I don't mind hold music -- I mind it when whatever is being played while I'm on hold is a human voice talking, especially if it breaks into music --
because then, I think I'm being taken off hold. You think those 'please wait on the line, because your call is important to us' messages are annoying... how about someone telling you how great their service is, and that you should buy other stuff from them, too. Or how you could check your order status online (of course, I was calling to check the repair status on my computer).
So, if you're going to put me on hold, give me something that I can ignore in the background, and/or put on speakerphone without being overly distracting, and not having anything that might make me think for even a second that someone's finally talking to -- when they're not. When I hear a person's voice in a conversational tone (ie, not singing), I want to be able to tell them what my problem is, and have them tell me what can be done to fix it.
(I also prefer it when the music is below normal levels of spoken human conversation, so it's that much more obvious when someone finally gets on the line).
The article specifically said that this company was not working on user-fillable fuel cells... so these things will probably go the way of toner and ink cartridges:
other companies make a compatable form-factor
original company starts changing the form factor on a regular basis
other companies make refill kits
original company adds software so the cartridge thinks its empty
someone makes a 'tool' to convince the cartridge otherwise
original company sues person under the DCMA
Okay, that's not exactly the timeline with the previous ones, but I'd expect something similiar... don't think you're going to be able to just recharge these things from a can like for butane lighters.
You'll go to the store, and have to buy company X's model to it your machine, but the store will be all out, because company X is having a supply problem, and no one else has a comporable model. [case in point -- I got the third to the last pack of AA batteries at the CVS near my house last week....out of 12 or so hooks of Duracell, Energizer, generics, in 4/8/12 packs, they had 2 packs of generics left after I left... I have no idea why they were that low (they could've had more in back, I didn't ask).
If it's some proprietary format, I'm just not optimistic about finding a new battery when mine goes dead.
I fail to see how I'm supposed to respect management "risk decisions" based on ignorance and incompetence.
You don't. I know I sure as hell didn't. You document every last thing that you've told them,including what your recommendations where, and why, and when you told them.
And you save a nice little log of things, so you have someting to turn over to internal audit, when they start blaming you for projects not being delivered on time.
Which reminds me... I should see if they've gotten the new all-contractor internal audit department at GW up and running, as they mysteriously disbanded the old one, a couple weeks after I sent documents describing many incidents of that seemed to be indicitive of waste, poor decision making, and/or conflict of interest. And of course, the IT department fell under the same VP as the IA department... go figure.
Actually, when you consider they're all contending for the same frequencies, even with spread-spectrum channel hopping, you're not going to get even close to the theoretical max with so many devices talking at the same time.
[In the days before switched circuits, you'd run into problems when you started nearing 50% of your bandwidth with ethernet... I don't know how much better the collision handling is in 802.11b/g, but I'm guessing it's not so good that it can handle 74k nodes simultaneously talking.]
And yes, I know the joke that you're alluding to -- but that one's accurate, and we still use it. [well, maybe not a whole station wagon full]
The important part in the whole scheme isn't the key.
Yes, the key, combined with the algorythm and ciphertext can get you the original content, and so, if you can get the key, you can use alternative software or hardware to decrypt the files and use them without the restrictions that the vendors might have imposed.
However, just as simply, even with the keys and/or algorythms remaining secret, so long as the program can extract the relevent content, there will be someway to intercept it, and from that, make a copy.
Take for instance the pay-per-view cable channels -- you need a little box to decode the signal. Tampering with the box is illegal. But it's really easy to place a VCR/Tivo/DVR/whatever in between the cable box and the TV, and make a copy.
I have TV out on more than one of my computers... I can easily play someting legally on one, and then copy it to VHS or whatever. [I get an odd audio hiss from the desktop based PVR, I think it has a noisy power supply... I get better quality off of my laptop] Of course, with a DVD, you don't get the menus, and such, but you can get the basic content, which is what I need when I'm helping my neighbors assemble 6hr VHS tapes of kid's programming so their 3yr old will stay entertained during multi-day car trips, and they don't have to change tapes or DVDs every 30 minutes.
With an iPod, or whatever, you can wire the headphone jack to line in on something else -- of course, you'll lose track information, but you can get the basic content out.
All that DRM can do is make it more difficult to make copies -- never impossible. DRM is going to become more of an issue as technology changes [imagine, it's the 1980s... you've got your 8mm home movies, and you want to transfer them to VHS... but you can't, as the companies who approved the 8mm film standard put a specific clause against copying stuff]
When DVD came out, you couldn't just copy all of your VHS tapes to 'em. Hell, you can't even right now, but that's more of an analog-to-digital issue more than anything else, at this point. But when the next great standard comes out, you know that the movie companies are going to do their best to get you to buy all new copies of the 100+ DVDs you might already own, so they can get another $2-3k out of you.
Anyway, the only way that DRM will reliably work in the long run is to get rid of the standards that most movies depend on right now (vision, and hearing)... they''ll have to come up with some special chip you have to have inserted in your brain so that you'll only understand the movies that you've paid for.
I'd like to start off by saying that I have a sticker in front of me that says 'Joe Hates Banner' back from when I did a lot of the LDAP integration work at The George Washington University.
However, the thing about Banner, is that you get support -- it may be pretty crappy support, based on the people SCT kept on-site at GW [some were exceptional and yet there were some that I wondered how they managed to keep from getting fired over the years, as they clearly didn't understand the system they were supposed to be maintaining]
There have been any number of times when I've wondered what the reason was for keeping around the piece of crap that is banner, that GW hacked up to work around whatever problems they had run into.
The problem comes when there's some new federal requirement that you have to comply with, or you're going to be fined. Stuff along the lines of FERPA, or that more recent one that requires all foreign nationals be tracked -- if the program was made by one guy, who knows if he'll be available when changes need to be made. It doesn't matter how well you document things so that they can fix things later -- they want someone they can use as a scapegoat when something goes tits up.
If you don't have errors and omissions insurance, I hope they don't buy from you. We don't need another person out there as an example of 'this is what happens when you try to migrate from Banner'.
If you're serious about getting off of Banner, here's a few suggestions for you.
Know the system inside and out. If you don't know what SPRIDEN, SPBPERS, GOBTPAC and the rest are, there's no way you can even pretend to know how to get the data out of the system. Even more difficult, however, is the COBOL programs, that you're not going to get source to.
Don't go it alone -- find other schools with similar needs, build a community, and work together. There's already a group community colleges in California that negotiated discounts on Microsoft software, so that might be a place to start.
Don't do it in Perl. Sure, it's fast to do it in Perl, and you might be able to get away with the daily tasks using mod_perl, but some of the batch jobs they have to generate are killers -- you'd be better doing that in something compiled.
Lose the attitude. There is no way in hell you could recreate decades of bug fixes in a week. Sure, you might get close, but you're going to have some painful nights ahead of you if think everything's going to be right on the first try.
Now for a true story --
I worked at GW on and off for 7 years. I was responsible for database and web servers. I worked long and hard for a replacement webserver that would meet the rather specific set of needs that we had. (highly available, group accounts but individual accountability, cold fusion, cgiwrap). After 18 months, because our hardware kept getting janked for other projects, we were almost there... tricking ColdFusion to failover cleanly under SunCluster, and faking support for group quotas in Solaris 7 were almost as bad as the meetings with management. My estimate was 2 weeks from putting live data on there -- and they brought in a contractor. These two guys were supposed to help us do things the UML/CMM way... you know, a whole bunch of management crap. they got a copy of Rational Rose, took one of our laptops to put it on, and told me they'd show me how to use it to document the processes. I had to sit through meetings on how to write Use Cases.
Suddenly, I find out that the contractor is writing a 'vision document'. I try to get a copy of it... no one has it... a month later, I get it -- and it's obvious he's never built a webserver before. (he's planning on running iPlanet 4.1, iPlanet 6, Apache 1.3, Oracle, mySQL, PostgreSQL, RealServer, ColdFusion, ChiliSoft ASP and a whole crapload of other stuff all from the same server -- which is a two node cluster.) I looked at it, and told my manag
It's a thought, but whenever someone reboots, has their system go to sleep, or shuts it down, it's going to look like it's disappeared.
You'd want to use a seperate tracking system than something that runs only when the system is operating.
Oh, and I'd have personally recommended Bluetooth as opposed to some 802.11 implementation -- as you can get distance estimates between two nodes (I have no idea how accurate they are, though). And of course, it has the same problem with not being on when the computer's not on.
The problems with giving talks at conferences, and just randomly posting stuff on the internet is that it hasn't had a level of peer review. Someone may have some great information out there, that everyone should read, and someone else might have a complete load of crap.
The service that journals provide isn't so much the publishing, but the fact that skilled people in that profession have reviewed the papers, and have verified that it is accurate, and worthwhile [ie, not just some rewording of someone else's research].
And I'm sure they'd love to offer it up to the general public, as well. The question comes -- should all of it be public? I'm guessing that there are bits of it, which shouldn't be, and it's be more costly in the long run to try to analyze it, and determine what would have to remain confidential, then to just store it all in the first place.
I'd prefer that people who are familiar with the actual data being stored make the determination if it should be publicly available.
The problem is that there are lots of places out there that are making recordings, but not all of the data are being shared with other researchers. Much of the time, it's because people don't know the data is even out there. For instance, if someone finds some odd reading out there, before they go and spend a lot of time on it, if they can compare the data to some other telescope reading at the same time, that's at a different location, they might be able to determine if it was an error on the instrument, as opposed to a legitimate event.
As instruments only point at a fixed region, if you find something on a wide angle picture, you can try to find out if someone else was pointing at the region of interest with a better resolution at that point in time.
I'm in the DC/Baltimore area, and there's a radio station ofut of Baltimore (97.9FM / WIYY / 98 Rock), which, although owned by the Hearst Corporation, does play some good music mixed in with today's bubblegum crap.
Check around -- odds are there's some college radio station in your area, that isn't interested in selling out, and just wants to play music. WSOU in New Jersey comes to mind as a great station, if you're in the area, but if you're near any sort of city, odds are there's something out there, even if it's just for 30min a week that plays non-commercialized music.
Another great game in that style was 'Marble Drop' . It might not appeal to your typical video gamer (Gamespot gave it a mediocre score), but I loved it...
I'm guessing it could have a comeback, if Maxis would release it with a level-maker, and a way to share levels online.
These days, software seems to be 'games' or 'educational', without that middle ground that we used to have. (When's the last time you saw a Broderbund product on the shelf that wasn't something like 'math for 4th graders' or similar.)
And that's not to say that you have to be non-violent for educational games -- the little hunting bit from Oregon Trail had more action than most games out in its day.
There are rumors of problem ecache on quite a few of the last two generations of processors. Some that come to mind specifically are the 6800s and 4500s.
Sun will go to major pains to keep from changing out the processors -- they'll even strip out the center plane on a 4500, just so they don't have to change out the processors.
I've heard rumors that you have to sign an NDA to get the processors replaced, as they don't want people knowing that it's a processor problem. [but of course, it's one of those 'friend of a friend' type situations, so take that with a grain of salt].
I've seen more that one 4500 go flaky for no apparent reason -- I had gotten out of the Sun shop I was in before I had any significant experience with the x800 line.
Oh -- but Sun does have at least one book on data center design, and some documents online
I personally think the idea is flawed just for the reasons you mentioned... but there might be something in between [which it's entirely possible that's already being used, as I'm not in the movie industry].
If you have a bunch of powerful workstations on people's desks that are only getting 50% usage [ie, 12hrs per day], they might be able to farm out extra tasks to them, so that during a night's render, they make use of the main render farm, plus the desktop computers.
Of course, this assumes that the overall effort is worth it in the long run. [I have no idea what the overall ratio of workstations to render farm might be].
Oh -- and one other reason for not using random people -- trust. Someone might try to return faked results to boot their stats. You actually need to perform all calculations on untrusted distributed projects at least twice, and verify that the two results match. [if they don't, then you have to perform a third, and see if it matches one of the first two].
And let's not forget the final cost of external bandwidth -- would the cost of bandwidth compare to the TCO of new nodes in the farm? [I have no idea... like I said, I'm not in the industry].
For some reason, it seems that the more companies stress how much they "welcome feedback", the less likely you are to actually get some sort of response.
[or when you do, it's some sort of form letter, telling you that you're very important to them, and they'll look into it, but from the wording of the form letter, it's obvious that they've misunderstood what your issue was]
If they have a feedback mechanism, but don't go out of their way to over-hype it, then you might have a chance at getting a response from a real person. [eg, you have to go through the automated FAQ on The History Channel to get to the link for freeform comments. Although, the response to asking why they're always showing programs about Hitler still seemed like a form letter -- but it was at least a relevent response to the question.]
Mnemonics can be annoying when you have different people creating them -- it people use slightly different rules when creating the passwords, it can cause all sorts of problems --
do you perform any subsequent modifications (a -> @; s-> $; e-> 3), once you have the password?
are you consistent in your capitalization rules?
Are you consistent in your punctuation rules?
I find it particulary annoying when people use what I call the 'license plate' passwords -- if you know what the mnemonic is, the password makes sense, but it's difficult to consistently go from the mnemonic to the password --
!4m32s@y -> Not for me to say -> !4me2say
!4us2d0 -> Not for us to do -> !4us2do
(yes, I worked with some people who were rather negative)... but it'd get annoying when you're told what root's been changed to, and they don't have consistent rules for the passwords.
Personally, I was working on a program for generation of passwords from fortune, so that things are handled consistently, but I've stalled the idea until I get get it to use a significantly larger basis for the mnemonics (as if you knew the source of the mnemonics, and the rules for generating passwords, it's just as easy to brute force as a dictionary attack)
The 'DatabaseConnect' function didn't return anything.
Not a big deal, really, but they probably should have trapped that, as it could happen for any number of reasons (database down, authentication failed, etc).
I find that I'm getting much slower when I write programs these days -- because I'm checking errors for those things that I would've just blown off, or not have thought about in my earlier days.
[there's a few different things that could be done to this -- but I don't know why they're calling DatabaseConnect both at lines 16 and 19, so it would be careless of me to recommend a solution to code that I don't fully understand, and can't see the whole context]
There are good power cords (12ga and heavier; 12ga extenders; anything 3m and longer; anything 50cm and shorter; the IBM power cables that don't block the plug; right angle connectors) and then there are the run-of-the-mill crap you get with everything you buy -- 16 or 18 guage, between 1.5 and 2 meters long)
If you buy a rack from Sun, it comes with power in it... but they insist on sending you one or two power cables for each item that goes in it. So you buy a 36U rack, you're probably going to be getting 18+ power cables along with it. The only good thing is, copper can be sold for scrap -- cut the ends off first, and you'll get a slightly better price per pound.
But make sure to save the extenders -- They come in damned handy when you have to rearrange a rack to compress down space, and your management won't approve downtime. With two good extenders, a machine lift, and a system with multiple power taps, [not redundant power supplies -- redundant power taps -- the sun x000 and x500 series sucks for that], and a spare 50' ethernet cable, you can move quite far, just have to keep moving the power connections. [if it's got a SCSI disk pack attached, well, you can still slide stuff up/down in the rack]
R&D is what keeps a company from becoming stagnant, and having to try to find new ways to squeeze money out of what it has. [For those companies that sell a tangible, especially a tangible disposable product, it's not as big of a deal].
But to remain profitable in the long term, you diversify -- so you're not as likely to take a massive downfall from a single competing company. And you try to find new products and solutions, to improve what offerings you have (that whole concept of innovation).
Google's got their IPO coming, so they'll have a nice little bit of cash to work with to improve their chances of continuing their current rate of growth. [however, they're looking at long term growth, not short term... for short term, you focus on advertising, to try to convince everyone that you have a superior product, as opposed to actually making a superior product, and waiting for people to come to you]
Any company with a big R&D section would have some form of review process for projects -- if things change, you might shelve a project, and reassign people, because you're not sure if it's going to be as profitable as you originally thought. Depending on the field, you might have some board meeting every 3-12 months to review the current projects, and reassign resources, to make sure you don't stretch your resources too thin, and to identify which projects could benefit from extra funding.
I knew a cop, who about 5-6 years ago, had started using a digital recorder for taking notes -- he had trained Naturally Speaking, and the device had a clean enough recording that when he got back to the office, he'd play back it back to his computer --
A quick review to make sure it had transcribed cleanly, and he was done.
I'm guessing the software's gotten better since then, and the various recorders have gotten more memory, as well. With an iPod, it's not going to be cheap, but it's small, and it'll hold hours of dictation.
I've done very limited work with PHP, but I've been rather dismayed with its lack of support for bind variables, which can increase security, and speed execution time. However, it only works for variables (for the most part, bits used in the WHERE clause), so it can't be used for dynamic table or field names.
However, table and field names are bound by other rules, so you can throw an error if it contains any illegal characters:
($name =~ m/[^a-zA-Z0-9_/)
Of course, I didn't like that I was tied into using a particular database by the function calls, either -- I guess I've gotten spoiled with DBI in Perl.
They're getting energy from what was considered to be a waste product. If they weren't doing this, we would have to make larger nuclear power plants, or whatever other form of energy product you feel is acceptable for the environment.
This is a win-win situation, for those involved -- they de-water the waste, compact the waste for easier removal, and get energy back in the process to help offset the operational costs for the process.
For those who didn't take sewage treatment classes in college, there are four main types of setting -- type 1 is for things that accelerate from gravity (sticks, rocks, etc), type 2 is things that floculate (clump together as they're falling), type 3 and 4 are not typically done in a water treatment plant as they don't happen quickly enough. So, what they do is syphon off the 'mostly' clean water at the top, and dump the sludge at the bottom... but the sludge at the bottom is still mostly water, which is heavy, and bulky. Depending on the area, they'll spread it out to dry in the sun, or use anaerobic digestion (such as in the bottom of a pond), to get it to compress further.
And let's not forget that composted manure makes great fertilizer, which the farmer might otherwise be buying for the plants that go into feeding the cow. It's all just an example of a nice little ecosystem.
I've never personally used it, but I've noticed what seemed to be a large number of security issues found in the product at a time when I was doing a security audit of a system that was using it.
That's not to say that the other CMS systems don't have their own security problems, and I know the couple that I've written probably had their own issues, but I didn't pull a Matt Wright [of FormMail fame] and go distributing crappy software all over the place, either.
Nuke Security seems to have some information about securing various versions of PHPNuke.
Sudo is intended to grant access to specific programs to users. Typically, it's used when there is a specific set of tasks that a user, or group of user may need to perform.
It's been increasing used as a form of alternative for root -- there is no root password, and a user must come in through their own account, and sudo commands.
I'm personally okay with that, as if the person is 'root', they can do any damned thing they want on the box. If you don't want them to do things, don't give them root. If you have junior level folks, that you don't trust, then you should give them a specific list of commands that they can use in the/etc/sudoers file.
I'm using Mac OS X, and I use 'sudo sh' all the time, because there are some things that you simply can't do, or can't do easily with sudo. Most notably, when you're trying to manipulate files that are in directories that a basic user doesn't have read or execute on. [/var/spool/clientmqueue comes to mind]
You should vet all people before they get root access. You should know if they're the type of people who are going to attempt to bypass the security of the systems, and violate the policies and procedures that you've established. If you can't trust them to not do that, then how can you trust them to administer the box in the first place?
If you're in the sort of place that actually needs a higher level of accountability, you're going to have syslogs going to both a local and remote line printer, a centralized log server, and a whole bunch of automated monitoring of the systems -- you'll know if someone is trying to duck out of their commands getting logged, and they'll be fired on the spot.
I'm doing IT for a group of solar physicists, and we're running a rather high percentage of Macs. [I'd say over 50% of the physical systems, with Suns and Alphas coming in roughly tied for second, with Intel based systems a distant fourth].
With 64bit macs, I'm guessing they're going to get an even stronger foothold, especially as we look at the G5 XServe [which if procurement ever gets right, might actually come in sometime this year].
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I don't mind hold music -- I mind it when whatever is being played while I'm on hold is a human voice talking, especially if it breaks into music --
... how about someone telling you how great their service is, and that you should buy other stuff from them, too. Or how you could check your order status online (of course, I was calling to check the repair status on my computer).
because then, I think I'm being taken off hold. You think those 'please wait on the line, because your call is important to us' messages are annoying
So, if you're going to put me on hold, give me something that I can ignore in the background, and/or put on speakerphone without being overly distracting, and not having anything that might make me think for even a second that someone's finally talking to -- when they're not. When I hear a person's voice in a conversational tone (ie, not singing), I want to be able to tell them what my problem is, and have them tell me what can be done to fix it.
(I also prefer it when the music is below normal levels of spoken human conversation, so it's that much more obvious when someone finally gets on the line).
- other companies make a compatable form-factor
- original company starts changing the form factor on a regular basis
- other companies make refill kits
- original company adds software so the cartridge thinks its empty
- someone makes a 'tool' to convince the cartridge otherwise
- original company sues person under the DCMA
Okay, that's not exactly the timeline with the previous ones, but I'd expect something similiarYou'll go to the store, and have to buy company X's model to it your machine, but the store will be all out, because company X is having a supply problem, and no one else has a comporable model. [case in point -- I got the third to the last pack of AA batteries at the CVS near my house last week....out of 12 or so hooks of Duracell, Energizer, generics, in 4/8/12 packs, they had 2 packs of generics left after I left... I have no idea why they were that low (they could've had more in back, I didn't ask).
If it's some proprietary format, I'm just not optimistic about finding a new battery when mine goes dead.
And you save a nice little log of things, so you have someting to turn over to internal audit, when they start blaming you for projects not being delivered on time.
Which reminds me... I should see if they've gotten the new all-contractor internal audit department at GW up and running, as they mysteriously disbanded the old one, a couple weeks after I sent documents describing many incidents of that seemed to be indicitive of waste, poor decision making, and/or conflict of interest. And of course, the IT department fell under the same VP as the IA department... go figure.
Actually, when you consider they're all contending for the same frequencies, even with spread-spectrum channel hopping, you're not going to get even close to the theoretical max with so many devices talking at the same time.
[In the days before switched circuits, you'd run into problems when you started nearing 50% of your bandwidth with ethernet... I don't know how much better the collision handling is in 802.11b/g, but I'm guessing it's not so good that it can handle 74k nodes simultaneously talking.]
And yes, I know the joke that you're alluding to -- but that one's accurate, and we still use it. [well, maybe not a whole station wagon full]
The important part in the whole scheme isn't the key.
... I can easily play someting legally on one, and then copy it to VHS or whatever. [I get an odd audio hiss from the desktop based PVR, I think it has a noisy power supply... I get better quality off of my laptop] Of course, with a DVD, you don't get the menus, and such, but you can get the basic content, which is what I need when I'm helping my neighbors assemble 6hr VHS tapes of kid's programming so their 3yr old will stay entertained during multi-day car trips, and they don't have to change tapes or DVDs every 30 minutes.
... but you can't, as the companies who approved the 8mm film standard put a specific clause against copying stuff]
Yes, the key, combined with the algorythm and ciphertext can get you the original content, and so, if you can get the key, you can use alternative software or hardware to decrypt the files and use them without the restrictions that the vendors might have imposed.
However, just as simply, even with the keys and/or algorythms remaining secret, so long as the program can extract the relevent content, there will be someway to intercept it, and from that, make a copy.
Take for instance the pay-per-view cable channels -- you need a little box to decode the signal. Tampering with the box is illegal. But it's really easy to place a VCR/Tivo/DVR/whatever in between the cable box and the TV, and make a copy.
I have TV out on more than one of my computers
With an iPod, or whatever, you can wire the headphone jack to line in on something else -- of course, you'll lose track information, but you can get the basic content out.
All that DRM can do is make it more difficult to make copies -- never impossible. DRM is going to become more of an issue as technology changes [imagine, it's the 1980s... you've got your 8mm home movies, and you want to transfer them to VHS
When DVD came out, you couldn't just copy all of your VHS tapes to 'em. Hell, you can't even right now, but that's more of an analog-to-digital issue more than anything else, at this point. But when the next great standard comes out, you know that the movie companies are going to do their best to get you to buy all new copies of the 100+ DVDs you might already own, so they can get another $2-3k out of you.
Anyway, the only way that DRM will reliably work in the long run is to get rid of the standards that most movies depend on right now (vision, and hearing)... they''ll have to come up with some special chip you have to have inserted in your brain so that you'll only understand the movies that you've paid for.
However, the thing about Banner, is that you get support -- it may be pretty crappy support, based on the people SCT kept on-site at GW [some were exceptional and yet there were some that I wondered how they managed to keep from getting fired over the years, as they clearly didn't understand the system they were supposed to be maintaining]
There have been any number of times when I've wondered what the reason was for keeping around the piece of crap that is banner, that GW hacked up to work around whatever problems they had run into.
The problem comes when there's some new federal requirement that you have to comply with, or you're going to be fined. Stuff along the lines of FERPA, or that more recent one that requires all foreign nationals be tracked -- if the program was made by one guy, who knows if he'll be available when changes need to be made. It doesn't matter how well you document things so that they can fix things later -- they want someone they can use as a scapegoat when something goes tits up.
If you don't have errors and omissions insurance, I hope they don't buy from you. We don't need another person out there as an example of 'this is what happens when you try to migrate from Banner'.
If you're serious about getting off of Banner, here's a few suggestions for you.
Now for a true story --
It's a thought, but whenever someone reboots, has their system go to sleep, or shuts it down, it's going to look like it's disappeared.
You'd want to use a seperate tracking system than something that runs only when the system is operating.
Oh, and I'd have personally recommended Bluetooth as opposed to some 802.11 implementation -- as you can get distance estimates between two nodes (I have no idea how accurate they are, though). And of course, it has the same problem with not being on when the computer's not on.
The problems with giving talks at conferences, and just randomly posting stuff on the internet is that it hasn't had a level of peer review. Someone may have some great information out there, that everyone should read, and someone else might have a complete load of crap.
The service that journals provide isn't so much the publishing, but the fact that skilled people in that profession have reviewed the papers, and have verified that it is accurate, and worthwhile [ie, not just some rewording of someone else's research].
And I'm sure they'd love to offer it up to the general public, as well. The question comes -- should all of it be public? I'm guessing that there are bits of it, which shouldn't be, and it's be more costly in the long run to try to analyze it, and determine what would have to remain confidential, then to just store it all in the first place.
I'd prefer that people who are familiar with the actual data being stored make the determination if it should be publicly available.
It's a search engine, for the most part.
I'm one of the programmers on the Virtual Solar Observatory. The poster I'm presenting today at the American Astronomical Society explains a little bit about what we're trying to accomplish.
The problem is that there are lots of places out there that are making recordings, but not all of the data are being shared with other researchers. Much of the time, it's because people don't know the data is even out there. For instance, if someone finds some odd reading out there, before they go and spend a lot of time on it, if they can compare the data to some other telescope reading at the same time, that's at a different location, they might be able to determine if it was an error on the instrument, as opposed to a legitimate event.
As instruments only point at a fixed region, if you find something on a wide angle picture, you can try to find out if someone else was pointing at the region of interest with a better resolution at that point in time.
I'm in the DC/Baltimore area, and there's a radio station ofut of Baltimore (97.9FM / WIYY / 98 Rock), which, although owned by the Hearst Corporation, does play some good music mixed in with today's bubblegum crap.
See the bottom of their Noise in the Basement page for a list of local Baltimore band links. (I know Jimmie's Chicken Shack got some national play a few years back, but I prefer stuff like Laughing Colors and Mary Prankster)
Check around -- odds are there's some college radio station in your area, that isn't interested in selling out, and just wants to play music. WSOU in New Jersey comes to mind as a great station, if you're in the area, but if you're near any sort of city, odds are there's something out there, even if it's just for 30min a week that plays non-commercialized music.
Another great game in that style was 'Marble Drop' . It might not appeal to your typical video gamer (Gamespot gave it a mediocre score), but I loved it...
I'm guessing it could have a comeback, if Maxis would release it with a level-maker, and a way to share levels online.
These days, software seems to be 'games' or 'educational', without that middle ground that we used to have. (When's the last time you saw a Broderbund product on the shelf that wasn't something like 'math for 4th graders' or similar.)
And that's not to say that you have to be non-violent for educational games -- the little hunting bit from Oregon Trail had more action than most games out in its day.
Sun will go to major pains to keep from changing out the processors -- they'll even strip out the center plane on a 4500, just so they don't have to change out the processors.
I've heard rumors that you have to sign an NDA to get the processors replaced, as they don't want people knowing that it's a processor problem. [but of course, it's one of those 'friend of a friend' type situations, so take that with a grain of salt].
I've seen more that one 4500 go flaky for no apparent reason -- I had gotten out of the Sun shop I was in before I had any significant experience with the x800 line.
Oh -- but Sun does have at least one book on data center design, and some documents online
I personally think the idea is flawed just for the reasons you mentioned ... but there might be something in between [which it's entirely possible that's already being used, as I'm not in the movie industry].
If you have a bunch of powerful workstations on people's desks that are only getting 50% usage [ie, 12hrs per day], they might be able to farm out extra tasks to them, so that during a night's render, they make use of the main render farm, plus the desktop computers.
Of course, this assumes that the overall effort is worth it in the long run. [I have no idea what the overall ratio of workstations to render farm might be].
Oh -- and one other reason for not using random people -- trust. Someone might try to return faked results to boot their stats. You actually need to perform all calculations on untrusted distributed projects at least twice, and verify that the two results match. [if they don't, then you have to perform a third, and see if it matches one of the first two].
And let's not forget the final cost of external bandwidth -- would the cost of bandwidth compare to the TCO of new nodes in the farm? [I have no idea... like I said, I'm not in the industry].
For some reason, it seems that the more companies stress how much they "welcome feedback", the less likely you are to actually get some sort of response.
[or when you do, it's some sort of form letter, telling you that you're very important to them, and they'll look into it, but from the wording of the form letter, it's obvious that they've misunderstood what your issue was]
If they have a feedback mechanism, but don't go out of their way to over-hype it, then you might have a chance at getting a response from a real person. [eg, you have to go through the automated FAQ on The History Channel to get to the link for freeform comments. Although, the response to asking why they're always showing programs about Hitler still seemed like a form letter -- but it was at least a relevent response to the question.]
I find it particulary annoying when people use what I call the 'license plate' passwords -- if you know what the mnemonic is, the password makes sense, but it's difficult to consistently go from the mnemonic to the password --
- !4m32s@y -> Not for me to say -> !4me2say
- !4us2d0 -> Not for us to do -> !4us2do
(yes, I worked with some people who were rather negative)Personally, I was working on a program for generation of passwords from fortune, so that things are handled consistently, but I've stalled the idea until I get get it to use a significantly larger basis for the mnemonics (as if you knew the source of the mnemonics, and the rules for generating passwords, it's just as easy to brute force as a dictionary attack)
The 'DatabaseConnect' function didn't return anything.
Not a big deal, really, but they probably should have trapped that, as it could happen for any number of reasons (database down, authentication failed, etc).
I find that I'm getting much slower when I write programs these days -- because I'm checking errors for those things that I would've just blown off, or not have thought about in my earlier days.
[there's a few different things that could be done to this -- but I don't know why they're calling DatabaseConnect both at lines 16 and 19, so it would be careless of me to recommend a solution to code that I don't fully understand, and can't see the whole context]
There are good power cords (12ga and heavier; 12ga extenders; anything 3m and longer; anything 50cm and shorter; the IBM power cables that don't block the plug; right angle connectors) and then there are the run-of-the-mill crap you get with everything you buy -- 16 or 18 guage, between 1.5 and 2 meters long)
If you buy a rack from Sun, it comes with power in it... but they insist on sending you one or two power cables for each item that goes in it. So you buy a 36U rack, you're probably going to be getting 18+ power cables along with it. The only good thing is, copper can be sold for scrap -- cut the ends off first, and you'll get a slightly better price per pound.
But make sure to save the extenders -- They come in damned handy when you have to rearrange a rack to compress down space, and your management won't approve downtime. With two good extenders, a machine lift, and a system with multiple power taps, [not redundant power supplies -- redundant power taps -- the sun x000 and x500 series sucks for that], and a spare 50' ethernet cable, you can move quite far, just have to keep moving the power connections. [if it's got a SCSI disk pack attached, well, you can still slide stuff up/down in the rack]
R&D is what keeps a company from becoming stagnant, and having to try to find new ways to squeeze money out of what it has. [For those companies that sell a tangible, especially a tangible disposable product, it's not as big of a deal].
... for short term, you focus on advertising, to try to convince everyone that you have a superior product, as opposed to actually making a superior product, and waiting for people to come to you]
But to remain profitable in the long term, you diversify -- so you're not as likely to take a massive downfall from a single competing company. And you try to find new products and solutions, to improve what offerings you have (that whole concept of innovation).
Google's got their IPO coming, so they'll have a nice little bit of cash to work with to improve their chances of continuing their current rate of growth. [however, they're looking at long term growth, not short term
Any company with a big R&D section would have some form of review process for projects -- if things change, you might shelve a project, and reassign people, because you're not sure if it's going to be as profitable as you originally thought. Depending on the field, you might have some board meeting every 3-12 months to review the current projects, and reassign resources, to make sure you don't stretch your resources too thin, and to identify which projects could benefit from extra funding.
I knew a cop, who about 5-6 years ago, had started using a digital recorder for taking notes -- he had trained Naturally Speaking, and the device had a clean enough recording that when he got back to the office, he'd play back it back to his computer --
A quick review to make sure it had transcribed cleanly, and he was done.
I'm guessing the software's gotten better since then, and the various recorders have gotten more memory, as well. With an iPod, it's not going to be cheap, but it's small, and it'll hold hours of dictation.
However, table and field names are bound by other rules, so you can throw an error if it contains any illegal characters:Of course, I didn't like that I was tied into using a particular database by the function calls, either -- I guess I've gotten spoiled with DBI in Perl.
They're getting energy from what was considered to be a waste product. If they weren't doing this, we would have to make larger nuclear power plants, or whatever other form of energy product you feel is acceptable for the environment.
This is a win-win situation, for those involved -- they de-water the waste, compact the waste for easier removal, and get energy back in the process to help offset the operational costs for the process.
For those who didn't take sewage treatment classes in college, there are four main types of setting -- type 1 is for things that accelerate from gravity (sticks, rocks, etc), type 2 is things that floculate (clump together as they're falling), type 3 and 4 are not typically done in a water treatment plant as they don't happen quickly enough. So, what they do is syphon off the 'mostly' clean water at the top, and dump the sludge at the bottom... but the sludge at the bottom is still mostly water, which is heavy, and bulky. Depending on the area, they'll spread it out to dry in the sun, or use anaerobic digestion (such as in the bottom of a pond), to get it to compress further.
And let's not forget that composted manure makes great fertilizer, which the farmer might otherwise be buying for the plants that go into feeding the cow. It's all just an example of a nice little ecosystem.
I've never personally used it, but I've noticed what seemed to be a large number of security issues found in the product at a time when I was doing a security audit of a system that was using it.
That's not to say that the other CMS systems don't have their own security problems, and I know the couple that I've written probably had their own issues, but I didn't pull a Matt Wright [of FormMail fame] and go distributing crappy software all over the place, either.
Nuke Security seems to have some information about securing various versions of PHPNuke.
Sudo is intended to grant access to specific programs to users. Typically, it's used when there is a specific set of tasks that a user, or group of user may need to perform.
/etc/sudoers file.
It's been increasing used as a form of alternative for root -- there is no root password, and a user must come in through their own account, and sudo commands.
I'm personally okay with that, as if the person is 'root', they can do any damned thing they want on the box. If you don't want them to do things, don't give them root. If you have junior level folks, that you don't trust, then you should give them a specific list of commands that they can use in the
I'm using Mac OS X, and I use 'sudo sh' all the time, because there are some things that you simply can't do, or can't do easily with sudo. Most notably, when you're trying to manipulate files that are in directories that a basic user doesn't have read or execute on. [/var/spool/clientmqueue comes to mind]
You should vet all people before they get root access. You should know if they're the type of people who are going to attempt to bypass the security of the systems, and violate the policies and procedures that you've established. If you can't trust them to not do that, then how can you trust them to administer the box in the first place?
If you're in the sort of place that actually needs a higher level of accountability, you're going to have syslogs going to both a local and remote line printer, a centralized log server, and a whole bunch of automated monitoring of the systems -- you'll know if someone is trying to duck out of their commands getting logged, and they'll be fired on the spot.
I'm doing IT for a group of solar physicists, and we're running a rather high percentage of Macs. [I'd say over 50% of the physical systems, with Suns and Alphas coming in roughly tied for second, with Intel based systems a distant fourth].
With 64bit macs, I'm guessing they're going to get an even stronger foothold, especially as we look at the G5 XServe [which if procurement ever gets right, might actually come in sometime this year].