Ya, that's the association I made with the name too. It makes just about as much sense as the phallic associations others seem to see in the name.
I also considered it in relation to piteous. Like, "I pity the man who gets in an accident in one of those things." A Smart Car may be a rolling economy size coffin. This thing is barely a stretcher to help move the body after the accident.
Ya. {sigh} I was really expecting more from the story. I forgot, Slashdot is running more Slashvertisments than news lately...
I've never driven a go-kart with a skin like that though. Then again, I'm an adult, and I probably wouldn't fit in it. Too bad their whole spec sheet is an image. I'd like to run it through a translator to see how pathetic the rest is.
Any volunteers who read Japanese who can translate it?
As I've observed from the mechanics themselves, pushing them to complete something in less time than they are comfortable with, can and will lead to errors. It could be something trivial, like forgetting to put your tire valve stem covers back on. It could also be something catastrophic, like not double checking the lug nuts were tightened down properly.
Sure you'll get fast. You might get good, if they don't overlook something that they'd normally do because you were rushing them.
I just fixed a friends car, who had a break fluid leak. It was discernible, he had to add brake fluid daily. The cursory check saw no problems at the wheels nor master cylinder, so they said there was nothing to worry about. They saw nothing wet, and no fluid on the ground.
I took my time, and followed the whole system through. Half way down the frame rail, there was a pinhole leak, which only manifested when he pumped the brakes.
Don't rush perfection, especially if your life depends on it. For a car, brakes are kind of important. For IT, it could mean that they missed a hole that could allow buffer overflows, SQL injection, or all kinds of dumb mistakes that simply shouldn't happen.
You outlined exactly why I won't touch development again. It doesn't matter what system you use to establish the flow. Development can make exactly what was requested, and regardless, they will want something different. The more people that are involved, the more changes will be requested, frequently in direct conflict with each other.
At some point, someone has to give in, and as you noted in step 2, this burns out the developers. So devs quit, get fired, or gracefully move over to another project, and now there's a new team of devs to repeat the process with.
I've gone through this with iterations of only a day or less. Programming all day and night to modify the previous weeks work to match the newly defined spec, and you still end up worse off than where you started.
Well sir, I have a nice Pentium 100 to sell you. And I have a team of developers ready to do your work. For only $20, they'll do any project. Don't ask how long it will take, I'm sure we* can have something** to show you by FY2015***.
* "we" only indicates anyone who the work may or may not have been farmed out to.
** "something" may only be a photocopy of the printout of your original request.
*** FY2015 is not a promised date, it simply indicates an arbitrary date in the future.
There's a secret about really successful web sites. It's not how pretty or ugly it is, it's all about traffic.
Plenty of people have asked me over the years, if I could make a site just like some other successful site. Sure I could. And we could make it the most beautiful site on the Internet, with the best content in the world. Once they have the web site, if they can't get the traffic, it will fail.
The pretty look has almost nothing to do with the traffic. Sure, Wikipedia is ugly. It gets traffic.
I worked for an adult company a while back. They were hugely successful, with million of people going to the site every day. People wanted me to make a site "just like it".
When I had time to burn, I set up a few sites, "just like" successful sites. Then I let them try to make their millions from it. If they were lucky, they made thousands a year. Like low thousands ($1k to $2k).
The whole thing about having a successful business is dumb luck. There are a few little things, like a good product, at a reasonable price.
Despite what we all like to say, Wikipedia has a reasonably good product, and the price (free) is acceptable to the users.
They don't ever have to make it prettier. The demise of Wikipedia will come about when someone makes a better product, at an equal or better price, that does become popular.
I don't have any of the books. I learned the hard way (trial and error). Having taken plenty of car doors apart for various reasons (replacing speakers, window motors, door handles), I already know how the inside of the door of a variety of cars look.
You can always take a locksmith course, and/or ask a local locksmith.
And there's always info online. I know on one car I have, the books say to use a slim jim in one spot. People online say to use a coat hanger in another spot. Both work just as effectively. On that car, I'm happy with the knowledge that the alarm will go off as soon as you pop the lock, and it will take at least a minute to silence the alarm. If you don't silence the alarm with the key fob, you won't start the engine. Without the right key, you won't be driving it anywhere anyways. The ECM simply won't let the engine run. It won't let the fuel injectors, nor ignition work. You can always bypass the starter, but it will only crank, not run.
In his case, the implication was for any malware. Definitely they could have done it for this specific case. It looks like they just went for the easier option of a static route and put the IP(s) on their own DNS server(s).
I guess you don't see the obvious problems with that...
1) There's plenty of existing malware that does that already. "Click here to clean your computer". Some even give a friendly 800 (or 900) number to call for "advice", so you can call and give your credit card number of the phone because it's "so much safer".
2) When they redirect a residential customer to the security problem page, it's not going to just redirect the infected machine, it will redirect all of your machines. That makes it difficult to get tools to clean up with.
And being I've had to remotely clean up machines for plenty of machines for people who were too far away to drive to, and couldn't figure out how to run an antivirus with explicit instructions and hand holding over the phone.
You know, that's been done before, and (hopefully) will be done again.
I forget the name of the malware, but there was a nasty that basically took over IP networking on Windows machines, and pumped everything through somewhere in Eastern Europe..... then the server went down. Hopefully, it was someone saying "Hmmm, malware, unplug the network cables."
And about a dozen people dragged their home computers in to me to fix. Well, theirs, their friends, family, and apparently they had told everyone in their neighborhood.. There was no graceful redemption, no "think of the users". It broke, and people all over the world cleaned up yet another malware infested machine. It may have been tens of thousands, it may have been millions. It wasn't newsworthy, because we just did what we always do.
Actually, unless a piece of malware managed to get on every Windows machine in the world, and absolutely wipe out everything on all direct and network attached drives, before popping a Warner Brothers cartoon "That's All Folks", would I even consider it noteworthy. Then again, it couldn't be newsworthy, as virtually every reporters computer would now be lacking an OS.
All the really managed to do is give the malware author a few more minutes of fame. Whoopdie-fucking-doo.
Actually, that would act more like vehicle armor. You want to stop the projectile, rather than it penetrating the vehicle.
I just watched a few videos on the subject, where they were using pellet guns. The non-Newtonian fluid scattered, looking like foam under the same impact. When it recovered, it moved like a fluid again.
I'd think, rather than supporting and spreading the force, it would just react like a weak solid. Sure, you can walk across a sheet of foam board without it collapsing. It doesn't make very good armor though.
Something like layered Kevlar and non-Newtonian fluid may work well, but most likely the overall weight would prevent any sort of practical uses. Unless you're Chuck Norris, and we all know that he doesn't need armor at all.:)
I linked to a second graph from the same page he linked to. I'm not trying to pick sides, but I am perfectly happy to point out errors with conflicting data at the same source.
It may change in time, but just because someone invents a better keyboard layout, or a more innovative way to type, doesn't mean it will meet common acceptance.
It would have made sense if people adopted the abcdef keyboard (alphabetical), but as most devices are qwerty (or whatever your region uses), they'll remain. People aren't going to flock to buying new keyboards, for home and work, and swap out their cell phones with keypads for newer ones.
Even the shift from regular keyboards to ergonomic never happened, because it was difficult for people to switch back and forth quickly. I got used to it, switching when I'd get on a client's computer. A lot of people had problems trying. If they really stuck with it, they'd buy new keyboards for their home and office, usually out of pocket for the employer.
The biggest migration of keyboard style I can think of is from the old mechanical typewriters, which didn't have the zero or one keys (redundant for "o" and "l") That was an obvious one, since the newer mechanical typewriters did have the full set of numbers, and distinguishing marks on the numerals.
And the displayed data only goes to 2004, so it misses the following 8 years of higher trending.
If I were a conspiracy nut, I'd say it were chopped off to not show recent events. I know the reality is, they haven't compiled new graphs to include yet.
Well, I've seen floor jacks sink into asphalt, which is a good reason not to have it in the pits.
One summer when I was a kid, I didn't know asphalt was soft. I stopped my motorcycle on it
Hard braking and acceleration can also grove it.
I've seen particular roads, with heavy vehicle traffic (like rock trucks and tractor trailers). At traffic lights, the roads had significant grooves. Along the rest of the road, it wasn't so bad. It made driving pretty difficult at the traffic lights, but it seems the city didn't care to fix it, since it would just happen again.
The whole global warming thing is a world wide weather change. Areas will experience different weather patterns than normal. Right now, we're experiencing hotter summers. Where I live, during the summer, we get heavy thunderstorms every afternoon. If we don't get those storms, the heat goes from ball melting hot, to "I'd rather hide in the oven" broiling.
Today, the outside high was only 99F (feels like temp "ball melting hot"). When the thunderstorms came in, it dropped to 85F (and feels like a sauna).
Our average high for this day is 90F. The historical high temp range is 77F to 96F. It hit 99, because the storms did not form as early as they normally would have.
If the days remain hot longer, inland areas will dry out. That, in turn, will cause fewer thunderstorms in those areas. We had this happen in the 1980's, except the highs only hit 95 to 102, and we're still a month away from our normal hottest month.
The storms are good enough to form in coastal areas, and we've already seen unprecedented flooding in coastal areas. That's from the water evaporating faster in the ocean, and drenching the coastal areas. Inland, they do receive some relief from these storms, but the water from even a hurricane will be gone in just a few days.
We live a few miles inland, and will be moving farther inland soon. 3 times in the last month, the roads have flooded enough to stop all vehicle traffic. Just a couple more inches, and the houses would have been in it. When one storm blew through, the actual flood waters were 2" below where they predicted, which put the water about 1" from entering the house.
Locksmiths have a book that show exactly how to open various cars. It's precise enough to show where to put the wedges (placed between the window and the outside window seal), where and how deep to put the slim jim, and which way to move it.
A friend of mine has locked herself out of her car several times. I happen to have an almost identical car, so if it were to happen, I could pop my door open in 3 to 30 seconds.
In a lot of cars, the electric lock buttons don't work if the alarm is set (doors locked with the remote). Our cars both require the resister key, so I haven't bothered to try to pick the ignition lock.
From what I understand, the door locks are difficult to pick, so I haven't bothered trying. I can open a house lock in about 5 seconds. The same for cheap to mid grade cash boxes and low end consumer "safes". The first cash box I had to pick was in middle school. The teacher lost the key, so I volunteered to open it with a paperclip. I spent more time straightening the paper clip, and breaking it into two pieces, than I spent opening the lock.
At one job, I wrote a little tool to keep a database updated with this kind of information.
The servers were Linux, so it made it much easier to pull the necessary information. It's doable with Windows too. I'll only describe its function. There should be someone who can write the functional parts.
Basically, there were a few tables with what was described in the existing spreadsheet. There were a few other fields, such as last modified, current state (online/offline/pending deployment/disposed of).
The main table was for a machine. It had CPU, memory, OS, hardware description, and notes.
There was a table with MAC addresses, since many machines had multiple cards.
There was a table for IP addresses, since most machines had more than one IP on them.
I used dmidecode to gather the machine information (manufacturer, model number, serial number, service tag).
For the OS, it grabbed the kernel version (uname -a), and the release version (/etc/*version*,/etc/*release*)
To gather everything, it was just a scripted SSH session from a machine that had its keys on all the other machines.
For the most part, it was able to fill in most of the information on it's own. We extrapolated the datacenter location from the IP. It also discovered new machines with a ping scan (nmap -sP) on machines on that network segment, arp cache, and the network switch. We had to fill in the rack number and position. We simply numbered every 1u space in the rack, so most racks had 40 positions. They were named for the top most U occupied.
I also generated a simple HTML page, with an empty rack as placeholder images. Known machine types (like Dells matching a model) were used for known equipment. Some white box machines got a generic image. KVMs, network switches, remote PDU all got their appropriate images. Overlaid over the images were the hostname and primary IP that we had stored in the database.
Generally, the unique identifier for the machines was the MAC address for the first network card. We used the on-board network interfaces, and sometimes some add-ons. Using that first MAC let us keep a positive ID on the unit. If, for example, a machine was replaced with a new machine, there was a new record. The old machine was marked appropriately (discarded, or with its new designation).
Information in the network switch (MAC/CAM info) was used to determine what was plugged in where. MAC addresses were simplified to only hexadecimal. : and - marks were removed, so we had a consistent way of reading it. We filled in : every two digits to make it readable on the displayed version.
All in all, it's a day of programming to make the interface to edit the records by hand if necessary. It took a little while to get all the information updated. Every time someone went to a remote datacenter, they checked the list. There were crashed machines (power off, wasting space) that needed to be added. They also were to note the precise position, if a machine had been moved. They also had to determine where power was plugged in.
It was very helpful to determine if we could put more machines in a rack, without someone physically inspecting the site. We were able to ship equipment to sites, and have a local tech install it. "Put it above the machine labeled XYZ, plug in the network in ports 3,4. Plug in the power on PDU ## in position 4." We'd update our database to reflect that, and verify next time we had a staff member go to the site.
Staff were always sent out with label printers, in case a label was wrong. When we started doing it, there was a *lot* of information that was wrong. Machines had been reassigned over the years. and never got new stickers. Once we had the DB 90% right, it was easy to make the rest of the information correct.
Everyone who's ever been to a Fry's, but now lives in an area without one, wishes they'd expand to their area. The nearest one to me is 470 miles.
On a work sponsored road trip (transporting servers), We stopped at 5 different Fry's locations, just because we could. I picked up all kinds of crap that I didn't "really" need, but I wasn't going to find elsewhere for the same price.:)
Walking on water, and wielding a magic wand that fixes any sort of technical or mechanical issue, doesn't help much any more.
As one CEO said, "Why should we keep paying him $50k/yr, when I can hire a kid from McDonalds at $16k/yr to to keep the same chair warm?" The mention of "Well, the guy making $50k knows how to do the job. The minimum wage kid doesn't have a clue" is answered by "He'll learn."
Companies would prefer to cycle through people working for the least possible money, regardless if they can do the job or not. They'll eventually get lucky, and get some kid who has learned something on the topic on his own, and be able to struggle with the job. Of course, by the time the kid hits 25, he'll either have a nervous breakdown, or a serious case of hypertension. I've seen both of those happen, to those who didn't bail when they were in over their heads.
The boss never cares that they got quality work from the more expensive skilled employee. They care that there's more money to go towards their own salary.
Nah, by the time Voyager gets to them, they've had years of radio and TV broadcasts pass them. They'll already know about copyright, and more importantly how Earth has planned to treat virtually every alien species. Kill them. Kill them with bullets. Kill them with ray guns. Kill them with fire. Kill them with nukes. If they didn't already have advanced weaponry, they'll have it built before they make first contact.
At this time, if they met with Voyager, they'd only be about 15 hours behind on our broadcasts.
No, we're well prepared for it. Thanks to science fiction, we've been able to plan for a vast variety of potential intergalactic threats. In response, we've built...
umm...
Well, we've theorized that we might be able to change the trajectory of a rock, given about a decade to build something...
Slashdot Mirror
Ya, that's the association I made with the name too. It makes just about as much sense as the phallic associations others seem to see in the name.
I also considered it in relation to piteous. Like, "I pity the man who gets in an accident in one of those things." A Smart Car may be a rolling economy size coffin. This thing is barely a stretcher to help move the body after the accident.
Ya. {sigh} I was really expecting more from the story. I forgot, Slashdot is running more Slashvertisments than news lately...
I've never driven a go-kart with a skin like that though. Then again, I'm an adult, and I probably wouldn't fit in it. Too bad their whole spec sheet is an image. I'd like to run it through a translator to see how pathetic the rest is.
Any volunteers who read Japanese who can translate it?
As I've observed from the mechanics themselves, pushing them to complete something in less time than they are comfortable with, can and will lead to errors. It could be something trivial, like forgetting to put your tire valve stem covers back on. It could also be something catastrophic, like not double checking the lug nuts were tightened down properly.
Sure you'll get fast. You might get good, if they don't overlook something that they'd normally do because you were rushing them.
I just fixed a friends car, who had a break fluid leak. It was discernible, he had to add brake fluid daily. The cursory check saw no problems at the wheels nor master cylinder, so they said there was nothing to worry about. They saw nothing wet, and no fluid on the ground.
I took my time, and followed the whole system through. Half way down the frame rail, there was a pinhole leak, which only manifested when he pumped the brakes.
Don't rush perfection, especially if your life depends on it. For a car, brakes are kind of important. For IT, it could mean that they missed a hole that could allow buffer overflows, SQL injection, or all kinds of dumb mistakes that simply shouldn't happen.
If I teleported your iPod with a trebuchet, would that be an innovation? It'd sure be more likely to work than an iPod based teleportation device. :)
You outlined exactly why I won't touch development again. It doesn't matter what system you use to establish the flow. Development can make exactly what was requested, and regardless, they will want something different. The more people that are involved, the more changes will be requested, frequently in direct conflict with each other.
At some point, someone has to give in, and as you noted in step 2, this burns out the developers. So devs quit, get fired, or gracefully move over to another project, and now there's a new team of devs to repeat the process with.
I've gone through this with iterations of only a day or less. Programming all day and night to modify the previous weeks work to match the newly defined spec, and you still end up worse off than where you started.
Well sir, I have a nice Pentium 100 to sell you. And I have a team of developers ready to do your work. For only $20, they'll do any project. Don't ask how long it will take, I'm sure we* can have something** to show you by FY2015***.
* "we" only indicates anyone who the work may or may not have been farmed out to.
** "something" may only be a photocopy of the printout of your original request.
*** FY2015 is not a promised date, it simply indicates an arbitrary date in the future.
There's a secret about really successful web sites. It's not how pretty or ugly it is, it's all about traffic.
Plenty of people have asked me over the years, if I could make a site just like some other successful site. Sure I could. And we could make it the most beautiful site on the Internet, with the best content in the world. Once they have the web site, if they can't get the traffic, it will fail.
The pretty look has almost nothing to do with the traffic. Sure, Wikipedia is ugly. It gets traffic.
I worked for an adult company a while back. They were hugely successful, with million of people going to the site every day. People wanted me to make a site "just like it".
When I had time to burn, I set up a few sites, "just like" successful sites. Then I let them try to make their millions from it. If they were lucky, they made thousands a year. Like low thousands ($1k to $2k).
The whole thing about having a successful business is dumb luck. There are a few little things, like a good product, at a reasonable price.
Despite what we all like to say, Wikipedia has a reasonably good product, and the price (free) is acceptable to the users.
They don't ever have to make it prettier. The demise of Wikipedia will come about when someone makes a better product, at an equal or better price, that does become popular.
I don't have any of the books. I learned the hard way (trial and error). Having taken plenty of car doors apart for various reasons (replacing speakers, window motors, door handles), I already know how the inside of the door of a variety of cars look.
A quick Google search turned up this.. The National Locksmith - Auto Lock Manual . I don't personally know anything about that book, so it may be worthless.
You can always take a locksmith course, and/or ask a local locksmith.
And there's always info online. I know on one car I have, the books say to use a slim jim in one spot. People online say to use a coat hanger in another spot. Both work just as effectively. On that car, I'm happy with the knowledge that the alarm will go off as soon as you pop the lock, and it will take at least a minute to silence the alarm. If you don't silence the alarm with the key fob, you won't start the engine. Without the right key, you won't be driving it anywhere anyways. The ECM simply won't let the engine run. It won't let the fuel injectors, nor ignition work. You can always bypass the starter, but it will only crank, not run.
In his case, the implication was for any malware. Definitely they could have done it for this specific case. It looks like they just went for the easier option of a static route and put the IP(s) on their own DNS server(s).
I guess you don't see the obvious problems with that...
1) There's plenty of existing malware that does that already. "Click here to clean your computer". Some even give a friendly 800 (or 900) number to call for "advice", so you can call and give your credit card number of the phone because it's "so much safer".
2) When they redirect a residential customer to the security problem page, it's not going to just redirect the infected machine, it will redirect all of your machines. That makes it difficult to get tools to clean up with.
And being I've had to remotely clean up machines for plenty of machines for people who were too far away to drive to, and couldn't figure out how to run an antivirus with explicit instructions and hand holding over the phone.
You know, that's been done before, and (hopefully) will be done again.
I forget the name of the malware, but there was a nasty that basically took over IP networking on Windows machines, and pumped everything through somewhere in Eastern Europe.. ... then the server went down. Hopefully, it was someone saying "Hmmm, malware, unplug the network cables."
And about a dozen people dragged their home computers in to me to fix. Well, theirs, their friends, family, and apparently they had told everyone in their neighborhood.. There was no graceful redemption, no "think of the users". It broke, and people all over the world cleaned up yet another malware infested machine. It may have been tens of thousands, it may have been millions. It wasn't newsworthy, because we just did what we always do.
Actually, unless a piece of malware managed to get on every Windows machine in the world, and absolutely wipe out everything on all direct and network attached drives, before popping a Warner Brothers cartoon "That's All Folks", would I even consider it noteworthy. Then again, it couldn't be newsworthy, as virtually every reporters computer would now be lacking an OS.
All the really managed to do is give the malware author a few more minutes of fame. Whoopdie-fucking-doo.
Actually, that would act more like vehicle armor. You want to stop the projectile, rather than it penetrating the vehicle.
I just watched a few videos on the subject, where they were using pellet guns. The non-Newtonian fluid scattered, looking like foam under the same impact. When it recovered, it moved like a fluid again.
I'd think, rather than supporting and spreading the force, it would just react like a weak solid. Sure, you can walk across a sheet of foam board without it collapsing. It doesn't make very good armor though.
Something like layered Kevlar and non-Newtonian fluid may work well, but most likely the overall weight would prevent any sort of practical uses. Unless you're Chuck Norris, and we all know that he doesn't need armor at all. :)
I linked to a second graph from the same page he linked to. I'm not trying to pick sides, but I am perfectly happy to point out errors with conflicting data at the same source.
I tried that once. It was interesting. Well, interesting, and a miserable failure. :)
It may change in time, but just because someone invents a better keyboard layout, or a more innovative way to type, doesn't mean it will meet common acceptance.
It would have made sense if people adopted the abcdef keyboard (alphabetical), but as most devices are qwerty (or whatever your region uses), they'll remain. People aren't going to flock to buying new keyboards, for home and work, and swap out their cell phones with keypads for newer ones.
Even the shift from regular keyboards to ergonomic never happened, because it was difficult for people to switch back and forth quickly. I got used to it, switching when I'd get on a client's computer. A lot of people had problems trying. If they really stuck with it, they'd buy new keyboards for their home and office, usually out of pocket for the employer.
The biggest migration of keyboard style I can think of is from the old mechanical typewriters, which didn't have the zero or one keys (redundant for "o" and "l") That was an obvious one, since the newer mechanical typewriters did have the full set of numbers, and distinguishing marks on the numerals.
I guess you missed the spike in this graph.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png
And the displayed data only goes to 2004, so it misses the following 8 years of higher trending.
If I were a conspiracy nut, I'd say it were chopped off to not show recent events. I know the reality is, they haven't compiled new graphs to include yet.
Well, I've seen floor jacks sink into asphalt, which is a good reason not to have it in the pits.
One summer when I was a kid, I didn't know asphalt was soft. I stopped my motorcycle on it
Hard braking and acceleration can also grove it.
I've seen particular roads, with heavy vehicle traffic (like rock trucks and tractor trailers). At traffic lights, the roads had significant grooves. Along the rest of the road, it wasn't so bad. It made driving pretty difficult at the traffic lights, but it seems the city didn't care to fix it, since it would just happen again.
Not that I'm a climatologist, but ...
The whole global warming thing is a world wide weather change. Areas will experience different weather patterns than normal. Right now, we're experiencing hotter summers. Where I live, during the summer, we get heavy thunderstorms every afternoon. If we don't get those storms, the heat goes from ball melting hot, to "I'd rather hide in the oven" broiling.
Today, the outside high was only 99F (feels like temp "ball melting hot"). When the thunderstorms came in, it dropped to 85F (and feels like a sauna).
Our average high for this day is 90F. The historical high temp range is 77F to 96F. It hit 99, because the storms did not form as early as they normally would have.
If the days remain hot longer, inland areas will dry out. That, in turn, will cause fewer thunderstorms in those areas. We had this happen in the 1980's, except the highs only hit 95 to 102, and we're still a month away from our normal hottest month.
The storms are good enough to form in coastal areas, and we've already seen unprecedented flooding in coastal areas. That's from the water evaporating faster in the ocean, and drenching the coastal areas. Inland, they do receive some relief from these storms, but the water from even a hurricane will be gone in just a few days.
We live a few miles inland, and will be moving farther inland soon. 3 times in the last month, the roads have flooded enough to stop all vehicle traffic. Just a couple more inches, and the houses would have been in it. When one storm blew through, the actual flood waters were 2" below where they predicted, which put the water about 1" from entering the house.
Locksmiths have a book that show exactly how to open various cars. It's precise enough to show where to put the wedges (placed between the window and the outside window seal), where and how deep to put the slim jim, and which way to move it.
A friend of mine has locked herself out of her car several times. I happen to have an almost identical car, so if it were to happen, I could pop my door open in 3 to 30 seconds.
In a lot of cars, the electric lock buttons don't work if the alarm is set (doors locked with the remote). Our cars both require the resister key, so I haven't bothered to try to pick the ignition lock.
From what I understand, the door locks are difficult to pick, so I haven't bothered trying. I can open a house lock in about 5 seconds. The same for cheap to mid grade cash boxes and low end consumer "safes". The first cash box I had to pick was in middle school. The teacher lost the key, so I volunteered to open it with a paperclip. I spent more time straightening the paper clip, and breaking it into two pieces, than I spent opening the lock.
At one job, I wrote a little tool to keep a database updated with this kind of information.
The servers were Linux, so it made it much easier to pull the necessary information. It's doable with Windows too. I'll only describe its function. There should be someone who can write the functional parts.
Basically, there were a few tables with what was described in the existing spreadsheet. There were a few other fields, such as last modified, current state (online/offline/pending deployment/disposed of).
The main table was for a machine. It had CPU, memory, OS, hardware description, and notes.
There was a table with MAC addresses, since many machines had multiple cards.
There was a table for IP addresses, since most machines had more than one IP on them.
I used dmidecode to gather the machine information (manufacturer, model number, serial number, service tag).
For the OS, it grabbed the kernel version (uname -a), and the release version (/etc/*version*, /etc/*release*)
To gather everything, it was just a scripted SSH session from a machine that had its keys on all the other machines.
For the most part, it was able to fill in most of the information on it's own. We extrapolated the datacenter location from the IP. It also discovered new machines with a ping scan (nmap -sP) on machines on that network segment, arp cache, and the network switch. We had to fill in the rack number and position. We simply numbered every 1u space in the rack, so most racks had 40 positions. They were named for the top most U occupied.
I also generated a simple HTML page, with an empty rack as placeholder images. Known machine types (like Dells matching a model) were used for known equipment. Some white box machines got a generic image. KVMs, network switches, remote PDU all got their appropriate images. Overlaid over the images were the hostname and primary IP that we had stored in the database.
Generally, the unique identifier for the machines was the MAC address for the first network card. We used the on-board network interfaces, and sometimes some add-ons. Using that first MAC let us keep a positive ID on the unit. If, for example, a machine was replaced with a new machine, there was a new record. The old machine was marked appropriately (discarded, or with its new designation).
Information in the network switch (MAC/CAM info) was used to determine what was plugged in where. MAC addresses were simplified to only hexadecimal. : and - marks were removed, so we had a consistent way of reading it. We filled in : every two digits to make it readable on the displayed version.
All in all, it's a day of programming to make the interface to edit the records by hand if necessary. It took a little while to get all the information updated. Every time someone went to a remote datacenter, they checked the list. There were crashed machines (power off, wasting space) that needed to be added. They also were to note the precise position, if a machine had been moved. They also had to determine where power was plugged in.
It was very helpful to determine if we could put more machines in a rack, without someone physically inspecting the site. We were able to ship equipment to sites, and have a local tech install it. "Put it above the machine labeled XYZ, plug in the network in ports 3,4. Plug in the power on PDU ## in position 4." We'd update our database to reflect that, and verify next time we had a staff member go to the site.
Staff were always sent out with label printers, in case a label was wrong. When we started doing it, there was a *lot* of information that was wrong. Machines had been reassigned over the years. and never got new stickers. Once we had the DB 90% right, it was easy to make the rest of the information correct.
Everyone who's ever been to a Fry's, but now lives in an area without one, wishes they'd expand to their area. The nearest one to me is 470 miles.
On a work sponsored road trip (transporting servers), We stopped at 5 different Fry's locations, just because we could. I picked up all kinds of crap that I didn't "really" need, but I wasn't going to find elsewhere for the same price. :)
Walking on water, and wielding a magic wand that fixes any sort of technical or mechanical issue, doesn't help much any more.
As one CEO said, "Why should we keep paying him $50k/yr, when I can hire a kid from McDonalds at $16k/yr to to keep the same chair warm?" The mention of "Well, the guy making $50k knows how to do the job. The minimum wage kid doesn't have a clue" is answered by "He'll learn."
Companies would prefer to cycle through people working for the least possible money, regardless if they can do the job or not. They'll eventually get lucky, and get some kid who has learned something on the topic on his own, and be able to struggle with the job. Of course, by the time the kid hits 25, he'll either have a nervous breakdown, or a serious case of hypertension. I've seen both of those happen, to those who didn't bail when they were in over their heads.
The boss never cares that they got quality work from the more expensive skilled employee. They care that there's more money to go towards their own salary.
I couldn't find a video clip, so the text will have to do.
Nah, by the time Voyager gets to them, they've had years of radio and TV broadcasts pass them. They'll already know about copyright, and more importantly how Earth has planned to treat virtually every alien species. Kill them. Kill them with bullets. Kill them with ray guns. Kill them with fire. Kill them with nukes. If they didn't already have advanced weaponry, they'll have it built before they make first contact.
At this time, if they met with Voyager, they'd only be about 15 hours behind on our broadcasts.
No, we're well prepared for it. Thanks to science fiction, we've been able to plan for a vast variety of potential intergalactic threats. In response, we've built ...
umm ...
Well, we've theorized that we might be able to change the trajectory of a rock, given about a decade to build something...
Ya, we're screwed.