That's exactly the point - if it was a bandwith-sucking attack, whether synflood or not, why exactly was a machine that traceroutes through the same router up and responsive?
first of all, a classic synflood is something that you and me can do from our home computers to some shitty webservers.. port 80 might stop accepting connections and simply time out. the box will still be up, every other service will be fine.
Yes, but the SCO Press Release states "The attack consumed about 90 percent of the available bandwidth of SCO's service provider for the entire Lindon, Utah backbone.". That does -not- sound like a synflood to me, and it *is* something that would affect servers that are accessed via the same link.
secondly, just because an ip is next to another ip doesnt mean they're connected to the same switch/hub
True. But here's a challenge for you: draw a network architecture in which two adjacent IP addresses, which are not network or broadcast addresses, do *not* have traffic passing through the same switch *somewhere*.
While you're at it, you can explain why the homicide, assault and armed robbery rates are up in Australia as well
After all, they're obviously not very large places, and surrounded by places with less restrictions -- oh, wait, no they're not.;)
ne could also go into the socio-economic forces which usually parallel crime rates.
Of course we could, and there would be the meat of a cause of a lot of crime - but it's so much easier to blame guns, especially when you want to ban them (not you specifically, I'm referring more to the anti-gun movement in general).
For the average person in fit of rage/anger, if they don't have immediate access to a gun, or had to sit through a 10 day waiting period. You are aruging that every single one of those people will instead commit the same crimes if they didn't have ready access to such a simple and suddenly lethal instrument?
No. I am arguing that many but not all would.
If everybody having guns is supposed to level the playing field between criminals and victims ( an arguement btw, that I do not buy into ), what happens when everyone has a gun, and criminals move up to more fire power?
210 lb rapist. 110 lb woman.
Both with guns, the odds are evener than niether with a gun - whoever is quickest wins, rather than who is stronger/heavier.
I don't understand how you can not see that as leveling the playing field.
As far as "everyone having a gun", I've already said that not everyone needs to have a gun. We just don't need gun ownership arbitrarily restricted to 'necessity'.
Umm, and apparently you're unaware that switches are usually plugged into routers, and if it were indeed an attacked that sucked up bandwidth, it's likely the bandwidth upstream from the router is where the pain would be felt.
Meaning that, switch or no switch, access to the ftp server ought to be sluggish.
We don't allow unliscensed doctors to perform medical procedures. Why should we allow what is in effect unliscensed police aka vigilante justice to be performed?
I never said anything about "vigilante justice".
If you attack me I have the right to defend myself. Period.
If you attack me with lethal force, I have the right to respond with lethal force.
If guns are illegal, the attacker, who is performing a criminal act already, is not going to care that he breaks an additional law by possessing and using a gun.
If the illegality of guns had any effect, how do you explain the murder rate in D.C.?
However, there is a huge disparity between the checks required to get such a permit and to simply own a gun.
Hmm - so your feeling (irrational, imho) that people owning guns will make *you* unsafe should mean that people who need a gun for self defense should be denied one?
You do understand that there have been cases where someone was trying to obtain a firearm, because they had *imminent* need of one, (a stalker, a pissed off ex-boyfriend/husband who wouldn't leave them alone, etc) who were murdered while they were waiting to obtain that firearm?
Now, if they had obtained the firearm immediately, there is no guarantee that they would be alive - but at least the odds would be better.
imho an 'instant background check' is ok, but a ten day waiting period is a bit insane.
Guns are very -simple- machines. It's not rocket science, the level of knowledge required to be safe is -very- low. *Far* less than the knowledge required to operate a car safely.
The problem is not that we let people have guns with a low level of knowledge. The problem is that there's such a fear of guns that people don't give their kids that very minimal base of knowledge required to be safe.
I've never killed anyone, and I don't intend to unless someone is trying to kill me - Which I would naturally do by instinct in the right circumstances, gun or no gun. Fight or flight, and fight usually meant someone dies.
A better orgasm than having sex? No. It doesn't give me any more pleasure than any of my other hobbies that require skill do.
Such as skateboarding, or playing chess, or throwing horseshoes. Do *those* activities have a point? Do you think people who partake in them do it because they get a 'better orgasm than having sex'?
The pleasure I get from those activities is definitely *not* orgasmic. The pleasure I get from shooting is the same as the pleasure from any other activity I enjoy.
The fact that you think that people who target shoot are in it for a power trip or 'a better orgasm than having sex' says a lot more about *you* than it does anyone else.
Sure it takes more effort to kill someone with a knife.
However, you *cannot* dismiss that some number of those murders would still be committed with a different implement.
The ease is just why the gun is picked over the knife. If someone is gone enough that they'll use a gun, they're gone enough to use something else if the gun is not there. You're even tacitly admitting this, as you 'posit that a non-zero number of 'crimes of passion' would be prevented', not "all", or even "most".
As a side note, if you take away guns, you take away any advantage a smaller person would gain against a larger/stronger attacker.
IMHO, the downside to banning firearms outweigh any gains.
If more guns are bad, if people carrying guns is bad, why aren't we in the throes of the biggest murder wave ever? After all, there are more than thirty states with shall-issue concealed carry laws.
So where's the bloodbath we were all warned about, that people were screaming would occur when those laws were up for passage? Because I'm not seeing it. Murder rates are *down*, not up.
You can web surf with a 486 with no software but a browser.
You can ride a 50cc motorcycle.
You can skate down the street on a fiberglass banana board.
The fact that there's a less powerful alternative does not mean we should ban the more powerful alternatives.
If I want to put.50 caliber holes in paper, why shouldn't I be allowed to?
If I want to put a bunch of 5.56 caliber holes in a piece of paper, really fast, what's the problem?
If I want to bust some clay targets that are flying through the air, why does that concern you?
It doesn't. Not if I never misuse it.
The same way that my having a super-evil-looking black-tactical-special-forces-approved combat knife should not concern you if I never use it for anything other than cutting steak.
The point is that there *are* entirely valid non-destructive uses, and there are entirely legal destructive uses (self defense).
The misuses are already illegal, and more law abiding gun owners will mean that those who misuse are quite likely to run into people willing and able to stop them.
btw, the biggest holes I've put in paper were 12 guage, but that's only because the rifle range I was shooting at only allowed you to shoot slugs from a shotgun. I'd have preferred to put a lot of smaller holes all at once rather than one big hole.
The 'no valid uses' and 'you should lay down and die and let your killer get his chance before a judge and jury' attitudes of some people strike me as particularly silly.
What other uses for guns besides firing a high speed projectile with the intent to kill/maim/destroy something are there?
How about firing a high speed projectile with the intent to put a hole in a piece of paper? You know, the kind with concentric rings around an X printed on it?
Oh, wait, but that would be "destroying" the piece of paper, and therefore target shooting must be evil.
I'm with you, brother - when's the next 'Save the Targets' meeting?
One has to have a nic card for every computer connected and one for the modem that is assuming there are enough pci slots
Buy a switch, and you only need one nic for every network.
My firewall box has two nics - one for the outside net (plugged into the DSL "modem") and one for the inside net, (plugged into a switch (Little 8-port desktop type, which iirc was fairly cheap).
My firewall hasn't been rebooted for at least six months - there is no need to 'regularly reboot the computer'.
You do not need root privileges to bind to port 8000.
You run on a port that doesn't require root privileges to bind so that if there's an explotable flaw, exploiting that flaw doesn't immediately give root.
I'm not saying that you aren't, I've never met you, I've never worked with you, you may very well be.
Actually, my point doesn't depend on whether I personally am or am not a systems expert.
The point is that admins should recognize that such people exist, In other words, do not make a blanket assumption in that regard.
I've seen too many admins reject a reasonable request where the rejection is rooted in this 'you're not a systems expert' attitude. Where the admin is not even listening, just saying 'No'.
The real problem, imho, is us-vs-them attitudes between the admins and the developers. Admins who refuse to recognize that a developer can have systems knowledge contributes to this. (Don't take that as 'the admins are the root of this problem', as there are definitely things developers do that contribute as well).
If you're a developer, and you're not a systems expert, you should let a systems expert know what you want to do, and together figure out the best way to do it.
If you're a developer, and you are a systems expert, you shouldn't have to butt heads with the admins because they're blindly saying no.
If you're an admin, and a developer needs to do something, and happens to have the systems knowledge required to suggest a solution, you should at least consider it. If it's not feasable, you should figure out the best way to it, collectively.
If you're a developer, and an admin points out something about how the net/systems are set up that makes your suggestion infeasable, you should move on, and figure out the best way to get it done, collectively.
If there's something I don't know about how the net/systems/whatever are setup that make a change I suggest non-optimal, just say so, we can work something out - because I still need to get what I need done, done. However, I've definitely run into trouble in the past with an admin who a) just blindly says no, and b) isn't willing to suggest any way to get the required end result. In those cases, I end up having to argue with the guy for three hours, showing him exactly why every objection he's coming up with is -not- a valid objection. I shouldn't have to do that.
Of course, the flipside is that there's going to be a developer who refused to recognize why an objection is valid - I've dealt with that as an admin, so I know it happens, and the admin shouldn't have to deal with that, either.
You presuppose that no developers know exactly what power they weild.
I don't need to wait for three hours, doing nothing, for you to do something that would take me ten minutes.
Of course, it's not your fault it takes three hours, since it likely only takes you ten minutes as well. You've just got higher-priority things to take care of in the preceding one hundred and seventy minutes. The problem is, in that time period, I'm blocked, at least for whatever work requires that change. If I happen to have other things I can work on, ok, but if I don't, I'm sitting there doing nothing for three hours.
Likewise, you don't need a huge team of developers bugging you to do various things when they can either ask me to do it, or I've already made sure they won't need to ask in the first place, plus let *you* know so that you're prepared when whatever it is needs to roll into a non-dev environment.
Having someone on the development team who knows systems is a good thing. Denying that person root access in a dev environment is, in many instances, wrong.
As far as staging/production root access, I won't ask for it in the first place, so it's a non issue.
I'm a systems subject matter expert. I don't pretend to be a code expert.
Your a coding expert. Don't pretend to be a systems expert.
I don't pretend. I've done your job, and done it well. Well enough that the people who do your job in the company I work for still come to me with questions. Well enough that I can honestly say I had a huge effect on the methods used to currently ramp up any production system.Many of those methods were initially suggested and implemented by me. Others were changed due to input from me.
The generalization here is not valid. Many (of course, not all, maybe not even most, but many) 'coding experts' are systems experts as well. The knowledge held does not disappear with a change in job title.
So get a grip - we're in this together. It is the sysadmin and the programmer's job *collectively* to create a 'complete SYSTEM that functions'. The attitude of 'you're not a systems expert' *will* get in the way of that, when you run into someone like me.
They caught him in his apartment, not a van. However, they did track him down by his cell phone emissions.
From John Markoff's article (http://www.takedown.com/coverage/prince-hackers.h tml):
"Shimomura held a cellular-frequency direction-finding antenna and watched a signal-strength meter on a laptop computer screen. Within 30 minutes the two had narrowed the site to an apartment complex in Duraleigh Hill, four kilometres from the airport."
Although I doubt they used triangulation as given in this article, they probably just noticed they were driving in circles around the apartment complex...
3. Management tells programmers what they want and programmers um and ah, say they will need twice the reasonable amount of time and deliver it late and buggy (and gain overtime in the process).
This is really
3. Management tells programmers what they want and when they want it. Management ignores statements by said programmers that the delivery date given is unreasonable Programmers attempt to deliver on Management's unreasonable schedule, as directed by Management. Management whines and complains that the delivery is late and buggy, even though the delivery is done in three-quarters of the original programming team estimate (hence the bugginess, it's really an 'early' release, given that last one-quarter, less bugs).
It seems to me that this article is complaining that they couldn't drive to downtown D.C. after the nuke hit.
'Lots of networks/servers/etc in the blackout area were unreachable'
Well, duh.
The most we learn from this is that if you want to stay up in a blackout, invest in better backup power systems. It is not, however, pointing out a significant weakness in the worldwide network as a whole.
I used to run Xwindows, etc. on a 66mhz 486. So your statement 'your hardware requirements go way beyond the 75mhz Pentium' is flat out *wrong*.
The reason people see it as unreasonable to run like that *now* is because hardware is faster, they're used to it operating faster. When it runs slower than they're used to, they see it as unacceptable.
That doesn't mean it won't work. It just means the expectations have been raised.
Slashdot Mirror
That's exactly the point - if it was a bandwith-sucking attack, whether synflood or not, why exactly was a machine that traceroutes through the same router up and responsive?
first of all, a classic synflood is something that you and me can do from our home computers to some shitty webservers.. port 80 might stop accepting connections and simply time out. the box will still be up, every other service will be fine.
Yes, but the SCO Press Release states "The attack consumed about 90 percent of the available bandwidth of SCO's service provider for the entire Lindon, Utah backbone.". That does -not- sound like a synflood to me, and it *is* something that would affect servers that are accessed via the same link.
secondly, just because an ip is next to another ip doesnt mean they're connected to the same switch/hub
True. But here's a challenge for you: draw a network architecture in which two adjacent IP addresses, which are not network or broadcast addresses, do *not* have traffic passing through the same switch *somewhere*.
RTFPR
SCO originally claimed it was a DDOS.
"The ISP has identified 138 different machines as the intermediate source, but has not yet confirmed the identity of the original source."
If that's not distributed, I don't know what is.
I find the "Cyber terrorism hurts a business as much as any other crime involving destruction of property" quote rather interesting, as well.
Because DC is not a very large place, and immediately surrounded by places with less restrictions.
;)
Well, then, explain the increase in gun crime in Britain since they banned handguns.
While you're at it, you can explain why the homicide, assault and armed robbery rates are up in Australia as well
After all, they're obviously not very large places, and surrounded by places with less restrictions -- oh, wait, no they're not.
ne could also go into the socio-economic forces which usually parallel crime rates.
Of course we could, and there would be the meat of a cause of a lot of crime - but it's so much easier to blame guns, especially when you want to ban them (not you specifically, I'm referring more to the anti-gun movement in general).
For the average person in fit of rage/anger, if they don't have immediate access to a gun, or had to sit through a 10 day waiting period. You are aruging that every single one of those people will instead commit the same crimes if they didn't have ready access to such a simple and suddenly lethal instrument?
No. I am arguing that many but not all would.
If everybody having guns is supposed to level the playing field between criminals and victims ( an arguement btw, that I do not buy into ), what happens when everyone has a gun, and criminals move up to more fire power?
210 lb rapist. 110 lb woman.
Both with guns, the odds are evener than niether with a gun - whoever is quickest wins, rather than who is stronger/heavier.
I don't understand how you can not see that as leveling the playing field.
As far as "everyone having a gun", I've already said that not everyone needs to have a gun. We just don't need gun ownership arbitrarily restricted to 'necessity'.
Umm, and apparently you're unaware that switches are usually plugged into routers, and if it were indeed an attacked that sucked up bandwidth, it's likely the bandwidth upstream from the router is where the pain would be felt.
Meaning that, switch or no switch, access to the ftp server ought to be sluggish.
No.
The best programmers don't need to worry about what language you want the app programmed in.
They'll get the job done no matter what the language is.
We don't allow unliscensed doctors to perform medical procedures. Why should we allow what is in effect unliscensed police aka vigilante justice to be performed?
I never said anything about "vigilante justice".
If you attack me I have the right to defend myself. Period.
If you attack me with lethal force, I have the right to respond with lethal force.
If guns are illegal, the attacker, who is performing a criminal act already, is not going to care that he breaks an additional law by possessing and using a gun.
If the illegality of guns had any effect, how do you explain the murder rate in D.C.?
However, there is a huge disparity between the checks required to get such a permit and to simply own a gun.
Hmm - so your feeling (irrational, imho) that people owning guns will make *you* unsafe should mean that people who need a gun for self defense should be denied one?
You do understand that there have been cases where someone was trying to obtain a firearm, because they had *imminent* need of one, (a stalker, a pissed off ex-boyfriend/husband who wouldn't leave them alone, etc) who were murdered while they were waiting to obtain that firearm?
Now, if they had obtained the firearm immediately, there is no guarantee that they would be alive - but at least the odds would be better.
imho an 'instant background check' is ok, but a ten day waiting period is a bit insane.
Guns are very -simple- machines. It's not rocket science, the level of knowledge required to be safe is -very- low. *Far* less than the knowledge required to operate a car safely.
The problem is not that we let people have guns with a low level of knowledge. The problem is that there's such a fear of guns that people don't give their kids that very minimal base of knowledge required to be safe.
Really?
I've never killed anyone, and I don't intend to unless someone is trying to kill me - Which I would naturally do by instinct in the right circumstances, gun or no gun. Fight or flight, and fight usually meant someone dies.
A better orgasm than having sex? No. It doesn't give me any more pleasure than any of my other hobbies that require skill do.
Such as skateboarding, or playing chess, or throwing horseshoes. Do *those* activities have a point? Do you think people who partake in them do it because they get a 'better orgasm than having sex'?
The pleasure I get from those activities is definitely *not* orgasmic. The pleasure I get from shooting is the same as the pleasure from any other activity I enjoy.
The fact that you think that people who target shoot are in it for a power trip or 'a better orgasm than having sex' says a lot more about *you* than it does anyone else.
You have a funny definition of avoidance.
Sure it takes more effort to kill someone with a knife.
However, you *cannot* dismiss that some number of those murders would still be committed with a different implement.
The ease is just why the gun is picked over the knife. If someone is gone enough that they'll use a gun, they're gone enough to use something else if the gun is not there. You're even tacitly admitting this, as you 'posit that a non-zero number of 'crimes of passion' would be prevented', not "all", or even "most".
As a side note, if you take away guns, you take away any advantage a smaller person would gain against a larger/stronger attacker.
IMHO, the downside to banning firearms outweigh any gains.
If more guns are bad, if people carrying guns is bad, why aren't we in the throes of the biggest murder wave ever? After all, there are more than thirty states with shall-issue concealed carry laws.
So where's the bloodbath we were all warned about, that people were screaming would occur when those laws were up for passage? Because I'm not seeing it. Murder rates are *down*, not up.
You won't remove 'a major factor'.
The crimes of passion/opportunity will still be committed, just with a different tool.
In an apartment complex down the street a guy stabbed his wife to death, about two weeks ago.
Shall we ban kitchen knives? They, after all, allow a murder to be committed with violence and speed.
Everyone doesn't need to be walking around armed to the teeth.
However, enough responsible people need to be armed so that criminals can't assume that people are *not* armed.
Yeah, you can target shoot with a pellet gun.
.50 caliber holes in paper, why shouldn't I be allowed to?
You can web surf with a 486 with no software but a browser.
You can ride a 50cc motorcycle.
You can skate down the street on a fiberglass banana board.
The fact that there's a less powerful alternative does not mean we should ban the more powerful alternatives.
If I want to put
If I want to put a bunch of 5.56 caliber holes in a piece of paper, really fast, what's the problem?
If I want to bust some clay targets that are flying through the air, why does that concern you?
It doesn't. Not if I never misuse it.
The same way that my having a super-evil-looking black-tactical-special-forces-approved combat knife should not concern you if I never use it for anything other than cutting steak.
The point is that there *are* entirely valid non-destructive uses, and there are entirely legal destructive uses (self defense).
The misuses are already illegal, and more law abiding gun owners will mean that those who misuse are quite likely to run into people willing and able to stop them.
btw, the biggest holes I've put in paper were 12 guage, but that's only because the rifle range I was shooting at only allowed you to shoot slugs from a shotgun. I'd have preferred to put a lot of smaller holes all at once rather than one big hole.
The 'no valid uses' and 'you should lay down and die and let your killer get his chance before a judge and jury' attitudes of some people strike me as particularly silly.
What other uses for guns besides firing a high speed projectile with the intent to kill/maim/destroy something are there?
How about firing a high speed projectile with the intent to put a hole in a piece of paper? You know, the kind with concentric rings around an X printed on it?
Oh, wait, but that would be "destroying" the piece of paper, and therefore target shooting must be evil.
I'm with you, brother - when's the next 'Save the Targets' meeting?
You'd rather have a dead victim and a perpetrator who gets to sit before a judge and jury than live victim and a dead perpetrator?
If that's what you mean by 'civilized country', no thanks.
One has to have a nic card for every computer connected and one for the modem that is assuming there are enough pci slots
Buy a switch, and you only need one nic for every network.
My firewall box has two nics - one for the outside net (plugged into the DSL "modem") and one for the inside net, (plugged into a switch (Little 8-port desktop type, which iirc was fairly cheap).
My firewall hasn't been rebooted for at least six months - there is no need to 'regularly reboot the computer'.
You need root privileges to bind to port 80.
You do not need root privileges to bind to port 8000.
You run on a port that doesn't require root privileges to bind so that if there's an explotable flaw, exploiting that flaw doesn't immediately give root.
I'm not saying that you aren't, I've never met you, I've never worked with you, you may very well be.
Actually, my point doesn't depend on whether I personally am or am not a systems expert.
The point is that admins should recognize that such people exist, In other words, do not make a blanket assumption in that regard.
I've seen too many admins reject a reasonable request where the rejection is rooted in this 'you're not a systems expert' attitude. Where the admin is not even listening, just saying 'No'.
The real problem, imho, is us-vs-them attitudes between the admins and the developers. Admins who refuse to recognize that a developer can have systems knowledge contributes to this. (Don't take that as 'the admins are the root of this problem', as there are definitely things developers do that contribute as well).
If you're a developer, and you're not a systems expert, you should let a systems expert know what you want to do, and together figure out the best way to do it.
If you're a developer, and you are a systems expert, you shouldn't have to butt heads with the admins because they're blindly saying no.
If you're an admin, and a developer needs to do something, and happens to have the systems knowledge required to suggest a solution, you should at least consider it. If it's not feasable, you should figure out the best way to it, collectively.
If you're a developer, and an admin points out something about how the net/systems are set up that makes your suggestion infeasable, you should move on, and figure out the best way to get it done, collectively.
If there's something I don't know about how the net/systems/whatever are setup that make a change I suggest non-optimal, just say so, we can work something out - because I still need to get what I need done, done. However, I've definitely run into trouble in the past with an admin who a) just blindly says no, and b) isn't willing to suggest any way to get the required end result. In those cases, I end up having to argue with the guy for three hours, showing him exactly why every objection he's coming up with is -not- a valid objection. I shouldn't have to do that.
Of course, the flipside is that there's going to be a developer who refused to recognize why an objection is valid - I've dealt with that as an admin, so I know it happens, and the admin shouldn't have to deal with that, either.
And where exactly in my comment did I say 'give all programmers root access'?
Nowhere.
Give the programmers who you know can handle it root access.
You presuppose that no developers know exactly what power they weild.
I don't need to wait for three hours, doing nothing, for you to do something that would take me ten minutes.
Of course, it's not your fault it takes three hours, since it likely only takes you ten minutes as well. You've just got higher-priority things to take care of in the preceding one hundred and seventy minutes. The problem is, in that time period, I'm blocked, at least for whatever work requires that change. If I happen to have other things I can work on, ok, but if I don't, I'm sitting there doing nothing for three hours.
Likewise, you don't need a huge team of developers bugging you to do various things when they can either ask me to do it, or I've already made sure they won't need to ask in the first place, plus let *you* know so that you're prepared when whatever it is needs to roll into a non-dev environment.
Having someone on the development team who knows systems is a good thing. Denying that person root access in a dev environment is, in many instances, wrong.
As far as staging/production root access, I won't ask for it in the first place, so it's a non issue.
I'm a systems subject matter expert. I don't pretend to be a code expert.
Your a coding expert. Don't pretend to be a systems expert.
I don't pretend. I've done your job, and done it well. Well enough that the people who do your job in the company I work for still come to me with questions. Well enough that I can honestly say I had a huge effect on the methods used to currently ramp up any production system.Many of those methods were initially suggested and implemented by me. Others were changed due to input from me.
The generalization here is not valid. Many (of course, not all, maybe not even most, but many) 'coding experts' are systems experts as well. The knowledge held does not disappear with a change in job title.
So get a grip - we're in this together. It is the sysadmin and the programmer's job *collectively* to create a 'complete SYSTEM that functions'. The attitude of 'you're not a systems expert' *will* get in the way of that, when you run into someone like me.
They caught him in his apartment, not a van. However, they did track him down by his cell phone emissions.
h tml):
...
From John Markoff's article (http://www.takedown.com/coverage/prince-hackers.
"Shimomura held a cellular-frequency direction-finding antenna and watched a signal-strength meter on a laptop computer screen. Within 30 minutes the two had narrowed the site to an apartment complex in Duraleigh Hill, four kilometres from the airport."
Although I doubt they used triangulation as given in this article, they probably just noticed they were driving in circles around the apartment complex
I never said there weren't.
3. Management tells programmers what they want and programmers um and ah, say they will need twice the reasonable amount of time and deliver it late and buggy (and gain overtime in the process).
This is really
3. Management tells programmers what they want and when they want it. Management ignores statements by said programmers that the delivery date given is unreasonable Programmers attempt to deliver on Management's unreasonable schedule, as directed by Management. Management whines and complains that the delivery is late and buggy, even though the delivery is done in three-quarters of the original programming team estimate (hence the bugginess, it's really an 'early' release, given that last one-quarter, less bugs).
It seems to me that this article is complaining that they couldn't drive to downtown D.C. after the nuke hit.
'Lots of networks/servers/etc in the blackout area were unreachable'
Well, duh.
The most we learn from this is that if you want to stay up in a blackout, invest in better backup power systems. It is not, however, pointing out a significant weakness in the worldwide network as a whole.
Bull.
I used to run Xwindows, etc. on a 66mhz 486. So your statement 'your hardware requirements go way beyond the 75mhz Pentium' is flat out *wrong*.
The reason people see it as unreasonable to run like that *now* is because hardware is faster, they're used to it operating faster. When it runs slower than they're used to, they see it as unacceptable.
That doesn't mean it won't work. It just means the expectations have been raised.