An anonymous reader writes "I'm the Senior Developer at a fairly large agency, we're currently a 100% LAMP shop, but I've heard a reliable report through the grapevine that the management a few levels above our office wants to standardize our region on MS.NET. As I'm sure most of you can appreciate, to do such a thing would be... counterproductive, and I could really do with a hand conveying this to a manager whose only real knowledge of Linux is "if it's so good, why would you give it away for free?"
Question: Ask him if he charges his children for the parenting he gives them? Must be worthless, then, right?
Question: Ask him how it is in the company's best interests to spend money on something you can get for free?
Question; Ask him how much he thinks it would cost to convert over, and then give him an estimate of what you could do with the money on your existing LAMP platform.
My guess: FEAR. It seems to me he's afraid that *something* *will* go *wrong* and he wants to be able to Cover His Posterior. (See: Sarbanes-Oxley Act.) Address his fear by pointing out the REALITY of what happens WHEN something goes wrong.
MS.NET: File a bug report. Wait. Hope nobody exploits it while waiting. Wait for fix to be developed. Wait for Patch Tuesday. Continue to be vulnerable while waiting.
LAMP: File a bug report. Wait. *OR* Look at the sources. Find the bug. Fix bug and move along. Problem solved.
Of course, he could mention about coding a work-around, but that holds true for either platform. It's a non-factor.
It might help to also point out that with LAMP, it is possible to be pro-active and actively search for vulnerabilities. Seeing as others would have the
same interest in safety, this has already been done to a some extent, but you still have the option of doing this yourself. With MS.NET, you're screwed. It's closed source and there's no way to investigate what problems are there. Security by obscurity? Right.
Still, with a bug in.NET the manager can say it's a bug with Microsoft and wave his hands around it. Sounds good, but in the meantime, his hands are tied, and
the brown stuff is still hitting the spinnie-thingie. With LAMP, he CAN do more than just wait for a fix... and any fix that can be implemented in less than a month is a win compared to Windows.
I know I waved my hands around some in the preceding, but the manager really doesn't care HOW your code works, or even WHAT your code is written in. He's just looking at an abstract "applications that do FOO". Speak to him at his level. Get him to be specific about his fears. For each one, address what could be done with either platform. Provide a reasonable time line. Keep harping on having to wait for MS to get back to you with a fix, while, with LAMP, you could have already constructed one.
FTFA:
A new study from UCLA showed that monkeys, like humans, learn faster by being actively involved [CC] in the learning process rather than just having information placed before them, according to a story in ScienceDaily."
Reminds of two old sayings:
If you really want to understand something, try explaining it to someone else.
Tell me, and I will forget...
Show me, and I may remember...
Involve me, and I will understand.
I've seen several good suggestions already with specific suggestions on tools or parts. Start with those. My suggestion is quite simple, actually: Why GUESS what you need, when you can find out for sure?
Tear down one ENTIRE rack. (Or several, if they have any variations.)
Pull out ALL the servers.
Pull out ALL the switches and routers.
Disconnect ALL the cables.
Unscrew EVERY screw and EVERY bolt.
Disassemble each different server's internals:
Pull out EVERY board.
Remove the power supplies.
Pull out the motherboards.
Ditto for any COMMs hardware (e.g. cards, etc.)
Now, look at this big pile of parts in front of you and imagine what you would do WHEN *ANY* one of them breaks.
Get several spares for each of those parts and put into the cart.
Whatever tools you needed for disassembly, put into a crash cart.
Then make another, identical cart. When the brown stuff hits the spinnie thingie, and multiple systems are down, the last thing you want to be doing is fighting over tools. Get spares of EVERYTHING so at least TWO people can work on things at the same time! You'll thank me when there's two of you trying to work on both sides of a rack.
NOTE: Be sure to inventory what you put into each cart! Tools have a way of growing legs and you want to be able to check and make sure that you STILL have ALL the tools.
And please consider getting a big-ass UPS for your cart (At least 1KVA). If your power is wonky, you want to be sure your cart's equipment (laptop, hub, switch, router, etc.) won't be flaking out as the power comes and goes. Even with the power out, you can plug one server into the UPS and restore/repair it while the power is still out. While you're at it, also get some LONG extension cords (100-foot) made of AT LEAST 12-gauge wire. Plug the UPS into the extension cord.
Think you're all set? Now, using ONLY the tools on ONE crash cart, put the rack back together. With the power out. (i.e. no mains)
When you have done this, not only will you be CERTAIN that you have all the tools you needed to [re]assemble everything, you'll actually have done so and will have run into (hopefully) most of the problems that you could encounter.
That's it off the top of my head. Best of luck to you!
P.S. One last thing: MANY rolls of Duct Tape! <grin>
...people could now be charged with criminal copyright infringement even if such infringement has not actually taken place.
Reading that made me want to vomit. That's how I learned the link needed to be corrected:
"Intellectual Property Enhanced Criminal enforcement ACt". Somehow, it just seems fitting to call it the IPECAC bill. Besides, what did you expectorant?
FTFS:
"A responsive sub-flooring system made up of blocks that depress slightly under the force of human steps would be installed beneath the station's main lobby.
And when the snow comes in winter, when the floor is wet and/or icy, people will be falling all over the place increasing their energy donation to the system. <sarcasm>grin</sarcasm>
But seriously, just how much would it COST to build, install, and maintain a floor-wide energy absorbing system? May I suggest they put these panels under the stairs, instead? Especially on the stairs going DOWN. Take advantage of the energy of the crowds where the investment is smallest and the payback is the greatest. This could even be developed as an after-market item and installed ANYWHERE, without having to modify existing infrastructure. i.e. place meta-steps on top of the existing steps and then wire the meta-steps together.
Wikia has aquired the Grub sourcecode from LookSmart. We will be posting the complete, current codebase as soon as possible, here on Grub.org. In the meantime, signup and stay tuned to developments regarding getting Grub going again.
Translation: Development had slowed to a SNAIL's pace(*), but now casting off its SHELL, we bring you a new and improved (TM) GRUB!
I suggest that GPS transmitters be installed on all vehicles (public AND private) of all elected officials (local, county, state, and federal). Further, such info should be posted, continuously, to a web site for the public to monitor and review. Historical information should be available for download and/or searching. Who would be against fighting potential corruption?
With the continuing advances in technology and in price/performance ratios, it is not hard to imagine such plate recognition technology becoming ubiquitous. This could with continuous expansion lead to continuous surveillance of all vehicles. Just to make sure there are no problems with doing such a thing, I would like to see our government leaders actually LEAD and demonstrate to us how effective and safe it is, before they require such a thing for the rest of us.
Accuracy I've not yet seen a post addressing the accuracy of the license plate recognition. OCR technology is far from perfect, and that is with a *stationary* document; not a vehicle moving at highways speeds. I saw no mention of how they address the issues of false positives AND of false negatives.
From the article:-
Letting the hackers have the source codes, operating manuals and unlimited access to the voting machines "is like giving a burglar the keys to your house,'' said Steve Weir, clerk-recorder of Contra Costa County and head of the state Association of Clerks and Election Officials. This is simply not true! The analogue in the real world of locks and keys is that you have given a burgler the design blueprints of the lock. NOT the code combination or the key lever settimgs. The demonstrated ignorance of the said Steve Weir about secure computing begs the question "How did he get appointed to his positions?" This is directly responded to in the
Overview of Red Team Reports in section 3.1 (page 5):
(NB: emphasis added.)
Finally, no security should ever rely solely on secrecy of defensive mechanisms and
countermeasures. [2] While not publishing details of security mechanisms is perfectly
acceptable as one security mechanism, it is perhaps the one most easily breached,
especially in this age of widespread information dissemination. Worse, it provides a false
sense of security. Dumpster diving, corporate espionage, outright bribery, and other
techniques can discover secrets that companies and organizations wish to keep hidden;
indeed, in many cases, organizations are unaware of their own leaking of information. A
perhaps classic example occurred when lawyers for the DVD Copyright Control
Association sued to prevent the release of code that would decipher any DVD movie file.
They filed a declaration containing the source code of the algorithm. One day later, they
asked the court to seal the declaration from public view--but the declaration had been
posted to several Internet web sites, including one that had over 21,000 downloads of the
declaration! [9] More recently, Fox News reported that information posing "a direct
threat to U.S. troops... was posted carelessly to file servers by government agencies and
contractors, accessible to anyone online" [8], and thefts of credit card numbers and
identities are reported weekly and growing in number. Thus, the statement that attackers
could not replicate what red team testers do, because the red team testers have access to
information that other attackers would not have, profoundly underestimates the ability
and the knowledge of attackers, and profoundly overestimates the infallibility of
organizations and human nature.
[2] This is often called "security through obscurity".
FTFA: Let's consider one other option: Could TiVo sell itself, perhaps to Cisco/Scientific Atlanta or Motorola? Not likely. True, the company is affordable. TiVo's market cap was around $550 million as of Thursday. The problem is that TiVo carries baggage -- i.e., its existing business model. Cisco/SA and Motorola wouldn't want to continue to service and support the 4.3 million TiVo subscribers out there, and it would be a rather pricey acquisition just to get the technology. I can't imagine buying TiVo would tickle Comcast's fancy either.(emphasis added)
The author of the article apparently perceives support of 4.3 million fanatic users as a burden!!??!!! I propose that Google would do well to buy TiVo.
Granted, there are additional costs beyond an acquisition: building the wireless infrastructure, merging it all together... but to put this in perspective, I just checked market caps:
(NB: GOOG's Market Cap went up $190M while I was writing this post.)
Lessee, $4.6B + $0.55B = $5.1B for nation-wide reach, a fanatic user-base (TiVo users), direct access to what customers are watching (more data!), YouTube tie-in capability (they already have a distributed video infrastructure)... what's not to like?
Heck, google could afford to give TiVos away, and have a guaranteed platform on which to sell its ads - nationwide, just for a few $billion more.
Prediction: if Google gets the wireless spectrum it is looking for, I expect to see "GooTiVo" (TM) within a year.
FTFS:
While many technology companies load their products up with buttons, Steve Jobs treats them as blemishes [CC] that add complexity and hinder their clean aesthetics.
I see his point, but OTOH, there are times when buttons ARE preferable. I can text a message on my cellphone without looking at the phone because there is a tactile reference to where each key is located. This is quite handy (pun intended!) Try texting a message inconspicuously at your next boring meeting.
I know this is/. and actually reading the article is unusual, but *I* did and came upon this:
A computing architecture made from nanomechanical transistors thus is competitive with 45 nm CMOS technology Note 2, while taking a step towards enabling reversible computing. (emphasis added)
I would LOVE to see THAT happen!
<dream>Whenever a program crashes, just open the debugger, run it backwards until it gets "weird". Run it forwards and backwards again to isolate where it's broken. Of course, there are some problems with asynchronous signals (disk I/O, keyboard, mouse, etc.) but I can dream, can't I?</dream>
But seriously, could this just be something thrown in to help get more funding or is it an actual possibility?
It's harder to aquire the needed control, but certainly not impossible. There are places that will help you.
There are so many ways. Be government. Pay off a phone company insider. Set up your own phony phone company even.
Thanks for the feedback! Your response got me to wondering, so I just did some googling. It appears from the first link I found:
Automated Caller ID / ANI Spoofing that it is relatively easy to spoof either of these, today, as long as one has access to a willing VOIP company. Didn't used to be so easy!
Quoth the parent:
So, they are working off of a sample size of twenty??? Not sure if I would draw too many conclusions from this dataset.
Agreed! But look closer:
FTFA:
REALITY: It's Safer In the Back.
The funny thing about all those expert opinions: They're not really based on hard data about actual airline accidents. A look at real-world crash stats, however, suggests that the farther back you sit, the better your odds of survival. Passengers near the tail of a plane are about 40 percent more likely to survive a crash than those in the first few rows up front.
That's the conclusion of an exclusive Popular Mechanics study that examined every commercial jet crash in the United States, since 1971, that had both fatalities and survivors. The raw data from these 20 accidents has been languishing for decades in National Transportation Safety Board files, waiting to be analyzed by anyone curious enough to look and willing to do the statistical drudgework.
What *I* would like to see: a comparison of severity of injury vs seating location. They used only two statistical baskets: dead or not-dead.
How many survived UNinjured? Where were THEIR seats? Of those who were injured, how severe were the injuries, and where were THEY seated? Sure, there's a gray area there, but isn't that what is done with triage? (see: triage, Simple Triage And Rapid Treatment, and also Emergency department).
For example, the article states a survival rate of 56 percent in the section behind first/business class and ahead of the wing and the SAME 56 percent survival rate for those in the section OVER the wing. (See the picture.) And were the various injuries equally distributed, too? What about burns? (Isn't the jet fuel primarily stored in the wings? Hmmm, how many of the crashes were on takeoff, during flight, or during landing?)
So, I commend them for taking this first look at the data, but I would love to see them perform a follow-up analysis. Ideally, publishing the data they found in machine-readable form for others who are interested to perform more in-depth analysis.
Most carriers offer a "skip passcode" feature that lets you turn off voice mail password-checking when you call from your cell phone. But because carriers use Caller ID to verify the phone, cell phones "spoofing" another phone's number can get in, enabling hackers to access your voice mail and other features without ever knowing the password.
If spoofed CID info allows access to YOUR mobile phone's voice mail, then (IMNSHO) it's time to change carriers!!!
Background: I worked for a specialized PBX company, hardware and software, in the late 1990's. Things may have changed since then, but I have no doubt I'll get educated quickly if that is the case!:-)
The quoted part from the article continues a common misconception. First, some definitions:
CID: "Caller ID". Just another call feature, can be be readily spoofed (via Asterisk, PBX, web-sites, etc.)
ANI: Automatic Number Information (AFAIK) cannot be spoofed.
Let's try some use cases to put this in perspective:
Case 1: Plain Old Call
Someone calls me and I see a CID number displayed on my phone. No guarantee of accuracy -- easily spoofed or suppressed data.
Case 2: Collect Call When someone calls me collect, my bill will contain the ANI data, which may or may not match the CID info I see on my phone.
The premise is this: If I am paying for the call, then I am entitled to see what I am paying for. IIRC, even a call from an unpublished number will appear in my phone bill.
Case 3: Toll Free Calls
The same concept applies for calls made to a toll-free number (1-800-xxx-xxxx, 1-888-xxx-xxxx, 1-877-xxx-xxxx, etc.)
The call costs nothing for the CALLER, because the CALLEE is paying for the call. The CALLEE is entitled to know what they are paying for; the actual phone number that you call from will appear in their phone bill.
Here's the confusion: For an additional fee, the CALLEE can receive the actual phone number (ANI) transmitted in real time, instead of waiting for their bill to arrive. This affords the CALLEE the ability to do customer-centric things like pre-fetching data about your account based on your phone number. This seems to an ordinary user to be the same as CID, but it is not; the source and veracity of the data is quite different!
OTOH, Even if the carrier uses ANI, a couple minutes' access to the actual phone would still provide ready access to your voice mail, unless this "feature" is deactivated.
What happens if you're deprived of your, uh, offline storage? would you suddenly be unable to contact anyone because the information is not in your brain at all?
Of course not -- that's what the people who are over 50 are for: backups!! <grin>
But seriously, that brings into question what is my disaster recovery plan? In the "good old days", when I lost my little black book, I was SOL... it's just too much work to manually copy over every entry... and even then there was likely to be typos.
Today, I can daily sync the data in my PDA and mobile phone with my desktop and from there do daily backups to offline and offsite storage. If I lose *ANY* of those, then I'm only inconvenienced for a short while.
I think the focus on what people remember or how much people remember is missing the whole point of the matter.
For me, it all boils down to this: How can I best accomplish my daily tasks?
FTA: As many as a third of those surveyed under the age of 30 were unable to recall their home telephone number without resorting to their mobile phones or to notes.
Years ago: I memorized people's phone numbers because I had to actually dial their number to call them. If I did not remember their phone number, that meant I had to find someplace that it was WRITTEN DOWN (e.g. little black book, business card in my wallet, telephone directory). For someone who I called frequently, much less effort was required to remember their phone number than there was in looking up their number each and every time. IOW a cache hit (memorizing the phone number) was a big save compared to a cache miss (having to look up their phone number).
Today: The cost of a cache hit (knowing the phone number): I DIAL A 10-DIGIT NUMBER. The cost of a cache miss (do not know the phone number): VOICE-DIAL MY MOBILE PHONE ("CALL Jim-at-home")
So why would I even WANT to remember phone numbers? It provides no "value" to me, it takes up valuable resources in my brain that I use for comparatively more useful things.
FTA: When it came to remembering important dates such as the birthdays of close family relatives, 87 per cent of those over the age of 50 could remember the details, compared with 40 per cent of those under the age of 30.
Years ago: I'm out shopping and wondering if I need to pick up any greeting cards (birthday, anniversary, etc.) If I do not remember *ALL* birthdays and anniversaries, etc. then I need to refer to my "little black book" OR, not having one with me, waiting until I get home and can look it up on the calendar on the wall. If I forgot a date, then it meant another trip back to the store to get a card. Ouch.
Today: I always have my mobile phone with me. I look on the calendar page for this month (Menu, 7, 2, Enter, right, right, right, etc.) and can tell at a glance at each of the upcoming days what is coming up, for whom, and how soon.
FTA: Professor Roberston, who oversaw the research to mark the launch of Puzzler Brain Trainer Magazine, said that a series of five simple exercises a day can help to increase memory capacity. (emphasis added)
I honestly do not know if there is a connection here, but *I find it interesting there is a financial incentive behind the research's funding. He who pays the piper calls the tune? Hmmm, now who said that anyway? Let me take a look on google...:-)
I'd like to take this one step further and make a suggestion for our politicians to show their good-faith interest in establishing such laws... volunteer to go first.
What kind of data aggregation will take place? How many databases will this tie in with? Which organizations will have access to this data? What systems will be used to cull license plate numbers/face recognition/and other such patterns?
The purpose of using the databases is to help make the needles stick out in the haystack of our lives. For example: License Plate Number provides an index to a person's name, address, and driver's license number. From that, it would be easy for the government to determine what the person's social security number is. That, in turn, connects to all of a person's financial information (income tax returns) and accounts (bank, credit card, debit card, stock market, investments, etc.)
Rather than make ALL of that information readily available to everyone, I propose that only a token demonstration of their sincerity is needed: start by passing a law that requires ALL legislators, senators, mayors, governors, and judges be REQUIRED to have bright Orange License Plates on ALL of their personal vehicle(s). And, that ANYONE can videotape them, at ANY time, in ANY public venue whether Pthey are driving, have just parked and are walking on the sidewalk, are walking through the park, whatever. If you are doing nothing wrong, then you have nothing to hide, right? And since you are in a public area, you have no expectation of privacy, right?
IOW: When YOU (lawmakers) make it easy for US to watch YOU, then I will *consider* making it easier for YOU to watch ME.
And, BTW, I'm astonished that given all the interest in video games that I've seen expressed on/. and with all the heightened realism that today's videa games can display, I've noticed an amazing omission. All the posts I've seen just assume that the videos are acurate depictions of reality. Just how much computing power does it require to "enhance" a video recording to make it contain what "they" want it to contain? Sure, it's beyond Joe Sixpack, right now, but with the continuing improvement in computing power and video-processing application, int he hands of a skilled professional, it wouldn't take much to create whatever "they" wanted. Simply plant a suspicious artifact in the video "recording" and take it from there.
P.S. I made a conscious decision to exclude police from this suggestion as they put their lives on the line every day. Their line of work will naturally result in some people with "resentments" who might wish to exact revenge. So, for that reason, I excluded them from the suggested list of participants in the OLPC (Orange License Plate Club:-) But, I add the proviso that if they break the law and violate our confidence in them (e.g. corruption), then they are entitled to a free membership, too.
I would rather see the patent process made a little more transparent: any patent application has to go through 90 days on a public wiki or discussion board, where we could view applications and immediately reference prior art. This might simplify the job of the patent reviewers, who cannot possibly know the history of entire industries. They could simply check out the claims of prior art (which themselves could be ranked by visitors for validity -- "oh ya, I remember THAT") and immediately see that, duh, one-click purchasing is a really dumb idea.
Why would anyone participate? First, it's in our nature. You might have heard of Slashdot, where people with varying kinds of brain matter make varying kinds of comments about varying kinds of "news."
Why take somebody else's word for it when you can watch the actual talk? Thanks to conference organizer Kevin Werbach:
http://conversationhub.com/2007/06/27/video-john-k neuer-on-spectrum-policy-and-network-neutrality/ [conversationhub.com]
Thanks for that link! I watched the whole presentation and discussion. What I saw/heard was far less incendiary than what I was led to expect from TFA summary. Seemed to me that Kneuer handled himself relatively calmly in the midst of a confrontational audience. At least
twice he asked for the audience to bring on the hard questions.
Here's my take on it;
Kneuer claimed we've got some great infrastructure in place.
Audience member pointed out we're 19th in the world in availability of high-speed internet access.
There's this 700 MHz band becoming available with the movement of TV broadcasting from analog to digital.
There is a market for the US government to auction off this spectrum (i.e. raise $BIGNUM for the government).
Also implied, if the barrier to entry is high enough, then there can be no competition from groups other than the incumbent telecom companies.
There are some people who want some of that spectrum to be made freely available to consumers, just as the 2.4GHz spectrum was. (I woul dlike that to happen, too.)
This spectrum is especially valuable because the 700 MHz band, by nature of its frequency, can readily be a more long-distance transmission medium than 2.4 GHz spectrum could ever hope to be (Watt for Watt). (I don't know if this is true; it's just what I picked up on from the discussion... can anyone confirm/deny the better/worse ability of this spectrum to penetrate obstructions, etc. and thus be more viable as a long-distance carrier?)
My conclusions:
There's money to be had for the US government in them thar spectrum.
If we make some of it freely available:
That will be some spectrum that cannot be auctioned off, i.e. government gets less money.
If a free infrastructure can actually develop in the asked-for free-slice-of-spectrum, it diminishes the value of the part of that spectrum which gets auctioned off, i.e. government gets less money.
The existing telecoms would face heightened competition and might not be able to continue their current money-making ways.
IOW: I took this as a spirited discussion. Some good points were made, by both sides, but not really entirely understood, by either side of the discussion. Kneuer was coming from a business ($$$) perspective. The audience seemed to be coming from a purely technical side and did not acknowledge the $$$ side to the discussion.
The 3rd or 4th audience comment had the right idea, I believe. He gave a concrete example of how the non-auctioned 2.4GHz spectrum had been wildly successful. He got Kneuer to buy in to all of this for 2.4GHz. But, the audience member failed to make the connection from the tech details and speak to Kneuer at the level Kneuer is dealing with: $$$.
I'm struggling to find the right words to tie this all together. Does anyone else see the point I'm trying to make here? PLEASE take a stab at making it clearer.
Just imagine a beowolf cluster of these... Seriously!
The SBC had TWO usb host slots into which TWO of these could be plugged (back-to-back) and EACH of these could have TWO more!
And so on and so on. Sure there'd be power considerations (duh).
So, more realistically, plug a multiport USB hub into your PC, and plug one of these into each of the ports... instant cluster!
Yes, I know, there's probably has no _practical_ use like this (190 MHz; 64MB SDRAM), but just for the geekiness of it, I'd love to see someone DO it!
I'm not entirely thrilled with this idea of dynamically communicating between hardware and software. From what I got from TFA, the hardware would change dynamically based on feedback from the software.
It seems to me that we already have plenty of trouble writing programs that work correctly when the hardware does not change... imagine trying to debug a program when the computer hardware is adapting to the changes in your code. (IOW: heisenbugs.)
Also, I've got some unease when I think about what mal-ware authors could come up with using this technology. Sure, we'll come up with something else to counteract that... but I think it'll bring up another order of magnitude's worth of challenge in this cat and mouse game we already have.
Slashdot Mirror
Question: Ask him if he charges his children for the parenting he gives them? Must be worthless, then, right?
Question: Ask him how it is in the company's best interests to spend money on something you can get for free?
Question; Ask him how much he thinks it would cost to convert over, and then give him an estimate of what you could do with the money on your existing LAMP platform.
My guess: FEAR. It seems to me he's afraid that *something* *will* go *wrong* and he wants to be able to Cover His Posterior. (See: Sarbanes-Oxley Act.) Address his fear by pointing out the REALITY of what happens WHEN something goes wrong.
Of course, he could mention about coding a work-around, but that holds true for either platform. It's a non-factor.
It might help to also point out that with LAMP, it is possible to be pro-active and actively search for vulnerabilities. Seeing as others would have the same interest in safety, this has already been done to a some extent, but you still have the option of doing this yourself. With MS .NET, you're screwed. It's closed source and there's no way to investigate what problems are there. Security by obscurity? Right.
Testing for vulnerabilities: There's a big difference between what is POSSIBLE with: Black Box (.NET) vs White Box (LAMP).
Still, with a bug in .NET the manager can say it's a bug with Microsoft and wave his hands around it. Sounds good, but in the meantime, his hands are tied, and
the brown stuff is still hitting the spinnie-thingie. With LAMP, he CAN do more than just wait for a fix... and any fix that can be implemented in less than a month is a win compared to Windows.
I know I waved my hands around some in the preceding, but the manager really doesn't care HOW your code works, or even WHAT your code is written in. He's just looking at an abstract "applications that do FOO". Speak to him at his level. Get him to be specific about his fears. For each one, address what could be done with either platform. Provide a reasonable time line. Keep harping on having to wait for MS to get back to you with a fix, while, with LAMP, you could have already constructed one.
Reminds of two old sayings:
If you really want to understand something, try explaining it to someone else.
Tell me, and I will forget...
Show me, and I may remember...
Involve me, and I will understand.
I've seen several good suggestions already with specific suggestions on tools or parts. Start with those. My suggestion is quite simple, actually: Why GUESS what you need, when you can find out for sure?
Tear down one ENTIRE rack. (Or several, if they have any variations.)
Now, look at this big pile of parts in front of you and imagine what you would do WHEN *ANY* one of them breaks.
Get several spares for each of those parts and put into the cart.
Whatever tools you needed for disassembly, put into a crash cart.
Then make another, identical cart. When the brown stuff hits the spinnie thingie, and multiple systems are down, the last thing you want to be doing is fighting over tools. Get spares of EVERYTHING so at least TWO people can work on things at the same time! You'll thank me when there's two of you trying to work on both sides of a rack.
NOTE: Be sure to inventory what you put into each cart! Tools have a way of growing legs and you want to be able to check and make sure that you STILL have ALL the tools.
And please consider getting a big-ass UPS for your cart (At least 1KVA). If your power is wonky, you want to be sure your cart's equipment (laptop, hub, switch, router, etc.) won't be flaking out as the power comes and goes. Even with the power out, you can plug one server into the UPS and restore/repair it while the power is still out. While you're at it, also get some LONG extension cords (100-foot) made of AT LEAST 12-gauge wire. Plug the UPS into the extension cord.
Think you're all set? Now, using ONLY the tools on ONE crash cart, put the rack back together. With the power out. (i.e. no mains)
When you have done this, not only will you be CERTAIN that you have all the tools you needed to [re]assemble everything, you'll actually have done so and will have run into (hopefully) most of the problems that you could encounter.
That's it off the top of my head. Best of luck to you! P.S. One last thing: MANY rolls of Duct Tape! <grin>
...people could now be charged with criminal copyright infringement even if such infringement has not actually taken place.Reading that made me want to vomit. That's how I learned the link needed to be corrected: "Intellectual Property Enhanced Criminal enforcement ACt". Somehow, it just seems fitting to call it the IPECAC bill. Besides, what did you expectorant?
<groan>
And when the snow comes in winter, when the floor is wet and/or icy, people will be falling all over the place increasing their energy donation to the system. <sarcasm>grin</sarcasm>
But seriously, just how much would it COST to build, install, and maintain a floor-wide energy absorbing system? May I suggest they put these panels under the stairs, instead? Especially on the stairs going DOWN. Take advantage of the energy of the crowds where the investment is smallest and the payback is the greatest. This could even be developed as an after-market item and installed ANYWHERE, without having to modify existing infrastructure. i.e. place meta-steps on top of the existing steps and then wire the meta-steps together.
Wikia has aquired the Grub sourcecode from LookSmart. We will be posting the complete, current codebase as soon as possible, here on Grub.org. In the meantime, signup and stay tuned to developments regarding getting Grub going again.
Translation: Development had slowed to a SNAIL's pace(*), but now casting off its SHELL, we bring you a new and improved (TM) GRUB!
(*) From: Member Statistics (as of 20070730 at 14:47 EDT)
Let's see here:
38.3737 YEARS!I suggest that GPS transmitters be installed on all vehicles (public AND private) of all elected officials (local, county, state, and federal). Further, such info should be posted, continuously, to a web site for the public to monitor and review. Historical information should be available for download and/or searching. Who would be against fighting potential corruption?
With the continuing advances in technology and in price/performance ratios, it is not hard to imagine such plate recognition technology becoming ubiquitous. This could with continuous expansion lead to continuous surveillance of all vehicles. Just to make sure there are no problems with doing such a thing, I would like to see our government leaders actually LEAD and demonstrate to us how effective and safe it is, before they require such a thing for the rest of us.
Accuracy I've not yet seen a post addressing the accuracy of the license plate recognition. OCR technology is far from perfect, and that is with a *stationary* document; not a vehicle moving at highways speeds. I saw no mention of how they address the issues of false positives AND of false negatives.
[2] This is often called "security through obscurity".
Here is an article about it on Toyota's own website.
I had a little trouble parsing the article title, at first:
Happy (System Administrator) Appreciation Day.
Maybe more System Administrators would be happy if we appreciated them more?
Hey, I know! Let's have a Happy System Administrator Appreciat... Ummm... Oh. Darn.
<grin>
What DO you get if you put these together?
The author of the article apparently perceives support of 4.3 million fanatic users as a burden!!??!!! I propose that Google would do well to buy TiVo.
Granted, there are additional costs beyond an acquisition: building the wireless infrastructure, merging it all together... but to put this in perspective, I just checked market caps:
- GOOG $158 Billion ($158,390 Million)
- TIVO $.55 Billion ($000,550 Million)
(NB: GOOG's Market Cap went up $190M while I was writing this post.)Lessee, $4.6B + $0.55B = $5.1B for nation-wide reach, a fanatic user-base (TiVo users), direct access to what customers are watching (more data!), YouTube tie-in capability (they already have a distributed video infrastructure)... what's not to like?
Heck, google could afford to give TiVos away, and have a guaranteed platform on which to sell its ads - nationwide, just for a few $billion more.
Prediction: if Google gets the wireless spectrum it is looking for, I expect to see "GooTiVo" (TM) within a year.
I see his point, but OTOH, there are times when buttons ARE preferable. I can text a message on my cellphone without looking at the phone because there is a tactile reference to where each key is located. This is quite handy (pun intended!) Try texting a message inconspicuously at your next boring meeting.
Pshaw!! *I* am waiting for iDuke iNuke'm iForever! <grin>
I know this is /. and actually reading the article is unusual, but *I* did and came upon this:
A computing architecture made from nanomechanical transistors thus is competitive with 45 nm CMOS technology Note 2, while taking a step towards enabling reversible computing. (emphasis added)I would LOVE to see THAT happen!
<dream>Whenever a program crashes, just open the debugger, run it backwards until it gets "weird". Run it forwards and backwards again to isolate where it's broken. Of course, there are some problems with asynchronous signals (disk I/O, keyboard, mouse, etc.) but I can dream, can't I?</dream>
But seriously, could this just be something thrown in to help get more funding or is it an actual possibility?
:-)
But seriously, For a humorous report on just such an experiment and its analysis, see: "Squirrel Fishing; A new approach to rodent performance evaluation"; Nikolas Gloy and Yasuhiro Endo; Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences; Harvard University
There are so many ways. Be government. Pay off a phone company insider. Set up your own phony phone company even.
Thanks for the feedback! Your response got me to wondering, so I just did some googling. It appears from the first link I found: Automated Caller ID / ANI Spoofing that it is relatively easy to spoof either of these, today, as long as one has access to a willing VOIP company. Didn't used to be so easy!
Agreed! But look closer: FTFA:
REALITY: It's Safer In the Back.The funny thing about all those expert opinions: They're not really based on hard data about actual airline accidents. A look at real-world crash stats, however, suggests that the farther back you sit, the better your odds of survival. Passengers near the tail of a plane are about 40 percent more likely to survive a crash than those in the first few rows up front.
That's the conclusion of an exclusive Popular Mechanics study that examined every commercial jet crash in the United States, since 1971, that had both fatalities and survivors. The raw data from these 20 accidents has been languishing for decades in National Transportation Safety Board files, waiting to be analyzed by anyone curious enough to look and willing to do the statistical drudgework.
What *I* would like to see: a comparison of severity of injury vs seating location. They used only two statistical baskets: dead or not-dead.
How many survived UNinjured? Where were THEIR seats? Of those who were injured, how severe were the injuries, and where were THEY seated? Sure, there's a gray area there, but isn't that what is done with triage? (see: triage, Simple Triage And Rapid Treatment, and also Emergency department).
For example, the article states a survival rate of 56 percent in the section behind first/business class and ahead of the wing and the SAME 56 percent survival rate for those in the section OVER the wing. (See the picture.) And were the various injuries equally distributed, too? What about burns? (Isn't the jet fuel primarily stored in the wings? Hmmm, how many of the crashes were on takeoff, during flight, or during landing?)
So, I commend them for taking this first look at the data, but I would love to see them perform a follow-up analysis. Ideally, publishing the data they found in machine-readable form for others who are interested to perform more in-depth analysis.
FTFA:
Most carriers offer a "skip passcode" feature that lets you turn off voice mail password-checking when you call from your cell phone. But because carriers use Caller ID to verify the phone, cell phones "spoofing" another phone's number can get in, enabling hackers to access your voice mail and other features without ever knowing the password.If spoofed CID info allows access to YOUR mobile phone's voice mail, then (IMNSHO) it's time to change carriers!!!
Background: I worked for a specialized PBX company, hardware and software, in the late 1990's. Things may have changed since then, but I have no doubt I'll get educated quickly if that is the case! :-)
The quoted part from the article continues a common misconception. First, some definitions:
Let's try some use cases to put this in perspective:
The premise is this: If I am paying for the call, then I am entitled to see what I am paying for. IIRC, even a call from an unpublished number will appear in my phone bill.
The same concept applies for calls made to a toll-free number (1-800-xxx-xxxx, 1-888-xxx-xxxx, 1-877-xxx-xxxx, etc.)
The call costs nothing for the CALLER, because the CALLEE is paying for the call. The CALLEE is entitled to know what they are paying for; the actual phone number that you call from will appear in their phone bill.
Here's the confusion: For an additional fee, the CALLEE can receive the actual phone number (ANI) transmitted in real time, instead of waiting for their bill to arrive. This affords the CALLEE the ability to do customer-centric things like pre-fetching data about your account based on your phone number. This seems to an ordinary user to be the same as CID, but it is not; the source and veracity of the data is quite different!
OTOH, Even if the carrier uses ANI, a couple minutes' access to the actual phone would still provide ready access to your voice mail, unless this "feature" is deactivated.
What happens if you're deprived of your, uh, offline storage? would you suddenly be unable to contact anyone because the information is not in your brain at all?
Of course not -- that's what the people who are over 50 are for: backups!! <grin>
But seriously, that brings into question what is my disaster recovery plan? In the "good old days", when I lost my little black book, I was SOL... it's just too much work to manually copy over every entry... and even then there was likely to be typos.
Today, I can daily sync the data in my PDA and mobile phone with my desktop and from there do daily backups to offline and offsite storage. If I lose *ANY* of those, then I'm only inconvenienced for a short while.
I think the focus on what people remember or how much people remember is missing the whole point of the matter.
For me, it all boils down to this: How can I best accomplish my daily tasks?
FTA: As many as a third of those surveyed under the age of 30 were unable to recall their home telephone number without resorting to their mobile phones or to notes.So why would I even WANT to remember phone numbers? It provides no "value" to me, it takes up valuable resources in my brain that I use for comparatively more useful things.
FTA: When it came to remembering important dates such as the birthdays of close family relatives, 87 per cent of those over the age of 50 could remember the details, compared with 40 per cent of those under the age of 30.- Years ago: I'm out shopping and wondering if I need to pick up any greeting cards (birthday, anniversary, etc.) If I do not remember *ALL* birthdays and anniversaries, etc. then I need to refer to my "little black book" OR, not having one with me, waiting until I get home and can look it up on the calendar on the wall. If I forgot a date, then it meant another trip back to the store to get a card. Ouch.
- Today: I always have my mobile phone with me. I look on the calendar page for this month (Menu, 7, 2, Enter, right, right, right, etc.) and can tell at a glance at each of the upcoming days what is coming up, for whom, and how soon.
FTA: Professor Roberston, who oversaw the research to mark the launch of Puzzler Brain Trainer Magazine, said that a series of five simple exercises a day can help to increase memory capacity. (emphasis added)I honestly do not know if there is a connection here, but *I find it interesting there is a financial incentive behind the research's funding. He who pays the piper calls the tune? Hmmm, now who said that anyway? Let me take a look on google... :-)
I'd like to take this one step further and make a suggestion for our politicians to show their good-faith interest in establishing such laws... volunteer to go first.
What kind of data aggregation will take place? How many databases will this tie in with? Which organizations will have access to this data? What systems will be used to cull license plate numbers/face recognition/and other such patterns?The purpose of using the databases is to help make the needles stick out in the haystack of our lives. For example: License Plate Number provides an index to a person's name, address, and driver's license number. From that, it would be easy for the government to determine what the person's social security number is. That, in turn, connects to all of a person's financial information (income tax returns) and accounts (bank, credit card, debit card, stock market, investments, etc.)
Rather than make ALL of that information readily available to everyone, I propose that only a token demonstration of their sincerity is needed: start by passing a law that requires ALL legislators, senators, mayors, governors, and judges be REQUIRED to have bright Orange License Plates on ALL of their personal vehicle(s). And, that ANYONE can videotape them, at ANY time, in ANY public venue whether Pthey are driving, have just parked and are walking on the sidewalk, are walking through the park, whatever. If you are doing nothing wrong, then you have nothing to hide, right? And since you are in a public area, you have no expectation of privacy, right?
IOW: When YOU (lawmakers) make it easy for US to watch YOU, then I will *consider* making it easier for YOU to watch ME.
And, BTW, I'm astonished that given all the interest in video games that I've seen expressed on /. and with all the heightened realism that today's videa games can display, I've noticed an amazing omission. All the posts I've seen just assume that the videos are acurate depictions of reality. Just how much computing power does it require to "enhance" a video recording to make it contain what "they" want it to contain? Sure, it's beyond Joe Sixpack, right now, but with the continuing improvement in computing power and video-processing application, int he hands of a skilled professional, it wouldn't take much to create whatever "they" wanted. Simply plant a suspicious artifact in the video "recording" and take it from there.
P.S. I made a conscious decision to exclude police from this suggestion as they put their lives on the line every day. Their line of work will naturally result in some people with "resentments" who might wish to exact revenge. So, for that reason, I excluded them from the suggested list of participants in the OLPC (Orange License Plate Club :-) But, I add the proviso that if they break the law and violate our confidence in them (e.g. corruption), then they are entitled to a free membership, too.
Why would anyone participate? First, it's in our nature. You might have heard of Slashdot, where people with varying kinds of brain matter make varying kinds of comments about varying kinds of "news."
Prior Art: :) I posted on this idea back in Feb of 2006: PatentDot - http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=177904&cid =14756447
Also, the PTO (later) made a suggestion along these same lines: PTO Seeks Public Input on Patent Applications
Also, ChrisGilliard (913445) Suggested using the new SlashDot tagging system which I think holds promise, too.
Thanks for that link! I watched the whole presentation and discussion. What I saw/heard was far less incendiary than what I was led to expect from TFA summary. Seemed to me that Kneuer handled himself relatively calmly in the midst of a confrontational audience. At least twice he asked for the audience to bring on the hard questions. Here's my take on it;
My conclusions:
IOW: I took this as a spirited discussion. Some good points were made, by both sides, but not really entirely understood, by either side of the discussion. Kneuer was coming from a business ($$$) perspective. The audience seemed to be coming from a purely technical side and did not acknowledge the $$$ side to the discussion.
The 3rd or 4th audience comment had the right idea, I believe. He gave a concrete example of how the non-auctioned 2.4GHz spectrum had been wildly successful. He got Kneuer to buy in to all of this for 2.4GHz. But, the audience member failed to make the connection from the tech details and speak to Kneuer at the level Kneuer is dealing with: $$$.
I'm struggling to find the right words to tie this all together. Does anyone else see the point I'm trying to make here? PLEASE take a stab at making it clearer.
Just imagine a beowolf cluster of these... Seriously!
The SBC had TWO usb host slots into which TWO of these could be plugged (back-to-back) and EACH of these could have TWO more! And so on and so on. Sure there'd be power considerations (duh).
So, more realistically, plug a multiport USB hub into your PC, and plug one of these into each of the ports... instant cluster!
Yes, I know, there's probably has no _practical_ use like this (190 MHz; 64MB SDRAM), but just for the geekiness of it, I'd love to see someone DO it!
Some Links:
And a comment:
I'm not entirely thrilled with this idea of dynamically communicating between hardware and software. From what I got from TFA, the hardware would change dynamically based on feedback from the software. It seems to me that we already have plenty of trouble writing programs that work correctly when the hardware does not change... imagine trying to debug a program when the computer hardware is adapting to the changes in your code. (IOW: heisenbugs.)
Also, I've got some unease when I think about what mal-ware authors could come up with using this technology. Sure, we'll come up with something else to counteract that... but I think it'll bring up another order of magnitude's worth of challenge in this cat and mouse game we already have.