In your last statement, "Personally I'd take irradiation hazards over chemical hazards any day of the week.", are you basically saying that we are in more danger from chemicals than from radiation?
Like, me, Average Joe, on an average work day.
I shower with a dozen compounds I can barely pronounce, brush my teeth with almost as many.
I hop in my chemically induced car (plastic and chemically treated leather interior), which is powered by the explosive liquid fuel stored in the 16 gallon tank in the back (ignoring the 5 quarts of oil, and one lead acid battery wrapped in plastic)
I go to my work, which if I lived in California, would have a tag on the outside of the building which says "This building may contain chemicals and/or other substances known to cause cancer..."
Don't forget my chemically treated lunch (to preserve freshness and coloration)
We'll pretend that I haven't smoked a half pack of cigarettes through the theoretical day.
Hmmm, I think you get the idea.
The alternative is a radiation hazard. I have yet to be to a site where a dosimeter is even recommended. No nukes have ever been dropped anywhere near me. No radioactive incidents. No spent fuel rods falling off of trains. No satellites crashing into my back yard.
I guess as average Joe, the worst radiation hazards are the non-ionizing radiation from power lines and computer monitors (ahhh, not even touched here), and the speck of it in my smoke alarm.:)
I totally agree, there are enough hazards to worry about on a daily basis. One of my biggest concerns is getting into a car accident, or a slip and fall accident in my own bathroom.:) I guess in some parts of the world (like Iraq) the concerns are more of getting shot.
Not many people have even mentioned those links. It's just a little cross-site linking to raise page ranks for a few projects.
My full resume lists a huge porn site. I've had to explain on occasion, in a completely professional manner, that the network was a large installation with high redundancy, that required me to be at my best 24/7. When I left, the largest site had an Alexa rank of #325. They'll usually listen as I go into more detail of the network infrastructure, my OS and web server choices and changes over the years, and the particular security challenges we were presented with. If you figure 0.01% of the users is a script kiddie, and our high traffic days were over 6,000,000 users, that means 60,000 folks a day were trying to defeat our security. When I looked at the firewall logs, in excess of 10 attempts per second were common. Some would be attempting to defeat our security to gain access to the servers. Others were attempting various methods to defeat our site authentication for "Passwordz" sites. Regardless of who they were and what they were trying, we couldn't allow any compromise. Our security methods would grow with the attackers methods changing, and frequently beyond what their current attempts were. I stayed on top of network security to ensure I was on the same level as the best attackers, so regardless of what they tried, I already knew what they were going to do to stop them.
I'd go into conversations on how the redundancy across multiple datacenters was accomplished, with our extremely high bandwidth requirements. Typical days took over an aggregated 3Gb/s, and I had to be sure to keep the utilization on any line within tolerances to not allow a focused attack from taking down any single line. Failure of a single line or cluster of servers could not leave the site down. We included the capability for multiple site outages, which would not disrupt the normal flow of the site. This sometimes threw our providers. We'd loose a site that was pulling 500Mb/s, and I'd just call to see when it would be fixed, as we'd already failed that over to other sites before I called. We wouldn't allow a fail back until we were confident the problem had been resolved. Sometimes we'd simulate a site failure to test the capability of new lines. Just because they've installed GigE doesn't mean there's 1000Mb/s to be used there.
And, rather than taking extremely high dollar approaches, I took the cheaper approaches, which has since become the model for quite a few other companies. Commodity servers, open source software, and a well scripted environment to handle common tasks. The environment was usually handled by myself and one other person, not moderately sized teams that you would expect, although I would have liked to had a properly sized team of 6 to 9 people across 3 shifts. Since most things ran smoothly, I had time to work on other projects, and if I needed a 3 day weekend, it was usually safe to do, as long as I had my laptop handy.:)
In the end, I probably worked myself out of my job. Things were smooth, and easy to manage and expand on. The entire setup was intuitive, with consistency across all servers. Training of Unix skilled staff could be accomplished in a week or less, most of that time getting familiar with the specific sites and their needs.
At which point, the interviewer usually says "oh. wow, you do know your stuff.":)
Most of the people who I've interviewed (or at least read their resumes) are pretty bland. It's their real name, list of employers, blah, blah.
Myself, the resume is the simple list of jobs, experience, etc. I try to explain as well as I can in a short form (just 4 printed pages) my history and skills.
In the resume, I have my personal site name. I use it for a lot of things. If you look at my personal site, it's kinda bare. I really only started using it a year or two ago.
On my site are two versions of my resume. In the obvious area, there is my resume with all personal and contact information redacted. It shows what I know, just nothing to identify myself.
In a obscured area there is my full resume in HTML, MSWord, and PDF. It does have my real name, address, phones, company names, references, etc. Otherwise, the content is identical. It helps to make clear that the alias site is really me. Otherwise, I could have just leeched the obscured resume and filled in my own information. Upon contacting the employers, they will usually remember that I used the alias on occasion. Most of them catch me using aliases on the phone, depending on who I'm talking to. Once I'm working somewhere, I explain my separation of real vs alias.
"A call holding on line 4? It's a cold call from a vendor we don't deal with? Thanks.
[picking up line 4]
Hi this is John, how can I help you?
My title? I'm an assistant systems administrator. Oh no, Mr Real Name isn't here, but I'll take your information and pass it on. He's out of country right now dealing with some of our [fill in BS here], but when he gets back I'm sure he'll call you.
When will he be back? I don't know. I do know it was important for him to go, but as an executive, he doesn't always tell us lowly staffers his plans.":)
It's funnier that people I work with will walk up and refer to me as Mr. Smythe or JW. Depending on how playful I'm feeling, sometimes I'll completely refuse to be him. Mr Who? I don't even know him.
I was smart enough to pick an alias that could be a real name. It even has a middle name, date of birth, birth place, current residence. I've used it long enough to swap back and forth fluidly, without confusing the two.
As far as anyone online is concerned, I am and always will be JW Smythe. Even if/when we meet in person, unless there's a need for a personal relationship, I will remain JW Smythe.
And most importantly (as it relates to the article), when you search for "JW Smythe" or "JWSmythe" on Google, you'll find information on myself. You won't find anything on me by searching for my real name. Well, you'll find lots (and lots) of things. Even my real name was somewhat more common, but more so in Europe.
I for one welcome our deceased giant sea scorpion overlords.:) Ya, I was expecting it too, but I couldn't really put it together to make it work. Hell, they've been extinct for quite a while now. Unless they're.....
I for one welcome our time traveling giant sea scorpion overlords!
Much like Godwin's Law, some people invoke the name "God" because they don't have an intelligent argument to make.
He was right, the bee network doesn't really do much. You're taking several simple units, and utilizing them into a functional unit. It's the same as one solider is to a battalion, or one cell is to a whole person. The coordination of the elements in the functional unit must be customized for that task. If you have servers behave as bees or ants or soldiers, they may (and probably won't) accomplish the intended task as well as you would hope.
But, to follow the successes and failures of previous generations, regardless of their species, you can learn through their inherited intelligence.
Ahhh, and I didn't use God anywhere in it.:)
I was accosted by a God freak in a night time drinking and socializing area. Actually, my wife was first. This girl came up and was praying for her soul. Then she asked if she could pray for my soul. My wife played along, but I told her it was probably better that she didn't. I'm blasphemous enough by myself. I'd hate to think that when God finally tries to shove a lightning bolt up my @$$, it may hit someone else.
I had that conversation with another executive recently.
He dropped off his laptop with "problems". I suspected viruses, spyware, whatever. I was in the middle of other work, so I didn't even fire it up. Later that day, he asked me "How long will it take?" Being that I was on the way to a meeting at that moment, and had all kinds of urgent company tasks to do, and I hadn't inspected the system yet, the answer was "As long as it takes. I don't know." He wanted an answer like "End of business today.", which wasn't a good answer. Heck, it may have taken 5 minutes to fix, and ya, I would have it done by the end of the day.
As it turned out, it was VERY virus and spyware infected. Literally over 100 different nasty problems to fix.
I don't know why people think IT is easy, and can be done on demand. You don't drop off your car saying "it has a funny sound, how long until it's fixed?" It could be a tree branch stuck under the bumper, or the engine needs to be rebuild.
It's only obvious tasks that can be given a specific time. How long will it take to add an account to the email server? About 45 seconds. How long to change the flat tire on my car (at a shop), it'll be done in 30 minutes.
How long to fix something that no one else has managed to fix yet? Who the hell knows. 30 seconds to 6 months, it depends on how hard the problem is to fix.
>And if your product is considered "mission critical", I would > expect a data corruption bug to be fixed within 24 hours. > Even if it is nothing more than rolling back the recent > patches and re-issuing the previous version.
Been developing long?
Every customer considers every application to be "mission critical"
And, regardless of if you were the developer or company involved, any unrelated problem will be thrown back to you. What if the data corruption bug is a failing hard drive on the client's machine? They'll sure as heck be asking you what YOU can do.
Been there, done that, have the migraines to prove it.:)
Really, it depends on your environment, and what needs to be done.
I'll use one of my web site as an example. It's all PHP and Perl, so ya, it's programming (I'm sure people will argue this).
Since I wrote all the code, I know it all inside and out. If you say "there's a problem [here]", I know exactly what file to look in, and what code to look for. I've banged out changes, tested them, and put them into production in a matter of minutes.
On a high traffic web site, we had a java applet which was being used by about 25,000 people per day. For little things, I'd change the code, test on all applicable platforms, and roll out the change in a few hours. Even then, the bosses were sometimes displeased with the time it took. Since I was careful to test, I never rolled out bad code, so I was never pushed into the long QA cycles.
Working with one company, things were a lot different. It went something like this.
1) Propose the change to your manager, with supporting documentation.
2) Manager would go to the project coordinator (i.e., customer liaison)
3) project coordinator would go to the customer
4) customer would approve the change.
Up to here was anywhere from an hour to a week. Sometimes the customer would put stipulations on the change, such as "there's a big event happening, or going to happen, don't make the change until X time."
5) document the proposed changes
6) hold a meeting with development, QA, the project coordinator, and management. Discuss the potential changes.
1-3 days later
7) hold another meeting with the same people to rehash the changes.
1-3 days later
8) hold another meeting with the same people to rehash the changes.
9) Write the changes. Make them available to the QA team.
3-7 days later
10) Explain to the QA team that the errors they are experiencing with the fix have nothing to do with the fix, they were preexisting problems with another piece of code.
1-7 days later
11) hold another meeting with development, QA, project coordinator, and management, to explain that the error has been fixed with the supplied changes. The other problems are elsewhere.
1-3 days later
12) hold a strategy meeting to plan on how to fix the other problems.
13) fix the other problems, and break more things.
1-3 days later
14) have QA test the other changes.
14) roll back changes in step 13
15) beta test the previous changes, and notify customer
16) Customer balks at other pre-existing problems.
17) Repeat steps 5 to 15 again, until the customer gets tired of balking.
18) Implement changes.
Then start the process all over with step 1 to fix the other pre-existing problems.
The solution really is...
1) Identify the problem.
2) Gather together the appropriate staff who won't talk outside of your group.
3) Fix, internally test, and implement the resolution.
4) If anyone asks, there was no problem to start with, and you were all really working on steps 5 to 15 of the previous plan on another problem.
Funny how that works.
But, it's a matter of, is it a trivial fix, or something that requires serious rewriting? Did someone miss trapping invalid input in one line, or is it a poor coding practice through all of the code? Is it an included library that simply needs to be upgraded and recompiled?
Hell, look at some of the efficient projects they have going now. The TSA is the latest and greatest. They're defending against a non-threat, and costing billions every year.
"Consequently, airlines will be confronted with the worst of two worlds -- a national security tax increase added to an already crushing $3.2B tax which holds no promise to enhance aviation security."
But in being that he built a time machine 5000 years in the future (our future), he traveled back to the beginning of written language, and established the concept of ownership of logical property, and that he was the firm holder of all rights on the mark known as question.
He has now come to our modern time to assert these rights on his property, to acquire rights to assets which will be valuable to our new alien overlords in the year 2012, in turn will spell their demise by the year 4930, 5 years before his birth.
Being that this is all outside of our timeline, we are completely unaware of these changes. Through a fluke of the universal design, he has momentarily crossed through our timeline, and is never to be heard from again..... or will he?....
There's a way to commit any crime, as long as the criminal is intent enough on doing it.
Swap RFID's out (painful, but worth not spending life in prison) with the person you wish to frame, wear something so you appear like them (hat, mask, whatever), do it, and then swap your chip back. RFID and CCTV is worthless, for the pain of a pin prick.
The computers have it right, the only way to save humanity from itself is to kill it all.
Hmmm, with over 1/4 million users on here, the odds of that are slightly higher than any of us would prefer. At least I'm careful not to put my real information out there. You wouldn't be one of those guys who put their phone number and CV right on the site linked from here, would you?:)
I've carried large sums of cash and my passport. Does that make me a murderer on the run?
It's completely circumstantial evidence.
But, if you put enough pieces together, circumstantial evidence can be damning in front of a jury, regardless if the truth is there or not.
From what I've seen, there are several ways it could have gone.
1) He killed her (the presumption of law enforcement)
2) Her new boyfriend, the drug and kinky sex fiend, killed her.
3) She's a sex slave, living in a crack house somewhere in the less friendly neighborhoods of any major US city.
4) She left town, and is living somewhere else in America or Canada.
5) She left the country, possibly for Russia.
As someone else said, they don't believe she could be in Russia. Any country with enough land and population, provides a place for anyone to hide comfortably, even in plain site. She could be working as a doctor, using her own name, with enough clients to be very comfortable, and still no one would notice.
I don't know all the facts, just the ones that have been presented in the media and in interviews. I'm not following closely though. I just know, none of us have all the evidence at our disposal, so none of us can make really educated opinions on it.
For all we know, it was some one-off killing, where some random lunatic saw a crying woman in a parking lot, killed her, drove her 1000 miles away, and buried her in a shallow grave. Heck, we've all done that once or twice. (j/k)
I did something like this against the Florida Lottery.
It was interesting. I had tried a long time ago, when my database and programming skills weren't quite all that great (like, quite a while ago). It was very klunky, but I was able to establish slightly better odds.
This last time around, with a longer set of numbers, I gave it another shot. I downloaded the lottery history, which ran from May 1998 to Feb 2007 (which is when I stopped playing with it). I end up with a 2% variance, from over 8000 draws. I also let it draw upon the recent history, so if some factor changes with the machines and/or balls, that would be compensated for.
I dumped all the numbers into a database, and then started analyzing them. Once I was satisfied with my method, I put together a web interface so I could set a few variables, and let it run through history, starting on the first pull.
When we got pretty deep into it, things got interesting. Using variations on all time and recent ball history, I worked it through to win with all 6 balls twice a year, and a few 4 and 5 balls wins, by spending $100k per lottery drawing. So, for an investment of $5,200,000 every year, you could walk away with quite a few more millions.:)
Needless to say, I couldn't refine it any more (more like I didn't bother), and when I mentioned it to a few friends, we couldn't rationalize finding $100k at a shot to potentially blow on a losing venture, even if it would win twice a year. 1:26 or even 1:52 is a hell of a lot better than 1:16,529,385,600
Anyone really interested in seeing my work can contact me via my site (which is linked from my profile here). Maybe you can increase your odds.:) If you win, kick a little back to me.
... what about an adult napping in the back seat? It's not a completely unreasonable prospect that after a long day at work, a person may want to catch a few minutes nap, or more depending on traffic.:) Not to say it's the nicest thing to do to your co-drivers, but hey, it happens.
If people are really determined to break the rules, they will. A dummy warmed to body temperature ought to cover the need. I suspect a liquid/gel filled head cover, an thermostat controlled heating pad, and a power inverter, would do very nicely. If the "person" is wearing a jacket or other substantial clothing, if freshly put on, only the head and hands would show well. Since they hands may likely be out of view, the head would be the only part to heat.
Hmmmm.. The space shuttle drops at about 167 fps at 290 knots (+- 12 knots).:) They do flare at the end, and reduce the drop to 9fps, at about 190 knots. 167 fps would really hurt.:)
At least it can flare though. I'm pretty sure the X-Wing is a wee bit nose heavy.:)
If I remember the movies right (where I'm not a big Star Wars fan), The X-Wing has other thrusters, in places including the nose, which would be obviously needed for maneuvering in space. I may be confusing it with the BSG Viper, though. My apologies to anyone offended.:)
There's a secret to having good skills. Get experience.
Go on eBay, and buy an old Catalyst 2916, or 2924. Set it up at home. Play with the settings. Figure out how to set up snmp, and then graph your ports. Generate traffic, and see how it behaves. Be good. Be bad. Find exploits and run them against your equipment. Look around the script kiddie sites for ways to generate traffic. Use the seemingly normal stuff, and the obviously bad things. It's a fake network, you can't hurt anything. If you do, wipe out your configurations, and start over.:) Do firmware upgrades. More fun is to screw up an upgrade. Put the wrong one on, and figure out how to fix it (hint: serial cable, very slowly). You can get images not-so-legally through various places, including a neat program, "ISO Hunter"
Then you can pick up a couple T1 routers. Make yourself a T1 crossover cable, and hook them together. Route two fake networks together. Spend a few extra bucks, and get a few more, so you can have a more complex network. Play with the basic routing protocols too.
You'll appreciate doing it once you actually go to the CCNA class. You won't be playing in the dark, you'll be walking in with experience. Things that you'll break as a novice will help you learn, and since you'll be doing it on your own, you won't have a choice but to learn how to do it.
When it comes time to take the Cisco test, there are several simulator tests, so it would be to your advantage to have some real world experience. If I remember the scoring correctly, they said I passed 100% of the simulators.
The guy who ran the school I learned at would buy every piece of equipment he could afford off of eBay. He had about 100 pieces in the classroom for lab work. Since I had experience with it, I had a lot of fun. A lot of people were asking "you plug what in where? What does that command mean? How do you....?"
I originally learned Cisco by getting thrown into it. Years ago, I was suddenly in charge of a network with a 7200 series router, a Catalyst 2924, and an original PIX firewall (4u - Pentium Pro 200 based system). It was all fun and games until one day our provider went down, and their support said "Oh, it must be your firewall, take it out." and then "Your network still doesn't work now? Well, we can't support bringing it back up. We have a guy who can help, but he won't be in until next Thursday." Welcome to the Cisco crash course. Learn it or loose your job. It took me an hour, but I tied it all back together, and over the next month I made it better until it worked better than ever.
I had an odd learning curve several months ago. I bought up 3 Catalyst 5000 series switches, and a whole bunch of cards. They behave a lot differently than the others that I had used before. The commands are different, but the ideas are the same. It was a bit of an adjustment. The 5000 series switches are cheap, but you'll likely want to learn on the Cisco IOS first, and then the CatOS. After I played with them for a while, I sold all 3 at a profit, since I bought them untested, my experimenting time now made them tested and verified switches, and I sold them as known good working switches with a 90 day warranty. I got a few bad parts in lots, but even those were covered by my profits. My customers were happy. This was my favorite one:
I got a second supervisor in another lot, which matched the first, so I pulled the top most ethernet card, and put the supervisor in as a hot spare. It's never needed it, but it's there just in case. I just gave it to them, and left the extra ethernet card as a spare for them. Be careful if you get a 13 slot 5500, they're heavy, even with no cards installed, and then need two 20A power c
Actually, he doesn't indicate that he DOES have the certificate.:)
I agree with... well, almost every posting. Big deal, they had their equipment set up wrong. The heavy usage from the game showed the problem, they fixed it. end of story.
A few years ago, a friend of mine with very little (like almost none) network experience wanted to take a class for his CCNA. I'd been using Cisco equipment for years, and am very proficient, but I decided to go with him, just so I could finally get the certificate.
On the test, I didn't do so hot on some of the token ring, and ISDN questions. Oddly enough, I hadn't touched either in years, and all my experience had been with ethernet and large WAN configurations. I breezed through the class (sat back, hacked other students equipment to change the hostname, etc, etc). It was fun for me, and I did my best to keep from being too disruptive.
About 40% of the people testing passed on the first try. I was surprised, since most of them seemed clueless in class. Another 20% passed on the second try. Those people are going to show their CCNA on their resume (heck, I do).
When it comes to making things work, most of them will be lost until they get some serious real world experience. Then they'll be posting the same thing. "OMG, we took a traffic hit from ____ and we had to fix something to save the network." Hell, saving the day is part of a SysAdmin's job. There's no thank you's, no pats on the back. no "atta boy!". At most, you get to sit down at the pub with your friends, and laugh about it over a couple (dozen) pints. There's always a server crashing, a router misconfigured, a battle cruiser, a death ray, or an intergalactic plague that is about to wipe out all life on this miserable little planet, and we'll deal with it without anything more than our regular old paycheck in the box each week.
Well, you've written pretty much what I wanted to say.
In his actions, there was a justifiable use of force against him. He resisted several officers, and was making an effort to resist their instructions (leave).
When they had him on the ground, handcuffed, he was now in control. Up until this point, they could have used the taser with justified force. Now that he was on the ground, in control, he was just being loud.
I didn't hear any zapping. I didn't see the convulsions, although the video I watched (first link) did not have a clear shot of the student. He was only screaming "OW! OW! OW!".
I typical use of force would be to control the resisting person with pressure points and positive control. Every law enforcement officer is taught them. When I went through law enforcement school in Florida, it was a long, required part of the training.
Florida has an escalation of force matrix. It's really very simple. You are allowed to use one step above what the other person is using. If they are resisting, you may use hand-to-hand tactics. If they are resisting with force, you may escalate to non-lethal weapons (tazer, or pepper spray)
From what I could see, it appeared they were using pressure points and positive control, which yes, would have made him say "Ow!"
Now, if he had a weapon, and rushed the stage, they could have escalated the force to lethal force immediately. i.e., shot him before he got to the stage.
He got hurt (Ow!), but he was being an ass. He was pushing the issue ("Are you a members of Skull and Bones?!?"), and wasn't leaving the speaker a chance to answer. Someone mentioned that he was a journalism student. A good journalist needs to ask questions, and receive answers. If he was a journalist, he would likely be fired for his actions, which I hope his teacher told him.
When he was asked to leave the mic, he could have simply said "Thank you for your time.", and walked away, even if they did escort him from the building.
You are right, if he had stated his question, and waited for an answer, he may have still been asked to leave, but the speaker should have simply laughed, and said "oh no, I'm not.". Diffused situation. That's up to a good speaker to know how to control his audience, but sometimes you'll have an audience member who doesn't play well (like this student).
Wireless will never take over Ethernet until they resolve one unresolvable issue. Interference.
I've been asked to look at various people's homes and offices. They'll always have dead spots. There are costly options. Repeaters, bridges, relays, but which is cheaper and more reliable? To have cables run, or to add more and more equipment to accomplish the same thing as cables?
My own home is a mix. I have some nicely powered wireless equipment, that does a really good job compared to it's low powered cousins. My office, and the pieces of equipment I depend on working are all wired.
I leave wireless for pieces that I'm too lazy to wire, and don't feel the effort vs result requires it. That is, the kids computer, the TiVos, the... ummm... well, that's about it.:)
Occasionally various pieces will have service outages, which I've never really been able to explain. Why does one unit fail to connect, while a unit 10 feet farther away does fine, and both were working yesterday? Maybe someone walked through the room with a cell phone, cordless phone, or whatever. Maybe a delivery vehicle happened to call dispatch on the radio, and it bothered that particular unit.
Until it's 100% reliable and cost effective, wired will never go away.
I can't imagine a colo facility going all wireless. I've been in some large facilities. Hmmm, 1000 cabinets in a room, up to 40 machines per cabinet, say at 50% utilization, that's 20,000 machines screaming out on wireless connections in a very confined space. Worse than that is the fact that the rooms I've been in like this are usually full, and there may be a dozen or so rooms like this in very close proximity in the building.
That was just cruel. Cruel to the poor schmucks who were in the videos. Cruel to us who watched even a small part of it.. I can feel my brain bleeding...
Lets hope that isn't the song that's going to get stuck in my head for the rest of the day..
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, that was just wrong.
Ya, it was shown to me at work.
And no, he shouldn't have to see it either.
But we both know he will.
In your last statement, "Personally I'd take irradiation hazards over chemical hazards any day of the week.", are you basically saying that we are in more danger from chemicals than from radiation?
:)
:) I guess in some parts of the world (like Iraq) the concerns are more of getting shot.
Like, me, Average Joe, on an average work day.
I shower with a dozen compounds I can barely pronounce, brush my teeth with almost as many.
I hop in my chemically induced car (plastic and chemically treated leather interior), which is powered by the explosive liquid fuel stored in the 16 gallon tank in the back (ignoring the 5 quarts of oil, and one lead acid battery wrapped in plastic)
I go to my work, which if I lived in California, would have a tag on the outside of the building which says "This building may contain chemicals and/or other substances known to cause cancer..."
Don't forget my chemically treated lunch (to preserve freshness and coloration)
We'll pretend that I haven't smoked a half pack of cigarettes through the theoretical day.
Hmmm, I think you get the idea.
The alternative is a radiation hazard. I have yet to be to a site where a dosimeter is even recommended. No nukes have ever been dropped anywhere near me. No radioactive incidents. No spent fuel rods falling off of trains. No satellites crashing into my back yard.
I guess as average Joe, the worst radiation hazards are the non-ionizing radiation from power lines and computer monitors (ahhh, not even touched here), and the speck of it in my smoke alarm.
I totally agree, there are enough hazards to worry about on a daily basis. One of my biggest concerns is getting into a car accident, or a slip and fall accident in my own bathroom.
You can dazzle them with bullshit, but you'll always win them with the truth.
(unless otherwise dictated by circumstance)
Hehe.
Not many people have even mentioned those links. It's just a little cross-site linking to raise page ranks for a few projects.
My full resume lists a huge porn site. I've had to explain on occasion, in a completely professional manner, that the network was a large installation with high redundancy, that required me to be at my best 24/7. When I left, the largest site had an Alexa rank of #325. They'll usually listen as I go into more detail of the network infrastructure, my OS and web server choices and changes over the years, and the particular security challenges we were presented with. If you figure 0.01% of the users is a script kiddie, and our high traffic days were over 6,000,000 users, that means 60,000 folks a day were trying to defeat our security. When I looked at the firewall logs, in excess of 10 attempts per second were common. Some would be attempting to defeat our security to gain access to the servers. Others were attempting various methods to defeat our site authentication for "Passwordz" sites. Regardless of who they were and what they were trying, we couldn't allow any compromise. Our security methods would grow with the attackers methods changing, and frequently beyond what their current attempts were. I stayed on top of network security to ensure I was on the same level as the best attackers, so regardless of what they tried, I already knew what they were going to do to stop them.
I'd go into conversations on how the redundancy across multiple datacenters was accomplished, with our extremely high bandwidth requirements. Typical days took over an aggregated 3Gb/s, and I had to be sure to keep the utilization on any line within tolerances to not allow a focused attack from taking down any single line. Failure of a single line or cluster of servers could not leave the site down. We included the capability for multiple site outages, which would not disrupt the normal flow of the site. This sometimes threw our providers. We'd loose a site that was pulling 500Mb/s, and I'd just call to see when it would be fixed, as we'd already failed that over to other sites before I called. We wouldn't allow a fail back until we were confident the problem had been resolved. Sometimes we'd simulate a site failure to test the capability of new lines. Just because they've installed GigE doesn't mean there's 1000Mb/s to be used there.
And, rather than taking extremely high dollar approaches, I took the cheaper approaches, which has since become the model for quite a few other companies. Commodity servers, open source software, and a well scripted environment to handle common tasks. The environment was usually handled by myself and one other person, not moderately sized teams that you would expect, although I would have liked to had a properly sized team of 6 to 9 people across 3 shifts. Since most things ran smoothly, I had time to work on other projects, and if I needed a 3 day weekend, it was usually safe to do, as long as I had my laptop handy.
In the end, I probably worked myself out of my job. Things were smooth, and easy to manage and expand on. The entire setup was intuitive, with consistency across all servers. Training of Unix skilled staff could be accomplished in a week or less, most of that time getting familiar with the specific sites and their needs.
At which point, the interviewer usually says "oh. wow, you do know your stuff."
This is an interesting one.
:)
Most of the people who I've interviewed (or at least read their resumes) are pretty bland. It's their real name, list of employers, blah, blah.
Myself, the resume is the simple list of jobs, experience, etc. I try to explain as well as I can in a short form (just 4 printed pages) my history and skills.
In the resume, I have my personal site name. I use it for a lot of things. If you look at my personal site, it's kinda bare. I really only started using it a year or two ago.
On my site are two versions of my resume. In the obvious area, there is my resume with all personal and contact information redacted. It shows what I know, just nothing to identify myself.
In a obscured area there is my full resume in HTML, MSWord, and PDF. It does have my real name, address, phones, company names, references, etc. Otherwise, the content is identical. It helps to make clear that the alias site is really me. Otherwise, I could have just leeched the obscured resume and filled in my own information. Upon contacting the employers, they will usually remember that I used the alias on occasion. Most of them catch me using aliases on the phone, depending on who I'm talking to. Once I'm working somewhere, I explain my separation of real vs alias.
"A call holding on line 4? It's a cold call from a vendor we don't deal with? Thanks.
[picking up line 4]
Hi this is John, how can I help you?
My title? I'm an assistant systems administrator. Oh no, Mr Real Name isn't here, but I'll take your information and pass it on. He's out of country right now dealing with some of our [fill in BS here], but when he gets back I'm sure he'll call you.
When will he be back? I don't know. I do know it was important for him to go, but as an executive, he doesn't always tell us lowly staffers his plans."
It's funnier that people I work with will walk up and refer to me as Mr. Smythe or JW. Depending on how playful I'm feeling, sometimes I'll completely refuse to be him. Mr Who? I don't even know him.
I was smart enough to pick an alias that could be a real name. It even has a middle name, date of birth, birth place, current residence. I've used it long enough to swap back and forth fluidly, without confusing the two.
As far as anyone online is concerned, I am and always will be JW Smythe. Even if/when we meet in person, unless there's a need for a personal relationship, I will remain JW Smythe.
And most importantly (as it relates to the article), when you search for "JW Smythe" or "JWSmythe" on Google, you'll find information on myself. You won't find anything on me by searching for my real name. Well, you'll find lots (and lots) of things. Even my real name was somewhat more common, but more so in Europe.
I for one welcome our deceased giant sea scorpion overlords. :) Ya, I was expecting it too, but I couldn't really put it together to make it work. Hell, they've been extinct for quite a while now. Unless they're.....
I for one welcome our time traveling giant sea scorpion overlords!
Much like Godwin's Law, some people invoke the name "God" because they don't have an intelligent argument to make.
He was right, the bee network doesn't really do much. You're taking several simple units, and utilizing them into a functional unit. It's the same as one solider is to a battalion, or one cell is to a whole person. The coordination of the elements in the functional unit must be customized for that task. If you have servers behave as bees or ants or soldiers, they may (and probably won't) accomplish the intended task as well as you would hope.
But, to follow the successes and failures of previous generations, regardless of their species, you can learn through their inherited intelligence.
Ahhh, and I didn't use God anywhere in it.
I was accosted by a God freak in a night time drinking and socializing area. Actually, my wife was first. This girl came up and was praying for her soul. Then she asked if she could pray for my soul. My wife played along, but I told her it was probably better that she didn't. I'm blasphemous enough by myself. I'd hate to think that when God finally tries to shove a lightning bolt up my @$$, it may hit someone else.
I had that conversation with another executive recently.
He dropped off his laptop with "problems". I suspected viruses, spyware, whatever. I was in the middle of other work, so I didn't even fire it up. Later that day, he asked me "How long will it take?" Being that I was on the way to a meeting at that moment, and had all kinds of urgent company tasks to do, and I hadn't inspected the system yet, the answer was "As long as it takes. I don't know." He wanted an answer like "End of business today.", which wasn't a good answer. Heck, it may have taken 5 minutes to fix, and ya, I would have it done by the end of the day.
As it turned out, it was VERY virus and spyware infected. Literally over 100 different nasty problems to fix.
I don't know why people think IT is easy, and can be done on demand. You don't drop off your car saying "it has a funny sound, how long until it's fixed?" It could be a tree branch stuck under the bumper, or the engine needs to be rebuild.
It's only obvious tasks that can be given a specific time. How long will it take to add an account to the email server? About 45 seconds. How long to change the flat tire on my car (at a shop), it'll be done in 30 minutes.
How long to fix something that no one else has managed to fix yet? Who the hell knows. 30 seconds to 6 months, it depends on how hard the problem is to fix.
>And if your product is considered "mission critical", I would
:)
> expect a data corruption bug to be fixed within 24 hours.
> Even if it is nothing more than rolling back the recent
> patches and re-issuing the previous version.
Been developing long?
Every customer considers every application to be "mission critical"
And, regardless of if you were the developer or company involved, any unrelated problem will be thrown back to you. What if the data corruption bug is a failing hard drive on the client's machine? They'll sure as heck be asking you what YOU can do.
Been there, done that, have the migraines to prove it.
Really, it depends on your environment, and what needs to be done.
I'll use one of my web site as an example. It's all PHP and Perl, so ya, it's programming (I'm sure people will argue this).
Since I wrote all the code, I know it all inside and out. If you say "there's a problem [here]", I know exactly what file to look in, and what code to look for. I've banged out changes, tested them, and put them into production in a matter of minutes.
On a high traffic web site, we had a java applet which was being used by about 25,000 people per day. For little things, I'd change the code, test on all applicable platforms, and roll out the change in a few hours. Even then, the bosses were sometimes displeased with the time it took. Since I was careful to test, I never rolled out bad code, so I was never pushed into the long QA cycles.
Working with one company, things were a lot different. It went something like this.
1) Propose the change to your manager, with supporting documentation.
2) Manager would go to the project coordinator (i.e., customer liaison)
3) project coordinator would go to the customer
4) customer would approve the change.
Up to here was anywhere from an hour to a week. Sometimes the customer would put stipulations on the change, such as "there's a big event happening, or going to happen, don't make the change until X time."
5) document the proposed changes
6) hold a meeting with development, QA, the project coordinator, and management. Discuss the potential
changes.
1-3 days later
7) hold another meeting with the same people to rehash the changes.
1-3 days later
8) hold another meeting with the same people to rehash the changes.
9) Write the changes. Make them available to the QA team.
3-7 days later
10) Explain to the QA team that the errors they are experiencing with the fix have nothing to do with the fix, they were preexisting problems with another piece of code.
1-7 days later
11) hold another meeting with development, QA, project coordinator, and management, to explain that the error has been fixed with the supplied changes. The other problems are elsewhere.
1-3 days later
12) hold a strategy meeting to plan on how to fix the other problems.
13) fix the other problems, and break more things.
1-3 days later
14) have QA test the other changes.
14) roll back changes in step 13
15) beta test the previous changes, and notify customer
16) Customer balks at other pre-existing problems.
17) Repeat steps 5 to 15 again, until the customer gets tired of balking.
18) Implement changes.
Then start the process all over with step 1 to fix the other pre-existing problems.
The solution really is...
1) Identify the problem.
2) Gather together the appropriate staff who won't talk outside of your group.
3) Fix, internally test, and implement the resolution.
4) If anyone asks, there was no problem to start with, and you were all really working on steps 5 to 15 of the previous plan on another problem.
Funny how that works.
But, it's a matter of, is it a trivial fix, or something that requires serious rewriting? Did someone miss trapping invalid input in one line, or is it a poor coding practice through all of the code? Is it an included library that simply needs to be upgraded and recompiled?
Governments love this stuff, don't worry.
Hell, look at some of the efficient projects they have going now. The TSA is the latest and greatest. They're defending against a non-threat, and costing billions every year.
"Consequently, airlines will be confronted with the worst of two worlds -- a national security tax increase added to an already crushing $3.2B tax which holds no promise to enhance aviation security."
- James C. May, President & CEO - Air Transport Association of America, Inc.
But in being that he built a time machine 5000 years in the future (our future), he traveled back to the beginning of written language, and established the concept of ownership of logical property, and that he was the firm holder of all rights on the mark known as question.
.... or will he? ....
He has now come to our modern time to assert these rights on his property, to acquire rights to assets which will be valuable to our new alien overlords in the year 2012, in turn will spell their demise by the year 4930, 5 years before his birth.
Being that this is all outside of our timeline, we are completely unaware of these changes. Through a fluke of the universal design, he has momentarily crossed through our timeline, and is never to be heard from again.
{cough} {cough}
There's a way to commit any crime, as long as the criminal is intent enough on doing it.
Swap RFID's out (painful, but worth not spending life in prison) with the person you wish to frame, wear something so you appear like them (hat, mask, whatever), do it, and then swap your chip back. RFID and CCTV is worthless, for the pain of a pin prick.
The computers have it right, the only way to save humanity from itself is to kill it all.
Hmmm, with over 1/4 million users on here, the odds of that are slightly higher than any of us would prefer. At least I'm careful not to put my real information out there. You wouldn't be one of those guys who put their phone number and CV right on the site linked from here, would you?
That part was a joke.
And for the sake of all the law enforcement folks who are bound to be drooling over the prospect of an online confession,
It was a joke.
There are no bodies buried in my back yard (that I know of).
There's only a few blood stains in my vehicles, but those people are still alive.
And most importantly, as far as I know, no one I've known has gone missing.
I've carried large sums of cash and my passport. Does that make me a murderer on the run?
It's completely circumstantial evidence.
But, if you put enough pieces together, circumstantial evidence can be damning in front of a jury, regardless if the truth is there or not.
From what I've seen, there are several ways it could have gone.
1) He killed her (the presumption of law enforcement)
2) Her new boyfriend, the drug and kinky sex fiend, killed her.
3) She's a sex slave, living in a crack house somewhere in the less friendly neighborhoods of any major US city.
4) She left town, and is living somewhere else in America or Canada.
5) She left the country, possibly for Russia.
As someone else said, they don't believe she could be in Russia. Any country with enough land and population, provides a place for anyone to hide comfortably, even in plain site. She could be working as a doctor, using her own name, with enough clients to be very comfortable, and still no one would notice.
I don't know all the facts, just the ones that have been presented in the media and in interviews. I'm not following closely though. I just know, none of us have all the evidence at our disposal, so none of us can make really educated opinions on it.
For all we know, it was some one-off killing, where some random lunatic saw a crying woman in a parking lot, killed her, drove her 1000 miles away, and buried her in a shallow grave. Heck, we've all done that once or twice. (j/k)
I did something like this against the Florida Lottery.
:)
:) If you win, kick a little back to me.
It was interesting. I had tried a long time ago, when my database and programming skills weren't quite all that great (like, quite a while ago). It was very klunky, but I was able to establish slightly better odds.
This last time around, with a longer set of numbers, I gave it another shot. I downloaded the lottery history, which ran from May 1998 to Feb 2007 (which is when I stopped playing with it). I end up with a 2% variance, from over 8000 draws. I also let it draw upon the recent history, so if some factor changes with the machines and/or balls, that would be compensated for.
I dumped all the numbers into a database, and then started analyzing them. Once I was satisfied with my method, I put together a web interface so I could set a few variables, and let it run through history, starting on the first pull.
When we got pretty deep into it, things got interesting. Using variations on all time and recent ball history, I worked it through to win with all 6 balls twice a year, and a few 4 and 5 balls wins, by spending $100k per lottery drawing. So, for an investment of $5,200,000 every year, you could walk away with quite a few more millions.
Needless to say, I couldn't refine it any more (more like I didn't bother), and when I mentioned it to a few friends, we couldn't rationalize finding $100k at a shot to potentially blow on a losing venture, even if it would win twice a year. 1:26 or even 1:52 is a hell of a lot better than 1:16,529,385,600
Anyone really interested in seeing my work can contact me via my site (which is linked from my profile here). Maybe you can increase your odds.
If people are really determined to break the rules, they will. A dummy warmed to body temperature ought to cover the need. I suspect a liquid/gel filled head cover, an thermostat controlled heating pad, and a power inverter, would do very nicely. If the "person" is wearing a jacket or other substantial clothing, if freshly put on, only the head and hands would show well. Since they hands may likely be out of view, the head would be the only part to heat.
Good thing I don't live near DC.
Hmmmm.. The space shuttle drops at about 167 fps at 290 knots (+- 12 knots).
At least it can flare though. I'm pretty sure the X-Wing is a wee bit nose heavy.
If I remember the movies right (where I'm not a big Star Wars fan), The X-Wing has other thrusters, in places including the nose, which would be obviously needed for maneuvering in space. I may be confusing it with the BSG Viper, though. My apologies to anyone offended.
There's a secret to having good skills. Get experience.
:) Do firmware upgrades. More fun is to screw up an upgrade. Put the wrong one on, and figure out how to fix it (hint: serial cable, very slowly). You can get images not-so-legally through various places, including a neat program, "ISO Hunter"
....?"
Go on eBay, and buy an old Catalyst 2916, or 2924. Set it up at home. Play with the settings. Figure out how to set up snmp, and then graph your ports. Generate traffic, and see how it behaves. Be good. Be bad. Find exploits and run them against your equipment. Look around the script kiddie sites for ways to generate traffic. Use the seemingly normal stuff, and the obviously bad things. It's a fake network, you can't hurt anything. If you do, wipe out your configurations, and start over.
Then you can pick up a couple T1 routers. Make yourself a T1 crossover cable, and hook them together. Route two fake networks together. Spend a few extra bucks, and get a few more, so you can have a more complex network. Play with the basic routing protocols too.
You'll appreciate doing it once you actually go to the CCNA class. You won't be playing in the dark, you'll be walking in with experience. Things that you'll break as a novice will help you learn, and since you'll be doing it on your own, you won't have a choice but to learn how to do it.
When it comes time to take the Cisco test, there are several simulator tests, so it would be to your advantage to have some real world experience. If I remember the scoring correctly, they said I passed 100% of the simulators.
The guy who ran the school I learned at would buy every piece of equipment he could afford off of eBay. He had about 100 pieces in the classroom for lab work. Since I had experience with it, I had a lot of fun. A lot of people were asking "you plug what in where? What does that command mean? How do you
I originally learned Cisco by getting thrown into it. Years ago, I was suddenly in charge of a network with a 7200 series router, a Catalyst 2924, and an original PIX firewall (4u - Pentium Pro 200 based system). It was all fun and games until one day our provider went down, and their support said "Oh, it must be your firewall, take it out." and then "Your network still doesn't work now? Well, we can't support bringing it back up. We have a guy who can help, but he won't be in until next Thursday." Welcome to the Cisco crash course. Learn it or loose your job. It took me an hour, but I tied it all back together, and over the next month I made it better until it worked better than ever.
I had an odd learning curve several months ago. I bought up 3 Catalyst 5000 series switches, and a whole bunch of cards. They behave a lot differently than the others that I had used before. The commands are different, but the ideas are the same. It was a bit of an adjustment. The 5000 series switches are cheap, but you'll likely want to learn on the Cisco IOS first, and then the CatOS. After I played with them for a while, I sold all 3 at a profit, since I bought them untested, my experimenting time now made them tested and verified switches, and I sold them as known good working switches with a 90 day warranty. I got a few bad parts in lots, but even those were covered by my profits. My customers were happy. This was my favorite one:
http://jwsmythe.com/ebay/Cisco_5500_13_slot.jpg
I got a second supervisor in another lot, which matched the first, so I pulled the top most ethernet card, and put the supervisor in as a hot spare. It's never needed it, but it's there just in case. I just gave it to them, and left the extra ethernet card as a spare for them. Be careful if you get a 13 slot 5500, they're heavy, even with no cards installed, and then need two 20A power c
no shit.
:)
... well, almost every posting. Big deal, they had their equipment set up wrong. The heavy usage from the game showed the problem, they fixed it. end of story.
Actually, he doesn't indicate that he DOES have the certificate.
I agree with
A few years ago, a friend of mine with very little (like almost none) network experience wanted to take a class for his CCNA. I'd been using Cisco equipment for years, and am very proficient, but I decided to go with him, just so I could finally get the certificate.
On the test, I didn't do so hot on some of the token ring, and ISDN questions. Oddly enough, I hadn't touched either in years, and all my experience had been with ethernet and large WAN configurations. I breezed through the class (sat back, hacked other students equipment to change the hostname, etc, etc). It was fun for me, and I did my best to keep from being too disruptive.
About 40% of the people testing passed on the first try. I was surprised, since most of them seemed clueless in class. Another 20% passed on the second try. Those people are going to show their CCNA on their resume (heck, I do).
When it comes to making things work, most of them will be lost until they get some serious real world experience. Then they'll be posting the same thing. "OMG, we took a traffic hit from ____ and we had to fix something to save the network." Hell, saving the day is part of a SysAdmin's job. There's no thank you's, no pats on the back. no "atta boy!". At most, you get to sit down at the pub with your friends, and laugh about it over a couple (dozen) pints. There's always a server crashing, a router misconfigured, a battle cruiser, a death ray, or an intergalactic plague that is about to wipe out all life on this miserable little planet, and we'll deal with it without anything more than our regular old paycheck in the box each week.
Another pint?
Well, you've written pretty much what I wanted to say.
In his actions, there was a justifiable use of force against him. He resisted several officers, and was making an effort to resist their instructions (leave).
When they had him on the ground, handcuffed, he was now in control. Up until this point, they could have used the taser with justified force. Now that he was on the ground, in control, he was just being loud.
I didn't hear any zapping. I didn't see the convulsions, although the video I watched (first link) did not have a clear shot of the student. He was only screaming "OW! OW! OW!".
I typical use of force would be to control the resisting person with pressure points and positive control. Every law enforcement officer is taught them. When I went through law enforcement school in Florida, it was a long, required part of the training.
Florida has an escalation of force matrix. It's really very simple. You are allowed to use one step above what the other person is using. If they are resisting, you may use hand-to-hand tactics. If they are resisting with force, you may escalate to non-lethal weapons (tazer, or pepper spray)
From what I could see, it appeared they were using pressure points and positive control, which yes, would have made him say "Ow!"
Now, if he had a weapon, and rushed the stage, they could have escalated the force to lethal force immediately. i.e., shot him before he got to the stage.
He got hurt (Ow!), but he was being an ass. He was pushing the issue ("Are you a members of Skull and Bones?!?"), and wasn't leaving the speaker a chance to answer. Someone mentioned that he was a journalism student. A good journalist needs to ask questions, and receive answers. If he was a journalist, he would likely be fired for his actions, which I hope his teacher told him.
When he was asked to leave the mic, he could have simply said "Thank you for your time.", and walked away, even if they did escort him from the building.
You are right, if he had stated his question, and waited for an answer, he may have still been asked to leave, but the speaker should have simply laughed, and said "oh no, I'm not.". Diffused situation. That's up to a good speaker to know how to control his audience, but sometimes you'll have an audience member who doesn't play well (like this student).
#1 is a great starting point for many things. (and a few bad ones)
Wireless will never take over Ethernet until they resolve one unresolvable issue. Interference.
:)
I've been asked to look at various people's homes and offices. They'll always have dead spots. There are costly options. Repeaters, bridges, relays, but which is cheaper and more reliable? To have cables run, or to add more and more equipment to accomplish the same thing as cables?
My own home is a mix. I have some nicely powered wireless equipment, that does a really good job compared to it's low powered cousins. My office, and the pieces of equipment I depend on working are all wired.
I leave wireless for pieces that I'm too lazy to wire, and don't feel the effort vs result requires it. That is, the kids computer, the TiVos, the... ummm... well, that's about it.
Occasionally various pieces will have service outages, which I've never really been able to explain. Why does one unit fail to connect, while a unit 10 feet farther away does fine, and both were working yesterday? Maybe someone walked through the room with a cell phone, cordless phone, or whatever. Maybe a delivery vehicle happened to call dispatch on the radio, and it bothered that particular unit.
Until it's 100% reliable and cost effective, wired will never go away.
I can't imagine a colo facility going all wireless. I've been in some large facilities. Hmmm, 1000 cabinets in a room, up to 40 machines per cabinet, say at 50% utilization, that's 20,000 machines screaming out on wireless connections in a very confined space. Worse than that is the fact that the rooms I've been in like this are usually full, and there may be a dozen or so rooms like this in very close proximity in the building.
That was just cruel. Cruel to the poor schmucks who were in the videos. Cruel to us who watched even a small part of it.. I can feel my brain bleeding...
Lets hope that isn't the song that's going to get stuck in my head for the rest of the day..
(Gimme 5, whoo, gimme 5, whooo)
Oh god.