If they're going to institute a change in contract terms, you should be able to get out of your contract.
None of this class action nonsense, pick up and GTFO./Former t-mob customer, who left after his onerous 2 yr contract with a horrid WinMob phone finally ended//Likely will never go back
....especially Verizon, whose big brother in the UK (Vodaphone) is making them tear up the CDMA network for GSM. In some respects, AT&T is better-positioned today, and the continuing revenue stream from iPhones (something ungodly percentage of their new customers are iPhone customers) will allow them to invest in upgrades.
T-Mobile still doesn't have 3G nearly anywhere, and even the EDGE capability is spotty in places.
Sprint's got a friend-of-Barack, which has allowed them to push forward with their WiMax network faster than Verizon's planned 4G data (VHF analog TV spectrum), but they, too, are going to switch to GSM from CDMA for the Sprint portions of the network. Whatever was Nextel is unchanged.
But none of those providers have any single thing that's generating new customers like AT&T, and some are still bleeding subscribers despite nifty stuff (looking at you, Sprint).
In my experience, AT&T has been at least as reliable for voice. The data hasn't been as reliable as my last provider; but I'd rather have fast data 90% of the time, than unusably slow data 98% of the time.
"AMD also estimated that the power consumption for a fully populated 42U rack would be 9.2 KW using the six-core Opteron 2425 HE, a 55-W part. Replacing those chips with the 2419 EE would require 7.5 KW, about an 18 percent power savings."
That's just in the rack consumption. I would imagine these probably run cooler, too, which will help with HVAC costs.
AMD seems to be doing a better job shrinking down dated designs at this point. While Intel is selling the Atom, which is undoubtedly cooler and less power-hungry, it's still based on a very old CPU design, which isn't up to heavy computing tasks. AMD, OTOH, has now established a pretty good record of taking mainline processors, and developing lower-power versions. They scaled down what used to be a pretty hot Athlon core (Thunderbird) to the Geode (as used in the OLPC). They followed that with a 45W Athlon 64 X2. Now the Opteron. Intel does have a 35W Conroe, but it's in Celeron cripple-mode badging, a shadow performance-wise, of the original C2Ds that initially came out on that core.
I hope that AMD does release a desktop version of this, but I don't know if they could keep it profitable ($900+ eek.)
....all this means is it'll have to go back to trial to decide the issues. I kind of figured this would happen; Kimball's summary judgment was premature.
(yes, I skimmed through the long-ass PDF)
The same verdict as Kimball granted could potentially be reached again, this time with a full court proceeding. What it does do is delay the other cases even longer, as the Novell case decision is really required before any of them can proceed.
Likely three reasons: longevity, NVH, and current production. The first two are related -- 3-cylinder engines have the tendency to vibrate themselves the death. Even most of the econoboxen in Europe and Asia have four cylinders for that reason. A small four-cylinder with decent balancing can achieve very good longevity. I'd imagine the expected lifespan of a series two hybrid motor (one that only turns a generator) could well be 500,000 miles or more.
The last one, well, the Geo 3-cyl was a Suzuki engine, and GM doesn't produce it.
There have been various projects using L4 to isolate Linux or Linux drivers in VMs, so it's a logical thing for them to do too.
Cool. FWIW, the situation is much worse with Hyper-V than it is Xen.:-)
I was hopeful about their use of L4, as its known to be (capable of being) very fast. I'm really not sure where (if anywhere) they're going now; they do seem to lack a strong lead / direction, which like everything has both benefits and costs.
Yeah, IIRC, they ran into a major show-stopper with L4 and the current design that put things on hold. Some of the developers were working with Jonathan Shapiro on the Coyotos project at CMU; I'm not sure anything concrete came of that. Might be a moot point, anyway, since Shap's off to Redmond.
I didn't know NetBSD had Mach compatibility - do you mean it can run on top of Mach? That's cool. I don't, to be honest, know a whole lot about Mach - and to make things more complicated I have the impression there are several versions floating around out there.
Not sure how close this is to being production-ready with the ongoing enhancements in OS X, but they'd made pretty good progress around the 10.3 stage. Much of the NeXTstep model used Mach IPC for message passing (think about how ObjC works!). NetBSD had to emulate the Mach facilities in-kernel to build this in. If someone cared, they could probably do a COMPAT_NEXT for m68k, etc. Not sure how many of the features would need to be added to support the Hurd daemons.
There's not been enough that's different about DragonflyBSD to get me running it just yet but that may change.
I played around with some of the early versions, but haven't touched it much lately to try out the nifty new features. Most of the things I used BSD for I converted from FreeBSD to NetBSD around the time that Matt stood up DF. Probably would have been easier in hindsight, especially the community machine I help maintain, but I didn't think it was quite ready for primetime back then. Been very, very pleased with NetBSD, however. Certainly much better quality in my experience than FreeBSD later than version 4.
Nono...you helped me look at it a different way!:-)
any hypervisor will need some kind of device driver virtualisation which can often be a means of increasing the amount of trusted code (e.g. on Xen you basically trust all of the dom0 VM - including Linux - to do the right thing since it has IO privileges, even though the hypervisor itself is quite small).
Right. And you're still at the mercy of whatever drivers on dom0 might be flaky. Something like a network device driver that's susceptible to a DoS attack....that can be exploited by anything running in a domU, and the entire host goes kaboom. I'm not sure if virtualizing the driver is enough, because it still reveals the underlying hardware. I understand there's a performance hit, but if every NIC in the world is an e100, well, you have only one flaky driver to worry about with the domUs, while the dom0 might be running a Marvell gigabit or whatever.
The TUD:OS demo CD includes (IIRC) some sandboxed applications, such as some port of gpg to L4. It also features a minimal secure GUI that runs outside of Linux and can be used to isolate things - pretty cool.
I'll have to take a look!
GNU/Hurd always seems like a really awesome system to me. But last I read they had decided that L4 doesn't suit them and that they want to write a new microkernel. Disappointing:-( I really want to be able to use (and hack on) that thing but I'd like the project to look a little more well-defined first!
I haven't followed nearly as closely as I used to. I guess the bigger point with them is the longer they go without a compelling release, the more difficult it becomes for them to release anything people would want/need. I think that might have been some of the impetus behind the eventual Minix-3 release; let's get something out that proves our point. It doesn't have to beat Linux or BSD, but has to have something else compelling, and enough of a framework that shows potential for future growth.
I've also wondered if they might be able to look at seeing what they can do with either NetBSD or DragonFlyBSD's kernels. NetBSD, of course, gives you Mach compatibility, a halfway decently-performing FFS driver, etc. DragonFly's LWKTs might be a more hospitable environment for HURD daemon porting from Mach. Use it to strip down to just what you need, much the way they did between Mach releases. 2.5, 3.0, and 4.0 are all very different from each other.
Okay, I understand that. My past with L4 has been more varied. I've played around with L4-Linux and DROPS, as well as the beginnings of the GNU/Hurd port.
But I can definitely see the benefit of sandboxing applications separate from Linux. Particularly applications that don't do a lot of direct filesystem or hardware access. Still a lot of work to be done, however.:-)
(Of course, this sounds a hell of a lot like what you're supposed to be able to do with native Hurd applications, where you could theoretically do most operations through native IPC, whether that's Mach or L4 or Coyotos or whatever)
Okay, so you have a proven kernel. But it's L4. L4 provides nearly nothing in the way of functionality, just thread scheduling, and very rudimentary IPC.
Yes, an L4 kernel can be written in anything. Most variants have been written in C, but L4-Pistachio was written in C++. Anything that adheres to the L4 specification works. So it could be written in pretty much anything that doesn't require significant runtime libraries (and the associated overhead for filesystem handling, etc.).
If I had modpoints, you'd get one, AC. The Heartland breach kinda makes TJX look minor, and many people who might have been affected would never know.
Shame TFA didn't mention this, because it's a much more serious vulnerability than one large retail chain, precisely because the customers don't know about it.
But to answer the question posed, I think I might be more likely to shop at a chain that's been compromised. Not right when the story is breaking, mind you, but several months later, certainly. If they've had a compromise, the risk of a second compromise and the ensuing damage from it, is a far greater financial risk than a one-time charge to fix any problems that led to the first compromise (as well as anything new that's found during the review).
Same applies to air travel. I know I'll feel a lot more confident flying an an A330/340 after the Air France crash, once the upgraded airspeed sensors are installed fleet-wide. Same deal with the FAA's complete grounding-for-wire-inspection of the DC-9/MD-{8X/9X}/B-717 fiasco from early last year.
If I had a reason to go to a TJX store, I wouldn't hesitate to do so. (And, yes, I did check my Amex statements after the news came out, and I realized I'd bought some luggage at TJ-Maxx around the time of the breach)
My property management company is the same way -- no direct way to do EFT.
Doesn't your bank have an online "bill-pay" system? Mine does. They normally do payment by having the bank write a check and posting it to the recipient.
Yes, it's actually the bank mentioned in TFA here (and, yes, I'll probably download this app, since I can't use their scanner software, because my scanner doesn't work with anything other than XP, and I'm too cheap to buy another one) does have such a service. I'd used for about a year without a problem until June.
That's when my bank-produced paper check got sent to the wrong PO box (thanks, USPS!!1!), and another company deposited it. It cleared both banks, even though it was the wrong party who deposited it. Am not a satisfied customer at this point to say the least, especially since it took two weeks to get my money back. Luckily, I was still able to pay my rent on time.
And I could probably use the exercise walking the four blocks to deposit a hand-written check in their office mail slot.
The police use them extensively in the downtown area where I live. I actually saw one pull over a car once. But, apart from being terribly expensive, one of my friends bought one. He'd ride it to work when the weather wasn't horrid, as well as around town on the weekends. He had a blast with it for about four months, until he hit that patch of mislaid pavers....
Double compound fracture. Ow. Thousands of dollars in medical bills, even after insurance. My curiosity completely evaporated. Much like my desire to buy a motorcycle dies every few months when I see one that's wiped out on the interstate.
I went and looked at a few before I posted, and had the model numbers mixed up. That they didn't was my initial thought, since I was thinking about Atom's heritage. Some of the newer ones (230) do.
No existing applications / devices that were 32-bit only had to worry, there was still 32-bit XP dammit.
Anyone know if the XP-mode of Windows 7 is available in the 64-bit version? (I haven't tried it)
But ok, whatever, fuck it, Intel was still flogging 32-bit CPUs for some reason, and people are morons. Fine.
PAE, which allows up to 36GB on 32-bit. Intel has another 64-bit architecture, dontchaknow....it's called Itanium. They didn't license the amd64 instruction until Microsoft decided to embrace "X64."
In a lot of respects, it was a bad decision, as it badly breaks a lot of backwards compatibility (this is why 16-bit Windows apps no longer run), but it is what it is. (not to mention stupid stuff that POWER, MIPS, and Sparc figured out, like how to access 64-bit registers in 32-bit mode, etc. etc.)
Because you can just go out and grab a $300 netbook with 6GB of RAM, right? Even if you could, not all of the Atom processors support EMT64, though the most-popular ones do.
32-bit is still faster for a lot of things, too. The i486 has been around for 20 years now, amd64 not so long. The compilers haven't quite caught up.
To Microsoft's credit, they are requiring 64-bit for a lot of their enterprise products now. IIRC, Exchange 2007 and SQL 2008 both require either 2k3 or 2k8 64-bit.
DADMS is DoN-only for a reason; nobody else has the NMCI problem, and it didn't exist prior to NMCI. It's somewhat disconcerting to sit in on a meeting for a joint POR system, and have flag officers wonder WTF the Navy isn't implementing. "Uh, it's not in DADMS, sir." Sparks fly to say the least.
That said, the procedure is pretty simple, and since DITSCAP/DIACAP provide for it, you run specific vendor patches for whatever vendor-supported OS you're running (sorry Gentoo fanboys, roll-your-own isn't allowed in production systems). The Unix SRR script *should* be able to figure out if the backport is applied in a vendor-supplied patch, and pronounce it okay.
(The SRR scripts are publicly-available to everyone; if you're not running a commercial distro, you'll probably get some weird results, but it's still pretty good at picking out possible problems, even on systems that aren't officially-supported. I've run it on everything from Debian, including GNU/Hurd to OS X. http://iase.disa.mil/stigs/SRR/index.html)
If something is revealed that's not accurate, you document: a) why you can't fix it (i.e. whatever system is running on top ceases to work, the vendor refuses to fix, the vendor is tango uniform, it's Wednesday and you don't feel like it, etc.), b) why the scanner goofed up and picked out a problem that doesn't exist (yes, this version is different, but the vendor backported the fix [with proper vendor reference] to this, which is applied). or c) the fix hasn't been released and fully tested yet.
Cases a and c are what a POA&M is for, which is normally submitted along with the accreditation package, and updated periodically.
I've found many places in my flat where LED bulbs (no, they're not over $100 as TFA says; I buy two-packs at Sam's Club for less than $20) work great. My bedside lamps, for example, work really well. It's enough light that I can read, etc. They're also not so bright that my SO's keeps me up if she wants to stay awake longer. No mercury or very thin glass to worry about, either.
Iran and Honduras take a back seat to Michael Jackson, Billy Mays, and Farrah Fawcett. But, hey, Obama is "deeply concerned," and people are free to worry about such trivialities.
And we rank right behind Australia. Hmm. Might CO2 emissions involved in transportation of goods across such a large territory have something to do with it? Nah, couldn't be.
Same thing when people start piping up about high speed rail. Frankfurt to Munich is like Boston to Philly.
The IT program at the local university (UCF) isn't bad, and is very tech-worker-friendly with its online options. Many of the local community colleges even offer certification programs (such as A+, CCNA, Oracle, and even RedHat) in both day and night school.
UCF (and the Orlando area) are also hotbeds of modeling and simulation work. Probably not of much interest to someone who wants to fix people's "broken Outlook" for life, but definitely some interesting work to be had.
And the last time I was in Orlando, it was cold (upper 30s). Of course, it was in the teens where I live, but that's beside the point.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
If they're going to institute a change in contract terms, you should be able to get out of your contract.
None of this class action nonsense, pick up and GTFO. /Former t-mob customer, who left after his onerous 2 yr contract with a horrid WinMob phone finally ended //Likely will never go back
....especially Verizon, whose big brother in the UK (Vodaphone) is making them tear up the CDMA network for GSM. In some respects, AT&T is better-positioned today, and the continuing revenue stream from iPhones (something ungodly percentage of their new customers are iPhone customers) will allow them to invest in upgrades.
T-Mobile still doesn't have 3G nearly anywhere, and even the EDGE capability is spotty in places.
Sprint's got a friend-of-Barack, which has allowed them to push forward with their WiMax network faster than Verizon's planned 4G data (VHF analog TV spectrum), but they, too, are going to switch to GSM from CDMA for the Sprint portions of the network. Whatever was Nextel is unchanged.
But none of those providers have any single thing that's generating new customers like AT&T, and some are still bleeding subscribers despite nifty stuff (looking at you, Sprint).
In my experience, AT&T has been at least as reliable for voice. The data hasn't been as reliable as my last provider; but I'd rather have fast data 90% of the time, than unusably slow data 98% of the time.
The important information FTFA is here:
"AMD also estimated that the power consumption for a fully populated 42U rack would be 9.2 KW using the six-core Opteron 2425 HE, a 55-W part. Replacing those chips with the 2419 EE would require 7.5 KW, about an 18 percent power savings."
That's just in the rack consumption. I would imagine these probably run cooler, too, which will help with HVAC costs.
AMD seems to be doing a better job shrinking down dated designs at this point. While Intel is selling the Atom, which is undoubtedly cooler and less power-hungry, it's still based on a very old CPU design, which isn't up to heavy computing tasks. AMD, OTOH, has now established a pretty good record of taking mainline processors, and developing lower-power versions. They scaled down what used to be a pretty hot Athlon core (Thunderbird) to the Geode (as used in the OLPC). They followed that with a 45W Athlon 64 X2. Now the Opteron. Intel does have a 35W Conroe, but it's in Celeron cripple-mode badging, a shadow performance-wise, of the original C2Ds that initially came out on that core.
I hope that AMD does release a desktop version of this, but I don't know if they could keep it profitable ($900+ eek.)
Knowledge is power, but ignorance is bliss?
Well, supposedly, cockroaches are the ones expected to survive the apocalypse; SCO will be around. :-/
....all this means is it'll have to go back to trial to decide the issues. I kind of figured this would happen; Kimball's summary judgment was premature.
(yes, I skimmed through the long-ass PDF)
The same verdict as Kimball granted could potentially be reached again, this time with a full court proceeding. What it does do is delay the other cases even longer, as the Novell case decision is really required before any of them can proceed.
See you in 2012.
"you have died of dysentery"
As well as MS-DOS and the Apple II.
Likely three reasons: longevity, NVH, and current production. The first two are related -- 3-cylinder engines have the tendency to vibrate themselves the death. Even most of the econoboxen in Europe and Asia have four cylinders for that reason. A small four-cylinder with decent balancing can achieve very good longevity. I'd imagine the expected lifespan of a series two hybrid motor (one that only turns a generator) could well be 500,000 miles or more.
The last one, well, the Geo 3-cyl was a Suzuki engine, and GM doesn't produce it.
There have been various projects using L4 to isolate Linux or Linux drivers in VMs, so it's a logical thing for them to do too.
Cool. FWIW, the situation is much worse with Hyper-V than it is Xen. :-)
I was hopeful about their use of L4, as its known to be (capable of being) very fast. I'm really not sure where (if anywhere) they're going now; they do seem to lack a strong lead / direction, which like everything has both benefits and costs.
Yeah, IIRC, they ran into a major show-stopper with L4 and the current design that put things on hold. Some of the developers were working with Jonathan Shapiro on the Coyotos project at CMU; I'm not sure anything concrete came of that. Might be a moot point, anyway, since Shap's off to Redmond.
I didn't know NetBSD had Mach compatibility - do you mean it can run on top of Mach? That's cool. I don't, to be honest, know a whole lot about Mach - and to make things more complicated I have the impression there are several versions floating around out there.
COMPAT_DARWIN
Not sure how close this is to being production-ready with the ongoing enhancements in OS X, but they'd made pretty good progress around the 10.3 stage. Much of the NeXTstep model used Mach IPC for message passing (think about how ObjC works!). NetBSD had to emulate the Mach facilities in-kernel to build this in. If someone cared, they could probably do a COMPAT_NEXT for m68k, etc. Not sure how many of the features would need to be added to support the Hurd daemons.
There's not been enough that's different about DragonflyBSD to get me running it just yet but that may change.
I played around with some of the early versions, but haven't touched it much lately to try out the nifty new features. Most of the things I used BSD for I converted from FreeBSD to NetBSD around the time that Matt stood up DF. Probably would have been easier in hindsight, especially the community machine I help maintain, but I didn't think it was quite ready for primetime back then. Been very, very pleased with NetBSD, however. Certainly much better quality in my experience than FreeBSD later than version 4.
Nono...you helped me look at it a different way! :-)
any hypervisor will need some kind of device driver virtualisation which can often be a means of increasing the amount of trusted code (e.g. on Xen you basically trust all of the dom0 VM - including Linux - to do the right thing since it has IO privileges, even though the hypervisor itself is quite small).
Right. And you're still at the mercy of whatever drivers on dom0 might be flaky. Something like a network device driver that's susceptible to a DoS attack....that can be exploited by anything running in a domU, and the entire host goes kaboom. I'm not sure if virtualizing the driver is enough, because it still reveals the underlying hardware. I understand there's a performance hit, but if every NIC in the world is an e100, well, you have only one flaky driver to worry about with the domUs, while the dom0 might be running a Marvell gigabit or whatever.
The TUD:OS demo CD includes (IIRC) some sandboxed applications, such as some port of gpg to L4. It also features a minimal secure GUI that runs outside of Linux and can be used to isolate things - pretty cool.
I'll have to take a look!
GNU/Hurd always seems like a really awesome system to me. But last I read they had decided that L4 doesn't suit them and that they want to write a new microkernel. Disappointing :-( I really want to be able to use (and hack on) that thing but I'd like the project to look a little more well-defined first!
I haven't followed nearly as closely as I used to. I guess the bigger point with them is the longer they go without a compelling release, the more difficult it becomes for them to release anything people would want/need. I think that might have been some of the impetus behind the eventual Minix-3 release; let's get something out that proves our point. It doesn't have to beat Linux or BSD, but has to have something else compelling, and enough of a framework that shows potential for future growth.
I've also wondered if they might be able to look at seeing what they can do with either NetBSD or DragonFlyBSD's kernels. NetBSD, of course, gives you Mach compatibility, a halfway decently-performing FFS driver, etc. DragonFly's LWKTs might be a more hospitable environment for HURD daemon porting from Mach. Use it to strip down to just what you need, much the way they did between Mach releases. 2.5, 3.0, and 4.0 are all very different from each other.
Okay, I understand that. My past with L4 has been more varied. I've played around with L4-Linux and DROPS, as well as the beginnings of the GNU/Hurd port.
But I can definitely see the benefit of sandboxing applications separate from Linux. Particularly applications that don't do a lot of direct filesystem or hardware access. Still a lot of work to be done, however. :-)
(Of course, this sounds a hell of a lot like what you're supposed to be able to do with native Hurd applications, where you could theoretically do most operations through native IPC, whether that's Mach or L4 or Coyotos or whatever)
Okay, so you have a proven kernel. But it's L4. L4 provides nearly nothing in the way of functionality, just thread scheduling, and very rudimentary IPC.
Yes, an L4 kernel can be written in anything. Most variants have been written in C, but L4-Pistachio was written in C++. Anything that adheres to the L4 specification works. So it could be written in pretty much anything that doesn't require significant runtime libraries (and the associated overhead for filesystem handling, etc.).
Someone care to enlighten me?
If I had modpoints, you'd get one, AC. The Heartland breach kinda makes TJX look minor, and many people who might have been affected would never know.
Shame TFA didn't mention this, because it's a much more serious vulnerability than one large retail chain, precisely because the customers don't know about it.
But to answer the question posed, I think I might be more likely to shop at a chain that's been compromised. Not right when the story is breaking, mind you, but several months later, certainly. If they've had a compromise, the risk of a second compromise and the ensuing damage from it, is a far greater financial risk than a one-time charge to fix any problems that led to the first compromise (as well as anything new that's found during the review).
Same applies to air travel. I know I'll feel a lot more confident flying an an A330/340 after the Air France crash, once the upgraded airspeed sensors are installed fleet-wide. Same deal with the FAA's complete grounding-for-wire-inspection of the DC-9/MD-{8X/9X}/B-717 fiasco from early last year.
If I had a reason to go to a TJX store, I wouldn't hesitate to do so. (And, yes, I did check my Amex statements after the news came out, and I realized I'd bought some luggage at TJ-Maxx around the time of the breach)
My property management company is the same way -- no direct way to do EFT.
Doesn't your bank have an online "bill-pay" system? Mine does. They normally do payment by having the bank write a check and posting it to the recipient.
Yes, it's actually the bank mentioned in TFA here (and, yes, I'll probably download this app, since I can't use their scanner software, because my scanner doesn't work with anything other than XP, and I'm too cheap to buy another one) does have such a service. I'd used for about a year without a problem until June.
That's when my bank-produced paper check got sent to the wrong PO box (thanks, USPS!!1!), and another company deposited it. It cleared both banks, even though it was the wrong party who deposited it. Am not a satisfied customer at this point to say the least, especially since it took two weeks to get my money back. Luckily, I was still able to pay my rent on time.
And I could probably use the exercise walking the four blocks to deposit a hand-written check in their office mail slot.
The police use them extensively in the downtown area where I live. I actually saw one pull over a car once. But, apart from being terribly expensive, one of my friends bought one. He'd ride it to work when the weather wasn't horrid, as well as around town on the weekends. He had a blast with it for about four months, until he hit that patch of mislaid pavers....
Double compound fracture. Ow. Thousands of dollars in medical bills, even after insurance. My curiosity completely evaporated. Much like my desire to buy a motorcycle dies every few months when I see one that's wiped out on the interstate.
I went and looked at a few before I posted, and had the model numbers mixed up. That they didn't was my initial thought, since I was thinking about Atom's heritage. Some of the newer ones (230) do.
No existing applications / devices that were 32-bit only had to worry, there was still 32-bit XP dammit.
Anyone know if the XP-mode of Windows 7 is available in the 64-bit version? (I haven't tried it)
But ok, whatever, fuck it, Intel was still flogging 32-bit CPUs for some reason, and people are morons. Fine.
PAE, which allows up to 36GB on 32-bit. Intel has another 64-bit architecture, dontchaknow....it's called Itanium. They didn't license the amd64 instruction until Microsoft decided to embrace "X64."
In a lot of respects, it was a bad decision, as it badly breaks a lot of backwards compatibility (this is why 16-bit Windows apps no longer run), but it is what it is. (not to mention stupid stuff that POWER, MIPS, and Sparc figured out, like how to access 64-bit registers in 32-bit mode, etc. etc.)
Because you can just go out and grab a $300 netbook with 6GB of RAM, right? Even if you could, not all of the Atom processors support EMT64, though the most-popular ones do.
32-bit is still faster for a lot of things, too. The i486 has been around for 20 years now, amd64 not so long. The compilers haven't quite caught up.
To Microsoft's credit, they are requiring 64-bit for a lot of their enterprise products now. IIRC, Exchange 2007 and SQL 2008 both require either 2k3 or 2k8 64-bit.
DADMS is DoN-only for a reason; nobody else has the NMCI problem, and it didn't exist prior to NMCI. It's somewhat disconcerting to sit in on a meeting for a joint POR system, and have flag officers wonder WTF the Navy isn't implementing. "Uh, it's not in DADMS, sir." Sparks fly to say the least.
That said, the procedure is pretty simple, and since DITSCAP/DIACAP provide for it, you run specific vendor patches for whatever vendor-supported OS you're running (sorry Gentoo fanboys, roll-your-own isn't allowed in production systems). The Unix SRR script *should* be able to figure out if the backport is applied in a vendor-supplied patch, and pronounce it okay.
(The SRR scripts are publicly-available to everyone; if you're not running a commercial distro, you'll probably get some weird results, but it's still pretty good at picking out possible problems, even on systems that aren't officially-supported. I've run it on everything from Debian, including GNU/Hurd to OS X. http://iase.disa.mil/stigs/SRR/index.html)
If something is revealed that's not accurate, you document:
a) why you can't fix it (i.e. whatever system is running on top ceases to work, the vendor refuses to fix, the vendor is tango uniform, it's Wednesday and you don't feel like it, etc.),
b) why the scanner goofed up and picked out a problem that doesn't exist (yes, this version is different, but the vendor backported the fix [with proper vendor reference] to this, which is applied).
or
c) the fix hasn't been released and fully tested yet.
Cases a and c are what a POA&M is for, which is normally submitted along with the accreditation package, and updated periodically.
Most CFs are weak and bluish, too.
I've found many places in my flat where LED bulbs (no, they're not over $100 as TFA says; I buy two-packs at Sam's Club for less than $20) work great. My bedside lamps, for example, work really well. It's enough light that I can read, etc. They're also not so bright that my SO's keeps me up if she wants to stay awake longer. No mercury or very thin glass to worry about, either.
....weren't they big Obama supporters? How's that workin' out for y'all, now?
Iran and Honduras take a back seat to Michael Jackson, Billy Mays, and Farrah Fawcett. But, hey, Obama is "deeply concerned," and people are free to worry about such trivialities.
But, god, please don't destroy any more wonderful Apple Extended Keyboards to make ominous story photos.
And we rank right behind Australia. Hmm. Might CO2 emissions involved in transportation of goods across such a large territory have something to do with it? Nah, couldn't be.
Same thing when people start piping up about high speed rail. Frankfurt to Munich is like Boston to Philly.
The IT program at the local university (UCF) isn't bad, and is very tech-worker-friendly with its online options. Many of the local community colleges even offer certification programs (such as A+, CCNA, Oracle, and even RedHat) in both day and night school.
UCF (and the Orlando area) are also hotbeds of modeling and simulation work. Probably not of much interest to someone who wants to fix people's "broken Outlook" for life, but definitely some interesting work to be had.
And the last time I was in Orlando, it was cold (upper 30s). Of course, it was in the teens where I live, but that's beside the point. :-)