Ahhh, MPE... In a little over a year I'll be dancing on its grave. (in my shop at least) Almost gone are the endless days of troubleshooting the bandaid over duct tape over baling wire "interfaces" written by 20+ year HP3000 veterans with no knowledge of networking or any modern software design concepts. Sure, the core applications run like clockwork on this OS which hasn't changed appreciably in the last 15 years but the hideous piles of crap substituting for code being used to interface it to the modern age of computing are nothing but trouble. I only hope that consultants step in and disuade our core software vendor from carrying over its more archane and poorly thought-out design concepts into the Unix-based replacement. [takes last swig of lager]
"I already get the cards that tell me to file online rather than fill out paper forms, but it still forces me to buy tax software every year."
Can you believe that there are countries in which your God-given right to a market is not vigorously protected by the government!? To think that these Swiss goons feel like they can just give away tax software.... I hope the IRS doesn't get any crazy ideas about spending.000000000024% of their revenue to produce a free tax package. How would poor Intuit survive then?
He's dead-on with his observation that personality type and aptitude are the most important qualities in a sysadmin. I am fighting a battle with a boss who actually thinks you can train someone (anyone) to be a sysadmin. Unfortunately when these people fail miserably I get accused of poor training. Oh well, I can always work for a service provider in my next life.
Because The Family Guy hasn't been worth watching since it got canceled/took a break/whatever and returned. As I recall, it was actually witty when it first hit the air but degenerated to the level of any short-run sitcom with the only thing setting it apart being the fact that it's animated.
After running up2date on my Redhat box I surfed on over to Slashdot and found a post about a Wired article on the rarity of exploits for Windows security bugs. Intrigued, I clicked through only to find that the linked article was about the exploitation of software bugs in general and only casually mentioned Windows in one instance. I'm sure that there must be another article dealing exclusively with Windows since "Windows" is in the title, the submitter mentioned it twice, and he even crafted a Google query on Windows exploits. Can anyone point me to the correct article? Thanks in advance!
I think that articles linking to the New York Times should have a category to themselves. That way I could just filter them out. I have registered a thousand times but it never fails that as soon as I sit down to browse at work or from a friend's machine there is another NYT link on Slashdot.
Oh, and as for on-topic content, I think Powertel/Voicestream/T-Mobile/whatevertheirnameisn ow is an excellent example. I worked in a department store selling their stuff back in '96 when they first hit the market. I'll never forget the coverage maps that they gave us. At first glance it appeared that their coverage area was huge but after reading the fine print you saw that the giant swath marked on the map was in fact their "planned coverage area". The actual coverage was a thin line following the path of interstates. Aside from swelling ever-so-slightly around cities, the coverage is pretty much identical today in spite of the fact that they have a much larger subscriber base.
I'll be the first to admit that the market is tougher than it was a couple of years ago but is it really because there are fewer jobs? My experience has been that the number of jobs is the same but the ones out there are less desirable. Suddenly every entry in the classifieds is asking for a CCNE, MSCE, and a master's degree regardless of the skill level. Additionally everything is being contracted out and often requires enormous amounts of travel. I just turned down a 20K raise because I didn't want to be away from my fiancée for three weeks out of the month. In any case, I can only hope that companies will suffer because of the outsourcing trend and realize the value of retaining highly-intelligent, well-trained individuals that are actually familiar with their specific business and goals.
This is exactly the sort of thing that I expect to push the adoption of IPSEC or another transport level encryption scheme; not the desire to prevent loss of personal information or financial data. Rather than the elimination of eavesdropping, the increased resistance to targeted filtering will be the "killer app" that encourages widespread use of on-by-default encryption by Joe User.
"CNN are covering the merger of two of the leading companies in the field of OLEDs. This brings the dream of flexible plastic monitors and TVs a step closer to fruition."
Yeah, nothing speeds up development cycles like reducing the number of competitors.
Most computer sales are to corporations. Home users only account for something like 20% of Dell or Gateway's sales. Corporations are interested in the presumably increased life of LCDs, their reduced power consumption, space savings, and the effects of CRTs on their employees' eyes (People sue for everything after all). I work for a medium-sized credit union (which, unlike banks, are non-profit) with ~250 seats and we are already to the point of being 30% flat panels. By next year we will be over 70%. I love not pulling a muscle every time I have to swap a display out.
I can't say that anyone on my network mentioned any issues yesterday or today. I think that as CPU horsepower and memory have become cheaper, ISP's and backbone providers have seriously increased the use of caching. Judging from my experience during this 'major' outage it seems to have paid off.
I've noticed two major trends in Linux development lately. First, developers are finally recognizing the power of MS Office file format compatibility and Exchange server interoperability. More importantly, they seem to be ignoring the traditional Linux "what is right" approach of stability and security before features and eye candy. Ironically, it may be the latter that finally allows Linux to win the desktop.
You think companies would actually buy into this?
on
A Universal Power Bus?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I suppose Dell who designed my notebook's power supply with a bastardized triangular connector would sign on to this, huh? And Motorola, the company with cell phones that utilize flat connectors compatible with nothing else... and batteries that are engineered to be incompatible between models despite being the same voltage and shape and employing the same connectors and locking mechanisms? (Think StarTac vs. Nextel i1000) I think the point here is that companies seem to like being the only source for these items. Someone decided a long time ago that being the only source for accessories increases profits and no one has thought about it since.
Two years ago I spent fifty percent of my time resolving "bad monitors" that were caused by users selecting bright pink fonts on bright pink backgrounds and explaining to pointy-hair types why our customers saw half naked women on the screens at our branches. Now I'm a network Nazi and spend that time applying security patches and combing Snort logs.
Ok, so my initial reaction to the AOL for Lindows link at http://www.lindows.com/lindows_products_details.ph p?id=15 (not in the article) was one of excitement. Once I checked the AOL home page and found that the download link no longer takes you to a "select your OS page" but shoves a Win32 executable down your throat the excitement subsided. I'd be shocked if the client that Lindows offers is anything other than the Win32 version running (probably poorly) under Wine. A year or two ago there was an unreleased "beta" of an AOL client for Linux floating around in the warez circles... Never tried it, but at the time I hoped that it was a sign of better things to come.
A minor point to be sure but I'd have to disagree about the ISP arms of megacorporations profiting from peer-to-peer. They have made it perfectly clear with tiered pricing and arbitrary blocking of ports that they expect their users to pay $60 per month to do nothing more than visit a couple of web sites. In their minds anything more is clear-cut abuse.
I've read a number of articles on these and other flat, flexible displays such as "digital paper". It's amusing that all of this life-changing display technology is just months from everyday use... and has been for the past six or seven years.
It's definitely true that this is one of the most notable weaknesses of intrusion detection systems as they exist now. I work in a financial institution where upper management has finally made a sensible decision and devoted a full-time person (me) to network security but that's not the case in many smaller organizations. The vast majority of (external) intrusion attempts are from script kiddies that use pre-fab tools and put forth little effort to conceal their actions. In my opinion, this is justification for most networks to run in a "low paranoia" mode. This would get rid of excessive false-positives and the noise created by Joe Kiddie and his 10,000 buddies who are out there constantly port scanning class A subnets.
That it can handle many clients with little latency... You'd have to duplicate the data across a huge number of disks to provide similar response time to clients. Sure, if you were the only client, you couldn't tell the difference but with thousands upon thousands of clients all seeking data that would be stored in different locations on a disk things would quickly grind to a halt. Because so much unrelated data is being requested, seek time is the key. Sure, memory is more expensive per meg but its ability to serve so many more clients makes it less expensive overall.
One of the first replies mentions 1W being the maximum power allowed in the band by the FCC. The way it is worded appears to have led a number of people to believe that this is what the mod allows the access point to do. Having read the link, it looks like the mod allows for up to 100mW of power. Aren't there 100mW cards and access points everywhere? Maybe I'm mistaken but this only looks to be of value if the hardware in question can be found for dirt cheap... Even then you wouldn't be getting extraordinary performance; just typical performance at a good price.
Personally, I am going to leave the house, (gasp) go to a bar and get drunk with some friends. You see, I've learned something that the replies to this article would indicate that many here haven't... That hiding yourself from the rest of society (like staying home on New Years Eve) does far more to brand you as a geek than being seen out in your plastic-framed glasses talking about the latest kernal release. Life isn't high school; the cool guys won't pick on you anymore... Now they just ignore you which is fine by me.
Good luck. Pipeline is another re-packaged service... At least in my area. Pipeline here comes by way of High Speed Access corp. A whopping 512K/128k connection and a mere 350ms ping time to my neighbors. I was really impressed that most traceroutes only showed a dozen or so private addresses between me and my chosen Internet destination.
Slashdot Mirror
Ahhh, MPE... In a little over a year I'll be dancing on its grave. (in my shop at least) Almost gone are the endless days of troubleshooting the bandaid over duct tape over baling wire "interfaces" written by 20+ year HP3000 veterans with no knowledge of networking or any modern software design concepts. Sure, the core applications run like clockwork on this OS which hasn't changed appreciably in the last 15 years but the hideous piles of crap substituting for code being used to interface it to the modern age of computing are nothing but trouble. I only hope that consultants step in and disuade our core software vendor from carrying over its more archane and poorly thought-out design concepts into the Unix-based replacement. [takes last swig of lager]
"I already get the cards that tell me to file online rather than fill out paper forms, but it still forces me to buy tax software every year."
.000000000024% of their revenue to produce a free tax package. How would poor Intuit survive then?
Can you believe that there are countries in which your God-given right to a market is not vigorously protected by the government!? To think that these Swiss goons feel like they can just give away tax software.... I hope the IRS doesn't get any crazy ideas about spending
He's dead-on with his observation that personality type and aptitude are the most important qualities in a sysadmin. I am fighting a battle with a boss who actually thinks you can train someone (anyone) to be a sysadmin. Unfortunately when these people fail miserably I get accused of poor training. Oh well, I can always work for a service provider in my next life.
Because The Family Guy hasn't been worth watching since it got canceled/took a break/whatever and returned. As I recall, it was actually witty when it first hit the air but degenerated to the level of any short-run sitcom with the only thing setting it apart being the fact that it's animated.
After running up2date on my Redhat box I surfed on over to Slashdot and found a post about a Wired article on the rarity of exploits for Windows security bugs. Intrigued, I clicked through only to find that the linked article was about the exploitation of software bugs in general and only casually mentioned Windows in one instance. I'm sure that there must be another article dealing exclusively with Windows since "Windows" is in the title, the submitter mentioned it twice, and he even crafted a Google query on Windows exploits. Can anyone point me to the correct article? Thanks in advance!
This is getting ridiculous. I checked the calendar to make sure that it wasn't April 1st... Nope, its Thanksgiving. (in the US anyway)
I think that articles linking to the New York Times should have a category to themselves. That way I could just filter them out. I have registered a thousand times but it never fails that as soon as I sit down to browse at work or from a friend's machine there is another NYT link on Slashdot.
n ow is an excellent example. I worked in a department store selling their stuff back in '96 when they first hit the market. I'll never forget the coverage maps that they gave us. At first glance it appeared that their coverage area was huge but after reading the fine print you saw that the giant swath marked on the map was in fact their "planned coverage area". The actual coverage was a thin line following the path of interstates. Aside from swelling ever-so-slightly around cities, the coverage is pretty much identical today in spite of the fact that they have a much larger subscriber base.
Oh, and as for on-topic content, I think Powertel/Voicestream/T-Mobile/whatevertheirnameis
I'll be the first to admit that the market is tougher than it was a couple of years ago but is it really because there are fewer jobs? My experience has been that the number of jobs is the same but the ones out there are less desirable. Suddenly every entry in the classifieds is asking for a CCNE, MSCE, and a master's degree regardless of the skill level. Additionally everything is being contracted out and often requires enormous amounts of travel. I just turned down a 20K raise because I didn't want to be away from my fiancée for three weeks out of the month. In any case, I can only hope that companies will suffer because of the outsourcing trend and realize the value of retaining highly-intelligent, well-trained individuals that are actually familiar with their specific business and goals.
This is exactly the sort of thing that I expect to push the adoption of IPSEC or another transport level encryption scheme; not the desire to prevent loss of personal information or financial data. Rather than the elimination of eavesdropping, the increased resistance to targeted filtering will be the "killer app" that encourages widespread use of on-by-default encryption by Joe User.
"CNN are covering the merger of two of the leading companies in the field of OLEDs. This brings the dream of flexible plastic monitors and TVs a step closer to fruition."
Yeah, nothing speeds up development cycles like reducing the number of competitors.
Most computer sales are to corporations. Home users only account for something like 20% of Dell or Gateway's sales. Corporations are interested in the presumably increased life of LCDs, their reduced power consumption, space savings, and the effects of CRTs on their employees' eyes (People sue for everything after all). I work for a medium-sized credit union (which, unlike banks, are non-profit) with ~250 seats and we are already to the point of being 30% flat panels. By next year we will be over 70%. I love not pulling a muscle every time I have to swap a display out.
I can't say that anyone on my network mentioned any issues yesterday or today. I think that as CPU horsepower and memory have become cheaper, ISP's and backbone providers have seriously increased the use of caching. Judging from my experience during this 'major' outage it seems to have paid off.
I've noticed two major trends in Linux development lately. First, developers are finally recognizing the power of MS Office file format compatibility and Exchange server interoperability. More importantly, they seem to be ignoring the traditional Linux "what is right" approach of stability and security before features and eye candy. Ironically, it may be the latter that finally allows Linux to win the desktop.
I suppose Dell who designed my notebook's power supply with a bastardized triangular connector would sign on to this, huh? And Motorola, the company with cell phones that utilize flat connectors compatible with nothing else... and batteries that are engineered to be incompatible between models despite being the same voltage and shape and employing the same connectors and locking mechanisms? (Think StarTac vs. Nextel i1000)
I think the point here is that companies seem to like being the only source for these items. Someone decided a long time ago that being the only source for accessories increases profits and no one has thought about it since.
Two years ago I spent fifty percent of my time resolving "bad monitors" that were caused by users selecting bright pink fonts on bright pink backgrounds and explaining to pointy-hair types why our customers saw half naked women on the screens at our branches. Now I'm a network Nazi and spend that time applying security patches and combing Snort logs.
Ok, so my initial reaction to the AOL for Lindows link at http://www.lindows.com/lindows_products_details.ph p?id=15 (not in the article) was one of excitement. Once I checked the AOL home page and found that the download link no longer takes you to a "select your OS page" but shoves a Win32 executable down your throat the excitement subsided. I'd be shocked if the client that Lindows offers is anything other than the Win32 version running (probably poorly) under Wine. A year or two ago there was an unreleased "beta" of an AOL client for Linux floating around in the warez circles... Never tried it, but at the time I hoped that it was a sign of better things to come.
As an administrator of mostly Windows boxes I'm feeling a little left out... Of course that might just be because they are all properly patched.
A minor point to be sure but I'd have to disagree about the ISP arms of megacorporations profiting from peer-to-peer. They have made it perfectly clear with tiered pricing and arbitrary blocking of ports that they expect their users to pay $60 per month to do nothing more than visit a couple of web sites. In their minds anything more is clear-cut abuse.
that the Slashdot effect took out a site by draining the server's battery rather than overlooding it.
I've read a number of articles on these and other flat, flexible displays such as "digital paper". It's amusing that all of this life-changing display technology is just months from everyday use... and has been for the past six or seven years.
It's definitely true that this is one of the most notable weaknesses of intrusion detection systems as they exist now. I work in a financial institution where upper management has finally made a sensible decision and devoted a full-time person (me) to network security but that's not the case in many smaller organizations. The vast majority of (external) intrusion attempts are from script kiddies that use pre-fab tools and put forth little effort to conceal their actions. In my opinion, this is justification for most networks to run in a "low paranoia" mode. This would get rid of excessive false-positives and the noise created by Joe Kiddie and his 10,000 buddies who are out there constantly port scanning class A subnets.
That it can handle many clients with little latency... You'd have to duplicate the data across a huge number of disks to provide similar response time to clients. Sure, if you were the only client, you couldn't tell the difference but with thousands upon thousands of clients all seeking data that would be stored in different locations on a disk things would quickly grind to a halt. Because so much unrelated data is being requested, seek time is the key. Sure, memory is more expensive per meg but its ability to serve so many more clients makes it less expensive overall.
One of the first replies mentions 1W being the maximum power allowed in the band by the FCC. The way it is worded appears to have led a number of people to believe that this is what the mod allows the access point to do. Having read the link, it looks like the mod allows for up to 100mW of power. Aren't there 100mW cards and access points everywhere? Maybe I'm mistaken but this only looks to be of value if the hardware in question can be found for dirt cheap... Even then you wouldn't be getting extraordinary performance; just typical performance at a good price.
Personally, I am going to leave the house, (gasp) go to a bar and get drunk with some friends. You see, I've learned something that the replies to this article would indicate that many here haven't... That hiding yourself from the rest of society (like staying home on New Years Eve) does far more to brand you as a geek than being seen out in your plastic-framed glasses talking about the latest kernal release. Life isn't high school; the cool guys won't pick on you anymore... Now they just ignore you which is fine by me.
Good luck. Pipeline is another re-packaged service... At least in my area. Pipeline here comes by way of High Speed Access corp. A whopping 512K/128k connection and a mere 350ms ping time to my neighbors. I was really impressed that most traceroutes only showed a dozen or so private addresses between me and my chosen Internet destination.
Your mileage may vary. Lets hope that it does.