If they don't want Windows problems, there's always Mac/Linux/*BSD. Lets see:
Slowness, protection from viruses - Non-Microsoft OS makes this much less a problem
Upgrades, hardware becoming obsolete - Again, non-MS OS helps here, and applies to "cloud enabled services" also - either cloud or local can use current programs and tech, but upgrades to either has an equal chance of needing hardware upgrades
General Hardware problems - Same as above, you still need hardware to connect to "the cloud". You can get a full-on PC for less then $300 US these days, crippled "Cloud" hardware won't be much cheaper to replace.
The one valid argument I can see is it makes data integrity someone else's' problem, but a simple backup service ala timemachine or "cloud based" subscription backup can take care of that.
Justin Foster, a fellow Canadian infosec guy, brought up an interesting point today in a tweet he sent out: I remember the good old days when a cloud was something we drew to represent the Internet between two points. *Sigh*
He's also responsible for the following diagram for those of you who are visual people: http://twitpic.com/flhfo
"Cloud" is one of those marketing terms that I can't stand because it is now applied to absolutely everything out on the Internet AND in data centers. In my day we called those areas DMZ and those vendors Application Service Providers (ASPs).....consarnit!
If you're not using hundreds of petabytes or more, you shouldn't even consider this. This would be a fools errand if they needed only one of these. But the probably have many hundreds or thousands, and it's definitely worth it for them. Much like Google with their bare-bones servers and custom software, COTS works well at the small scale, but custom is better when you're dealing with huge amounts of hardware.
It already exists in T2, with "Eight encryption engines, with each supporting DES, 3DES, AES, RC4, SHA1, SHA256, MD5, RSA-2048, ECC, CRC32" (From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UltraSPARC_T2) Also, the T2 has hardware random number generator. The T2 processor seems to be designed with web serving in mind, and especially makes an excellent SSL enabled web server. I fail to see why this is newsworthy, as the T2 already does this quite well, and few people seem to care.
I have MFM and RLL cards still, and a 386 somewhere that will use them. Obviously that's not the case for most people, but I'm not frail or old, just a geek.;-) However, you're comparing comparatively small run, early hardware with modern hardware. MFM controllers were complicated for the day, (S)ATA controllers are relatively simple.
Also, the (S)ATA specs currently use 48 bit LBA, allowing for 128 PB per drive. Assuming the HD capacity doubles every 3 years(about right based on http://www.mattscomputertrends.com/harddrives.html) starting from 2TB today, the largest HDs will be 64TB in 15 years. Coincidently, if we take a 256GB SSD and apply Moore's law, we get 32TB in 15 years. Both give a factor of 2000-4000 smaller then SATA interface allows.
In 15 years, I'm willing to bet you can buy an add in card for $30 or less, inflation adjusted, that will let you read a SATA II disk from today, if that functionality isn't still built into the motherboard of most computers.
There will probably be "sata 5.0", which might or might not be backwards compatible, but there will certainly be sata cards available for cheap which will work with your computer. The SATA install base is too large to disappear completely in that span of time.
Right. Everyone cites the fact that all the crap before standardization is a pain to read, ignoring the fact that a CD or IDE hard drive with plain text, gif, or jpgs from 15 years ago will be readable just fine with most computers out there. Worst case they'd need to buy a $10 IDE card if they have SATA only.
USB, sata, and DVDs with html, plain text, PNG, GIf, jpegs, mp3s and mpeg2 video will probably be similarly easily accessible 15 years from now.
Um.. Yes, it is. I already own a PC with plenty of grunt for Android development, and it cost me less then $500 total. Only ~ $250 of that is current expenditure, the case, power supply, etc I've had for a while.
So, getting started with android development costs me nothing, where getting started with iPhone development costs me at least $500 for a mac mini + $100 or so for cheap monitor.
I bought a 30 GB OCZ vertex for my boot/application drive, and use a few 1TB drives in RAID for bulk storage. Best of both worlds. Yes, the 30BG one isn't quite as fast as the 120GB one, but it's still 10x faster at loading apps and 3x faster at booting Ubuntu then my past HD.
PowerPC did well in the performance/$ equation, but Intel kicked their butts in the performance/watt equation. That is the reason Apple switched, to get decent laptops..
ARTHUR: On display? I had to go down to the cellar to find them!
PROSSER: That's the display department!
ARTHUR: With a flashlight.
PROSSER: The lights had probably gone out.
ARTHUR: So had the stairs.
PROSSER: But you found the notice, didn't you?
ARTHUR: Yes, I did. It was "on display" in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying, "Beware of the Leopard."
The announcement.. Most of the first comments to this article seemed to imply NASA wanted to kill it. According to the article they don't want to drop it, they want to keep it, but need to whip get some congressmen outraged at the cancelation so they will give them more money. The plan seems to be working.;-) Therefore, it is probable the ISS will last quite a bit past 2016, assuming the economy doesn't further implode and scrap NASA in the process..
Article implies they are planning on trashing it in 2016 unless they get more funding.. This is a political move, and the ISS will probably be kept in service longer then that.
No one really fully understands a topic as controvercial as full disclosure, and your perspective isn't complete either. Neither is mine.
Full Disclosure doesn't necessarily mean exploit code. It does mean full details for someone skilled in the art to be able to produce exploit code. There is a world of difference. Of course, these days for any worthwhile flaw the time from full disclosure to in the wild worm type exploit code is now usually only 48 hours or so, but that isn't usually released by the researcher.
Full disclosure is the A bomb, scorched earth, last resort of most legit security researchers, and legit researchers will follow some sort of "responsible disclosure" timeline, but if the vendor does not fix the problem in a reasonable amount of time(where reasonable varies widely by software, # of deployments, complexity of the fix, etc), Full Disclosure is the big stick threat that usually will get results if nothing else does.
Scan on read is the important one, because you get virus updates every day, and a month from now you may detect something you didn't detect on write.
Really though, the important one is it do in-depth scans periodically, as most scanners find many more things on a scheduled scan as the real-time scan.
+1 for NOD32. Best combo of fast and accurate out there. I will say that turning off "scan on write" on older computers in any virus engine often gives a great speed boost, NOD32 included. I have found that speed/security tradeoff to be worth it, as files are still scanned on read, and on scheduled full scans.
Security is risk analysis. If you want your company to make security changes, you need to give the stakeholders the information they need to make decisions, in terms of dollars and cents and probabilities. I would recommend you pick up a few books like "The New School of Information Security" and "Security Metrics: Replacing Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt". They do a good job of helping you to see security risk through business eyes.
My point is not that you should buy one to hurt amazon, just that you can use the kindle and avoid DRM. I don't care whether I stick it to the man or not, I just want the best value for my dollar. And currently the Kindle DX is that.
The Kindle DX is by far the cheapest and best Eink reader of that size at the moment. Go compare them yourself: http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/E-book_Reader_Matrix The only other current options are the iRex products. The reviews for those read like a horror show, and they're quite a bit more expensive.
Using the kindle also gives me the option of buying ebooks from others vendors, or Amazon if I decide. There's many books I probably won't reread, and a copy on my Kindle and iPod touch are enough for me, no matter whether I can download it again later or not. So yes, I use it much like I did the iPod before it went completely non-DRM.. Buy the music I want in the least restrictive content available.
The supreme court also exists to uphold the constitution against the legislature also. If civil cases are awarding punitive damages, they should be held to the same standard of proof as criminal cases. That's what this appeal is about, and why the large settlement is important. Civil cases and criminal cases are treated very differently, and it's important that that divide isn't breached.
Slashdot Mirror
The MiFi hardware looks awesome, but the 5GB/month limit puts it firmly in the "no thank you very much" category for now..
If they don't want Windows problems, there's always Mac/Linux/*BSD.
Lets see:
The one valid argument I can see is it makes data integrity someone else's' problem, but a simple backup service ala timemachine or "cloud based" subscription backup can take care of that.
From http://www.andrewhay.ca/archives/992 :
Justin Foster, a fellow Canadian infosec guy, brought up an interesting point today in a tweet he sent out:
I remember the good old days when a cloud was something we drew to represent the Internet between two points. *Sigh*
He's also responsible for the following diagram for those of you who are visual people:
http://twitpic.com/flhfo
"Cloud" is one of those marketing terms that I can't stand because it is now applied to absolutely everything out on the Internet AND in data centers. In my day we called those areas DMZ and those vendors Application Service Providers (ASPs).....consarnit!
The applications moving to "key value stores" are not the oracle crowd. They're the MySQL crowd.
Oracle has more to fear from PostgreSQL then they do key-value stores. And they still have the upper hand there in terms of support for quite a while.
If you're not using hundreds of petabytes or more, you shouldn't even consider this.
This would be a fools errand if they needed only one of these. But the probably have many hundreds or thousands, and it's definitely worth it for them.
Much like Google with their bare-bones servers and custom software, COTS works well at the small scale, but custom is better when you're dealing with huge amounts of hardware.
Not to mention no push or background support, so even on wifi it's useless for incoming calls..
It already exists in T2, with "Eight encryption engines, with each supporting DES, 3DES, AES, RC4, SHA1, SHA256, MD5, RSA-2048, ECC, CRC32" (From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UltraSPARC_T2)
Also, the T2 has hardware random number generator.
The T2 processor seems to be designed with web serving in mind, and especially makes an excellent SSL enabled web server.
I fail to see why this is newsworthy, as the T2 already does this quite well, and few people seem to care.
I have MFM and RLL cards still, and a 386 somewhere that will use them. Obviously that's not the case for most people, but I'm not frail or old, just a geek. ;-)
However, you're comparing comparatively small run, early hardware with modern hardware. MFM controllers were complicated for the day, (S)ATA controllers are relatively simple.
Also, the (S)ATA specs currently use 48 bit LBA, allowing for 128 PB per drive.
Assuming the HD capacity doubles every 3 years(about right based on http://www.mattscomputertrends.com/harddrives.html) starting from 2TB today, the largest HDs will be 64TB in 15 years. Coincidently, if we take a 256GB SSD and apply Moore's law, we get 32TB in 15 years. Both give a factor of 2000-4000 smaller then SATA interface allows.
In 15 years, I'm willing to bet you can buy an add in card for $30 or less, inflation adjusted, that will let you read a SATA II disk from today, if that functionality isn't still built into the motherboard of most computers.
There will probably be "sata 5.0", which might or might not be backwards compatible, but there will certainly be sata cards available for cheap which will work with your computer. The SATA install base is too large to disappear completely in that span of time.
I recently pulled out my zip drive and transfered all my old stuff to DVDs.
Really weren't so bad, if you got the SCSI ZIP drive and kept the disks in cases. I never had much problems anyway.
Right. Everyone cites the fact that all the crap before standardization is a pain to read, ignoring the fact that a CD or IDE hard drive with plain text, gif, or jpgs from 15 years ago will be readable just fine with most computers out there. Worst case they'd need to buy a $10 IDE card if they have SATA only.
USB, sata, and DVDs with html, plain text, PNG, GIf, jpegs, mp3s and mpeg2 video will probably be similarly easily accessible 15 years from now.
Um.. Yes, it is.
I already own a PC with plenty of grunt for Android development, and it cost me less then $500 total. Only ~ $250 of that is current expenditure, the case, power supply, etc I've had for a while.
So, getting started with android development costs me nothing, where getting started with iPhone development costs me at least $500 for a mac mini + $100 or so for cheap monitor.
I bought a 30 GB OCZ vertex for my boot/application drive, and use a few 1TB drives in RAID for bulk storage. Best of both worlds.
Yes, the 30BG one isn't quite as fast as the 120GB one, but it's still 10x faster at loading apps and 3x faster at booting Ubuntu then my past HD.
Since this rant, google has actually gone IPv6 for IPv6 ready ISPs.
http://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/
By no means is the internet IPv6 friendly, and a lot of the points Dan makes are good ones, but he fails to offer any solutions either.
PowerPC did well in the performance/$ equation, but Intel kicked their butts in the performance/watt equation.
That is the reason Apple switched, to get decent laptops..
PROSSER: The plans were on display--
ARTHUR: On display? I had to go down to the cellar to find them!
PROSSER: That's the display department!
ARTHUR: With a flashlight.
PROSSER: The lights had probably gone out.
ARTHUR: So had the stairs.
PROSSER: But you found the notice, didn't you?
ARTHUR: Yes, I did. It was "on display" in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying, "Beware of the Leopard."
The announcement.. Most of the first comments to this article seemed to imply NASA wanted to kill it. According to the article they don't want to drop it, they want to keep it, but need to whip get some congressmen outraged at the cancelation so they will give them more money. The plan seems to be working. ;-) Therefore, it is probable the ISS will last quite a bit past 2016, assuming the economy doesn't further implode and scrap NASA in the process..
Article implies they are planning on trashing it in 2016 unless they get more funding.. This is a political move, and the ISS will probably be kept in service longer then that.
No one really fully understands a topic as controvercial as full disclosure, and your perspective isn't complete either. Neither is mine.
Full Disclosure doesn't necessarily mean exploit code. It does mean full details for someone skilled in the art to be able to produce exploit code. There is a world of difference. Of course, these days for any worthwhile flaw the time from full disclosure to in the wild worm type exploit code is now usually only 48 hours or so, but that isn't usually released by the researcher.
Full disclosure is the A bomb, scorched earth, last resort of most legit security researchers, and legit researchers will follow some sort of "responsible disclosure" timeline, but if the vendor does not fix the problem in a reasonable amount of time(where reasonable varies widely by software, # of deployments, complexity of the fix, etc), Full Disclosure is the big stick threat that usually will get results if nothing else does.
Scan on read is the important one, because you get virus updates every day, and a month from now you may detect something you didn't detect on write.
Really though, the important one is it do in-depth scans periodically, as most scanners find many more things on a scheduled scan as the real-time scan.
+1 for NOD32.
Best combo of fast and accurate out there.
I will say that turning off "scan on write" on older computers in any virus engine often gives a great speed boost, NOD32 included. I have found that speed/security tradeoff to be worth it, as files are still scanned on read, and on scheduled full scans.
Security is risk analysis. If you want your company to make security changes, you need to give the stakeholders the information they need to make decisions, in terms of dollars and cents and probabilities.
I would recommend you pick up a few books like "The New School of Information Security" and "Security Metrics: Replacing Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt". They do a good job of helping you to see security risk through business eyes.
My point is not that you should buy one to hurt amazon, just that you can use the kindle and avoid DRM. I don't care whether I stick it to the man or not, I just want the best value for my dollar. And currently the Kindle DX is that.
The Kindle DX is by far the cheapest and best Eink reader of that size at the moment.
Go compare them yourself: http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/E-book_Reader_Matrix
The only other current options are the iRex products. The reviews for those read like a horror show, and they're quite a bit more expensive.
Using the kindle also gives me the option of buying ebooks from others vendors, or Amazon if I decide. There's many books I probably won't reread, and a copy on my Kindle and iPod touch are enough for me, no matter whether I can download it again later or not.
So yes, I use it much like I did the iPod before it went completely non-DRM.. Buy the music I want in the least restrictive content available.
Or buy a kindle and use it to read non-DRM content from other providers.
The kindle is good hardware, just the amazon kindle store has some problems.
The supreme court also exists to uphold the constitution against the legislature also.
If civil cases are awarding punitive damages, they should be held to the same standard of proof as criminal cases. That's what this appeal is about, and why the large settlement is important. Civil cases and criminal cases are treated very differently, and it's important that that divide isn't breached.