I've changed out several phones on Sprint just by doing an ESN swap - no change to the "plan" needed at all. The end result is a never ending $10/mo data + tethering for my PDA phones and no contract. Resigning contracts with absurdly high fees to get a new phone is silly, but people rarely go through the effort to do the math so they think they're getting a great deal.
I don't know if they have a DR plan; I'm just guessing based on the aftermath of the disaster. Maybe they do, found out it was faulty, and they'll end up revising it to account for this situation in the future.
In any case, I still think its idiotic for any company (except colo where you really don't control the hardware) to wash their hands of a customer just because they didn't pay extra for "backups". Sure, pay for convenience backups, but total site loss? Come on, that's for the hoster's protection, not the customer.
It doesn't matter; the point of a disaster recovery backup (or plan) is not to protect your clients against accidentally deleting files, but to protect you (and them) from events that are completely outside of your control. Using a closed-source virtualization package that could possibly house a major security hole that you don't know about would qualify as something to plan for in disaster recovery. Apparently they didn't.
I disagree; it should logically follow that a company should have some kind of disaster recovery plan other than "Oops, it's all gone, but how about a few months of free service?" If that's what customers want and I could get away with then damn, I've been wasting time and money keeping disaster recovery backups offsite. I'm not talking about backups like customers accidentally deleting files, but loss of service due to events beyond your control.
Yes, you should have copies of your own stuff, the more the better. For vahost even if the "oh crap" backup was a week old that would have been better than the total loss they're selling as "not our fault we dun got hacked".
1) Lost of customers are cheap bastards; lowest cost hosting wins irrespective of the actual service offered. 2) VAserv apparently couldn't be bothered to keep their own disaster recovery backups.
There's this really awesome cell tower by my office that's in a flood plane. They built the whole equipment shelter up on stilts about 20 feet off the ground with a generator sitting on the elevated platform with a 200 gallon tank. It's a pretty hardcore tower for a location where the only risk is river flooding; certainly not what you see every day. Normally it's batteries and hookup for a generator on a trailer *if* they get around to it.
The AT&T terminal that's in the same flood prone area as the badass cell site? It sits in a 6 foot concrete basin with no generator. They throw sandbags across the opening when it rains. Fiber is fast and awesome, but it needs power all over the damn place.
The surplus sale for the school I graduated from usually has all the computers hooked up and running so you can see they actually work, vs. a stack of who knows what that's powered off. But I agree; I wouldn't really grab something out of the unknown stack. I suppose not all schools would take the time to hook everything back up just to get rid of it.
Most schools have a salvage sale. If their school isn't large enough, perhaps there's a nearby major university that does have one. The laptops are always the first to go at the monthly salvage sale where I am, but they're fully functional and dirt cheap. Me, I got a new laser printer for $5 and a network interface for $1 last time I went. They get rid of a lot of neat stuff.
That can be very common when the rack density exceeds their cooling or power capacity. They'll have customers purchase empty space to offset that rack full of blade servers.
Even if it's not a matter of a criminal record, things that end up on the internet stand good chance of becoming its own permanent record. My message to kids these days: Don't do anything you don't want (or can't live with) preserved on the internet for eternity.
No kidding. I use my WM based Treo for SSH a lot and handwriting recognition would be completely retarded.
As an aside, I've tried lots of phones and I tend to like the Treo form factor the best because it's really easy to use one-handed. With a little practice I can operate my Treo without looking at it. Although I'm sure I'm the fringe minority of people who wants a quick access SSH terminal in my pocket.
"Car stops for woman going home from work late at night, and she's sexually assaulted after she pulled off the road...turns out the car shut off because the steering fluid was low...."
The sad truth is they'd rather have that happen than tell you their top secret codes.
Putting your backup storage server on the other end of a point to point circuit (or MPLS, or frame, etc.) eliminates the "yay I'm on the internet" factor. The downside is cost.
I'm going to say "yes" to all points you made. I'd rather see companies die because they made stupid decisions that led to their death opposed to being rewarded with free money. Sometimes things need to be culled for progress to happen.
This is why everyone moving everything and anything to Google is a bad thing. Sometimes I feel like the last person on the planet that doesn't use Google services to run damn near everything.
Just in the last 24 hours we got a story on Slashdot about the new 30 meter telescope being built.
Hubble works, and has worked, for years now. Why abandon something we have right now for something that we might have in 2018 assuming it's finished on time? While we're waiting, we should also demolish all ground based telescopes that will be inferior and just put science on hold until then.
Hubble's already outclassed by Keck as well - so ground-based telescopes already make it almost entirely redundant.
Hubble can see ultraviolet, Keck can't. Even if it could, Hubble doesn't have to worry about the atmospheric turbulence.
Slashdot Mirror
I've changed out several phones on Sprint just by doing an ESN swap - no change to the "plan" needed at all. The end result is a never ending $10/mo data + tethering for my PDA phones and no contract. Resigning contracts with absurdly high fees to get a new phone is silly, but people rarely go through the effort to do the math so they think they're getting a great deal.
I don't know if they have a DR plan; I'm just guessing based on the aftermath of the disaster. Maybe they do, found out it was faulty, and they'll end up revising it to account for this situation in the future.
In any case, I still think its idiotic for any company (except colo where you really don't control the hardware) to wash their hands of a customer just because they didn't pay extra for "backups". Sure, pay for convenience backups, but total site loss? Come on, that's for the hoster's protection, not the customer.
It doesn't matter; the point of a disaster recovery backup (or plan) is not to protect your clients against accidentally deleting files, but to protect you (and them) from events that are completely outside of your control. Using a closed-source virtualization package that could possibly house a major security hole that you don't know about would qualify as something to plan for in disaster recovery. Apparently they didn't.
I disagree; it should logically follow that a company should have some kind of disaster recovery plan other than "Oops, it's all gone, but how about a few months of free service?" If that's what customers want and I could get away with then damn, I've been wasting time and money keeping disaster recovery backups offsite. I'm not talking about backups like customers accidentally deleting files, but loss of service due to events beyond your control.
Yes, you should have copies of your own stuff, the more the better. For vahost even if the "oh crap" backup was a week old that would have been better than the total loss they're selling as "not our fault we dun got hacked".
1) Lost of customers are cheap bastards; lowest cost hosting wins irrespective of the actual service offered.
2) VAserv apparently couldn't be bothered to keep their own disaster recovery backups.
I know Verizon is making the move away from CDMA but I haven't heard anything about what Sprint is doing to do with their CDMA network.
No shit. This isn't exactly news in cell phone land. I guess they thought the iPhone didn't fall under the normal rules?
There's this really awesome cell tower by my office that's in a flood plane. They built the whole equipment shelter up on stilts about 20 feet off the ground with a generator sitting on the elevated platform with a 200 gallon tank. It's a pretty hardcore tower for a location where the only risk is river flooding; certainly not what you see every day. Normally it's batteries and hookup for a generator on a trailer *if* they get around to it.
The AT&T terminal that's in the same flood prone area as the badass cell site? It sits in a 6 foot concrete basin with no generator. They throw sandbags across the opening when it rains. Fiber is fast and awesome, but it needs power all over the damn place.
The surplus sale for the school I graduated from usually has all the computers hooked up and running so you can see they actually work, vs. a stack of who knows what that's powered off. But I agree; I wouldn't really grab something out of the unknown stack. I suppose not all schools would take the time to hook everything back up just to get rid of it.
Most schools have a salvage sale. If their school isn't large enough, perhaps there's a nearby major university that does have one. The laptops are always the first to go at the monthly salvage sale where I am, but they're fully functional and dirt cheap. Me, I got a new laser printer for $5 and a network interface for $1 last time I went. They get rid of a lot of neat stuff.
That can be very common when the rack density exceeds their cooling or power capacity. They'll have customers purchase empty space to offset that rack full of blade servers.
That's what I thought. If that's true I'd better go file my patent for email address validation and sue the internet for infringement.
Are you fucking kidding me? Did they just really patent the format "###-##-####"? I didn't RTFA because I didn't want my head to explode.
Personal responsibility is so last century.
Even if it's not a matter of a criminal record, things that end up on the internet stand good chance of becoming its own permanent record. My message to kids these days: Don't do anything you don't want (or can't live with) preserved on the internet for eternity.
No kidding. I use my WM based Treo for SSH a lot and handwriting recognition would be completely retarded.
As an aside, I've tried lots of phones and I tend to like the Treo form factor the best because it's really easy to use one-handed. With a little practice I can operate my Treo without looking at it. Although I'm sure I'm the fringe minority of people who wants a quick access SSH terminal in my pocket.
"Car stops for woman going home from work late at night, and she's sexually assaulted after she pulled off the road...turns out the car shut off because the steering fluid was low...."
The sad truth is they'd rather have that happen than tell you their top secret codes.
Well, I wouldn't advocate it as a backup solution myself. It is a convenient method to augment removable media stored offsite.
Putting your backup storage server on the other end of a point to point circuit (or MPLS, or frame, etc.) eliminates the "yay I'm on the internet" factor. The downside is cost.
Especially because giving them more money to continue doing things as usual isn't exactly going to help. Isn't this why we have bankruptcy courts?
I'm going to say "yes" to all points you made. I'd rather see companies die because they made stupid decisions that led to their death opposed to being rewarded with free money. Sometimes things need to be culled for progress to happen.
This is why everyone moving everything and anything to Google is a bad thing. Sometimes I feel like the last person on the planet that doesn't use Google services to run damn near everything.
Just in the last 24 hours we got a story on Slashdot about the new 30 meter telescope being built.
Hubble works, and has worked, for years now. Why abandon something we have right now for something that we might have in 2018 assuming it's finished on time? While we're waiting, we should also demolish all ground based telescopes that will be inferior and just put science on hold until then.
Hubble's already outclassed by Keck as well - so ground-based telescopes already make it almost entirely redundant.
Hubble can see ultraviolet, Keck can't. Even if it could, Hubble doesn't have to worry about the atmospheric turbulence.
Once Google finishes assimilating everything and we depend on them, that's when they'll strike and we're all screwed.
Or am I just joking?
Firewire.