Perhaps you should start with the server and convert that to Linux/BSD and Samba 3. It should handle file/print services for your Windoze users just fine.
I recently replaced our aging NT server with Linux/Samba and it's working fine. (the server's primary job is file storage for front-end unix/linux servers so the Linux choice was easy. Setting up Samba on it allowed it to to replace our old NT machine for "free".)
Another benefit from switching to Samba - XP Home can log into it but it could not attach to our old NT domain. This saved us $$$ in Home->Pro "upgrade" costs on some new laptops.
Naturally, the Linux desktops have no trouble logging in, either.
There are two common ways for drilling the holes for wires. Cut in the box and use a long flexible bit to drill down through the floor in the wall - OK till you hit a wire/pipe/duct or find the hole comes out in an inaccessible place.
The other is to drill the wire at a steep angle, so it will hit the floor about mid-wall. It's pretty easy to eyeball this.
Then, once you have verified from below that the positioning is acceptable, cut in your box and drill your hole from above or below depending on convenience/access.
Don't use the templates stacked by the old-work boxes. Just hold the box (opening toward the wall, back toward you) together with a torpedo level in one hand and a tape measure in the other. Hold the box at your preferred distance from the floor and level it. Now trace around the box.
You will have to remember that the box gets turned around so you have to make the openings for the tabs opposite to where they are when the box is against the wall but it's a very fast and easy way to mark your opening (important when I completely rewired and tripled the outlets in my 1946 era house).
Most default 66 and 110 blocks are made for cross-connecting, not for distributing one line to many places. You need a phone connecting block like this. Home Depot used to sell something similar.
If you don't want to spend the $$ on a "real" 110 punchdown tool you can get a cheap (~$3) plastic one and cut the wires with diagonal cutters.
If you have a crawl-space you can use a trick an electrician friend showed me. Cut the bottom part off of a bunch of coathangers so you have a long straight piece of stiff wire. Find the studs on either side of the spot where you want to mount the jack then chuck a piece of the coathanger wire into a drill and drill right in the corner of your baseboard or just above the baseboard - whichever works well for you. When you go to the crawlspace you can find the wires sticking down and check to see if there are any obstructions to drilling then use the wire as a locator to drill up into the wall space. It's easy and you are far less likely to drill through a hardwood floor than if you tried measuring the locations.
Last month I visited a friend in North Carolina and rented a car. When we returned the car there were all sorts of fees with names like "Airport Surcharge Recovery Fee", "County Mandated Foo Fee", etc. The fees and taxes added up to roughly an additional 30%.
I have mixed feelings on this. On one hand I like it when the government tax gouging is made obvious. On the other hand I want things to be standard from place to place.
What lots of companies have been doing (hotels, car rental firms, and telcos are among the worst), is to make their prices look lower by "converting" a bunch of their overhead to "fees" that get tacked onto the bill (always phrased to sound like taxes but often including the overhead of handling the supposed manditory tax).
It's like buying a cup of coffee for $0.30 but going to the cash register and finding your receipt reading: Coffee: $0.30 Property tax recovery fee: $0.10 Business license recovery charge: $0.02 Government mandated workers compensation surcharge: $0.25 Health board inspection fee: $0.08 Employee income tax recovery charge: $0.35 Corporate tax surcharge: $0.20 Sales tax: $0.05 City waste disposal charge: $0.15
That will be $1.50, sir.
As an aside, in a country where one of the rallying cries was "No taxation without representation" our politicians try to subvert that wherever possible. The prime example is outrageous hotel room taxes. Soak the tourists, they won't be able to vote against me.
Way back (late 80s) I had a used Toshiba laptop - you know, blue monochrome LCD, 2 floppy. I slipped running up the front stairs of my apartment (concrete steps, concrete landing) and fell swinging the laptop over my head and smashing it down on the landing. Pieces flew everywhere but I just took out the soldering iron and melted the brass inserts back into the plastic case, carefully figured out where everything went, reassembled it and used it for quite a while thereafter.
As others have mentioned, studies indicate that the fact that you are concentrating on something other than driving is the real safety factor, not the fact that you are holding a phone.
Studies also indicate that cell-phone use is unfairly singled out as it is generally less of a safety factor than other things drivers are known to do. (IIRC, adjusting the radio/changing tapes or CDs was #1. Others included eating, checking maps, shaving, getting distracted by kids or pets.) Cell phones aren't worse, just more visible.
Having said that, my sister has a very nice speakerphone that attaches to the rods on the headrest. It is a horizontal rod with a speaker on each end and a flexible microphone holder. I generally can't tell that she is in the car (well, except for the squealing tires, screaming passengers, shattering glass and other side-effects of Cell Phone While Driving Syndrome). I don't know if this is the exact model but it looks similar: http://www.herringtoncatalog.com/m112.ht ml
I have been a customer of LMI for many years. They are quite geek-friendly. Things may have changed but when I got DSL they didn't even offer DHCP - if you bought an always-on connection you got a static IP. They don't block ports or have funny bandwidth caps either. They will run email/DNS for you or, of course, you can run your own. I don't think they operate outside the SF Bay Area, though.
I tend to agree. Now the poster doesn't seem to be saying, "Gee, I've been screwed. Where do I sue." but rather, "What is the norm, if any, for compensating employees for inventions."
What I find interesting is the way "invention" and "patent" seem to make people think they are doing something different than others. Most knowledge workers are financially compensated in return for using their brains and the company's resources to create something of value. In this case the company feels that the best way of protecting the results of this investment is to obtain a patent.
But how different is this from someone who writes a user manual for a company product only to discover (gasp!) that the company has copyrighted it?
Or perhaps you wrote some nifty program or designed a better tire tread or created a faster machine for manufacturing medicine. And it's not just tech. Artists, architects and composers all do work for hire and the person paying the bill owns the product.
Call it a sculpture, drawing, composition, article, book or invention - it's all pretty much the same. You are trading your talents for money. Be happy you have talent to trade.
Contact the congresscritters for your local district. They certainly know that any effort to fight spam will look good come re-election and they have the power to "make a couple calls".
Don't know your OS/desktop/etc. but check out the accessibility options. For instance, the KDE control center has accessibility options to "stick" the control, shift and alt keys so you don't have to press them simultaneously (press shift then f to get F for example). I've seen similar options for other systems.
I have found PostgreSQL to be nearly bullet-proof. I routinely have connections up for months at a time (that's individual persistent connections - the server is up much longer and the connections usually get dropped when I upgrade the client software). Still, sh*t happens and replication has been a sore point for many databases both open and commercial.
You should investigate eRserver. It was originally a commercial replication product for Postgres but has been open-sourced. I haven't tried it yet but it's on my to-do list.
Um, not exactly. It actually says that you must not reject a message just because the EHLO doesn't resolve to the connecting IP. You can't even get that far if you violate section 3.6:
3.6 Domains... The domain name given in the EHLO command MUST BE either a primary host name (a domain name that resolves to an A RR) or, if the host has no name, an address literal as described in section 4.1.1.1
Unless your computer's netbios name is something like [12.34.56.78] then it probably fails to meet every possible allowed EHLO name format.
Note also section 7.7:
7.7 Scope of Operation of SMTP Servers
It is a well-established principle that an SMTP server may refuse to accept mail for any operational or technical reason that makes sense to the site providing the server.
This section goes on to say that interoperability is what makes email the powerful tool it has become so use this power carefully. I consider killing spam, preventing the spread of viruses, and protecting my mailserver so that it remains available to the users it is meant to serve are all completely valid and necessary reasons for refusing mail. I don't think I'm alone.
RFC2821 requires the HELO/EHLO to be fully qualified. Most (all??) sobig EHLO with the Windows netbios name.
Sure, the next virus might be more RFC compliant but it stops this one. We already require FQDN EHLO to reduce spam so sobig didn't make it past our mail server.
As a bonus, sobig seems to connect directly to the recepients MX so simply rejecting the message (as opposed to accepting a message and generating a bounce) reduces the overall impact on the network.
If you don't HELO with a FQDN then you aren't "speaking" SMTP so don't expect my SMTP server to communicate with you.
If you are running a corporate network where users shouldn't be making direct SMTP connections, filter outbound port 25 and use an IDS/log checking to see if someone inside has gotten infected.
As reporters so often do this one screwed up. Watts are a measure of power but "40 megawatts" doesn't give any information about how much _energy_ is stored, only how fast it can be delivered (power). Slashdot's editors "corrected" the story but only by recalculating based on incorrect interpretation of power and energy.
A typical average - at least in the lower 48 - is 1kw/household so 40 megawatts should handle 40,000 homes. For how long? We don't have that info other than the article's claim of 7 minutes. Assuming they got their signals crossed and mean that it can deliver 40 megawatts for 7 minutes then the batteries store 40,000kw * 7 minutes / 60 minutes = 4666kWh of energy.
For comparison, a AA nicad holds ~.75wh or.00075 kWh of energy so based on the preceding assumptions this battery bank is the equivalent of somewhat over 6 million AA batteries.
Another article indicates that the purpose is not to power the entire city but to carry the excess load when a single plant drops off line. Fairbanks does have outside feeds and multiple local plants just like the continental US but it has fewer of each so loss of a plant can cause a proportionately larger swing in the supply. It appears that this battery bank is really a load leveler, not a UPS.
I used to have a freebie subscription to a magazine which I believe was called "Computer Graphics". It may be around now but I haven't had a subscription in years.
It would be worth looking through back issues as frequently a front-page article dealt with breakthroughs and problems in CG. The oceans in Waterworld, animating hair, and so on.
It also had interesting articles on geeks and directors. I don't recall if it was Casper or Toy Story but one article mentioned the difficulty encountered when the director mentality collided with the computer animation mentality. The director kept going back to the animators for more "takes" while the geeks thought they had delivered finished product (hmmm...that actually sounds like a pretty common type of IT/management complaint outside of CG as well).
While it's easy to grab sci-fi adventures as examples as the CG is obvious (well done, perhaps, but we know that the death-star or pod-racer or whatever isn't real) don't forget to include examples where the CG is invisible - just another tool in the box so the director can add or modify elements in everyday scenes to create his or her vision.
In fact, if you are looking for influence you might concentrate on looking at the shift in tools over time. Sci fi flix have been around a long time but we no longer hang pie tins from strings. We used to blow things up for real but now it's frequently just bits and bytes. As we get better and better, CG becomes a more cost effective way of creating ever more parts of a movie. Given how well dead actors have been integrated into live-action films you might conclude that eliminating the actor (or at least outsourcing the mo-cap to India) is the "final frontier".
Sobig greets the other server with the netbios name of the infected computer. This does not conform to rfc2821 which requires a fully qualified domain name. My mailserver does not accept connections from hosts that do not properly identify themselves as the RFC requires. Haven't seen a single Sobig here - the server rejected them all.
Now bounced messages from other mailservers...that's another issue.
If mail admins simply set their servers to require FQDN greetings then Sobig would be stopped dead. By rejecting the message my mailserver expects the connecting MTA to generate any necessary bounce which Sobig, of course, does not do. No delivery. No bounce messages. No problem.
So how about it all you mail admins out there. How about demanding a bit of RFC compliance from connecting MTAs. Perhaps this virus will provide the moral authority you need to tighten up your servers.
I rewired my whole house from the power pole down (was 40s era ungrounded knob and tube with 30 amp service) so it can be done but some things will make it easier.
First, find an electrician friend or at least an electrician who is DIY friendly and get a professional opinion. If the insulation in the panel is bad it may be bad in the walls as well. You may not want to know.
While you can do the research and learning yourself, a pro will quickly spot certain gotchas like aluminum wiring without the proper anti-corrosion connectors or grease.
They will also likely spot other things you would probably miss such as certain Federal Pacific Electric panels and breakers (http://www.inspect-ny.com/fpe/sec1982.htm).
In my case I knew plenty about electricity in general but hiring a friend for a few hours to review the project and teach me the tricks really helped speed the job. He was also able to review the codes. Again, basic electricity wasn't the problem but my friend was intimate with all the issues like where GFCIs are required, required height of outlets, how many are required per wall, allowed location and hole sizes in floor joists, locations where conduit/BX is and is not required.
A lot of the codes sound arbitrary and to a certain extent they are but before dismissing them as silly remember that they represent the accumulated wisdom from the fires, electrocutions, etc. in the past. Building codes are all written in blood.
A pro can show you good tricks. For example, throw away the stupid paper template that comes with the retrofit junction boxes and simply hold a torpedo level against the box, use a tape to measure the proper height and pencil around the box then cut.
Also, before locating a box take a piece of straight coat-hanger wire, chuck it into a drill, and drill it through the baseboard or ceiling wherever you want to locate the box. Then crawl under the house or into the attic and the wire will give you the exact location so you can check for obstructions and you can drill the holes in the right place. Much better than trying to measure plus coathangers are free and the tiny hole is easily filled with a dab of spackle.
If you do get into major rewiring I recommend a few things:
1. Use 20 amp wiring - the material cost is very slightly higher but labor isn't. You have extra capacity and lower resistance losses.
2. More breakers - OK, I went a bit overboard with well over 20 breakers in a 1200 square foot house but running every kitchen outlet to its own breaker cost me very little in time or money and I have no problem running the microwave, coffee maker, waffle maker, toaster along with the fridge and dishwasher.
3. Outlets everywhere. I added outlets in every closet - they are great for powering chargers, adding a burglar alarm, etc. Add them where you might add appliances - I'm finally getting a garage door opener but the install will be easy since the outlet is already in place. While I was up in the attic I added an outlet under the eaves - handy every Christmas. I increased the number ouf outlets 3-4 fold and have used every one.
4. Run 240 to the garage - you will eventually want to run a small welder and even if not you might want to use it for an illegal backfeed from your generator in a blackout (just be sure to kill the main breaker first).
Upgrading to a solid over-engineered electrical system wasn't like getting a new computer or other toy - it was more like finally getting a pebble out of my shoe (no more blown fuses, no more sticking a three prong adapter on the extension cord then tossing it out the bathroom window to be able to mow the back lawn...) It's work but the result is nice.
Unless you are working in a two-man shop your "employer" is not a single sentient being. You need to deal with humans in the organization and each person will have individual motivations.
You are unlikely to sell your dyed-in-the-wool MSCE boss on open-source if it means that you become the expert and he becomes redundant. The benefit to the corporation doesn't matter here. In most organizations you won't have much luck trying to go over his head, either.
Also, keep the "big picture" in mind. I've seen people decry the fact that their employers waste so much money on [paperclips, toner, servers] they bought at [big on-line megastore] when the paperclips are 20 cents cheaper at Joe's stationers and a new desktop is cheaper down the street at we-b-p-cs. Fine, but collecting all those prices, managing the paperwork for all those accounts, etc. is expensive. It's usually better to have a few good suppliers with decent prices and good service/return policies than trying to micromanage every purchase so don't try to convince the purchasing manager otherwise.
Having very little detail to go on in your post I can blindly offer one suggestion: a well-done pilot or example project completed while doing a good job with your assigned duties and presented carefully to the proper people can do wonders. I've seen this work brilliantly on many occasions.
For a large-scale example of this read "Sidewinder", the book about the development of the Sidewinder missile. The original task was to improve fuses for bombs but the engineers co-opted the project and developed the most spectacularly successful air-to-air missile in history.
NiCd and NiMH have somewhat lower voltage (~1.2v) than alkaline (~1.5v) but they also have a far lower internal resistance so if you short a NiCd/NiMH you can get far more current than if you short an alkaline.
NiMH also self-discharge quite rapidly - several percent/day. In some apps the self-discharge drains the battery faster than the device does. This also makes them lousy for emergency uses unless they are always on charge.
The upshot of this is that if you have a very low draw app like noise-cancelling headphones or a radio-only walkthing then you may want to stick with alkaline as they last weeks to months anyway and the loss of 0.6v (for 2 cells) may cause problems.
You may also want to stick with alkaline for certain very high-draw apps. Some halogen high-intensity flashlight bulbs specifically recommend against using rechargables. They are designed for use with alkaline and without the limiting factor of the internal resistance of the alkaline battery the bulb will pull too much current and burn out quickly.
On the other hand moderately high draw things like digital cameras are perfect for NiMH. The high draw depletes the alkaline to a point that it can't supply enough current in short order - a couple dozen pictures in my camera. NiMH will power it for a couple hundred. Unless your use level borders on "never", rechargables are the way to go for cameras, flash units, handi-talkies and similar devices.
Beware of chargers that recharge pairs of batteries, however. I recently had some old NiMH batteries that I thought were dead (~12 pix per charge). I had been using the Kodak charger that I got with my camera - it charges cells in pairs. Unfortunately if cells are out of balance it doesn't work well.
I bought a PowerX charger and after a couple charge cycles the batteries were working great again - and they are almost 5 years old.
The PowerX has gotten favorable reviews from ham operators and camera buffs. It has two charge cycles so if you don't need a charge RightNow! you can switch to a slower setting to prolong the life of your battery. Also, each battery is on an independent channel so each battery gets an appropriate charge and you won't be driven crazy when you have an oh-so-common 3 battery device. After charging it switches to a trickle mode to keep the battery topped-off. I've only had mine for a couple of weeks but so far it beats the heck out of my old chargers. Comes with a car cable, too.
This story was on SF Gate 2 weeks ago and I submitted it that day. The weird thing is that my submission was and still is listed as accepted but the story was never posted. Now it finally shows up.
Maybe the microbes had to chew through some bowel obstructions to allow the accepted stories to clear through.:)
Not true. I've read plenty of stories and reports that *nix admins typically have a far better foundation in the fundamentals. My experience has been similar. *nix gurus tend to know what happens under the surface and can often do a much faster/better job of debugging and engineering. I'll wager that if you were to compare *nix admins with Windoze admins, you would find a far higher percentage of *nix admins understand http/smtp/pop well enough to use telnet to access and debug a web/mail/pop server.
Also, as a couple of articles have pointed out, almost all *nix admins have at least some experience with Windows while Windows admins with *nix skills are less common.
If I were the employer, however, I'd be concerned about interest level. If you are dying to learn Windows and increase your overall skill level then go for it. For others, being forced to deal with Windows would be like sitting listening to blackboards being scratched all day. Still, you gotta eat.
I mostly deal with *nix but need to deal with Windoze from time to time. I got the Universal Command Guide: http://www.ucgbook.com
There's plenty to complain about starting with the hubris of the "Every Command Every Operating System Cross-Referenced Together" subtitle Apparently TRON, Plan 9, vxWorks, etc. aren't operating systems (or "Some of the More Common Operating Systems, Many of the Common Commands" didn't get past the marketing department). The selection of commands in the book can sometimes seem odd and at $70 it isn't cheap, either.
Still, when you are used to "w", "ifconfig", "passwd" and the rest but find yourself sitting in front of a Netware/Mac/DOS/Windows machine thinking "there must be an equivalent instruction if I only knew what/where it is", then the cross reference in this book should at least get you pointed in the right direction.
I only pick it up every few months but even at $70 it doesn't take much time and frustration savings to pay for itself.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps you should start with the server and convert that to Linux/BSD and Samba 3. It should handle file/print services for your Windoze users just fine.
I recently replaced our aging NT server with Linux/Samba and it's working fine. (the server's primary job is file storage for front-end unix/linux servers so the Linux choice was easy. Setting up Samba on it allowed it to to replace our old NT machine for "free".)
Another benefit from switching to Samba - XP Home can log into it but it could not attach to our old NT domain. This saved us $$$ in Home->Pro "upgrade" costs on some new laptops.
Naturally, the Linux desktops have no trouble logging in, either.
I just looked at the excerpt of "The Partner, Large Print Edition" but unfortunately the font was the same as for all the other books.
The other is to drill the wire at a steep angle, so it will hit the floor about mid-wall. It's pretty easy to eyeball this.
Then, once you have verified from below that the positioning is acceptable, cut in your box and drill your hole from above or below depending on convenience/access.
Don't use the templates stacked by the old-work boxes. Just hold the box (opening toward the wall, back toward you) together with a torpedo level in one hand and a tape measure in the other. Hold the box at your preferred distance from the floor and level it. Now trace around the box.
You will have to remember that the box gets turned around so you have to make the openings for the tabs opposite to where they are when the box is against the wall but it's a very fast and easy way to mark your opening (important when I completely rewired and tripled the outlets in my 1946 era house).
If you don't want to spend the $$ on a "real" 110 punchdown tool you can get a cheap (~$3) plastic one and cut the wires with diagonal cutters.
If you have a crawl-space you can use a trick an electrician friend showed me. Cut the bottom part off of a bunch of coathangers so you have a long straight piece of stiff wire. Find the studs on either side of the spot where you want to mount the jack then chuck a piece of the coathanger wire into a drill and drill right in the corner of your baseboard or just above the baseboard - whichever works well for you. When you go to the crawlspace you can find the wires sticking down and check to see if there are any obstructions to drilling then use the wire as a locator to drill up into the wall space. It's easy and you are far less likely to drill through a hardwood floor than if you tried measuring the locations.
Last month I visited a friend in North Carolina and rented a car. When we returned the car there were all sorts of fees with names like "Airport Surcharge Recovery Fee", "County Mandated Foo Fee", etc. The fees and taxes added up to roughly an additional 30%.
.
I have mixed feelings on this. On one hand I like it when the government tax gouging is made obvious. On the other hand I want things to be standard from place to place.
What lots of companies have been doing (hotels, car rental firms, and telcos are among the worst), is to make their prices look lower by "converting" a bunch of their overhead to "fees" that get tacked onto the bill (always phrased to sound like taxes but often including the overhead of handling the supposed manditory tax)
It's like buying a cup of coffee for $0.30 but going to the cash register and finding your receipt reading:
Coffee: $0.30
Property tax recovery fee: $0.10
Business license recovery charge: $0.02
Government mandated workers compensation surcharge: $0.25
Health board inspection fee: $0.08
Employee income tax recovery charge: $0.35
Corporate tax surcharge: $0.20
Sales tax: $0.05
City waste disposal charge: $0.15
That will be $1.50, sir.
As an aside, in a country where one of the rallying cries was "No taxation without representation" our politicians try to subvert that wherever possible. The prime example is outrageous hotel room taxes. Soak the tourists, they won't be able to vote against me.
Way back (late 80s) I had a used Toshiba laptop - you know, blue monochrome LCD, 2 floppy. I slipped running up the front stairs of my apartment (concrete steps, concrete landing) and fell swinging the laptop over my head and smashing it down on the landing. Pieces flew everywhere but I just took out the soldering iron and melted the brass inserts back into the plastic case, carefully figured out where everything went, reassembled it and used it for quite a while thereafter.
As others have mentioned, studies indicate that the fact that you are concentrating on something other than driving is the real safety factor, not the fact that you are holding a phone.
t ml
Studies also indicate that cell-phone use is unfairly singled out as it is generally less of a safety factor than other things drivers are known to do. (IIRC, adjusting the radio/changing tapes or CDs was #1. Others included eating, checking maps, shaving, getting distracted by kids or pets.) Cell phones aren't worse, just more visible.
Having said that, my sister has a very nice speakerphone that attaches to the rods on the headrest. It is a horizontal rod with a speaker on each end and a flexible microphone holder. I generally can't tell that she is in the car (well, except for the squealing tires, screaming passengers, shattering glass and other side-effects of Cell Phone While Driving Syndrome). I don't know if this is the exact model but it looks similar:
http://www.herringtoncatalog.com/m112.h
I have been a customer of LMI for many years. They are quite geek-friendly. Things may have changed but when I got DSL they didn't even offer DHCP - if you bought an always-on connection you got a static IP. They don't block ports or have funny bandwidth caps either. They will run email/DNS for you or, of course, you can run your own. I don't think they operate outside the SF Bay Area, though.
I tend to agree. Now the poster doesn't seem to be saying, "Gee, I've been screwed. Where do I sue." but rather, "What is the norm, if any, for compensating employees for inventions."
What I find interesting is the way "invention" and "patent" seem to make people think they are doing something different than others. Most knowledge workers are financially compensated in return for using their brains and the company's resources to create something of value. In this case the company feels that the best way of protecting the results of this investment is to obtain a patent.
But how different is this from someone who writes a user manual for a company product only to discover (gasp!) that the company has copyrighted it?
Or perhaps you wrote some nifty program or designed a better tire tread or created a faster machine for manufacturing medicine. And it's not just tech. Artists, architects and composers all do work for hire and the person paying the bill owns the product.
Call it a sculpture, drawing, composition, article, book or invention - it's all pretty much the same. You are trading your talents for money. Be happy you have talent to trade.
Contact the congresscritters for your local district. They certainly know that any effort to fight spam will look good come re-election and they have the power to "make a couple calls".
Don't know your OS/desktop/etc. but check out the accessibility options. For instance, the KDE control center has accessibility options to "stick" the control, shift and alt keys so you don't have to press them simultaneously (press shift then f to get F for example). I've seen similar options for other systems.
You should investigate eRserver. It was originally a commercial replication product for Postgres but has been open-sourced. I haven't tried it yet but it's on my to-do list.
Um, not exactly. It actually says that you must not reject a message just because the EHLO doesn't resolve to the connecting IP. You can't even get that far if you violate section 3.6:
...
3.6 Domains
The domain name given in the EHLO command MUST BE either a primary host name (a domain name that resolves to an A RR) or, if the host has no name, an address literal as described in section 4.1.1.1
Unless your computer's netbios name is something like [12.34.56.78] then it probably fails to meet every possible allowed EHLO name format.
Note also section 7.7:
7.7 Scope of Operation of SMTP Servers
It is a well-established principle that an SMTP server may refuse to accept mail for any operational or technical reason that makes sense to the site providing the server.
This section goes on to say that interoperability is what makes email the powerful tool it has become so use this power carefully. I consider killing spam, preventing the spread of viruses, and protecting my mailserver so that it remains available to the users it is meant to serve are all completely valid and necessary reasons for refusing mail. I don't think I'm alone.
RFC2821 requires the HELO/EHLO to be fully qualified. Most (all??) sobig EHLO with the Windows netbios name.
Sure, the next virus might be more RFC compliant but it stops this one. We already require FQDN EHLO to reduce spam so sobig didn't make it past our mail server.
As a bonus, sobig seems to connect directly to the recepients MX so simply rejecting the message (as opposed to accepting a message and generating a bounce) reduces the overall impact on the network.
If you don't HELO with a FQDN then you aren't "speaking" SMTP so don't expect my SMTP server to communicate with you.
If you are running a corporate network where users shouldn't be making direct SMTP connections, filter outbound port 25 and use an IDS/log checking to see if someone inside has gotten infected.
A typical average - at least in the lower 48 - is 1kw/household so 40 megawatts should handle 40,000 homes. For how long? We don't have that info other than the article's claim of 7 minutes. Assuming they got their signals crossed and mean that it can deliver 40 megawatts for 7 minutes then the batteries store 40,000kw * 7 minutes / 60 minutes = 4666kWh of energy.
For comparison, a AA nicad holds ~.75wh or .00075 kWh of energy so based on the preceding assumptions this battery bank is the equivalent of somewhat over 6 million AA batteries.
Another article indicates that the purpose is not to power the entire city but to carry the excess load when a single plant drops off line. Fairbanks does have outside feeds and multiple local plants just like the continental US but it has fewer of each so loss of a plant can cause a proportionately larger swing in the supply. It appears that this battery bank is really a load leveler, not a UPS.
I used to have a freebie subscription to a magazine which I believe was called "Computer Graphics". It may be around now but I haven't had a subscription in years.
It would be worth looking through back issues as frequently a front-page article dealt with breakthroughs and problems in CG. The oceans in Waterworld, animating hair, and so on.
It also had interesting articles on geeks and directors. I don't recall if it was Casper or Toy Story but one article mentioned the difficulty encountered when the director mentality collided with the computer animation mentality. The director kept going back to the animators for more "takes" while the geeks thought they had delivered finished product (hmmm...that actually sounds like a pretty common type of IT/management complaint outside of CG as well).
While it's easy to grab sci-fi adventures as examples as the CG is obvious (well done, perhaps, but we know that the death-star or pod-racer or whatever isn't real) don't forget to include examples where the CG is invisible - just another tool in the box so the director can add or modify elements in everyday scenes to create his or her vision.
In fact, if you are looking for influence you might concentrate on looking at the shift in tools over time. Sci fi flix have been around a long time but we no longer hang pie tins from strings. We used to blow things up for real but now it's frequently just bits and bytes. As we get better and better, CG becomes a more cost effective way of creating ever more parts of a movie. Given how well dead actors have been integrated into live-action films you might conclude that eliminating the actor (or at least outsourcing the mo-cap to India) is the "final frontier".
Sobig greets the other server with the netbios name of the infected computer. This does not conform to rfc2821 which requires a fully qualified domain name. My mailserver does not accept connections from hosts that do not properly identify themselves as the RFC requires. Haven't seen a single Sobig here - the server rejected them all.
Now bounced messages from other mailservers...that's another issue.
If mail admins simply set their servers to require FQDN greetings then Sobig would be stopped dead. By rejecting the message my mailserver expects the connecting MTA to generate any necessary bounce which Sobig, of course, does not do. No delivery. No bounce messages. No problem.
So how about it all you mail admins out there. How about demanding a bit of RFC compliance from connecting MTAs. Perhaps this virus will provide the moral authority you need to tighten up your servers.
I rewired my whole house from the power pole down (was 40s era ungrounded knob and tube with 30 amp service) so it can be done but some things will make it easier.
First, find an electrician friend or at least an electrician who is DIY friendly and get a professional opinion. If the insulation in the panel is bad it may be bad in the walls as well. You may not want to know.
While you can do the research and learning yourself, a pro will quickly spot certain gotchas like aluminum wiring without the proper anti-corrosion connectors or grease.
They will also likely spot other things you would probably miss such as certain Federal Pacific Electric panels and breakers (http://www.inspect-ny.com/fpe/sec1982.htm).
In my case I knew plenty about electricity in general but hiring a friend for a few hours to review the project and teach me the tricks really helped speed the job. He was also able to review the codes. Again, basic electricity wasn't the problem but my friend was intimate with all the issues like where GFCIs are required, required height of outlets, how many are required per wall, allowed location and hole sizes in floor joists, locations where conduit/BX is and is not required.
A lot of the codes sound arbitrary and to a certain extent they are but before dismissing them as silly remember that they represent the accumulated wisdom from the fires, electrocutions, etc. in the past. Building codes are all written in blood.
A pro can show you good tricks. For example, throw away the stupid paper template that comes with the retrofit junction boxes and simply hold a torpedo level against the box, use a tape to measure the proper height and pencil around the box then cut.
Also, before locating a box take a piece of straight coat-hanger wire, chuck it into a drill, and drill it through the baseboard or ceiling wherever you want to locate the box. Then crawl under the house or into the attic and the wire will give you the exact location so you can check for obstructions and you can drill the holes in the right place. Much better than trying to measure plus coathangers are free and the tiny hole is easily filled with a dab of spackle.
If you do get into major rewiring I recommend a few things:
1. Use 20 amp wiring - the material cost is very slightly higher but labor isn't. You have extra capacity and lower resistance losses.
2. More breakers - OK, I went a bit overboard with well over 20 breakers in a 1200 square foot house but running every kitchen outlet to its own breaker cost me very little in time or money and I have no problem running the microwave, coffee maker, waffle maker, toaster along with the fridge and dishwasher.
3. Outlets everywhere. I added outlets in every closet - they are great for powering chargers, adding a burglar alarm, etc. Add them where you might add appliances - I'm finally getting a garage door opener but the install will be easy since the outlet is already in place. While I was up in the attic I added an outlet under the eaves - handy every Christmas. I increased the number ouf outlets 3-4 fold and have used every one.
4. Run 240 to the garage - you will eventually want to run a small welder and even if not you might want to use it for an illegal backfeed from your generator in a blackout (just be sure to kill the main breaker first).
Upgrading to a solid over-engineered electrical system wasn't like getting a new computer or other toy - it was more like finally getting a pebble out of my shoe (no more blown fuses, no more sticking a three prong adapter on the extension cord then tossing it out the bathroom window to be able to mow the back lawn...) It's work but the result is nice.
My ISP handled the outage just fine. Here in California we don't have to worry about blackou&*#%@
carrier lost
Unless you are working in a two-man shop your "employer" is not a single sentient being. You need to deal with humans in the organization and each person will have individual motivations.
You are unlikely to sell your dyed-in-the-wool MSCE boss on open-source if it means that you become the expert and he becomes redundant. The benefit to the corporation doesn't matter here. In most organizations you won't have much luck trying to go over his head, either.
Also, keep the "big picture" in mind. I've seen people decry the fact that their employers waste so much money on [paperclips, toner, servers] they bought at [big on-line megastore] when the paperclips are 20 cents cheaper at Joe's stationers and a new desktop is cheaper down the street at we-b-p-cs. Fine, but collecting all those prices, managing the paperwork for all those accounts, etc. is expensive. It's usually better to have a few good suppliers with decent prices and good service/return policies than trying to micromanage every purchase so don't try to convince the purchasing manager otherwise.
Having very little detail to go on in your post I can blindly offer one suggestion: a well-done pilot or example project completed while doing a good job with your assigned duties and presented carefully to the proper people can do wonders. I've seen this work brilliantly on many occasions.
For a large-scale example of this read "Sidewinder", the book about the development of the Sidewinder missile. The original task was to improve fuses for bombs but the engineers co-opted the project and developed the most spectacularly successful air-to-air missile in history.
NiCd and NiMH have somewhat lower voltage (~1.2v) than alkaline (~1.5v) but they also have a far lower internal resistance so if you short a NiCd/NiMH you can get far more current than if you short an alkaline.
NiMH also self-discharge quite rapidly - several percent/day. In some apps the self-discharge drains the battery faster than the device does. This also makes them lousy for emergency uses unless they are always on charge.
The upshot of this is that if you have a very low draw app like noise-cancelling headphones or a radio-only walkthing then you may want to stick with alkaline as they last weeks to months anyway and the loss of 0.6v (for 2 cells) may cause problems.
You may also want to stick with alkaline for certain very high-draw apps. Some halogen high-intensity flashlight bulbs specifically recommend against using rechargables. They are designed for use with alkaline and without the limiting factor of the internal resistance of the alkaline battery the bulb will pull too much current and burn out quickly.
On the other hand moderately high draw things like digital cameras are perfect for NiMH. The high draw depletes the alkaline to a point that it can't supply enough current in short order - a couple dozen pictures in my camera. NiMH will power it for a couple hundred. Unless your use level borders on "never", rechargables are the way to go for cameras, flash units, handi-talkies and similar devices.
Beware of chargers that recharge pairs of batteries, however. I recently had some old NiMH batteries that I thought were dead (~12 pix per charge). I had been using the Kodak charger that I got with my camera - it charges cells in pairs. Unfortunately if cells are out of balance it doesn't work well.
I bought a PowerX charger and after a couple charge cycles the batteries were working great again - and they are almost 5 years old.
The PowerX has gotten favorable reviews from ham operators and camera buffs. It has two charge cycles so if you don't need a charge RightNow! you can switch to a slower setting to prolong the life of your battery. Also, each battery is on an independent channel so each battery gets an appropriate charge and you won't be driven crazy when you have an oh-so-common 3 battery device. After charging it switches to a trickle mode to keep the battery topped-off. I've only had mine for a couple of weeks but so far it beats the heck out of my old chargers. Comes with a car cable, too.
This story was on SF Gate 2 weeks ago and I submitted it that day. The weird thing is that my submission was and still is listed as accepted but the story was never posted. Now it finally shows up.
:)
Maybe the microbes had to chew through some bowel obstructions to allow the accepted stories to clear through.
Not true. I've read plenty of stories and reports that *nix admins typically have a far better foundation in the fundamentals. My experience has been similar. *nix gurus tend to know what happens under the surface and can often do a much faster/better job of debugging and engineering. I'll wager that if you were to compare *nix admins with Windoze admins, you would find a far higher percentage of *nix admins understand http/smtp/pop well enough to use telnet to access and debug a web/mail/pop server.
Also, as a couple of articles have pointed out, almost all *nix admins have at least some experience with Windows while Windows admins with *nix skills are less common.
If I were the employer, however, I'd be concerned about interest level. If you are dying to learn Windows and increase your overall skill level then go for it. For others, being forced to deal with Windows would be like sitting listening to blackboards being scratched all day. Still, you gotta eat.
I mostly deal with *nix but need to deal with Windoze from time to time. I got the Universal Command Guide: http://www.ucgbook.com
There's plenty to complain about starting with the hubris of the "Every Command Every Operating System Cross-Referenced Together" subtitle Apparently TRON, Plan 9, vxWorks, etc. aren't operating systems (or "Some of the More Common Operating Systems, Many of the Common Commands" didn't get past the marketing department). The selection of commands in the book can sometimes seem odd and at $70 it isn't cheap, either.
Still, when you are used to "w", "ifconfig", "passwd" and the rest but find yourself sitting in front of a Netware/Mac/DOS/Windows machine thinking "there must be an equivalent instruction if I only knew what/where it is", then the cross reference in this book should at least get you pointed in the right direction.
I only pick it up every few months but even at $70 it doesn't take much time and frustration savings to pay for itself.