This isn't 1876, Alexander. We have webcams for this shit now.
Dude - you do know that unless you teach her how to use VPN properly, any fool with five minutes and the means of popping her local wifi network can see what you see (then post the results onto some tube site), right?
I can tell quite a few of you pussies have never been in the military.
...or had an s/o travel on business a lot. While I don't do it long-term, I do know folks who work on remote assignment for months at a shot, or spend at least half the year cumulatively away from family, girlfriends, etc.
On occasion, I usually go off for a week or so to some remote big city on business, but the missus and I keep in daily touch by phone, online via chat, and usually even by (*gasp*) facebook just to share some weird shit we stumbled across that day (me while walking about town, her by pointing me to weird shit back home).
The big trick is communication. Talk about everything and anything, at least once a day. Watch a show together while chatting or on the phone. Do something romantic. Oh, for instance? I'd draw a heart on the beach with our initials, take a photo, and email it to her. In San Francisco there's a zillion heart sculptures - snap a photo of a different one each day and send it along with a little poem. Take a photo of yourself watching a sunset, email that, and then call her telling her about stuff on your mind while she opens that photo. The point is to let her know you still think of her, and how much you love her. She'll appreciate that a whole lot more than tchotskes or souvenirs.
Most important of all - If you're gone a long time, and if you can swing it, find a way to get back there on a periodic basis to be with her, or find a way to get her out to you.
Now this go 'round, I saved a few extra pennies and brought her along (it's our anniversary, and she'd never seen this city before) - but that gets pricey after awhile... So we adapt, and enjoy the times when we are together. No end-game involved. Maybe TFA dude is doing something similar. Maybe he expects to be reunited shortly. No business of mine, but I'm happy to help when I can.
well, technically a "white" man can be on of many various shades of pink and/or tan/olive** in skin color, and a "black" man's skin can range from a very pale beige to nearly jet-black. An Asian man's skin isn't really yellow at all (unless something like jaundice is involved).
"African American" could just as easily describe a pale blue-eyed dude from South Africa as it could a dude with jet-black skin from Rwanda or a more Arabic-looking gent from Egypt. QED: The term is ignorant at best. "Caucasian" is a holdover from days when scientists thought that pale folks all stemmed from folks who lived in the Caucasus region of the world, as you half-stated. IMHO, the only term that even halfway seems to fit would be "Native American", but as a group, they all emigrated from Asia about 100k years ago, and as time goes by even that particular distinction will fuzz and fade.
It would just be easier to call 'em all "people" and be done with it, no? I figure in about 500 years (assuming civilization holds up that long), skin color will be too blended and mixed to even hope to tell any differences by mere sight.
FYI: I'm currently typing this missive while on business in Atlanta, Georgia; I've seen nearly every shade of skin color in the past 24 hours. I've seen folks getting along in social situations just fine, the participants individually bearing radically differing skin colors. I grew up under similar circumstances, and I can tell you that Obama is very inept, very ideological, very selfish, and a very lousy president; not one of the worst, but pretty close to it.
I don't have to schedule reboots each month. I have *nix VMs (okay, LPARs) that I haven't had to reboot (scheduled or otherwise) for at least six months.
Windows world? It's gotten better (adding roles and features), but it's still reboot hell at times.
-- You still need to reboot. A lot. More than I thought.
Only if you're patching the kernel or glibc. Protip: If you don't want to bother plowing through reboots just because you don't like restarting services, learn to use the telinit command.;)
-- Things that really ought to be automatic, aren't. I spent a good 50% of the lab doing really fiddly things like cut & pasting iptables rules to open firewall ports. The installer really should have just done that for me.
Clue: Windows application installers don't usually mod the firewall either (unless we're talking MSFT-branded ones, e.g. SQL Server.)
Binding services together and just generally getting things to start up and talk required an awful lot of error prone manual labour.
'fraid you'll have to be more specific than what you posted, because you're not making sense here. What exactly do you mean by "binding services together"?
I love the disclaimer in the training guide: "Linux configuration scripts do not tolerate typos, are case sensitive, and are not possible to validate before running the associated service." Fun stuff. I can't wait to diagnose random single-character problems in 10 kilobyte files when the only error is that one of a dozen services barfed when started.
You mean like when a seemingly random multi-MB.aspx file has a single typo in it, causing IIS to not run, with only a cryptic (and definitely non-intuitive) generic blurb buried somewhere deep in Event Viewer? Or how about a typo in some config file (lurking under a dozen nested folders) causes SSRS to fall over?
Or are you just arsed over case-sensitivity?;)
Wow, the 70s called and wanted their limitations back: spaces in file names?
Just like in Powershell, you may want to learn to use quotes or escape chars... and with MSFT moving away from the GUI at the server level, you'd better get used to it.
Clue: Wizards are going away in Windows too. Better brush up on Powershell.;)
Want to make a configuration change to a service without having to stop & start it? You're dreaming!
That's actually an advantage: one can change all kinds of differing network info (IP addy, DNS, NIS/windbind, etc) over ssh (think RDP for grown men;) ), and not have the machine blink out until you're ready to commit those changes.
An editor more user friendly than vi?
Try EMACS (I kid, I kid...) In all seriousness, there's a zillion of them, with varying opinions. vi on the other hand has the advantage of being universal. I can use it in Linux, HPUX, Solaris, AIX, FreeBSD, etc.
A lot more portable and capable than Notepad, dontcha think?
-- I love the undecipherable command-line wizardry. I'm not an idiot, but how-the-fuck would I know what "-e" does on some random command?
I can give the counter-arguments against using Windows:
* You're guaranteed to suffer every month for maintenance (Patch Tuesday), and require multiple machines not just for capacity-matching, but for redundancy if you want anywhere near the same uptime. In spite of an MCSE/MCSA being cheaper, one competent UNIX admin can maintain 3x the machine count than an MCSE/MCSA can - unless you feel like springing for a lot of pricey add-ons/upsells to keep admin FTE headcount down (e.g. automation via SCOM,SCCM and etc). It doesn't take too much for that SA contract cost to match or exceed the HP one, especially if the Microsoft products have the word "Enterprise" in the product title/license.
* All that aside, I haven't even touched on increased space, power consumption, cooling/HVAC, and etc... the costs scale up almost exponentially in larger installations.
The decline is from the price point. My last place of employment had 1 HP UX server that costed upwards of 25K for software and specific HP hardware to run on. migrating to windows cost a fraction of that in OS licenses and hardware, even though it took 8 windows servers to do what the one UX server did, it was still cheaper.
Agreed, but for one thing: Amortization.
In a previous position, one of my clients had an ancient IBM 9370 mainframe going. Mind you, for the business size (about 200 employees) and what they used it for (a string of automotive dealerships), it was 1) overkill when purchased (they overestimated their expansion plans by couple of factors), and 2) hellishly expensive. I think they paid a solid 7 figures for it, but cannot remember exactly how much.
Thing is, its amortization schedule was roughly 2 decades at least if I were to guess. They bought it in 1984, I last saw it in 1999, and I bet it's still running today if their CFO has anything to say about it. Anything after the amortization date is pure gravy for them, methinks.
Another reason why I say it's likely still around: - It does pretty much everything they need it to. - Unlike most x86 servers (but not unlike most high-end UNIX boxen) could probably take a direct 1-megaton nuclear detonation and keep going without so much as a dropped routine. - You could swap out everything but the power cable without shutting it down (I think only a microcode and certain IPL patches would force any real cold downtime). Yes, I'm including RAM and processors.
And to top that off, I see a lot of similar situations with other ancient boxes (HPUX, AIX, SunOS, you-name-it.)
As the spouse of a disabled veteran, I call bullshit to that one.
It has its good points, but the data inefficiency is astronomical. TFA is right about the paper problems - when medication is routinely mailed, and includes a huge wad of paper (required) that lists personal patient info alongside the side effects and etc? When I could literally wander anywhere in the building, and pick up a ton of ID theft-friendly info from papers containing personal patient info sitting around on desks, nurses' stations, and et al?
Little wonder the VA has such a huge data leakage problem from paper... I'm always rather astounded by the amount of paper that even a simple office visit at a VAMC generates.
They'll see if they can slip all that DRM and restriction back in once enough customers have bought one. They'll claim that piracy is massive, and that they had to take drastic steps, etc.
Sort of like how Sony popped in that little update on the PS3 that killed OtherOS, but this time with an excuse that the common folk will rationalize.
Well he does, sorta... if it weren't for the massive charitable 'contribution' he gave former Prez. Vicente Fox' wife for her 'charity (causing a planned migration to Linux to instead swerve back towards Windows)', Mexico would've been using primarily Linux by now, reducing Microsoft's market share (and thus its stock price, thus Gates' bank account, etc).
Hell, I suspect the whole third world would've been using Linux by now judging by that one yardstick...
It's one thing when you have a niche job that requires a specific skillset by its very nature**
It's another thing entirely when the job is fairly common, but the 'home team' gets preference (c'mon... it's not like there's a big shortage of folks who can jockey a vSphere farm.)
** notice I didn't say a contrived-to-be-niche job, which is sadly how a lot of corps get around the H1-B thing.
Most VPN tunnels are between networking devices (usually Cisco ASA), but you can use pretty much anything, including a Linux box on both ends to handle the tunnel.
Anyone who uses a Windows Server on either end of a corporate-critical 24/7/365 VPN tunnel is, well, an idiot.
No powerful corporation will tolerate the routine interception of its business communications and the reading of its internal records by a political entity.
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Long story short? Unless the government has demonstrable cause to read/know the full text of "everything", it's none of their fucking business.
One small problem - encrypted messages won't get very far if the packets are blocked as being non-readable by whatever censorship authority runs the firewall/choke-point/etc.
A truly 'Balkanized' Internet would mean that there would be choke-points through which packets have to travel between subnets.
Now if you said 'steganography' instead, well, different story. But an obviously encrypted message would likely be blocked cold.
First, oddball configs - that is, take notes on any custom settings and processes.
Nothing is more irritating than to troubleshoot something, only to find that the configs are some goofball way-out-of-the-ordinary rigging that somehow works in spite of itself. Or worse, discovering that what looks like a straightforward deal becomes a messy multi-day-outage when you try to fix it according to best practices.
Sure, you can build-up a replacement that has far better/standard configs, or put together better processes... But that doesn't help you out when $system is down and your users want it back *right now*. It's better to at least get some insight into why it was set up the way it was, and you can then plan of rectifying that before it goes down (and as a bonus, knowing how and why it's rigged like it is, making t-shooting a lot easier to do.)
Also, I'd get some insight into what projects he had planned and in process - those will give you some insight into what you yourself will really want to pay attention to. For instance, if there's a backup improvement project planned, it may well be because the existing backup solution either sucks balls, fails any integrity checks you may have, or is about to collapse any day.
Finally, sit the admin down and go over all vendor-supplied services and service contracts (service, certificates, etc), and find out what's about to expire. It would kinda suck if you have your SAN (or worse, core switch, Oracle DB product, etc) crap out, then discover that the platinum 4-hour service contract attached to it expired a week after that guy left... per-hour charges are brutal, parts are moreso, and if your company does the whole PO thing? It's gonna suck.
Overall though - wring that guy's brain out, and record it to audio if you can. It'll save you a lot of headaches down the road.
Slashdot Mirror
Phone sex?
This isn't 1876, Alexander. We have webcams for this shit now.
Dude - you do know that unless you teach her how to use VPN properly, any fool with five minutes and the means of popping her local wifi network can see what you see (then post the results onto some tube site), right?
I can tell quite a few of you pussies have never been in the military.
...or had an s/o travel on business a lot. While I don't do it long-term, I do know folks who work on remote assignment for months at a shot, or spend at least half the year cumulatively away from family, girlfriends, etc.
On occasion, I usually go off for a week or so to some remote big city on business, but the missus and I keep in daily touch by phone, online via chat, and usually even by (*gasp*) facebook just to share some weird shit we stumbled across that day (me while walking about town, her by pointing me to weird shit back home).
The big trick is communication. Talk about everything and anything, at least once a day. Watch a show together while chatting or on the phone. Do something romantic. Oh, for instance? I'd draw a heart on the beach with our initials, take a photo, and email it to her. In San Francisco there's a zillion heart sculptures - snap a photo of a different one each day and send it along with a little poem. Take a photo of yourself watching a sunset, email that, and then call her telling her about stuff on your mind while she opens that photo. The point is to let her know you still think of her, and how much you love her. She'll appreciate that a whole lot more than tchotskes or souvenirs.
Most important of all - If you're gone a long time, and if you can swing it, find a way to get back there on a periodic basis to be with her, or find a way to get her out to you.
Now this go 'round, I saved a few extra pennies and brought her along (it's our anniversary, and she'd never seen this city before) - but that gets pricey after awhile... So we adapt, and enjoy the times when we are together. No end-game involved. Maybe TFA dude is doing something similar. Maybe he expects to be reunited shortly. No business of mine, but I'm happy to help when I can.
...logic, rationality, and ideology? Like mixing salt, sodium, and water... the results are always messy and explosive.
well, technically a "white" man can be on of many various shades of pink and/or tan/olive** in skin color, and a "black" man's skin can range from a very pale beige to nearly jet-black. An Asian man's skin isn't really yellow at all (unless something like jaundice is involved).
"African American" could just as easily describe a pale blue-eyed dude from South Africa as it could a dude with jet-black skin from Rwanda or a more Arabic-looking gent from Egypt. QED: The term is ignorant at best. "Caucasian" is a holdover from days when scientists thought that pale folks all stemmed from folks who lived in the Caucasus region of the world, as you half-stated. IMHO, the only term that even halfway seems to fit would be "Native American", but as a group, they all emigrated from Asia about 100k years ago, and as time goes by even that particular distinction will fuzz and fade.
It would just be easier to call 'em all "people" and be done with it, no? I figure in about 500 years (assuming civilization holds up that long), skin color will be too blended and mixed to even hope to tell any differences by mere sight.
FYI: I'm currently typing this missive while on business in Atlanta, Georgia; I've seen nearly every shade of skin color in the past 24 hours. I've seen folks getting along in social situations just fine, the participants individually bearing radically differing skin colors. I grew up under similar circumstances, and I can tell you that Obama is very inept, very ideological, very selfish, and a very lousy president; not one of the worst, but pretty close to it.
** BTW, maybe we can just call 'em pink?
Nah, no need to work it out in court ;)
There's a much easier workaround here:
"Hi, my name is Angela Jenkins, and I think..." {-- insert troll comment here}
(hint: My name damned sure isn't Angela.)
I don't have to schedule reboots each month. I have *nix VMs (okay, LPARs) that I haven't had to reboot (scheduled or otherwise) for at least six months.
Ok, I'll bite.
Cool - allow me to dispel some bits:
-- You still need to patch, or install 140+ dependencies to install one application. Same difference.
RedHat-based: yum -y install (whatever).
Debian-based: apt-get install (whatever).
Best part is, you can put the whole list in at once if you want in one go.
Windows world? It's gotten better (adding roles and features), but it's still reboot hell at times.
-- You still need to reboot. A lot. More than I thought.
Only if you're patching the kernel or glibc. Protip: If you don't want to bother plowing through reboots just because you don't like restarting services, learn to use the telinit command. ;)
-- Things that really ought to be automatic, aren't. I spent a good 50% of the lab doing really fiddly things like cut & pasting iptables rules to open firewall ports. The installer really should have just done that for me.
Clue: Windows application installers don't usually mod the firewall either (unless we're talking MSFT-branded ones, e.g. SQL Server.)
Binding services together and just generally getting things to start up and talk required an awful lot of error prone manual labour.
'fraid you'll have to be more specific than what you posted, because you're not making sense here. What exactly do you mean by "binding services together"?
I love the disclaimer in the training guide: "Linux configuration scripts do not tolerate typos, are case sensitive, and are not possible to validate before running the associated service." Fun stuff. I can't wait to diagnose random single-character problems in 10 kilobyte files when the only error is that one of a dozen services barfed when started.
You mean like when a seemingly random multi-MB .aspx file has a single typo in it, causing IIS to not run, with only a cryptic (and definitely non-intuitive) generic blurb buried somewhere deep in Event Viewer? Or how about a typo in some config file (lurking under a dozen nested folders) causes SSRS to fall over?
Or are you just arsed over case-sensitivity? ;)
Wow, the 70s called and wanted their limitations back: spaces in file names?
Just like in Powershell, you may want to learn to use quotes or escape chars... and with MSFT moving away from the GUI at the server level, you'd better get used to it.
IPv6? In theory, not in practice.
Now I know you're trolling, or are completely ignorant.
GUI config wizards? Nope.
Clue: Wizards are going away in Windows too. Better brush up on Powershell. ;)
Want to make a configuration change to a service without having to stop & start it? You're dreaming!
That's actually an advantage: one can change all kinds of differing network info (IP addy, DNS, NIS/windbind, etc) over ssh (think RDP for grown men ;) ), and not have the machine blink out until you're ready to commit those changes.
An editor more user friendly than vi?
Try EMACS (I kid, I kid...) In all seriousness, there's a zillion of them, with varying opinions. vi on the other hand has the advantage of being universal. I can use it in Linux, HPUX, Solaris, AIX, FreeBSD, etc.
A lot more portable and capable than Notepad, dontcha think?
-- I love the undecipherable command-line wizardry. I'm not an idiot, but how-the-fuck would I know what "-e" does on some random command?
man {so
The minis? Yep... they were pretty nifty.
The one I referred to originally was the real deal, refrigerator-sized and IBM-branded.
I'm sure it was a UCS system (Reynolds and Reynolds, today).
Bingo has been called (though it was called FDCS when I joined up with 'em). :)
And yes, UCS was the absolute king of fees, but I daresay that folks like Microsoft, Dell, HP, *ORACLE*, et al. have learned rather well from them.
I can give the counter-arguments against using Windows:
* You're guaranteed to suffer every month for maintenance (Patch Tuesday), and require multiple machines not just for capacity-matching, but for redundancy if you want anywhere near the same uptime. In spite of an MCSE/MCSA being cheaper, one competent UNIX admin can maintain 3x the machine count than an MCSE/MCSA can - unless you feel like springing for a lot of pricey add-ons/upsells to keep admin FTE headcount down (e.g. automation via SCOM,SCCM and etc). It doesn't take too much for that SA contract cost to match or exceed the HP one, especially if the Microsoft products have the word "Enterprise" in the product title/license.
* All that aside, I haven't even touched on increased space, power consumption, cooling/HVAC, and etc... the costs scale up almost exponentially in larger installations.
The decline is from the price point. My last place of employment had 1 HP UX server that costed upwards of 25K for software and specific HP hardware to run on. migrating to windows cost a fraction of that in OS licenses and hardware, even though it took 8 windows servers to do what the one UX server did, it was still cheaper.
Agreed, but for one thing: Amortization.
In a previous position, one of my clients had an ancient IBM 9370 mainframe going. Mind you, for the business size (about 200 employees) and what they used it for (a string of automotive dealerships), it was 1) overkill when purchased (they overestimated their expansion plans by couple of factors), and 2) hellishly expensive. I think they paid a solid 7 figures for it, but cannot remember exactly how much.
Thing is, its amortization schedule was roughly 2 decades at least if I were to guess. They bought it in 1984, I last saw it in 1999, and I bet it's still running today if their CFO has anything to say about it. Anything after the amortization date is pure gravy for them, methinks.
Another reason why I say it's likely still around:
- It does pretty much everything they need it to.
- Unlike most x86 servers (but not unlike most high-end UNIX boxen) could probably take a direct 1-megaton nuclear detonation and keep going without so much as a dropped routine.
- You could swap out everything but the power cable without shutting it down (I think only a microcode and certain IPL patches would force any real cold downtime). Yes, I'm including RAM and processors.
And to top that off, I see a lot of similar situations with other ancient boxes (HPUX, AIX, SunOS, you-name-it.)
As the spouse of a disabled veteran, I call bullshit to that one.
It has its good points, but the data inefficiency is astronomical. TFA is right about the paper problems - when medication is routinely mailed, and includes a huge wad of paper (required) that lists personal patient info alongside the side effects and etc? When I could literally wander anywhere in the building, and pick up a ton of ID theft-friendly info from papers containing personal patient info sitting around on desks, nurses' stations, and et al?
Little wonder the VA has such a huge data leakage problem from paper... I'm always rather astounded by the amount of paper that even a simple office visit at a VAMC generates.
Simple answer, really...
They'll see if they can slip all that DRM and restriction back in once enough customers have bought one. They'll claim that piracy is massive, and that they had to take drastic steps, etc.
Sort of like how Sony popped in that little update on the PS3 that killed OtherOS, but this time with an excuse that the common folk will rationalize.
And then we can look at how relatively little progress was made during the 1000+ years previous.
Protip: Think of an exponential curve, not a linear one. ;)
Each new bit is an addition to already known facts. The only real interruptions involve civilizational collapse and/or disruption.
"So, yeah, we HAD all this data, but..."
No worries - with this plan, they can recover 90% of the data from Dropbox.
What motivation does Putin have to do that?
Cheaper than hiring and inserting spies, for starters.
...simply because Metro is completely screwed-up, and because of that you have to price it way lower to attact any interest in it.
FTFY
Well he does, sorta... if it weren't for the massive charitable 'contribution' he gave former Prez. Vicente Fox' wife for her 'charity (causing a planned migration to Linux to instead swerve back towards Windows)', Mexico would've been using primarily Linux by now, reducing Microsoft's market share (and thus its stock price, thus Gates' bank account, etc).
Hell, I suspect the whole third world would've been using Linux by now judging by that one yardstick...
Sorry - I meant Infosys' home team (e.g. Indians).
It's one thing when you have a niche job that requires a specific skillset by its very nature**
It's another thing entirely when the job is fairly common, but the 'home team' gets preference (c'mon... it's not like there's a big shortage of folks who can jockey a vSphere farm.)
** notice I didn't say a contrived-to-be-niche job, which is sadly how a lot of corps get around the H1-B thing.
Most VPN tunnels are between networking devices (usually Cisco ASA), but you can use pretty much anything, including a Linux box on both ends to handle the tunnel.
Anyone who uses a Windows Server on either end of a corporate-critical 24/7/365 VPN tunnel is, well, an idiot.
No powerful corporation will tolerate the routine interception of its business communications and the reading of its internal records by a political entity.
Umm, businesses don't have to worry about that so much.
This is why:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Long story short? Unless the government has demonstrable cause to read/know the full text of "everything", it's none of their fucking business.
One small problem - encrypted messages won't get very far if the packets are blocked as being non-readable by whatever censorship authority runs the firewall/choke-point/etc.
A truly 'Balkanized' Internet would mean that there would be choke-points through which packets have to travel between subnets.
Now if you said 'steganography' instead, well, different story. But an obviously encrypted message would likely be blocked cold.
Some other bits:
First, oddball configs - that is, take notes on any custom settings and processes.
Nothing is more irritating than to troubleshoot something, only to find that the configs are some goofball way-out-of-the-ordinary rigging that somehow works in spite of itself. Or worse, discovering that what looks like a straightforward deal becomes a messy multi-day-outage when you try to fix it according to best practices.
Sure, you can build-up a replacement that has far better/standard configs, or put together better processes... But that doesn't help you out when $system is down and your users want it back *right now*. It's better to at least get some insight into why it was set up the way it was, and you can then plan of rectifying that before it goes down (and as a bonus, knowing how and why it's rigged like it is, making t-shooting a lot easier to do.)
Also, I'd get some insight into what projects he had planned and in process - those will give you some insight into what you yourself will really want to pay attention to. For instance, if there's a backup improvement project planned, it may well be because the existing backup solution either sucks balls, fails any integrity checks you may have, or is about to collapse any day.
Finally, sit the admin down and go over all vendor-supplied services and service contracts (service, certificates, etc), and find out what's about to expire. It would kinda suck if you have your SAN (or worse, core switch, Oracle DB product, etc) crap out, then discover that the platinum 4-hour service contract attached to it expired a week after that guy left... per-hour charges are brutal, parts are moreso, and if your company does the whole PO thing? It's gonna suck.
Overall though - wring that guy's brain out, and record it to audio if you can. It'll save you a lot of headaches down the road.