity, K'breel declined to comment.A block-level copy won't include detailed encoding data that might allow more advanced forms of data recovery.
My guess is that it is Darth Vader's operating system of FORCE. (Now there is a real BOF. None of this what's-your-user-name-clickety-clickety BS - he can read your mind and crush your throat before you even have a chance to complain about that missed email from an important colleague on Alderaan.)
Subnet availability is only part of the problem - there's also the size of the top level routing tables to consider.
The TED talk is well done at multiple levels. Not only is the material interesting, but the performance itself is also very polished and engaging. I suspect this combination's rare in military circles, but that's probably because I can only compare Barnett to IOSS D*I*C*E briefings (esp. presentations on computer/network OPSEC which are not unlike Vogon poetry in terms of what they do to individuals with Functioning Cerebrums and Bugtraq subscriptions). Maybe someone with real .mil presentation experience can tell us whether Barnett's speaking style is the exception or the norm.
Strangely enough, Barnett strikes me as being somewhat conservative. Aside from recent comments on his blog about Obama, he doesn't seem to be very political, which is probably necessary given his position and audiences.
Barnett slammed the Wired piece in a recent blog post (follow-up).
To provide a more general answer to your question, check out Sun Blueprints' Enterprise Data Center Design and Methodology. It's by no means complete, but it's a great starting point. We used it when we planned the deployment of a data center in Mali last year.
We could argue over definitions of availability. I would argue that a cell phone is a more efficient emergency communications mechanism than the house phone, in that someone with a cell phone is more likely to be physically proximate to people administering first aid (thus reducing the risk that information about the emergency or suggested responses are misstated by the person making the emergency call), and that someone with a cell phone can make the emergency call faster than someone who has to search for the house phone (thus reducing the risk of further injury to someone experiencing a medical emergency).
Another argument in this whole debate is that technical countermeasures to undesirable social behaviors feel oppressive. I believe that it is better to encourage "good behavior" than to punish bad behavior punitively. I know that I would prefer to live in a society where everyone is encouraged to do their best. That attitude seems to be a lot more constructive and egalitarian to me.
The sad truth is that when no economical options exist, you have to go with one of the uneconomical ones. In your case, that's probably some form of leased line. Alternatively, you can try to rig up your own wireless links, but unless you have clear line of sight to any prospective POPs (if heavily forested then probably not), you shouldn't waste your time or money on antennas and access points. If it were me, I'd probably provision 4 B channels (256kbps) and negotiate a better rate by agreeing to some level of over-subscription by the ISP/telco, say 2:1.
I'd love to know the legal distinction between a right and an affirmative defense. The author of the CNET article might be making a legally accurate point, much to our collective consternation.
And:
Arguments from both sides of the so-called political spectrum appear to devolve so quickly into ad hominem attacks and other logical absurdities, that it is difficult to evaluate, rationally, the arguments made for one policy decision or the other. (Except when, of course, it's obvious that a politician's supporters are being repaid, very handsomely and not for any reasons involving merit, out of the public treasury.) Brand me a cynic, but I call bullshit on everyone in the American political space today. How can they assert that they know best? Our policy makers are guessing (I'll be charitable) - there is no control group, no blinding, no error discussion (except to sweep those under the rhetorical rug), no repeatable results, etc. If politicians of any stripe were really serious about running this country and changing it (and the world in which we live) for the betterment of its citizens and, eventually, all mankind, they'd be acting less like power-mad, greedy, oversexed warlords and a little more like careful experimentalists, every step tentative, every belief acknowledged as unsubstantiated pending further evidence (and more likely untrue or invalid in real-world testing), assumptions explicitly stated, critical reviews given and accepted openly, and results presented with a view towards repeatability and (eventually) mass production. I guess all I can do is continue to call into question the politicians' methods, and to try to choose the people who will do the least amount of damage when given the reigns of power, but I'd prefer to exercise some real choice - not the machine politics of the American two-party system that you two advocate. So shut the hell up and let us sheep go back to sleep, or if you are going to be so rude as to bother us with your noise, at least take the time to come up with something worth hearing (instead of regurgitating the same bullshit press releases that pass for political journalism these days).
Bah! Humbug!
Another correct Slashdot commentor!
Would someone please mod the parent up? This is the first time I've seen a Slashdot commenter abbreviate "the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act" correctly.
(What with all this talk about audit logs eating up tons of disk space, I find myself wanting to play "Hungry Hungry HIPAAs"! *rimshot*)
I'm not sure to what nefarious purpose Microsoft's web server and firewall logs will be put, but if you consider the routine kinds of activity tracking performed by the average web farm, of course Microsoft will have your IP address and user agent information when you or the Automatic Updates client hits https://updates.microsoft.com/. That's the way the web works! The same goes for things like the time synchronization service - this is a client/server technology, so of course the other end will have your IP address.
Now, what's strange is how things like the IPv6 tunneling driver, the IME, etc. talk back to Microsoft. I'm willing to bet that its almost all performance-related logging, but it'd be nice to see a detailed dump of all of it.
Actually, custom kernel configuration is even easier than editing the GENERIC config file, which changes from time to time in ways that one may want to port to one's custom configurations. My custom config for Nokia IP440s looks something like this:
And so forth. This takes out the drivers I don't need, but if some kernel option or device driver gets added to GENERIC in the mean time, my config doesn't break. It beats the hell out of the Linux kernel build configuration especially since it's moderately future-proof and human-readable, and on the rare occasion when a particular option or driver doesn't have a manual page, there's at least a line or two in src/sys/conf/LINT or src/sys/<arch>/conf/LINT that will clue you in. I hate building custom kernels on Linux because it's such a pain compared to the BSD's kernel build system (and yes, I know about "make reconfigure").