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  1. Re:What I find alarming... on Microsoft Admits To Backdoor In IIS [updated] · · Score: 2
    Well, lets see - I see the need for a riddle :). It ran on a dual processor system - not SMP, but active/inactive for redundancy. Its main processor (at the time) was the same processor using in pre PPC Macs. It was all written in a proprietary heavily typed language based off Pascal, and these systems were used by millions of people everyday all over the world. It handled thousands of 'transactions' a second.

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  2. Re:Occam's razor needed on Las Vegas's Seedy Technical Underbelly · · Score: 5
    Well, perhaps, but...

    Why is everyone concentrating on Sprint? All these hotels have monster PBXs - heck a few probably have DMS-100 class systems given the # of lines they require - a bit much for all but the beefiest PBXs.

    It would be trivial for them to redirect the calls - either manually or even automagically with routing tables. Since they own it - they can easily do it and I honestly can't imagine it would fall under the jurisdiction of the PUC since it ain't a public utility! THey own the PBX, you use their phones, and as long as they meet various requirements (you can reach 911, etc) no problem. I honestly wonder if doing in on a PBX would be illegal! And eve nif it was - and they did - Sprint would still be out of the picture.

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  3. Re:How about the *cool* tech stuff? on Las Vegas's Seedy Technical Underbelly · · Score: 4
    You know, for a place that hosts Comdex and DefCon, a lot of computer people don't seem to realize how tech-driven Las Vegas really is.

    Absolutely!

    I managed an R&D data center with oh maybe 600 servers or so - lots of small boxen with their own disks, etc plus a handufl of LARGE Auspex/Net Appliance/HPUX K&N-Class type boxes. Well, we decided to try and centralize storage for as many systems as possible to improve backups, get better utilization of RAID storage, ie what we paid for, etc

    So we were dealing with a bunch of he big name SAN vendors (Clarion, EMC, etc) So durin gtheir roadshows with us - giving us technical info ont eh systems and how they scale - they each trootted out as one of their 'big' customers who proved multi site SAN was workable and a good idea: Las Vegas Casinos. The data networks and systems tracking everything there are IMMENSE and it was amazing to get even a high level glimpse of how it was all setup. Absolutely mind boggling.

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  4. Re:What I find alarming... on Microsoft Admits To Backdoor In IIS [updated] · · Score: 4
    Now I can bash Micro$oft with the best of them, but in their defense...

    The backdoor was slipped in by a coder who managed ot get it through a code review, etc, etc. This is not isolated to Microsoft. That's why OSS is so nice - anyone can look for and find backdoors to fix them.

    When you are talking about tens of millions of lines of code, its impossible to find stuff like this unless you spend a LOT of time looking for it. IN my previous life I worked for a company whose flagship software was about 25 million lines of code. I'll never forget when they decided to give the source to select customers who signed NDA's. They spent MONTHS looking for backdoors and inappropriate comments like:

    // If we get here we are REALLY f**ked

    It was amazing how much stuff they found (mostly in the comment catagory) and how long it took to find it all in a code base that large.

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  5. They say they WILL provide a searchable index... on Peer-to-Peer Search Engine Wants You To Help Grub · · Score: 5
    In reading the FAQ over - they state that they will, at some point, have a front end to search the data:

    Q: How much longer will it be before grub.org has a searchable index?
    A: The first phase of the client and server project has just started. We expect that phase to take somewhere between 2-3 months to complete. At that time, we will begin deploying to the client to beta testers - at which time the database will begin to grow. A searchable index will become available sometime between now and then that will access the database directly. Update: We expect the database to come online sometime in Jan 2001.

    Looks like they are a little behind schedule on this one.

    And another telling tidbit from their FAQ:

    Q: Why would I want to run this client? At least with SETI, I'm doing something - like looking for aliens.
    A: We like aliens too, but ours is noble cause if there ever was one - to have a decent index of the Internet free for any individual to use when they need it. The reasons that you'll want to run it will vary, but we think you'll see the advantages to be gained by running our client - especially if you are a system admin, or author of a web site.

    So I guess my main concern is that a) they could pull a GraceNote and b) the whole selling top result spots to big companies that may have NOTHING to do with what I'm searching for.

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  6. Re:What's the license on the database? on Peer-to-Peer Search Engine Wants You To Help Grub · · Score: 5
    Read their Investor Page - they absolutely plan on charging the search engines to use the data AND to sell top result spots to the highest bidder. Open source or no open source - this is a joke - they won't get a sliver of my bandwidth.

    Here is the section outlining what they plan to do with all this free data 'volunteers' give them:

    The first revenue stream will come from selling URL status information to companies like Google and Altavista. This status information will enable existing crawlers to target the crawls for a particular day, based on the highly up-to-date information contained in our database. These status updates are similar in nature to the service provided by someone like NetMind, in which a change on a website triggers an action. Grub's database will be much vaster by comparison however, enabling it to provide services directly to wholesale search engines.

    Second, Grub will begin selling "wholesale searches" to other search engines and companies. Grub will make strategic alliances with other search engines much in the same way that Google has done with Yahoo and Inktomi has done with Hotbot. Grub will also provide one-shot search results for a large search query, delivering the data in a database format (like XML) instead of a web format.

    Third, Grub will begin charging website customers for content control. Content control consists of indexing updated information on a regular basis and controlling link placement in search results. Large sites who's revenue depends on sustained inbound web traffic will be charged based on the amount of data that they submit into Grub's database, and on what placement they get in Grub's search result sets.

    Fourth, Grub will provide consulting services for companies wanting to set up their own Grub networks. Large corporate intranets could be quickly and efficiently indexed into a central database with the Grub client/server model. Consulting and coding for these proprietary installations is a common model in Open Source oriented businesses like Sendmail, MySQL and Apache.

    Guess they thought we were really that stupid!

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  7. Neat idea - but I'm gonna pass... on Peer-to-Peer Search Engine Wants You To Help Grub · · Score: 5
    So it sounds like they want to provide the info they gather to other existing' search engines. Hey - now Grub crawling the internet and sending its data to Google to make Google even better - I'm all over that. Of course, if they send data to Excite, I'll stop running the client. I cannot believe how Excite (and all the affiliated search engines they have now purchased) pretty much requires payment to get added and if you use the free form 'the site will be reviewed and there is no assurance it will be added. Process may take 4 to 6 weeks.'

    Thank goodness for Google!

    But again - this brings up the question similar to what happened with CDDB. Here you have internet volunteers providing free CPU power and bandwidth to provide raw material to for profit companies. Now granted - it is slightly different since you can still Google for free :) I'm not that selfish, but obviously there are some companies I'd be HAPPY to play a small part in improving their data set (Google) and others that given recent developments with URL submission and monetary sorting of search results that I wouldn't want to give data to unless they paid for it :)

    Which now that I read the site more is their business plan. Read their Investor Page I get a squirrely feeling about this. I don't care if the client is open source or not. Why should I use up my precious bandwidth to supply content to a for profit company to sell to other for profit companies? Yes, they give the data away to non profits, but heck - most of them use Google anyway :)

    And of course they are following hte lead of the other greedy search sites - adjusting search result order for money which I can't stand. Google is the one search engine that got it right - sort data by relevance and popularity.

    I'll read more about it - but I think I'm gonna pass on this on - I just don't see the benefit for the volunteers who run this both on a selfish individual scale and a broader Internet community scale

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  8. Re:Nobody is forcing you to upgrade on Apple Releases - Doing Less, Faster, Is Better? · · Score: 4
    But if you can schedule when the upgrades occur - who cares - becuase for everyone saying I only need them monthly there will at times be IT guys screaming for the patch yesterday.

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  9. Nobody is forcing you to upgrade on Apple Releases - Doing Less, Faster, Is Better? · · Score: 3
    Gee - we bitch because updates aren't coming fast enough - then when they do, their coming too often.

    I'd rather have lots of updates than not enough (as long as they don't break things!)

    How many people complain that RedHat doesn't release update RPMs fast enough (though you can now grab them from RawHide) and they don't show up in RedCarpet in a timely manner?

    So configure your client to update on a schedule you want and be glad when it DOES run that there are fixes to be had - you could be stuck with a buggy OS that never has the fixes released on a regular basis (*cough*Microsoft*cough*)

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  10. Water in a power supply.... on Commercial Water Cooling, And Quiet · · Score: 2
    I really want one of these babies. But seeing water tubes going into the power supply with 120 or 240VAC dancing around just makes me squimish. Even though I'm sure its not a big deal - the design looked very nice where the tubes stopped at the cases edge and inside was just a metal cooling assembly. I'm sure I'll quickly get over it and get one anyway :)

    Of course - I can't imagine UL signing off on these Power Supplies, but maybe they already have if they are robust enough. Are they UL listed? If not I can imagine this will be an issue of concern in the corporate world.

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  11. Re:And.. on Commercial Water Cooling, And Quiet · · Score: 2
    Which is cool - but what they REALLY need to do is provide a fan header that pulses at 4K a minute or somethign to fake the mobo into thinking its a fan - if the pump dies, the signal stops and the mobo will take action (most new mobos will shutdown if the fna dies or at least will raise an alarm) Plus most mobos have temp thresholds to shut down if they are exceeded.

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  12. Re:Quiet cases with water cooling on Commercial Water Cooling, And Quiet · · Score: 2
    I've seen a few posts saying that water cooling doesn't really reduce the noise enough to make it worthwhile, partially because of hard drive noise among other things.

    And there are others saying you can hardly hear the 3 small fans in this unit. Yes, the hard drives make some noise and that a fact, but every spinning device in your PC is adding to the noise level. By reduceing the fan count in your average geek box by at least 3 or 4, it makes a huge difference.

    Most review sites publish stats on HD noise so if you really want a quiet system you can shop for the best value drive with performance AND noise taken into account.

    So a system like this - for the price, is a godo deal if you enjoy peace and quiet even in the room your PC lives in.

    Of course if the vendors would ever get power mgmt working in a reliable and std manner - our PCs woudl shut down when we weren't using them without requiring a reboot :) I've used dozens of PCs and it always seems like some suspend nicely, others don't - and RedHat - heck I can't even get it to shut off my monitor (and yes I have power mgmt configured in my kernel!)

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  13. Re:They are nice and quiet on Commercial Water Cooling, And Quiet · · Score: 2
    I believe the display on the front is driven off a sensor embedded right into the cooling paddle that sits on the CPU - so it indicates the CPU temperature itself (or pretty close) Better than those blue thermistors.

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  14. Re:But... on Commercial Water Cooling, And Quiet · · Score: 2
    Well, it depends - my Athlon 700 has three fans, one fo which is in the power supply, two case fans (one in one out) and the heatsink fan - It isn't bothersome most of the time, but if you are watching a quiet movie by the fire with an SO - (my desk is in teh den) it is noticable during quiet periods in the movie.

    I definitely see one of these babies in my future!

    Of course my Athlon is nothing compared to my server room - 5 boxes, plus a firewall was a VERY loud fan, and a 4 disk RAID array tower. PLENTY of noise there! - They used to be in my office - too noisy - now they'll be in a room above my garage - Hopefully I won't be able to hear them in the house LOL :)

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  15. Re:Congrats, you've discovered business on Information Wants to Suck · · Score: 1
    Its ALL Melinda. Come on - he's a geek. All geeks generally would do just about anything to get laid regularly :) Of course in his case it cost him millions - but he can afford it LOL

    But seriously - he didn't donate squat before they met/got married. Now he donates tons, which is good and I applaud him for it. But if he were still single, well, the world would be a slightly different place!

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  16. Speed is one thing.. on Benchmarking XFS, ext2, ReiserFS, FAT32 · · Score: 2
    While speed is important, lets not lose sight of one of the other main benefits of a JFS - recovery time. Even if XFS is a little slower than ext2, I'd still use it given the recovery advantage. Yes reiserFS will do it too, though I belive XFS to be a more 'compilant' JFS in terms of b-trees, etc and I believe as the drivers mature IMHO!!! that XFS will pull away from reiserFS in terms of performance. Only time will tell.

    Needless to say I've got a pair of 61GB IDE's screaming for XFS once the 2.4.4 patches are out. Can't wait.

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  17. Very interesting - you have to wonder on MPAA vs. 2600 Transcript · · Score: 2
    You have to wonder though - if the judges feel 2600 was right/protected in what they did will their status as 'crackers' in teh judges eyes - will that have an impact and how much. I mean judges are ALWAYS supposed to be impartial, but it would kill them, establishment types, to rule against the establishment regardless of the merits of the law.

    I'm not saying they will and I have faith in our judicial system most of the time. But in this case, the MPAA is stepping WAY overboard and a ruling against 2600 would have some major implications in many areas.

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  18. Re:Please add a spelling checker on Slash 2.0 Released · · Score: 2
    The whole virtues of spell checking aside - implementing it right now probably wouldn't be all that smart anyway. pspell is just now getting going (apsell now requires it) and it has a great interface. I plan to use it on on of my sites - but I can't till I move to RH 7. Why? Aspell/Pspell wont' compile on RH 6 (Aspell won't anyway) At least the latest few version won't. Its a known issue. I went back at least 6 or 7 revisions and finally gave up. Granted my site uses php so I want to use the psepll interface with PHP. But I'm sure similar issues exist with Perl.

    I'd say once pspell and the underlying spell check combo gets more wide spread (ie more folks move to the newer gcc and distros) adding a portable spell check won't be such a big deal and it'll require much less code given the neat functions pspell offers.

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  19. Re:just like williams on Internet Access Via Pneumatic Tubes -- Whooosh! · · Score: 2
    Electric companies are doing stuff like this too. They apparently have fiber inside or attached underneath miles of ground cable on high tension power lines. At least here in NC, they initially used the fiber to build a comm network to monitor and control remote substations. But teh fiber allows gives them an infrasructure to provide pretty heavy duty bandwidth over long distances. Smart planning IMHO. They needed the fiber anyway so they overbuilt the network knowing full well they could sell the excess bandwidth later.

    Course I'm not sure if it has paid off for CP&L at least. They bought some local internet companies (like Interpath) but its been a strange story after that.

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  20. Re:The big question for DSL. . . on Cable Sprints, DSL Trudges, Free ISPs Pant · · Score: 3
    DSL will survive. Perhaps not as a residential solution but you can be sure it will as a commercial access solution. With speeds approaching 4MBit/s on the horizon, symetric high speed DSL makes sense for companies with a couple T1s. And there are lots of those and usually they are close to a CO.

    Cable had the advantage that it's network was in betetr shape to handle broad deployment. Telcos are notorious for screwing up new technology deployment (can we say ISDN?) They're trying to screw up DSL too, but I think they'll pull it out.

    As always YMMV, but my SDSL line has been like a rock. I run around 40 domains over it with probably 3 or 4 moderate traffic websites (I'm with a Mom & Pop and they're cool with it) and couldn't be happier. It rarely goes down and even then it might be for a minute or two.

    Compared to my freinds with Cabel Modems, well, I'll take DSL anyday. Sure they can get blazing download speends IF their neighbors aren't surfing and IF the phase of hte moon is right :) But it depends on the vendor. I've had friends drop Cable for DSL like crazy because of stability and bandwidth issues, but in other areas, its just the opposite.

    I think teh telcos are trying to figure out how to use DSL to make money without driving all their customers to cable modems. There have been bumps along the way, but they're learning.

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  21. Re:LOL on Microsoft Postpones Office XP Subscriptions · · Score: 2
    I believe that companies will start using linux/bsd desktops and servers exactly when it becomes obvious that it will cost them less money (hardware+software+maintenance+training) than the Microsoft-way

    But is this obvious? People have to be trained to use their computers regardless. KDE or Windows or Aqua. Doesn't matter and training costs money since it is a service regardless of the topic.

    RIght now Linux's main advantage over Microsoft is software costs which are substantial. The other costs aren't much different. In fact Linux might cost a little more because Linux techs and teachers cost more right now (though that is starting to change as more folks learn it) Hardware costs might be slightly less, but I doubt it. Half the pressure to upgrade business systems comes from employees wanting the latest, not the load from their software. I just switched jobs and went from using a 700MHz Athlon system to a Pentium II 300 running NT. I was surprised how well it runs. I relaized how much my company wasted on deploying the latest Pent III Dell system to secretaries who only run Office. The only folks who REALLY needed the top end systems were the developers compiling stuff locally and running complex IDEs. Same would be true for LInux developers.

    That said - Microsoft is really exsposing themselves more by pushing subscriptions. IT managers KNOW it'll cost them more in teh loon grun and that makes Linux look even more attractive

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  22. Re:This could seriously save lives. on Internet Aware Pacemakers Planned · · Score: 2
    But your DSL line went down so the message can't get out and you die. Your family sues the DSL provider for millions. They go under or start charging huge monthly fees just to cover teh cost of insurance.

    I think some internet aware devices are a great idea and this is way better than a refrigerator that emails you when the milk goes bad. But the danger of all new technologies like this is having the lawyers ruin it for everybody.

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  23. It has to be said on Digital Display Encryption Details Leaked · · Score: 2
    All your monitor are belong to us!

    And how true that will be!

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  24. Re:Warn Modem Users on Why Aren't You Using An OODMS? · · Score: 2
    Um gee isn't that what:

    ( Read More... | 21846 bytes in body | 106 of 163 comments | Features )

    Is for? I'm sure you're joking but I had to reply to make it 164 :)

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  25. It kills me to write this.. on ICANN Sneaks In Reserved Names For Existing TLDs · · Score: 4
    But I have to agree. We have a trademark system for a reason. Companies pay big $$$ to protect marketable brand names.

    I think it is reasonable for a domain name that contains a trademarked word within X levels of a TLD to be reserved for that trademark holder. Why not? That TM holds up in any other media and as much as I love the anarcy of the Internet, these companies have a point and have rights to whatever they may trademark.

    But the rules must be precise - no fuzzy "well its CLOSE to our trademark" BS. Either the word/phrase is in the domain and you own the trademark, or you don't and have no rights to it. And if you want to USE the names, you better pay up like the rest of us!

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