Well, there have been some interesting (and some pointless comments)...
I didn't think about it, but both of the macs I have are older ADB macs (1 68k and one PowerPC)... I don't have any USB macs at all. USB didn't even strike me as being relevant considering the array of equipment that I am thinking of... Although that does make sense for newer consumer machines.
Of the Linux boxes, two out of four have USB (the others are P90-P133 machines in various server roles)...
Some of the real unix boxes use Serial consoles which work for booting too and for those I'll happily use conserver But some of the other machines I've used in the past used a local keyboard/mouse and wouldn't have it any other way.
I guess that what would be nice is a modular system. Plug in a board per machine which converts universal keyboard/mouse/video signals into specific ones. The boards would probably have to have some sort of DSP on them to convert the signals into USB/ADB/PS2/AT... The video signals would also need to be converted to some extent...
For the moment though, I guess I just want something that can convert ADB to PS2 to AT and back again... And a simple selector.
Try looking at TMDA... I'm running it on my mail server and I am down from 10 spams a day to one a month. That one is through a mailing list that I would rather not unsubscribe from.
Basically it adds a whitelist of people that you will accept mail from, a blacklist that you will reject mail from, and will allow people to automatically add themselves to your whitelist.
You can also have time limited addresses, keyword addresses that you can revoke, and so on...
It is working for me, if it's not working for you, why not.:-)
Woohoo!!!! It took three pages of searching through this to find the one comment that I instantly thought to make. This document is NOT perfect. I disagree with some of the comments that they make, but as a starting point it will suggest a whole HEAP of stuff that you probably wouldn't think of on your own.
Personally I think that every system should have multiple names. One that tells you what the server is. One that tells you what the server does. And maybe one that tells you where the server is, and a final one that is easy to remember.
Cute names are fun (ping elvis... Elvis is alive) but are meaningless when you can't relaate them. Having a system that tells you what the machine is but nothing else is confusing... (sure hp201 is a 2 processor hp box, but what does it do? Do I mean ax601 or ax602 here?) Having a purely functional name is equally confusing... (So is camsapd1 the HP development box for SAP or it the Sun box?)
At the very least you need to be able to find out what a machine does, where it is in the machine room(s) and what it is very easily. I would suggest putting all of this information into a database, and having a unique name that is relatively meaningless (the hp201 schema is good for that.. AAXNN where AA is a two character manufacturer code, X is the maximum number of procs that it can have and NN is a counter)
The name should stay with the computer throughout it's life in your datacenter. Application specific aliases can be pointed at it. The database MUST be kept up to date and should be easy to interrogate (web based?)... Include location, serial number, info about the hardware, info about what software is running on it, info about who needs to be informed when work is done on that machine (Joe's web server is going down tomorrow, better call and remind him) and anything else that is useful for you.
That keeps your naming scheme simple, but allows for all of the other possible uses for names to be provided for in a simple manner.
In the UK we call it "Imperial" and it's not the same as the simplified variant that you use in the US.
Want proof? One fluid ounce is the same in "American" and Imperial. How big is a pint?
Under the American system a pint is sixteen fluid ounces. Why? Because a pound has sixteen ounces.
Under the Imperial system a pint is twenty fluid ounces. Why? Because it does.
Sure it's less convenient to have to remember that a pint is 20 fluid ounces not sixteen, and that a pound is sixteen ounces not twenty...
But PLEASE don't blame the English for your screwy non-metric system.
By the way, does anyone know why America is one of only two countries that doesn't use international standard paper sizes? They make perfect sense to me (you can make the next size down by cutting the paper in half, and the next size up by sticking two sheets together.)
all the current all-natural/herbal/psychic/magical/religious "cures" in the "health food"/"alternative medicine"/"complimentary medicine" industry
Emphasis mine.
Re-read the stuff in Bold
Where do you find Organic produce? Predominantly in "Health Food" Stores. Are they "All Natural"? Yes.
Organic does not just mean that they are using traditional techniques. It means that they are Certified as being produced to certain standards. For example, the feed that was fed to the cows has to be free from additives, the cows must not be injected/fed hormones. The standards vary (Californian Organic Standards, Oregon Tilth Standards) but the premise is the same.
Yes, this is not a "cure" it is an avoidance. But, having lumped All-Natural/Health-food in with Alternative Medicine, I had to point out that the reality is different.
Some All-Natural Alternative Medicines might have a genuine scientific basis (maybe even currently unknown) but some ARE pure quackery. At the moment a diet pill is being promoted very heavily in this area. It uses the astounding claim that you can lose a pound a week, (this is the rate that you can expect to lose weight if you watch your diet and exercise... as they suggest). I had a look at the ingredient list and it contained three "active" ingredients. An Ephedrine derivative (Sudafed anyone?), Caffeine, and a chromium dietary supplement. Considering some of the effects of both Ephedrine and Caffeine, you'd be as well off taking a few cups of coffee. Sure it makes you feel more "alive" or at least awake. Sure if you diet and exercise you will lose weight. But the pills... don't do jack.
I am not against denouncing quackery, I am against denouncing an entire, vaguely related, industry without any proof.
o) all the current all-natural/herbal/psychic/magical/religious "cures" in the "health food"/"alternative medicine"/"complimentary medicine" industry.
Well, I'm sorry that you find "Health Food" so obnoxious...
I'm not a creationist, I have a Bachelors degree in Applied Physics, and a Masters Degree in software engineering. Just so that you don't think I'm an irrational sucker.
I'm from the UK, but I'm living in the US these days. When I moved here I was perfectly capable of drinking regular British milk. I didn't have any trouble with American milk either.
After about six months I could no longer drink American milk. Something in it makes me ill pretty quickly, I won't go into details. However, I can drink Organic American Milk without any problems.
If I wasn't a "Rational Scientific Type" I would assume that non-organic milk is bad and that organic milk is good. It's an easy assumpition to make. As it is, I am pretty certain that there is something in American milk, that isn't in British milk, and isn't in Organic milk. This makes me suspect that it's a hormone or additive that isn't allowed in the UK.
Now, tell me again that "Health Food" is bad. It may be that it is no better for you than non health food in most cases. But in some cases it is a "cure".
If you want proof of this, come around here with a pint of milk, a pint of organic milk, and enough money to compensate me for the incredible discomfort that you are about to put me through...
Greetings,
I wonder how they decided what is "more secure", but my guess is that it's based on the number of reported exploits/bugs.
Does anyone know if they used any weighting on the types of exploits/bugs. I would consider a remotely exploitable bug to be much worse than a locally exploitable bug as you can't control people that aren't on your box as well as the people that are. I would consider a root/administrator access bug to be worse than a denial of service type bug.
So, given a weighting scheme of:-
Remote Root = 4
Remote Denial of Service = 3
Local Root = 2
Local Denial of Service = 1
How would the different OSes stack up?
My guess is that without even taking number of installations into account you would find that Microsoft was at least as bad as the various Linux/Unix versions. I'm not going to say that they were worse.
Anyone want to do some analysis on the same information given a weighting scheme and see what the differences are?
I've replaced the motherboard (Baby AT), and the drives, and it's working fine. The only thing to be aware of is the case format. Mine has the power supply hovering over the motherboard in one corner. I couldn't use my first choice motherboard replacement as it had prominent components just there (voltage regulators with heatsinks if it counts)
It's not been upgraded too far and it only has a CGA display, but perhaps you can do better.
Well, for me (Portland, Oregon, USA) the Net World Map reported that I was in Adana, Turkey. Not even close. Visual Route at backland.net was even worse. It couldn't find me at all. It seemed to fail as soon as it left their own network. It did show me whois information though saying that the network address was assigned to an Oregon based entity.
The Net World Map got my home location wrong too, that's in minneapolis apparently, which is fair enough as that is where my DSL provider is.
The Visual Route server based in Virginia seemed to work much better. My home is still in Minnesota, but I now work in Portland Oregon...
Whois on the domain names would provide more accurate information though...
I disagree... It sounds to me like this isn't "Linux + Basic System Security"
This isn't your traditional Unix/Linux. This is CMW. Compartmentalized Mode Workstation. I have previous experience on working with HP-UX 10.16 a CMW variant of HP-UX. The two are similar, but they are not the same. Not even close.
This is Military grade Mandatory and Discretionary Access Controls. Some of the additions are allowing certain privileges to certain users. If you have a privilege then you can use a certain ability, abilities include being able to talk to particular devices.
You also have multi-level filesystems under CMW. for example/tmp looks different to people running at Secret/Accounting than it does to people running at TopSecret/Accounting.
This stuff provides a lot of extra administrative hurdles (how can you backup and restore?) as well as a lot of extra protection IF it is set up correctly.
I would have thought that most people don't need this level of security. But for those that do the $3,000 price tag is nothing.
1) What is wrong with not being allowed to pump your own gas. If you want them to speed up, get out of your car and make like you are about to pump it yourself.
2) The kicker check is not a refund of government underspend, but a refund of excess taxes. If the actual tax income is greater than the projected tax income by about 2% (or more) then the excess is refunded. It has nothing to do with how much or how little the government spends.
3) Yup... Down with Bill Sizemore...:-)
4) November 1 not October 1, and in Eastern Oregon they are absolutely essential. Try driving from Troutdale to La Grande without studded tires today (we're in the middle of a severe storm). School Teachers in La Grande have been to known to use snowmobiles and cross country skis to get to school in the winter. Of course in the Portland Area if there is even a quarter inch of snow, schools have a snow day, cause people in Western Oregon seem to be immigrants from warmer states who don't know how to drive in snow.
5) What a great idea, stop people developing on prime farmland. It works for me, and frankly having comparing population densities between Portland and Western Europe, you have nothing to complain about as far as crowding goes. Try building houses that are larger than one floor, and don't have a yard larger than the house. Build up, not out!
Finally, my third generation Oregonian wife respectfully says that if you don't like Oregon that much, why don't you just go home, she'd rather see the fields than the people and traffic. And she used to live in the Beaverton area when there WERE fields there (a 25 acre farm which is now an evil sub division.)
I may be younger than you, but here's how I did it...
I got my first degree BSc (Bachelor of Science for non Brits) in Applied Physics. I spent three years unemployed doing a lot of computer based voluntary work.
I went back to college, got my MSc (Master of Science) in Software Technology and went to work as a software engineer for the R&D side of a small company. The other part of the company was an ISP. We needed to get some new servers running so myself and one of the other Software engineers were allowed to install SunOs on them. We secured them as best we could, and from there I slowly moved into administration. Before long I was transferred to the ISP side of the company as the web servers moved over (don't ask why R&D ran the web servers). Then I was trained in Cisco Routers, got more involved in network administartion, and ended up moving to the US...
Now I'm in my second job over here both of them have been pure systems administration.
How can you get into Systems Administration? Well, my advice would be to get experience with other flavours of Unix. At least try Solaris X86 (a free download from Sun) and one of the BSD variants. Linux only isn't going to be so useful if they are looking for a Unix SA. HP-UX and AIX experience could also be useful, but harder to get unless you want to buy a workstation from e-bay.
Read at the very least one of Essential System Administration or The Unix Systems Administration Handbook.
Network... Join Usenix and SAGE. Go to local meetings. Advertise on the SAGE website that you are looking for junior positions. Talk to local technical recruiters. Keep an eye on local job postings.
Apply for non-junior positions, try and talk to the hiring manager first, but it's possible that they may not get what they're looking for, and be willing to accept a good junior candidate instead.
Don't worry about your lack of experience, you have most of what you need. As a teacher you should have good communication skills. You should be able to manage your time. You should be used to putting in long hours when needed. You should have problem solving skills. The knowledge of particular versions of Unix is secondary. I'm working on AIX now, it's radically different from other versions I've dealt with. It's still Unix, the other skills are more important.
I wouldn't try and get a help desk job and move over... I've never seen that done successfully.
Given that politicians who may not understand technology are continually trying to regulate it, and that interested parties (like the RIAA and MPAA) are going to push their points of view (with lots of money)...
What are the best ways for people to communicate with their politicians to inform them of their views and opinions on proposed legislation?
That the top ten list of last year makes an appearance in the top 20 of this year?
Haven't we learned anything?
O.K. So some of them (no/weak passwords) are user related, but so many of them are admin related (bind vulnerabilities, IIS RDS vulnerabilities)
Don't any admins care about these?
Of course, inside a company network some of these problems can be ignored if that is the decision. R commands are useful, but I wouldn't want people using them across the internet to my machines... But at the very least firewall... Please.
That doesn't make one way tickets suspicious in and of themselves. It just makes return tickets cheaper.
Flight wise I've generally used International flights (my last was emigrating from the UK to the US)... Round trip would have cost me a good $300 more.
"The following things should cause there to be extra scrutiny... You buy a one-way ticket."
There are MANY reasons for buying one way tickets. Almost all of them completely innocent. Here are some of the reasons that I have bought one way tickets in the past.
1) I bought a day ticket (there and back in a day) and ended up staying overnight. I bought a one way ticket to get home.
2) I got a lift somewhere and needed to get home, different forms of transport in different directions.
3) I made a strange journey consisting of stops in various places. A round trip but in a loop, not there and back.
4) I planned on spending several years at my destination. Why spend more on a ticket that means I have to travel back every month?
5) Midweek in Ireland, one way long distance bus tickets automatically act as return tickets. If you're travelling on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday then you only ever buy a one way ticket.
And these are just the reasons that I have bought one way tickets. I can think of others that I've never used. Imagine you bought a car from someone 500 miles away. You want to travel down there to pick it up, but you're going to drive it back...
I understand why you think that one way tickets are suspicious, but there are many valid reasons for buying one, and ANY terrorist could set one of those reasons up just as easily.
My Mistake, I used 1:1,000 instead of 1:10,000...
Still, in 4 months that gives 411 people incorrectly being fingered as terrorists.
My guess is that the number of Terrorists/Criminals to Innocent Civilians is closer to 1 in 10,000 than 1 in 100. So, I don't think the number of false negatives would be artificially reduced by increasing the number of false positives. (i.e. making the match looser).
Of course we can make the system even more secure if we don't care about false positives. Think of it, software with a 0% false negative rate. The False positive rate will be close to 100% but that's acceptable if we're going to stamp out terrorism isn't it.
If 1 in 10,000 people is a terrorist or criminal then the false positive rate would only be 99.99%. We can live with that can't we?
For those people who said yes, please line up over there for your body cavity search. Thank you.
"Thanks to modern technology and tremendous advances in processing power, we now have a device that can accurately (four nines) identify a potential criminal."
It's nice that you are so happy that one in 1,000 people will be falsely fingered. You realise that that level of accuracy would mean that for the state of Oregon, (using the 1999 population estimate) that would mean roughly 3,301 would be incorrectly identified as terrorists. For Portland Airport, That would have been 4,115 people in the first quarter of 2000 alone that would have been labelled as "possible criminals" FALSELY.
I believe that the figure of 99.99% accuracy is under "perfect" conditions, so it could be a lot worse. Having said that, assuming that the percentage of False Negatives is the same, 99.99% accurate. Then 4,115 terrorists and criminals could have passed through Portland Airport in just four months last year without being caught.
"Facial recognition cameras will take an additional burden off of our already overworked police departments, while at the same time, making the streets safer for our children. How can anyone NOT like the idea?"
Well, apart from the research that has been done in the UK showing that increased video surveillance did not reduce violent crime, how is this going to help the police departments?
Imagine, you are one of the unfortunates who just happens to look like a criminal. Every time you walk anywhere, the police get called out to investigate. Now, the police get even more extra work checking up on you, you get continually harrassed by them, the police start ignoring the warnings, the streets are no safer.
If 1 in 1,000 people generate a false positive alert then in even a VERY small town this is going to go off too often to be taken seriously.
Why not try and build a sense of community in your community. Don't ostracise strangers, talk to your neighbours, get to know one another. That way your streets will be safer because your children will know who they can ask for help from. Your friends and neighbours will know who lives in the area and will be able to ask people that don't belong why they are watching your children play, or staring at houses...
Nah, I guess that would never work, it doesn't use technology and it might drag people away from their TV sets for a few minutes.
The name "liberty alliance" and the domain "projectliberty" both imply that the goal is somehow connected with freedom.
The only freedom that I can see from this is the freedom of having yet another repository of my personal information. I can't imagine websites giving us the choice between "passport", "project liberty" or "anonymous consumer".
I read the FAQ and it doesn't mention anything much about how they are planning on divulging the contents of this "consumer database" to people. I can't imagine that they are all doing this for altruistic reasons, so I guess I'd rather avoid using it.
"The track records on terrorism of nations should be recognized, with regard to allowing entrance or immigration, but once here people need to be equal under the law."
Nicely said, So when are you going to stop Irish, and Spanish visitors from coming to the USA? After all, ETA (the Basque seperatist movement) are Terrorists, and so are the IRA.
And when is the US Government going to really do something about not funding Terrorists? Are they going to seize the assets of Noraid?
How about the CIA? They've been involved with Terrorists once or twice...
I don't Seriously expect the US government to be impartial about their "War on Terrorism" but I'm just so surprised at some of the convenient blanks in the collective memory.
Greetings,
Thank you Phil for producing PGP, for standing up for what you really believe, and for re-evaluating your beliefs after this tragic event.
Given the use of techniques like steganography and Chaffing and Winnowing to hide messages with or without encryption, and the many ways of communicating without openly passing a message (codes, one time pads,...) laws on cryptography are obviously pointless as far as stopping terrorism is concerned.
So, What would you like to see being done? What measures do you think might be effective against terrorism?
I don't have any answers, but I haven't seen any that seem effective to me either.
And considering that the rest of the message isn't free of typos, it's hard to tell if it was really intended as a joke.
Still, it's nice to see that nobody reads past the first line of my reply to see that that was made in an offhand way, and the rest of the reply was devoted to an actual argument about the original post, not the sig.
Slashdot Mirror
Yup, I don't know what it's called, but I saw this (and used it) at the Edinburgh Science Festival in 1993, 1994, 1995.
Of course, the tighter you strapped the sensors on the easier it was to become a star...
Z.
Wow, Only 1 million in a day... Google gives me over 4 million hits in a few seconds...
I guess they were using a different "codeword"
Z.
Well, there have been some interesting (and some pointless comments)...
I didn't think about it, but both of the macs I have are older ADB macs (1 68k and one PowerPC)... I don't have any USB macs at all. USB didn't even strike me as being relevant considering the array of equipment that I am thinking of... Although that does make sense for newer consumer machines.
Of the Linux boxes, two out of four have USB (the others are P90-P133 machines in various server roles)...
Some of the real unix boxes use Serial consoles which work for booting too and for those I'll happily use conserver But some of the other machines I've used in the past used a local keyboard/mouse and wouldn't have it any other way.
I guess that what would be nice is a modular system. Plug in a board per machine which converts universal keyboard/mouse/video signals into specific ones. The boards would probably have to have some sort of DSP on them to convert the signals into USB/ADB/PS2/AT... The video signals would also need to be converted to some extent...
For the moment though, I guess I just want something that can convert ADB to PS2 to AT and back again... And a simple selector.
Z.
Try looking at TMDA... I'm running it on my mail server and I am down from 10 spams a day to one a month. That one is through a mailing list that I would rather not unsubscribe from.
Basically it adds a whitelist of people that you will accept mail from, a blacklist that you will reject mail from, and will allow people to automatically add themselves to your whitelist.
You can also have time limited addresses, keyword addresses that you can revoke, and so on...
It is working for me, if it's not working for you, why not. :-)
Z.
Woohoo!!!! It took three pages of searching through this to find the one comment that I instantly thought to make. This document is NOT perfect. I disagree with some of the comments that they make, but as a starting point it will suggest a whole HEAP of stuff that you probably wouldn't think of on your own.
Personally I think that every system should have multiple names. One that tells you what the server is. One that tells you what the server does. And maybe one that tells you where the server is, and a final one that is easy to remember.
Cute names are fun (ping elvis... Elvis is alive) but are meaningless when you can't relaate them. Having a system that tells you what the machine is but nothing else is confusing... (sure hp201 is a 2 processor hp box, but what does it do? Do I mean ax601 or ax602 here?) Having a purely functional name is equally confusing... (So is camsapd1 the HP development box for SAP or it the Sun box?)
At the very least you need to be able to find out what a machine does, where it is in the machine room(s) and what it is very easily. I would suggest putting all of this information into a database, and having a unique name that is relatively meaningless (the hp201 schema is good for that.. AAXNN where AA is a two character manufacturer code, X is the maximum number of procs that it can have and NN is a counter)
The name should stay with the computer throughout it's life in your datacenter. Application specific aliases can be pointed at it. The database MUST be kept up to date and should be easy to interrogate (web based?)... Include location, serial number, info about the hardware, info about what software is running on it, info about who needs to be informed when work is done on that machine (Joe's web server is going down tomorrow, better call and remind him) and anything else that is useful for you.
That keeps your naming scheme simple, but allows for all of the other possible uses for names to be provided for in a simple manner.
Just my 1.7p
Z.
But we prefer the English system
Ahem...
It's not the English System
In the UK we call it "Imperial" and it's not the same as the simplified variant that you use in the US.
Want proof? One fluid ounce is the same in "American" and Imperial. How big is a pint?
Under the American system a pint is sixteen fluid ounces. Why? Because a pound has sixteen ounces.
Under the Imperial system a pint is twenty fluid ounces. Why? Because it does.
Sure it's less convenient to have to remember that a pint is 20 fluid ounces not sixteen, and that a pound is sixteen ounces not twenty...
But PLEASE don't blame the English for your screwy non-metric system.
By the way, does anyone know why America is one of only two countries that doesn't use international standard paper sizes? They make perfect sense to me (you can make the next size down by cutting the paper in half, and the next size up by sticking two sheets together.)
Z.
- all the current all-natural/herbal/psychic/magical/religious "cures" in the "health food"/"alternative medicine"/"complimentary medicine" industry
Emphasis mine.Re-read the stuff in Bold
Where do you find Organic produce? Predominantly in "Health Food" Stores. Are they "All Natural"? Yes.
Organic does not just mean that they are using traditional techniques. It means that they are Certified as being produced to certain standards. For example, the feed that was fed to the cows has to be free from additives, the cows must not be injected/fed hormones. The standards vary (Californian Organic Standards, Oregon Tilth Standards) but the premise is the same.
Yes, this is not a "cure" it is an avoidance. But, having lumped All-Natural/Health-food in with Alternative Medicine, I had to point out that the reality is different.
Some All-Natural Alternative Medicines might have a genuine scientific basis (maybe even currently unknown) but some ARE pure quackery. At the moment a diet pill is being promoted very heavily in this area. It uses the astounding claim that you can lose a pound a week, (this is the rate that you can expect to lose weight if you watch your diet and exercise... as they suggest). I had a look at the ingredient list and it contained three "active" ingredients. An Ephedrine derivative (Sudafed anyone?), Caffeine, and a chromium dietary supplement. Considering some of the effects of both Ephedrine and Caffeine, you'd be as well off taking a few cups of coffee. Sure it makes you feel more "alive" or at least awake. Sure if you diet and exercise you will lose weight. But the pills... don't do jack.
I am not against denouncing quackery, I am against denouncing an entire, vaguely related, industry without any proof.
Z.
Book Burning... Now THAT is scientific debate
o) all the current all-natural/herbal/psychic/magical/religious "cures" in the "health food"/"alternative medicine"/"complimentary medicine" industry.
Well, I'm sorry that you find "Health Food" so obnoxious...
I'm not a creationist, I have a Bachelors degree in Applied Physics, and a Masters Degree in software engineering. Just so that you don't think I'm an irrational sucker.
I'm from the UK, but I'm living in the US these days. When I moved here I was perfectly capable of drinking regular British milk. I didn't have any trouble with American milk either.
After about six months I could no longer drink American milk. Something in it makes me ill pretty quickly, I won't go into details. However, I can drink Organic American Milk without any problems.
If I wasn't a "Rational Scientific Type" I would assume that non-organic milk is bad and that organic milk is good. It's an easy assumpition to make. As it is, I am pretty certain that there is something in American milk, that isn't in British milk, and isn't in Organic milk. This makes me suspect that it's a hormone or additive that isn't allowed in the UK.
Now, tell me again that "Health Food" is bad. It may be that it is no better for you than non health food in most cases. But in some cases it is a "cure".
If you want proof of this, come around here with a pint of milk, a pint of organic milk, and enough money to compensate me for the incredible discomfort that you are about to put me through...
Z.
Greetings,
:-
I wonder how they decided what is "more secure", but my guess is that it's based on the number of reported exploits/bugs.
Does anyone know if they used any weighting on the types of exploits/bugs. I would consider a remotely exploitable bug to be much worse than a locally exploitable bug as you can't control people that aren't on your box as well as the people that are. I would consider a root/administrator access bug to be worse than a denial of service type bug.
So, given a weighting scheme of
Remote Root = 4
Remote Denial of Service = 3
Local Root = 2
Local Denial of Service = 1
How would the different OSes stack up?
My guess is that without even taking number of installations into account you would find that Microsoft was at least as bad as the various Linux/Unix versions. I'm not going to say that they were worse.
Anyone want to do some analysis on the same information given a weighting scheme and see what the differences are?
Z.
Greetings, Check out your local thrift stores...
I got an old 286 Luggable for $5.
I've replaced the motherboard (Baby AT), and the drives, and it's working fine. The only thing to be aware of is the case format. Mine has the power supply hovering over the motherboard in one corner. I couldn't use my first choice motherboard replacement as it had prominent components just there (voltage regulators with heatsinks if it counts)
It's not been upgraded too far and it only has a CGA display, but perhaps you can do better.
Well, for me (Portland, Oregon, USA) the Net World Map reported that I was in Adana, Turkey. Not even close. Visual Route at backland.net was even worse. It couldn't find me at all. It seemed to fail as soon as it left their own network. It did show me whois information though saying that the network address was assigned to an Oregon based entity.
The Net World Map got my home location wrong too, that's in minneapolis apparently, which is fair enough as that is where my DSL provider is.
The Visual Route server based in Virginia seemed to work much better. My home is still in Minnesota, but I now work in Portland Oregon...
Whois on the domain names would provide more accurate information though...
Z.
Hmm...
/tmp looks different to people running at Secret/Accounting than it does to people running at TopSecret/Accounting.
I disagree... It sounds to me like this isn't "Linux + Basic System Security"
This isn't your traditional Unix/Linux. This is CMW. Compartmentalized Mode Workstation. I have previous experience on working with HP-UX 10.16 a CMW variant of HP-UX. The two are similar, but they are not the same. Not even close.
This is Military grade Mandatory and Discretionary Access Controls. Some of the additions are allowing certain privileges to certain users. If you have a privilege then you can use a certain ability, abilities include being able to talk to particular devices.
You also have multi-level filesystems under CMW. for example
This stuff provides a lot of extra administrative hurdles (how can you backup and restore?) as well as a lot of extra protection IF it is set up correctly.
I would have thought that most people don't need this level of security. But for those that do the $3,000 price tag is nothing.
Zwack
Greetings,
:-)
A few comments about your posting...
1) What is wrong with not being allowed to pump your own gas. If you want them to speed up, get out of your car and make like you are about to pump it yourself.
2) The kicker check is not a refund of government underspend, but a refund of excess taxes. If the actual tax income is greater than the projected tax income by about 2% (or more) then the excess is refunded. It has nothing to do with how much or how little the government spends.
3) Yup... Down with Bill Sizemore...
4) November 1 not October 1, and in Eastern Oregon they are absolutely essential. Try driving from Troutdale to La Grande without studded tires today (we're in the middle of a severe storm). School Teachers in La Grande have been to known to use snowmobiles and cross country skis to get to school in the winter. Of course in the Portland Area if there is even a quarter inch of snow, schools have a snow day, cause people in Western Oregon seem to be immigrants from warmer states who don't know how to drive in snow.
5) What a great idea, stop people developing on prime farmland. It works for me, and frankly having comparing population densities between Portland and Western Europe, you have nothing to complain about as far as crowding goes. Try building houses that are larger than one floor, and don't have a yard larger than the house. Build up, not out!
Finally, my third generation Oregonian wife respectfully says that if you don't like Oregon that much, why don't you just go home, she'd rather see the fields than the people and traffic. And she used to live in the Beaverton area when there WERE fields there (a 25 acre farm which is now an evil sub division.)
Zwack
Greetings,
I may be younger than you, but here's how I did it...
I got my first degree BSc (Bachelor of Science for non Brits) in Applied Physics. I spent three years unemployed doing a lot of computer based voluntary work.
I went back to college, got my MSc (Master of Science) in Software Technology and went to work as a software engineer for the R&D side of a small company. The other part of the company was an ISP. We needed to get some new servers running so myself and one of the other Software engineers were allowed to install SunOs on them. We secured them as best we could, and from there I slowly moved into administration. Before long I was transferred to the ISP side of the company as the web servers moved over (don't ask why R&D ran the web servers). Then I was trained in Cisco Routers, got more involved in network administartion, and ended up moving to the US...
Now I'm in my second job over here both of them have been pure systems administration.
How can you get into Systems Administration? Well, my advice would be to get experience with other flavours of Unix. At least try Solaris X86 (a free download from Sun) and one of the BSD variants. Linux only isn't going to be so useful if they are looking for a Unix SA. HP-UX and AIX experience could also be useful, but harder to get unless you want to buy a workstation from e-bay.
Read at the very least one of Essential System Administration or The Unix Systems Administration Handbook.
Network... Join Usenix and SAGE. Go to local meetings. Advertise on the SAGE website that you are looking for junior positions. Talk to local technical recruiters. Keep an eye on local job postings.
Apply for non-junior positions, try and talk to the hiring manager first, but it's possible that they may not get what they're looking for, and be willing to accept a good junior candidate instead.
Don't worry about your lack of experience, you have most of what you need. As a teacher you should have good communication skills. You should be able to manage your time. You should be used to putting in long hours when needed. You should have problem solving skills. The knowledge of particular versions of Unix is secondary. I'm working on AIX now, it's radically different from other versions I've dealt with. It's still Unix, the other skills are more important.
I wouldn't try and get a help desk job and move over... I've never seen that done successfully.
I hope that this helps.
Z.
This comment...
I want to get the lawyers out and the innovators in.
I think that this was slightly edited... I'm sure that the original read...
I want to get the lawyers out, and the innovators in jail.
Clearly she means "Get the lawyers out" in the same sense that a gunfighter would say "get the guns out."
Z.
Given that politicians who may not understand technology are continually trying to regulate it, and that interested parties (like the RIAA and MPAA) are going to push their points of view (with lots of money)...
What are the best ways for people to communicate with their politicians to inform them of their views and opinions on proposed legislation?
Z.
That the top ten list of last year makes an appearance in the top 20 of this year?
Haven't we learned anything?
O.K. So some of them (no/weak passwords) are user related, but so many of them are admin related (bind vulnerabilities, IIS RDS vulnerabilities)
Don't any admins care about these?
Of course, inside a company network some of these problems can be ignored if that is the decision. R commands are useful, but I wouldn't want people using them across the internet to my machines... But at the very least firewall... Please.
Z.
That doesn't make one way tickets suspicious in and of themselves. It just makes return tickets cheaper.
Flight wise I've generally used International flights (my last was emigrating from the UK to the US)... Round trip would have cost me a good $300 more.
Z.
"The following things should cause there to be extra scrutiny ... You buy a one-way ticket."
There are MANY reasons for buying one way tickets. Almost all of them completely innocent. Here are some of the reasons that I have bought one way tickets in the past.
1) I bought a day ticket (there and back in a day) and ended up staying overnight. I bought a one way ticket to get home.
2) I got a lift somewhere and needed to get home, different forms of transport in different directions.
3) I made a strange journey consisting of stops in various places. A round trip but in a loop, not there and back.
4) I planned on spending several years at my destination. Why spend more on a ticket that means I have to travel back every month?
5) Midweek in Ireland, one way long distance bus tickets automatically act as return tickets. If you're travelling on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday then you only ever buy a one way ticket.
And these are just the reasons that I have bought one way tickets. I can think of others that I've never used. Imagine you bought a car from someone 500 miles away. You want to travel down there to pick it up, but you're going to drive it back...
I understand why you think that one way tickets are suspicious, but there are many valid reasons for buying one, and ANY terrorist could set one of those reasons up just as easily.
Z.
My Mistake, I used 1:1,000 instead of 1:10,000...
Still, in 4 months that gives 411 people incorrectly being fingered as terrorists.
My guess is that the number of Terrorists/Criminals to Innocent Civilians is closer to 1 in 10,000 than 1 in 100. So, I don't think the number of false negatives would be artificially reduced by increasing the number of false positives. (i.e. making the match looser).
Of course we can make the system even more secure if we don't care about false positives. Think of it, software with a 0% false negative rate. The False positive rate will be close to 100% but that's acceptable if we're going to stamp out terrorism isn't it.
If 1 in 10,000 people is a terrorist or criminal then the false positive rate would only be 99.99%. We can live with that can't we?
For those people who said yes, please line up over there for your body cavity search. Thank you.
Z.
"Thanks to modern technology and tremendous advances in processing power, we now have a device that can accurately (four nines) identify a potential criminal."
It's nice that you are so happy that one in 1,000 people will be falsely fingered. You realise that that level of accuracy would mean that for the state of Oregon, (using the 1999 population estimate) that would mean roughly 3,301 would be incorrectly identified as terrorists. For Portland Airport, That would have been 4,115 people in the first quarter of 2000 alone that would have been labelled as "possible criminals" FALSELY.
I believe that the figure of 99.99% accuracy is under "perfect" conditions, so it could be a lot worse. Having said that, assuming that the percentage of False Negatives is the same, 99.99% accurate. Then 4,115 terrorists and criminals could have passed through Portland Airport in just four months last year without being caught.
"Facial recognition cameras will take an additional burden off of our already overworked police departments, while at the same time, making the streets safer for our children. How can anyone NOT like the idea?"
Well, apart from the research that has been done in the UK showing that increased video surveillance did not reduce violent crime, how is this going to help the police departments?
Imagine, you are one of the unfortunates who just happens to look like a criminal. Every time you walk anywhere, the police get called out to investigate. Now, the police get even more extra work checking up on you, you get continually harrassed by them, the police start ignoring the warnings, the streets are no safer.
If 1 in 1,000 people generate a false positive alert then in even a VERY small town this is going to go off too often to be taken seriously.
Why not try and build a sense of community in your community. Don't ostracise strangers, talk to your neighbours, get to know one another. That way your streets will be safer because your children will know who they can ask for help from. Your friends and neighbours will know who lives in the area and will be able to ask people that don't belong why they are watching your children play, or staring at houses...
Nah, I guess that would never work, it doesn't use technology and it might drag people away from their TV sets for a few minutes.
Z.
The name "liberty alliance" and the domain "projectliberty" both imply that the goal is somehow connected with freedom.
The only freedom that I can see from this is the freedom of having yet another repository of my personal information. I can't imagine websites giving us the choice between "passport", "project liberty" or "anonymous consumer".
I read the FAQ and it doesn't mention anything much about how they are planning on divulging the contents of this "consumer database" to people. I can't imagine that they are all doing this for altruistic reasons, so I guess I'd rather avoid using it.
Z.
"The track records on terrorism of nations should be recognized, with regard to allowing entrance or immigration, but once here people need to be equal under the law."
Nicely said, So when are you going to stop Irish, and Spanish visitors from coming to the USA? After all, ETA (the Basque seperatist movement) are Terrorists, and so are the IRA.
And when is the US Government going to really do something about not funding Terrorists? Are they going to seize the assets of Noraid?
How about the CIA? They've been involved with Terrorists once or twice...
I don't Seriously expect the US government to be impartial about their "War on Terrorism" but I'm just so surprised at some of the convenient blanks in the collective memory.
Z.
Greetings,
Thank you Phil for producing PGP, for standing up for what you really believe, and for re-evaluating your beliefs after this tragic event.
Given the use of techniques like steganography and Chaffing and Winnowing to hide messages with or without encryption, and the many ways of communicating without openly passing a message (codes, one time pads,...) laws on cryptography are obviously pointless as far as stopping terrorism is concerned.
So, What would you like to see being done? What measures do you think might be effective against terrorism?
I don't have any answers, but I haven't seen any that seem effective to me either.
Thanks,
Z.
Hmmm...
Well, at least I didn't go postal.
And considering that the rest of the message isn't free of typos, it's hard to tell if it was really intended as a joke.
Still, it's nice to see that nobody reads past the first line of my reply to see that that was made in an offhand way, and the rest of the reply was devoted to an actual argument about the original post, not the sig.
Z.