I will try this one last time. My own opinion is that without further evidence I have no opinion. Personally I choose not to wave my arse as flag and venture guesses.
Simply because the evidence I have seen so far (namely the report of a team of experts, I do not consider the rant of some guy on slashdot named Rei evidence) leans toward this being ice does not mean I believe it is ice. I am simply pointing out that if you are biased on a subject to the point of discounting all findings before they have even had the opportunity to be properly reviewed (and worse, actually acting like not having had a chance to be reviewed yet counts against the findings?) you really should not commit further offense by spreading that bias to others.
"It could also be lava flows (which is what it looks like)"
According to you, according to the FA lava is firmly ruled out because these have clear undisputed characteristics of a much more mobile fluid. They ruled out lava because it decidedly does NOT look like lava.
If you look at a path in sand made by molasses and then another made by water there is very distinct difference in the marks they make. Especially when your basis for comparison was made in the same sand, on the same beach.
I could agree that the Slashdot post paints this as a clearer picture than it is, right now there are a list of facts which lean TOWARD this being water but are far from conclusive. You however are exibiting a decided bias in the other direction, glossing over facts and only admitting them when they are explictly pointed out. You are attempting to persuade standing primarily on the shoulders of rheotoric.
The facts are these:
There is a formation on mars which looks like packed ice.
There is a location which is widely accepted to have once held water nearby.
There is a path of erosion indicating the water traveled from the ancient wetspot to the exact spot where we have found what appears to be ice.
We can clearly tell the formations were made by a highly mobile liquid and have little to no chance of being made by lava.
The depth of craters in the area indicates there is ice beneath.
It is impossible for anyone to form a substantiated opinion on whether or not this is ice based on the existing evidence.
Further, it is important to remember that being in violation of a THEORY does not make something less likely. A theory is a guess that we believe fits the evidence we have, theory are certainly mobile fluids and are often subject to regular modification and change.
Considering that most of our theories about Mars are in their infancy they are all highly suspect and nobody should be trying to supress new data which would change them... unless they are pushing an alterior motive, such as supporting/disproving the possibility of life on Mars.
At the same time is not your own reporting a tad biased here?
Neglecting to mention that there is a valley that has long been thought to be an ancient body of water. And leading out from that vally are signs of erosion which indicate the water flowed to this spot. And sure enough it turns out there is what appears to be ice WHERE THEY EXPECTED TO FIND IT.
It seems to me that is a rather significant omission.
I missed the linux zealotry.:) It seemed a fair
question since every significant security hole
posted for firefox/thunderbird has been a problem
with the windows permissions model and only affected windows users.
In this case the glitch is in javascript. And you have to click a link to get the popups.
Go here and click the link to find out if your vulnerable.
If the advertisements use images, animations, flash, or any other scheme that significantly impacts page loading or distracts from the content on the page, they are just as bad as popups/unders.
Also blocking popup/unders is easy. Blocking banners and flash ads is a little more difficult and those who are doing so will not be buying from your ads anyway.
Are you running windows or linux? Since the browser doesn't seem to be the key I'm wondering if the OS is. I haven't gotten any popups when browsing with firefox under linux.
I am unable to get a popup from any of the sites being mentioned using firefox. Currently I'm using firefox 1.0 under linux (suse 9.2 pro). Are you guys who are getting them running windows?
Can you explain why a buffer overrun in a userspace application could crash the KERNEL? The kernel isn't supposed to allow overruns or any other fault in individual userspace applications to take down the system.
This isn't a survey AC. I have been working in both environments for years and have actually worked as a linux admin and as a windows admin, and administered both systems in a mixed environment as well. Notice how nobody else who has done so is disputing me? It is called peer review, it is the system we have here on slashdot and is generally is attributed more weight than raw research data.
I doubt it would bring suits because I doubt anyone would sue because they lost a position paying less than 6 figures.
Then again your probably right, I doubt Cisco would chance the bad press. 45-50 employees is probably a drop in the bucket compared to what Cisco employs so the unemployment claims probably won't even begin to impact the rates they pay.
My experience with corporations is that they WOULD do this if they did not feel the risks outweighed the benefits. Corporate machines do not actually care about "doing the right thing" for the employees.
"Does Cisco *really* emply such a large team of nothing-but Windows admins? At my work, we have about 200 Windows PCs... and Wayne, the admin."
In order for a windows admin to support 200 pc's he has to be EXTREMELY overworked, and the setup has to be very simple and streamlined.
Now I'll grant that 40-1 is low, but that is about what it would take to be able to deliver IMMEDIATE response to technical problems without users being able to install/configure software themselves (meaning at any given moment there will be someone sitting around waiting for a call) which is probably what cisco is looking for when it comes to its Engineers. The higher the ratio goes, the more it becomes about setting up a queue of tasks, the admin's ability to juggle tasks, and reasonable rather than immediate response times.
Cisco admins are probably making 40k/year and the engineers are making 250+k/year each... they probably figure this is worthwhile to minimize downtime.
At 400-1 a linux admin will probably have reasonable idle time, but you can't guarantee that two problems will come at once. This is where having 5 admins who administer 2000 pcs come in, ONE of them will be more likely have idle time when that second problem comes in. Of course those 5 admins are probably making $80k/year rather than $40k/year like the windows admins were but the salary of 10 admins with only 5 sets of benefits is a great deal less than 50 salaries and 50 sets of benefits.
"His poor admins who now have to support linux with inadequate training..."
Keeping the same admins would be categorically stupid. You simply get rid of the windows admins (they did not have the knowledge needed to perform their job function, no unemployment for you!) and hire in real linux admins. Or maybe discover that some of your windows admins were really linux admins who took the job to get Cisco on their resume.
Since the support costs of linux ARE lower than the support costs of windows I doubt he is fudging the data.
Why would he fudge his own data, to make a case to himself, to convince himself that he should invest in an OS change?
I hate to be the one to spring this on you, but the Cisco it manager is letting people know what he's doing, he really doesn't give a shit whether they agree with the decisions he made or not.
I am with Flacco here. The time for this response is long past. Although the parent was maybe a bit insulting in his method, basically your post is saying "STFU" to non-programmers who ask for features/solutions that are missing in OSS software.
This is ridiculous because first and foremost, if your going to put something out for use and review b the public you ARE opening yourself to BOTH criticism and praise. This should be expected and developers as a whole (all of them, globally) need to learn to accept honest and productive criticism.E ven if it is general in nature, generalized criticism can provide a general direction and goal to work toward, criticism does NOT need to be specific to be productive.
Second, just because someone is not coding themselves does not mean they are not selflessly slaving away to make the open source community a better place. In the traditional *nix world this is fudged but in reality System/Network Administrator and coder are two entirely DIFFERENT things, this is a class of user who is probably going to be looking for features and have constructive criticism. This class of user is probably helping spread open source through deployment, maybe working on documentation, and helping in support forums.
It is true that no individual has an obligation to listen to them, but they are not doing anything wrong by offering constructive criticism and they do NOT need someone popping up to tell them to STFU.
Flacco I agree completely. I think most of the services need these kind of smooth and easy tools. Some people rail against them, they are afraid of becoming a windows clone or something. They need a wake up call.
The benefit of linux is NOT that only elite users who know their shit can configure linux implmentations of technology (hopefully most who thought so have gone to BSD by now), the benefit of linux is that after the wizard finishes running I can tweak/adjust every parameter it set for me.
Right now the up front cost of linux is higher than windows, not just because existing infrastructure has to be changed, but because right now you HAVE to set almost every parameter manually. Wizards (that can run in curses or x mode) and sane defaults could save a great deal of time WITHOUT sacrificing flexibility (binary configuration utils do NOT mean the settings have to be stored in binary files),
Once we manage that dream I'll fight for simple curses/graphical configuration tools that actually read in your existing configuration and let you modify it AFTER initial install.
The programmers from a unix background need to concentrate on keeping a solid and flexible system and accept that it is the Novell/Windows who should put forth the ideas for high level interaction between the system/applications and the user. *nix is king in terms of stability, scalability, security, automatablity, and programmability; but ALL *nix systems have had a setup and basic day to day administration experience on par with rubbing your testicals against salty razorblades.
Apple systems go to the other extreme, a one click install rather than asking the fundemental questions needed (for instance a web based admin package might ask where your cgi-bin and webroot are located) for setup means you ALWAYS have to reconfigure after install. Basically they handhold too much to be of any use to someone who actually knows what they are doing.
No, firestone would have an obligation to replace a defective tire no matter what I did with it. If the tire failed BECAUSE I used it in a way that wasn't designed or intended that would be another matter. If the tire was made with rubber that had imperfections or wasn't up to the rating, the tire should be replaced even if it does not fail.
A manufacturer has an obligation to fix or replace a defective product regardless of whether the defect is life threatening or not. A defect is a defect regardless of severity.
Support is one thing, updates and patches are fixes for a product found to be defective (that all software is defective in this fashion doesn't change the fact that bugs and security holes are defects on par with firestone).
Or another way of looking at this. When a software vendors sells you an application it is ALWAYS defective. The bugs (security and functional) are defects in the product they willfully sold you (without mentioning it was defective).
Because of this, they have an obligation to provide the fixes to any defects they find. Kind of like firestone has an obligation to replace defective tires they have sold.
Slashdot Mirror
Who told you about us? How did this leak after so long!!!!
Where did you say you lived again?
I will try this one last time. My own opinion is that without further evidence I have no opinion. Personally I choose not to wave my arse as flag and venture guesses.
Simply because the evidence I have seen so far (namely the report of a team of experts, I do not consider the rant of some guy on slashdot named Rei evidence) leans toward this being ice does not mean I believe it is ice. I am simply pointing out that if you are biased on a subject to the point of discounting all findings before they have even had the opportunity to be properly reviewed (and worse, actually acting like not having had a chance to be reviewed yet counts against the findings?) you really should not commit further offense by spreading that bias to others.
"It could also be lava flows (which is what it looks like)"
According to you, according to the FA lava is firmly ruled out because these have clear undisputed characteristics of a much more mobile fluid. They ruled out lava because it decidedly does NOT look like lava.
If you look at a path in sand made by molasses and then another made by water there is very distinct difference in the marks they make. Especially when your basis for comparison was made in the same sand, on the same beach.
I could agree that the Slashdot post paints this as a clearer picture than it is, right now there are a list of facts which lean TOWARD this being water but are far from conclusive. You however are exibiting a decided bias in the other direction, glossing over facts and only admitting them when they are explictly pointed out. You are attempting to persuade standing primarily on the shoulders of rheotoric.
The facts are these:
There is a formation on mars which looks like packed ice.
There is a location which is widely accepted to have once held water nearby.
There is a path of erosion indicating the water traveled from the ancient wetspot to the exact spot where we have found what appears to be ice.
We can clearly tell the formations were made by a highly mobile liquid and have little to no chance of being made by lava.
The depth of craters in the area indicates there is ice beneath.
It is impossible for anyone to form a substantiated opinion on whether or not this is ice based on the existing evidence.
Further, it is important to remember that being in violation of a THEORY does not make something less likely. A theory is a guess that we believe fits the evidence we have, theory are certainly mobile fluids and are often subject to regular modification and change.
Considering that most of our theories about Mars are in their infancy they are all highly suspect and nobody should be trying to supress new data which would change them... unless they are pushing an alterior motive, such as supporting/disproving the possibility of life on Mars.
At the same time is not your own reporting a tad biased here?
Neglecting to mention that there is a valley that has long been thought to be an ancient body of water. And leading out from that vally are signs of erosion which indicate the water flowed to this spot. And sure enough it turns out there is what appears to be ice WHERE THEY EXPECTED TO FIND IT.
It seems to me that is a rather significant omission.
I missed the linux zealotry. :) It seemed a fair
question since every significant security hole
posted for firefox/thunderbird has been a problem
with the windows permissions model and only
affected windows users.
In this case the glitch is in javascript. And you
have to click a link to get the popups.
Go here and click the link to find out if your vulnerable.
hmm I don't have a custom hosts file either. But
after digging a bit I have discovered that
the problem doesn't come when just visiting a site.
Instead it is a glitch that lets them open a
popup in addition to changing the window to the url.
Go here and click on the link, if it opens 5 popups (google) your affected.
what version of firefox are you using?
If the advertisements use images, animations, flash, or any other scheme that significantly impacts page loading or distracts from the content on the page, they are just as bad as popups/unders.
Also blocking popup/unders is easy. Blocking banners and flash ads is a little more difficult and those who are doing so will not be buying from your ads anyway.
Are you running windows or linux? Since the browser doesn't seem to be the key I'm wondering if the OS is. I haven't gotten any popups when browsing with firefox under linux.
I am unable to get a popup from any of the sites being mentioned using firefox. Currently I'm using firefox 1.0 under linux (suse 9.2 pro). Are you guys who are getting them running windows?
No popup there or on another site where the person mentioned popups. Are you guys using windows? I still get zero popups under linux.
Can you explain why a buffer overrun in a userspace application could crash the KERNEL? The kernel isn't supposed to allow overruns or any other fault in individual userspace applications to take down the system.
umm EAL certification IS worthless... It really doesn't matter who has earned it.
This isn't a survey AC. I have been working in both environments for years and have actually worked as a linux admin and as a windows admin, and administered both systems in a mixed environment as well. Notice how nobody else who has done so is disputing me? It is called peer review, it is the system we have here on slashdot and is generally is attributed more weight than raw research data.
I doubt it would bring suits because I doubt anyone would sue because they lost a position paying less than 6 figures.
Then again your probably right, I doubt Cisco would chance the bad press. 45-50 employees is probably a drop in the bucket compared to what Cisco employs so the unemployment claims probably won't even begin to impact the rates they pay.
My experience with corporations is that they WOULD do this if they did not feel the risks outweighed the benefits. Corporate machines do not actually care about "doing the right thing" for the employees.
"Does Cisco *really* emply such a large team of nothing-but Windows admins? At my work, we have about 200 Windows PCs... and Wayne, the admin."
In order for a windows admin to support 200 pc's he has to be EXTREMELY overworked, and the setup has to be very simple and streamlined.
Now I'll grant that 40-1 is low, but that is about what it would take to be able to deliver IMMEDIATE response to technical problems without users being able to install/configure software themselves (meaning at any given moment there will be someone sitting around waiting for a call) which is probably what cisco is looking for when it comes to its Engineers. The higher the ratio goes, the more it becomes about setting up a queue of tasks, the admin's ability to juggle tasks, and reasonable rather than immediate response times.
Cisco admins are probably making 40k/year and the engineers are making 250+k/year each... they probably figure this is worthwhile to minimize downtime.
At 400-1 a linux admin will probably have reasonable idle time, but you can't guarantee that two problems will come at once. This is where having 5 admins who administer 2000 pcs come in, ONE of them will be more likely have idle time when that second problem comes in. Of course those 5 admins are probably making $80k/year rather than $40k/year like the windows admins were but the salary of 10 admins with only 5 sets of benefits is a great deal less than 50 salaries and 50 sets of benefits.
"His poor admins who now have to support linux with inadequate training..."
Keeping the same admins would be categorically stupid. You simply get rid of the windows admins (they did not have the knowledge needed to perform their job function, no unemployment for you!) and hire in real linux admins. Or maybe discover that some of your windows admins were really linux admins who took the job to get Cisco on their resume.
Since the support costs of linux ARE lower than the support costs of windows I doubt he is fudging the data.
Why would he fudge his own data, to make a case to himself, to convince himself that he should invest in an OS change?
I hate to be the one to spring this on you, but the Cisco it manager is letting people know what he's doing, he really doesn't give a shit whether they agree with the decisions he made or not.
AFAIK MS has always claimed that ADS was based on ldap. Hell you can even export ldifs.
I am with Flacco here. The time for this response is long past. Although the parent was maybe a bit insulting in his method, basically your post is saying "STFU" to non-programmers who ask for features/solutions that are missing in OSS software.
.E ven if it is general in nature, generalized criticism can provide a general direction and goal to work toward, criticism does NOT need to be specific to be productive.
This is ridiculous because first and foremost, if your going to put something out for use and review b the public you ARE opening yourself to BOTH criticism and praise. This should be expected and developers as a whole (all of them, globally) need to learn to accept honest and productive criticism
Second, just because someone is not coding themselves does not mean they are not selflessly slaving away to make the open source community a better place. In the traditional *nix world this is fudged but in reality System/Network Administrator and coder are two entirely DIFFERENT things, this is a class of user who is probably going to be looking for features and have constructive criticism. This class of user is probably helping spread open source through deployment, maybe working on documentation, and helping in support forums.
It is true that no individual has an obligation to listen to them, but they are not doing anything wrong by offering constructive criticism and they do NOT need someone popping up to tell them to STFU.
Sure you can, if you implemented an open standard the result would be an open standard.
When you ripoff an open standard the result is a MS technology.
Flacco I agree completely. I think most of the services need these kind of smooth and easy tools. Some people rail against them, they are afraid of becoming a windows clone or something. They need a wake up call.
The benefit of linux is NOT that only elite users who know their shit can configure linux implmentations of technology (hopefully most who thought so have gone to BSD by now), the benefit of linux is that after the wizard finishes running I can tweak/adjust every parameter it set for me.
Right now the up front cost of linux is higher than windows, not just because existing infrastructure has to be changed, but because right now you HAVE to set almost every parameter manually. Wizards (that can run in curses or x mode) and sane defaults could save a great deal of time WITHOUT sacrificing flexibility (binary configuration utils do NOT mean the settings have to be stored in binary files),
Once we manage that dream I'll fight for simple curses/graphical configuration tools that actually read in your existing configuration and let you modify it AFTER initial install.
The programmers from a unix background need to concentrate on keeping a solid and flexible system and accept that it is the Novell/Windows who should put forth the ideas for high level interaction between the system/applications and the user. *nix is king in terms of stability, scalability, security, automatablity, and programmability; but ALL *nix systems have had a setup and basic day to day administration experience on par with rubbing your testicals against salty razorblades.
Apple systems go to the other extreme, a one click install rather than asking the fundemental questions needed (for instance a web based admin package might ask where your cgi-bin and webroot are located) for setup means you ALWAYS have to reconfigure after install. Basically they handhold too much to be of any use to someone who actually knows what they are doing.
Windows and Active Directory are a proprietary ripoff of LDAP and kerberos with some gui tools.
There is no reason a distro couldn't smoothly tie them together with some simple curses/graphical configuration tools. The question is a good one.
No, firestone would have an obligation to replace a defective tire no matter what I did with it. If the tire failed BECAUSE I used it in a way that wasn't designed or intended that would be another matter. If the tire was made with rubber that had imperfections or wasn't up to the rating, the tire should be replaced even if it does not fail.
A manufacturer has an obligation to fix or replace a defective product regardless of whether the defect is life threatening or not. A defect is a defect regardless of severity.
Support is one thing, updates and patches are fixes for a product found to be defective (that all software is defective in this fashion doesn't change the fact that bugs and security holes are defects on par with firestone).
Or another way of looking at this. When a software vendors sells you an application it is ALWAYS defective. The bugs (security and functional) are defects in the product they willfully sold you (without mentioning it was defective).
Because of this, they have an obligation to provide the fixes to any defects they find. Kind of like firestone has an obligation to replace defective tires they have sold.