I've been looking for a 1U, non x86, low power server (ie designed to run 24/7, have proper cooling, gige, multiple disks etc) for quite some time... I read about various ARM servers as well as the chinese loongson mips based boards, and have been reading about them regularly for a couple of years now...
And what do all these things have in common? None of them are actually available to purchase anywhere!
I have frequently washed regular keyboards in this way... So long as you leave it a long time to dry (usually overnight in the boiler closet) they work just fine afterwards. Considering how cheap keyboards are, i saw nothing to lose by washing it and having already bought a new one, now had a spare.
Pretty much any security products only work if they're not well known... Once something becomes well known, people will research efficient methods of circumvention and soon that knowledge will become widespread.
Of course, this runs against the goal of any business trying to sell such a product, since they want it to become as widespread as possible in order to sell as much as they can.
Even a security system that calls the police is not flawless, if its over sensitive (or a criminal can trigger a false alarm easily without breaking in) and not an exceptionally high value target, then the police will soon get sick of coming out and start ignoring the alarms. Similarly, the police response time gives you a window of opportunity in which to commit your crime.
Some of the lights out boards are linux based (eg the old sun ones on the v20z servers run on an embedded ppc linux)... The Soekris comBIOS is not open source.
Personally i only block ads which i find obnoxious...
Any popups Excessive animation Any sound Forced unskippable video watching Pointless ads, eg advertising something that i cannot (legally) obtain because of where i live
If ads are unintrusive, i have no problem with them
Unfortunately, you can't sell "simplicity" as a product, most (generally not very clued up) people want complex because they think the added complexity means its somehow more valuable. As a result, we have entire industries geared up to adding layer upon layer of extra complexity to "secure" your network, any of which could contain an exploitable vulnerability.
It's not enabled by default because it would spam your logs if you loaded it on a box (or vm) that didn't actually have the serial ports present...
On the other hand, its trivially turned on or enabled from the bootloader... And i don't believe BSD has serial consoles enabled by default any more than linux does, its only systems like Solaris which are pretty much expected to be used with only a serial console, and comes supplied with hardware that always has one.
Serial console use has always been uncommon on x86, due to the traditional lack of firmware access via serial and the fact that windows seems not to support serial consoles at all. Personally i always use a lights out card on my servers, with serial access (because its MUCH faster than sending video over the network and doesnt require any nonstandard clients).
If you do that, then you only have serial access while the OS is running... You need firmware redirection, or a lights out card. I would never buy a server without lights out, it has its own ip which i can ssh to and get a virtual serial console which also provides access to the firmware.
There are already numerous better tools for viewing, creating and editing pdf files than acrobat... And yet many people still think pdf is a proprietary format that requires acrobat, and there are many websites carrying pdf files which even try to advertise this false information.
I have even seen mac and linux users, who generally have a far superior pdf viewer installed by default, using acrobat... Never understood why.
It's not better tools we need, its better awareness that these tools exist.
Also even if these viewers are just as insecure, simply having diversity will improve things massively.
Let the school do what it's intended for, and educate the kids on how to use the internet safely...
If you setup a strict filtering policy it will never be perfect, and people will still come across content they aren't meant to see, or as mentioned in the summary they will make dangerous levels of information available to the public via sites like facebook. Also you will always get a few kids who will actively try to bypass the filter, being told no is the biggest motivator for some kids (i was one of those).
Another thing to consider, is while you can try to protect them from potential dangers on the internet while they're on campus, all you are really doing is leaving them less prepared for the real world. They won't consider that you were trying to protect them, they will just think you were trying to restrict them, and when they find themselves with access to an unfiltered internet connection they will encounter and/or seek out all manner of content.
So the key is education... And that's what a school is supposed to do, prepare kids for what they will encounter in the real world, not hide them away from it.
It will just be regular cisco kit like 6500 series switches... They won't have pushed 700gb through a single device, the bbc has peering with most of the major isps in the uk and the 700gb figure will be combined across a large number of peering and transit links.
As someone who currently does work in technology, and knows several restaurant owners...
If someone wasn't stating valid business reasons for using open source then they weren't trying very hard. Aside from the cost, guaranteed continual availability (ie you can always install more copies) and scalability (install as many copies as you want for no additional cost), easier exit strategy due to less lockin, access to sourcecode should you want or need it, availability of multiple sources for support (since only those who have the source can properly support a product), lack of user-hostile functionality like license enforcement (many companies have suffered major pain due to licensing enforcement code going wrong and preventing access to legitimately purchased software)...
There are always risks with deploying software, and i have seen many commercial products which are either broken, a poor fit for the business, overpriced and where the supposed support is either useless or nonexistent. I have seen very few software implementations where costs didn't escalate from the original spec, and many commercial offerings are even designed that way from the outset - ie get you hooked, turn the screws later.
Open source can bring some risks, but it also reduces other risks... There is also a LOT of commercially supported open source which theoretically provides the benefits of both.
Other currencies are also just entries in a database held at a bank somewhere... At least with bitcoin, the transactions and inner workings are out in the open.
Scarcity is a good thing, without scarcity they would have no value at all... The reward from mining is only designed to kickstart the currency. It encourages people to process transactions while the currency is young and not many transactions are taking place. Over time there will be more transactions, and you can benefit from the transaction processing fees instead of the mining reward.
A lot of people don't mine bitcoins at all, they buy them using other currencies, or obtain them in exchange for goods/services.
The bitcoin infrastructure itself, ie the system which processes payments is whats secure... An organisation which was storing bitcoins was found not to be secure...
This is no different to a bank getting robbed, and is down to poor security on the part of the bank rather than anything to do with the actual item that was stolen.
Sure, the originally purchased software may work indefinitely if you keep it in the same state it was originally in... But this is far from ideal for a number of reasons, for instance:
The software may require an old OS, and/or other old third party libraries. The software itself, or other software it depends on may be out of date and full of security holes. The software, or the os it runs on may require old hardware that is no longer available. If your business changes and has new requirements, the old software may not be able to accommodate them. If you business expands and you need more users of the software, chances are you wont be able to obtain licenses legally.
I've had very few problems, most applications continue to run just fine as you upgrade java... Many of them don't officially "support" newer versions, and will often try to insist you must run an ancient (and full of security holes) version of java...
The few java apps i had problems with weren't incompatible with the modern jre per se, they just included explicit checks and would complain if they detected a version they didn't recognise, but if you manually hacked out the checks the apps usually ran anyway.
And how fast does the bytecode run? GPUs are specialist processors, running the kind of things they are designed to do they are very fast... Making them run things which they are not suited to can result in terrible performance.
The free google apps is advertising supported, and will use your data for targeted advertising (although this is automated, no human will ever read your data).. The paid google apps is a paid app, your subscription pays for the service so they have no reason to push advertising on you, or to mine your data.
If you want to use the free service, you have to accept the compromises. Software can be provided for free, but a service cannot because it costs money to keep the servers running.
I would rather have a TLS connection with a known certificate, than a proprietary connection where i have no idea how it works.
If a device works with exchange, it will work with an open source activesync implementation like z-push too... As for at-rest encryption, as you pointed out the device can simply lie to the server. You therefore can never rely on what the server says, and must inspect the device yourself if you care about it.
The problem is if people see excel and another spreadsheet program returning different results, they will assume that excel is correct and that the other program is wrong... I have seen libreoffice make exactly the same mistakes as excel, and always wondered if that was an actual bug, or a case of the developers trying to make it behave like excel because thats what users demand. In either case, it would be nice to have an option to choose between "correct" or "excel compatible"...
Libreoffice does have VB macros... But i don't see why you would consider a lack of VB macros to be detrimental in the first place...
Firstly, Libreoffice supports macros in javascript, python, its own form of basic and possibly some others... If i was learning macros for a spreadsheet, i would much rather learn a proper programming language that will give me reusable skills, rather than a language which is specific to that application.
Second, MS are dropping VB, and before that they had a different macro languages which is also long since dropped... I would much rather learn a language that is going to stick around. Learning VB right now would be like learning m68k assembly.
Slashdot Mirror
Saw that, don't seem to be shipping... Attempted to contact the company to get a price but got no response.
I've been looking for a 1U, non x86, low power server (ie designed to run 24/7, have proper cooling, gige, multiple disks etc) for quite some time... I read about various ARM servers as well as the chinese loongson mips based boards, and have been reading about them regularly for a couple of years now...
And what do all these things have in common? None of them are actually available to purchase anywhere!
THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG
its quite strange to type while trying to hold both shift keys...
Tried that, and the solvent dissolved the letter off the keycaps, leaving me with what is effectively a das keyboard...
I have frequently washed regular keyboards in this way... So long as you leave it a long time to dry (usually overnight in the boiler closet) they work just fine afterwards. Considering how cheap keyboards are, i saw nothing to lose by washing it and having already bought a new one, now had a spare.
Pretty much any security products only work if they're not well known... Once something becomes well known, people will research efficient methods of circumvention and soon that knowledge will become widespread.
Of course, this runs against the goal of any business trying to sell such a product, since they want it to become as widespread as possible in order to sell as much as they can.
Even a security system that calls the police is not flawless, if its over sensitive (or a criminal can trigger a false alarm easily without breaking in) and not an exceptionally high value target, then the police will soon get sick of coming out and start ignoring the alarms. Similarly, the police response time gives you a window of opportunity in which to commit your crime.
Some of the lights out boards are linux based (eg the old sun ones on the v20z servers run on an embedded ppc linux)...
The Soekris comBIOS is not open source.
Personally i only block ads which i find obnoxious...
Any popups
Excessive animation
Any sound
Forced unskippable video watching
Pointless ads, eg advertising something that i cannot (legally) obtain because of where i live
If ads are unintrusive, i have no problem with them
Fully agree with keeping it simple...
Unfortunately, you can't sell "simplicity" as a product, most (generally not very clued up) people want complex because they think the added complexity means its somehow more valuable. As a result, we have entire industries geared up to adding layer upon layer of extra complexity to "secure" your network, any of which could contain an exploitable vulnerability.
It's not enabled by default because it would spam your logs if you loaded it on a box (or vm) that didn't actually have the serial ports present...
On the other hand, its trivially turned on or enabled from the bootloader... And i don't believe BSD has serial consoles enabled by default any more than linux does, its only systems like Solaris which are pretty much expected to be used with only a serial console, and comes supplied with hardware that always has one.
Serial console use has always been uncommon on x86, due to the traditional lack of firmware access via serial and the fact that windows seems not to support serial consoles at all. Personally i always use a lights out card on my servers, with serial access (because its MUCH faster than sending video over the network and doesnt require any nonstandard clients).
If you do that, then you only have serial access while the OS is running...
You need firmware redirection, or a lights out card. I would never buy a server without lights out, it has its own ip which i can ssh to and get a virtual serial console which also provides access to the firmware.
There are already numerous better tools for viewing, creating and editing pdf files than acrobat... And yet many people still think pdf is a proprietary format that requires acrobat, and there are many websites carrying pdf files which even try to advertise this false information.
I have even seen mac and linux users, who generally have a far superior pdf viewer installed by default, using acrobat... Never understood why.
It's not better tools we need, its better awareness that these tools exist.
Also even if these viewers are just as insecure, simply having diversity will improve things massively.
Let the school do what it's intended for, and educate the kids on how to use the internet safely...
If you setup a strict filtering policy it will never be perfect, and people will still come across content they aren't meant to see, or as mentioned in the summary they will make dangerous levels of information available to the public via sites like facebook. Also you will always get a few kids who will actively try to bypass the filter, being told no is the biggest motivator for some kids (i was one of those).
Another thing to consider, is while you can try to protect them from potential dangers on the internet while they're on campus, all you are really doing is leaving them less prepared for the real world. They won't consider that you were trying to protect them, they will just think you were trying to restrict them, and when they find themselves with access to an unfiltered internet connection they will encounter and/or seek out all manner of content.
So the key is education... And that's what a school is supposed to do, prepare kids for what they will encounter in the real world, not hide them away from it.
It will just be regular cisco kit like 6500 series switches...
They won't have pushed 700gb through a single device, the bbc has peering with most of the major isps in the uk and the 700gb figure will be combined across a large number of peering and transit links.
As someone who currently does work in technology, and knows several restaurant owners...
If someone wasn't stating valid business reasons for using open source then they weren't trying very hard. Aside from the cost, guaranteed continual availability (ie you can always install more copies) and scalability (install as many copies as you want for no additional cost), easier exit strategy due to less lockin, access to sourcecode should you want or need it, availability of multiple sources for support (since only those who have the source can properly support a product), lack of user-hostile functionality like license enforcement (many companies have suffered major pain due to licensing enforcement code going wrong and preventing access to legitimately purchased software)...
There are always risks with deploying software, and i have seen many commercial products which are either broken, a poor fit for the business, overpriced and where the supposed support is either useless or nonexistent. I have seen very few software implementations where costs didn't escalate from the original spec, and many commercial offerings are even designed that way from the outset - ie get you hooked, turn the screws later.
Open source can bring some risks, but it also reduces other risks... There is also a LOT of commercially supported open source which theoretically provides the benefits of both.
Great, just what we need, another piece of junk orbiting the planet and causing a hazard to other space missions.
Other currencies are also just entries in a database held at a bank somewhere...
At least with bitcoin, the transactions and inner workings are out in the open.
Scarcity is a good thing, without scarcity they would have no value at all...
The reward from mining is only designed to kickstart the currency. It encourages people to process transactions while the currency is young and not many transactions are taking place. Over time there will be more transactions, and you can benefit from the transaction processing fees instead of the mining reward.
A lot of people don't mine bitcoins at all, they buy them using other currencies, or obtain them in exchange for goods/services.
The bitcoin infrastructure itself, ie the system which processes payments is whats secure...
An organisation which was storing bitcoins was found not to be secure...
This is no different to a bank getting robbed, and is down to poor security on the part of the bank rather than anything to do with the actual item that was stolen.
Sure, the originally purchased software may work indefinitely if you keep it in the same state it was originally in...
But this is far from ideal for a number of reasons, for instance:
The software may require an old OS, and/or other old third party libraries.
The software itself, or other software it depends on may be out of date and full of security holes.
The software, or the os it runs on may require old hardware that is no longer available.
If your business changes and has new requirements, the old software may not be able to accommodate them.
If you business expands and you need more users of the software, chances are you wont be able to obtain licenses legally.
I've had very few problems, most applications continue to run just fine as you upgrade java...
Many of them don't officially "support" newer versions, and will often try to insist you must run an ancient (and full of security holes) version of java...
The few java apps i had problems with weren't incompatible with the modern jre per se, they just included explicit checks and would complain if they detected a version they didn't recognise, but if you manually hacked out the checks the apps usually ran anyway.
And how fast does the bytecode run?
GPUs are specialist processors, running the kind of things they are designed to do they are very fast... Making them run things which they are not suited to can result in terrible performance.
The free google apps is advertising supported, and will use your data for targeted advertising (although this is automated, no human will ever read your data)..
The paid google apps is a paid app, your subscription pays for the service so they have no reason to push advertising on you, or to mine your data.
If you want to use the free service, you have to accept the compromises. Software can be provided for free, but a service cannot because it costs money to keep the servers running.
I would rather have a TLS connection with a known certificate, than a proprietary connection where i have no idea how it works.
If a device works with exchange, it will work with an open source activesync implementation like z-push too...
As for at-rest encryption, as you pointed out the device can simply lie to the server. You therefore can never rely on what the server says, and must inspect the device yourself if you care about it.
The problem is if people see excel and another spreadsheet program returning different results, they will assume that excel is correct and that the other program is wrong...
I have seen libreoffice make exactly the same mistakes as excel, and always wondered if that was an actual bug, or a case of the developers trying to make it behave like excel because thats what users demand.
In either case, it would be nice to have an option to choose between "correct" or "excel compatible"...
Libreoffice does have VB macros...
But i don't see why you would consider a lack of VB macros to be detrimental in the first place...
Firstly, Libreoffice supports macros in javascript, python, its own form of basic and possibly some others... If i was learning macros for a spreadsheet, i would much rather learn a proper programming language that will give me reusable skills, rather than a language which is specific to that application.
Second, MS are dropping VB, and before that they had a different macro languages which is also long since dropped... I would much rather learn a language that is going to stick around. Learning VB right now would be like learning m68k assembly.