Cantor Fitzgerald and subsidiaries eSpeed and TradeSpark, located on floors 101, 103, 104, and 105 of 1 WTC, lost 700 of 1000 employees, and were up and running again 44 hours later. Why? Live off-site backups of all data.
Tools get lost, borrowed, stolen, etc. However, particularly with screwdrivers, it is fairly often that I find I need two of them -- one to hold something in place or out of the way, and one to actually do the job. I once had to use three screwdrivers, with one propping up a piece of equipment, one holding wires out of the way, and one doing the actual work on the screw.
The CD-RWs are to save me time and money in updating the CDs. I can add patches and whatnot, and not have to reburn the CD. (Yes, I'm cheap.) All of the family's computers can read CD-RW, though, so that isn't a problem.
PCAnywhere has caused me untold troubles in the past; I know of many who use it successfully, but it's driven me nuts, though. VNC is something to consider, but what script is this that sends the IP address? That could be handy.
It's only recently that CL has been able to put out drivers for the original Audigy that don't do odd things. Their card quality also leaves something to be desired; go look through the newsgroups and you'll see what I mean. I even had to send mine back to the factory for a BIOS refresh because something got corrupted; they had the card for two weeks. Bleh.
Critical supplies for fixing my family's Windows computers:
* Installation CDs for all versions of Windows * CD-RWs updated with the latest service packs and patches for Windows (one for 9x, one for NT/2K/XP) * CD-RW with various disk utilities, AV updates, Ad-Aware, etc. * Toolkit with two of each kind of tool * Victorinox Swiss Army Knife, computer tech edition * Small bottle of Advil * Several cables of varying types and lengths * One Trident PCI 512KB VGA card -- it's old and crappy, but more reliable than anything else I have when nothing seems to want to work * Two 32MB PC133 DIMMs * Two 70ns 16MB SIMMs (mom's old computer) * Small bag of various jumpers, screws (fine- and course-thread), motherboard mounts, etc.
Finally, I make sure that all of the computers have Netmeeting installed on them. I have been called more than once on some critical issue while at work, so I just connect in with NM, have them set up Desktop Sharing, and let them know when I'm done. XP's Remote Desktop is useful, but only when I don't need to see a problem replicated.
And I never, EVER go to their houses without at least my primary CD case. I can improvise on tools, but it's a pain to find cab file 17 for Windows 98SE when you have no internet access and no CDs, and the file has been deleted from the hard drive to make space ("I only had a couple of gigathings left!").
If you find enough, you may even be able to setup a cluster with HA (if you can swing the cost of the license) or just run Beowulf or one of the Linux solutions on it.
You are hereby fined 25 karma for mention of Beowulf Clusters on Slashdot without any concurrent mention of grits, Natalie Portman, or CowboyNeal.
You bring up some good points. I wasn't aware that Earthlink and others did that. I'd get a bit annoyed, as I use three different e-mail servers for outgoing (work, private domain, and a website I manage), but I guess their solution is better than letting the spammers in that easily.
You wouldn't fly this over the enemy's territory. At a sufficient altitude (the 747 is capable of sustained altitude of about 45,000 feet / 13,750m), the visible area for targeting will be huge. If d = (h^2 + 2hr)^0.5, where d is the distance to the horizon, h is the altitude of the aircraft (13,750m), and r is the approximate radius of the planet (6,378,000m), d = 419km, or 260 miles. This is assuming capture and targeting of a missile at launch. The system will certainly be tied into the launch detection network, and so would get notice of over-the-horizon launches as well, targeting them as they climb above the horizon. Newer engines may be employed to boost the maximum altitude and gain increased fuel efficiency for longer flights; a boost to 15,000m altitude gains 18km / 12mi, which doesn't sound like much until you're under attack. A boost to 20,000m extends the horizon to 505km / 314mi, which may or not be possible with the airframe.
Beam attenuation will be a problem, of course, but the adaptive optics help to cover that. As the missile climbs above the horizon, it will become visible, and the lens will probably already be pointed in the proper direction, thanks to the launch warning network. Those precious seconds are saved, and the laser can get to work.
The biggest question comes with aerosols. Can a missile employ some form of aerosol system to disperse the laser during ascent? Or would that add too much weight to the missile? Some of them designed to loft multiple warheads might well drop one or more warheads on favor of a higher survivability.
AOL does weird stuff. We found out with a new customer that AOL hijacks port 25 outgoing. (The customer maintains dial-up accounts with AOL for internet access, and yes, we're trying to get them to change.) Now, this may be a method to block spamming (not sure how successful it is), but AOL was less than forthcoming about it. We solved it by changing to port 26, which worked fine, but we've still not received an explanation of which I am aware.
Mostly it improves speed while processing graphics, although I've seen some speed boosts in large postscript files as well. I've also seen a handful of cases where such printers will run out of memory on very large images and either not print or (more commonly) print a partial result. Diminishing returns start at 4MB, and drop off sharply at 8MB, but it won't hurt throwing the rest in.
For simple text, you probably won't see a change. If you throw any medium level of images on (web pages), then you'll see a little boost.
I look forward to further security disclosures rather than modifications. If a problem can be found, analyzed, documented, reported, and (after an appropriate time) released, then we may see even more fixes on the way.
Between Moscow and Beijing, I imagine that money in the right places could see the code compromised.
My, my... Don't some people get touchy when they can't see any possibility of humor or sarcasm in someone else's words. I think it might be time for someone to take a nap.
idiot - A person of profound mental retardation having a mental age below three years and generally being unable to learn connected speech or guard against common dangers.
moron - A person of mild mental retardation having a mental age of from 7 to 12 years and generally having communication and social skills enabling some degree of academic or vocational education.
Bush, Jr., may not be the best public speaker, but he does not fit the above definitions.
dork - 1. Slang. A stupid, inept, or foolish person. 2. Vulgar Slang. The penis.
Bush, Sr., was by your own words intelligent, and therefore that negates this, unless you meant the latter definition, in which case I thought he had one, but maybe I was mistaken about his particular features.
fool - One who is deficient in judgment, sense, or understanding.
It was completely unnecessary to go to an overlay area code. There was tons of evidence that fully half of the available phone numbers were unused at the time, just had been allocated somewhere due to allocation schemes that were in use, and nobody wanted to give up any numbers.
In California, we almost went through overlays a few years ago, but everyone cried foul (although I think 424 may have overlaid 310). In exchange, they added additional regional area codes, until we even got sick of that. Some angry people started counting up the numbers and how they were allocated, and decided that moving blocks of numbers around in groups of 10,000 was a bad idea. As I recall, numbers are now handled in blocks of 1000, and I saw a prediction that no new area codes would be needed in California until at least 2010, and that's without instituting tighter control over the number allocation.
Southern California used to be 213 for Los Angeles, 818 for the Valley, 714 for Orange County, and 619 for San Diego, Riverside, and San Bernardino. Now we have 714 and 949 for Orange County, 909 for Riverside, 619 and 858 for San Diego, 760 for Imperial County and the San Bernardino areas, and Los Angeles County has 213, 310, 323, 424, 562, 626, and 818. This doesn't include the insanity of the rest of the state, which has a total of, as I count it, 27 area codes (209, 213, 310, 323, 408, 415, 424, 510, 530, 559, 562, 619, 626, 650, 661, 707, 714, 760, 805, 818, 831, 858, 909, 916, 925, 935, and 949).
don't even get me started on all the morons who think that one day VoIP/Ethernet is going to show up on their fucking doorstep
Well, I don't know about my doorstep, but it is on my desk. In fact, it has been for about seven months now, since I ordered my Vonage connection. Granted, not everyone can get it (it requires a fair amount of bandwidth, and the upstream will test many home connections), but it does exist and it works quite well.
A web page could viably be seen as a commercial concern, as it is composed, in this case, of published text, and it may not be obvious that there is not a commercial group behind it. In that case, the trademark can be infringed, and it is the right and responsibility of the trademark holder to defend it.
From RFC 2870 (Root Name Server Operational Requirements), section 2.3:
At any time, each server MUST be able to handle a load of requests for root data which is three times the measured peak of such requests on the most loaded server in then current normal conditions. This is usually expressed in requests per second. This is intended to ensure continued operation of root services should two thirds of the servers be taken out of operation, whether by intent, accident, or malice.
With 13 current servers, this means that 8-9 servers can be taken out at one time and have negligible impact on the world's DNS queries, assuming that the outage is at a peak time and the servers are being hit very hard. Practically speaking, the existing root servers are probably built even more toughly, so the remaining 4-5 servers can probably handle shorter outages (such as that mentioned in the article) without significant effort, and even if brought down to 2-3 could probably handle things with some difficulty.
According to root-servers.org, the existing servers are fairly concentrated, with only those in Stockholm, London, and Tokyo not in the United States. Perhaps three more, with one maybe in South Korea, one in Australia, and one in North Africa or the Middle East (Cairo would be ideal to cover both) would be a viable option? I realize that the last is probably going to be questionable for some, given the censorship agendas often in place in the area, but it would help to make further attacks a little more difficult, as well as adding a little prestige and maybe tech investment to the area. Just an idea.
As for Dalnet, why isn't the FBI involved? (I'm not aware of current happenings on the network, as I don't use it.)
If a revulsion to the sight or experience of something is a reason to avoid it, many people should never have surgery. I can watch most surgeries, but when the cranial saw starts to bite.... [shudder]
Parody does not, on its own, dilute a trademark, as it is expression of free speech. This is why you can parody a song or a movie and get away with it, although there is often a fuzzy line between parody and theft.
Have you *ever* had a molex power connector come apart on you unexpectedly? I count myself lucky if I can get them apart on purpose!
I keep a set of channel locks around for the connectors in one of my systems, and they still usually take 5-10 seconds of pulling to remove. The connectors go in just fine; it's coming out that takes ten minutes and results in pained fingers without tools.
The first time I fired a gun, I was five years old. I was in the desert with my dad and a couple of his friends, and I fired a little.38 and a.22 rifle.
In addition, I knew where the guns were. I knew where the ammo was. I imagine I could have figured out how to load them without much difficulty, too. I never touched them, though, because it was drilled into me from that first desert trip how dangerous a gun in the wrong hands could be. Guns were to be used for target shooting when we went to a range or to the desert, or for self-defense, and then only by my parents until I was in high school and the Rodney King riots broke out. (I lived only a few miles from one riot location, and they were sometimes moving very rapidly.) At that point, the guns were loaded, and I thought for a bit about whether I could take a life. I imagine I could have under the circumstances, but it wasn't something I relished.
When I have children, I intend to let them know about the guns, where the ammo is, and so forth. They will learn how to use them, and how to respect them, just as I did. I will hope that they or I are never placed into a situation where they might have to use them in self-defense. I will not regret it, though, if a life has to be taken to protect them.
Slashdot Mirror
Cantor Fitzgerald and subsidiaries eSpeed and TradeSpark, located on floors 101, 103, 104, and 105 of 1 WTC, lost 700 of 1000 employees, and were up and running again 44 hours later. Why? Live off-site backups of all data.
Tools get lost, borrowed, stolen, etc. However, particularly with screwdrivers, it is fairly often that I find I need two of them -- one to hold something in place or out of the way, and one to actually do the job. I once had to use three screwdrivers, with one propping up a piece of equipment, one holding wires out of the way, and one doing the actual work on the screw.
The CD-RWs are to save me time and money in updating the CDs. I can add patches and whatnot, and not have to reburn the CD. (Yes, I'm cheap.) All of the family's computers can read CD-RW, though, so that isn't a problem.
PCAnywhere has caused me untold troubles in the past; I know of many who use it successfully, but it's driven me nuts, though. VNC is something to consider, but what script is this that sends the IP address? That could be handy.
It's only recently that CL has been able to put out drivers for the original Audigy that don't do odd things. Their card quality also leaves something to be desired; go look through the newsgroups and you'll see what I mean. I even had to send mine back to the factory for a BIOS refresh because something got corrupted; they had the card for two weeks. Bleh.
Critical supplies for fixing my family's Windows computers:
* Installation CDs for all versions of Windows
* CD-RWs updated with the latest service packs and patches for Windows (one for 9x, one for NT/2K/XP)
* CD-RW with various disk utilities, AV updates, Ad-Aware, etc.
* Toolkit with two of each kind of tool
* Victorinox Swiss Army Knife, computer tech edition
* Small bottle of Advil
* Several cables of varying types and lengths
* One Trident PCI 512KB VGA card -- it's old and crappy, but more reliable than anything else I have when nothing seems to want to work
* Two 32MB PC133 DIMMs
* Two 70ns 16MB SIMMs (mom's old computer)
* Small bag of various jumpers, screws (fine- and course-thread), motherboard mounts, etc.
Finally, I make sure that all of the computers have Netmeeting installed on them. I have been called more than once on some critical issue while at work, so I just connect in with NM, have them set up Desktop Sharing, and let them know when I'm done. XP's Remote Desktop is useful, but only when I don't need to see a problem replicated.
And I never, EVER go to their houses without at least my primary CD case. I can improvise on tools, but it's a pain to find cab file 17 for Windows 98SE when you have no internet access and no CDs, and the file has been deleted from the hard drive to make space ("I only had a couple of gigathings left!").
If you find enough, you may even be able to setup a cluster with HA (if you can swing the cost of the license) or just run Beowulf or one of the Linux solutions on it.
You are hereby fined 25 karma for mention of Beowulf Clusters on Slashdot without any concurrent mention of grits, Natalie Portman, or CowboyNeal.
You bring up some good points. I wasn't aware that Earthlink and others did that. I'd get a bit annoyed, as I use three different e-mail servers for outgoing (work, private domain, and a website I manage), but I guess their solution is better than letting the spammers in that easily.
You wouldn't fly this over the enemy's territory. At a sufficient altitude (the 747 is capable of sustained altitude of about 45,000 feet / 13,750m), the visible area for targeting will be huge. If d = (h^2 + 2hr)^0.5, where d is the distance to the horizon, h is the altitude of the aircraft (13,750m), and r is the approximate radius of the planet (6,378,000m), d = 419km, or 260 miles. This is assuming capture and targeting of a missile at launch. The system will certainly be tied into the launch detection network, and so would get notice of over-the-horizon launches as well, targeting them as they climb above the horizon. Newer engines may be employed to boost the maximum altitude and gain increased fuel efficiency for longer flights; a boost to 15,000m altitude gains 18km / 12mi, which doesn't sound like much until you're under attack. A boost to 20,000m extends the horizon to 505km / 314mi, which may or not be possible with the airframe.
Beam attenuation will be a problem, of course, but the adaptive optics help to cover that. As the missile climbs above the horizon, it will become visible, and the lens will probably already be pointed in the proper direction, thanks to the launch warning network. Those precious seconds are saved, and the laser can get to work.
The biggest question comes with aerosols. Can a missile employ some form of aerosol system to disperse the laser during ascent? Or would that add too much weight to the missile? Some of them designed to loft multiple warheads might well drop one or more warheads on favor of a higher survivability.
AOL does weird stuff. We found out with a new customer that AOL hijacks port 25 outgoing. (The customer maintains dial-up accounts with AOL for internet access, and yes, we're trying to get them to change.) Now, this may be a method to block spamming (not sure how successful it is), but AOL was less than forthcoming about it. We solved it by changing to port 26, which worked fine, but we've still not received an explanation of which I am aware.
Mostly it improves speed while processing graphics, although I've seen some speed boosts in large postscript files as well. I've also seen a handful of cases where such printers will run out of memory on very large images and either not print or (more commonly) print a partial result. Diminishing returns start at 4MB, and drop off sharply at 8MB, but it won't hurt throwing the rest in.
For simple text, you probably won't see a change. If you throw any medium level of images on (web pages), then you'll see a little boost.
I look forward to further security disclosures rather than modifications. If a problem can be found, analyzed, documented, reported, and (after an appropriate time) released, then we may see even more fixes on the way.
Between Moscow and Beijing, I imagine that money in the right places could see the code compromised.
My, my... Don't some people get touchy when they can't see any possibility of humor or sarcasm in someone else's words. I think it might be time for someone to take a nap.
moron - A person of mild mental retardation having a mental age of from 7 to 12 years and generally having communication and social skills enabling some degree of academic or vocational education.
Bush, Jr., may not be the best public speaker, but he does not fit the above definitions.
dork - 1. Slang. A stupid, inept, or foolish person. 2. Vulgar Slang. The penis.
Bush, Sr., was by your own words intelligent, and therefore that negates this, unless you meant the latter definition, in which case I thought he had one, but maybe I was mistaken about his particular features.
fool - One who is deficient in judgment, sense, or understanding.
Yeah, you described Clinton well there.
Topps came with crunchy gum.
Mmmm... crunchy...
It was completely unnecessary to go to an overlay area code. There was tons of evidence that fully half of the available phone numbers were unused at the time, just had been allocated somewhere due to allocation schemes that were in use, and nobody wanted to give up any numbers.
In California, we almost went through overlays a few years ago, but everyone cried foul (although I think 424 may have overlaid 310). In exchange, they added additional regional area codes, until we even got sick of that. Some angry people started counting up the numbers and how they were allocated, and decided that moving blocks of numbers around in groups of 10,000 was a bad idea. As I recall, numbers are now handled in blocks of 1000, and I saw a prediction that no new area codes would be needed in California until at least 2010, and that's without instituting tighter control over the number allocation.
Southern California used to be 213 for Los Angeles, 818 for the Valley, 714 for Orange County, and 619 for San Diego, Riverside, and San Bernardino. Now we have 714 and 949 for Orange County, 909 for Riverside, 619 and 858 for San Diego, 760 for Imperial County and the San Bernardino areas, and Los Angeles County has 213, 310, 323, 424, 562, 626, and 818. This doesn't include the insanity of the rest of the state, which has a total of, as I count it, 27 area codes (209, 213, 310, 323, 408, 415, 424, 510, 530, 559, 562, 619, 626, 650, 661, 707, 714, 760, 805, 818, 831, 858, 909, 916, 925, 935, and 949).
don't even get me started on all the morons who think that one day VoIP/Ethernet is going to show up on their fucking doorstep
Well, I don't know about my doorstep, but it is on my desk. In fact, it has been for about seven months now, since I ordered my Vonage connection. Granted, not everyone can get it (it requires a fair amount of bandwidth, and the upstream will test many home connections), but it does exist and it works quite well.
A web page could viably be seen as a commercial concern, as it is composed, in this case, of published text, and it may not be obvious that there is not a commercial group behind it. In that case, the trademark can be infringed, and it is the right and responsibility of the trademark holder to defend it.
In WinNT/2K/XP, you can also clear the DNS cache by using ipconfig /flushdns from the command line.
From RFC 2870 (Root Name Server Operational Requirements), section 2.3:
At any time, each server MUST be able to handle a load of
requests for root data which is three times the measured peak of
such requests on the most loaded server in then current normal
conditions. This is usually expressed in requests per second.
This is intended to ensure continued operation of root services
should two thirds of the servers be taken out of operation,
whether by intent, accident, or malice.
With 13 current servers, this means that 8-9 servers can be taken out at one time and have negligible impact on the world's DNS queries, assuming that the outage is at a peak time and the servers are being hit very hard. Practically speaking, the existing root servers are probably built even more toughly, so the remaining 4-5 servers can probably handle shorter outages (such as that mentioned in the article) without significant effort, and even if brought down to 2-3 could probably handle things with some difficulty.
According to root-servers.org, the existing servers are fairly concentrated, with only those in Stockholm, London, and Tokyo not in the United States. Perhaps three more, with one maybe in South Korea, one in Australia, and one in North Africa or the Middle East (Cairo would be ideal to cover both) would be a viable option? I realize that the last is probably going to be questionable for some, given the censorship agendas often in place in the area, but it would help to make further attacks a little more difficult, as well as adding a little prestige and maybe tech investment to the area. Just an idea.
As for Dalnet, why isn't the FBI involved? (I'm not aware of current happenings on the network, as I don't use it.)
I'm curious which bank this is... so I can make sure I stay the hell out of its branches.
If a revulsion to the sight or experience of something is a reason to avoid it, many people should never have surgery. I can watch most surgeries, but when the cranial saw starts to bite.... [shudder]
Parody does not, on its own, dilute a trademark, as it is expression of free speech. This is why you can parody a song or a movie and get away with it, although there is often a fuzzy line between parody and theft.
Have you *ever* had a molex power connector come apart on you unexpectedly? I count myself lucky if I can get them apart on purpose!
I keep a set of channel locks around for the connectors in one of my systems, and they still usually take 5-10 seconds of pulling to remove. The connectors go in just fine; it's coming out that takes ten minutes and results in pained fingers without tools.
The first time I fired a gun, I was five years old. I was in the desert with my dad and a couple of his friends, and I fired a little .38 and a .22 rifle.
In addition, I knew where the guns were. I knew where the ammo was. I imagine I could have figured out how to load them without much difficulty, too. I never touched them, though, because it was drilled into me from that first desert trip how dangerous a gun in the wrong hands could be. Guns were to be used for target shooting when we went to a range or to the desert, or for self-defense, and then only by my parents until I was in high school and the Rodney King riots broke out. (I lived only a few miles from one riot location, and they were sometimes moving very rapidly.) At that point, the guns were loaded, and I thought for a bit about whether I could take a life. I imagine I could have under the circumstances, but it wasn't something I relished.
When I have children, I intend to let them know about the guns, where the ammo is, and so forth. They will learn how to use them, and how to respect them, just as I did. I will hope that they or I are never placed into a situation where they might have to use them in self-defense. I will not regret it, though, if a life has to be taken to protect them.
From the perspective of the geek, there is no company with more personalities than Sony:
They're a member of the RIAA (BOO!!!)
But they came out with a driver that reads and writes both DVD+R/RW and DVD-R/RW (YAY!!!)
But they're a member of the MPAA (BOO!!!)
But they come up with technology like this that allows competition in what are now monopoly situations (YAY!!!)
Sony is about the only company out there that we can pretty much agree we both love and hate at the same time.