The management of media companies seem to be more prone to saying things like "Ad skipping is theft!" "Napster costs us billions each year." etc, etc.
It's to guilt people into paying, and it works. That's why pirates eventually become paying customers.
In general, the only pirates they are after are the ones profiting from it- they could care less about the little guys. Giving away free samples has always been a way to broaden the market share long term.
The problem is, mail is a critical app, and in some ways exchange *really* misses the point.
I think the most frustrating situation I've ever seen as a system administrator was when we were doing a scheduled reboot of the exchange server. After about 20 minutes waiting for it to resync itself & shutdown, my boss, one of those "smart enough to be dangerous types", decided it was a typical NT hang & to go ahead and hit the reset button (he did it in a single motion without a word, there was nothing anyone could do).
It took almost 2 weeks to get things straightend out. We had backups, but it turned out there was a 2048 meg bug with NT restores that had been re-introduced by a recent server upgrade, and we had problems getting the patch rolled into the new code (legato tech support- need I say more?).
350 people *screaming* for 2 weeks. I was very glad I was not the mail administrator.. but very sad to be sitting next to him.
Why not just hire some 31337 geeks, preferably young teenagers who want to show off their skillz without caring about what happens, to shut down the e-mail and telephone systems in your favorite target country.
Because it wouldn't really do anything other than annoying people. Every so often, I'll dial up my ISP and they won't answer. I'll wait a few hours, try again, and things will have cleared themselves up. There are no deaths. There is no permanant damage that will take months to clear up. There are no massive fires, or explosions. It's just a little bit annoying for the country involved.
Surely you jest. The reason for 9/11 was a hatred of capitalism.
The whole dot-com era had the effect of driving all the major (and minor) companies to the Net, and now many exist solely on the Net. Many more depend upon it as thier main source of income.
If people can't get online, they can't spend money on the net. Then they don't fund these ventures. Every day the internet is inaccessable that's another day of lost revenue. If the internet were to be taken down for say, 30 days, the effect would be horrible.
Think about it, online only businesses could very well be made to suffer enough that they would close. Major businesses would be able to fall back to more traditional outlets, but would certainly take a huge loss as well.
In short, a well orchestrated sustained DOS could absolutely crush the economy. Like it really needs to get any worse.
Not to mention all the smaller ISPs that would end up having to close, and that we would probably be forced into an Internet Access Monopoly.
I would like to think that the cryptanalysts at the Dept of Defense would be fully versed in the fallacy of Security through Obscurity, and would make their voices heard.
I don't think this is a ploy about security, I think it's more of an issue of capitalism.
What cracked me up was the last line from the article:
Stenbit said the debate is academic and that what matters is how secure a given piece of software is. To that end, the Defense Department is now prohibited from purchasing any software that has not undergone security testing by the NSA. Stenbit said he is unaware of any open-source software that has been tested.
Erm, when was the last time you *purchased* free software?
If it doesn't cost anything, they aren't allowed to pay for it. I think I'll go to bed now.
I didn't read all the way through the letter before it hit the trash
Mine didn't hit the trash. I wrote on it, in big black letters, "I hope you get sued" (amoung other things) and mailed it back to them in the pre-paid envelope.
Letting it "hit the trash" only reduces thier cost for this type of marketing. Since the envelope was pre-paid, take the extra moment to write what you think and mail it back.
The bit that annoys me the most is the whois server for my domain says:
By submitting a WHOIS query, you agree that you will use this data only for lawful purposes and that, under no circumstances will you use this data to: (1) allow, enable, or otherwise support the transmission of mass unsolicited, commercial advertising or solicitations via direct mail, electronic mail, or by telephone; or (2) enable high volume, automated, electronic processes that apply to Register.com (or its systems).
You say that like having an inexpensive treat for the neighbors dog (who never shuts up) is a bad thing. -- Sanity is the trademark of a weak mind.
-- Mark Harrold
I've had some experience with the Root Group
and was happy. They did a good job, and as the company I worked for was cheap, they are probably quite affordable.
The biggest problem was that the company I worked for didn't want to actually implement the suggestions because it was going to cost some money for things like a real firewall.:/
I've also had bad auditors come in, usually forced on the admin group by managment and sales staff.
I would advise the following to avoid these types:
First, ask them ahead of time what thier requirements are to get started. If they say "root access", show them the door. There is no talent in a company that requires full access to see if you are vulnerable (Note: there is nothing *wrong* with giving them access as part of the audit, but they shouldn't be *starting* there).
Matter of fact, if they start with wanting to login to your servers, you can probably do better.
Make sure they understand trust trees.
Make sure they are familiar with your OSs and critical applications.
Ask for, and check up on, references.
It sounds like you are off to a good start. Having managment ask you to plan something will mean you can get a real audit.. I've been through several where the "audit" started with me handing out root access so they could run "crack" on the shadow files, followed by a find command to look for world writable files, etc..
Now I have no doubt that after this session of looking at code, MS products will have caught up with the competition in terms of security.
Erm, sure kid. Here's a lollipop. Now run along/me pats IamTheRealMike on head
Re:UNIX was never dying in the first place
on
Unix Isn't Dead
·
· Score: 1
My vision of UNIX's biggest fear, is that it won't necessarily die, but be bred out of existence because new projects tend to be addressed by whatever resources are available at that time, and if there aren't any available UNIX experts, then nature abhors a vacuum and the projects will be filled with whomever is available at that time.
On a unix system, a good administrator can automate 70% of the job, and simplify another 20% such that anyone can do it. This reduces the job to monitering automated emails and waiting for something to break.
Spending all day reading email doesn't look good to efficency experts. So they choose the windows person working 20 hour days applying critical updates onto (way too many) computers.
The result is the unix guy gets pushed into working on mismanaged projects so they at least have enough to do to keep thier job. They end up miserable eventually bail on the whole thing, becoming sales or management because the job they wanted to do ends up being less than enough work to make it viable to management.
What I would like to find out is how well it does MPEG capture, meaning how fast a processor, how much memory, and how much disk do I need to convert 22 minutes of analog to MPEG. Does it encode on the card, or in software?
And does thier card work with other capture software, or are you stuck with what they provide?
One of the things that annoyed me about this card is it doesn't do duel-head. The Xtasy Everything seems to be a comparable device, but it also does dual head. But you end up with an IR remote & the encoding is done in software.
Actually, I was thinking that being married would solve the problem- everyone I know who's been married for more than 5 years has developed the ability to turn off thier hearing at will (well, at least the males).
That's actually a bit extreame. Last time I checked some states had pretty severe penalties for killing a dog.
I've had problems with barking dogs in the past, and I found tossing them a hot dog with a asprin in it knocked them out, which ment I could get back to sleep. How much depends on the dog. I've used around 8 for a big dog with sucess.
(it was a real bitch pushing them into the rack, I can tell you!)
What were you thinking? You should have put some cardboard into the rack as shelves, then plugged in the computers and sprayed the whole lot over with foam.
Gives you a nice lightweight rack, and the hard drives have more shock absorbtion then anything I'd ever dreamed of.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess you weren't paying attention.
I was once asked "What are the names of the 3 races in Starcraft?"
It's to guilt people into paying, and it works. That's why pirates eventually become paying customers.
In general, the only pirates they are after are the ones profiting from it- they could care less about the little guys. Giving away free samples has always been a way to broaden the market share long term.
The problem is, mail is a critical app, and in some ways exchange *really* misses the point.
I think the most frustrating situation I've ever seen as a system administrator was when we were doing a scheduled reboot of the exchange server. After about 20 minutes waiting for it to resync itself & shutdown, my boss, one of those "smart enough to be dangerous types", decided it was a typical NT hang & to go ahead and hit the reset button (he did it in a single motion without a word, there was nothing anyone could do).
It took almost 2 weeks to get things straightend out. We had backups, but it turned out there was a 2048 meg bug with NT restores that had been re-introduced by a recent server upgrade, and we had problems getting the patch rolled into the new code (legato tech support- need I say more?).
350 people *screaming* for 2 weeks. I was very glad I was not the mail administrator.. but very sad to be sitting next to him.
Now I'm getting worried that a bulldozer is going to show up in front of my house..
Surely you jest. The reason for 9/11 was a hatred of capitalism.
The whole dot-com era had the effect of driving all the major (and minor) companies to the Net, and now many exist solely on the Net. Many more depend upon it as thier main source of income.
If people can't get online, they can't spend money on the net. Then they don't fund these ventures. Every day the internet is inaccessable that's another day of lost revenue. If the internet were to be taken down for say, 30 days, the effect would be horrible.
Think about it, online only businesses could very well be made to suffer enough that they would close. Major businesses would be able to fall back to more traditional outlets, but would certainly take a huge loss as well.
In short, a well orchestrated sustained DOS could absolutely crush the economy. Like it really needs to get any worse.
Not to mention all the smaller ISPs that would end up having to close, and that we would probably be forced into an Internet Access Monopoly.
And that would suck.
Of course. And we've only found the redundant ones at this point.
64-22=42. QED.
Save yourself some time-
Between The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life" you will find this, and many other such questions, covered.
But it is a planned future accessory.
While it is amusing, the specifications for the laptop are a bit hefty for that old laptop you have laying around:
Pentium II - 800 MHz or faster
256 MB RAM
50MB Hard disk space
2 USB ports
I don't know about you, but I don't have any 800MHz/256MB laptops laying around.
I don't think this is a ploy about security, I think it's more of an issue of capitalism.
What cracked me up was the last line from the article:
Erm, when was the last time you *purchased* free software?
If it doesn't cost anything, they aren't allowed to pay for it. I think I'll go to bed now.
Why, napster of course. Oh.. wait..
Mine didn't hit the trash. I wrote on it, in big black letters, "I hope you get sued" (amoung other things) and mailed it back to them in the pre-paid envelope.
Letting it "hit the trash" only reduces thier cost for this type of marketing. Since the envelope was pre-paid, take the extra moment to write what you think and mail it back.
The bit that annoys me the most is the whois server for my domain says:
By submitting a WHOIS query, you agree that you will use this data only for lawful purposes and that, under no circumstances will you use this data to: (1) allow, enable, or otherwise support the transmission of mass unsolicited, commercial
advertising or solicitations via direct mail, electronic mail, or by telephone; or (2) enable high volume, automated, electronic processes
that apply to Register.com (or its systems).
And they obviously violated that agreement.
Unless you happen to live in the US.
You say that like having an inexpensive treat for the neighbors dog (who never shuts up) is a bad thing.
--
Sanity is the trademark of a weak mind.
-- Mark Harrold
--
Psychotics are consistently inconsistent. The essence of sanity is to be inconsistently inconsistent. -- Larry Wall
Erm.. they spent 5k on a quad 266MHz machine. How could you think it was anyone *but* a government entitiy?
I've had some experience with the Root Group and was happy. They did a good job, and as the company I worked for was cheap, they are probably quite affordable.
:/
The biggest problem was that the company I worked for didn't want to actually implement the suggestions because it was going to cost some money for things like a real firewall.
I've also had bad auditors come in, usually forced on the admin group by managment and sales staff. I would advise the following to avoid these types:
First, ask them ahead of time what thier requirements are to get started. If they say "root access", show them the door. There is no talent in a company that requires full access to see if you are vulnerable (Note: there is nothing *wrong* with giving them access as part of the audit, but they shouldn't be *starting* there).
Matter of fact, if they start with wanting to login to your servers, you can probably do better.
Make sure they understand trust trees.
Make sure they are familiar with your OSs and critical applications.
Ask for, and check up on, references.
It sounds like you are off to a good start. Having managment ask you to plan something will mean you can get a real audit.. I've been through several where the "audit" started with me handing out root access so they could run "crack" on the shadow files, followed by a find command to look for world writable files, etc..
Once again demonstrating that k5 has better and more timely news than /.
*sigh*
You've slashdotted them..
Spending all day reading email doesn't look good to efficency experts. So they choose the windows person working 20 hour days applying critical updates onto (way too many) computers.
The result is the unix guy gets pushed into working on mismanaged projects so they at least have enough to do to keep thier job. They end up miserable eventually bail on the whole thing, becoming sales or management because the job they wanted to do ends up being less than enough work to make it viable to management.
What I would like to find out is how well it does MPEG capture, meaning how fast a processor, how much memory, and how much disk do I need to convert 22 minutes of analog to MPEG. Does it encode on the card, or in software?
And does thier card work with other capture software, or are you stuck with what they provide?
One of the things that annoyed me about this card is it doesn't do duel-head. The Xtasy Everything seems to be a comparable device, but it also does dual head. But you end up with an IR remote & the encoding is done in software.
Actually, I was thinking that being married would solve the problem- everyone I know who's been married for more than 5 years has developed the ability to turn off thier hearing at will (well, at least the males).
That's actually a bit extreame. Last time I checked some states had pretty severe penalties for killing a dog.
I've had problems with barking dogs in the past, and I found tossing them a hot dog with a asprin in it knocked them out, which ment I could get back to sleep. How much depends on the dog. I've used around 8 for a big dog with sucess.
It's like a beowulf cluster of bad humor..
(it was a real bitch pushing them into the rack, I can tell you!)
What were you thinking? You should have put some cardboard into the rack as shelves, then plugged in the computers and sprayed the whole lot over with foam.
Gives you a nice lightweight rack, and the hard drives have more shock absorbtion then anything I'd ever dreamed of.
Kudos on a wonderful idea!