Point well taken, but I definately wasn't arguing that newer is better... Just that there isn't something technically better or superior about the platform that makes it stable. It's stability lies entrirely in its maturity. I don't manage the 3000 in our environment but I tend to get dragged into it whenever a peripheral or network issue comes up. It's my experience that the features that are relatively new to the OS like network terminals & printing, Internet services, and even high-speed modems are the ones that give the most trouble. If your needs haven't changed in twenty years then you'd probably argue for the 3000's stability. On the other hand, if you work in a financial institution like I do and require updates several times a year just to keep up with regulatory changes you'd probably rank the 3000 w/ Unix or any other OS as far as reliability is concerned.
First, it seems that a number or folks are misunderstanding this announcement and jumping to the conclusion that HP-UX is going away. This is not the case. The HP3000 runs MPE/iX while the 9000 series runs HP-UX. The hardware is really similar but the 3000 stuff has different firmware and a huge markup.
Second, I keep hearing "rock-solid" and "unheard of uptime" in reference to HP3000 systems. Give me a break. If I had spend the last twenty years doing nothing but bug fixes for my DOS 2.0 applications, they'd be pretty stable too... Nothing has happened on these boxes for that long. That's why they are so stable.
A little humor.... My work sent me to a conference last year thinking that they could lure me away from my petty career in networking to work with this magnificent core platform... Out of two hundred attendees, a show of hands confirmed that only three were under the age of thirty.
See previous reply on the worm bit... But since it was brought up, it would be very possible to write a worm to exploit a previous remote vulnerability to gain non-privileged access and then exploit this bug to gain root... Certainly beyond my capability but it could be done. Multi-vulnerability worms seem to be all the rage these days.
Oh, I'm sorry... I've obviously violated some sacred Slashdot code by not specifically disclaiming that my tagline had nothing to do with my message... But I am immensely impressed with the way you kicked off your response with name-calling. I guess I'll back off after reading that. Besides, it only proves my point.
That's odd... I've grown used to any Slashdot posting about privilege elevation exploits being condescending and insulting. Where are the accusations of carelessness on the part of the programmers? How about the shots at the intelligence of the administrators? Oh, this is a Linux bug? How convenient....
May be this will all change when Xerox PARC's electronic paper (http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=980821/0956225 &mode=thread) finally becomes a reality... Think about it. You can get half way into a newspaper article and then an ad can popup in the middle of it requiring you to read it or take some other action to get back to the content you were actually interested in. At last traditional media can keep up with the web!
Hmmm... What's so bloody important, eh? I'm sitting in the NOC of a mid-sized credit union and from my desk, I can see various activity lights blinking non-stop on our Internet banking platform. I'm somewhat comforted by the fact that our ISP and their upstream provider, as well as our account-holders ISP's and upstream providers can't intercept that information and alter it in transit. Aside from that, I'm just not comfortable with anyone listening in on my communications with my girlfriend... family or doctor. It's not that any great harm would come to me if they did; just that I don't think that it is worth allowing it for some bullshit, perceived greater good.
What is the point of fighting it any more? This is due to a fundamental flaw in our system of government. Representatives are allowed to bundle too much un-related stuff into one bill. Who in the hell are we going to be able to convince not to vote for this? Obviously, if it were a bill that only existed to criminalize secure communications everyone would be outraged. It's not that. It's an "anti-terrorism" bill with a zillion individial provisions inside. My congressman isn't taking anyone seriously who calls and askes him to vote against an anti-terrorism bill and I guarantee yours isn't either.
Step out into the street and hand over your guns to the police and don't even think about complaining about it because you could be tried for treason.
Ok, I'm not about to defend Microsoft but this post is so typical of Slashdot that it makes me want to vomit.
We're running a hypothetical web server on a Windows box, right? I'm sure we have non-essential services disabled then... (Since not doing so would immediately qualify us as a worthless paper MCSE who should go home and leave system administration to Linux geeks) That would mean that the last time we needed to patch our system was June 10th. Five times this year (if we are running index server). And if I recall correctly, the index server patch is one of the more and more common no-reboot variety. I realize that Windows has its problems and would never think of claiming that Linux has as many but why does it provide some people intense pleasure to grossly exaggerate the degree of Windows insecurity?
I know this will shock some of the Linux zealots out there but there is actually a baseline... A minimum intelligence required to admin even a Windows box and I can guarantee that it is higher than what is required to install a hotfix or service pack. In most cases, the problem lies in the fact that companies don't want to pay for hypotheticals. Spending money is only warranted if there is a problem NOW. The end result is that non-essential things like applying patches, reviewing permissions and checking logs get tossed aside because "senior system administrators" and "network engineers" are fixing font size problems and helping users change the Office assistant. If one of these employees isn't standing over a down system or implementing some VP's fetish-induced project, they are an expense to be trimmed.
Maybe I should have been more clear... I have run into users in my shop that clear their temp files every time they exit their browser... And in one case, every half hour or so while working in Word!
False authority, eh? Now I know why I'm constantly hearing "Joe told me that I could speed things up by cleaning out my temporary Internet files... He an expert. He works in the computer/electronics department at Office Depot." from the owners of GHz machines with 80% of their disk space free.
Every now and then we see stories such as this touting that some organization has adopted Linux. The truth is that Windows still has the desktop locked tight. I'm a sysadmin in a pretty much Windows only shop and I can tell you that I'd love to introduce my users to Linux but in our environment, the fact is that we use way too many custom apps built around Windows. Sure, these could be ported but not all at once. What Linux needs is a reliable, simple, free X-server that will run on Windows. This would allow niche apps to be ported and run from a Linux server without the pressures of having everything ready for a Linux desktop at the same time. Once this has gone on for a while, more and more of these niche apps will be available on Linux making it a viable alternative at the desktop. I've dealt with many third party vendors and found that there are lots of programmers playing with Linux but the only (enterprise niche) apps that are making it to Linux are ones that can run on a server and don't need any client interaction.
I think it's important to remember that these are all large networks and the bottlenecks can be anywhere within. I was on Charter myself (AL) until a couple of months ago. In my case, I got 256Kb at 4:00am and less than 128Kb most of the other time. In any case, it was always way, way more latent than a 56K modem. Ping times to servers geographically nearby often approached 800ms. With average page sizes being what they are (Flash aside), latency is really what's important. Anyway, my first month on Telocity (AKA DirecDSL), I got ~1.5Mb and now I'm seeing ~1.2Mb... Hope I'm not about to be switching again.
I stayed at a Radison in San Jose a couple of weeks back and found that until you purchase it, the STSN service seems to only redirect HTTP requests to the "purchase me" page. You still have access to the gateway. I was able to sign on to AOL(work-provided), AIM, and connect to my corporate VPN with no problem... And at no charge. I had to use an IP for the VPN as DNS apeared to be blocked, but hey still not bad for free. Sure this is off-topic, but I couldn't help myself.
I work for a small credit union where the we worked our tails off to get everything compliant. While we didn't run into any major failures to speak of, our Meridian phone system has mis-labeled the dates of our voicemails ever since. Additionally, the few application specific problems encountered were swept under the rug and attributed to other causes... regardless of how obviously Y2K related they were. Perhaps this behavior is common and is the reason we never heard anything.
Most people practicing a little social engineering try to make themselves seem to be more than they are. I tend to hone my skills by pretending to be less than what I am. There's nothing like the kick you get out of asking a sales associate if that shiny new Palm V has enough RAM to run Windows 2000 and actually have him take you seriously. Heck, it even comes in handy on the job. Users don't bother me because they think I know nothing! My boss gets an altogether different kind of social engineering though.
Slashdot Mirror
Point well taken, but I definately wasn't arguing that newer is better... Just that there isn't something technically better or superior about the platform that makes it stable. It's stability lies entrirely in its maturity. I don't manage the 3000 in our environment but I tend to get dragged into it whenever a peripheral or network issue comes up. It's my experience that the features that are relatively new to the OS like network terminals & printing, Internet services, and even high-speed modems are the ones that give the most trouble. If your needs haven't changed in twenty years then you'd probably argue for the 3000's stability. On the other hand, if you work in a financial institution like I do and require updates several times a year just to keep up with regulatory changes you'd probably rank the 3000 w/ Unix or any other OS as far as reliability is concerned.
First, it seems that a number or folks are misunderstanding this announcement and jumping to the conclusion that HP-UX is going away. This is not the case. The HP3000 runs MPE/iX while the 9000 series runs HP-UX. The hardware is really similar but the 3000 stuff has different firmware and a huge markup.
Second, I keep hearing "rock-solid" and "unheard of uptime" in reference to HP3000 systems. Give me a break. If I had spend the last twenty years doing nothing but bug fixes for my DOS 2.0 applications, they'd be pretty stable too... Nothing has happened on these boxes for that long. That's why they are so stable.
A little humor.... My work sent me to a conference last year thinking that they could lure me away from my petty career in networking to work with this magnificent core platform... Out of two hundred attendees, a show of hands confirmed that only three were under the age of thirty.
Now that's utter bull. Shots at the intelligence of admins? How is it relevant here?
e nd or=RedHat&title=Linux&version=Any§ion=vendor&w hich=vendor
Wasn't saying it was relevant to the bug in question... just that it is what I am used to on Slashdot.
Again, nobody would bash Microsoft programmers for an occasional bug. But that's simply not the case at Microsoft.
Granted, Microsoft software is as buggy as hell... but it's not alone.
http://www.securityfocus.com/cgi-bin/vulns.pl?v
See previous reply on the worm bit... But since it was brought up, it would be very possible to write a worm to exploit a previous remote vulnerability to gain non-privileged access and then exploit this bug to gain root... Certainly beyond my capability but it could be done. Multi-vulnerability worms seem to be all the rage these days.
Oh, I'm sorry... I've obviously violated some sacred Slashdot code by not specifically disclaiming that my tagline had nothing to do with my message... But I am immensely impressed with the way you kicked off your response with name-calling. I guess I'll back off after reading that. Besides, it only proves my point.
That's odd... I've grown used to any Slashdot posting about privilege elevation exploits being condescending and insulting. Where are the accusations of carelessness on the part of the programmers? How about the shots at the intelligence of the administrators? Oh, this is a Linux bug? How convenient....
I'd continue to rant, but I have a worm to write.
May be this will all change when Xerox PARC's electronic paper (http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=980821/0956225 &mode=thread) finally becomes a reality... Think about it. You can get half way into a newspaper article and then an ad can popup in the middle of it requiring you to read it or take some other action to get back to the content you were actually interested in. At last traditional media can keep up with the web!
Hmmm... What's so bloody important, eh? I'm sitting in the NOC of a mid-sized credit union and from my desk, I can see various activity lights blinking non-stop on our Internet banking platform. I'm somewhat comforted by the fact that our ISP and their upstream provider, as well as our account-holders ISP's and upstream providers can't intercept that information and alter it in transit. Aside from that, I'm just not comfortable with anyone listening in on my communications with my girlfriend... family or doctor. It's not that any great harm would come to me if they did; just that I don't think that it is worth allowing it for some bullshit, perceived greater good.
The flag I fly has thirteen stars.
What is the point of fighting it any more? This is due to a fundamental flaw in our system of government. Representatives are allowed to bundle too much un-related stuff into one bill. Who in the hell are we going to be able to convince not to vote for this? Obviously, if it were a bill that only existed to criminalize secure communications everyone would be outraged. It's not that. It's an "anti-terrorism" bill with a zillion individial provisions inside. My congressman isn't taking anyone seriously who calls and askes him to vote against an anti-terrorism bill and I guarantee yours isn't either.
Step out into the street and hand over your guns to the police and don't even think about complaining about it because you could be tried for treason.
Ok, I'm not about to defend Microsoft but this post is so typical of Slashdot that it makes me want to vomit.
We're running a hypothetical web server on a Windows box, right? I'm sure we have non-essential services disabled then... (Since not doing so would immediately qualify us as a worthless paper MCSE who should go home and leave system administration to Linux geeks) That would mean that the last time we needed to patch our system was June 10th. Five times this year (if we are running index server). And if I recall correctly, the index server patch is one of the more and more common no-reboot variety. I realize that Windows has its problems and would never think of claiming that Linux has as many but why does it provide some people intense pleasure to grossly exaggerate the degree of Windows insecurity?
I know this will shock some of the Linux zealots out there but there is actually a baseline... A minimum intelligence required to admin even a Windows box and I can guarantee that it is higher than what is required to install a hotfix or service pack. In most cases, the problem lies in the fact that companies don't want to pay for hypotheticals. Spending money is only warranted if there is a problem NOW. The end result is that non-essential things like applying patches, reviewing permissions and checking logs get tossed aside because "senior system administrators" and "network engineers" are fixing font size problems and helping users change the Office assistant. If one of these employees isn't standing over a down system or implementing some VP's fetish-induced project, they are an expense to be trimmed.
Maybe I should have been more clear... I have run into users in my shop that clear their temp files every time they exit their browser... And in one case, every half hour or so while working in Word!
False authority, eh? Now I know why I'm constantly hearing "Joe told me that I could speed things up by cleaning out my temporary Internet files... He an expert. He works in the computer/electronics department at Office Depot." from the owners of GHz machines with 80% of their disk space free.
Every now and then we see stories such as this touting that some organization has adopted Linux. The truth is that Windows still has the desktop locked tight. I'm a sysadmin in a pretty much Windows only shop and I can tell you that I'd love to introduce my users to Linux but in our environment, the fact is that we use way too many custom apps built around Windows. Sure, these could be ported but not all at once. What Linux needs is a reliable, simple, free X-server that will run on Windows. This would allow niche apps to be ported and run from a Linux server without the pressures of having everything ready for a Linux desktop at the same time. Once this has gone on for a while, more and more of these niche apps will be available on Linux making it a viable alternative at the desktop. I've dealt with many third party vendors and found that there are lots of programmers playing with Linux but the only (enterprise niche) apps that are making it to Linux are ones that can run on a server and don't need any client interaction.
I think it's important to remember that these are all large networks and the bottlenecks can be anywhere within. I was on Charter myself (AL) until a couple of months ago. In my case, I got 256Kb at 4:00am and less than 128Kb most of the other time. In any case, it was always way, way more latent than a 56K modem. Ping times to servers geographically nearby often approached 800ms. With average page sizes being what they are (Flash aside), latency is really what's important. Anyway, my first month on Telocity (AKA DirecDSL), I got ~1.5Mb and now I'm seeing ~1.2Mb... Hope I'm not about to be switching again.
I stayed at a Radison in San Jose a couple of weeks back and found that until you purchase it, the STSN service seems to only redirect HTTP requests to the "purchase me" page. You still have access to the gateway. I was able to sign on to AOL(work-provided), AIM, and connect to my corporate VPN with no problem... And at no charge. I had to use an IP for the VPN as DNS apeared to be blocked, but hey still not bad for free. Sure this is off-topic, but I couldn't help myself.
I work for a small credit union where the we worked our tails off to get everything compliant. While we didn't run into any major failures to speak of, our Meridian phone system has mis-labeled the dates of our voicemails ever since. Additionally, the few application specific problems encountered were swept under the rug and attributed to other causes... regardless of how obviously Y2K related they were. Perhaps this behavior is common and is the reason we never heard anything.
Most people practicing a little social engineering try to make themselves seem to be more than they are. I tend to hone my skills by pretending to be less than what I am. There's nothing like the kick you get out of asking a sales associate if that shiny new Palm V has enough RAM to run Windows 2000 and actually have him take you seriously. Heck, it even comes in handy on the job. Users don't bother me because they think I know nothing! My boss gets an altogether different kind of social engineering though.