The problem with your theory is that it hits the poor the hardest. The wealthy get all of the energy they want. The middle class, well they get squeezed. "Sorry son/daughter, college isn't in the cards for you. Maybe you could join the service and get used as a tool of foreign policy. Hand me another blanket, it's gonna be cold tonight." Jacking up energy prices doesn't lead to greater efficiency. Offering discounts on energy efficiency however DOES lead to greater efficiency, and makes higher cost improvements cheaper as more competitors enter the market and existing manufacturers learn how to make the same products for less money. Eventually you won't need the discounts as whatever technologies you promote become commoditized. Discounts drive consumers. Punishment/taxes discourage consumption.
Unfortunately, this doesn't hold true for apartment complexes. They have little incentive to modernize. Taxes however are an even bigger disincentive to apartment complex corporations than they are to home owners. The discounts must be created to benefit these kinds of businesses. The poor of course will be the last to benefit as they have the least to spend. The way out of that is education and opportunity. We won't eliminate poverty, but we can elevate what is defined as poverty. A poor person of 40 years ago had a lot less than a poor person does today in part due to commoditization.
Finally, if the means of wealth generation are placed well out of reach, then invention is retarded or halted completely. The IT revolution of the 90s and the on-going Big Data revolution can only exist in a country where electricity is both affordable and plentiful. Make turning on that computer or light a major cost decision and you'll loose those driven individuals that are creating the next economy.
I didn't know that Ashton Kutcher was a tech investor. Too bad we don't know how large or how deeply he was involved with the companies listed. It would be useful information to gauge this new endeavor. I wonder though, does Lenovo need technical assistance, or an artist? Technical specs are fine (and the Yoga tablet doesn't sound like a power house) but an ugly interface is the kiss of death. People spend far too much for Apple products. Why? They work well (enough) and they like the interface (Apple haters excluded). I use a Nexus phone because I don't like vendor loaded crap, but I will acknowledge the Note as one pretty phone.
This is a good move for Dell, provided they can adopt to this new market. Dell should focus on the back end of the cloud. They make good servers. They just need to cut off the consumer arm and let it drift into the ether. They lost the consumer market a long time ago and like IBM need to focus on what they (still) do well.
I grew up in the 70s and 80s. I never thought we would see a Communist state abandon the Planned Economy and embrace the Free Market. If you brought the idea to me when I was 18 or 25, I'd have thought you were nuts. What Communist wanted to give up that much power over the individual? How could a nation, so accustomed to marching in lockstep with it's leadership handle economic freedom? Russia wasn't doing so well after Communism and China was reportedly employing one third of this population to spy on and control the remaining two thirds. Today, many people wonder if the government's form really matters when Communist nations like China and Vietnam are creating a strong middle class while few Democracies are facing a future where its children are worse off than their parents.
Didn't Apple (mostly) kill music DRM by proving that people will buy digital music if it isn't a major pain in the ass to purchase, store, recover, or access? Hasn't the rise of streaming services like Pandora, Rdio and Spotify places the final nails in RIAA's coffin?
Isn't the lack of live, streaming NFL and NBA games cable and satellite's last hope for DRM laced video? More and more people prefer NOT to sit with a bunch of self absorbed phone addicts in a dark theater to watch a crappy movie.
Self driving cars aren't meant for longer highway speed driving. They are meant for highly congested roadways which rarely get much over 45 mph anyway. I live in just such an area. The biggest traffic tie ups are always at the merge points. Why? People are terrible at merging, and everyone merges differently. Some follow the driving class' rules and drive to the end of the on ramp. Others find a hole and dive in. Others slowly sneak out. Some only recently started driving or moved into the area from a place that didn't have traffic congestion.
Shows like Top Gear will argue that self driving cars ruin the driving experience. Personally, I don't consider my morning commute a worthwhile experience. It's merely a less time consuming method than riding the bus. If I could let my car handle the daily commute while I grab a nap or read my RSS feeds, I'd leave the driving to Google or whoever. Leave the highway miles and scenic road ways to me. Leave the drudgery to the machines.
I read the same thing on Wonk Blog. However the law also allows states to default to the Fed's exchange. That's what happens when you rush a Bill through the system instead of writing and tweaking the Bill while you run for office.
The problem with healthcare.org's site is implementation. Any moderately trained person can build a web site. A skilled artistic type can make a pretty website. To build something with the size and scope of healthcare.org, you have to set a few rules. First, you create an API for insurance companies, and you base the API around the ACA's rules and whatever federal rules already exist. Then you publish that API using whatever open source license you prefer. Let interested coders make better mousetraps and propose the improvements via GIT. In order to sell health insurance on healthcare.org, require some sort of long and difficult to crack encryption system...currently certificates are popular. If a poor encryption scheme is adopted, the self-interested coders will point that out and the more motivated ones will propose a solution.
So how do you keep the trolls and the bots at bay? Require proof, say Captcha and a sample code submission. Let the community identify the paid posers and kick them out of the system.
How not to do it? Develop the system in a vacuum. Give insurance companies an out by delaying their entry into the site as a provider. Worry more about governmental oversight and less about the end product. Develop the front end, but don't focus on the back end. Keep the Administration in the dark so it turns in to a big fiasco.
When the ACA was a Bill I often asked people "Why do you think the Government would do a good job providing healthcare or insurance?" The answers I got depended on political affiliation. Obama supporters looked at me like I asked a good question, but they refused to process the information as it was easier to respond with "well, the have it in Europe and I believe their system is perfect." Non-Obama supporters answered with their own talking points: Obama's a socialist/communist, Obama's not a US citizen, Obama . Now here we are with a half baked site and a lot of disappointed people who were already disappointed with Obama's adoption of Bush's platform, lack of openness, and the number of scandals that were suddenly popping up all around him.
Well, the ACA is law and it won't be repealed any time soon. The question I really want an answer too is: Does anyone think the government has it in them to do a good job now that the site's failures are impossible to hide from the public?
If it was my project I'd use extendable plastic pipes to circulate the cooling liquid and let the colder sea water carry away the heat. It's certainly more efficient than air, and San Francisco Bay's water is pretty cold to being with. It would take a monumental amount of heat to alter the Bay's ecosystem.
Could they fix the on-going problems with the Intel chipsets that now inhabit nearly every laptop sold? How about the Ralink WiFi chipsets that can't maintain a reliable connection?
Oh and the touchpad drivers -- I should be able to automatically shut the thing down when I plug in my external mouse.
Check out Mini Box.com for build it yourself solutions. It will cost a bit more initially, but you gain the ability to run any software you desire. I used DD-WRT for years but it doesn't seem to be well maintained anymore. Ditto OpenWRT. Interest in hacking consumer routers appears to have run it's course. Personally I run bind and isc-dhcp inside my network and I use a third party DNS provider instead of my ISP's questionable DNS service.
The problem with fingerprints as username goes back to the problem with all biometric data -- humans are made of squishy flesh. If I cut the finger used as a password or username, I loose access until that finger has healed.
A better idea already exists and could be improved upon - the chip-and-pin system. Granted, any hardware token can be cloned. Most people use the same PIN for everything. However the equipment is in place (except the US). Add a secondary "something you know" item to authentication. Do NOT make that second item a password. Instead, add a series of questions and allow the user to pick the correct answer from the POS device's keypad. Encourage users to select questions with obscure data: "Who is your favorite Third Base Coach?" "What movie were you watching the first time you held hands with a girl?"
Like all forms of combat, I expect new challenges as criminals develop countermeasures, but we shouldn't relay on biometrics.
Sell it for $300 and let me run Android on it. No fair refusing to open up your hardware information to the community. I dig the form factor, but I hate the OS.
I read Matt Kruse's blog post last night. Then I read the BuzzFeed story. I think Facebook is using Social Fixer as a test case. If they can successfully shut down apps like Social Fixer while mostly ignoring user complaints, they can become more like WalMart and less like...um....I can't think of a company or product that hasn't gone this route. I guess this is happens to all successful companies or brands. Apple's shine is definitely off since Jobs passed away. The biographies and commentaries about him aren't what I would call glowing. They read more like MSNBC criticizing Democrats, or FoxNews criticizing Republicans. You get the picture.
I think this is what happens to great, popular, or successful brands. The question is, will we look back on Facebook the way we now look at GM?
I grew up around educators, and I heard the "don't change it!" refrain often. Educators are government employees. Bureaucrats. Anything which threatens the status quo is a threat to the fate of Western Civilization. The truth is we've always had testing, just not at the federal level. We've never had a national education system. Education was NEVER a priority and I don't expect that to change. Why? Old people.
Why? Old people have the time to get involved in politics. Younger people are raising kids, (not) paying off college loans, etc. They don't have time or the interest. So what are the elderly's priorities? Social Security. Medicare. "Those people I don't understand because they didn't exist in my world 50 years ago, but the TV tells me to be afraid of them so I want protection from them." Those "darn foreigners." Hence our national priorities. Think about it. Why do we need a wall between us and Mexico, but not Canada?
How does this relate to education? The elderly don't care about the future. Not enough to make it a national priority. Since the elderly represent the largest group of political participants, they set the agenda. The young do not set the agenda. We're broke, in debt, and stressed out. We're sent to wars with less than clear outcomes, we face a job market that expects five years experience from newly minted college graduates, and we all suffer from a "4th Estate" that doesn't inform or put things into a context.
I expect parents who can will have their kids assessed and assisted. This doesn't create a new group of 'haves and have nots.' That division exists. If this new form of educational assessment isn't institutionalized I expect someone to invent free or fremium models that will place these tools into the hands of parents, individuals, or educators. This Clinton-era malcontent has it all wrong.
If possible, build a relationship with the outgoing administrator. Accept that a lot of his head knowledge will dissipate soon after he leaves the company but it wouldn't hurt to have him as an information resource for the first few weeks, just don't abuse the privilege. If he's moving on to another job, his loyalties and focus will be to them not his old company.
Get his permission and comb through his corporate inbox and home directory -- dump it to an offline location. I know you don't need his permission but a little humble pie goes a long way. Again, don't abuse the privilege. Burn a little overtime and construct your own documentation from whatever you find. Let your new supervisor know you're going to bill overtime and why it is necessary. A little work now will make your holiday season a lot smoother.
I did this in my first LAN Admin job. Within four months I was able to take off to the Caribbean for a week and I never received one phone call.
Check out page 29 and 30 of the manual. They include a method to push updated SSH keys out to other DASDEC devices. So it isn't as complicated as I first assumed.
We have potentially thousands of these devices in the field that were deployed with the default factory configuration? That's security 101 -- Don't go with the factory settings. I haven't looked up the manual for these devices so I can't say how difficult it is to change the "hard coded" SSH keys but apparently the article suggests that it is possible to generate and deploy your own SSH keys provided the sending station(s) have the public keys required to encode and send these broadcasts. It requires quires quite a bit of coordination on the part of the installers or station engineers but it is possible.
This is nothing new. SC has had a young bent to it since the 60s and the counter culture that spawned it. The latest iteration of the SC start up is the IPO bubble: get hired, work insane hours. Get preferred pre-IPO stock. If the hype is matched with money on IPO day, cash out and get rich.
Anyone who didn't hitch a ride one of these IPO bubbles, stayed on to keep things running. They aren't the math and comp sci majors who will work hundreds of hours on a project with a language they never truly mastered. They ARE the masters who can whip out the same code in a fraction of the time, get raked over the coals by some ex-techie who things he's still technical manager because the code isn't elegant or something. These are the left behind. Those you rarely hear about because they're too busy trying to stay employed and raise a family. They aren't "leaning in." They don't have the paycheck to hire a round the clock nanny or hire someone to take care of Dad while he's recovering from chemo or a stroke. They don't fit into the idealized, simplified world of the mythical SC Tech God who never interacts with reality.
I run into this all the time and I don't work in SC. I'm in DC. What do I see? I see a desire for "plug and play." I see a desire to keep people cheap by only paying for the most basic training or offering to reimburse you for the test, provided you pay for it out of pocket first. I don't see companies who want to keep you around, nor do they care if you stick around. After nearly 30 years of job hopping, no one expect you to stay anyway. So maybe SC hires the young. It's California and they've had an age bias since the youth quake of the 60s. If I was in a similar situation, I'd sell that over priced home to a kid with more paycheck than sense, move somewhere I can buy a house outright, and find any job to pay the monthly bills.
Why? Because eventually you miss a step on that great treadmill of a career and you get clobbered. So save up and make your move fellow old guys. Let the kids sacrifice their minds and bodies. Then laugh at them as you go home to your paid for house, in your paid for car. After you put in your 40 at your new stress free job.
We've tried banning fermentation, narcotics, and various forms of love making. Most were designed to please a well funded, politically loud group of dunces who falsely believe we can promote social good or common good by merely passing a law and putting violators in jail. Yet none of these bans have worked. To ban gun printing would be to expect the police, FBI, ATF, etc to bust down every door in the country looking for illegally printed weapons. The Brits do this with their television license, spending quite a few pounds developing roving vans to bust violators.
Is this the kind of country we want? I'd vote for "no."
Windows 8 is not "New Coke." For this to work out as well, M$ would have to have a Pepsi-like product. On the desktop, that doesn't exist. New Coke was an attempt to re-make a flagship brand. To appeal to changing American tastes for a sweeter product. Windows 8 isn't that product. Consumers weren't clamoring for a touch screen desktop. They accepted touch on tablets and smartphones because it works on handheld devices. It doesn't work well on desktops. Look at the Windows 8 commercials. You don't see office work. You don't see email or composition. You see touch applications, and that's the point. When you buy a laptop, you expect a keyboard. You expect to type. When you buy a tablet, you expect to touch.
For this to work, Microsoft has to have a Domino's moment. Admit you were wrong, then come out with a truly well designed and well made product. I'm not seeing this happen with Blue. I hear about Blue on sites like this. I don't see M$'s corporate face on Blue. Blue feels like a politician's half-hearted admission of guilt.
I predict the business world will continue to adopt Windows 7 and skip Windows 8. If these same IT shops adopt Office 365, Windows may fall off the desktop. A web-based office automation product doesn't need expensive desktop licenses. That change could make "the year of the RHEL desktop" happen.
As someone who works in a data center, I'd add a few things:
1. Paint the walls some sort of "sand" color. It'll lower the emotional temperature in the room.
2. Keep a budget for swiffer wet pads and have a Friday "GI Party" for clean up.
3. Rubber pads for assembly. Nothing sucks more than a lost screw.
4. Hearing protection and wipes for the ear muffs or a few big dispensers with ear plugs. These rooms are LOUD.
5. Task lighting and hand sanitizer. Keep the squinting and the sick time to a minimum.
Agreed. Open Source was never meant to be a top-down heiarchy. Its history will tell you that. Some of RMS' rants speak volumes about how Open Source, like life, tends to break out and do its own thing. I'm all for competition in this category. The major distros will adopt one or the other, or both! The two projects may merge (un-fork?) and become stronger than either could alone. In the meantime, we have Xorg and it works well enough.
So let the strongest triumph over the weaker project. We could have a Street Fighter style "Finish Him" video to hail the end of the lesser. What do you think?
One big difference between torrents and a Darknet -- torrents, like social media, are meant to be open and easily shared. Darknets are designed to deny by default, allow only if invited. The total opposite of the open Internet we have today. So no, I'd not worry if I primarily operated on a properly run and maintained Darknet.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with your theory is that it hits the poor the hardest. The wealthy get all of the energy they want. The middle class, well they get squeezed. "Sorry son/daughter, college isn't in the cards for you. Maybe you could join the service and get used as a tool of foreign policy. Hand me another blanket, it's gonna be cold tonight." Jacking up energy prices doesn't lead to greater efficiency. Offering discounts on energy efficiency however DOES lead to greater efficiency, and makes higher cost improvements cheaper as more competitors enter the market and existing manufacturers learn how to make the same products for less money. Eventually you won't need the discounts as whatever technologies you promote become commoditized. Discounts drive consumers. Punishment/taxes discourage consumption.
Unfortunately, this doesn't hold true for apartment complexes. They have little incentive to modernize. Taxes however are an even bigger disincentive to apartment complex corporations than they are to home owners. The discounts must be created to benefit these kinds of businesses. The poor of course will be the last to benefit as they have the least to spend. The way out of that is education and opportunity. We won't eliminate poverty, but we can elevate what is defined as poverty. A poor person of 40 years ago had a lot less than a poor person does today in part due to commoditization.
Finally, if the means of wealth generation are placed well out of reach, then invention is retarded or halted completely. The IT revolution of the 90s and the on-going Big Data revolution can only exist in a country where electricity is both affordable and plentiful. Make turning on that computer or light a major cost decision and you'll loose those driven individuals that are creating the next economy.
I didn't know that Ashton Kutcher was a tech investor. Too bad we don't know how large or how deeply he was involved with the companies listed. It would be useful information to gauge this new endeavor. I wonder though, does Lenovo need technical assistance, or an artist? Technical specs are fine (and the Yoga tablet doesn't sound like a power house) but an ugly interface is the kiss of death. People spend far too much for Apple products. Why? They work well (enough) and they like the interface (Apple haters excluded). I use a Nexus phone because I don't like vendor loaded crap, but I will acknowledge the Note as one pretty phone.
This is a good move for Dell, provided they can adopt to this new market. Dell should focus on the back end of the cloud. They make good servers. They just need to cut off the consumer arm and let it drift into the ether. They lost the consumer market a long time ago and like IBM need to focus on what they (still) do well.
I grew up in the 70s and 80s. I never thought we would see a Communist state abandon the Planned Economy and embrace the Free Market. If you brought the idea to me when I was 18 or 25, I'd have thought you were nuts. What Communist wanted to give up that much power over the individual? How could a nation, so accustomed to marching in lockstep with it's leadership handle economic freedom? Russia wasn't doing so well after Communism and China was reportedly employing one third of this population to spy on and control the remaining two thirds. Today, many people wonder if the government's form really matters when Communist nations like China and Vietnam are creating a strong middle class while few Democracies are facing a future where its children are worse off than their parents.
Didn't Apple (mostly) kill music DRM by proving that people will buy digital music if it isn't a major pain in the ass to purchase, store, recover, or access? Hasn't the rise of streaming services like Pandora, Rdio and Spotify places the final nails in RIAA's coffin?
Isn't the lack of live, streaming NFL and NBA games cable and satellite's last hope for DRM laced video? More and more people prefer NOT to sit with a bunch of self absorbed phone addicts in a dark theater to watch a crappy movie.
Self driving cars aren't meant for longer highway speed driving. They are meant for highly congested roadways which rarely get much over 45 mph anyway. I live in just such an area. The biggest traffic tie ups are always at the merge points. Why? People are terrible at merging, and everyone merges differently. Some follow the driving class' rules and drive to the end of the on ramp. Others find a hole and dive in. Others slowly sneak out. Some only recently started driving or moved into the area from a place that didn't have traffic congestion.
Shows like Top Gear will argue that self driving cars ruin the driving experience. Personally, I don't consider my morning commute a worthwhile experience. It's merely a less time consuming method than riding the bus. If I could let my car handle the daily commute while I grab a nap or read my RSS feeds, I'd leave the driving to Google or whoever. Leave the highway miles and scenic road ways to me. Leave the drudgery to the machines.
I read the same thing on Wonk Blog. However the law also allows states to default to the Fed's exchange. That's what happens when you rush a Bill through the system instead of writing and tweaking the Bill while you run for office.
The problem with healthcare.org's site is implementation. Any moderately trained person can build a web site. A skilled artistic type can make a pretty website. To build something with the size and scope of healthcare.org, you have to set a few rules. First, you create an API for insurance companies, and you base the API around the ACA's rules and whatever federal rules already exist. Then you publish that API using whatever open source license you prefer. Let interested coders make better mousetraps and propose the improvements via GIT. In order to sell health insurance on healthcare.org, require some sort of long and difficult to crack encryption system...currently certificates are popular. If a poor encryption scheme is adopted, the self-interested coders will point that out and the more motivated ones will propose a solution.
So how do you keep the trolls and the bots at bay? Require proof, say Captcha and a sample code submission. Let the community identify the paid posers and kick them out of the system.
How not to do it? Develop the system in a vacuum. Give insurance companies an out by delaying their entry into the site as a provider. Worry more about governmental oversight and less about the end product. Develop the front end, but don't focus on the back end. Keep the Administration in the dark so it turns in to a big fiasco.
When the ACA was a Bill I often asked people "Why do you think the Government would do a good job providing healthcare or insurance?" The answers I got depended on political affiliation. Obama supporters looked at me like I asked a good question, but they refused to process the information as it was easier to respond with "well, the have it in Europe and I believe their system is perfect." Non-Obama supporters answered with their own talking points: Obama's a socialist/communist, Obama's not a US citizen, Obama . Now here we are with a half baked site and a lot of disappointed people who were already disappointed with Obama's adoption of Bush's platform, lack of openness, and the number of scandals that were suddenly popping up all around him.
Well, the ACA is law and it won't be repealed any time soon. The question I really want an answer too is: Does anyone think the government has it in them to do a good job now that the site's failures are impossible to hide from the public?
If it was my project I'd use extendable plastic pipes to circulate the cooling liquid and let the colder sea water carry away the heat. It's certainly more efficient than air, and San Francisco Bay's water is pretty cold to being with. It would take a monumental amount of heat to alter the Bay's ecosystem.
Could they fix the on-going problems with the Intel chipsets that now inhabit nearly every laptop sold? How about the Ralink WiFi chipsets that can't maintain a reliable connection?
Oh and the touchpad drivers -- I should be able to automatically shut the thing down when I plug in my external mouse.
Check out Mini Box.com for build it yourself solutions. It will cost a bit more initially, but you gain the ability to run any software you desire. I used DD-WRT for years but it doesn't seem to be well maintained anymore. Ditto OpenWRT. Interest in hacking consumer routers appears to have run it's course. Personally I run bind and isc-dhcp inside my network and I use a third party DNS provider instead of my ISP's questionable DNS service.
The problem with fingerprints as username goes back to the problem with all biometric data -- humans are made of squishy flesh. If I cut the finger used as a password or username, I loose access until that finger has healed.
A better idea already exists and could be improved upon - the chip-and-pin system. Granted, any hardware token can be cloned. Most people use the same PIN for everything. However the equipment is in place (except the US). Add a secondary "something you know" item to authentication. Do NOT make that second item a password. Instead, add a series of questions and allow the user to pick the correct answer from the POS device's keypad. Encourage users to select questions with obscure data: "Who is your favorite Third Base Coach?" "What movie were you watching the first time you held hands with a girl?"
Like all forms of combat, I expect new challenges as criminals develop countermeasures, but we shouldn't relay on biometrics.
Sell it for $300 and let me run Android on it. No fair refusing to open up your hardware information to the community. I dig the form factor, but I hate the OS.
I read Matt Kruse's blog post last night. Then I read the BuzzFeed story. I think Facebook is using Social Fixer as a test case. If they can successfully shut down apps like Social Fixer while mostly ignoring user complaints, they can become more like WalMart and less like...um....I can't think of a company or product that hasn't gone this route. I guess this is happens to all successful companies or brands. Apple's shine is definitely off since Jobs passed away. The biographies and commentaries about him aren't what I would call glowing. They read more like MSNBC criticizing Democrats, or FoxNews criticizing Republicans. You get the picture.
I think this is what happens to great, popular, or successful brands. The question is, will we look back on Facebook the way we now look at GM?
So I'm supposed to believe that Google is trying to patent basic math? Seriously, what's next?
Call me when it's powered by unobtainium and shoots lasers from its eyes and energy bolts from its tail.
I grew up around educators, and I heard the "don't change it!" refrain often. Educators are government employees. Bureaucrats. Anything which threatens the status quo is a threat to the fate of Western Civilization. The truth is we've always had testing, just not at the federal level. We've never had a national education system. Education was NEVER a priority and I don't expect that to change. Why? Old people.
Why? Old people have the time to get involved in politics. Younger people are raising kids, (not) paying off college loans, etc. They don't have time or the interest. So what are the elderly's priorities? Social Security. Medicare. "Those people I don't understand because they didn't exist in my world 50 years ago, but the TV tells me to be afraid of them so I want protection from them." Those "darn foreigners." Hence our national priorities. Think about it. Why do we need a wall between us and Mexico, but not Canada?
How does this relate to education? The elderly don't care about the future. Not enough to make it a national priority. Since the elderly represent the largest group of political participants, they set the agenda. The young do not set the agenda. We're broke, in debt, and stressed out. We're sent to wars with less than clear outcomes, we face a job market that expects five years experience from newly minted college graduates, and we all suffer from a "4th Estate" that doesn't inform or put things into a context.
I expect parents who can will have their kids assessed and assisted. This doesn't create a new group of 'haves and have nots.' That division exists. If this new form of educational assessment isn't institutionalized I expect someone to invent free or fremium models that will place these tools into the hands of parents, individuals, or educators. This Clinton-era malcontent has it all wrong.
If possible, build a relationship with the outgoing administrator. Accept that a lot of his head knowledge will dissipate soon after he leaves the company but it wouldn't hurt to have him as an information resource for the first few weeks, just don't abuse the privilege. If he's moving on to another job, his loyalties and focus will be to them not his old company.
Get his permission and comb through his corporate inbox and home directory -- dump it to an offline location. I know you don't need his permission but a little humble pie goes a long way. Again, don't abuse the privilege. Burn a little overtime and construct your own documentation from whatever you find. Let your new supervisor know you're going to bill overtime and why it is necessary. A little work now will make your holiday season a lot smoother.
I did this in my first LAN Admin job. Within four months I was able to take off to the Caribbean for a week and I never received one phone call.
UPDATE
Check out page 29 and 30 of the manual. They include a method to push updated SSH keys out to other DASDEC devices. So it isn't as complicated as I first assumed.
http://www.digitalalertsystems.com/pdf/DASDEC_II_manual.pdf
We have potentially thousands of these devices in the field that were deployed with the default factory configuration? That's security 101 -- Don't go with the factory settings. I haven't looked up the manual for these devices so I can't say how difficult it is to change the "hard coded" SSH keys but apparently the article suggests that it is possible to generate and deploy your own SSH keys provided the sending station(s) have the public keys required to encode and send these broadcasts. It requires quires quite a bit of coordination on the part of the installers or station engineers but it is possible.
Thoughts?
This is nothing new. SC has had a young bent to it since the 60s and the counter culture that spawned it. The latest iteration of the SC start up is the IPO bubble: get hired, work insane hours. Get preferred pre-IPO stock. If the hype is matched with money on IPO day, cash out and get rich.
Anyone who didn't hitch a ride one of these IPO bubbles, stayed on to keep things running. They aren't the math and comp sci majors who will work hundreds of hours on a project with a language they never truly mastered. They ARE the masters who can whip out the same code in a fraction of the time, get raked over the coals by some ex-techie who things he's still technical manager because the code isn't elegant or something. These are the left behind. Those you rarely hear about because they're too busy trying to stay employed and raise a family. They aren't "leaning in." They don't have the paycheck to hire a round the clock nanny or hire someone to take care of Dad while he's recovering from chemo or a stroke. They don't fit into the idealized, simplified world of the mythical SC Tech God who never interacts with reality.
I run into this all the time and I don't work in SC. I'm in DC. What do I see? I see a desire for "plug and play." I see a desire to keep people cheap by only paying for the most basic training or offering to reimburse you for the test, provided you pay for it out of pocket first. I don't see companies who want to keep you around, nor do they care if you stick around. After nearly 30 years of job hopping, no one expect you to stay anyway. So maybe SC hires the young. It's California and they've had an age bias since the youth quake of the 60s. If I was in a similar situation, I'd sell that over priced home to a kid with more paycheck than sense, move somewhere I can buy a house outright, and find any job to pay the monthly bills.
Why? Because eventually you miss a step on that great treadmill of a career and you get clobbered. So save up and make your move fellow old guys. Let the kids sacrifice their minds and bodies. Then laugh at them as you go home to your paid for house, in your paid for car. After you put in your 40 at your new stress free job.
We've tried banning fermentation, narcotics, and various forms of love making. Most were designed to please a well funded, politically loud group of dunces who falsely believe we can promote social good or common good by merely passing a law and putting violators in jail. Yet none of these bans have worked. To ban gun printing would be to expect the police, FBI, ATF, etc to bust down every door in the country looking for illegally printed weapons. The Brits do this with their television license, spending quite a few pounds developing roving vans to bust violators.
Is this the kind of country we want? I'd vote for "no."
Windows 8 is not "New Coke." For this to work out as well, M$ would have to have a Pepsi-like product. On the desktop, that doesn't exist. New Coke was an attempt to re-make a flagship brand. To appeal to changing American tastes for a sweeter product. Windows 8 isn't that product. Consumers weren't clamoring for a touch screen desktop. They accepted touch on tablets and smartphones because it works on handheld devices. It doesn't work well on desktops. Look at the Windows 8 commercials. You don't see office work. You don't see email or composition. You see touch applications, and that's the point. When you buy a laptop, you expect a keyboard. You expect to type. When you buy a tablet, you expect to touch.
For this to work, Microsoft has to have a Domino's moment. Admit you were wrong, then come out with a truly well designed and well made product. I'm not seeing this happen with Blue. I hear about Blue on sites like this. I don't see M$'s corporate face on Blue. Blue feels like a politician's half-hearted admission of guilt.
I predict the business world will continue to adopt Windows 7 and skip Windows 8. If these same IT shops adopt Office 365, Windows may fall off the desktop. A web-based office automation product doesn't need expensive desktop licenses. That change could make "the year of the RHEL desktop" happen.
As someone who works in a data center, I'd add a few things:
1. Paint the walls some sort of "sand" color. It'll lower the emotional temperature in the room.
2. Keep a budget for swiffer wet pads and have a Friday "GI Party" for clean up.
3. Rubber pads for assembly. Nothing sucks more than a lost screw.
4. Hearing protection and wipes for the ear muffs or a few big dispensers with ear plugs. These rooms are LOUD.
5. Task lighting and hand sanitizer. Keep the squinting and the sick time to a minimum.
Agreed. Open Source was never meant to be a top-down heiarchy. Its history will tell you that. Some of RMS' rants speak volumes about how Open Source, like life, tends to break out and do its own thing. I'm all for competition in this category. The major distros will adopt one or the other, or both! The two projects may merge (un-fork?) and become stronger than either could alone. In the meantime, we have Xorg and it works well enough.
So let the strongest triumph over the weaker project. We could have a Street Fighter style "Finish Him" video to hail the end of the lesser. What do you think?
One big difference between torrents and a Darknet -- torrents, like social media, are meant to be open and easily shared. Darknets are designed to deny by default, allow only if invited. The total opposite of the open Internet we have today. So no, I'd not worry if I primarily operated on a properly run and maintained Darknet.