Well stated, and I couldn't agree more. To those looking to implement things like this to "improve my experience with the product", here's a clue: My satisfaction with your product is inversely proportional to how much it spies on my. And a data collection option that's on by default is spying.
Or FreeBSD. It's very unlikely I'll ever install another Linux-based distro on any personally owned system again, for two reasons:
1. Linus' "security bugs are not important, they're just bugs" mentality.
2. systemd.
Stuff like this just reinforces that decision. I've been slowly converting all my personal machines to FreeBSD. Seven down and one to go, and I haven't looked back at all. Though I certainly give a shout out to Devuan and Slackware for at least resisting the second item. If I ever did go back, it'd probably be to one of those distros.
A subsection of the cluster will have Infiniband interconnect. Most nodes will be GigE connected. Storage will be NFS, served from several very high end dedicated NFS servers. The cluster will run RedHat Enterprise Linux.
There are other ways this could have been done than by having 200 folks play rack-and-stack at the same time. How, exactly? If the old clusters being replaced were taking all available space, power, and/or cooling in the data center, that makes it pretty hard to build a new cluster without first turning them off. And new data centers are not exactly cheap.
The problem, however, is that an economic solution will take away the very freedom and openness that made e-mail such a great communication medium. I have seen several proposals for economic solutions to the spam problem and don't like any of them. It's not because I can't afford the penny an e-mail or whatever it is that a given plan wants to charge, it's more of an ideological thing. Associating any sort of cost with e-mail will change the fundamental nature of what e-mail is, and I think there are many people who don't want to see that happen. I'm not entirely convinced that a technical solution is impossible, so I'd much rather pursue that avenue before we start looking at economic or social solutions. There are some very promising technical solutions out there.
Unlike Windows, Mac OS X requires an administrator password to change certain configurations, run the system updater, and when installing new software. From a security perspective, this is another example of how Apple takes a proactive approach to system-level security. If a virus, remote hacker, or co-worker tries to install or reconfigure something on the system, they're stymied without knowing the administrator's password stored in the hardened System Keychain.
What do you mean, unlike Windows? You have to be an admin to install mostly anything, or change most computer settings on Windows.
That is true, except the default Windows configuration is to automatically log on as the administrative user with no password when the system is booted up.
Back when I lived in the dorms (I'm still in college now, but have since moved to an off-campus apartment) they had outlets for two rooms on the same circuit. My room had 5 computers and associated monitors, printer, refrigerator, microwave, fans, etc. and the guys next door had 6 or 7 computers, monitors, stereo, refrigerator, micorwave, fans, etc. We blew the fuse (that's right, no circuit breakers in this dorm) all the time. A few weeks after the semester started, we reached an agreement that neither of us would use our microwave until we alerted the guys next door so we could power down our monitors, printers, and other unnecessary hardware (of course we never wanted to power one of the computers down).
Like David said though, we only have the systems for a couple years, after which they are discarded, so increasing lifespan is not a huge concern. I work on the systems in question and have not yet seen a node fail for anything that looked like heat-related issues (at least not in the main cluster that's shown). The usual mode of failure is a hard drive or stick of memory flaking out. (I know the arguement could be made that excess heat could contribute to this, but I would think it has a lot more to do with age of the equipment.)
We have PII 450s and PIII 550s in the main cluster. Each machine has a 10 GB hard drive and 256 MB of memory, with the exception of some of the 550 nodes which have been upgraded to 768 MB or RAM.
Another way (which happens to be the way we do it where I work) is to make a master OS image, store it on a central server, and rsync it down to / on every node. Updates are made to the master OS image and then get automatically propagated down to every node. When new or replacement nodes are deployed, we use RedHat's KickStart system to install a base OS on them, then rsync down the master image. We maintain over 700 nodes this way.
>>> "We did it that way because we don't want to eat up disk space, and we wanted to make it easier if people had to restore from a backup."
>> Just how do you manage to restore data that never gets backed up?
> Good point. Or how is 512 bytes of data "eating up disk space"?
Oh, come on now. Everybody knows that disk space is at such a premium these days that writing to the boot sector is the only way to avoid completely filling up the disk! Thank you, Intuit, for being such a good citizen and saving that huge amount of unbelievably expensive disk space for your customers. I don't know how they would ever get along without those extra 512 bytes.
Just because Linux starts expanding into new markets doesn't mean it will start failing in the server market. I think this is a good thing. The more uses Linux has, the more ways it can be marketed to people, and the more people will use it.
Here is another way of doing the exact same thing, only this lets you actually change the passwords as well so you can log in as Administrator when the computer is restarted.
If you must have a computer that's physically accessible to people, set it to boot from the hard drive first, set a password on the BIOS, and put a nice big lock on the case.
If the average user would spend half as much time trying to learn about the stuff as they do complaining about it, we wouldn't be having this discussion. Most (yes, I realize there are exceptions) products that the average end user has to use are not so difficult that they can't be figured out by someone who has a bit of common sense and is willing to invest the energy in learning.
I can't say I have any sympathy whatsoever for the RIAA/MPAA/[insert your favorite evil monopolistic content group here]. They have been ripping off decent people who choose to go and actually purchase CDs and videos for years, and they have nobody but themselves to blame when the consumers decide to return the favor. This is not about anything more than big-shot record label execs getting scared that they might lose the opportunity to finance their fat arses, big houses, and fast cars with the hard-earned money of the general public. I'm sorry, but I have better things to do with my money. Maybe if the record companies had decided on a business model that didn't put the bottom line before honesty and fairness, they wouldn't have to worry about Kazaa and other P2P networks today.
...and want to have the satisfaction of signing Mr. Ralsky up for a few more mass mailers, here's his address which was posted the last time this story appeared.
Buyer: ALAN M RALSKY
Buyer Mailing Address:
6747 MINNOW POND DR, WEST BLOOMFIELD, MI 48322
Seller: BING CONSTRUCTION CO
Property Address: 6747 MINNOW POND DR, WEST BLOOMFIELD, MI 48322
Sale Date: 8/28/2002
Recorded Date: 9/12/2002
Sale Price: $ 740,000 (Full Amount)
They can sniff the session, but all they will get is meaningless rubbish unless they can decrypt it. This is nearly impossible to do when using 128 bit SSL encryption.
They need to learn how to effectively use a command line. I don't think it matters if that happens before of after they learn the GUI (probably easier to learn before) but they need to know it. As pretty or easy as the GUI may be, the heart of *nix is the command line, and if you don't have skillz there, you're in trouble when your nice GUI breaks or you have to run a server with no GUI at all.
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Well stated, and I couldn't agree more. To those looking to implement things like this to "improve my experience with the product", here's a clue: My satisfaction with your product is inversely proportional to how much it spies on my. And a data collection option that's on by default is spying.
Why not use Devuan?
Or FreeBSD. It's very unlikely I'll ever install another Linux-based distro on any personally owned system again, for two reasons:
1. Linus' "security bugs are not important, they're just bugs" mentality.
2. systemd.
Stuff like this just reinforces that decision. I've been slowly converting all my personal machines to FreeBSD. Seven down and one to go, and I haven't looked back at all. Though I certainly give a shout out to Devuan and Slackware for at least resisting the second item. If I ever did go back, it'd probably be to one of those distros.
Or even, "Lock the keys in the car when you drop it, and when I get there I'll grab the second set from where I keep it to unlock." Total cost $0.
A subsection of the cluster will have Infiniband interconnect. Most nodes will be GigE connected. Storage will be NFS, served from several very high end dedicated NFS servers. The cluster will run RedHat Enterprise Linux.
The problem, however, is that an economic solution will take away the very freedom and openness that made e-mail such a great communication medium. I have seen several proposals for economic solutions to the spam problem and don't like any of them. It's not because I can't afford the penny an e-mail or whatever it is that a given plan wants to charge, it's more of an ideological thing. Associating any sort of cost with e-mail will change the fundamental nature of what e-mail is, and I think there are many people who don't want to see that happen. I'm not entirely convinced that a technical solution is impossible, so I'd much rather pursue that avenue before we start looking at economic or social solutions. There are some very promising technical solutions out there.
Unlike Windows, Mac OS X requires an administrator password to change certain configurations, run the system updater, and when installing new software. From a security perspective, this is another example of how Apple takes a proactive approach to system-level security. If a virus, remote hacker, or co-worker tries to install or reconfigure something on the system, they're stymied without knowing the administrator's password stored in the hardened System Keychain.
What do you mean, unlike Windows? You have to be an admin to install mostly anything, or change most computer settings on Windows.
That is true, except the default Windows configuration is to automatically log on as the administrative user with no password when the system is booted up.
Back when I lived in the dorms (I'm still in college now, but have since moved to an off-campus apartment) they had outlets for two rooms on the same circuit. My room had 5 computers and associated monitors, printer, refrigerator, microwave, fans, etc. and the guys next door had 6 or 7 computers, monitors, stereo, refrigerator, micorwave, fans, etc. We blew the fuse (that's right, no circuit breakers in this dorm) all the time. A few weeks after the semester started, we reached an agreement that neither of us would use our microwave until we alerted the guys next door so we could power down our monitors, printers, and other unnecessary hardware (of course we never wanted to power one of the computers down).
Like David said though, we only have the systems for a couple years, after which they are discarded, so increasing lifespan is not a huge concern. I work on the systems in question and have not yet seen a node fail for anything that looked like heat-related issues (at least not in the main cluster that's shown). The usual mode of failure is a hard drive or stick of memory flaking out. (I know the arguement could be made that excess heat could contribute to this, but I would think it has a lot more to do with age of the equipment.)
We currently use PBS Pro to do our scheduling.
As for statistics, check this out.
We have PII 450s and PIII 550s in the main cluster.
Each machine has a 10 GB hard drive and 256 MB of memory, with the exception of some of the 550 nodes which have been upgraded to 768 MB or RAM.
Another way (which happens to be the way we do it where I work) is to make a master OS image, store it on a central server, and rsync it down to / on every node. Updates are made to the master OS image and then get automatically propagated down to every node. When new or replacement nodes are deployed, we use RedHat's KickStart system to install a base OS on them, then rsync down the master image. We maintain over 700 nodes this way.
>>> "We did it that way because we don't want to eat up disk space, and we wanted to make it easier if people had to restore from a backup."
>> Just how do you manage to restore data that never gets backed up?
> Good point. Or how is 512 bytes of data "eating up disk space"?
Oh, come on now. Everybody knows that disk space is at such a premium these days that writing to the boot sector is the only way to avoid completely filling up the disk! Thank you, Intuit, for being such a good citizen and saving that huge amount of unbelievably expensive disk space for your customers. I don't know how they would ever get along without those extra 512 bytes.
Just because Linux starts expanding into new markets doesn't mean it will start failing in the server market. I think this is a good thing. The more uses Linux has, the more ways it can be marketed to people, and the more people will use it.
Just what we need, more government regulation. After all, we all know how well that usually works out.
Here is another way of doing the exact same thing, only this lets you actually change the passwords as well so you can log in as Administrator when the computer is restarted.
If you must have a computer that's physically accessible to people, set it to boot from the hard drive first, set a password on the BIOS, and put a nice big lock on the case.
If the average user would spend half as much time trying to learn about the stuff as they do complaining about it, we wouldn't be having this discussion. Most (yes, I realize there are exceptions) products that the average end user has to use are not so difficult that they can't be figured out by someone who has a bit of common sense and is willing to invest the energy in learning.
I can't say I have any sympathy whatsoever for the RIAA/MPAA/[insert your favorite evil monopolistic content group here]. They have been ripping off decent people who choose to go and actually purchase CDs and videos for years, and they have nobody but themselves to blame when the consumers decide to return the favor. This is not about anything more than big-shot record label execs getting scared that they might lose the opportunity to finance their fat arses, big houses, and fast cars with the hard-earned money of the general public. I'm sorry, but I have better things to do with my money. Maybe if the record companies had decided on a business model that didn't put the bottom line before honesty and fairness, they wouldn't have to worry about Kazaa and other P2P networks today.
Can I get $19.95 off my next bill if I present the spammer's head to the ISP (pre mounted and ready to hand on the wall, of course)?
...and want to have the satisfaction of signing Mr. Ralsky up for a few more mass mailers, here's his address which was posted the last time this story appeared.
Buyer: ALAN M RALSKY
Buyer Mailing Address:
6747 MINNOW POND DR, WEST BLOOMFIELD, MI 48322
Seller: BING CONSTRUCTION CO
Property Address: 6747 MINNOW POND DR, WEST
BLOOMFIELD, MI 48322
Sale Date: 8/28/2002
Recorded Date: 9/12/2002
Sale Price: $ 740,000 (Full Amount)
They can sniff the session, but all they will get is meaningless rubbish unless they can decrypt it. This is nearly impossible to do when using 128 bit SSL encryption.
It's nice to see that the computing industry as a whole is following Micro$oft's example and taking security "so seriously".
Isn't it just so wonderfully convenient that this offer comes right as a large nation like India is considering teaching Linux in their schools.
Let me get out my little violin and play a sad, sad song for the Spammer with Too Much Spam.
They need to learn how to effectively use a command line. I don't think it matters if that happens before of after they learn the GUI (probably easier to learn before) but they need to know it. As pretty or easy as the GUI may be, the heart of *nix is the command line, and if you don't have skillz there, you're in trouble when your nice GUI breaks or you have to run a server with no GUI at all.