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User: aaronb1138

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  1. Re:1st post. on Apache Web Server Share Falls Below 50 Percent For First Time Since 2009 · · Score: 0

    The bigger part people are missing is security patches and upgrades. The 2.2 -> 2.4 transition sucked because it broke every httpd.conf and lost of others requiring hand audits of configuration files. In IIS, you can safely let the OS update the service weekly. Outside of big players that have the infrastructure for a weekly build test and deploy schedule, who really feels safe rolling out Apache updates with confidence nothing will break. Red Hat, CentOS and most other Linux distros certainly don't, they lag the "stable" release by 6-12 months at a time.

    Add to the fire all of the huge issues Apache has had of late versus IIS' lack and the addition of cleanly working PHP the last few years. Yep, this is a no brainer. I bet IIS will be faster to get a non-Zend PHP accelerator or run-time compiler similar to HipHop. The .NET platform is much easier to develop such rich, real applications with tons more power than the limited scripting languages Apache has available. I liked Mono, but it is stillborn with the IIS immigration, plus the need to have .NET on Linux / Apache only demonstrates it's utility.

  2. Re:Subcontractors on NSA Firing 90% of Its Sysadmins · · Score: 1

    Given that the NSA also participates in generating some of the disinformation and noise, 90% could be more like 9%. Then start to outsource to leaky targets. Then let the outsourced get into honeypot laden systems.

    Not a bad idea, but it seems more like a wartime move, which given Russia's and China's current traffic profiles into the U.S., might be exactly what is going on right now. I'm actually ok with the Snowden was a phony conspiracy theory.

  3. Re:You all missed the point on Samsung Smart TV: Basically a Linux Box Running Vulnerable Web Apps · · Score: 1

    Thank you for identifying yourself. I'd rather not work with people who can't appreciate the subtle humor of the stereotyped, "Shut up and get to work..." meme. Actually, seeing someone laugh at an over the top delivery is a great way to figure out who had to work through high school / college in the service industries. This is usually a good way to filter and find people who can pinch hit and knock stuff out of the park when everyone's back is to the wall.

  4. Re:You all missed the point on Samsung Smart TV: Basically a Linux Box Running Vulnerable Web Apps · · Score: 1

    $400 / hr seems to be the sweet spot most "security only" firms charge. Sadly, most of them can only tell you the problems, nothing about solutions especially when it gets to platforms not Cisco or Microsoft. Most of the "security only" firms just run script kiddie checks and occasionally compile a pre-built list of CVE numbers based on software / firmware revisions installed on equipment. A more fair rate is $150-250 and your average consultant who can actually configure your hardware can do the audit and fixes for the same rate. Further, the real consultants can tell you how to get around the CVE's with proper policies and ignore software / firmware update churn that might break critical applications and doesn't necessarily increase security.

  5. Re:You all missed the point on Samsung Smart TV: Basically a Linux Box Running Vulnerable Web Apps · · Score: 0

    There are two bigger issues in the giant pile of FUD that the security community has been gravitating towards in favor of higher paychecks and less rather than more informed users. The first is defining the scope of damage. What can a hacker *do* with a compromised smart TV, versus how likely is the end user to just factory reset an oddly acting set. The second is ignoring multiple user failure steps as somehow being the software's fault. The latest HTTPS hack is a complete fabrication of an issue. Assume I am a cracker / script kiddie. If I can get the end user to a malicious website, I have already won. Wasting time with an SSL/TLS exploit is boring compared to a full key logger and Dark Comet install. But the genius and skill was never in the website code, SSL exploits, or Dark Comet. The hack was getting someone to go to the wrong neighborhood on the internet at the wrong time, not the mugging.

    Ironically, I sell security consulting. I rather charge less and teach users more about risky behavior. Luckily, I have found customers who don't think charging less than $400 / hr for security audits is a bad thing and are willing to listen to advice most of the time. Hell, even Norton AV + AGV AV + MSE installs can be explained with multiple condoms not working and just breaking more often analogies.

  6. Re:Pat on the back on The Rising Power of Developers · · Score: 1

    Like hiring good people, it is really difficult if you don't have the social skills to tell if someone will be a good manager. Good managers can produce multiple times over their salary in increased productivity. The problem is, just like every other industry, the majority working in the segment suck and aren't a hugely positive factor. On the flip side, attracting good management is like attracting a good CEO, and money get's tossed out there without thought.

    It's a bit hard for an employer to open a management position and say that the pay will be $50k if they do an average job and $120k if they are a rockstar. Figuring out a bonus structure is similarly difficult unless the business has a very short production to profit chain. A small handful of retail chains fit this model, they bonus their managers off the store's bottom line, so yeah, ignoring the ups and downs of the economy, a great manager can start grabbing huge bonuses 60 days into turning a location around. Not so easy to see from the corporate middle-management side of things. It would be great if you could bonus management based on a weighted superior / subordinate monthly review process, but this sounds like social networking chaos.

  7. Re:Pat on the back on The Rising Power of Developers · · Score: 1

    Please look more closely at the distribution of burger flippers to even sous chefs in industry and you will find my analogy is spot on correct. The same ability / work ethic / intellect / raw intelligence distribution exists within software development as any other industry, just like food service. The problem is that throughout CS & IT you have a lot of primadonnas who should be doing the equivalent of shoveling tacos together at the bell telling people they are elite professionals and demanding high pay and treatment.

    My remark was harsh because if we don't squash the egos now, we'll be stuck with social leaches that much of the electrical infrastructure industry has become, where linemen are 50% above the median production worker pay for having 80-something IQs and being able to recall simple knot patterns when instructed by a foreman.

  8. Re:You know on Obama Administration Overrules iPhone Trade Ban · · Score: 1

    You believe budget numbers from a company that manages to convince a nice portion of the population that it barely makes any money off iTunes music and books sales. Umm, yeah, no thank you.

  9. You all missed the point on Samsung Smart TV: Basically a Linux Box Running Vulnerable Web Apps · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Thanks to bad headline choices you all missed the point. Samsung provided a ripe platform for hacking and development by making root easy (just like with their smart phones).

    Shut up and get to work porting XBMC to it already.

  10. Re:Slashdot sociopaths... on $375,000 Lab-Grown Beef Burger To Debut On Monday · · Score: 1

    If you really understood how cows are raised, you would well know that killing them and eating them are the two most humane parts of the process...

  11. Re:I wonder about the taste on $375,000 Lab-Grown Beef Burger To Debut On Monday · · Score: 1

    Actually, cows in particular taint the meat with a bad flavor if they are in fear when they die.

    That being said, I still prefer naturally sourced meat. Lab grown meat is going to lack all the flavor of having lived life. Beef is already hard to get at good quality because we condense a 3-4 year growing phase to 13 months for most.

  12. Re:Pat on the back on The Rising Power of Developers · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Can we please put developers in the back seat as run of the mill production workers like they belong. I respect a minority of software architects, but plain jane code toads need to be getting the treatment and pay of the few steps above fry cook that they are.

  13. Re:Awesome! on NASA and ESA To Demonstrate Earth-Moon Laser Communication · · Score: 1

    You meant WireSharks with frikkin lasers!

  14. Re:Similar quote from Seymour Cray on Qualcomm Says Eight-Core Processors Are Dumb · · Score: 1

    I hope you are being sarcastic. I love all the 'tards saying they want many cores so they can run VMs on their phones. If they had half a clue and really wanted to improve virtualization and overall flexibility of their phone, they would want a RAM on demand system where the OS and hardware could online and offline RAM chips based on utilization. For virtualization, 4-8 GB of RAM would rock, but for battery usage, 0.5-1 GB makes more sense for screen off / VMs suspended time. Android would need to be taught some new tricks, since it likes to hold everything in memory forever (balloon & shutdown process?). Virtualization is exactly the consolidation of many machines which at one time would have had 1-4 cores of their own to each share just the fraction of a core that they need to run correctly and to take turns grabbing higher amounts of compute resources when necessary.

    Ultimately, Cray was exactly right.

    Massively parallel computing is not useful on a consumer, day-to-day scale. Even most IT resources and use cases rarely need more than 25-40% of any one resources capabilities at a time, with the exception of the fact that permanent storage is universally slow as crap and holds back the rest of the industry (HDD, SSD, SANs, NAS, etc.). Answering scientific questions computationally is frankly a rare use case, and the only justification for massively parallel work.

  15. Re:dilbert on Study Finds Bug Bounty Programs Extremely Cost-Effective · · Score: 0

    I don't understand that comic, is the funny part where the salaried employees (dumb slaves) realize that the money is in consulting?

  16. Re:So it's going to be downvoted. on You Will Get DirectX 11.2 Only With Windows 8.1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The sames things were said about Vista and 7.

    Frankly, I was less than 2 months into 7 that I looked back and realized I had been stupid to skip Vista purely on "it's new and different" grounds and similarly to wait until 2011 to go to 7. Both were huge improvements on XP. Vista got a bad rap because shithead low end hardware (and a few cases software) makers wouldn't fix their drivers in a timely manner. Since 7 could mostly use Vista drivers when it came out, it was perceived as better despite really just being a cleanup and consolidation of good choices in Vista. Windows 8.1 will be the same thing.

    I would be using Windows 8 on more hardware, but Intel decided to f*ck everyone on Atom / GMA based touch devices who bought hardware released even the same year as Windows 8 if it didn't include their Windows 8 hardware tax. Basically, the problem is consistently not Microsoft, but the hardware OEMs who produce crap or poor support. Microsoft's own internal studies are showing somewhere in the neighborhood of 80% of BSODs on XP/Vista/7 were not due to the OS, but directly due to graphics drivers. With Vista and 7 they created a framework for being able to control and reboot the GPU drivers and BSODs have massively dropped. Frankly, more Microsoft KB articles and help fields should point the fingers at software and hardware manufacturers when applicable. They've always been way too nice and softballed the error sources.

  17. Re:Uh, no? on Microsoft Pushing Bing For Search In Schools, With Ad-Removal Hook · · Score: 1

    Indeed, it's just a lot more shit on the internet, all thanks to asshats peddling SEO.

  18. Re:As much as we love to hate Microsoft... on Microsoft Pushing Bing For Search In Schools, With Ad-Removal Hook · · Score: 0

    No, Apple's education program worked great at killing the PC in the mind of most students and making fertile tilled soil for the iPhone and iPad.

    The iPod and iPhone rebuilt the brand. The loyal Apple desktop users are ALL loyal despite how difficult they make regular schoolwork and assignments.

  19. Re:As much as we love to hate Microsoft... on Microsoft Pushing Bing For Search In Schools, With Ad-Removal Hook · · Score: 1

    Hey, I'm surprised ad free isn't an iron-clad requirement in schools, not because of the captive audience silliness, but because enough helicoptering whack jobs of parents haven't lost it over how much it prevents their ADHD (that's still the cool one, right?) from being successful.

  20. Re:Optical density, schmoptical schmensity! on New Technique For Optical Storage Claims 1 Petabyte On a Single DVD · · Score: 1

    Hard disks were cheaper per GB, then there was flooding in Thailand and the industry realized they could milk the consumers for better margins on components.

    I bought 1.5 TB HDDs two years ago for $60 each ($40 per GB, better than a stack of DVDs). The best sale prices on Newegg and Amazon have been hitting 4 TB for $150, effectively meaning the best bang for the buck has dropped 7% in two years. Previously, HDD storage was dropping at more like 30-50% per year (slower on years where no new density breakpoints had been hit).

  21. Re:The 1920s called... on Wi-Fi Signals Allow Gesture Recognition All Through the Home · · Score: 1

    No, no, these intrepid scientists have discovered a method of radio-frequency detection and ranging. They must rush to the patent office immediately to protect the intellectual property of R-FDAR.

  22. Re:Seriously, on Google Security Expert Finds, Publicly Discloses Windows Kernel Bug · · Score: 1

    I believe you, but I also believe your wife's use case was mostly Pinterest (Firefox), Facebook (Firefox), E-mail (Y! Mail via Firefox), and some very light document editing (Libre Office, because she hasn't found Google Docs / Drive). Oh, and don't forget looking at pictures of cats (Firefox).

    There are lots of people who fit in the extremely narrow, non-content producing, and limited scope consuming which is equally well served by Linux, Android, or iOS software. If you use current versions of Firefox or Chrome, you're genuinely fine, or better off, on Windows XP for almost another year.

  23. Re:Pi Madness on Pi to Go: Hot Raspberry Pi DIY Mini Desktop PC Project · · Score: 2

    At the price for all the major and minor components, they have to be what, 2/3s the way to the price of a Nexus 7 + Bluetooth keyboard.

    Idiots.

  24. Re:Correction on DoS Attack Forces EVE Online Offline · · Score: 1, Troll

    My bets would be most of the DDoS in the independent WoW server community is sponsored by Blizzard or Blizzard employees in an attempt to stop piracy (under corporate software developer's default assumption that anything they don't control is piracy).

    Sure, most of the attacks come from Russia and southeast Asia, but the money that pays them comes from someone else. The accusation that other server runners are part of the DDoSing is just good propaganda to keep people looking in the wrong direction.

    Face it, DDoS requires Smurfs, and most of the Smurfs in this world are dedicated to tasks that make money, like SPAM, tweaking stock prices, and taking down corporate websites, "at just the right time." I would love to do an in-depth comparison of companies and related entities which get hit hard with DDoS and are heavily algo-traded on the markets.

  25. Sometimes when I see strings of reasoning like this, I wonder if the risk assessment and budgeting has missed the idea of seeing about not building in areas with such hazards in the first place.

    It's like building data centers with targets of 99.999% or better uptime in Phoenix, where multi-day large scale power outtages occur on regular 3-8 year timelines. There is nothing in Phoenix that makes it worth putting a data center there either. What about OKC made it so very necessary? Maybe the cost of labor and square footage made adding ridiculously thick concrete walls worthwhile, in which case the assessment balanced out. On the other hand, if the land is that much cheaper and the labor that much more affordable, there might be good reason why you don't want to be there.