Hmmm... something like the choice on an airplane eh?
How about including one from "the cockpit" where the sounds are from a slave galley - cracking whips and shouting slave-drivers to the beat of a timing drum, punctuated by shouts of "get on with it, there're people waiting on hold damnit!!!"
If nothing else, make 'em laugh.
Re:Cheap, Fast RAM makes swap for new swap ideas
on
Is Swap Necessary?
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· Score: 1
Sorry for replying to my own post - but it turns out you can't (at least I havn't been able to) make swapon use/dev/shm/swapfile. I'll investigate and post my results on my blog.
Cheap, Fast RAM makes swap for new swap ideas
on
Is Swap Necessary?
·
· Score: 1
This discussion mirrors some of the things I've been looking at over the past couple of months - and my experiences over the past 25+ years with systems with "swap".
Many of the systems I've been installing and using over the past couple of years have stuck fairly closely to my "one MHz/1Mbyte" rule of thumb. My workstation is 2.4GHz and 2Gigs of RAM for example.
Despite application bloat (another discussion;) the vast majority of RAM in most of my systems ends up as disk cache. I've limited many of the systems to 10Megs of Swap with one or two spare partitions I can turn on if I'm going to do something that needs more - bringing the total to about 1/2 total RAM in most cases. Old school said you should have 2x total RAM due to need to re-build page tables when RAM got too fragmented. Old Xenix systems (that actually "swapped" as opposed to todays "paging") could get to the point where the OS had to push all but the kernel out to disk and rebuild the RAM image from scratch.
One of the things I'm looking at (2.4 kernel) is using a file in/dev/shm for "swap" with a high priority and a small (10 megs or so) size, and another larger (partition or file) at lower priority. The kernel seems to need at least a couple of Megs of swap and the/dev/shm/swapfile would satisfy that but still make it FAST! The lower priority disk cache might then soak up the need for any larger swap, and a periodic "swapoff/dev/swap ; sleep 5 ; swapon -p 32767/dev/swap" would keep it from getting too old and crusty - using a script that would look at how busy the system was to decide if it should run or not (don't run if busy)
I'm just getting into the 2.6 kernel on a couple of servers and will play with the "swapiness" setting to see what it does in real life.
On my workstation I'm looking to keep all of the (many - 60+ virtual desktops full) terminal sessions and applications I keep open responsive as I move from desktop to desktop.
On many of my small customers' servers in many cases I need to balance the needs of a diverse range of server applications such as Samba, NFS, Mysql, EXIM, POP, Spamassassin, DHCP, etc.
The diverse file activity of the SMTP chain (EXIM, Spamassassin, POP) can soak up a lot of cache, while the need to keep buffer space available for SMB and NFS for fast response has to be balanced with the need for RAM for Mysql's tables.
As one last point, I'm wondering if the use of the old "sticky bit" (which forced the old swapping systems to keep a program in RAM even if it was no longer active on the theory that things like the shell and cron would be more responsive if they didn't have to be loaded from disk each time they were run) wouldn't give us some more control by allowing us to "nail" a particular application into RAM simply by setting it chmod 1755. I believe this would take a change to the kernel to achieve as I don't believe the sticky bit on files has much if any use on a paged system. I'd love to do this for example for rxvt/xterm.
The problem is one of distribution and potential compromise:
with several (many) administrators, getting them the latest password for 300 (different root password) machines is fraught with potential for compromise - printed e-mail, unencrypted e-mail, etc.
not having the admin on the spot with the right password at the right time due to some administrative screw-up
The point is that either the admins are trustworthy, or they should not be admins. The problem is not one of access, but rather one of accountability. If all admins have the same rights, how do you figure out which one did the damage (even if inadvertently - so you can train them more) - the answer is to look at the logs (of ssh logins) - which workstation did they come from?
If you ever have to figure this out due to bad things happening, you have "chosen unwisely" in your staff - and then should call in the mafia;)
There is nothing in the way of technology that can guard against a truly capable and pissed-off (ex) admin.
So... don't piss them off - but in case you do (or they're truly evil)
don't allow root logins (by "normal" means such as tty, rsh, etc.) - only on the physical console (done via settings in/etc/ssh/sshd_config) - and then restrict access to the machine room (yes, really - don't even let the CEO in unless s/he signs the book)
create a master.ssh/authorized_keys file and a distribution list - and test it.
use/etc/hosts.allow to restrict access via sshd to "trusted" domains/IP addrs.
do backups - and use 2 different people to create/verify them (and another to take them off-site)
lie to all of your minions about what _all_ of the security devices are that you use (i.e. - keep a hold-back)
The above won't guarantee that you'll survive a nasty ex-admin, but it will at least cover your ass somewhat.
bureaucrat1: can't have all that dangerous material spread all over the place - we'll put it all in a single, well protected place.
bureaucrat2: can't tell Utah that we're putting dangerous stuff there - tell them it's a replacement for Fort Knox
bureaucrat1: Hey - I love it!
time passes - large, iron clad, secure bunker-style building with lots of military and police all around is built in Lindon. Stuff starts arriving from all over and put inside
bureaucrat1: now it's all in one place, we can rest easy.
radiation engineer1: They did what?!!!
radiation engineer2: Yup - and the temperature in Lindon is rising rapidly - put all that stuff together and you get lots of interaction - I'm getting out of here
rad eng1: me too - by!
news anchor: bulletin from Utah - Lindon has been wiped off the map by something that people in Las Vegas describe as a mushroom cloud. IBM lawyers cheer and Linus says "I knew SCO would self-destruct, but I had absolutely no idea they would do it so well"
I've forgotten more computer languages than most current programmers know even existed - but I'll never call myself a programmer. In fact, the guys I work with have vowed to break my fingers if I write any code.
On the other hand, I write better documentation than most of them, and can read their code and understand it. Our team is better for this synergy - but the problem in general is that this synergy doesn't exist very often.
The biggest programming problem IMHO is the fact that most programmers don't know how to write English (or their chosen native tongue) and even if they do, they don't know when and why to write it.
The people I like (as a manager) are those who understand that the corporation is paying them to assume they might get hit by a bus tomorrow, and someone else is going to have to keep their pet software running for the next 50 years; and that the software will for some reason be still in use 50+ years from now with 4th generation future newbies having to look after it.
Making understandable and supportable code is necessary. Maybe COBOL wasn't such a bad idea afterall (just kidding;)
The law (in Canada the Copyright Act) that institutes the levy (similar in other countries but you have to see their individual acts to figure out exactly how similar) balances the levy by making the "private" copying onto the levied medium of works from (again here in Canada specifically) any source perfectly legal. Private copying means for your own use, not for give-away or resale - which leads to the interesting scenario of purchasing a CD, making a copy of it for your own use, and giving the original away to a friend (who then copies it, keeps the copy and gives the original...) which all is perfectly legal.
The board in its recent ruling even noted that downloading music from the Internet was OK but that uploading (or sharing) was not.
It's all well and good to kick the French - but you should realize that the US does a similar thing for the same reasons - they levy a fee on blank cassette tapes which is passed on to the music industry.
The fact is that over 25 countries have instituted such a levy in some form or other. We here in Canada have the "Blank Media Levy" on CDs, tapes, and "digital storage in portable digital music recorders" which includes hard drives built in at the time of manufacture as well as Flash and/or RAM. The people who administer this levy (Canadian Private Copying Consortium or CPCC) have intimated that they will go after other hard drives in the future (the next round starts some time this month for implementation beginning of 2005)
The point is that the US people who lobby for this have not been as aggressive so today you don't have the levy on anything but the cassettes AFAIK; but you certainly could.
To those who think they should get some sort of compensation for their copied software, the Canadian Copyright Act actually leaves it open to potential groups to apply for and get status to do exactly that but it seems that nobody but the music publishers seem to be able to get together and actually do it (thank our lucky stars!)
As one of the people who directly opposed the CPCC in their recent initial request to apply a levy of $21 per Gigabyte for the storage in things like the iPOD, I can tell you that you can make a difference if you try. The actual levy approved by the Copyright Board was from $2 to a maximum of $25 per unit depending on how much storage it has in it when manufactured - and no levy on additional storage modules purchased after the fact. This and a hold at previous levels for CDs and tapes was actually quite a victory. I expect the fight over levies on regular PC hard drives will be every bit as hard when it comes.
Let this be a lesson to you - and let's see if you can apply it regarding the DMCA and other repressive legislation that your wonderful government (and the business lobby that pays it) are foisting on the world (see what is happening in Austrailia for example)
The biggest problem with "seeing the lock" is that the lock icon itself does not intrude enough and the "You're now viewing a secure site" message is too intrusive.
The auto industry went through this when they put warning bells/buzzers on their cars telling drivers/passengers that their belt was not done up. The warning was persistent and loud - and got disabled (read ignored for the lock symbol and turned off for the message) ASAP.
They (the auto industry) learned though - they put the buzzer/bell on for only a few seconds at the beginning of the trip - reminding those who cared and not pissing off the rest enough to result in turning off the warning permanently (and thereby removing the warning from others who might drive the car/run the browser)
The lesson is "If you are going to issue a warning message - do it for a few seconds and then get rid of it so the idiot driving doesn't use wire cutters to remove it altogether"
Actually I really meant voice recognition. It had to be trained, but could recognize about 30 words fairly well once this was done.
32k is more than I dreamed of a few (25) years ago
on
The Disposable Computer
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
32K is a lot of RAM. It's enough to do a fairly useful voice recognition system, or word processor, or even spreadsheet.
I know - because that's how much RAM my Radio Shack Model 1 had after I'd purchased the add-on module and populated it with the extra 16K of RAM (the main module could only handle 16K) and before I pushed the limits by moving to 48K.
Note that the module plus 32K extra RAM (to bring the system to 48K) was about $2,000 Canadian at the time.
This is not insignificant - at least not if you've ever used something other than Windoze;)
To: usptoinfo@uspto.gov
Subject: Patents
Patent application #20030189597 - Virtual Desktop Manager
I have been using a facility identical to this both on my Unix/Linux systems and on Windows systems for a (large) number of years.
On Unix/Linux under the X-windows system the facility is best typified by the pager facility of the fvwm Window manager. It has equivallents on all graphical user desktops since the mid 80's
On Windows, a pager called sDesk (Semik's desktop), based on the above mentioned fvwm has been on my desktop since 1999 (it was copyright 1998 by Jan Tomasek)
I don't know about the US, but here in Canada we have (AFAIK + IANAL) the option of paying something "into court" pending the outcome of a case. In this case it might be possible (you'll have to determine whether you deem it prudent) to pay your SCO license amount "into court" pending the outcome of the case(s) of whether SCO owns whatever they claim and that a user (as opposed to a distributor) is liable for using what they claim is theirs. In the event their case is turned down/dismissed/etc. you get your money back and all is well.
In the case that they prove their claim you are also covered, having paid your dues up front.
Of course I'm of the opinion that Darl et al belong back under the rock they crawled out from under and won't be availing myself of such an out, personally.
RTFP - Read the Friendly Post - capital means one-time cost - that means they're only going to skip cleaning the toilets once for a couple of days in order to pay for the US$150 AP hardware
If we had to put up with dirty toilets for a couple of days a month, I'm not sure what would happ... wait... how would you know? I don't know about you, but I'm not in one place long enough to know if they've cleaned recently or not!!!
I believe in Darwin - those who are unfit will die (or at least spend more time reformatting their systems than they do actually online infecting the rest of us)
The point is that whatever problems we are seeing now will be blips on the screen of history eventually (picture M$ as a blip - I dare you)
I don't get worms or viruses - and lots of people I know don't either. Well, we get them - but they don't infect us because we've been immunized by one or another of: education or Linux
The ignorant ones (educationally and OS-wise) will just have to deal with the problem.
There is nothing about the use of wireless that is any different from the fact that there are open relays in every block of IP addresses used by tier 1, 2, 3 ISPs and many enterprises. If you practice safe IP you won't have a problem, whether you send packets via 802.11 or pigeon.
balance between being here and being here too long
on
WiFi Free-For-All
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
With all the seats in various establishments such as hotels, airports, bistros, coffee shops, etc. vying for our bucks... the question of balance between getting your butt in the seat and getting "turnover" so that the seat generates income is going to become a real problem.
I predict that there will be a market for software that will degrade the quality of a WIFI connection based on the time from first discovery and extended by the amount of coffee (or other valued product) ingested.
this is why it makes sense to have such a facility managed by "professionals" - and why you should look at SPF if you are considering such an installation. It strongly suggests that mail gateways add SASL (Simple Authentication and Security layer) outgoing mail - so you connect via a secure path for outgoing mail to the same place you pick up your incoming mail from.
I love having access to my own mail system - it allows me to have all sorts of accounts that attract spam - and I let my Evolution system download all of them with a wide-open text password just to add load to those who might be interested in sniffing... all except the one account I use for "real" email - that is encrypted.
Re:Forgive my ignorance...
on
WiFi Free-For-All
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
That's why you run a firewall (yeah - turn that function that now comes with XP on) or do what I do... run Linux (with full firewall via IPTABLES) and then run VMWare with Win2k inside if you absolutely have to run M$
You've obviously never sat for hours at "the gate" waiting for the late plane that will carry you to your next destination. The gate is where we all hope there is coffee and entertainment - and if you have a laptop with IP connectivity you can at least fake the entertainment;)
Of course you're all using encryption and firewalling your laptops (via iptables running on Linux of course) so that the guys who run these open APs can't sniff too much from your boxen (lappen?)
Same as the soap in the bathroom
on
WiFi Free-For-All
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
It makes sense because the incremental cost of providing the service is probably lower than the cost of the soap (lots in my flight bag) and the capital is less than the cleaning budget for the toilets for a day or two
On the other hand, if she is, you can always yell out in your sleep "format c: yes"
and claim it was a nightmare;)
On a more practical note - while I love the IBM keyboards, I recently purchased one of the Logitech "Internet Navigator" keybaords (thumb wheel on the left and lots of extra buttons that Linux doesn't yet seem to see) that is really quite quiet. That along with one of the add-on "skid-pads" (like the ones on laptops) should lower the noise a few decibels.
Add to this one either a piece of relatively heavy fabric hung between the desk and the bed(s) or a (used) free-standing partition (like cubicles are built from - haunt the local auctions) and you can get some much needed rest.
Slashdot Mirror
How about including one from "the cockpit" where the sounds are from a slave galley - cracking whips and shouting slave-drivers to the beat of a timing drum, punctuated by shouts of "get on with it, there're people waiting on hold damnit!!!"
If nothing else, make 'em laugh.
Sorry for replying to my own post - but it turns out you can't (at least I havn't been able to) make swapon use /dev/shm/swapfile. I'll investigate and post my results on my blog.
Many of the systems I've been installing and using over the past couple of years have stuck fairly closely to my "one MHz/1Mbyte" rule of thumb. My workstation is 2.4GHz and 2Gigs of RAM for example.
Despite application bloat (another discussion;) the vast majority of RAM in most of my systems ends up as disk cache. I've limited many of the systems to 10Megs of Swap with one or two spare partitions I can turn on if I'm going to do something that needs more - bringing the total to about 1/2 total RAM in most cases. Old school said you should have 2x total RAM due to need to re-build page tables when RAM got too fragmented. Old Xenix systems (that actually "swapped" as opposed to todays "paging") could get to the point where the OS had to push all but the kernel out to disk and rebuild the RAM image from scratch.
One of the things I'm looking at (2.4 kernel) is using a file in /dev/shm for "swap" with a high priority and a small (10 megs or so) size, and another larger (partition or file) at lower priority. The kernel seems to need at least a couple of Megs of swap and the /dev/shm/swapfile would satisfy that but still make it FAST! The lower priority disk cache might then soak up the need for any larger swap, and a periodic "swapoff /dev/swap ; sleep 5 ; swapon -p 32767 /dev/swap" would keep it from getting too old and crusty - using a script that would look at how busy the system was to decide if it should run or not (don't run if busy)
I'm just getting into the 2.6 kernel on a couple of servers and will play with the "swapiness" setting to see what it does in real life.
On my workstation I'm looking to keep all of the (many - 60+ virtual desktops full) terminal sessions and applications I keep open responsive as I move from desktop to desktop.
On many of my small customers' servers in many cases I need to balance the needs of a diverse range of server applications such as Samba, NFS, Mysql, EXIM, POP, Spamassassin, DHCP, etc.
The diverse file activity of the SMTP chain (EXIM, Spamassassin, POP) can soak up a lot of cache, while the need to keep buffer space available for SMB and NFS for fast response has to be balanced with the need for RAM for Mysql's tables.
As one last point, I'm wondering if the use of the old "sticky bit" (which forced the old swapping systems to keep a program in RAM even if it was no longer active on the theory that things like the shell and cron would be more responsive if they didn't have to be loaded from disk each time they were run) wouldn't give us some more control by allowing us to "nail" a particular application into RAM simply by setting it chmod 1755. I believe this would take a change to the kernel to achieve as I don't believe the sticky bit on files has much if any use on a paged system. I'd love to do this for example for rxvt/xterm.
with several (many) administrators, getting them the latest password for 300 (different root password) machines is fraught with potential for compromise - printed e-mail, unencrypted e-mail, etc.
not having the admin on the spot with the right password at the right time due to some administrative screw-up
The point is that either the admins are trustworthy, or they should not be admins. The problem is not one of access, but rather one of accountability. If all admins have the same rights, how do you figure out which one did the damage (even if inadvertently - so you can train them more) - the answer is to look at the logs (of ssh logins) - which workstation did they come from?
If you ever have to figure this out due to bad things happening, you have "chosen unwisely" in your staff - and then should call in the mafia ;)
So... don't piss them off - but in case you do (or they're truly evil)
don't allow root logins (by "normal" means such as tty, rsh, etc.) - only on the physical console (done via settings in /etc/ssh/sshd_config) - and then restrict access to the machine room (yes, really - don't even let the CEO in unless s/he signs the book)
create a master .ssh/authorized_keys file and a distribution list - and test it.
use /etc/hosts.allow to restrict access via sshd to "trusted" domains/IP addrs.
do backups - and use 2 different people to create/verify them (and another to take them off-site)
lie to all of your minions about what _all_ of the security devices are that you use (i.e. - keep a hold-back) The above won't guarantee that you'll survive a nasty ex-admin, but it will at least cover your ass somewhat.
bureaucrat2: can't tell Utah that we're putting dangerous stuff there - tell them it's a replacement for Fort Knox
bureaucrat1: Hey - I love it!
time passes - large, iron clad, secure bunker-style building with lots of military and police all around is built in Lindon. Stuff starts arriving from all over and put inside
bureaucrat1: now it's all in one place, we can rest easy.
radiation engineer1: They did what?!!!
radiation engineer2: Yup - and the temperature in Lindon is rising rapidly - put all that stuff together and you get lots of interaction - I'm getting out of here
rad eng1: me too - by!
news anchor: bulletin from Utah - Lindon has been wiped off the map by something that people in Las Vegas describe as a mushroom cloud. IBM lawyers cheer and Linus says "I knew SCO would self-destruct, but I had absolutely no idea they would do it so well"
On the other hand, I write better documentation than most of them, and can read their code and understand it. Our team is better for this synergy - but the problem in general is that this synergy doesn't exist very often.
The biggest programming problem IMHO is the fact that most programmers don't know how to write English (or their chosen native tongue) and even if they do, they don't know when and why to write it.
The people I like (as a manager) are those who understand that the corporation is paying them to assume they might get hit by a bus tomorrow, and someone else is going to have to keep their pet software running for the next 50 years; and that the software will for some reason be still in use 50+ years from now with 4th generation future newbies having to look after it.
Making understandable and supportable code is necessary. Maybe COBOL wasn't such a bad idea afterall (just kidding ;)
The board in its recent ruling even noted that downloading music from the Internet was OK but that uploading (or sharing) was not.
The fact is that over 25 countries have instituted such a levy in some form or other. We here in Canada have the "Blank Media Levy" on CDs, tapes, and "digital storage in portable digital music recorders" which includes hard drives built in at the time of manufacture as well as Flash and/or RAM. The people who administer this levy (Canadian Private Copying Consortium or CPCC) have intimated that they will go after other hard drives in the future (the next round starts some time this month for implementation beginning of 2005)
The point is that the US people who lobby for this have not been as aggressive so today you don't have the levy on anything but the cassettes AFAIK; but you certainly could.
To those who think they should get some sort of compensation for their copied software, the Canadian Copyright Act actually leaves it open to potential groups to apply for and get status to do exactly that but it seems that nobody but the music publishers seem to be able to get together and actually do it (thank our lucky stars!)
As one of the people who directly opposed the CPCC in their recent initial request to apply a levy of $21 per Gigabyte for the storage in things like the iPOD, I can tell you that you can make a difference if you try. The actual levy approved by the Copyright Board was from $2 to a maximum of $25 per unit depending on how much storage it has in it when manufactured - and no levy on additional storage modules purchased after the fact. This and a hold at previous levels for CDs and tapes was actually quite a victory. I expect the fight over levies on regular PC hard drives will be every bit as hard when it comes.
Let this be a lesson to you - and let's see if you can apply it regarding the DMCA and other repressive legislation that your wonderful government (and the business lobby that pays it) are foisting on the world (see what is happening in Austrailia for example)
They can have local files and such because even if it has a .pif extension it won't run/infect - I love Linux ;)
The auto industry went through this when they put warning bells/buzzers on their cars telling drivers/passengers that their belt was not done up. The warning was persistent and loud - and got disabled (read ignored for the lock symbol and turned off for the message) ASAP.
They (the auto industry) learned though - they put the buzzer/bell on for only a few seconds at the beginning of the trip - reminding those who cared and not pissing off the rest enough to result in turning off the warning permanently (and thereby removing the warning from others who might drive the car/run the browser)
The lesson is "If you are going to issue a warning message - do it for a few seconds and then get rid of it so the idiot driving doesn't use wire cutters to remove it altogether"
Are you listening programmers?
Actually I really meant voice recognition. It had to be trained, but could recognize about 30 words fairly well once this was done.
I know - because that's how much RAM my Radio Shack Model 1 had after I'd purchased the add-on module and populated it with the extra 16K of RAM (the main module could only handle 16K) and before I pushed the limits by moving to 48K.
Note that the module plus 32K extra RAM (to bring the system to 48K) was about $2,000 Canadian at the time.
This is not insignificant - at least not if you've ever used something other than Windoze ;)
Subject: Patents
Patent application #20030189597 - Virtual Desktop Manager
I have been using a facility identical to this both on my Unix/Linux systems and on Windows systems for a (large) number of years.
On Unix/Linux under the X-windows system the facility is best typified by the pager facility of the fvwm Window manager. It has equivallents on all graphical user desktops since the mid 80's
On Windows, a pager called sDesk (Semik's desktop), based on the above mentioned fvwm has been on my desktop since 1999 (it was copyright 1998 by Jan Tomasek)
More information and a picture of my desktop may be seen at: http://richard.pacdat.net/home-office.htm
I trust this will put a stop to the possibility that anyone may patent this facility - it has ample prior art.
richard
In the case that they prove their claim you are also covered, having paid your dues up front.
Of course I'm of the opinion that Darl et al belong back under the rock they crawled out from under and won't be availing myself of such an out, personally.
If we had to put up with dirty toilets for a couple of days a month, I'm not sure what would happ... wait... how would you know? I don't know about you, but I'm not in one place long enough to know if they've cleaned recently or not!!!
The point is that whatever problems we are seeing now will be blips on the screen of history eventually (picture M$ as a blip - I dare you)
I don't get worms or viruses - and lots of people I know don't either. Well, we get them - but they don't infect us because we've been immunized by one or another of: education or Linux
The ignorant ones (educationally and OS-wise) will just have to deal with the problem.
There is nothing about the use of wireless that is any different from the fact that there are open relays in every block of IP addresses used by tier 1, 2, 3 ISPs and many enterprises. If you practice safe IP you won't have a problem, whether you send packets via 802.11 or pigeon.
I predict that there will be a market for software that will degrade the quality of a WIFI connection based on the time from first discovery and extended by the amount of coffee (or other valued product) ingested.
this is why it makes sense to have such a facility managed by "professionals" - and why you should look at SPF if you are considering such an installation. It strongly suggests that mail gateways add SASL (Simple Authentication and Security layer) outgoing mail - so you connect via a secure path for outgoing mail to the same place you pick up your incoming mail from.
I love having access to my own mail system - it allows me to have all sorts of accounts that attract spam - and I let my Evolution system download all of them with a wide-open text password just to add load to those who might be interested in sniffing... all except the one account I use for "real" email - that is encrypted.
You've obviously never sat for hours at "the gate" waiting for the late plane that will carry you to your next destination. The gate is where we all hope there is coffee and entertainment - and if you have a laptop with IP connectivity you can at least fake the entertainment ;)
Of course you're all using encryption and firewalling your laptops (via iptables running on Linux of course) so that the guys who run these open APs can't sniff too much from your boxen (lappen?)
It makes sense because the incremental cost of providing the service is probably lower than the cost of the soap (lots in my flight bag) and the capital is less than the cleaning budget for the toilets for a day or two
and claim it was a nightmare ;)
On a more practical note - while I love the IBM keyboards, I recently purchased one of the Logitech "Internet Navigator" keybaords (thumb wheel on the left and lots of extra buttons that Linux doesn't yet seem to see) that is really quite quiet. That along with one of the add-on "skid-pads" (like the ones on laptops) should lower the noise a few decibels.
Add to this one either a piece of relatively heavy fabric hung between the desk and the bed(s) or a (used) free-standing partition (like cubicles are built from - haunt the local auctions) and you can get some much needed rest.