We have a couple dozen VBrick encoders (mostly MPEG4) and they work great. Very compatible with just about anything. Now, MPEG4 ain't "non-proprietary." It's just a very open standard. I think you won't find what you're looking for. I also think you're after something specific that has no real demand for its existence.
Oh, and can you imagine a beowulf cluster of these?
So maybe my "Hello World" Java method will win this one!
"Telework" is entirely implicated in the VA case
on
Telecommuting Backlash
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
"Telecommuting" means working away from the normal office environment. This guy was a "teleworker." Sure, he isn't NORMALLY a teleworker (e.g. he usually works out of the office). But he took work home. He was telecommuting. There would have been little chance of this data being stolen had he not "telecommuted."
Telecommuting has drawbacks. The number one issue is that the home is not usually a good environment for work. This includes issues of safety and data security. Operations are at risk if you do not take sufficient precautions.
One interesting solution to this is thin client computing. I've experimented with Sun Ray thin clients that connect over a broadband connection back to a server. No data is stored on the thin client. All it really transmits is pixels and keyboard and mouse clicks (encrypted, too). That's the right way to approach this. Never store data away from the people paid to protect it (then make sure those people do a good job).
By lumping those countries together, I didn't mean to do anything anti-east-asian. Add Suriname, Burma, Ivory Coast, etc. Basically, any place where labor is exploited. The better the wages there (Mexico is apparently "too expensive" these days), the more comfortable you can be with products originating there.
I will also lump India and Pakistan (to a lesser extent), as they, too, are targets of exploitation labor.
I could give a cow's fart about a given place's politics, ethnicity, history or background. If western countries exploit their labor force, then I want to limit my part in that. With today's erosion of labor rights and corporate hegemony, it's not easy.
Actually, I also prefer NB based on quality, but their Chinese models aren't inherently worse than their USA-built models. I pick from those models because 1) they're the style I'm looking for and 2) they're USA-built.
Yes, Sri Lankan girls will suffer, but Sri Lankan girls will continue to suffer until such time as the average wage improves relative to the rest of us. Only by not playing in the exploitation game are you free from sin. Your argument is akin to the argument against emanicpation of black slaves in the USA - those poor ignorant bastards will starve if we don't give them their gruel!
The only real continuous poverty on this planet is the result of exploitation (by someone else, currently "the west"). The status quo is typically maintained by authoritarian governments acting as puppets for the exploiters (or at least entirely subservient to their interests). Consumerism without regard to socioeconomic consequences is a large force supporting this.
The Honda minivan I drive was made in Alabama ("Made in USA" label is only applicable to products that contain "all, or virtually all" US-produced content). Our older Subaru station wagon, however, was made in Japan.
It still matters to me. I just bought a pair of New Balance shoes, and I only buy NB athletic shoes because they still make some in the USA (check the inside label, because they also make some models abroad). I'm also a bit of a woodworker/tool junkie, and I refuse to buy tools made in China. I'll settle for Japan, Europe or Mexico if USA isn't available. But nothing from Taiwan, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, etc.
The only people to blame are consumers. Demand something else and you'll get it. Settle, and you get sweatshop labor. "Free Tibet" isn't just a bumper sticker slogan. If you really cared about it, you would change your ways.
...is in the form of customer approval. They will approve of easy and affordable methods of obtaining licensed content, and will thereby protect the bottom lines of the content providers. They will shun pirated media in favor of supporting the people who give them the good stuff, they way they like it, pr0n or otherwise.
I bet you thought I would say something else about "protection." I thought about it, but you know...
Technically the only official SUPPORT for Solaris 10 will be under Virtual Infrastructure 3 (VI3 is the new name for ESX). That said, I run Solaris 10 just fine under VMWare Workstation 5.5 (even though it's reported as "experimental"). But we are definitely going to look into running Solaris 10 production under VI3.
The best news for ESX owners (with Serivce and Support agreements) is that we can buy into VI3 Enterprise (all the cool automation features) for a cool $1000 per TWO CPU server. Darn, that's a deal. I'm hoping.edu pricing will be lower:)
I would also suggest looking at it. It has the features you're asking for, including very good workflow management. We got it as a web content management system, and it works for that too, though it's a bit hard to use for this. It's also a bit pricey, but complete.
Everyone remembers the "1984" spot Chiat-Day did for Apple when they introduced the Mac. Many of us, however, also remember the dreaded "Lemmings" campaign that followed. This basically called "IBM PC users" morons and flopped miserably. You don't steal your competitor's customers by calling them idiots.
Talk to top vendors. We just decided on a Dell/EMC CX3-40 system, after comparing systems from HP (EVA 6000), IBM (DS4800) and StorageTek (FLX 380). They were so close to one another in support and features. Surprisingly, their engineers and sales teams were quite complimentary of each other, and each attested to interoperability (our mix of WS2K3EE, RHEL/SEL, VMware ESX and MOSXS). Quite honestly, we would be very happy with any one of them. Dell just went all out and gave us the best value.
All you naysayers, understand that we had exactly the same sort of announcements before the Linear Tape Open (LTO) standard was developed. IBM led a group of manufacturers to develop a standard built around a few breakthroughs in tape density and drive head technologies. They predicted 10X (or more) capacity, 5X (or more) throughput, etc. and it would be available in 5 years or so. Sure enough, LTO-1 came about and immediately led to a tape storage boom. Quantum pushed DLT to about its limits, Storagetek upped the ante with their very high speed formats, etc. Everything got cheaper. Tape stayed relevant. I predict the very same trend in the near future...
Totally agree with you. Disclosure is a necessary FORMAL process. It involves complete academic review. Those that do it can right can find gainful employment as security professionals.
but beware of thin clients based on Windows XP Embedded. This is basically a "dumbed down" version of XP, meant to run a few local applications (browsers, media players, etc.). However, being XP, they are susceptible to many of the same vulnerabilities that "fat" XP is. Vendors will tell you that they're immune because they use "nonwritable storage." The problem is, that's not really true. They use a "RAM disk" scheme that is basically a reboot-to-discard-changes operation. While the system is powered and on the network, it's a target, and seeing how many zero-day XP vulnerabilities there are, you're forced to keep chasing this security target for eternity. There goes your supposed lowered TCO...
We have tried Wyse and Neoware clients based on XP Embedded. They both functioned OK. RAM limitations for the RAM disk were the achilles heel - lots of apps (IE, QuickTime, Real & WMP) expect a disk to use as cache. It will work, but you have to pay attention to application-level caches. As I mentioned, the REAL problem with these systems is that you have to manage them just like fat clients - patch, patch, patch, reboot, patch, etc. We absolutely hated the Wyse Rapport software. Neoware's was easier, but the delays in getting XP Embedded specific patches from either vendor was unacceptable, despite the fact that these systems were vulnerable to the same errata as "fat" XP.
The next style is the Linux-based thin client. These are far slimmer (less built-in code) than their XP Embedded cousins, often running on much lower powered platforms (PPC is quite common), making them much less susceptible to common Linux-on-X86 vulnerabilities. I haven't tried them yet, so I can't speak to the management scheme. But, I figure it's somewhere near the XP Embedded space - you still have multiple boxes sitting on desktops that need to get upgraded from time to time. I just think the fact that Linux thin clients are so much slimmer makes them far less likely to be exposed to the same risk as XP Embedded.
My favorite thin client architecture thus far is the Sun Ray platform. This is a TRUE thin client, in that the clients don't really run any software. For the most part, they behave as an Ethernet-based remote KVM. Add smart card-based "hot desking" and you have a truly usable "network computer" environment. They even run RDP for running Windows apps now. The best thing about Sun Ray is that software upgrades are done on ONE BOX (the Sun Ray Server System server, which can be Solaris or Linux). At most, you have to manage a handful of servers, if you run a cluster. But these are all in the same room, right next to your professional sysadmin, who keeps on top of patches and locks it down right. Very much a different beast than a box on every desk.
I like the name "wii" and I'm getting one for my son the day it comes out. Nintendo understands why I got into games to begin with - social interaction with people in the room. Yeah, FPS is fun, but nothing beats clobbering your bros. at Cyberball or NHLPA Hockey (yes, Genesis days, TYVM) and telling them their "face" was just handed to them...
You also don't understand evolutionary theory. There is no such thing as "maximum benefit." There is only "good enough" (and therefore still around and surviving) and "not good enough" (extinct).
Only "academics" (in the pure, pejorative definition) bother themselves about which is the "perfect" operating system. Meanwhile, imperfect species (Windoze, Linux, etc.) continue to thrive. Tannenbaum is the definition of an academic.
I don't think they stopped doing what they were doing - they just never came up with a strategy to handle the new reality.
Ah, but they did. During the "bad years" under Rick Belluzzo, SGI's then very competitive engineering was halted, in favor of turning SGI into a competitor for HP and Dell (Rick came from HP). SGI marched to orders to become a "NT workstation reseller." What a collossal mistake. Now they were beholden to Microsoft for any support of their brilliant engineering (the best video hardware of the time - unusable because of delays in Microsoft driver integration). No biggie for Rick - he went on to Microsoft, before getting fired and moving on to Quantum.
So, yeah, they stopped doing what they do best. It's unfortunate, because they lost a lot of ground during those times. It was only recently that they decided to go back 100% to what they knew best- Viz & HPC. Had they done this earlier, I suspect their Linux developments would have made Linux on Itanium quite a bitter better known.
Dearest Andy, please take some University courses on evolutionary biology. Perhaps you will take away a meaningful sense of the differences between "optimal" and "sufficient." I agree 100% with what you say. "Microkernels are better." That being said, this does nothing to diminish the viability of Linux, or any other monolithic system. Evolution only requires that a species retain sufficient qualities to ensure survivability (and therefore reproduction) in a given environment. "Perfection" never enters the equation (not even qualifiers such as "best" or "better" - just "good enough").
So, let's all agree with Andy, then go on using the best tools for our purposes. If that happens to be Linux (or even Windoze), then so be it...
Slashdot Mirror
There is no Project Mayhem!
We have a couple dozen VBrick encoders (mostly MPEG4) and they work great. Very compatible with just about anything. Now, MPEG4 ain't "non-proprietary." It's just a very open standard. I think you won't find what you're looking for. I also think you're after something specific that has no real demand for its existence.
Oh, and can you imagine a beowulf cluster of these?
So maybe my "Hello World" Java method will win this one!
"Telecommuting" means working away from the normal office environment. This guy was a "teleworker." Sure, he isn't NORMALLY a teleworker (e.g. he usually works out of the office). But he took work home. He was telecommuting. There would have been little chance of this data being stolen had he not "telecommuted."
Telecommuting has drawbacks. The number one issue is that the home is not usually a good environment for work. This includes issues of safety and data security. Operations are at risk if you do not take sufficient precautions.
One interesting solution to this is thin client computing. I've experimented with Sun Ray thin clients that connect over a broadband connection back to a server. No data is stored on the thin client. All it really transmits is pixels and keyboard and mouse clicks (encrypted, too). That's the right way to approach this. Never store data away from the people paid to protect it (then make sure those people do a good job).
According to New Balance, they're made in either Maine or Massachussettes (blue states!).
By lumping those countries together, I didn't mean to do anything anti-east-asian. Add Suriname, Burma, Ivory Coast, etc. Basically, any place where labor is exploited. The better the wages there (Mexico is apparently "too expensive" these days), the more comfortable you can be with products originating there.
I will also lump India and Pakistan (to a lesser extent), as they, too, are targets of exploitation labor.
I could give a cow's fart about a given place's politics, ethnicity, history or background. If western countries exploit their labor force, then I want to limit my part in that. With today's erosion of labor rights and corporate hegemony, it's not easy.
Actually, I also prefer NB based on quality, but their Chinese models aren't inherently worse than their USA-built models. I pick from those models because 1) they're the style I'm looking for and 2) they're USA-built.
Yes, Sri Lankan girls will suffer, but Sri Lankan girls will continue to suffer until such time as the average wage improves relative to the rest of us. Only by not playing in the exploitation game are you free from sin. Your argument is akin to the argument against emanicpation of black slaves in the USA - those poor ignorant bastards will starve if we don't give them their gruel!
The only real continuous poverty on this planet is the result of exploitation (by someone else, currently "the west"). The status quo is typically maintained by authoritarian governments acting as puppets for the exploiters (or at least entirely subservient to their interests). Consumerism without regard to socioeconomic consequences is a large force supporting this.
The Honda minivan I drive was made in Alabama ("Made in USA" label is only applicable to products that contain "all, or virtually all" US-produced content). Our older Subaru station wagon, however, was made in Japan.
It still matters to me. I just bought a pair of New Balance shoes, and I only buy NB athletic shoes because they still make some in the USA (check the inside label, because they also make some models abroad). I'm also a bit of a woodworker/tool junkie, and I refuse to buy tools made in China. I'll settle for Japan, Europe or Mexico if USA isn't available. But nothing from Taiwan, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, etc.
The only people to blame are consumers. Demand something else and you'll get it. Settle, and you get sweatshop labor. "Free Tibet" isn't just a bumper sticker slogan. If you really cared about it, you would change your ways.
...is in the form of customer approval. They will approve of easy and affordable methods of obtaining licensed content, and will thereby protect the bottom lines of the content providers. They will shun pirated media in favor of supporting the people who give them the good stuff, they way they like it, pr0n or otherwise.
I bet you thought I would say something else about "protection." I thought about it, but you know...
Technically the only official SUPPORT for Solaris 10 will be under Virtual Infrastructure 3 (VI3 is the new name for ESX). That said, I run Solaris 10 just fine under VMWare Workstation 5.5 (even though it's reported as "experimental"). But we are definitely going to look into running Solaris 10 production under VI3.
.edu pricing will be lower :)
The best news for ESX owners (with Serivce and Support agreements) is that we can buy into VI3 Enterprise (all the cool automation features) for a cool $1000 per TWO CPU server. Darn, that's a deal. I'm hoping
I would also suggest looking at it. It has the features you're asking for, including very good workflow management. We got it as a web content management system, and it works for that too, though it's a bit hard to use for this. It's also a bit pricey, but complete.
Everyone remembers the "1984" spot Chiat-Day did for Apple when they introduced the Mac. Many of us, however, also remember the dreaded "Lemmings" campaign that followed. This basically called "IBM PC users" morons and flopped miserably. You don't steal your competitor's customers by calling them idiots.
Talk to top vendors. We just decided on a Dell/EMC CX3-40 system, after comparing systems from HP (EVA 6000), IBM (DS4800) and StorageTek (FLX 380). They were so close to one another in support and features. Surprisingly, their engineers and sales teams were quite complimentary of each other, and each attested to interoperability (our mix of WS2K3EE, RHEL/SEL, VMware ESX and MOSXS). Quite honestly, we would be very happy with any one of them. Dell just went all out and gave us the best value.
All you naysayers, understand that we had exactly the same sort of announcements before the Linear Tape Open (LTO) standard was developed. IBM led a group of manufacturers to develop a standard built around a few breakthroughs in tape density and drive head technologies. They predicted 10X (or more) capacity, 5X (or more) throughput, etc. and it would be available in 5 years or so. Sure enough, LTO-1 came about and immediately led to a tape storage boom. Quantum pushed DLT to about its limits, Storagetek upped the ante with their very high speed formats, etc. Everything got cheaper. Tape stayed relevant. I predict the very same trend in the near future...
...because new developers that DO will take their place, and do quite nicely to boot.
But he 1337 h4x0r! He pwn3s!
Totally agree with you. Disclosure is a necessary FORMAL process. It involves complete academic review. Those that do it can right can find gainful employment as security professionals.
You missed my disclaimer "real" in that :)
Yeah, it has flash that is updated automatically (via tftp) when it boots to the SRSS server. Exceptionally minimal, hence the term "thin."
but beware of thin clients based on Windows XP Embedded. This is basically a "dumbed down" version of XP, meant to run a few local applications (browsers, media players, etc.). However, being XP, they are susceptible to many of the same vulnerabilities that "fat" XP is. Vendors will tell you that they're immune because they use "nonwritable storage." The problem is, that's not really true. They use a "RAM disk" scheme that is basically a reboot-to-discard-changes operation. While the system is powered and on the network, it's a target, and seeing how many zero-day XP vulnerabilities there are, you're forced to keep chasing this security target for eternity. There goes your supposed lowered TCO...
a sp
We have tried Wyse and Neoware clients based on XP Embedded. They both functioned OK. RAM limitations for the RAM disk were the achilles heel - lots of apps (IE, QuickTime, Real & WMP) expect a disk to use as cache. It will work, but you have to pay attention to application-level caches. As I mentioned, the REAL problem with these systems is that you have to manage them just like fat clients - patch, patch, patch, reboot, patch, etc. We absolutely hated the Wyse Rapport software. Neoware's was easier, but the delays in getting XP Embedded specific patches from either vendor was unacceptable, despite the fact that these systems were vulnerable to the same errata as "fat" XP.
The next style is the Linux-based thin client. These are far slimmer (less built-in code) than their XP Embedded cousins, often running on much lower powered platforms (PPC is quite common), making them much less susceptible to common Linux-on-X86 vulnerabilities. I haven't tried them yet, so I can't speak to the management scheme. But, I figure it's somewhere near the XP Embedded space - you still have multiple boxes sitting on desktops that need to get upgraded from time to time. I just think the fact that Linux thin clients are so much slimmer makes them far less likely to be exposed to the same risk as XP Embedded.
My favorite thin client architecture thus far is the Sun Ray platform. This is a TRUE thin client, in that the clients don't really run any software. For the most part, they behave as an Ethernet-based remote KVM. Add smart card-based "hot desking" and you have a truly usable "network computer" environment. They even run RDP for running Windows apps now. The best thing about Sun Ray is that software upgrades are done on ONE BOX (the Sun Ray Server System server, which can be Solaris or Linux). At most, you have to manage a handful of servers, if you run a cluster. But these are all in the same room, right next to your professional sysadmin, who keeps on top of patches and locks it down right. Very much a different beast than a box on every desk.
eWeek has a special report on thin clients; http://www.eweek.com/category2/0,1874,1725167,00.
Good luck!
Charles
I like the name "wii" and I'm getting one for my son the day it comes out. Nintendo understands why I got into games to begin with - social interaction with people in the room. Yeah, FPS is fun, but nothing beats clobbering your bros. at Cyberball or NHLPA Hockey (yes, Genesis days, TYVM) and telling them their "face" was just handed to them...
It's too late. You work for "systems," but can't be bothered to provide "support." You and your organization should be shut down.
You also don't understand evolutionary theory. There is no such thing as "maximum benefit." There is only "good enough" (and therefore still around and surviving) and "not good enough" (extinct).
Only "academics" (in the pure, pejorative definition) bother themselves about which is the "perfect" operating system. Meanwhile, imperfect species (Windoze, Linux, etc.) continue to thrive. Tannenbaum is the definition of an academic.
Don't tell me what I'm saying. I'm saying that the "greatness" of Mach has no bearing on the suitability of Linux, and therefore it's survival.
LOTS of great operating systems have been developed, just as Smalltalk is the best programming language ever created...
So there are no more apes, then, right?
"Improvement" isn't even a consideration. By what standard? "Didn't die off" is all you can hope for.
Ah, but they did. During the "bad years" under Rick Belluzzo, SGI's then very competitive engineering was halted, in favor of turning SGI into a competitor for HP and Dell (Rick came from HP). SGI marched to orders to become a "NT workstation reseller." What a collossal mistake. Now they were beholden to Microsoft for any support of their brilliant engineering (the best video hardware of the time - unusable because of delays in Microsoft driver integration). No biggie for Rick - he went on to Microsoft, before getting fired and moving on to Quantum.
So, yeah, they stopped doing what they do best. It's unfortunate, because they lost a lot of ground during those times. It was only recently that they decided to go back 100% to what they knew best- Viz & HPC. Had they done this earlier, I suspect their Linux developments would have made Linux on Itanium quite a bitter better known.
Dearest Andy, please take some University courses on evolutionary biology. Perhaps you will take away a meaningful sense of the differences between "optimal" and "sufficient." I agree 100% with what you say. "Microkernels are better." That being said, this does nothing to diminish the viability of Linux, or any other monolithic system. Evolution only requires that a species retain sufficient qualities to ensure survivability (and therefore reproduction) in a given environment. "Perfection" never enters the equation (not even qualifiers such as "best" or "better" - just "good enough").
So, let's all agree with Andy, then go on using the best tools for our purposes. If that happens to be Linux (or even Windoze), then so be it...