I happen to work for a library... as a programmer. Go figure. The point, though, is that librarians take your privacy very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that in this library, they specifically commissioned a change to their operations database so that no data is preserved once the library asset has been returned. That means, as long as you turn in your books, most libraries thumb their noses at the Patriot Act by deleting the record of what you borrowed. (They don't want to comply with FBI subpoenas, they don't want the responsibility!)
I don't know if NASA has posted any open source solution (i.e., source code) but I've seen a page by someone who has. However, it looks only semi-open as he has restrictions that it be used by academic and other non-profits.
So you wake up one day and wonder how you got here. Rather than repeat all the rhetoric (I don't think I'm intelligent enough to capture your attention for that long, anyway!), let me make one observation:
Your ultimate success in this life depends on how you relate to the people in your life. If you yourself is your top priority, what a miserable person you will be. If others become your top priority, then -- as if by magic! -- you find fulfillment in serving their needs.
OK, two observations (so I can't count): God is a person, and no He's not dead. How He made the world is still up for debate, and -- oh my! -- what a lively debate it is! But it doesn't really matter much in the long run "how" He did it. What matters is how you relate to Him. Relationship is key. Knowledge only matters as much as it helps you help others -- relationships must be primary! So quit asking "How? Why?" and start asking "How may I serve?"
Dr. Doug Schmidt hosts the Adaptive Communications Environment (ACE), which is essentially a C++ library or framework of building blocks. Although the learning curve is a bit steep, I have since created several Win32 NT-service client/server apps using the ACE library. I find that the ACE mindset simplifies design, and once the project's designed, implementation is very rapid since it's just a matter of gluing together various pieces of the ACE library. Please forgive my sorry introduction to this wonderful toolkit, and go read about ACE for yourself! You will be glad that you did!
I thought I recognized that URL... go look at http://home.earthlink.net/~jaymzh666/... it's one of the IPFilter guys! Good going, Phil! Thanks for all your work supporting IPFilter! (And props to Darren, if you read this)
It's hard to believe that the commercialization and commoditization of the 'Net was less than ten years ago. When I graduated college in Spring 1994, I'd had an Internet email address for four years and preached the email revolution to my friends and relatives. About a year later, I stumbled across Barkakati's "Linux Secrets" and forayed into Slackware's distro (v 3.0!), one step at a time. It's fun to look back at my beginnings on the Internet vs. the Internet's beginnings (which precedes mine by decades) vs. the general public's exposure to the 'Net (when was that, 1996? Remember the term, information superhighway? Ugh!) All that, less than ten years ago. Look how far we've come!
*ah hem* Yeah, I got a little carried away with the verbage there. regularly used as evidence in hindsight should read has been known to be used as evidence, from time to time. Oh, there it is! I see it! The preview button. Dang it!
I work at a University computer department. A lot of my work goes into writing/maintaining the software that provides a three-way cross between client IP address, username, and timestamp for every use of our computer facilities (except staff and faculty workstations). These logs are regularly used as evidence in court and in pre-trial proceedings. IANAL, and I don't actually interface with the lawyers, but my buddies in the security group are constantly reviewing the login records at the behest of xxAA or FBI or whatever (they always play the cloak and dagger routine -- "need to know only!" *rolls the eyes*). Every login is preceded by "By clicking the button you agree to these policies" with a URL to the pages and pages of dos and don'ts, or else published everywhere around these workstations as dead tree reminders of "acceptable use". I can't speak for public libraries, but here at University we try to be lenient and let the students off with a "never do that again!" If they cower and tremble and repent of their evil filesharing ways, we let them off. Otherwise, they get a permanent "incident report" filed on their student record and get to take their song and dance to the VP of student affairs.
Which brings me to the point of, where's the right to privacy? Waived at the door, I guess, since apparently the presupposition is that by using your authentication to log in to these systems, you've agreed that you've read all these policies and have agreed to all these potential remedies against your violation of these policies. Any lawyers out there know if that holds water?
--
"Limited government" will always exceed its bounds
I don't see anyone raising the question of morality here. We all love to hate Microsoft, so anyone who hates my enemy is my friend? We all sit at the edge of the room and grouse about the elephant in the middle -- we assume that elephant is Microsoft. Riddle me this, Batman -- could Microsoft ever have risen to its present domination without government power doing its bidding? Regulation cuts both ways, and IMHO, tends to serve the established players in the market more than the consumers. So what if the big fat elephant is this overwhelming totalitarian state? We have learned nothing from the millions of casualties of the 20th century, served up on the platter of state-mandated wars. So we trudge onward, implementing ever more powerful governments in the hope that "this one won't be as bad as the last one." I hope we learn to limit the power of government before WWIII. *sigh* Probably not.
--
"Limited Government" will always exceed its bounds
For posting on/. is it a prerequisite to be well-versed in conspiracy theory? Big Oil this and Detroit Auto Thugs that... whatever happened to semi-anarchic free market theory? If you build it (and build it well, and price it enticingly) they will buy...
-1 Flamebait, -1 Troll... [sigh]... see you in mod hell
Baa! You got me pegged. Running the Win2K desktop, sporting IE6, trying (lamely) to administer Active Directory... thus the "flamebait" question at the parent. M$FT on the desktop (for me), BSD in the server room (where I have a say-so), W2K server everywheres else.
--
It's a great, big stupid world! -- Randy Stonehill, some song, some time in the late 1980s
Seems rather Orwellian to me... if you reinvent the language, you control the people.
[1984]Let's introduce a new term, boys and girls: "hate speech". Yes, that's right, these are thoughts and ideas that are too terrible for you to contemplate, so we will censor them from your tender minds. What? No, you are not sensible enough to arrive at your own conclusions, so we must ensure that you are never exposed to these evil ideas.[/1984]
As a teenager in the 80s, I witnessed the trailing edge of the sexual revolution, or the cultural overhaul, or whatever you want to call it. To me, I see cliches when I watch the movies -- over and over and over... ad infinitum, yes I'm hammering on the definition of cliche here.
So now that I live in a post-modern, post-Christian America, I guess I have a jaded perspective. If you preach "Jesus saves!" you're branded as some kind of fanatic/loser, hey don't push that propaganda on me.
What if you preach some other religion? Like, "free love, man!" Or, "It's not an alternate lifestyle, I was BORN this way!" You have the silver bullet, and no one gets to call you a fanatical propagandist. Seems a bit lopsided to me.
So you have some legitimate, concerned citizens, who are sincere in their faith (try not to put labels on them,/.'ers!). They like a good flick just like the next guy. But they literally wince at every f-word, and cringe when the lady's bra straps fall off her shoulder. What recourse do they have when the secular humanists own the pulpit in Hollywood? Personally, I'd rather see them boycott the machine, but I applaud their efforts nonetheless.
Wherever you are on the whole gun control debate, there is a nugget of truth in the statement: "Guns don't kill people, people do." At the risk of stating the obvious, that means that a gun never pulls its own trigger; there is always a person aiming and discharging the weapon.
Using the same logic on technology itself... is it evil?... is it good? Just as Orwell's point was more about control than technology, so the evaluation of "evil" does not apply to the technology itself, but rather to the person/persons/institution/corporation/government wielding that technology. What is his/her/their intent?
If a person's intention is to deceive (to compel another person to make a choice based on a lie), then that is evil. Technology used in the deception is irrelevant.
... wrote a novel, Ender's Game, a fascinating read about this kind of scenario. The novel focuses on kids being trained for military in the face of almost certain doom (invading aliens). The author's ability to empathize with the 8- and 9-yr-old subjects makes it a hard book to put down. The finale of the book has the kids operating, remote control, a pre-emptive strike against the aliens' home planet. I'll save a few details for you to read on your own, but when I saw this article, I immediately thought of Ender.
First, as an introduction to the rules, let's review our terms and terminology.
Definitions
Uptime is the amount of time the entire system is available.
By entire system we are saying that an entire transaction can be completed.
Just having your web servers running when the needed application server isn't running cannot be defined as uptime.
Downtime is everything else.
Scheduled maintenance downtimes or windows are the periods of time (for example, from 1:00am to 3:00am Monday morning) when an IT team has the option, if they need, to bring down various components in a fashion that causes the system to be incapable of complete functionality.
Reliability is defined as uptime but where scheduled maintenance downtime is not counted against it. For example, if in a 24 hour period there was an hour of scheduled downtime, but otherwise full operational for the remaing 23 hours, then the system was 100% reliable.
So how do you translate the 'nines' into acceptable downtime? This chart provides the answer:
'Nines'
Uptime %
Minutes Per Year
Minutes Per Month
Two
99%
5256
438.0
Three
99.9%
526
43.8
Four
99.99%
53
4.4
Five
99.999%
5
0.4
Rule #1: A great system run poorly is a poor system.
This is the most crucial rule to understand when managing any system.
It doesn't matter how much you spent on the hardware, how well designed your database tables are, or if you installed the latest and greatest operating system on the market.
If it cannot be managed well, problems ensue.
Users don't see, or care that problems come from your database servers, or your application servers, or your static data caching.
What they perceive is one of two states: working or not working.
They want to make their reservation, or pay their bill, or just get the weather in Bali, and they want to do it NOW!
Managing with a given level of reliability in mind is about people, hardware, operating and escalation plans, and ultimately, it is about the money to put it all together and keep it running.
The cost of reliability, is very hard to quantify.
Even assuming it is a linear relationship (and few things in life are) it's a staggering relationship in financial terms.
In my experience each 'nine' is close to an order of magnitude increase in cost!
The bottom-line is this, you need to do an honest assessment of available resources versus intended goals; it is the first step in making sure your great systems runs at least as good as you intended.
Rule #2: Five nines is a goal reachable only through both fully automated system management, and rigorously controlled and tested applications.
Scared by four and five nines?
Unless you've worked in a true, hardcore, spare no expense data center, you should be!
Let's think about five nines for a moment.
5 minutes a year.
That rules out any form of human involvement in fixing problems.
After all, even the best humans are known to be distracted for a minute or two into conversation with a co-worker, or a phone ringing.
As an example, let's time a perfectly common scenario, where you have two people monitoring systems.
Time the following emulation in your office space:
Assume the system is working happily.
Walk over to your kitchen area and grab a soft drink. Then walk back.
Wait 15 seconds while you pretend to have the other NOC (Network Operations Center) engineer say "Hey, look at this!"
Sprint over to your desk and sit down.
Log into your desktop machine.
Log into a remote machine.
Run one or two basic remote commands ('ps' or 'top' for example)
Now stop the clock.
I'm willing to bet your five minutes are up!
Even without a distraction, it's simply not possible for a system of any complexity, to have a problem confirmed, cross checked, and resolved, by a person, within five minutes.
Oh, and don't forget about the minute to 90 seconds that you've already lost in monitoring the issue - unless you want alarms going off continuously, you have to set an error threshold that typically consumes 60 seconds or so.
"Okay," you say, "well, five nines is a lot. How about aiming at four nines?"
But are four nines really much different than five?
Certainly, it gives you more latitude and time to fix a problem, but not much more.
You can afford a single downtime that takes a few minutes to debug, but that's all.
The truth is, unless you have an application that doesn't fail, the odds are that your hardware failures will still occur three to four times a year, which pushes the limit of human intervention.
A good rule of thumb is that things never happen when you are watching them - figure that any issue takes at least ten minutes to resolve, even if it as simple as a human inadvertently powering both sets of redundant systems down, and now they are powering back up.
Slashdot Mirror
Not so much a formal study but a fun paper to read: On the Directional Correlation of Axial Rotation in Inverted Felines and Planetary Spin: Coriolis Revisited
The author also happens to be a Computer Science professor in data networks. Quite a dry sense of humor -- his classes are a lot of fun!
Mandatory Disclaimer : yes, I'm a starving grad student of his, and yes, I'm pulling for a graduation date this decade!
Slashdot this, he says:
...
http://cs.baylor.edu/~wilsonj/xwing.html
Famous last words
- Van Jacobson and Michael J. Karels Congestion Avoidance and Control. SIGCOMM, 1988
- J.H. Saltzer, D.P. Reed and D.D. Clark, End-to-end Arguments in System Design, ACM Transactions on Computer Systems, Nov 1984, p. 277-288
- Jeffrey C. Mogul The Case for Persistent-Connection HTTP. In Proceedings of ACM Sigcomm '95, pp. 299-313, Cambridge, MA, August 1995
Maybe someone else will have better luck tracking down a link to Mogul's paper.I happen to work for a library ... as a programmer. Go figure. The point, though, is that librarians take your privacy very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that in this library, they specifically commissioned a change to their operations database so that no data is preserved once the library asset has been returned. That means, as long as you turn in your books, most libraries thumb their noses at the Patriot Act by deleting the record of what you borrowed. (They don't want to comply with FBI subpoenas, they don't want the responsibility!)
If you're overdue, though, prepare to pay. (LOL)
I don't know if NASA has posted any open source solution (i.e., source code) but I've seen a page by someone who has. However, it looks only semi-open as he has restrictions that it be used by academic and other non-profits.
Have a look-see: Baylor's WFG
So you wake up one day and wonder how you got here. Rather than repeat all the rhetoric (I don't think I'm intelligent enough to capture your attention for that long, anyway!), let me make one observation:
Your ultimate success in this life depends on how you relate to the people in your life. If you yourself is your top priority, what a miserable person you will be. If others become your top priority, then -- as if by magic! -- you find fulfillment in serving their needs.
OK, two observations (so I can't count): God is a person, and no He's not dead. How He made the world is still up for debate, and -- oh my! -- what a lively debate it is! But it doesn't really matter much in the long run "how" He did it. What matters is how you relate to Him. Relationship is key. Knowledge only matters as much as it helps you help others -- relationships must be primary! So quit asking "How? Why?" and start asking "How may I serve?"
Or don't. Stay miserable. Your call.
Dr. Doug Schmidt hosts the Adaptive Communications Environment (ACE), which is essentially a C++ library or framework of building blocks. Although the learning curve is a bit steep, I have since created several Win32 NT-service client/server apps using the ACE library. I find that the ACE mindset simplifies design, and once the project's designed, implementation is very rapid since it's just a matter of gluing together various pieces of the ACE library. Please forgive my sorry introduction to this wonderful toolkit, and go read about ACE for yourself! You will be glad that you did!
Sorry, a bit OT:
... go look at http://home.earthlink.net/~jaymzh666/ ... it's one of the IPFilter guys! Good going, Phil! Thanks for all your work supporting IPFilter! (And props to Darren, if you read this)
I thought I recognized that URL
It's hard to believe that the commercialization and commoditization of the 'Net was less than ten years ago. When I graduated college in Spring 1994, I'd had an Internet email address for four years and preached the email revolution to my friends and relatives. About a year later, I stumbled across Barkakati's "Linux Secrets" and forayed into Slackware's distro (v 3.0!), one step at a time. It's fun to look back at my beginnings on the Internet vs. the Internet's beginnings (which precedes mine by decades) vs. the general public's exposure to the 'Net (when was that, 1996? Remember the term, information superhighway? Ugh!) All that, less than ten years ago. Look how far we've come!
dream on!
(from -1, mod hell, apparently)
The ideal mix is an armed citizen. Ask ESR!
*ah hem* Yeah, I got a little carried away with the verbage there. regularly used as evidence in hindsight should read has been known to be used as evidence, from time to time. Oh, there it is! I see it! The preview button. Dang it!
I work at a University computer department. A lot of my work goes into writing/maintaining the software that provides a three-way cross between client IP address, username, and timestamp for every use of our computer facilities (except staff and faculty workstations). These logs are regularly used as evidence in court and in pre-trial proceedings. IANAL, and I don't actually interface with the lawyers, but my buddies in the security group are constantly reviewing the login records at the behest of xxAA or FBI or whatever (they always play the cloak and dagger routine -- "need to know only!" *rolls the eyes*). Every login is preceded by "By clicking the button you agree to these policies" with a URL to the pages and pages of dos and don'ts, or else published everywhere around these workstations as dead tree reminders of "acceptable use". I can't speak for public libraries, but here at University we try to be lenient and let the students off with a "never do that again!" If they cower and tremble and repent of their evil filesharing ways, we let them off. Otherwise, they get a permanent "incident report" filed on their student record and get to take their song and dance to the VP of student affairs.
Which brings me to the point of, where's the right to privacy? Waived at the door, I guess, since apparently the presupposition is that by using your authentication to log in to these systems, you've agreed that you've read all these policies and have agreed to all these potential remedies against your violation of these policies. Any lawyers out there know if that holds water?
--
"Limited government" will always exceed its bounds
I don't see anyone raising the question of morality here. We all love to hate Microsoft, so anyone who hates my enemy is my friend? We all sit at the edge of the room and grouse about the elephant in the middle -- we assume that elephant is Microsoft. Riddle me this, Batman -- could Microsoft ever have risen to its present domination without government power doing its bidding? Regulation cuts both ways, and IMHO, tends to serve the established players in the market more than the consumers. So what if the big fat elephant is this overwhelming totalitarian state? We have learned nothing from the millions of casualties of the 20th century, served up on the platter of state-mandated wars. So we trudge onward, implementing ever more powerful governments in the hope that "this one won't be as bad as the last one." I hope we learn to limit the power of government before WWIII. *sigh* Probably not.
--
"Limited Government" will always exceed its bounds
I go to read the article, and guess whose banner ad pops up? Ha! Buckeye Express. Oh, the irony ...
--
"Limited Government" will always exceed its bounds
For posting on /. is it a prerequisite to be well-versed in conspiracy theory? Big Oil this and Detroit Auto Thugs that ... whatever happened to semi-anarchic free market theory? If you build it (and build it well, and price it enticingly) they will buy ...
... [sigh] ... see you in mod hell
-1 Flamebait, -1 Troll
Baa! You got me pegged. Running the Win2K desktop, sporting IE6, trying (lamely) to administer Active Directory ... thus the "flamebait" question at the parent. M$FT on the desktop (for me), BSD in the server room (where I have a say-so), W2K server everywheres else.
--
It's a great, big stupid world! -- Randy Stonehill, some song, some time in the late 1980s
How does this affect M$FT's implementation of K5?
Seems rather Orwellian to me ... if you reinvent the language, you control the people.
[1984]Let's introduce a new term, boys and girls: "hate speech". Yes, that's right, these are thoughts and ideas that are too terrible for you to contemplate, so we will censor them from your tender minds. What? No, you are not sensible enough to arrive at your own conclusions, so we must ensure that you are never exposed to these evil ideas.[/1984]
One of the consequences of truly "free" speech is that you have to hear a lot of crap from people you strongly disagree with. These are the "idiots" that we "love to hate", but if their speech isn't free, then nobody's is. That's the idea of free exchange of ideas in a free society. But then again, there's no such thing, because every attempt at a free society has ended by a centralization into a totalitarian state. [© 2002 jazzbotley the cynic] Ah, the rub. (Thanks, G.W.!)
As a teenager in the 80s, I witnessed the trailing edge of the sexual revolution, or the cultural overhaul, or whatever you want to call it. To me, I see cliches when I watch the movies -- over and over and over ... ad infinitum, yes I'm hammering on the definition of cliche here.
/.'ers!). They like a good flick just like the next guy. But they literally wince at every f-word, and cringe when the lady's bra straps fall off her shoulder. What recourse do they have when the secular humanists own the pulpit in Hollywood? Personally, I'd rather see them boycott the machine, but I applaud their efforts nonetheless.
So now that I live in a post-modern, post-Christian America, I guess I have a jaded perspective. If you preach "Jesus saves!" you're branded as some kind of fanatic/loser, hey don't push that propaganda on me.
What if you preach some other religion? Like, "free love, man!" Or, "It's not an alternate lifestyle, I was BORN this way!" You have the silver bullet, and no one gets to call you a fanatical propagandist. Seems a bit lopsided to me.
So you have some legitimate, concerned citizens, who are sincere in their faith (try not to put labels on them,
See you in mod hell
Wherever you are on the whole gun control debate, there is a nugget of truth in the statement: "Guns don't kill people, people do." At the risk of stating the obvious, that means that a gun never pulls its own trigger; there is always a person aiming and discharging the weapon.
... is it evil? ... is it good? Just as Orwell's point was more about control than technology, so the evaluation of "evil" does not apply to the technology itself, but rather to the person/persons/institution/corporation/government wielding that technology. What is his/her/their intent?
Using the same logic on technology itself
If a person's intention is to deceive (to compel another person to make a choice based on a lie), then that is evil. Technology used in the deception is irrelevant.
... wrote a novel, Ender's Game, a fascinating read about this kind of scenario. The novel focuses on kids being trained for military in the face of almost certain doom (invading aliens). The author's ability to empathize with the 8- and 9-yr-old subjects makes it a hard book to put down. The finale of the book has the kids operating, remote control, a pre-emptive strike against the aliens' home planet. I'll save a few details for you to read on your own, but when I saw this article, I immediately thought of Ender.
I am guessing that eavesblogging is a play on eavesdropping?
When you're a blockhead, wordplay hurts. Y'know?
The Uptime Rules
First, as an introduction to the rules, let's review our terms and terminology.
Definitions
Uptime is the amount of time the entire system is available. By entire system we are saying that an entire transaction can be completed. Just having your web servers running when the needed application server isn't running cannot be defined as uptime.
Downtime is everything else.
Scheduled maintenance downtimes or windows are the periods of time (for example, from 1:00am to 3:00am Monday morning) when an IT team has the option, if they need, to bring down various components in a fashion that causes the system to be incapable of complete functionality.
Reliability is defined as uptime but where scheduled maintenance downtime is not counted against it. For example, if in a 24 hour period there was an hour of scheduled downtime, but otherwise full operational for the remaing 23 hours, then the system was 100% reliable.
So how do you translate the 'nines' into acceptable downtime? This chart provides the answer: 'Nines' Uptime % Minutes
Per Year Minutes
Per Month Two 99% 5256 438.0 Three 99.9% 526 43.8 Four 99.99% 53 4.4 Five 99.999% 5 0.4
Rule #1: A great system run poorly is a poor system.
This is the most crucial rule to understand when managing any system. It doesn't matter how much you spent on the hardware, how well designed your database tables are, or if you installed the latest and greatest operating system on the market. If it cannot be managed well, problems ensue.
Users don't see, or care that problems come from your database servers, or your application servers, or your static data caching. What they perceive is one of two states: working or not working. They want to make their reservation, or pay their bill, or just get the weather in Bali, and they want to do it NOW!
Managing with a given level of reliability in mind is about people, hardware, operating and escalation plans, and ultimately, it is about the money to put it all together and keep it running. The cost of reliability, is very hard to quantify. Even assuming it is a linear relationship (and few things in life are) it's a staggering relationship in financial terms. In my experience each 'nine' is close to an order of magnitude increase in cost!
The bottom-line is this, you need to do an honest assessment of available resources versus intended goals; it is the first step in making sure your great systems runs at least as good as you intended.
Rule #2: Five nines is a goal reachable only through both fully automated system management, and rigorously controlled and tested applications.
Scared by four and five nines? Unless you've worked in a true, hardcore, spare no expense data center, you should be!
Let's think about five nines for a moment. 5 minutes a year. That rules out any form of human involvement in fixing problems. After all, even the best humans are known to be distracted for a minute or two into conversation with a co-worker, or a phone ringing.
As an example, let's time a perfectly common scenario, where you have two people monitoring systems. Time the following emulation in your office space:
Now stop the clock. I'm willing to bet your five minutes are up!
Even without a distraction, it's simply not possible for a system of any complexity, to have a problem confirmed, cross checked, and resolved, by a person, within five minutes. Oh, and don't forget about the minute to 90 seconds that you've already lost in monitoring the issue - unless you want alarms going off continuously, you have to set an error threshold that typically consumes 60 seconds or so.
"Okay," you say, "well, five nines is a lot. How about aiming at four nines?" But are four nines really much different than five? Certainly, it gives you more latitude and time to fix a problem, but not much more. You can afford a single downtime that takes a few minutes to debug, but that's all.
The truth is, unless you have an application that doesn't fail, the odds are that your hardware failures will still occur three to four times a year, which pushes the limit of human intervention. A good rule of thumb is that things never happen when you are watching them - figure that any issue takes at least ten minutes to resolve, even if it as simple as a human inadvertently powering both sets of redundant systems down, and now they are powering back up.
yeah she is ... see my story on CEOnistas