I curious about the implications to off-site backups, pretty much no one I know doing them owns the off-site facility.
For a comprehensive disaster recovery plan, installation disks, relevant media / data (say copyrighted images that you got permission to display on your website), etc. have to be stored, with a 3rd party. By the definition given wouldn't an offsite backup of say a windows XP installation disk be copyright infringement?
The example has been brought up somewhere else in this thread of you copying your disks (music / data / programs / etc) and put them in a bank's safety deposit box, could the bank be sued for copyright infringement? They meet every other criteria discussed, they are a 3rd party, you are using their facilities not your own, if they really wanted to get at your files they can and therefore open up the possibility of copying the files (I would find it hard to believe a bank can't get into a safety deposit box if they wanted to and if the FBI or other agency comes knocking they would be legally required to).
Given that google is trying to integrate the android kernel back into the vanilla kernel, it has the potential to do allot.
Google got caught between a rock and a hard place in terms of needing to show a working product and having to maintain a separate kernel vs having nothing to show for a while and keeping their patches within the linux kernel itself.
The performance of hard drives has limited what can be done on PCs for years, they are orders of magnitudes slower than any other part of the PC (short of removable disk drives) and as you have correctly pointed out many schemes have had to be designed to counter their slowness.
Any disk cache falls apart once your data set passes the size of available ram and then performance drops to the performance of the hard drive itself. There is also the issue of any caching mechanism adds overhead, and if you get allot of misses the performance benefit is almost completely negated, all you need is a somewhat random I/O pattern and it goes to hell.
If we bring this argument down to the common person on the street, will they see a difference if you upgrade the processor? probably not, ram? beyond a certain point nope (pass 2GB now a days and most can't see much difference), PCI-E 3.0 / SATA 3.0 / USB 3.0? Most devices can't even saturate the 2.0 version of these interfaces.
The day I dropped in my OCZ Vertex into my home system to say I saw an increase in performance that outmatched going from 2G to 4G and then to 12G of RAM. I see a difference from the memory but only in certain apps. I also saw little difference except in gaming going from a X2 athlon to a quad phenom. I've also seen little real difference in most apps with a Centrino duo vs a i7 (my boss's laptop vs mine). I tend to win most comparisons / tests we do due to my solid state vs his mechanical hard drive.
We are hitting diminishing returns on pretty much any other part of the chain, solid state is the only real answer at the moment but they have a size / cost issue to deal with 1st.
PDF's strong point is consistency in layout across any platform, even ePub and book formats have issues in this area when layout is important.
Magazines, Application forms (e.g. passport, drivers permit, id cards, etc), invoices are a few examples where PDF is still heavily used.
Its much easier for a web master to just include this on their site and things "just work" than to ensure that all of your clients need to download and install a PDF viewer. This becomes even more appropriate when you take the mobile side of things into account, having to fire up a separate reader can become quite annoying.
That can't happen (specifically, grabbing private files and reselling them). The day that is discovered to have happened is the day everyone leaves Dropbox forever.
Didn't dropbox already get caught with something along these lines where they admitted they can read your files? Also a "non-issue-just-clarifying" but the timing seems odd. Also how easy would it be to prove that they copied and sold the file and that it was not lost due to malware infecting your machine?
I'll accept this may be necessary to protect themselves legally but they chose one of the worst times to make the change. I've been watching the security flaws and other issues and right now I really don't think this is a company I can trust any more.
Given that this gentleman's target wasn't just the US but a UN committee even China would have been affected. Especially since this was before China became the power it is now.
Thanks for the good wishes, now that the damage is done to public perception it is going to be almost impossible to reverse this course we are on.
Can I sue / file a FoIA request to find out what the patents themselves are?
As someone else in this thread states "as long as they keep the licensing cost below the cost of a legal battle companies will license".
As with most open source patent cases, as long as it is known what the infringing chunks of code are they will be speedily removed.
The signs of "humiliating desperation" comes from who Microsoft is targeting. Google is already being sued by Oracle right now over the Java side of things, teaming up or even suing Google separately would add even more stress to Google's legal team and would make perfect sense right now, IF the attack couldn't be easily countered / deflected.
One possible answer to this is that Microsoft is trying to build momentum in preparation for Google but as has also been pointed out laws trump contracts so other than providing income streams to show investors this has to be part of some bigger strategy Microsoft has because even they seem to (indirectly) acknowledge this isn't going to last forever.
Take a good read of your article, no where does it state the number of PEOPLE killed by wind energy. Instead it talks about birds / bats when talking about wind vs people for coal. Exploding bats sounds like fun though I can't say I've ever heard about that before so I'd definitely say that's one for the Mythbusters to investigate.
"Violently spinning turbine blades are a potential decapitation hazard for curious passers-by who climb up the ladders often installed on the shafts. Also, these high, easy-to-climb structures can be an irresistible temptation for depressives lost in the flatlands where turbines are usually sited, and seeking a means of suicide." This is even more fun, if the appropriate security is not in place at a coal facility I can easily see the "curious passers-by" argument working, same applies to depressives.
If you want to refute the GP at least answer my 1st point about the apples to oranges comparison. The article goes into wind turbines can induce the butterfly effect and produce tornadoes.
Co-location / Dedicated server - These guys took racks of equipment, and judging from what I can get off of google's cache of DigitalOne's site these guys don't offer shared hosting "DigitalOne offers Quad and Six core Xeon CPU's Blade Servers, equipped up to 128GB of memory, RAID controllers and SAS/SATA and Flash (SLC) hard drives.". Neither of those offer a solution to this problem, especially when you take into account the fact that the company actually told the FBI what server to take / which one they were after. Co-locating somewhere else? They'll just hit both at once, come on you haven't seen those cop shows on TV. While I'll concede that you aren't their target, I find it hard to believe that a bunch of hackers only have 1 server to co-ordinate their activities.
A hosting provider who has the capability to quickly bring in a backup - Lets think of this a different way, if this was the command and control for a botnet do you really think the FBI will let them bring it back online? Also if backups exist, the FBI would most likely take them to analyze what the servers have actually been doing.
Best defense is actually get a different hosting provider in a country that is not friendly to the US which will therefore say F U when the FBI comes knocking. No amazon hosting over in Europe probably won't do because the FBI has jurisdiction over at least part of the company. Lets just hope the hackers don't pick the same places.
Oh yeah, this is what the innocent have to do to protect themselves from their government, not the hackers. Terrorism - 1, US - 0.
DigitalOne provided all necessary information to pinpoint the servers for a specific I.P. address, Mr. Ostroumow said. However, the agents took entire server racks, perhaps because they mistakenly thought that “one enclosure is = to one server,” he said in an e-mail.
Even if you are a Fortune 500 company, if you become a burden do you really think Google is going to give a damn?
Almost by definition cloud companies have to reach large scales to become profitable, so even the largest of their customers appears minuscule in comparison to the whole.
Cloud providers are applying what those MIT students learnt about blackjack, the law of large numbers.
A good explanation and while I agree this is probably be what IT should be aiming at, it can / will be abused by someone who is too lazy to do the cost/benefit analysis themselves (or even check if it will do what you need).
Oh yeah, those guys in IT have nothing better to do. Lets get them to check this out...
I agree arrogance should not be tolerated but the only reason I can see things got that bad is that the company not only accepted but encouraged that behavior which lead to the decision that your CEO had to make.
Here's a quick piece of advice, get your video camera out. there will be a repeat performance in a couple of years.
Then it should also be management's responsibility when data-breaches, etc happen.
I'd love to hear what "business needs" are, last I heard it included (but not limited to) * Provide every possible report from data that was typed by a room of monkeys. * Have everything done yesterday, including read your mind in the future so we can be prepared. * Do the above 2 points for free or near free.
Slashdot Mirror
Its quite scary that the comparison makes sense...
New AND Improved!!!
I curious about the implications to off-site backups, pretty much no one I know doing them owns the off-site facility.
For a comprehensive disaster recovery plan, installation disks, relevant media / data (say copyrighted images that you got permission to display on your website), etc. have to be stored, with a 3rd party. By the definition given wouldn't an offsite backup of say a windows XP installation disk be copyright infringement?
The example has been brought up somewhere else in this thread of you copying your disks (music / data / programs / etc) and put them in a bank's safety deposit box, could the bank be sued for copyright infringement? They meet every other criteria discussed, they are a 3rd party, you are using their facilities not your own, if they really wanted to get at your files they can and therefore open up the possibility of copying the files (I would find it hard to believe a bank can't get into a safety deposit box if they wanted to and if the FBI or other agency comes knocking they would be legally required to).
Given that google is trying to integrate the android kernel back into the vanilla kernel, it has the potential to do allot.
Google got caught between a rock and a hard place in terms of needing to show a working product and having to maintain a separate kernel vs having nothing to show for a while and keeping their patches within the linux kernel itself.
What is the slowest point in your PC?
The performance of hard drives has limited what can be done on PCs for years, they are orders of magnitudes slower than any other part of the PC (short of removable disk drives) and as you have correctly pointed out many schemes have had to be designed to counter their slowness.
Any disk cache falls apart once your data set passes the size of available ram and then performance drops to the performance of the hard drive itself. There is also the issue of any caching mechanism adds overhead, and if you get allot of misses the performance benefit is almost completely negated, all you need is a somewhat random I/O pattern and it goes to hell.
If we bring this argument down to the common person on the street, will they see a difference if you upgrade the processor? probably not, ram? beyond a certain point nope (pass 2GB now a days and most can't see much difference), PCI-E 3.0 / SATA 3.0 / USB 3.0? Most devices can't even saturate the 2.0 version of these interfaces.
The day I dropped in my OCZ Vertex into my home system to say I saw an increase in performance that outmatched going from 2G to 4G and then to 12G of RAM. I see a difference from the memory but only in certain apps. I also saw little difference except in gaming going from a X2 athlon to a quad phenom. I've also seen little real difference in most apps with a Centrino duo vs a i7 (my boss's laptop vs mine). I tend to win most comparisons / tests we do due to my solid state vs his mechanical hard drive.
We are hitting diminishing returns on pretty much any other part of the chain, solid state is the only real answer at the moment but they have a size / cost issue to deal with 1st.
PDF's strong point is consistency in layout across any platform, even ePub and book formats have issues in this area when layout is important.
Magazines, Application forms (e.g. passport, drivers permit, id cards, etc), invoices are a few examples where PDF is still heavily used.
Its much easier for a web master to just include this on their site and things "just work" than to ensure that all of your clients need to download and install a PDF viewer. This becomes even more appropriate when you take the mobile side of things into account, having to fire up a separate reader can become quite annoying.
Especially if it gets them to upgrade
That can't happen (specifically, grabbing private files and reselling them). The day that is discovered to have happened is the day everyone leaves Dropbox forever.
Didn't dropbox already get caught with something along these lines where they admitted they can read your files? Also a "non-issue-just-clarifying" but the timing seems odd. Also how easy would it be to prove that they copied and sold the file and that it was not lost due to malware infecting your machine?
I'll accept this may be necessary to protect themselves legally but they chose one of the worst times to make the change. I've been watching the security flaws and other issues and right now I really don't think this is a company I can trust any more.
And just like any one who has ever made anything worthwhile, I'm sure they hate it if the pre-release manages to get out
It is a great service if you need to share anything bigger than your e-mail provider will allow (don't forget the limits on what they will allow too).
Any business using it will most likely drop it now due to these clauses, sounds like a data breach waiting to happen.
Advertising could be deemed as a necessary to keep dropbox running.
Heck, anything that could provide them with an income stream could be seen as "to the extent we think it necessary for the Service".
They offer a free service, I can't say I see much ads so where is their income coming from???
U talking about al qaeda or lulz? al qaeda seems very capable of picking their targets.
Given that this gentleman's target wasn't just the US but a UN committee even China would have been affected. Especially since this was before China became the power it is now.
Thanks for the good wishes, now that the damage is done to public perception it is going to be almost impossible to reverse this course we are on.
Can I sue / file a FoIA request to find out what the patents themselves are?
As someone else in this thread states "as long as they keep the licensing cost below the cost of a legal battle companies will license".
As with most open source patent cases, as long as it is known what the infringing chunks of code are they will be speedily removed.
The signs of "humiliating desperation" comes from who Microsoft is targeting. Google is already being sued by Oracle right now over the Java side of things, teaming up or even suing Google separately would add even more stress to Google's legal team and would make perfect sense right now, IF the attack couldn't be easily countered / deflected.
One possible answer to this is that Microsoft is trying to build momentum in preparation for Google but as has also been pointed out laws trump contracts so other than providing income streams to show investors this has to be part of some bigger strategy Microsoft has because even they seem to (indirectly) acknowledge this isn't going to last forever.
Take a good read of your article, no where does it state the number of PEOPLE killed by wind energy. Instead it talks about birds / bats when talking about wind vs people for coal. Exploding bats sounds like fun though I can't say I've ever heard about that before so I'd definitely say that's one for the Mythbusters to investigate.
"Violently spinning turbine blades are a potential decapitation hazard for curious passers-by who climb up the ladders often installed on the shafts. Also, these high, easy-to-climb structures can be an irresistible temptation for depressives lost in the flatlands where turbines are usually sited, and seeking a means of suicide." This is even more fun, if the appropriate security is not in place at a coal facility I can easily see the "curious passers-by" argument working, same applies to depressives.
If you want to refute the GP at least answer my 1st point about the apples to oranges comparison. The article goes into wind turbines can induce the butterfly effect and produce tornadoes.
I'm not the GP but I'm interested to hear a counter to this.
Now lets tackle your countermeasures:
Co-location / Dedicated server - These guys took racks of equipment, and judging from what I can get off of google's cache of DigitalOne's site these guys don't offer shared hosting "DigitalOne offers Quad and Six core Xeon CPU's Blade Servers, equipped up to 128GB of memory, RAID controllers and SAS/SATA and Flash (SLC) hard drives.". Neither of those offer a solution to this problem, especially when you take into account the fact that the company actually told the FBI what server to take / which one they were after. Co-locating somewhere else? They'll just hit both at once, come on you haven't seen those cop shows on TV. While I'll concede that you aren't their target, I find it hard to believe that a bunch of hackers only have 1 server to co-ordinate their activities.
A hosting provider who has the capability to quickly bring in a backup - Lets think of this a different way, if this was the command and control for a botnet do you really think the FBI will let them bring it back online? Also if backups exist, the FBI would most likely take them to analyze what the servers have actually been doing.
Best defense is actually get a different hosting provider in a country that is not friendly to the US which will therefore say F U when the FBI comes knocking. No amazon hosting over in Europe probably won't do because the FBI has jurisdiction over at least part of the company. Lets just hope the hackers don't pick the same places.
Oh yeah, this is what the innocent have to do to protect themselves from their government, not the hackers. Terrorism - 1, US - 0.
RTFA
DigitalOne provided all necessary information to pinpoint the servers for a specific I.P. address, Mr. Ostroumow said. However, the agents took entire server racks, perhaps because they mistakenly thought that “one enclosure is = to one server,” he said in an e-mail.
Even if you are a Fortune 500 company, if you become a burden do you really think Google is going to give a damn?
Almost by definition cloud companies have to reach large scales to become profitable, so even the largest of their customers appears minuscule in comparison to the whole.
Cloud providers are applying what those MIT students learnt about blackjack, the law of large numbers.
A good explanation and while I agree this is probably be what IT should be aiming at, it can / will be abused by someone who is too lazy to do the cost /benefit analysis themselves (or even check if it will do what you need).
Oh yeah, those guys in IT have nothing better to do. Lets get them to check this out...
What happens to you when it fails?
I agree arrogance should not be tolerated but the only reason I can see things got that bad is that the company not only accepted but encouraged that behavior which lead to the decision that your CEO had to make.
Here's a quick piece of advice, get your video camera out. there will be a repeat performance in a couple of years.
Then it should also be management's responsibility when data-breaches, etc happen.
I'd love to hear what "business needs" are, last I heard it included (but not limited to)
* Provide every possible report from data that was typed by a room of monkeys.
* Have everything done yesterday, including read your mind in the future so we can be prepared.
* Do the above 2 points for free or near free.
Yeah, and OpenCL does all of that and works on something other than windows.
Can't you already do this with OpenCL?
My CPU appears as an OpenCL device just like my graphics card, I can ramp up / switch where it executes the same way.
lol, can we have one article with no car analogies in the comments?