It has everything to do with the behavior of static electricity. What were you taught as a kid, should you find yourself in a lightning storm?
Get out in the open. Stay away from trees.
Ever look at a lightning rod?
Static electricity collects at points. The overall lack of geographic features over the ocean pretty much negates most opportunities for static charges to balance themselves between earth and sky, without any points to collect at.
Environments are important. You could be a crack hack wizard and still suck because of distractions.
The first and foremost important piece of your work environment is your chair. Make sure it's something you can be comfortable in for hours at a time, especially when coding. Get your feet off the floor and onto something. I personally use a high back leather chair and matching footstool. Medically, having your feet dangling or poorly supported for long periods of time is bad for you. Make sure you can lean back in your chair, and you're not working hunched over.
Match your chair to your desk, with regard to height. Find a working position between the two that's comfortable, or work out a way to get your keyboard lower. Ergonomics, while froofy, aren't a joke.
Noise suppression. If you're a coder, get some good noise cancellation going. Background noise reduction cuts down on a lot of distractions. Even if you're not pumping music into it, having your ears covered will quickly become a sign to people that you're busy. Train the mammals to send email instead of pop into your cube. I personally use Sony's noise reduction earbuds, which by shape alone are a functional earplug.
Lighting is important. I've had several cases of janitor combat by disengaging overhead flourescents in favor of a gentle incandescent lamp. Don't work in the dark, though. Hormonally, humans (and other diurnal creatures (this excludes Solaris admins)) are stimulated into various modes by light levels. One argument you'll be presented with should you decide to tamper with overheads is 'Safety Reasons'. Don't let this slide. It's YOUR work environment. Ground level strip lighting is just as effective, and less intrusive. Use indirect lighting where possible.
If you're in a heavy corporate environment, it's entirely plausible that certain management types will immediately single you out as a deviant, so use caution.
Some ammunition:
Oklahoma State Doc on Ergonomics and Environments: This is a good common sense doc about computer heavy work environments. You can draft a simple checklist based on the contents to see how your work environs stack up.
This document points out something important: OSHA does NOT have a standing (read: enforcable) ruling or standard for computer operation environments. Your employer can simply tell you to take a hike and get away with it. In some cases, I'd say take this up with HR, or rally your like minded coworkers, but given that most corporate HR teams simply don't give a damn, caveat emptor.
In any case, do some homework before embarking on this quest. If nothing else, present it in simple financial terms. Personally controlled light environments tend to be less expensive to maintain than mass overhead lighting. No ladders required, less maintenance impact. Lights turned off when cubes are vacated at beer o' clock serve as pro-active energy management.
Single user monitor lamps, like these from Think Geek ($29.99 each) work very well. They did their homework about lighting advantages, as well. This brings cubespace lighting down from the ceiling and into the cube.
The drawback to this, and one of the first things managers (and site security) like to point out, is the reduced light level for the rest of the office. It's a perfectly valid argument, and generally brings lighting wars to a screaming halt. This can be replied to with something simple and inexpensive, like these Mini Lights, which would sit well on the exterior of any cube wall, illuminating the aisle.
As for general office lighting a few well placed torchiere style lamps (check your lamp types, though. Some suck more power than others) provide excellent indirect lighting.
1. Acquire keg of beer popular among your group of introverts. Declare a standing keg rule: No one pulls their own draft.
2. Nothing gets people together like a common enemy. Shove a couple at each other, and see how they bond by calling you names.
3. Utter "Boba Fett is lame." See premise of #2.
4. Slyly mention that the hot secretary is studying I/COBOL.
5. Instead of name tags, label people by their choice of editor. Let the ridicule begin.
6. Variant on #5: Label by choice of OS. Hand out Nerf Bats.
7. Indian Poker: #6, applied to foreheads without them knowing what the label says. The goal is now to really get someone's ass beat. (AOS/VS is the trump play.)
8. Set up a (Game Cube|XBox|PS2) or four. Have competitions.
9. Your favorite and mine, Spin the DIMM-Module!
10. Counter-Strike Counter-Strike Counter-Strike. (Silly rabbit, Quake is for kids!)
11. Vodka shots. Declare that first puker gets a weeks bonus PTO. (Deny requests to use it in the event of hangover, however. For suffering to be truly effective, it must be enjoyed by others.)
12. CP/M Trivial Pursuit!
13. Strippers. The aggressive kind. You know, Bambi the Leather Terminator.
There's a handful of important things to consider when assessing a colocation facility. Major questions to ask the sales droids:
Connectivity. How many providers bring connectivity into the facility? - Companies like Exodus have no small amount of their own backbone, but other companies, like Equinix, bring in large pipes from multiple providers, making it much akin to having colo right on a peering point. Having direct access to multiple providers gives you room to negotiate for the levels of service you need, and can provide.
How is connectivity delivered? - Basically, how many fiber entrances into the facility? Will a single fiber cut or repeater failure blind you to the rest of the network?
Can you get out-of-band circuits or facilities? - Out-of-band could mean a T1 into the back end of your colo cage, or something as simple as a dial-in to a console server.
How does the company handle peering, routing, and traffic engineering? - How is their reputation, in a nutshell? Check around, see what other networking companies think of them. Now more than ever, intelligent routing companies are getting into the mix and really leveraging multiple peer environments (Equinix is one colo space that is doing this).
Two: Power and Environment What kind of backup power is available? - It's common to have a online UPS through which all power flows. In the event of a brownout or power failure, your hardware should never know.
On the outside of that UPS should be two power feeds: City power, and generator backup.
How often is preventative maintenance performed on backup equipment? - Sounds extreme, but it's important. Companies like GlobalCenter performed weekly/biweekly tests of all generator facilities.
In the event of an extended outage, what is the colo company's fuel situation for diesel backups? - Don't laugh. Some generators can power facilities for a couple hours or more. For a widespread failure (Like the PG&E debacle in the Bay area a few years back), is there a process in place to make sure a fuel truck will arrive on time?
Average maintained temperature within the facility? - Some devices just don't like room temperatures. If you're running big servers, ask your engineers what your environment requirements are. The differences across platforms are significant.
Security: What's the reputation of the site security team? - Big dirty question. I've done a lot of work in a lot of facilities, and it will shock and astound you how far you can go with a little knowledge and a forked tongue. Companies won't be quick to fess up to famous failures, but people who work there might. Make the sales droid bring an engineer, and shush the droid when you ask this question.
Access limitations? - When can you get in? Who can you get in? Who controls site access? What happens when your liaison departs the company (yours or theirs)? What happens when someone tries to get in without proper credentials?
- True story. I didn't have access to a facility, and had to have my boss call in to approve it. Approval was done over the phone. Anyone else see where the grease can go here?
How is equipment access and movement controlled? - Signed in and out with notation of serial numbers OR MAC ADDRESSES, hopefully. Who did it, when they did it, where it came from or where they put it. Log of event emailed to liaison at the time, would be nice, but probably too much to ask for. Cook your SLA well.
Support: Can you get remote hands in the facility? - It happens. You reboot a machine, it doesn't come back up. You're in Turkey, the box is in LA. Can you get a console to it to identify the error in the short term? These are often rolled in to sales agreements or SLAs.
How long does it take to get support?
- Do you call a call center or a tech center? How long does it take for them to find your information? How much longer to get someone on the problem? Time means money. Your money.
How does their escalation process work? - Escalation is a big magic word. I've personally been involved in shaking a union president out of bed to get more techs on a sonet ring turn up, after we ran out of escalation levels with the telco. Know what happens when things are broken and people aren't getting things done. Mention rebates to the sales droid and watch them squirm.
Do they do their own post mortem work? - It's the day after a night full of fast hacks and dirty reassembly in the wake of a power failure or peering outage, or anything else that's clearly the provider's fault. Who calls first thing the next morning, you or them?
I'm not going to get into things like uptime gaurantees and network security, because those are joint responsibility areas. If you're relying on the provider to account for all your uptime, you're already missing the point of it.
Hope this helps. If you're doing something big and scary and have other questions, I may consult. Email me.
When you look at the subnet mask for a network, say 255.255.255.0 for a Class C, break it up into the appropriate bit segments:
255 255 255 0 converted to hex is FF FF FF 00. Each value of FF is 8 bits. 255.255.255.0 is a 24 bit mask, or/24. 255.255.0.0 is a 16 bit mask, or/16. 255.0.0.0 is an 8 bit mask, or/8. A single host mask of 255.255.255.255 is a 32 bit mask, or/32.
You can determine the size of a network block (or subnet) by subtracting the bitmask from the maximum possible value (FF FF FF FF). A/24 would contain 256 ips. A/30 would contain 4. A/23 is two class C's, but a/22 is four. I leave the math as an exercise because I'm poor at it.
The question is begging, and I'm surprised a troll hasn't nailed it yet. Why start on NT and port to Unix, especially in light of MS's recent vow to hide security holes instead of fix them?
For an energy management system, security should always be a prime factor in any design. I'm not trying to smash down NT as an insecure system, but given the sheer number of factors you simply may not be able to account for, is this tactic wise?
I'm curious to know how long the security debate was in choosing NT devel first over Unix.
I think a better clarification to say that portions of the network were simply owned by military research facilities. ARPA/DARPA was research labs holding hands and singing a binary chorus. That doesn't mean it was all private sector and universities.
You're close to right, that IS possible. The problem is, that someone has had the block allocated to them. It's a simple lookup to the IRRdb or various other registry's to find the owner of the block and contact them. It *is*, however, a pretty damn sneaky move, which fully thwarts the most common tool used to identify a spam source: traceroute.
As far as the IPv6 issue, a lot will depend purely on accounting: How is address space issued? Do you get an IP with your driver's license?
Accountability will be everything, at that point. IPv4, as it's designed, is based on trust. America, as it's designed, is based on civil disobediance. Stop laughing, I'm serious.
Okay, first off, slow down. I actually know of some of the people involved in that article. Odds are, your intuition is right: They simply used the source address IP data and nothing more. It's fairly simple to get that from a mail server without compromising any of the actual mail content.
The ArborNetwork's crew is as white hat as they come.
Consider the source they used for their data: Routing tables. Aside from announcing the main superblock that says 'Hey, I have these IPs', looking at a full routing table to find out where blocks really wind up isn't effective. I actually had this discussion with a colleague a few days ago. They may announce it, but that doesn't mean it's reachable.
The report cites.mil and broadband land as the largest 'offenders', for lack of a better term. Personally, I could care less if.mil hosts aren't world reachable. By and large, I know for a fact there's a lot that exist that you simply can't get to, or wouldn't want to anyway.
As far as broadband goes, as well as large NSPs, consider how much address space is simply lost to breaking/24's up into/30's for interface numbering. Doing this produces a herd of four IP subnets. You immediately lose two IPs to Network Address and Broadcast, leaving you with two usable IPs, one for each end of the numbered interface, against 254 for a full Class C allocation. Do the math, and that's 64 point-to-point circuits.
Companies like Cisco and Unisphere sport routers capable of numbering interfaces in the THOUSANDS. Even making efficient use of IPs when numbering ATM topologies (common for DSL implementations), you're still losing one IP per interface, in addition to whatever small block is allotted to the customer on the other end. In most cases, every hop you see in a traceroute is one IP of a four ip subnet (exceptions would be LAN topology based peers or transits). For the purposes of security, or simplicity, providers may simply choose to not announce routes to IP space allocated for interface use. Inside their own networks, interior protocols like IGP, ISIS and OSPF can handle local delivery, but the world doesn't really need to know how to throw packets at a router's interfaces.
Cable modems are less guilty of this than most, since they tend to allocate two or four class C superblocks to a neighborhood and mask them accordingly.
About the point-to-point connection, wont the gain on the antenna you would need to run miles and miles place you outside of the boundaries set for unlicensed use?
Nope. You could bounce that signal off the moon and still recieve with a decent acceptable antenna. Then again, so could everyone else.
Good thing I only cite it as an example of available tech. I did note that it was a bit pricey, as well.
As far as alternatives, you could build a small herd of boxes for the cost of a 4GB Rocket Drive using available boards that can hold multiple gigabytes of RAM (good discussion over at TweakMax).
Question: Is it possible to software RAID networked file systems? If yes, how feasible is it to have a RAID based NFS network?
Caveats: What do you do with all the processor power? =)
I see your point, but I have to agree with the other folks chiming in on this thread. The latency for an equivalant throughput RAID is gonna be a hit. Usefulness of any RAM disk will lie wholly in implementation requirements.
80-100MB/s throughput is a damn lot of Muppet Porn, or at the very least, phat Amiga warez.;)
Okay, consider the biggest asset of a RAM disk: Speed.
One of the single best applications for this would be for dynamic content or database storage. Look at Google. Unless I'm mistaken, do they not store the bulk of their search engine database in memory, and not just on disk? What if Slashdot ran in this fashion? Any web site, for that matter, would benefit greatly from serving dynamic content from a RAM based file system. Transparent intermediate web caches, anyone? What about hugely active file servers?
Solid state, for those unfamiliar or new to the term, means no moving parts. That's less wear, less heat, and lower energy draw. Coupled with faster access times, and safe data protection methods (like Cenetek sports), and it's a win/win situation for the right implementation.
Cenatek seems to be on a good track with these. They offer a PCI card with a handful of DIMM slots, a slap on rechargable battery panel, which holds enough power to run a connected hard drive of appropriate size which will dump the contents of what is essentially a RAM disk, in the event of a shutdown or power loss. A little spendy still, for consumer use, but to see something like this backend busy websites, or store database file structures would be pretty slick.
Oh, don't even get me started. I'm still pissed about my post about the epoch timestamp tacking on a digit, which was, I felt, marginally more important than the 'Search for the best programmable remote control'.
I reiterate: Slashdot is not real news. It's a Nintendo with a web interface. If it was real news, little things like 'journalistic integrity', and not rampant yellow journalism, would prevail.
I didn't mean to imply that people who watch Nascar are stupid. I meant to imply that people who watch Nascar typically couldn't care less about the theoretical physics behind hull polarization, focused beam implementations, or discussions about FTL travel. All things considered, I'm a redneck. I come from a small (mostly farming, some military) town, I've cow tipped, and I can drink most people silly without feeling a thing.
Again, I'm not making a stupid redneck joke. I'm differentiating between those interested in starcraft, as opposed to more common feats of engineering.
If I was making a redneck joke, I'd have pointed out that none of the shuttles seem to have gunracks.
First off, I am not a lawyer, but:
Yes, those statements are binding and legal, because they serve as a warning to you, unless the license agreement or terms of use is non-accessible. If you click through a license agreement without understanding what you are agreeing to, you are still bound by it. It's like signing any document without reading it.
The difference most people don't get is that since there isn't a physical signature, there must be no real agreement, right? Wrong. Any web site you go to with that kind of intro will laugh in your face if you complain or attempt to sue based on content within, because in order to see it, you had to agree to the terms of use. If you didn't take the time to read them, that's your own damn fault.
I made a post a couple weeks ago that led off with an exercise in copyright law. It read that by reading the rest of my post, all users agreed not to respond under the guise of AC, and by doing so violated the terms of use, and authorized me to request information from this website and their isp in order to determine their identity. Is it legal? Sure, you couldn't read the rest of the post without agreeing to it, and you know what? Not a single AC replied. Now, like EULAs, is it really enforcable? Could I have grabbed a lawyer and gone the last mile? Remains to be seen.
Slobbering geek or not, this incarnation of Gene Roddenberry's creation is going to have some close ties to modern space technology, in both historical snapshots to support the entire storyline, as well as 'sneak previews' of existing technologies taken to new theoretical heights. I'd thank you to stop trampling on what may prove to be, in time, a heatsink for creativity and something else to stimulate the minds of the generations that are in desperate need of it.
Absolutely, we're going to discuss the physics, the application, the blunders, the holes, the brilliance, and, well, the cleavage. Why? Because this interests us. If it doesn't interest you, you go right ahead and flip back to Nascar.
At the risk of tipping my hand as a science fiction nut, something of a grounded take on the specific bits of science at hand here:
The failed 'hull plating', as pointed out, is applied active polarization. My guess would be a hull structure configured in such a way as to have active channels that can be charged to induce and encourage energy distribution in a controlled manner, so as to facilitate the dispersion/disruption of focused beam attacks.
In response to other chunks of this thread, a structural integrity field is an electromagnetic field designed to interact with various components of the super/infrastructure, to increase 'cohesion' of the whole by literally pulling them together all the time.\
Both of these items are staples of science fiction, and have solid grounding in applied theory.
Slashdot is not a real news site. If it was, things would have to be presented in a clear, unbiased manner, for the sake of journalistic integrity. Criteria for what makes it on the front page isn't clear, because unless it's pro-linux, anti-microsoft, or involves a toy or game, it won't get posted.
Slashdot itself is a toy. That will never change unless the ethics behind what gets posted, and how, do.
I can cite several good examples, but I don't really care.
Do you personally feel that we should forget about what happened? I think we should all be reminded every day about what these cowards did to the United States, in hopes of rallying the troops, so to speak, against the perpetraitors.
I'm glad to see another viewpoint in the same vein as mine.
After the emotional rollercoaster that was yesterday, a group of us went out en masse to unwind over beer. Our first stop, an Atlanta restaurant/lounge called Mumbo Jumbo, sported not a single television. This was something of a respite, having spent our morning and days surrounded by streaming video on large screens. Six hundred dollars of bar tab later, we moved on to a brewhouse up the street, which had multiple TVs. For a while, a group of us sat outside. After a bit, most of us migrated back in to commune and discuss. Occasionally someone would grab someone else's chin, turn the head, and say "Let it go," but it's a horribly unsimple task. The historic cry of 'Remember the Alamo' crawls to the surface, horribly apropo.
The first few days, we as a country will take the time to save those who were wounded, free those who are trapped, and pray for those who have died.
When the smoke has settled, we as a country will mourn. I myself will be wearing a black armband during this period, and I hope others will do the same. The injured and families of the fallen need to see and know that we support them, and that we care. It may not speed the healing, and it will not erase the scars, but the repairs will be stronger for it.
When the mourning is done, things will change. As a country, we've gotten lax. I travel pretty regularly, and I have no doubt that several of my standard carry on items (such as my Gerber Multitool) will be moved to my luggage. Security inspections will be tougher. Time to travel will be increased.
The coming months will be difficult as things are sorted out. There will be arguments about privacy, and increased pushes for surveillance technologies that could have prevented this. There are many facets to this that will be examined and fought over.
With recently uncovered facts, we now know how these deeds were perpetrated. No guns, no explosions. Simple hand implements and the knowledge of how to use them. Airline staff aren't combat trained, but what if they were? How could things have happened differently if people were better equipped, mentally and physically, to handle a hand to hand attack? Could you defend yourself against someone with a knife? Having studied some martial arts and sword fighting techniques, I'm glad I can say I could hold my own against an untrained attacker or even a slightly capable one.
What about support? How many people reading this are experienced enough to perform first aid or CPR? We have first hand amateur video of a brave doctor rushing into the dense dust and smoke to assist injured people at serious risk to his own life. In his running narrative, he mentions going to assist those who need help, because "he's not one of them." Finding yourself unhurt in a disaster environment, what would you do? What CAN you do?
An interview on CNN yesterday with a security expert who investigated the previous WTC bombing pointed out that this was a 'high concept' attack, as opposed to 'high tech'. We as a country are dependant upon technology to make things easier for us, to take the hard work out life. If not for the macabre aspect of the notion, I'd almost think the Amish were laughing at us now.
To paraphrase a piece of David Eddings fiction (and poorly), the United States reels from crisis to crisis like a drunken sailor. Everything is fine as long as the party is still going, and no one gets hurt. Now, in the wake of tragedy, the entire nation is galvanized into awareness of the world around them. Our populace, as a whole, has likely learned more about foreign policy and U.S. world involvement in the past two days than it has been aware of over the past two years.
Many people have likened this incident to the imfamous day of Pearl Harbor, and it's fitting only in that we are now a united people in the sister causes of mourning and vengeance. Many people I've spoken with take small comfort in knowing there will be a reprisal, and that it will be strong and it will not be forgotten.
Even now, other countries and world organizations are moving their pieces and formulating strategy to insure this doesn't happen again. When the reprisals are done, and justice is delivered, then what? What lessons will be learned and how will we apply them?
Slashdot Mirror
It has everything to do with the behavior of static electricity. What were you taught as a kid, should you find yourself in a lightning storm?
Get out in the open. Stay away from trees.
Ever look at a lightning rod?
Static electricity collects at points. The overall lack of geographic features over the ocean pretty much negates most opportunities for static charges to balance themselves between earth and sky, without any points to collect at.
Environments are important. You could be a crack hack wizard and still suck because of distractions.
The first and foremost important piece of your work environment is your chair. Make sure it's something you can be comfortable in for hours at a time, especially when coding. Get your feet off the floor and onto something. I personally use a high back leather chair and matching footstool. Medically, having your feet dangling or poorly supported for long periods of time is bad for you. Make sure you can lean back in your chair, and you're not working hunched over.
Match your chair to your desk, with regard to height. Find a working position between the two that's comfortable, or work out a way to get your keyboard lower. Ergonomics, while froofy, aren't a joke.
Noise suppression. If you're a coder, get some good noise cancellation going. Background noise reduction cuts down on a lot of distractions. Even if you're not pumping music into it, having your ears covered will quickly become a sign to people that you're busy. Train the mammals to send email instead of pop into your cube. I personally use Sony's noise reduction earbuds, which by shape alone are a functional earplug.
Lighting is important. I've had several cases of janitor combat by disengaging overhead flourescents in favor of a gentle incandescent lamp. Don't work in the dark, though. Hormonally, humans (and other diurnal creatures (this excludes Solaris admins)) are stimulated into various modes by light levels. One argument you'll be presented with should you decide to tamper with overheads is 'Safety Reasons'. Don't let this slide. It's YOUR work environment. Ground level strip lighting is just as effective, and less intrusive. Use indirect lighting where possible.
If you're in a heavy corporate environment, it's entirely plausible that certain management types will immediately single you out as a deviant, so use caution.
Some ammunition:
Oklahoma State Doc on Ergonomics and Environments: This is a good common sense doc about computer heavy work environments. You can draft a simple checklist based on the contents to see how your work environs stack up.
This document points out something important: OSHA does NOT have a standing (read: enforcable) ruling or standard for computer operation environments. Your employer can simply tell you to take a hike and get away with it. In some cases, I'd say take this up with HR, or rally your like minded coworkers, but given that most corporate HR teams simply don't give a damn, caveat emptor.
In the event your management doesn't go for it, here's a piece on combatting violence in the office.
In any case, do some homework before embarking on this quest. If nothing else, present it in simple financial terms. Personally controlled light environments tend to be less expensive to maintain than mass overhead lighting. No ladders required, less maintenance impact. Lights turned off when cubes are vacated at beer o' clock serve as pro-active energy management.
Single user monitor lamps, like these from Think Geek ($29.99 each) work very well. They did their homework about lighting advantages, as well. This brings cubespace lighting down from the ceiling and into the cube.
The drawback to this, and one of the first things managers (and site security) like to point out, is the reduced light level for the rest of the office. It's a perfectly valid argument, and generally brings lighting wars to a screaming halt. This can be replied to with something simple and inexpensive, like these Mini Lights, which would sit well on the exterior of any cube wall, illuminating the aisle.
As for general office lighting a few well placed torchiere style lamps (check your lamp types, though. Some suck more power than others) provide excellent indirect lighting.
Would spare them from the dreaded Dirty Laundry DoS attack frequently perpetrated at Customs. =)
1. Acquire keg of beer popular among your group of introverts. Declare a standing keg rule: No one pulls their own draft.
2. Nothing gets people together like a common enemy. Shove a couple at each other, and see how they bond by calling you names.
3. Utter "Boba Fett is lame." See premise of #2.
4. Slyly mention that the hot secretary is studying I/COBOL.
5. Instead of name tags, label people by their choice of editor. Let the ridicule begin.
6. Variant on #5: Label by choice of OS. Hand out Nerf Bats.
7. Indian Poker: #6, applied to foreheads without them knowing what the label says. The goal is now to really get someone's ass beat. (AOS/VS is the trump play.)
8. Set up a (Game Cube|XBox|PS2) or four. Have competitions.
9. Your favorite and mine, Spin the DIMM-Module!
10. Counter-Strike Counter-Strike Counter-Strike. (Silly rabbit, Quake is for kids!)
11. Vodka shots. Declare that first puker gets a weeks bonus PTO. (Deny requests to use it in the event of hangover, however. For suffering to be truly effective, it must be enjoyed by others.)
12. CP/M Trivial Pursuit!
13. Strippers. The aggressive kind. You know, Bambi the Leather Terminator.
14. Say "Vader could kick Gandalf's ass." See #3.
15. Anime Anime Anime!
I know it's minimal, but does anyone have any info on how much force the laser they use might exert?
Connectivity.
How many providers bring connectivity into the facility?
- Companies like Exodus have no small amount of their own backbone, but other companies, like Equinix, bring in large pipes from multiple providers, making it much akin to having colo right on a peering point. Having direct access to multiple providers gives you room to negotiate for the levels of service you need, and can provide.
How is connectivity delivered?
- Basically, how many fiber entrances into the facility? Will a single fiber cut or repeater failure blind you to the rest of the network?
Can you get out-of-band circuits or facilities?
- Out-of-band could mean a T1 into the back end of your colo cage, or something as simple as a dial-in to a console server.
How does the company handle peering, routing, and traffic engineering?
- How is their reputation, in a nutshell? Check around, see what other networking companies think of them. Now more than ever, intelligent routing companies are getting into the mix and really leveraging multiple peer environments (Equinix is one colo space that is doing this).
Two: Power and Environment
What kind of backup power is available?
- It's common to have a online UPS through which all power flows. In the event of a brownout or power failure, your hardware should never know. On the outside of that UPS should be two power feeds: City power, and generator backup.
How often is preventative maintenance performed on backup equipment?
- Sounds extreme, but it's important. Companies like GlobalCenter performed weekly/biweekly tests of all generator facilities.
In the event of an extended outage, what is the colo company's fuel situation for diesel backups?
- Don't laugh. Some generators can power facilities for a couple hours or more. For a widespread failure (Like the PG&E debacle in the Bay area a few years back), is there a process in place to make sure a fuel truck will arrive on time?
Average maintained temperature within the facility?
- Some devices just don't like room temperatures. If you're running big servers, ask your engineers what your environment requirements are. The differences across platforms are significant.
Security:
What's the reputation of the site security team?
- Big dirty question. I've done a lot of work in a lot of facilities, and it will shock and astound you how far you can go with a little knowledge and a forked tongue. Companies won't be quick to fess up to famous failures, but people who work there might. Make the sales droid bring an engineer, and shush the droid when you ask this question.
Access limitations?
- When can you get in? Who can you get in? Who controls site access? What happens when your liaison departs the company (yours or theirs)? What happens when someone tries to get in without proper credentials?
- True story. I didn't have access to a facility, and had to have my boss call in to approve it. Approval was done over the phone. Anyone else see where the grease can go here?
How is equipment access and movement controlled?
- Signed in and out with notation of serial numbers OR MAC ADDRESSES, hopefully. Who did it, when they did it, where it came from or where they put it. Log of event emailed to liaison at the time, would be nice, but probably too much to ask for. Cook your SLA well.
Support:
Can you get remote hands in the facility?
- It happens. You reboot a machine, it doesn't come back up. You're in Turkey, the box is in LA. Can you get a console to it to identify the error in the short term? These are often rolled in to sales agreements or SLAs.
How long does it take to get support?
- Do you call a call center or a tech center? How long does it take for them to find your information? How much longer to get someone on the problem? Time means money. Your money.
How does their escalation process work?
- Escalation is a big magic word. I've personally been involved in shaking a union president out of bed to get more techs on a sonet ring turn up, after we ran out of escalation levels with the telco. Know what happens when things are broken and people aren't getting things done. Mention rebates to the sales droid and watch them squirm.
Do they do their own post mortem work?
- It's the day after a night full of fast hacks and dirty reassembly in the wake of a power failure or peering outage, or anything else that's clearly the provider's fault. Who calls first thing the next morning, you or them?
I'm not going to get into things like uptime gaurantees and network security, because those are joint responsibility areas. If you're relying on the provider to account for all your uptime, you're already missing the point of it. Hope this helps. If you're doing something big and scary and have other questions, I may consult. Email me.
Okay, slash notation for subnets.
/24. 255.255.0.0 is a 16 bit mask, or /16. 255.0.0.0 is an 8 bit mask, or /8. A single host mask of 255.255.255.255 is a 32 bit mask, or /32.
/24 would contain 256 ips. A /30 would contain 4. A /23 is two class C's, but a /22 is four. I leave the math as an exercise because I'm poor at it.
When you look at the subnet mask for a network, say 255.255.255.0 for a Class C, break it up into the appropriate bit segments:
255 255 255 0 converted to hex is FF FF FF 00. Each value of FF is 8 bits. 255.255.255.0 is a 24 bit mask, or
You can determine the size of a network block (or subnet) by subtracting the bitmask from the maximum possible value (FF FF FF FF). A
The question is begging, and I'm surprised a troll hasn't nailed it yet. Why start on NT and port to Unix, especially in light of MS's recent vow to hide security holes instead of fix them?
For an energy management system, security should always be a prime factor in any design. I'm not trying to smash down NT as an insecure system, but given the sheer number of factors you simply may not be able to account for, is this tactic wise?
I'm curious to know how long the security debate was in choosing NT devel first over Unix.
I think a better clarification to say that portions of the network were simply owned by military research facilities. ARPA/DARPA was research labs holding hands and singing a binary chorus. That doesn't mean it was all private sector and universities.
You're close to right, that IS possible. The problem is, that someone has had the block allocated to them. It's a simple lookup to the IRRdb or various other registry's to find the owner of the block and contact them. It *is*, however, a pretty damn sneaky move, which fully thwarts the most common tool used to identify a spam source: traceroute.
As far as the IPv6 issue, a lot will depend purely on accounting: How is address space issued? Do you get an IP with your driver's license?
Accountability will be everything, at that point. IPv4, as it's designed, is based on trust. America, as it's designed, is based on civil disobediance. Stop laughing, I'm serious.
Okay, first off, slow down. I actually know of some of the people involved in that article. Odds are, your intuition is right: They simply used the source address IP data and nothing more. It's fairly simple to get that from a mail server without compromising any of the actual mail content.
The ArborNetwork's crew is as white hat as they come.
Consider the source they used for their data: Routing tables. Aside from announcing the main superblock that says 'Hey, I have these IPs', looking at a full routing table to find out where blocks really wind up isn't effective. I actually had this discussion with a colleague a few days ago. They may announce it, but that doesn't mean it's reachable.
.mil and broadband land as the largest 'offenders', for lack of a better term. Personally, I could care less if .mil hosts aren't world reachable. By and large, I know for a fact there's a lot that exist that you simply can't get to, or wouldn't want to anyway.
/24's up into /30's for interface numbering. Doing this produces a herd of four IP subnets. You immediately lose two IPs to Network Address and Broadcast, leaving you with two usable IPs, one for each end of the numbered interface, against 254 for a full Class C allocation. Do the math, and that's 64 point-to-point circuits.
The report cites
As far as broadband goes, as well as large NSPs, consider how much address space is simply lost to breaking
Companies like Cisco and Unisphere sport routers capable of numbering interfaces in the THOUSANDS. Even making efficient use of IPs when numbering ATM topologies (common for DSL implementations), you're still losing one IP per interface, in addition to whatever small block is allotted to the customer on the other end. In most cases, every hop you see in a traceroute is one IP of a four ip subnet (exceptions would be LAN topology based peers or transits). For the purposes of security, or simplicity, providers may simply choose to not announce routes to IP space allocated for interface use. Inside their own networks, interior protocols like IGP, ISIS and OSPF can handle local delivery, but the world doesn't really need to know how to throw packets at a router's interfaces.
Cable modems are less guilty of this than most, since they tend to allocate two or four class C superblocks to a neighborhood and mask them accordingly.
Nope. You could bounce that signal off the moon and still recieve with a decent acceptable antenna. Then again, so could everyone else.
Good thing I only cite it as an example of available tech. I did note that it was a bit pricey, as well.
As far as alternatives, you could build a small herd of boxes for the cost of a 4GB Rocket Drive using available boards that can hold multiple gigabytes of RAM (good discussion over at TweakMax).
Question: Is it possible to software RAID networked file systems? If yes, how feasible is it to have a RAID based NFS network?
Caveats: What do you do with all the processor power? =)
I see your point, but I have to agree with the other folks chiming in on this thread. The latency for an equivalant throughput RAID is gonna be a hit. Usefulness of any RAM disk will lie wholly in implementation requirements.
;)
80-100MB/s throughput is a damn lot of Muppet Porn, or at the very least, phat Amiga warez.
Okay, consider the biggest asset of a RAM disk: Speed.
One of the single best applications for this would be for dynamic content or database storage. Look at Google. Unless I'm mistaken, do they not store the bulk of their search engine database in memory, and not just on disk? What if Slashdot ran in this fashion? Any web site, for that matter, would benefit greatly from serving dynamic content from a RAM based file system. Transparent intermediate web caches, anyone? What about hugely active file servers?
Solid state, for those unfamiliar or new to the term, means no moving parts. That's less wear, less heat, and lower energy draw. Coupled with faster access times, and safe data protection methods (like Cenetek sports), and it's a win/win situation for the right implementation.
(heh. oops.)
Cenatek seems to be on a good track with these. They offer a PCI card with a handful of DIMM slots, a slap on rechargable battery panel, which holds enough power to run a connected hard drive of appropriate size which will dump the contents of what is essentially a RAM disk, in the event of a shutdown or power loss. A little spendy still, for consumer use, but to see something like this backend busy websites, or store database file structures would be pretty slick.
Oh, don't even get me started. I'm still pissed about my post about the epoch timestamp tacking on a digit, which was, I felt, marginally more important than the 'Search for the best programmable remote control'.
I reiterate: Slashdot is not real news. It's a Nintendo with a web interface. If it was real news, little things like 'journalistic integrity', and not rampant yellow journalism, would prevail.
What, no commentary from the crew of Voyager: Flying Toilet?
You'd think they'd violate the Prime Directive to at least put an end to Windows XP.
I didn't mean to imply that people who watch Nascar are stupid. I meant to imply that people who watch Nascar typically couldn't care less about the theoretical physics behind hull polarization, focused beam implementations, or discussions about FTL travel. All things considered, I'm a redneck. I come from a small (mostly farming, some military) town, I've cow tipped, and I can drink most people silly without feeling a thing.
Again, I'm not making a stupid redneck joke. I'm differentiating between those interested in starcraft, as opposed to more common feats of engineering.
If I was making a redneck joke, I'd have pointed out that none of the shuttles seem to have gunracks.
First off, I am not a lawyer, but:
Yes, those statements are binding and legal, because they serve as a warning to you, unless the license agreement or terms of use is non-accessible. If you click through a license agreement without understanding what you are agreeing to, you are still bound by it. It's like signing any document without reading it.
The difference most people don't get is that since there isn't a physical signature, there must be no real agreement, right? Wrong. Any web site you go to with that kind of intro will laugh in your face if you complain or attempt to sue based on content within, because in order to see it, you had to agree to the terms of use. If you didn't take the time to read them, that's your own damn fault.
I made a post a couple weeks ago that led off with an exercise in copyright law. It read that by reading the rest of my post, all users agreed not to respond under the guise of AC, and by doing so violated the terms of use, and authorized me to request information from this website and their isp in order to determine their identity. Is it legal? Sure, you couldn't read the rest of the post without agreeing to it, and you know what? Not a single AC replied. Now, like EULAs, is it really enforcable? Could I have grabbed a lawyer and gone the last mile? Remains to be seen.
Slobbering geek or not, this incarnation of Gene Roddenberry's creation is going to have some close ties to modern space technology, in both historical snapshots to support the entire storyline, as well as 'sneak previews' of existing technologies taken to new theoretical heights. I'd thank you to stop trampling on what may prove to be, in time, a heatsink for creativity and something else to stimulate the minds of the generations that are in desperate need of it.
Absolutely, we're going to discuss the physics, the application, the blunders, the holes, the brilliance, and, well, the cleavage. Why? Because this interests us. If it doesn't interest you, you go right ahead and flip back to Nascar.
At the risk of tipping my hand as a science fiction nut, something of a grounded take on the specific bits of science at hand here:
The failed 'hull plating', as pointed out, is applied active polarization. My guess would be a hull structure configured in such a way as to have active channels that can be charged to induce and encourage energy distribution in a controlled manner, so as to facilitate the dispersion/disruption of focused beam attacks.
In response to other chunks of this thread, a structural integrity field is an electromagnetic field designed to interact with various components of the super/infrastructure, to increase 'cohesion' of the whole by literally pulling them together all the time.\
Both of these items are staples of science fiction, and have solid grounding in applied theory.
Slashdot is not a real news site. If it was, things would have to be presented in a clear, unbiased manner, for the sake of journalistic integrity. Criteria for what makes it on the front page isn't clear, because unless it's pro-linux, anti-microsoft, or involves a toy or game, it won't get posted.
Slashdot itself is a toy. That will never change unless the ethics behind what gets posted, and how, do.
I can cite several good examples, but I don't really care.
Do you personally feel that we should forget about what happened? I think we should all be reminded every day about what these cowards did to the United States, in hopes of rallying the troops, so to speak, against the perpetraitors.
I'm glad to see another viewpoint in the same vein as mine.
After the emotional rollercoaster that was yesterday, a group of us went out en masse to unwind over beer. Our first stop, an Atlanta restaurant/lounge called Mumbo Jumbo, sported not a single television. This was something of a respite, having spent our morning and days surrounded by streaming video on large screens. Six hundred dollars of bar tab later, we moved on to a brewhouse up the street, which had multiple TVs. For a while, a group of us sat outside. After a bit, most of us migrated back in to commune and discuss. Occasionally someone would grab someone else's chin, turn the head, and say "Let it go," but it's a horribly unsimple task. The historic cry of 'Remember the Alamo' crawls to the surface, horribly apropo.
The first few days, we as a country will take the time to save those who were wounded, free those who are trapped, and pray for those who have died.
When the smoke has settled, we as a country will mourn. I myself will be wearing a black armband during this period, and I hope others will do the same. The injured and families of the fallen need to see and know that we support them, and that we care. It may not speed the healing, and it will not erase the scars, but the repairs will be stronger for it.
When the mourning is done, things will change. As a country, we've gotten lax. I travel pretty regularly, and I have no doubt that several of my standard carry on items (such as my Gerber Multitool) will be moved to my luggage. Security inspections will be tougher. Time to travel will be increased.
The coming months will be difficult as things are sorted out. There will be arguments about privacy, and increased pushes for surveillance technologies that could have prevented this. There are many facets to this that will be examined and fought over.
With recently uncovered facts, we now know how these deeds were perpetrated. No guns, no explosions. Simple hand implements and the knowledge of how to use them. Airline staff aren't combat trained, but what if they were? How could things have happened differently if people were better equipped, mentally and physically, to handle a hand to hand attack? Could you defend yourself against someone with a knife? Having studied some martial arts and sword fighting techniques, I'm glad I can say I could hold my own against an untrained attacker or even a slightly capable one.
What about support? How many people reading this are experienced enough to perform first aid or CPR? We have first hand amateur video of a brave doctor rushing into the dense dust and smoke to assist injured people at serious risk to his own life. In his running narrative, he mentions going to assist those who need help, because "he's not one of them." Finding yourself unhurt in a disaster environment, what would you do? What CAN you do?
An interview on CNN yesterday with a security expert who investigated the previous WTC bombing pointed out that this was a 'high concept' attack, as opposed to 'high tech'. We as a country are dependant upon technology to make things easier for us, to take the hard work out life. If not for the macabre aspect of the notion, I'd almost think the Amish were laughing at us now.
To paraphrase a piece of David Eddings fiction (and poorly), the United States reels from crisis to crisis like a drunken sailor. Everything is fine as long as the party is still going, and no one gets hurt. Now, in the wake of tragedy, the entire nation is galvanized into awareness of the world around them. Our populace, as a whole, has likely learned more about foreign policy and U.S. world involvement in the past two days than it has been aware of over the past two years.
Many people have likened this incident to the imfamous day of Pearl Harbor, and it's fitting only in that we are now a united people in the sister causes of mourning and vengeance. Many people I've spoken with take small comfort in knowing there will be a reprisal, and that it will be strong and it will not be forgotten.
Even now, other countries and world organizations are moving their pieces and formulating strategy to insure this doesn't happen again. When the reprisals are done, and justice is delivered, then what? What lessons will be learned and how will we apply them?