Exactly. Smart thieves perform a thorough risk/reward calculation and a lot of planning before they go for target. They are near impossible to catch.
I, for one, regularly steal rolls of toilet paper from work. I'll never get caught because I put a lot of forethought into each coup and perfectionized my strategy over years. I only lift one roll at a time so it doesn't get noticed and so I can at any time pretend to be just carrying it around because I need to "clean my desk or something". Plus, I always drop the roll into my bag while sitting at my desk and without looking down. Eyes must be focussed on screen, innocent facial expression - nobody would ever notice from a distance that I'm performing a felony under the table in just that moment!
Bare the occassional accident (when I miss the bag and have to crawl under the table to recover the loot) I think I can safely claim that the perfect crime is possible and I have mastered it.
Flushing to disk imho can not work so well when the box is loaded with more IOPS than the spindles can handle. It's the same problem that every database server is having (RAM vs WAL vs tablespace).
And about the shutdown issue: When you're talking about a scale where such RAM-based SANs get serious consideration then unknown risk factors like "terminal happenings" can usually not be tolerated. Building in the enough safe-guards to make such a failure sufficiently unlikely is usually more expensive than building a redundant setup in first place. Hence in most setups you'll probably see a traditional SAN with permanent storage in the mix, rather than a "RAID10 over RAM-SANs" without other fallbacks.
I haven't worked with RAM-SANs first hand but I know that even in the traditional SAN world most people will, for mission critical applications, buy at least two heads, even when each has plenty of redundance (including an UPS) built in.
Admittedly I haven't read up on them but most people I know wouldn't be comfortable with such a "persist on shutdown" option - because the interesting scenario is when the box doesn't get a chance to shutdown.
Yup, violin basically sells the same thing - in a yellow box, too. The problems with these boxes, until recently, have been price and (obviously) persistence.
Since data is never really persisted you'd only buy them in addition to a traditional SAN (or SSD nowadays), not as a replacement. When you have the dough you can do interesting things with them, though. I know a company that does most of their transaction processing on violins (financial sector, sick throughput) and uses spindles in a write-behind fashion. Technically very interesting but will imho always remain a niche market.
They probably didn't hold the source data on a single machine in first place (or did seagate break the Petabyte barrier, yet?).
48GB/s broken down over 4000 servers boils down to "only" 12 Mbyte/s. So indeed, impressive aggregate performance, but the individual nodes were "only" performing at (roughly) the throughput of Gigabit Ethernet.
Well, there *are* valid reasons for maintaining multiple kernels but security and "avoiding a monoculture" is not one of them. Maintaining multiple kernels for the sole purpose of avoiding a monocolture would just be a royal waste of ressources...
Actually from a security point of view a kernel monoculture could even have advantages because all eyes would focus on the one kernel instead of spreading out over multiple targets. Just imagine having the OpenBSD guys focus their attention on linux instead of a separate kernel. Such an "uberkernel" would soon beat everything out there today in terms of security.
The windows monoculture is vulnerable because it is based on a sloppy, closed codebase, maintained by a single vendor that doesn't care about security. The Linux kernel hardening patches and OpenBSD prove that security by design is possible in the OSS world. We could do better than windows if we wanted to - even and maybe especially in an open-source kernel monoculture.
Sorry but the only thing you proved is that you're apparently having a problem with your language. Look up the term "product" in a dictionary, maybe that helps you to realize that your definition doesn't match the definition that everyone else is using.
Well, you can spin it any way you like, it's still a word game and frankly, stupid polemics. Google is selling my attention span and, at worst, some demographic data about me. That is only a tiny fragment of me as a person and far from your "selling souls" speech.
Furthermore I, as a person, am free to opt-out of google's evil soul selling practices, just like everybody else.
I signed up to their services using fake data and an anonymous e-mail forwarder, plus my Firefox has adblock installed. So as far as I am concerned I get to use their services for free - without revealing any personal data and without looking at a single ad.
Sure, it's just a ballpark figure. This is a government project. So in reality it won't even get started for under $5 mio, will not show visible results earlier than 2 years after kickoff and become obsolete long before completion...
Well, ofcourse you and GP are correct in a way, I just have a problem with the twisted terminology here. Yes, google basically sells my attention-span to others but imho that doesn't make *me* (as a person) their product.
I'm still a customer because I choose to "pay" google with my attention in exchange for using their products.
Well, ofcourse you have a point. The Firefox integration could be better and MSIE has better integration (obviously - it's coming from the OS vendor).
What I was trying to say is that pretty much everything you need can be done with a bit of elbow grease and it's a one-time investment. The larger your deployment the more likely do you have the ressources to make that investment. And the more likely will you benefit from using Firefox over IE because of better security and indeed better customization options (XUL, Chrome, Addons) in the long run.
I'm talking a bit tongue in cheek here as I know that stuff first-hand (having supported large deployments and knowing a few people in the biz of *really* large deployments). Reality is that indeed, many large enterprise deployments use MSIE. Not because it is in any way superior but rather because IT is outsourced to a MS-contractor...
Well, nice word-games you're playing there but no, I'm not google's "product". They didn't make me. Google's products are Gmail and Search, they created them and I am using them.
Google is using a fairly novel approach to monetize their products but I don't agree with you swapping the definition of "product" and "customer" for them.
I still don't get what *exactly* you are missing? A checkbox in your SMS to have Firefox deployed?
How do you treat other third party packages (most of which probably don't provide a MSI either) and why don't you treat Firefox the same way?
I strongly suggest that someone who fails to integrate Firefox (of all things) with a large scale deployment infrastructure better not be responsible for said deployment. And yes, I have seen Firefox (alongside with IE btw.) in 1000+ seat installations with fully automatic provisioning.
After some quick back-of-the-envelope math I'd even say heck, pass me $300k and I'll build the damn thing for you in under 6 months. With encryption, authentication and all the she-bang that your little governmental heart desires.
Maybe not $2k worth of hardware but $200k will do. Which is still peanuts in government terms. They probably spend that amount on paperclips and toilet paper in the pentagon alone. Honestly, storing and indexing 140TB of e-mail is a trivial task when you can apply a six digit budget to it.
If their "archival system" blinks at the sight of 140TB of mostly text then it doesn't even deserve the name.
Ehm, you confused google and microsoft there. Microsoft is the marketing company. Google is a product company.
Google sets industry-standards with their products (search, gmail...) and people flock to them because they are better, not because google markets them anyhow. Seriously, have you seen an ad for google search or google mail ever? Microsoft puts out crappy products and forces them down the consumers throats through their OS monopoly and aggressive marketing.
Now that's a wild claim, especially with those (your own) figures. "Falling fast"? You mean, like 1% per year?
Sorry to break it for you but this is still a windows world and it will stay that way for a long while. Going windows-only (as much as we hate it) is still a valid business decision, because adressing 9 out of 10 users *now* is usually more attractive than addressing 10 of 10 users in x more months.
This is especially true when you're entering uncertain terrain. The codebase of a successful product can always be ported to other platforms. But when those 9/10 users don't like your product you'll be glad you didn't invest so much upfront.
I'd be perfectly comfortable with a linux powered "nuclear launch workstation" as long as it's not connected to a network. The same, btw, applies to any other OS, no matter how many certifications they may have invented for it.
Common sense dictates that such a system should have multiple independent layers of protection anyways, all of which default to "No, do not launch" in case of failure or breach.
Amen. I, for one, certainly don't feel sorry for HP who used to make excellent products (printers) but have long degraded into just another maker of mediocre "everything". I consider HP a noname brand nowadays as I have seen better printers from kyocera (how is that even spelt), better laptops from ASUS and better desktops from just about anybody.
Moreover I have to cheer in on the sheer disgust over the storyline and style of communications here. These are multi billion dollar companies, yet they fail to sort out a trivial issue like this without resorting to dog-eat-dog and almost calling each other names? It's indeed an enlightening insight into the real reasons for why the world economy is tanking. Way too many mouthbreathers have bubbled up to the top, let's hope at least that part of the problem gets sorted out during this crash...
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Exactly. Smart thieves perform a thorough risk/reward calculation and a lot of planning before they go for target. They are near impossible to catch.
I, for one, regularly steal rolls of toilet paper from work.
I'll never get caught because I put a lot of forethought into each coup and perfectionized my strategy over years. I only lift one roll at a time so it doesn't get noticed and so I can at any time pretend to be just carrying it around because I need to "clean my desk or something". Plus, I always drop the roll into my bag while sitting at my desk and without looking down. Eyes must be focussed on screen, innocent facial expression - nobody would ever notice from a distance that I'm performing a felony under the table in just that moment!
Bare the occassional accident (when I miss the bag and have to crawl under the table to recover the loot) I think I can safely claim that the perfect crime is possible and I have mastered it.
Flushing to disk imho can not work so well when the box is loaded with more IOPS than the spindles can handle. It's the same problem that every database server is having (RAM vs WAL vs tablespace).
And about the shutdown issue: When you're talking about a scale where such RAM-based SANs get serious consideration then unknown risk factors like "terminal happenings" can usually not be tolerated.
Building in the enough safe-guards to make such a failure sufficiently unlikely is usually more expensive than building a redundant setup in first place. Hence in most setups you'll probably see a traditional SAN with permanent storage in the mix, rather than a "RAID10 over RAM-SANs" without other fallbacks.
I haven't worked with RAM-SANs first hand but I know that even in the traditional SAN world most people will, for mission critical applications, buy at least two heads, even when each has plenty of redundance (including an UPS) built in.
...unless it fails, I suppose?
Admittedly I haven't read up on them but most people I know wouldn't be comfortable with such a "persist on shutdown" option - because the interesting scenario is when the box doesn't get a chance to shutdown.
In soviet russia...
Yup, violin basically sells the same thing - in a yellow box, too.
The problems with these boxes, until recently, have been price and (obviously) persistence.
Since data is never really persisted you'd only buy them in addition to a traditional SAN (or SSD nowadays), not as a replacement.
When you have the dough you can do interesting things with them, though. I know a company that does most of their transaction processing on violins (financial sector, sick throughput) and uses spindles in a write-behind fashion. Technically very interesting but will imho always remain a niche market.
You, Sir, are now my official in rem collateral discharged child support super-hero!
Oh and IANAL but I don't belive that YANAL.
They probably didn't hold the source data on a single machine in first place (or did seagate break the Petabyte barrier, yet?).
48GB/s broken down over 4000 servers boils down to "only" 12 Mbyte/s.
So indeed, impressive aggregate performance, but the individual nodes were "only" performing at (roughly) the throughput of Gigabit Ethernet.
Well, there *are* valid reasons for maintaining multiple kernels but security and "avoiding a monoculture" is not one of them.
Maintaining multiple kernels for the sole purpose of avoiding a monocolture would just be a royal waste of ressources...
Actually from a security point of view a kernel monoculture could even have advantages because all eyes would focus on the one kernel instead of spreading out over multiple targets. Just imagine having the OpenBSD guys focus their attention on linux instead of a separate kernel. Such an "uberkernel" would soon beat everything out there today in terms of security.
The windows monoculture is vulnerable because it is based on a sloppy, closed codebase, maintained by a single vendor that doesn't care about security.
The Linux kernel hardening patches and OpenBSD prove that security by design is possible in the OSS world. We could do better than windows if we wanted to - even and maybe especially in an open-source kernel monoculture.
Sorry but the only thing you proved is that you're apparently having a problem with your language.
Look up the term "product" in a dictionary, maybe that helps you to realize that your definition doesn't match the definition that everyone else is using.
Well, you can spin it any way you like, it's still a word game and frankly, stupid polemics.
Google is selling my attention span and, at worst, some demographic data about me. That is only a tiny fragment of me as a person and far from your "selling souls" speech.
Furthermore I, as a person, am free to opt-out of google's evil soul selling practices, just like everybody else.
I signed up to their services using fake data and an anonymous e-mail forwarder, plus my Firefox has adblock installed.
So as far as I am concerned I get to use their services for free - without revealing any personal data and without looking at a single ad.
Sure, it's just a ballpark figure.
This is a government project. So in reality it won't even get started for under $5 mio, will not show visible results earlier than 2 years after kickoff and become obsolete long before completion...
Well, ofcourse you and GP are correct in a way, I just have a problem with the twisted terminology here.
Yes, google basically sells my attention-span to others but imho that doesn't make *me* (as a person) their product.
I'm still a customer because I choose to "pay" google with my attention in exchange for using their products.
Well, ofcourse you have a point. The Firefox integration could be better and MSIE has better integration (obviously - it's coming from the OS vendor).
What I was trying to say is that pretty much everything you need can be done with a bit of elbow grease and it's a one-time investment.
The larger your deployment the more likely do you have the ressources to make that investment. And the more likely will you benefit from using Firefox over IE because of better security and indeed better customization options (XUL, Chrome, Addons) in the long run.
I'm talking a bit tongue in cheek here as I know that stuff first-hand (having supported large deployments and knowing a few people in the biz of *really* large deployments). Reality is that indeed, many large enterprise deployments use MSIE. Not because it is in any way superior but rather because IT is outsourced to a MS-contractor...
Well, nice word-games you're playing there but no, I'm not google's "product". They didn't make me.
Google's products are Gmail and Search, they created them and I am using them.
Google is using a fairly novel approach to monetize their products but I don't agree with you swapping the definition of "product" and "customer" for them.
I still don't get what *exactly* you are missing?
A checkbox in your SMS to have Firefox deployed?
How do you treat other third party packages (most of which probably don't provide a MSI either) and why don't you treat Firefox the same way?
I strongly suggest that someone who fails to integrate Firefox (of all things) with a large scale deployment infrastructure better not be responsible for said deployment.
And yes, I have seen Firefox (alongside with IE btw.) in 1000+ seat installations with fully automatic provisioning.
After some quick back-of-the-envelope math I'd even say heck, pass me $300k and I'll build the damn thing for you in under 6 months.
With encryption, authentication and all the she-bang that your little governmental heart desires.
Governments. Sheesh...
Maybe not $2k worth of hardware but $200k will do. Which is still peanuts in government terms. They probably spend that amount on paperclips and toilet paper in the pentagon alone.
Honestly, storing and indexing 140TB of e-mail is a trivial task when you can apply a six digit budget to it.
If their "archival system" blinks at the sight of 140TB of mostly text then it doesn't even deserve the name.
Ehm, what exactly needs to be "centrally managed" about a friggin' Web-Browser?
Drank a bit much of the MS kool-aid lately, did you?
Firefox can auto-detect the proxy server to use and updates itself over the intertubes.
What more do you need in your "corporate environment"?
Ehm, you confused google and microsoft there.
Microsoft is the marketing company. Google is a product company.
Google sets industry-standards with their products (search, gmail...) and people flock to them because they are better, not because google markets them anyhow. Seriously, have you seen an ad for google search or google mail ever?
Microsoft puts out crappy products and forces them down the consumers throats through their OS monopoly and aggressive marketing.
Now that's a wild claim, especially with those (your own) figures.
"Falling fast"? You mean, like 1% per year?
Sorry to break it for you but this is still a windows world and it will stay that way for a long while.
Going windows-only (as much as we hate it) is still a valid business decision, because adressing 9 out
of 10 users *now* is usually more attractive than addressing 10 of 10 users in x more months.
This is especially true when you're entering uncertain terrain. The codebase of a successful product can always be ported to other platforms. But when those 9/10 users don't like your product you'll be glad you didn't invest so much upfront.
They probably intended to compete over the 98% windows users before caring about the other 2%...
You're still thinking in Web 2.0 terms.
Web 3.0 will not need those things, it's going to be Pony Powered!
Who has immortal merchandising, too.
I'd be perfectly comfortable with a linux powered "nuclear launch workstation" as long as it's not connected to a network.
The same, btw, applies to any other OS, no matter how many certifications they may have invented for it.
Common sense dictates that such a system should have multiple independent layers of protection anyways, all of which default to "No, do not launch" in case of failure or breach.
Amen. I, for one, certainly don't feel sorry for HP who used to make excellent products (printers) but have long degraded into just another maker of mediocre "everything". I consider HP a noname brand nowadays as I have seen better printers from kyocera (how is that even spelt), better laptops from ASUS and better desktops from just about anybody.
Moreover I have to cheer in on the sheer disgust over the storyline and style of communications here. These are multi billion dollar companies, yet they fail to sort out a trivial issue like this without resorting to dog-eat-dog and almost calling each other names? It's indeed an enlightening insight into the real reasons for why the world economy is tanking. Way too many mouthbreathers have bubbled up to the top, let's hope at least that part of the problem gets sorted out during this crash...