If you patch 40 machines 99.9% of the time, nobody remembers that, what they remember is that you got cracked on one tiny detail you missed.
<rant>
Um, yeah. This is the real world. Mistakes have consequences. If NASA messes up on one conversion between units, $billions can go down the toilet (and have). Cars can crash and buildings can collapse if you don't get every detail right.
Not everything is in your control as a sys admin, and people will break in no matter what you do. But applying a patch that's been out for a while? C'mon. This isn't about not achieving 99.9%; this is about not achieving 80%.
</rant>
FYI, the ethernet hub policy is correct, although dated. Ethernet has a maximum distance that you cannot exceed... hubs work at a low level and simply connect all the devices to the same "bus". After the bus reaches a certain maximum length, collision detect no longer works, and you have random denial-of-service on the entire bus.
Ethernet switches are different. They work at a higher level and actually process the packets. This lets them direct packets between various ports as well as allow for unlimited cascading.
We noticed problems with ethernet hubs when we deployed them at my University in the mid-90's. Faculty members would decide to connect hubs to their network outlets and entire departments would lose connectivity when we tried to bring a different section of the building online.
The big difference is that ethernet signals go through transformers at both ends. Since the DC power signals can't travel through transformers, you have a strong guarantee that the power will not destroy your device.
The bank already has your name, social, phone, and a miryad of other peices of personal information. This is all protected by a card and one or two pass-nums.
This is BS. You can't call the bank and say, "Give me my social security number." They won't give it to you. You might be able to ask them for an address, but the person that coerced you into giving up your wallet for the ATM card already has your driver's license (which has your SSN, if you weren't smart enough to ask for it not to be put there).
Some credit card company had an incorrect date of birth for me, and I wanted to know what it was to figure out if someone had transposed digits while typing it, and they wouldn't tell me. I'm willing to bet that there are all sorts of rules about that , especially when the data in question is your SSN.
This is BS. You give access to people. Once you can identify who they are, everything else is meaningless.
And the three pillars of security you mention can't determine whether a person is being coerced, which is always going to be the biggest failure in any security system.
Any FPGA design can be converted into an ASIC design with minimal or zero modifications, and usually with a substaintial performance improvement. There are several companies out there that will take your synthesized netlist and give you an ASIC, and will do it cheaply. The FPGA vs ASIC break even point is in the ball part of 100,000 units and it's getting better every day.
While it may take a Virtex-II to compete with a decent accelerator for all applications, it may be possible to have multiple optimized implementation that are specific to specific applications. For instance, you could program the FPGA with an image optimized for 2D applications for general purpose use and then reprogram it with an image optimized for 3D applications as soon as you run your favorite FPS. Also, A decent sized Virtex-II can be purchased for US $323 in single quantities, and roughly half that in quantities of 1,000 or more.
Design tools from Xilinx are less than US $1,000. And if you use their web-based tools, they are free.
The circuit board would not be a major problem. I recently designed a PCI board with an FPGA and SDRAM on it (and wrote the FPGA code) and we got our 10 board for less than US $2,000. Most of this is set up cost, of course, so it gets really cheap really quickly as the numbers go up.
266 Mhz DDR RAM really only runs at 133 Mhz, and high end FPGAs can run at 300 Mhz. FPGA vendors often have hardware build into the FPGA to suppport high speed interfaces like that, or provide HDL source so that you can implement your own.
Even if it takes 5A to run these chips (slightly excessive IMHO), the requirement is at the core voltage (1.5V for the Virtex-II mentioned earlier). With a 85% efficient switching regulator (typical), that would equal 2.7A @ 3.3V or 1.8A @ 5V or 750mA @ 12V (all of which are available on the AGP connector). Besides 5A @ 1.5V is just 8W after you include the switching inefficies, and you probably have at least a 300W power supply, so it's less than 3% of your total power budget.
We do need to factor in assembly costs, which for a prototype run of 10 boards is going to to be about $3000 total, but the costs get really cheap if the quantity goes up, especially if the through-hole components are soldered by the enthusiasts who buy these cards.
So, you don't really need all that much capital, and the open-source development model will provide the large teams of engineers.
Unfortunately I can't contribute to this project because I code not in VHDL but in Verilog (which gets a lot more done for the same amount of effort in my opinion and others here and here).
Slashdot Mirror
<rant>
Um, yeah. This is the real world. Mistakes have consequences. If NASA messes up on one conversion between units, $billions can go down the toilet (and have). Cars can crash and buildings can collapse if you don't get every detail right.
Not everything is in your control as a sys admin, and people will break in no matter what you do. But applying a patch that's been out for a while? C'mon. This isn't about not achieving 99.9%; this is about not achieving 80%.
</rant>
mv file1 file2 file3 file4
This syntax is the opposite of tar: ...
tar -cvf archive file1 file2 file3 file4
One of these is intuitive...
Ethernet switches are different. They work at a higher level and actually process the packets. This lets them direct packets between various ports as well as allow for unlimited cascading. We noticed problems with ethernet hubs when we deployed them at my University in the mid-90's. Faculty members would decide to connect hubs to their network outlets and entire departments would lose connectivity when we tried to bring a different section of the building online.
While your point is legit, perhaps you can find a better quote? :-)
The big difference is that ethernet signals go through transformers at both ends. Since the DC power signals can't travel through transformers, you have a strong guarantee that the power will not destroy your device.
This is BS. You can't call the bank and say, "Give me my social security number." They won't give it to you. You might be able to ask them for an address, but the person that coerced you into giving up your wallet for the ATM card already has your driver's license (which has your SSN, if you weren't smart enough to ask for it not to be put there).
Some credit card company had an incorrect date of birth for me, and I wanted to know what it was to figure out if someone had transposed digits while typing it, and they wouldn't tell me. I'm willing to bet that there are all sorts of rules about that , especially when the data in question is your SSN.
And the three pillars of security you mention can't determine whether a person is being coerced, which is always going to be the biggest failure in any security system.
So, you don't really need all that much capital, and the open-source development model will provide the large teams of engineers.
Unfortunately I can't contribute to this project because I code not in VHDL but in Verilog (which gets a lot more done for the same amount of effort in my opinion and others here and here).