This is something I keep hearing from people, particularly those who balk at paying for upgrades to expensive fire suppression systems. "They're always built so well that there's never been a case of a server room destroyed by fire." I always did doubt that, and now whenever they tell me that, I can point to this.
You speak Truth, Gigs, and it's one that many people choose not to accept.
My entire career, I've been told to follow this path or that, and learn as much as I can about this topic or that topic. For various reasons, I took a middle path between the specialist and generalist, and became very good with Windows and competent (and still learning) in Linux and Cisco. I intend, over the next couple of years, to add FreeBSD and Solaris to my skill list, including some mid-level certifications. This will help to keep me out of knowledge-dulling management and in real positions that have an effect and keep me sharp.
Incidentally, this has helped me in the career choice that I have chosen to follow, and that is security. Having a broader sense of the capabilities of different systems has allowed me to look at a given situation and recommend a more flexible solution for it. Sometimes it's homogenous, and sometimes not; everything has its strengths and weaknesses. If I need to find some really obscure answer, I've used my past mentors as a knowledge network, and can usually call on at least one of them to provide me with that crucial tip or pointer.
There's an added advantage to this. Should the job market sour, I have more flexibility to get into the jobs that are available, even if they're not my immediate preference. It may be a lower-end job than I'm used to, but not-quite-happily employed is far better than homelessly unemployed.
And it is not exaclty like the 'ban guns' thing either, when did you last hear of someone getting shot to death by a guy armed with a website?:-)
I think the point was more that attempting to restrict information in a medium like the web is nearly pointless. For example, the laws in Europe forcing removal, as covered on Slashdot before, about how to derail trains were met with a great deal of derision because the material can easily be found elsewhere with a look around on a few search engines.
Besides, what's to stop protesters from advocating 'peaceful' marches (or just not specifying the level of violence expected), and then fomenting unrest at the site?
I'm generally suspicious of wireless (I have a semi-paranoid security perspective), but cost could be a huge consideration for me, as I'm trying to figure out how to get my apartment complex to set up high-speed internet. Between a Cogent 100Mbps connection for $1000 a month and this for a central antenna, the costs to the complex may well be able to drop from close to $100,000 for wiring it into every unit to perhaps $5000-$10,000, maybe less. That's far more reasonably in the eyes of the owners, as they can pay it off more quickly. With a little luck, we might actually even be able to get some pretty high speeds for maybe $20 a month -- and the complex might even make some decent profit with it.
This is particularly true in an environment like the central California valley, where two points of land on either side of a fault line can shift as much as a foot in either direction over the course of a year or so, and that's without an earthquake.
No offense, but as a resident of California, I'd like to see some official mention of movements like this before I believe you. Movement of a faultline by a foot is an enormous amount, and the energy released in something like that is non-trivial -- it would cause tremors.
You also need to pass the background check to ensure that you're not a felon, wanted for arrest, have a restraining order against you, or have a history of mental illness.
And no, the bike analogy doesn't work. There's a difference in the law between a physical item like a bike, where ownership does completely transfer, and the TiVo. You own your TiVo, but you do not own the code inside it. Modification of the code or unauthorized access to features is something TiVo doesn't want. Fair or not, cracking this code is probably right on the border between legal and illegal. TiVo would have full justification to revoke a warranty -- or perhaps even further updates, tracked in a database by serial number -- for systems it finds hacked, cracked, or modified.
It's too difficult to remove the backdoors. They're quite useful inhouse during dev/test cycles (a QA tester notices a bug, they can easily view the log files, etc). Two branches of the software, one inhouse with the backdoors, and one w/o them for the public is a lot to deal with. What if you applied a patch to one branch, forgot about the other. Now QA has to test both branches, to make sure they're the same. QA people whine, a lot (rightfully so sometimes). They won't like that.
Not intending flamebait, but isn't this exactly what we're usually complaining about companies doing? This is one of the highest examples of insecure design. It's not that difficult to remove the backdoor code from the public release, if you code it right to begin with. I know it's just a TiVo, but at some point, a lot of these things that we refer to as "just a" will be network connected, and it's best to start early on best practices, especially since the TiVo is networkable.
Yes, people like to get into their TiVos (and other gadgets) and tinker with them. A friend who has a TiVo does it all the time, and when I see word of a new hack on Slashdot, I usually let him know. That being said, he's perfectly well aware that what he's doing can seriously screw him if he breaks something. If TiVo really wanted to lock people out, they'd disable the backdoors to begin with, and if they really needed to see the logs on a defective unit, they could load it up on a custom system that can pull the logs from the drives after putting them in a read-only configuration. It wouldn't stop everyone from getting in, but it would stop all but the most determined.
Kudos to you for disabling unused services, but just because something is disabled doesn't necessarily mean you don't need to patch it. Suppose it does need to be enabled, perhaps a year from now, for some temporary purpose, and this vulnerability doesn't cross your mind at the time. Or maybe you won't even be there, and your replacement finds some reason to re-enable it. Whatever the case, finding a reason to not patch it is not a good practice in my mind.
You may sleep easier tonight than some other people, and you may not be racing to log in and patch it like some other admins are, but come the morning you probably should be planning on patching it. But I'm sure that's already on your schedule.:) Of course, if it's not even installed in the first place, then I guess you don't have to worry about it in the first place.
The problem is that once you require blocking at the backbone level, you're extending a single country's laws to the entire internet, which most people agree is a Bad Idea. What happens when laws collide? France and Germany have strong anti-Nazi laws; many other nations allow people to speak out as Nazis. Staying on the child pornography issue, some European nations allow nude modeling as young as 16, whereas the United States blocks most such photography for anyone under 18. Whose side does a backbone provider take in that case?
I still believe that backbone and other pure network providers should be left alone. They carry bits, and that's it. Any company that provides storage should be held unaccountable for their customers, unless and until it is brought to their attention and investigated (which should take all of a few minutes). If it's child porn or something else similarly illegal, they can shut down access, follow a procedure to provide copies of the data and any applicable logs for access to the proper authorities, and then their hands are washed of it. If they believe that a law is unjust, they can choose to fight it, but only in that case should they have any further involvement or liability.
I've heard a persistent legend from various people I've known attached to the military that the prototype U-2 was too good a glider. After the first test flight, the pilot was coming in for a landing, and couldn't get the damned thing on the ground. The wings provided so much lift that, combined with ground effect, it just wouldn't touch down. Finally, on about the third go-around, the pilot resorted to stalling the plane, resulting in a harsh landing that did a little damage to the landing gear and had engineers screaming at him for such a dangerous maneuver. The wings were reduced slightly in size, though, as a result of it, and testing continued successfully from there.
Of course, not having spoken to anyone who was actually there or on the design team, I don't know if it's true, but I've heard a nearly identical story from at least four sources in two branches (Navy and Air Force).
Yes, it is. With limited exceptions, the US Constitution applies to anyone under its jurisdiction, meaning that they have the right to free speech, the right to a speedy trial, the right to not have troops stationed in their homes here, etc. Gun ownership is the only one that comes to mind that may have exceptions, other than the exceptions anyone else is under (no yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater, etc).
I've actually made a couple of posts as an American defending Canadians, but now that I see how cheap your broadband is, I hate you all. I hope Zimbabwe invades and sinks your linky subs and enslaves the lot of you.:)
Yes, I'm an American. Yes, I'm pro-American. Yes, I poke fun at Canada. I just wanted to get that out of the way.
I've seen few people in the Western World more fiercely proud of their nation than Canadians, speaking in general terms. This kind of pride, though, is often the reason I poke fun at them. Anyone who tries to sit up on a high horse like this deserves it, and that includes my own country from time to time.
You should look around a bit, as there are many countries importing much of their economies, be it temporary because of economic disaster as North Korea does, or permanent because of poor resources, as some African and Middle East nations do. In addition, while the US is moving more towards a service-based economy, I think suggesting that our manufacturing capabilities have somehow become non-existent is an overstatement.
Finally, I'm interested in knowing how it is you can predict the economy decades in advance like that. Considering that a mere 15 or 20 years ago, there were fears of Japan taking too much control of the world economy and now the government is struggling to stave off bankruptcy, I'd think that would show that fortunes can turn too rapidly to try to predict such things.
It's not nearly that prevalent. According to http://www.optium.com/canarie/diabetes.htm, the rate for the United States is about 5.2% (15M out of 280M), and the rate for Canada is 5.3% (1.7M out of 31.9M), which are approximately identical. The total populations are derived from the CIA World Factbook.
Most of that price increase is in taxes as greedy politicians attach 'sin taxes' to cigarettes. New York and California pay more than 100% taxes when everything's added up, IIRC.
As for the ownership issue, I would think that since it's hardware, the purchaser owns it. Microsoft might claim rights to the installed software, but what one can do with the hardware itself should be more clear-cut. I don't have any consoles myself, but I don't recall seeing a EULA on the boxes in the stores.
That actually leads to an interesting point. There are a number of bands that are locally well-known that manage to make a decent amount of money *and* get a professional CD out without the help of the RIAA companies. I can't think of the name of the group (not my music choice, so it never sticks in my mind), but my brother is a roadie for one of them, and they manage to play to packed houses at the Whiskey and the House of Blues in Southern California, and they're occasionally invited to play in venues outside of California.
I wish I knew their feelings on MP3 trading; it would be interesting to find out.
The reason that singles died out was that the distributions were so expensive. I remember seeing some CD singles that were selling for $9, and the full CD sold for $15 (this was a few years ago). Why pay $9 when for $6 more you can get another 8-15 songs, some of which have a chance at being good?
Either set up a mirrored (I hate calling that RAID-0. It's not R.)
Then don't call it RAID-0. Call it RAID-1, which is what it is. RAID-0 is striping; RAID-1 is mirroring. And it is redundant -- if it weren't for my RAID-1 setup, I would have lost all my data when my hard drive crashed last month.
The personnel cost issues are the same ones that drove the 800 directories in the united states to ditch their operators and go with an entirely voice-activated system. Unfortunately, there seems to be NO way to get to a live human, even when the thing doesn't get the right item. For instance, about a week ago, I needed the number for Pacific Bell Internet so I could find out some things about their internet connectivity on Macs. I asked for "Pacific Bell Internet" and got the main Pacific Bell line, which has nothing to do with their internet branch.
Early in the use of these new systems, I got frustrated and finally got to a live person, and talked with her for a few minutes about the coming changeover. She gave me the address where I could send a letter protesting it, and also, at my request, transferred me to her supervisor, with whom I also spoke for a few minutes. They were very happy to hear that I had a problem with the new system, and encouraged me to send the letter. Apparently it didn't do much good at the time, but maybe soon they'll go back on it.
I used to work for Toshiba America Medical Systems, which makes things like MRIs, CT scanners, PET scanners, and other such fun and highly-sensitive stuff that cost anywhere from a couple hundred thousand dollars to over a million. Though I was a simple desktop support monkey at the time, I occasionally had to step into the QA department to fix their computers. Before doing so, we had to ground ourselves and put on an ESD smock. Mind you, I never went closer than maybe five or six meters to any non-desktop-computer equipment, but the simple fear that I could transfer something was enough reason to enforce the rules rigidly. Of course, *I* thought it was cool, though my older colleagues thought otherwise.
Possible failures here carry an extra problem, similar to the problems mentioned by another poster and his references to Raytheon's Missile Systems division. In my case, if something in the scanner didn't work quite right, it could potentially cause a misdiagnosis, and in the Raytheon case, if that's the last missile the pilot has in a dogfight and it doesn't explode when it's supposed to, he could be toast.
ESD failures for most people are a nuisance. For others, they can be downright deadly.
I'm guessing you've never been married. Women get the men to do their heavy lifting so they can stay pretty for us, or at least for the guy that comes along after us while we're busy doing the actual heavy lifting.
Aside from the managerial politics mentioned by the others, as well as the technical issue of moving between e-mail servers, there's also the Dick Factor. Specifically, the users will see the IT department as a bunch of dicks for forcing them to change from something they like. If they know specifically who ordered the change, and don't get an extraordinarily good reason for it (virtually impossible), they will see that SysAdmin as the biggest dick of the group, and some of those people have political power, which can result in a SysAdmin being a dick to the unemployment people.
Slashdot Mirror
This is something I keep hearing from people, particularly those who balk at paying for upgrades to expensive fire suppression systems. "They're always built so well that there's never been a case of a server room destroyed by fire." I always did doubt that, and now whenever they tell me that, I can point to this.
What a shame.
Yet you wasted time reading down this far into the responses to find out about that link?
You speak Truth, Gigs, and it's one that many people choose not to accept.
My entire career, I've been told to follow this path or that, and learn as much as I can about this topic or that topic. For various reasons, I took a middle path between the specialist and generalist, and became very good with Windows and competent (and still learning) in Linux and Cisco. I intend, over the next couple of years, to add FreeBSD and Solaris to my skill list, including some mid-level certifications. This will help to keep me out of knowledge-dulling management and in real positions that have an effect and keep me sharp.
Incidentally, this has helped me in the career choice that I have chosen to follow, and that is security. Having a broader sense of the capabilities of different systems has allowed me to look at a given situation and recommend a more flexible solution for it. Sometimes it's homogenous, and sometimes not; everything has its strengths and weaknesses. If I need to find some really obscure answer, I've used my past mentors as a knowledge network, and can usually call on at least one of them to provide me with that crucial tip or pointer.
There's an added advantage to this. Should the job market sour, I have more flexibility to get into the jobs that are available, even if they're not my immediate preference. It may be a lower-end job than I'm used to, but not-quite-happily employed is far better than homelessly unemployed.
And it is not exaclty like the 'ban guns' thing either, when did you last hear of someone getting shot to death by a guy armed with a website? :-)
I think the point was more that attempting to restrict information in a medium like the web is nearly pointless. For example, the laws in Europe forcing removal, as covered on Slashdot before, about how to derail trains were met with a great deal of derision because the material can easily be found elsewhere with a look around on a few search engines.
Besides, what's to stop protesters from advocating 'peaceful' marches (or just not specifying the level of violence expected), and then fomenting unrest at the site?
Cost is a big reason for wanting wifi.
I'm generally suspicious of wireless (I have a semi-paranoid security perspective), but cost could be a huge consideration for me, as I'm trying to figure out how to get my apartment complex to set up high-speed internet. Between a Cogent 100Mbps connection for $1000 a month and this for a central antenna, the costs to the complex may well be able to drop from close to $100,000 for wiring it into every unit to perhaps $5000-$10,000, maybe less. That's far more reasonably in the eyes of the owners, as they can pay it off more quickly. With a little luck, we might actually even be able to get some pretty high speeds for maybe $20 a month -- and the complex might even make some decent profit with it.
This is particularly true in an environment like the central California valley, where two points of land on either side of a fault line can shift as much as a foot in either direction over the course of a year or so, and that's without an earthquake.
No offense, but as a resident of California, I'd like to see some official mention of movements like this before I believe you. Movement of a faultline by a foot is an enormous amount, and the energy released in something like that is non-trivial -- it would cause tremors.
You also need to pass the background check to ensure that you're not a felon, wanted for arrest, have a restraining order against you, or have a history of mental illness.
And no, the bike analogy doesn't work. There's a difference in the law between a physical item like a bike, where ownership does completely transfer, and the TiVo. You own your TiVo, but you do not own the code inside it. Modification of the code or unauthorized access to features is something TiVo doesn't want. Fair or not, cracking this code is probably right on the border between legal and illegal. TiVo would have full justification to revoke a warranty -- or perhaps even further updates, tracked in a database by serial number -- for systems it finds hacked, cracked, or modified.
It's too difficult to remove the backdoors. They're quite useful inhouse during dev/test cycles (a QA tester notices a bug, they can easily view the log files, etc). Two branches of the software, one inhouse with the backdoors, and one w/o them for the public is a lot to deal with. What if you applied a patch to one branch, forgot about the other. Now QA has to test both branches, to make sure they're the same. QA people whine, a lot (rightfully so sometimes). They won't like that.
Not intending flamebait, but isn't this exactly what we're usually complaining about companies doing? This is one of the highest examples of insecure design. It's not that difficult to remove the backdoor code from the public release, if you code it right to begin with. I know it's just a TiVo, but at some point, a lot of these things that we refer to as "just a" will be network connected, and it's best to start early on best practices, especially since the TiVo is networkable.
Yes, people like to get into their TiVos (and other gadgets) and tinker with them. A friend who has a TiVo does it all the time, and when I see word of a new hack on Slashdot, I usually let him know. That being said, he's perfectly well aware that what he's doing can seriously screw him if he breaks something. If TiVo really wanted to lock people out, they'd disable the backdoors to begin with, and if they really needed to see the logs on a defective unit, they could load it up on a custom system that can pull the logs from the drives after putting them in a read-only configuration. It wouldn't stop everyone from getting in, but it would stop all but the most determined.
Kudos to you for disabling unused services, but just because something is disabled doesn't necessarily mean you don't need to patch it. Suppose it does need to be enabled, perhaps a year from now, for some temporary purpose, and this vulnerability doesn't cross your mind at the time. Or maybe you won't even be there, and your replacement finds some reason to re-enable it. Whatever the case, finding a reason to not patch it is not a good practice in my mind.
:) Of course, if it's not even installed in the first place, then I guess you don't have to worry about it in the first place.
You may sleep easier tonight than some other people, and you may not be racing to log in and patch it like some other admins are, but come the morning you probably should be planning on patching it. But I'm sure that's already on your schedule.
The problem is that once you require blocking at the backbone level, you're extending a single country's laws to the entire internet, which most people agree is a Bad Idea. What happens when laws collide? France and Germany have strong anti-Nazi laws; many other nations allow people to speak out as Nazis. Staying on the child pornography issue, some European nations allow nude modeling as young as 16, whereas the United States blocks most such photography for anyone under 18. Whose side does a backbone provider take in that case?
I still believe that backbone and other pure network providers should be left alone. They carry bits, and that's it. Any company that provides storage should be held unaccountable for their customers, unless and until it is brought to their attention and investigated (which should take all of a few minutes). If it's child porn or something else similarly illegal, they can shut down access, follow a procedure to provide copies of the data and any applicable logs for access to the proper authorities, and then their hands are washed of it. If they believe that a law is unjust, they can choose to fight it, but only in that case should they have any further involvement or liability.
I've heard a persistent legend from various people I've known attached to the military that the prototype U-2 was too good a glider. After the first test flight, the pilot was coming in for a landing, and couldn't get the damned thing on the ground. The wings provided so much lift that, combined with ground effect, it just wouldn't touch down. Finally, on about the third go-around, the pilot resorted to stalling the plane, resulting in a harsh landing that did a little damage to the landing gear and had engineers screaming at him for such a dangerous maneuver. The wings were reduced slightly in size, though, as a result of it, and testing continued successfully from there.
Of course, not having spoken to anyone who was actually there or on the design team, I don't know if it's true, but I've heard a nearly identical story from at least four sources in two branches (Navy and Air Force).
That motorcycle also cost US$37,000.
Yes, it is. With limited exceptions, the US Constitution applies to anyone under its jurisdiction, meaning that they have the right to free speech, the right to a speedy trial, the right to not have troops stationed in their homes here, etc. Gun ownership is the only one that comes to mind that may have exceptions, other than the exceptions anyone else is under (no yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater, etc).
I've actually made a couple of posts as an American defending Canadians, but now that I see how cheap your broadband is, I hate you all. I hope Zimbabwe invades and sinks your linky subs and enslaves the lot of you. :)
Well, now that we know your shift key works...
Yes, I'm an American. Yes, I'm pro-American. Yes, I poke fun at Canada. I just wanted to get that out of the way.
I've seen few people in the Western World more fiercely proud of their nation than Canadians, speaking in general terms. This kind of pride, though, is often the reason I poke fun at them. Anyone who tries to sit up on a high horse like this deserves it, and that includes my own country from time to time.
You should look around a bit, as there are many countries importing much of their economies, be it temporary because of economic disaster as North Korea does, or permanent because of poor resources, as some African and Middle East nations do. In addition, while the US is moving more towards a service-based economy, I think suggesting that our manufacturing capabilities have somehow become non-existent is an overstatement.
Finally, I'm interested in knowing how it is you can predict the economy decades in advance like that. Considering that a mere 15 or 20 years ago, there were fears of Japan taking too much control of the world economy and now the government is struggling to stave off bankruptcy, I'd think that would show that fortunes can turn too rapidly to try to predict such things.
It's not nearly that prevalent. According to http://www.optium.com/canarie/diabetes.htm, the rate for the United States is about 5.2% (15M out of 280M), and the rate for Canada is 5.3% (1.7M out of 31.9M), which are approximately identical. The total populations are derived from the CIA World Factbook.
Most of that price increase is in taxes as greedy politicians attach 'sin taxes' to cigarettes. New York and California pay more than 100% taxes when everything's added up, IIRC.
As for the ownership issue, I would think that since it's hardware, the purchaser owns it. Microsoft might claim rights to the installed software, but what one can do with the hardware itself should be more clear-cut. I don't have any consoles myself, but I don't recall seeing a EULA on the boxes in the stores.
That actually leads to an interesting point. There are a number of bands that are locally well-known that manage to make a decent amount of money *and* get a professional CD out without the help of the RIAA companies. I can't think of the name of the group (not my music choice, so it never sticks in my mind), but my brother is a roadie for one of them, and they manage to play to packed houses at the Whiskey and the House of Blues in Southern California, and they're occasionally invited to play in venues outside of California.
I wish I knew their feelings on MP3 trading; it would be interesting to find out.
The reason that singles died out was that the distributions were so expensive. I remember seeing some CD singles that were selling for $9, and the full CD sold for $15 (this was a few years ago). Why pay $9 when for $6 more you can get another 8-15 songs, some of which have a chance at being good?
David Graf (Tackleberry) is the Police Academy cast member who died, and he was 50. He died nine days short of his 51st birthday of a heart attack.
Either set up a mirrored (I hate calling that RAID-0. It's not R.)
Then don't call it RAID-0. Call it RAID-1, which is what it is. RAID-0 is striping; RAID-1 is mirroring. And it is redundant -- if it weren't for my RAID-1 setup, I would have lost all my data when my hard drive crashed last month.
The personnel cost issues are the same ones that drove the 800 directories in the united states to ditch their operators and go with an entirely voice-activated system. Unfortunately, there seems to be NO way to get to a live human, even when the thing doesn't get the right item. For instance, about a week ago, I needed the number for Pacific Bell Internet so I could find out some things about their internet connectivity on Macs. I asked for "Pacific Bell Internet" and got the main Pacific Bell line, which has nothing to do with their internet branch.
Early in the use of these new systems, I got frustrated and finally got to a live person, and talked with her for a few minutes about the coming changeover. She gave me the address where I could send a letter protesting it, and also, at my request, transferred me to her supervisor, with whom I also spoke for a few minutes. They were very happy to hear that I had a problem with the new system, and encouraged me to send the letter. Apparently it didn't do much good at the time, but maybe soon they'll go back on it.
I used to work for Toshiba America Medical Systems, which makes things like MRIs, CT scanners, PET scanners, and other such fun and highly-sensitive stuff that cost anywhere from a couple hundred thousand dollars to over a million. Though I was a simple desktop support monkey at the time, I occasionally had to step into the QA department to fix their computers. Before doing so, we had to ground ourselves and put on an ESD smock. Mind you, I never went closer than maybe five or six meters to any non-desktop-computer equipment, but the simple fear that I could transfer something was enough reason to enforce the rules rigidly. Of course, *I* thought it was cool, though my older colleagues thought otherwise.
Possible failures here carry an extra problem, similar to the problems mentioned by another poster and his references to Raytheon's Missile Systems division. In my case, if something in the scanner didn't work quite right, it could potentially cause a misdiagnosis, and in the Raytheon case, if that's the last missile the pilot has in a dogfight and it doesn't explode when it's supposed to, he could be toast.
ESD failures for most people are a nuisance. For others, they can be downright deadly.
I'm guessing you've never been married. Women get the men to do their heavy lifting so they can stay pretty for us, or at least for the guy that comes along after us while we're busy doing the actual heavy lifting.
Aside from the managerial politics mentioned by the others, as well as the technical issue of moving between e-mail servers, there's also the Dick Factor. Specifically, the users will see the IT department as a bunch of dicks for forcing them to change from something they like. If they know specifically who ordered the change, and don't get an extraordinarily good reason for it (virtually impossible), they will see that SysAdmin as the biggest dick of the group, and some of those people have political power, which can result in a SysAdmin being a dick to the unemployment people.