A centre-left-a-bit government, which nationalises suitable public services through government controlled public bodies and exercises sensible restrictions, is much more efficient, effective and frugal, than leaving the capitalists to throw small green pieces of paper at each other and shareholders, and eventually come up with a half-baked system designed at profiting them and them alone
I'm not arguing against your point, but it almost NEVER works that way in America. Here you have government departments who continually blow a lot of money to make sure they spent their entire budget, so their budget allotment is bigger next year. Government workers basically cannot get fired no matter how incompetents they are. I understand how it could work, and I'm sure it does - it just doesn't work here...
Well I think there is probably a point to the higher IQ thing. I mean it's typically the dumbest people who just go with the flow on everything, and who thus are willing to just go with whatever the two parties tell them. Generally more intelligent people are more likely to think about the issues and the gridlock and the problems with the two party system. It's these people who are more likely to be squeezed out of the regular two and end up affiliating themselves with other parties - not necessarily libertarian, but something else. If you're a republican/democrat with a high IQ, then that's fine too; provided the parties are doing what you want. My entire family is basically republican. The republicans traditionally have values I agree with like smaller government and trimming fat - THAT isn't the current republican party. I considered myself a part of the reform party until Pat Buchanan sort of wrecked it. Now I consider myself libertarian.
And no, most of us are not flaming anarchists. The government needs reform and that's a fact. But no matter what philosophy does it, it needs to happen slowly at the pace the people can accept - that goes for libertarianism or otherwise. The other option is revolution, but I'm not happy with that as a solution, and most Americans don't have the spirit needed to go through with one anyway.
You know, I have respect for Richard Stallman. And I find it amusing when people call him a hippie or whatnot. But this guy really wears outfits like that in public? I mean he looks like he fell out of the VW van used to sell crystals on the way to the next Greatful Dead concert.
Perhaps this gets brought up each time, but what are we supposed to use for password encryption anyway? MD5 seems to be inadequate. SHA-1 is also waning. I switched to Blowfish on all my FreeBSD servers partially because of MD5 problems, but also because it's not a common format to come across for anyone figuring they'd just have MD5 hashes to try - I understand however that blowfish was not intended for this purpose.
But it seems like MD5 and SHA are getting weaker by the day with computational power on the rise. Right now I'm setting up an email server (dovecot/postfix) and the strongest hash schemes are of course MD5 and SHA. That's all that almost all email clients support anyway. But it doesn't seem like anyone has a replacement, nor is anyone moving towards anything else, and I haven't seen any real talk about it. I know there was talk about a new hash algorithm contenst similar to the one that took place for AES, but honestly we need the new hashing algorithm out TODAY so we can start to see the extremely slow vendor support start to creep in.
Same here. And actually up until a month ago I hadn't actually seen another living person that owned one - well, i don't get out much, but still. Then about 3 weeks ago I had friends from various parts of the U.S. (and Canada) call me asking me if I was still looking for a Wii because they could now get one (since I went on and on about it before it even came out). So I'd say you'll probably be in luck within the next month or so. They're actually starting to stick on shelves. After the Christmas season starts they'll probably be nowhere to be found again until January.
A cost saving measure. Not because of the CDROM disk, but because of keeping the disk in sync with the hardware. A change of a component would probably mean a change in the recovery disk. Now you have to worry about pressing disks along with each hardware change. Not to mention if you wanted to include newer patches and such in windows, that would also require pressing a new CD. You already need an image for the hard drive, and keeping this up to date is easy. So just putting a utility to burn the image onto a CD means you get a disk that was in theory in sync with where your hardware was at.
I say screw the recovery disk crap. Give me the INSTALL disks like they used to.
It's not that hard, it's called "look at reality":) You think windows ME SP5 wouldn't still be crap? Some like Vista, and that's great for them. Personally I hate it and I'd say just wait to see what the next version of windows looks like.
Generally this is the lost in the group problem that happens in corporations. If you are the only employee then all of your successes (and failures) are to your credit. If you have one person in marketing, and your marketing is outstanding - then obviously it stands to the credit of one person. If you have a graphic design team of say 100 you will naturally have a curve of "mostly average" employees. But the one person who can really shine has to consider the benefits. If you put in 200% and your boss takes the credit, then why try? This creates the general apathy seen in many (not all but many) companies. It's the same way a small shop owner can make weighted decisions based on common sense, while a minimum wage phone operator can piss off a major customer because "that's the policy". The 'not paid to think' attitude and hiding behind 'the policy' is a dangerous thing.
In the end this guy took the fall, but I have the feeling he was hardly surprised when everyone put the blame on him. Usually you have the feel for people in your group and if they will sell you down the river the second things look bad.
I've actually gone through a few scenarios with the flew outbreak. Where I work we've had times when our workforce has been cut by 50% by blizzard conditions. Our facility actually did function alright, however there's no way we could sustain that over say; two weeks.
I also did some thinking about how to punch holes in the firewall and allow people to work remotely from home and such. The problem is that the network is simply going to buckle and die - if not at our T1, before then. Sure test it all you want, but what happens when EVERYONE decides to telecommute in order to keep things working? It's like 9/11. We're a company in northern PA and were putting a new accounting system into production. Well we had problems and needed outside help from the programmers across the country - just phone support mind you. Unfortunately all phone lines were down. If you had told me that blowing up two buildings in NYC would take down phone access at our company I would have laughed at you - now I really have little hope that initially anyone would be prepared for any large scale disaster.
Personally I'm just trying to figure out what to do about keyboards. Someone is going to come in sick and cough crap up into these things. I mean it's a biohazard waiting to happen, and as an IT person you're going to have to touch more than most people. I guess gloves will be alright for a while, but we'll probably have to throw out keyboards for just about everyone in the end. Huge pain in the ass that will be.
Re:And for those wondering what PCI refers to
on
PCI Compliance
·
· Score: 1
Whenever I see this topic brought up, most people haven't heard of it despite the fact that it's been swirling around for well over a year. So I wonder how effective this will actually all be. I've gotten a few vendors that have called who chime in with "Are you compliant with the new PCI regulations?" - attempting to panic me with some mystery regulation to get their foot in the door I suppose.
Among one of the many things you are supposed to do (and this one is actually realistic), you are not supposed to serve credit card information using SSLv2 or below. Lighttpd has had an option for a while now specifically to do this:
ssl.use-sslv2 = "disable"
In Apache I think you need encryption = HIGH:MEDIUM (or something like that). I gave up on configuring Apache a while ago, so I can't recall off of the top of my head so I'm not entirely sure.
By the time my state's primary comes around the decision will already be made for me as to who the candidate is because of our fucked up system of nomination.
Actually the nomination system is just fine - for 13 states where news travels very slowly. Simply put, much of our election system isn't scaling well to having so many people and 50 states. On election day, Hawaii's vote is basically local only since the election is almost always decided ahead of time. The electoral system is actually not that bad, but when you have as many people as California, then dragging millions of people along with the "state majority" is a bit crazy The electoral votes should be SPLIT according to the proportion of votes per candidate.
There's a lot of stuff that would just work a LOT better with some tweaking. Primaries held on the same day, splitting up electoral votes, no election results until the next day... term limits...
It also goes a bit more on a tangent when you think about it. Take sys admin A and B. A does 20% more of stuff that would be considered "productive". Sysadmin B spent 60% more time verifying backup scenarios and researching things. When things are just fine, then sure sysadmin A looks good on paper. When stuff goes wrong and critical business functions completely stop, then sysadmin A will not look so good. Likewise you would never want to "fully utilize" such a person anyway. If you are at 100% capacity for how much you can handle, and THEN the shit hits the fan; things will be dropped on the floor left and right and I.T. will look like a train wreck.
A lot of people also seem to be bringing up how much "uptime" you have. That's fine, but it is quite possible to have great uptime with everything strung together with duck tape and wire coat hangers - just waiting for the day when it does go wrong like wrong has never been done before. There is most certainly something to be said about the sys admin who takes the time to better understand systems, researches disaster response and proactively works on redundancy. These aren't necessarily things which count as "productive" but show their merits in any good I.T. environment.
I know there are bean counters who like to think that absolutely everything can be measured in some quantitative way in a master excel spreadsheet, but it simply isn't so - and honestly such thinking is quite dangerous. Some sys admin functions can be benchmarked but many computer related fields just can't be benchmarked overall in such a way. That's like benchmarking a programmer by how many lines of code he/she writes.
Japan does the same thing actually. Which is why they have sports cars like the Honda S2000 which manages to somehow get 240hp out of a 2.2 liter engine.
I've actually had discussions on this sort of topic and I didn't realize the implications until later. It's almost impossible to get an electronic system manufactured in the U.S. now because we've shipped all of our capabilities overseas - mainly to China. I was having a discussion with a friend about a product which he was talking about producing - a one time thing, for himself. I mentioned that it was a pretty cool idea and that he should consider making such a product commercially and selling it. He said that it wasn't worth the effort. You need to produce the product, that means using a Chinese manufacturer. They will copy it and undercut you to hell and back, whether you have a patent or not. So really there is no reason to think up new products because in the end China will end up screwing you.
There is an amazing amount of gadgetry out there now days, but I wonder how many products never come to life because people (in the U.S.) understand that there is no way to really make any money on it.
"I think the "new discovery" part is the "without supernova remnant". Aren't most pulsars embedded in their supernova remnants?"
While true I don't think it's exactly all that interesting that you'd find a neutron star without the remnants. There are many things that could have happened to eject such an object out of its normal position. Take a binary star system for example. If one star lost significant mass, and another gained (mass blown off of its partner) than an irregular orbit would cause the first to slingshot. That's one theory anyway.
You mean the "32bit" Linux version. I couldn't care less since (as a 64bit user) I've never HAD a Linux version. If Adobe isn't careful then Microsoft sprinkle (or whatever it's called) may actually take root.
I won't say I buy the entire theory, but I think there's a bit of merit to it. I mean think of a company that REALLY utilizes technology to its fullest potential (ok well imagine one that does). If such a company actually reaches this point they would probably seek to leverage IT more than they do today, which means significant growth.
Every company I've seen is still mired in red tape and completely backwards use of much of the technology we require to survive. If we actually did streamline our business the way software is capable of doing, I imagine we would be more than willing to invest in software that could boost our capabilities even farther instead of simply loathing the next round of Microsoft Office upgrades.
Yes the nature changed a lot. Look at the industrial revolution and the types of factories used. Most of them used to pour out black smoke unending. Coal was still used as a relatively common way to heat homes. Cars were scarce in comparison to today. It's been well documented that one of the biggest changes in the nature of pollution has been the fact that we've significantly reduced how visible pollution is. This means more sunlight hits the earth instead of something else. Instead we have non visible greenhouse gases accumulating.. We've also expanded the population by leaps and bounds, and cars used to be something a family MIGHT own - and is now something that each family member has. We're also a lot less efficient in many ways. Milk used to come in bottles that were given back and sanitized for reuse. How many people still use a clothes line to dry their clothes? etc.
Yes they typically do. Look closely at what you are saying; you are looking at VALUE not necessarily price. Smaller businesses often have better quality, service, value, whatever - yet it's the domain of the big business (ala Wallmart) that can leverage its sheer mass for lower prices due to scale. Some times this is unintuitive to people. If you buy cheap crap paint, and it takes you more than twice as much paint, did you really save 30% compared to the more expensive paint? Yet people will still buy the cheap paint because it's cheaper.
Looking at the clues here: File transfer + Firewall + needed to drop firewall... I'd say it was probably someone who couldn't figure out passive ftp. Needless to say they were transferring the data without encryption in the first place.
Agreed, this is an extremely handy feature - especially when you consider the implications for integration with other applications. I created a database to track things on our network which worked pretty well. But then doing support remotely got to be a bit tedious since I would have to look up the info, cut and paste the computer name into $program, and so on. Now I can add handlers in firefox like rdesktop:// and vnc:// that allow it to fully integrate into a simple system.
Better protections would be good, but I'd hate to see this functionality simply removed.
If you have two different network segments which are supposed to be routed and a connection between them appears, you end up with a scenario where packets may go to the switch or may hop the rogue connection. I had this happen at a new facility our company moved to. I had a few single switches divided in half with VLANS and somewhere someone ended up with a crossed connection. The result was strange packet storms that would mysteriously cause network interfaces to shut down completely on machines.
It actually took me a while to figure it out until I saw our internal (FreeBSD) network firewall was reporting traffic coming in on the wrong interface. After that it was a zoo finding the wire...
And there is something that isn't mentioned here. What about dust? When you move air by charging particles you're going to end up with dust sticking to it like crazy. Eventually this thing will probably not even be able to cool effectively. Most computers sit on the floor and suck up dust all day. So then what? You going to ask people to clean their computers every month? Most people have never opened up their PC. The last thing people want is MORE maintenance on a PC.
Slashdot Mirror
A centre-left-a-bit government, which nationalises suitable public services through government controlled public bodies and exercises sensible restrictions, is much more efficient, effective and frugal, than leaving the capitalists to throw small green pieces of paper at each other and shareholders, and eventually come up with a half-baked system designed at profiting them and them alone
I'm not arguing against your point, but it almost NEVER works that way in America. Here you have government departments who continually blow a lot of money to make sure they spent their entire budget, so their budget allotment is bigger next year. Government workers basically cannot get fired no matter how incompetents they are. I understand how it could work, and I'm sure it does - it just doesn't work here...
Well I think there is probably a point to the higher IQ thing. I mean it's typically the dumbest people who just go with the flow on everything, and who thus are willing to just go with whatever the two parties tell them. Generally more intelligent people are more likely to think about the issues and the gridlock and the problems with the two party system. It's these people who are more likely to be squeezed out of the regular two and end up affiliating themselves with other parties - not necessarily libertarian, but something else. If you're a republican/democrat with a high IQ, then that's fine too; provided the parties are doing what you want. My entire family is basically republican. The republicans traditionally have values I agree with like smaller government and trimming fat - THAT isn't the current republican party. I considered myself a part of the reform party until Pat Buchanan sort of wrecked it. Now I consider myself libertarian.
And no, most of us are not flaming anarchists. The government needs reform and that's a fact. But no matter what philosophy does it, it needs to happen slowly at the pace the people can accept - that goes for libertarianism or otherwise. The other option is revolution, but I'm not happy with that as a solution, and most Americans don't have the spirit needed to go through with one anyway.
You know, I have respect for Richard Stallman. And I find it amusing when people call him a hippie or whatnot. But this guy really wears outfits like that in public? I mean he looks like he fell out of the VW van used to sell crystals on the way to the next Greatful Dead concert.
Perhaps this gets brought up each time, but what are we supposed to use for password encryption anyway? MD5 seems to be inadequate. SHA-1 is also waning. I switched to Blowfish on all my FreeBSD servers partially because of MD5 problems, but also because it's not a common format to come across for anyone figuring they'd just have MD5 hashes to try - I understand however that blowfish was not intended for this purpose.
But it seems like MD5 and SHA are getting weaker by the day with computational power on the rise. Right now I'm setting up an email server (dovecot/postfix) and the strongest hash schemes are of course MD5 and SHA. That's all that almost all email clients support anyway. But it doesn't seem like anyone has a replacement, nor is anyone moving towards anything else, and I haven't seen any real talk about it. I know there was talk about a new hash algorithm contenst similar to the one that took place for AES, but honestly we need the new hashing algorithm out TODAY so we can start to see the extremely slow vendor support start to creep in.
Same here. And actually up until a month ago I hadn't actually seen another living person that owned one - well, i don't get out much, but still. Then about 3 weeks ago I had friends from various parts of the U.S. (and Canada) call me asking me if I was still looking for a Wii because they could now get one (since I went on and on about it before it even came out). So I'd say you'll probably be in luck within the next month or so. They're actually starting to stick on shelves. After the Christmas season starts they'll probably be nowhere to be found again until January.
A cost saving measure. Not because of the CDROM disk, but because of keeping the disk in sync with the hardware. A change of a component would probably mean a change in the recovery disk. Now you have to worry about pressing disks along with each hardware change. Not to mention if you wanted to include newer patches and such in windows, that would also require pressing a new CD. You already need an image for the hard drive, and keeping this up to date is easy. So just putting a utility to burn the image onto a CD means you get a disk that was in theory in sync with where your hardware was at.
I say screw the recovery disk crap. Give me the INSTALL disks like they used to.
It's not that hard, it's called "look at reality" :) You think windows ME SP5 wouldn't still be crap? Some like Vista, and that's great for them. Personally I hate it and I'd say just wait to see what the next version of windows looks like.
Generally this is the lost in the group problem that happens in corporations. If you are the only employee then all of your successes (and failures) are to your credit. If you have one person in marketing, and your marketing is outstanding - then obviously it stands to the credit of one person. If you have a graphic design team of say 100 you will naturally have a curve of "mostly average" employees. But the one person who can really shine has to consider the benefits. If you put in 200% and your boss takes the credit, then why try? This creates the general apathy seen in many (not all but many) companies. It's the same way a small shop owner can make weighted decisions based on common sense, while a minimum wage phone operator can piss off a major customer because "that's the policy". The 'not paid to think' attitude and hiding behind 'the policy' is a dangerous thing.
In the end this guy took the fall, but I have the feeling he was hardly surprised when everyone put the blame on him. Usually you have the feel for people in your group and if they will sell you down the river the second things look bad.
I've actually gone through a few scenarios with the flew outbreak. Where I work we've had times when our workforce has been cut by 50% by blizzard conditions. Our facility actually did function alright, however there's no way we could sustain that over say; two weeks.
I also did some thinking about how to punch holes in the firewall and allow people to work remotely from home and such. The problem is that the network is simply going to buckle and die - if not at our T1, before then. Sure test it all you want, but what happens when EVERYONE decides to telecommute in order to keep things working? It's like 9/11. We're a company in northern PA and were putting a new accounting system into production. Well we had problems and needed outside help from the programmers across the country - just phone support mind you. Unfortunately all phone lines were down. If you had told me that blowing up two buildings in NYC would take down phone access at our company I would have laughed at you - now I really have little hope that initially anyone would be prepared for any large scale disaster.
Personally I'm just trying to figure out what to do about keyboards. Someone is going to come in sick and cough crap up into these things. I mean it's a biohazard waiting to happen, and as an IT person you're going to have to touch more than most people. I guess gloves will be alright for a while, but we'll probably have to throw out keyboards for just about everyone in the end. Huge pain in the ass that will be.
Whenever I see this topic brought up, most people haven't heard of it despite the fact that it's been swirling around for well over a year. So I wonder how effective this will actually all be. I've gotten a few vendors that have called who chime in with "Are you compliant with the new PCI regulations?" - attempting to panic me with some mystery regulation to get their foot in the door I suppose.
Among one of the many things you are supposed to do (and this one is actually realistic), you are not supposed to serve credit card information using SSLv2 or below. Lighttpd has had an option for a while now specifically to do this:
ssl.use-sslv2 = "disable"
In Apache I think you need encryption = HIGH:MEDIUM (or something like that). I gave up on configuring Apache a while ago, so I can't recall off of the top of my head so I'm not entirely sure.
By the time my state's primary comes around the decision will already be made for me as to who the candidate is because of our fucked up system of nomination.
Actually the nomination system is just fine - for 13 states where news travels very slowly. Simply put, much of our election system isn't scaling well to having so many people and 50 states. On election day, Hawaii's vote is basically local only since the election is almost always decided ahead of time. The electoral system is actually not that bad, but when you have as many people as California, then dragging millions of people along with the "state majority" is a bit crazy The electoral votes should be SPLIT according to the proportion of votes per candidate.
There's a lot of stuff that would just work a LOT better with some tweaking. Primaries held on the same day, splitting up electoral votes, no election results until the next day... term limits...
It also goes a bit more on a tangent when you think about it. Take sys admin A and B. A does 20% more of stuff that would be considered "productive". Sysadmin B spent 60% more time verifying backup scenarios and researching things. When things are just fine, then sure sysadmin A looks good on paper. When stuff goes wrong and critical business functions completely stop, then sysadmin A will not look so good. Likewise you would never want to "fully utilize" such a person anyway. If you are at 100% capacity for how much you can handle, and THEN the shit hits the fan; things will be dropped on the floor left and right and I.T. will look like a train wreck.
A lot of people also seem to be bringing up how much "uptime" you have. That's fine, but it is quite possible to have great uptime with everything strung together with duck tape and wire coat hangers - just waiting for the day when it does go wrong like wrong has never been done before. There is most certainly something to be said about the sys admin who takes the time to better understand systems, researches disaster response and proactively works on redundancy. These aren't necessarily things which count as "productive" but show their merits in any good I.T. environment.
I know there are bean counters who like to think that absolutely everything can be measured in some quantitative way in a master excel spreadsheet, but it simply isn't so - and honestly such thinking is quite dangerous. Some sys admin functions can be benchmarked but many computer related fields just can't be benchmarked overall in such a way. That's like benchmarking a programmer by how many lines of code he/she writes.
but the lack of support for dates before 1900
The well known tactic by Microsoft to get people to move off of Microsoft Office 1895 and finally upgrade.
*sigh* this is one of those times when I feel that I MUST click on a link and wait for the image to load while praying it isn't tub girl..
Japan does the same thing actually. Which is why they have sports cars like the Honda S2000 which manages to somehow get 240hp out of a 2.2 liter engine.
I've actually had discussions on this sort of topic and I didn't realize the implications until later. It's almost impossible to get an electronic system manufactured in the U.S. now because we've shipped all of our capabilities overseas - mainly to China. I was having a discussion with a friend about a product which he was talking about producing - a one time thing, for himself. I mentioned that it was a pretty cool idea and that he should consider making such a product commercially and selling it. He said that it wasn't worth the effort. You need to produce the product, that means using a Chinese manufacturer. They will copy it and undercut you to hell and back, whether you have a patent or not. So really there is no reason to think up new products because in the end China will end up screwing you.
There is an amazing amount of gadgetry out there now days, but I wonder how many products never come to life because people (in the U.S.) understand that there is no way to really make any money on it.
"I think the "new discovery" part is the "without supernova remnant". Aren't most pulsars embedded in their supernova remnants?"
While true I don't think it's exactly all that interesting that you'd find a neutron star without the remnants. There are many things that could have happened to eject such an object out of its normal position. Take a binary star system for example. If one star lost significant mass, and another gained (mass blown off of its partner) than an irregular orbit would cause the first to slingshot. That's one theory anyway.
You mean the "32bit" Linux version. I couldn't care less since (as a 64bit user) I've never HAD a Linux version. If Adobe isn't careful then Microsoft sprinkle (or whatever it's called) may actually take root.
I won't say I buy the entire theory, but I think there's a bit of merit to it. I mean think of a company that REALLY utilizes technology to its fullest potential (ok well imagine one that does). If such a company actually reaches this point they would probably seek to leverage IT more than they do today, which means significant growth.
Every company I've seen is still mired in red tape and completely backwards use of much of the technology we require to survive. If we actually did streamline our business the way software is capable of doing, I imagine we would be more than willing to invest in software that could boost our capabilities even farther instead of simply loathing the next round of Microsoft Office upgrades.
Yes the nature changed a lot. Look at the industrial revolution and the types of factories used. Most of them used to pour out black smoke unending. Coal was still used as a relatively common way to heat homes. Cars were scarce in comparison to today. It's been well documented that one of the biggest changes in the nature of pollution has been the fact that we've significantly reduced how visible pollution is. This means more sunlight hits the earth instead of something else. Instead we have non visible greenhouse gases accumulating.. We've also expanded the population by leaps and bounds, and cars used to be something a family MIGHT own - and is now something that each family member has. We're also a lot less efficient in many ways. Milk used to come in bottles that were given back and sanitized for reuse. How many people still use a clothes line to dry their clothes? etc.
Yes they typically do. Look closely at what you are saying; you are looking at VALUE not necessarily price. Smaller businesses often have better quality, service, value, whatever - yet it's the domain of the big business (ala Wallmart) that can leverage its sheer mass for lower prices due to scale. Some times this is unintuitive to people. If you buy cheap crap paint, and it takes you more than twice as much paint, did you really save 30% compared to the more expensive paint? Yet people will still buy the cheap paint because it's cheaper.
Looking at the clues here: File transfer + Firewall + needed to drop firewall... I'd say it was probably someone who couldn't figure out passive ftp. Needless to say they were transferring the data without encryption in the first place.
Agreed, this is an extremely handy feature - especially when you consider the implications for integration with other applications. I created a database to track things on our network which worked pretty well. But then doing support remotely got to be a bit tedious since I would have to look up the info, cut and paste the computer name into $program, and so on. Now I can add handlers in firefox like rdesktop:// and vnc:// that allow it to fully integrate into a simple system.
Better protections would be good, but I'd hate to see this functionality simply removed.
If you have two different network segments which are supposed to be routed and a connection between them appears, you end up with a scenario where packets may go to the switch or may hop the rogue connection. I had this happen at a new facility our company moved to. I had a few single switches divided in half with VLANS and somewhere someone ended up with a crossed connection. The result was strange packet storms that would mysteriously cause network interfaces to shut down completely on machines.
It actually took me a while to figure it out until I saw our internal (FreeBSD) network firewall was reporting traffic coming in on the wrong interface. After that it was a zoo finding the wire...
And there is something that isn't mentioned here. What about dust? When you move air by charging particles you're going to end up with dust sticking to it like crazy. Eventually this thing will probably not even be able to cool effectively. Most computers sit on the floor and suck up dust all day. So then what? You going to ask people to clean their computers every month? Most people have never opened up their PC. The last thing people want is MORE maintenance on a PC.