And you reach the fundemental problem why is software protected unlike any other good? I baught it I paid for it I should own it and be able to do whatever I want with it sans copping and redistributing it. Software seems to be the tool that the first sale docterine is getting destroyed by. Corperations allways hated it that people have the right to open up there hardware and modify it it cost them money in support and warentee service. How many expensie car parts fly apart like a watch when opened? Software is becomming a new level of this.
Now granted I'm not for getting free services for nothing (ok it's intreging for a second then morals kick back in) I own a DirectTivo as it's the only Tivo I have seen with acceptable signal quality and the 2 tunner function rocks. But they refuse to allow them to upgrade to the new Tivo code to allow the home media option. They make very sure it's very hard to hack to get on the internet for it's phone in (there is some valid security there DirectTV authorizes it's payperview that way) Without an updated kernel on the box you cant go above 132 gigs per drive this is an issue as a lot of people would like to throw one or a pair of 250 gigs drives in.
Realy it looks more like the media companies are pshing to keep the DirectTivo cloase as possible and they have leverage via there pricign to DirectTV.
Not a bad idea untill you get the prissy Programing dept that cant have there sacred cow of a test server touched or the VP of sales that needs to bring his plauge ridden network onto the network and refuses to loose admin rights and the ability to override virus software.
Now granted mostly I'm a consultant so I actualy sugest the right course of action sometimes I win and other times expediance and bad addituded win generaly from the non IT department. Things in midsized shops like you mean I cant have local admin period? but I'm a programmer I need local Admin to install things. or the high and mighty sales guy who needs to open exe's from his email to do his job (yea because people allwasy send each other.exe's in email) granted he clicks on everything presented that looks official.
It would seem that they wrote 13 pages of well duh your not liable (the universities) under safe harbor as long as you follow DCMA procedures duh. You can give them legal help but dont have to. Otherwise it's up to the students to not infringe.
I dont know it realy looks like a toy to throw in and boot up some lab machine without leaving many traces. Most people I can think that need this allready have linux on a laptop for this function or are running windows equivialants.
Maybe it's a good giveaway for consultants to throw a little knoledge at the clients let them get scared and then do a real audit?
Actualy it will never stop the police they are allowed to lie as part of undercover work. Private citizens can bring any evidence they want to law enforcment no matter how they got it as well. But You can use the DMCA against them as every time you get a C&D letter you can obtain proof they illigialy scanned you. Law enforment can but private citizens cant this isn't going to stop you from getting nailed for infingement but if all the legal sites out there do it it will make it not worth the effort.
OK this seems like a simple fix add some verbage to the login page headers etc (and robots.txt possibly) stating that if you are any of the following you are not autorized to view any contant on this site.
Work for, with or at the behest of:
BSA RIAA MPAA etc etc etc
By continuing to utilize this site you agree to hold harmless this site of any infringments of copyright, pattents or other inteletual property. Failure to abide by these restrictions constitues Copyrigth infrinement, eletronic tresspass and acceptance to the above terms.
OK so when there bot visits your site you now have proof they at least infringed on your copyright.
Granted this is very rough and would need to be updated etc. But you could have something to sue upon after insiting that there is no infringing material. And computer tresspass is rather easy to prove.
Thats why you require laptops to have firewalling on them especialy for sales guys.
Outside consultants are harder to deal with realy this is why you us an IDS to see whats happening inside your firewall(s) and reset and shun nastyness. It also helps to stop those programming team security audits (watch a programmer when his port gets turned off for 30 minutes as he tries portscan a box they turn so red it's funny) allways get this in corprate documentation perferably with a set off the IDS and it's a terminatable offence.
Firewalls are only part of being safe on a network They provide conditional access and generaly stop external threats. Realy this is a filter to only let what you want though at a services level and sometimes do more by filtering at the application level. Often this is the pace where you can do first responce to a new threat in a reactive situation.
IDS's these realy act as a monitering application there use is generaly better for internal to internal protection and outgoing if your not proxied. If anything hits the internal IDS it should send up a big red flag and get looked at.
Patches and running services are generaly a second step when reacting to a new threat.
Now granded I think everybody has had default.ida triggering a reset and shun for awhile now at the firwall and IDA level at least.
Unfortunatly because a few people dont think driving on the roads that you pay for is a valid right they make you give up your rights when you get a liscence. It varies by state to state here is CT you have to dot he breathalizer or a blood test and the lawers all sugest the blood test as it means a trip to the hospital where at least they arent biased in genera and throw you at the bottom of the list to be seen (giving a person time to sober up as well)
Persoanly I think it should be the right of EVERYBODY to dirve once they pass a basic skill test aka the current driving test. But as far as not allowing people to drive once thats past it should be a right not a priviage. Now of course people will bring up the drunkards that are dangerious I said drive I didn't say drive an SUV get caught DUI why not be forced to drive a vespa scooter that you would have to try and hurt somebody on heck even a geo metro or an insight. This restriction should go away after a time and serve as the only punishment assuming they didn't hurt anybody. Otherwise were working on making another second class citizen with reduced rights and no ability for advancement (think of what sort of job you could do without a car) nor the ability to choose where they live (there is no garbage pickup in the suburbs nor services in so so no car means no way to even get your waste to the dump) and nobody should be forced to live in the cess pool that is the cities.
Well firewalls generaly are a lot less time consuming to configure and have the ability to be configured en Mass out of the box unlike windows servers. They also dont have significant dependancy issues in upgrades like windows PC's often do (even Linux boxes and unix boxes in general can depending on what it is getting updated) but the reality is a pair of firewalls can reliably handle hundred of megabits of traffic enough for the outside connections of a whole datacenter with thousands of PC servers so the manpower and cost generaly makes it cheaper and faster to update the firewall than all the servers.
Directly all the firewalls I control, that have been setup to my spec stop this on in it's tracks because connections to remote TFTP traffic are not allowed period. Public servers shouldent be allowed to make outgoing connections it's that simple any connections they do make should be to internal servers (proxies for anything they might need to get to) this makes keeping them secure very easy but the cost of having a proxy and the general levels of agrivation generaly mean it's only feasable on a larger network and not for colocation / webhosting (client issues) as people dont want secure theyw ant easy most of the time.
Well your talking about business in those cases I nearly exclusvle use Ultrim2 for new hardware 200 gigs uncompressed $100 tapes and $5k tape heads it will write out the 200 gigs in around 2 hours at 30 MB a sec.
When will people figure out to backup there machines on a regular basis? And more importantly verify those backups. Persoanly I have a large disk farm that doubles up as a media playback and ripping device with a 35 gig DLT haning off of it. Diff backups run nightly with fulls every 2 months I have been working on the same set of tapes for 4 years and this handles my entire network at home. Granted for a home user a small pile of CD-r is probably cheaper if more manpower intinsive. A full backup once a year wouldent be to bad with incrementals daily (how many people make 600 megs of incrementals a week forget daily?)
But you have stumbled upon one of the good things about some tech support departments. I have had direct contact with engineers that designed things with Cisco and Compaq (DEC realy) it generaly takes a few days before it happens the first time but after that you have a great resource. Case in point the Cisco Distributed Director Platform. I was doing a very large deployment of these for a large startup and had tones of problem ith HTTP mode redirection with DRP agents on our own 12k's (44 of them) after a week of teir 3 tech support they got the lead engineer involved from his cabin in Montana via fedexing him a cell (he was very much disconnected and on vacation) within a couple days I had a custom revision of code that fixed my issues and a direct contact for the issues we had later Cisco didn't have a problem with this. I have been told that there is a VP we gets to tell a CEO about any problem thats open after 3 days and why it isnt fixed.
I think calling off hours often gets you a happier tech with more time to take care of your issues. Often the off hours techs are newer / going to school and have a good additude.
Rackspace has some bad pricing structures bandwith wise but if your just talking about support you cant beat them for a hosting provider thats large and has a good network not just a good network story.
Ah the joys of a grammer Natzi. OK now that I got the flame bit over.
Realy why my own grammer is horid it's one thing to have issues in general grammer it's entirly another thing to take slag and submit it as english. I would think it's the same problem ebonics, people become to used to slang and consider it part of the general language. Now granted I did once here that if something appeared in print a few times it was considered a valid word in the english language, persoanly I have allways dispised the poor manner in wich dictionaries for american english have been assembled.
Thats funny I know a lot of people that make a good living supporting open source products it's called those local consulting companies. If you want support for an open source product you can normal buy it at similar costs to off the shelf apps. Generaly these are the consultants that have giving the customer a sence of it will get fixed and I dont have to ride shotgun over them to do it like corprate tech support.
Now this may be bacause your small shops dont have the money to hire lots of lackeys to field the stupid things. Maybe were not drawn down to all the silly things because they pay to talk to us. How many times have you have a user error that if you took a breather and came back 15 minutes later would have figured out rather than putting in support tickets.
Cisco tech support isn't that expensive there hardware support is:) Realy it's just a question of sending one of your techs in for CCIE training they then get all the tech support you need. Now if you only have 1 router this is very expensive but if you have one router you should probably have a consultant to deal with that that is a CCIE or has a partner agangrment. I would say in general there hardware support isn't worth it (5 years of it and you could buy a new one) how many routers fail within 5 years?
Funny most of the RFID chips I have seen are a simple serial number imprinted at manufacture. The device goes through a fiield gets charged up and emits that data as an rf pulse.
OK having used them but not needing support that often here are the highlights:
Dedicated team this means you get one of a handfull of people every time you call about your server AKA they do it right and assign admins and support staff to machines 1-500 another group to 501-1000 so they dont have to know about everyhting.
There teams are from multiple fields so there is the usual tech drones that get the info and do anything that has been stripted this is probably most of what they deal with if they are like the hosting companies I know well. But there is also the dedicated networking and OS guys in the mix so there is never the well networking is working on that we will get back to you there is somebody you can talk to directly.
They agressivly script things if there is a security update out they will volenteer to install it for you via a script pretty much unless you did any customization they will do the work for you for free. This isn't garenteed but it's automated so it happens.
On the flip side get 2 day past due and they will shut down the server there accounting is realy good about making sure they get paid. They will get things back ASAP as well and give you plenty of notification via email but if you ever lived in a large corp its those runs down to accounting to make that bill get on top of the processing pile.
OK I can do this now the bluetooth adapter plugs into the standard headseat plug on my siemens cordless or though another adapter to my AT&T phone (they use big ugly 1/4 inch jacks course it's an office phone)
Slashdot Mirror
And you reach the fundemental problem why is software protected unlike any other good? I baught it I paid for it I should own it and be able to do whatever I want with it sans copping and redistributing it. Software seems to be the tool that the first sale docterine is getting destroyed by. Corperations allways hated it that people have the right to open up there hardware and modify it it cost them money in support and warentee service. How many expensie car parts fly apart like a watch when opened? Software is becomming a new level of this.
Now granted I'm not for getting free services for nothing (ok it's intreging for a second then morals kick back in) I own a DirectTivo as it's the only Tivo I have seen with acceptable signal quality and the 2 tunner function rocks. But they refuse to allow them to upgrade to the new Tivo code to allow the home media option. They make very sure it's very hard to hack to get on the internet for it's phone in (there is some valid security there DirectTV authorizes it's payperview that way) Without an updated kernel on the box you cant go above 132 gigs per drive this is an issue as a lot of people would like to throw one or a pair of 250 gigs drives in.
Realy it looks more like the media companies are pshing to keep the DirectTivo cloase as possible and they have leverage via there pricign to DirectTV.
Not a bad idea untill you get the prissy Programing dept that cant have there sacred cow of a test server touched or the VP of sales that needs to bring his plauge ridden network onto the network and refuses to loose admin rights and the ability to override virus software.
.exe's in email) granted he clicks on everything presented that looks official.
Now granted mostly I'm a consultant so I actualy sugest the right course of action sometimes I win and other times expediance and bad addituded win generaly from the non IT department. Things in midsized shops like you mean I cant have local admin period? but I'm a programmer I need local Admin to install things. or the high and mighty sales guy who needs to open exe's from his email to do his job (yea because people allwasy send each other
Correction it's Illegal in the US and many other countries around the world.
It would seem that they wrote 13 pages of well duh your not liable (the universities) under safe harbor as long as you follow DCMA procedures duh. You can give them legal help but dont have to. Otherwise it's up to the students to not infringe.
But do you realy want to scan the network at best buy? All those vulnerable windows boxes.
I dont know it realy looks like a toy to throw in and boot up some lab machine without leaving many traces. Most people I can think that need this allready have linux on a laptop for this function or are running windows equivialants.
Maybe it's a good giveaway for consultants to throw a little knoledge at the clients let them get scared and then do a real audit?
Actualy it will never stop the police they are allowed to lie as part of undercover work. Private citizens can bring any evidence they want to law enforcment no matter how they got it as well. But You can use the DMCA against them as every time you get a C&D letter you can obtain proof they illigialy scanned you. Law enforment can but private citizens cant this isn't going to stop you from getting nailed for infingement but if all the legal sites out there do it it will make it not worth the effort.
OK this seems like a simple fix add some verbage to the login page headers etc (and robots.txt possibly) stating that if you are any of the following you are not autorized to view any contant on this site.
Work for, with or at the behest of:
BSA
RIAA
MPAA
etc
etc
etc
By continuing to utilize this site you agree to hold harmless this site of any infringments of copyright, pattents or other inteletual property. Failure to abide by these restrictions constitues Copyrigth infrinement, eletronic tresspass and acceptance to the above terms.
OK so when there bot visits your site you now have proof they at least infringed on your copyright.
Granted this is very rough and would need to be updated etc. But you could have something to sue upon after insiting that there is no infringing material. And computer tresspass is rather easy to prove.
Thats why you require laptops to have firewalling on them especialy for sales guys.
Outside consultants are harder to deal with realy this is why you us an IDS to see whats happening inside your firewall(s) and reset and shun nastyness. It also helps to stop those programming team security audits (watch a programmer when his port gets turned off for 30 minutes as he tries portscan a box they turn so red it's funny) allways get this in corprate documentation perferably with a set off the IDS and it's a terminatable offence.
I think it would be clearer to think of it like this.
GPL gives you the right to sell, provide for download and otherwise make copies abilible of a work.
As long as you dont distribute GPL has NOTHING to do with you at all as your not vialating copyright and you got your copy legaly.
GPL is a contract that you accept when you distribute not when you receive a copy.
OK I'll bite.
Firewalls are only part of being safe on a network They provide conditional access and generaly stop external threats. Realy this is a filter to only let what you want though at a services level and sometimes do more by filtering at the application level. Often this is the pace where you can do first responce to a new threat in a reactive situation.
IDS's these realy act as a monitering application there use is generaly better for internal to internal protection and outgoing if your not proxied. If anything hits the internal IDS it should send up a big red flag and get looked at.
Patches and running services are generaly a second step when reacting to a new threat.
Now granded I think everybody has had default.ida triggering a reset and shun for awhile now at the firwall and IDA level at least.
Unfortunatly because a few people dont think driving on the roads that you pay for is a valid right they make you give up your rights when you get a liscence. It varies by state to state here is CT you have to dot he breathalizer or a blood test and the lawers all sugest the blood test as it means a trip to the hospital where at least they arent biased in genera and throw you at the bottom of the list to be seen (giving a person time to sober up as well)
Persoanly I think it should be the right of EVERYBODY to dirve once they pass a basic skill test aka the current driving test. But as far as not allowing people to drive once thats past it should be a right not a priviage. Now of course people will bring up the drunkards that are dangerious I said drive I didn't say drive an SUV get caught DUI why not be forced to drive a vespa scooter that you would have to try and hurt somebody on heck even a geo metro or an insight. This restriction should go away after a time and serve as the only punishment assuming they didn't hurt anybody. Otherwise were working on making another second class citizen with reduced rights and no ability for advancement (think of what sort of job you could do without a car) nor the ability to choose where they live (there is no garbage pickup in the suburbs nor services in so so no car means no way to even get your waste to the dump) and nobody should be forced to live in the cess pool that is the cities.
Well firewalls generaly are a lot less time consuming to configure and have the ability to be configured en Mass out of the box unlike windows servers. They also dont have significant dependancy issues in upgrades like windows PC's often do (even Linux boxes and unix boxes in general can depending on what it is getting updated) but the reality is a pair of firewalls can reliably handle hundred of megabits of traffic enough for the outside connections of a whole datacenter with thousands of PC servers so the manpower and cost generaly makes it cheaper and faster to update the firewall than all the servers.
Directly all the firewalls I control, that have been setup to my spec stop this on in it's tracks because connections to remote TFTP traffic are not allowed period. Public servers shouldent be allowed to make outgoing connections it's that simple any connections they do make should be to internal servers (proxies for anything they might need to get to) this makes keeping them secure very easy but the cost of having a proxy and the general levels of agrivation generaly mean it's only feasable on a larger network and not for colocation / webhosting (client issues) as people dont want secure theyw ant easy most of the time.
You need to site the Cisco vulerability for the router when you contact TAC sitting that as the reason your entiled to an upgrade.
Well your talking about business in those cases I nearly exclusvle use Ultrim2 for new hardware 200 gigs uncompressed $100 tapes and $5k tape heads it will write out the 200 gigs in around 2 hours at 30 MB a sec.
I was talking about your generated data aka DivX you made and save games for your examples.
When will people figure out to backup there machines on a regular basis? And more importantly verify those backups. Persoanly I have a large disk farm that doubles up as a media playback and ripping device with a 35 gig DLT haning off of it. Diff backups run nightly with fulls every 2 months I have been working on the same set of tapes for 4 years and this handles my entire network at home. Granted for a home user a small pile of CD-r is probably cheaper if more manpower intinsive. A full backup once a year wouldent be to bad with incrementals daily (how many people make 600 megs of incrementals a week forget daily?)
But you have stumbled upon one of the good things about some tech support departments. I have had direct contact with engineers that designed things with Cisco and Compaq (DEC realy) it generaly takes a few days before it happens the first time but after that you have a great resource. Case in point the Cisco Distributed Director Platform. I was doing a very large deployment of these for a large startup and had tones of problem ith HTTP mode redirection with DRP agents on our own 12k's (44 of them) after a week of teir 3 tech support they got the lead engineer involved from his cabin in Montana via fedexing him a cell (he was very much disconnected and on vacation) within a couple days I had a custom revision of code that fixed my issues and a direct contact for the issues we had later Cisco didn't have a problem with this. I have been told that there is a VP we gets to tell a CEO about any problem thats open after 3 days and why it isnt fixed.
I think calling off hours often gets you a happier tech with more time to take care of your issues. Often the off hours techs are newer / going to school and have a good additude.
Rackspace has some bad pricing structures bandwith wise but if your just talking about support you cant beat them for a hosting provider thats large and has a good network not just a good network story.
Ah the joys of a grammer Natzi. OK now that I got the flame bit over.
Realy why my own grammer is horid it's one thing to have issues in general grammer it's entirly another thing to take slag and submit it as english. I would think it's the same problem ebonics, people become to used to slang and consider it part of the general language. Now granted I did once here that if something appeared in print a few times it was considered a valid word in the english language, persoanly I have allways dispised the poor manner in wich dictionaries for american english have been assembled.
Thats funny I know a lot of people that make a good living supporting open source products it's called those local consulting companies. If you want support for an open source product you can normal buy it at similar costs to off the shelf apps. Generaly these are the consultants that have giving the customer a sence of it will get fixed and I dont have to ride shotgun over them to do it like corprate tech support.
Now this may be bacause your small shops dont have the money to hire lots of lackeys to field the stupid things. Maybe were not drawn down to all the silly things because they pay to talk to us. How many times have you have a user error that if you took a breather and came back 15 minutes later would have figured out rather than putting in support tickets.
Cisco tech support isn't that expensive there hardware support is :) Realy it's just a question of sending one of your techs in for CCIE training they then get all the tech support you need. Now if you only have 1 router this is very expensive but if you have one router you should probably have a consultant to deal with that that is a CCIE or has a partner agangrment. I would say in general there hardware support isn't worth it (5 years of it and you could buy a new one) how many routers fail within 5 years?
Funny most of the RFID chips I have seen are a simple serial number imprinted at manufacture. The device goes through a fiield gets charged up and emits that data as an rf pulse.
OK having used them but not needing support that often here are the highlights:
Dedicated team this means you get one of a handfull of people every time you call about your server AKA they do it right and assign admins and support staff to machines 1-500 another group to 501-1000 so they dont have to know about everyhting.
There teams are from multiple fields so there is the usual tech drones that get the info and do anything that has been stripted this is probably most of what they deal with if they are like the hosting companies I know well. But there is also the dedicated networking and OS guys in the mix so there is never the well networking is working on that we will get back to you there is somebody you can talk to directly.
They agressivly script things if there is a security update out they will volenteer to install it for you via a script pretty much unless you did any customization they will do the work for you for free. This isn't garenteed but it's automated so it happens.
On the flip side get 2 day past due and they will shut down the server there accounting is realy good about making sure they get paid. They will get things back ASAP as well and give you plenty of notification via email but if you ever lived in a large corp its those runs down to accounting to make that bill get on top of the processing pile.
OK I can do this now the bluetooth adapter plugs into the standard headseat plug on my siemens cordless or though another adapter to my AT&T phone (they use big ugly 1/4 inch jacks course it's an office phone)