Actually, the amusing part of the example you've used is that the oil company is doing exactly what they know work:-p
Where your argument breaks down is when you attack the efforts of the people "doing it for a living" with regard to the oil leak.
These people know what works. The problem is that the solution that works is too slow and we're all paying the price for that. The same could be said for networking where the solutions that work are known. And with regard to networking it is fast!
I seriously doubt the government will be willing to spend the amount of money needed to buy the knowledge needed for a "network response team"... So I would rather have the admin who considers it a matter of honor and dedication to keep his network up!
Disclaimer: I work in the oil/gas business:-p I want to strange whoever authorized the drilling procedures that caused the accident... Mostly because it makes the whole industry look like asshats of greater douchery! Do it right, or dont fecking do it at all...
*goes back to testing emergency shutdown controller logic*
The "mud" is heavy compared to the pressure of oil and gas. Unfortunately you cant do the same with water as part of the reason the pumping of the "mud" works is that the weight of the mud works for you. Water doesnt have that weight and this leads to it not working as well or in some cases at all.
It is standard flash memory. Desoldering and reading the data is not hard at all. I think making sense of the raw data is more of a challenge than then desoldering and reading.
Unfortunately there is no easy way to test ways to fix this kind of issue. It just has not come up as an issue yet. The research happens when a case like this -does- happen. You can be sure they will sell the solution in the future (BP that is...).
What one should really ask is: Why the fuck did it happen in the first place... What you do afterwards is not the important bit with regard to this happening again...
That is why you prevent it from happening in the first place... I also work in the oil and gas business and the whole pile of neglect in the current case pisses me off to no end.
Last week Statoil in Norway had a blowout situation at a rig and the first safety barrier failed. If this had been the system in the gulf of mexico we'd be fucked over here too.... BUT there was a -second- barrier which stopped the problem. They locked down the well and there was no spill.
It is causing all manner of hell for Statoil at the moment though... people are quite nervous;)
Have a peek at the way Statoil operates rigs in Norway. I'm sure you can find some articles with a tiny bit of googling...
Here they have very strict safety requirements and are also required to submit regular reports on compliance. From what I can gather from working in the field for a few years it seems that the companies here have found that having a leak is too expensive to have happen... ever...
Doesnt hurt that the Norwegian state is a majority shareholder either;)
Well, the brilliant thing is that if/when Apple manage to get a certain critical point of market share the trojan/virus-writers will have a reason to attack the platform.
This is especially true since the platform is thought to be "impervious" to such things. Users expect to be safe and dont even think about the dangers you have to be aware of on a PC. So... I am eagerly awaiting the first big trojan or worm that attacks the macs... It will be glorious to watch the PR machine trying to explain it away!
I keep popcorn ready to pop for that reason alone...
No matter how small of a piece of the puzzle you are in a company you influence things.
The important thing is to know how to limit yourself. I personally like trying to introduce the "open" philosophy in my work. When I have a chance I try to go with an open alternative instead of a closed one.
This is the key. Do what you have to do to get the job done in the best way you can, but always try to keep in mind where you can pick an open alternative! Dont degrate your work or force the change, make the change happen because it is the best way to do the job. I personally feel this is the way to get a huge company to slowly change. If the open alternatives are just as good or better, and less costly than the closed options... win-win no?
thermite is loads of fun, especially if you manage to get hold of the proper materials.... And what we used to do with it was not really all that legal. We didnt hurt anyone, but quite a few pieces of steel fencing etc got melted somewhat over a few years time *cough*
No. The problem in the gulf of mexico was -not- a power issue.
It as a complete and utter failure of procedure.
The blowout preventer had a hydrolic leak. This should have caused major alarm in any decent control system.
On top of this apparently they claimed that loss of communication to the device could have caused it to not fire... Eh excuse me but these things are on "fail closed" circuits in ANY decent control system.
And seriously, a platform shutdown is quite different from one blowing up. There has been quite a few shutdowns on the rigs I've worked with and none of them dramatic. The control system is designed so that if any part of it fails the whole system -will- go to a safe state without being told to by an operator. Hell, most of the safety valves cant be opened from the control room. You have to actually go out in the field and manually reset them with a key..
The system failure on Deepwater Horizon was a combination of shitty engineering, shitty maintenance and shitty management. What happened should not be possible with a properly designed control system.
And no, I'm not talking out of my arse. I actually work in the control system business and have enough inside knowledge to know that this incident was a monumental cockup and not just an "accident".
It is much better to have a scheduled test with people ready to take care of any issues that may or may not pop up than to have a piece of equipment fail at a random time with few prepared...
I sure as hell would rather have a blip every now and then than knowing that the system might fail catastrophically when something unexpected happens..
Yep, but what is important to keep in mind is that if an oil rig has to shut down for a day due to a power issue the oil will still be in the ground. The company might lose money due to having promised a certain supply (especially with gas!) but the resource is not lost.
In a datacenter the uptime is all there is. Value is lost.
The oil rigs in Norwegian waters are fairly secure when it comes to power faults. If the system cannot guarantee power it goes into a shutdown sequence to set everything in a "safe" position. Shutdowns are actually not that rare. Minor shutdowns of parts of a platform or refinery is not very dramatic. It is just a case of getting the bugger up and running in a safe way.
I'd give details but unfortunately I am under NDA:-p
If you start out with something which is a horrible mess to learn then most students will start out negative about the class in general. This has been my experience when teaching.
Having someone with little or no programming experience start out with plain C is silly. Personally I feel C# using Visual Studio Express is a good way to start out. You dont get bogged down by a myriad of (important but still) details before you can have a result. If you are just starting out on programming an IDE that will tell you when you screw up and WHERE is very important. Getting it visually marked is even better. It helps with the learning process.
Personally I hated my classes in C not because of the language... but because of the horrible tools we were forced to use. Being told using a frontend for the compiler would be cheating, and that using an "IDE" other than windows notepad was banned... yeah.... fuck it;)
Slashdot Mirror
And all these systems sadly rely on the internet in many cases....
Seriously... I'm not joking :(
The internet is considered "critical infrastructure" by the people 'doing'.
Which I guess is part of the problem. If someone manage to crash the net then we're fucked anyway for a myriad of other reasons...
Actually, the amusing part of the example you've used is that the oil company is doing exactly what they know work :-p
Where your argument breaks down is when you attack the efforts of the people "doing it for a living" with regard to the oil leak.
These people know what works. The problem is that the solution that works is too slow and we're all paying the price for that.
The same could be said for networking where the solutions that work are known. And with regard to networking it is fast!
I seriously doubt the government will be willing to spend the amount of money needed to buy the knowledge needed for a "network response team"... So I would rather have the admin who considers it a matter of honor and dedication to keep his network up!
Disclaimer: I work in the oil/gas business :-p
I want to strange whoever authorized the drilling procedures that caused the accident... Mostly because it makes the whole industry look like asshats of greater douchery! Do it right, or dont fecking do it at all...
*goes back to testing emergency shutdown controller logic*
Biometrics wont stop identity theft.
It just means that when you're compromized you need new eyeballs and a finger-transplant :-p
The "mud" is heavy compared to the pressure of oil and gas. Unfortunately you cant do the same with water as part of the reason the pumping of the "mud" works is that the weight of the mud works for you. Water doesnt have that weight and this leads to it not working as well or in some cases at all.
It is standard flash memory. Desoldering and reading the data is not hard at all.
I think making sense of the raw data is more of a challenge than then desoldering and reading.
The problem is if that backfires....
Sometimes laws are based to protect us all from the outcries that sane people would discount as coming from "complete fools"...
Unfortunately there is no easy way to test ways to fix this kind of issue. It just has not come up as an issue yet.
The research happens when a case like this -does- happen. You can be sure they will sell the solution in the future (BP that is...).
What one should really ask is: Why the fuck did it happen in the first place... What you do afterwards is not the important bit with regard to this happening again...
The cleanup is always a fecking pain in the arse.
That is why you prevent it from happening in the first place... I also work in the oil and gas business and the whole pile of neglect in the current case pisses me off to no end.
Last week Statoil in Norway had a blowout situation at a rig and the first safety barrier failed. If this had been the system in the gulf of mexico we'd be fucked over here too.... BUT there was a -second- barrier which stopped the problem. They locked down the well and there was no spill.
It is causing all manner of hell for Statoil at the moment though... people are quite nervous ;)
http://virtuallyblind.com/2007/10/23/tax-virtual-profits-in-world/
Old article but hey, was the first thing I found when googling for "irs virtual currency".
Google ftw? :-p
Well thought out and well reasoned comment on this issue.
Hell of a more interesting to read than the average gulped up newspaper-fodder these days.
Please keep writing :)
Oh no! MY GRAPES!
*drops his dinner and runs*
I was thinking of the same episode...
Have a peek at the way Statoil operates rigs in Norway.
I'm sure you can find some articles with a tiny bit of googling...
Here they have very strict safety requirements and are also required to submit regular reports on compliance. From what I can gather from working in the field for a few years it seems that the companies here have found that having a leak is too expensive to have happen... ever...
Doesnt hurt that the Norwegian state is a majority shareholder either ;)
Well, the brilliant thing is that if/when Apple manage to get a certain critical point of market share the trojan/virus-writers will have a reason to attack the platform.
This is especially true since the platform is thought to be "impervious" to such things. Users expect to be safe and dont even think about the dangers you have to be aware of on a PC. So... I am eagerly awaiting the first big trojan or worm that attacks the macs... It will be glorious to watch the PR machine trying to explain it away!
I keep popcorn ready to pop for that reason alone...
No matter how small of a piece of the puzzle you are in a company you influence things.
The important thing is to know how to limit yourself. I personally like trying to introduce the "open" philosophy in my work. When I have a chance I try to go with an open alternative instead of a closed one.
This is the key. Do what you have to do to get the job done in the best way you can, but always try to keep in mind where you can pick an open alternative! Dont degrate your work or force the change, make the change happen because it is the best way to do the job. I personally feel this is the way to get a huge company to slowly change. If the open alternatives are just as good or better, and less costly than the closed options... win-win no?
thermite is loads of fun, especially if you manage to get hold of the proper materials.... And what we used to do with it was not really all that legal.
We didnt hurt anyone, but quite a few pieces of steel fencing etc got melted somewhat over a few years time *cough*
No. The problem in the gulf of mexico was -not- a power issue.
It as a complete and utter failure of procedure.
The blowout preventer had a hydrolic leak. This should have caused major alarm in any decent control system.
On top of this apparently they claimed that loss of communication to the device could have caused it to not fire... Eh excuse me but these things are on "fail closed" circuits in ANY decent control system.
And seriously, a platform shutdown is quite different from one blowing up. There has been quite a few shutdowns on the rigs I've worked with and none of them dramatic. The control system is designed so that if any part of it fails the whole system -will- go to a safe state without being told to by an operator.
Hell, most of the safety valves cant be opened from the control room. You have to actually go out in the field and manually reset them with a key..
The system failure on Deepwater Horizon was a combination of shitty engineering, shitty maintenance and shitty management. What happened should not be possible with a properly designed control system.
And no, I'm not talking out of my arse. I actually work in the control system business and have enough inside knowledge to know that this incident was a monumental cockup and not just an "accident".
I'd go into detail but I'm under NDA ;)
Yes, but what the management probably worries about is "what if the redundant system fails while you are testing the primary?".
So they wont let us lowly engineers do the test... opting instead of the chance of a disaster...
I'm glad I work in the oil business... safety is ALWAYS the most important thing... since any failure will be horribly expensive :-p
Just be glad nobody got killed...
Shorting out something in a main power junction could easily have created a fairly nasty fire...
It is much better to have a scheduled test with people ready to take care of any issues that may or may not pop up than to have a piece of equipment fail at a random time with few prepared...
I sure as hell would rather have a blip every now and then than knowing that the system might fail catastrophically when something unexpected happens..
Yep, but what is important to keep in mind is that if an oil rig has to shut down for a day due to a power issue the oil will still be in the ground.
The company might lose money due to having promised a certain supply (especially with gas!) but the resource is not lost.
In a datacenter the uptime is all there is. Value is lost.
The oil rigs in Norwegian waters are fairly secure when it comes to power faults. If the system cannot guarantee power it goes into a shutdown sequence to set everything in a "safe" position.
Shutdowns are actually not that rare. Minor shutdowns of parts of a platform or refinery is not very dramatic. It is just a case of getting the bugger up and running in a safe way.
I'd give details but unfortunately I am under NDA :-p
We went in this order at my college... *sigh*
Visual Basic 6.0
Assembly for PIC16
C
Labview
C#
This was a technical college though and not a computer science deal
If you start out with something which is a horrible mess to learn then most students will start out negative about the class in general. This has been my experience when teaching.
Having someone with little or no programming experience start out with plain C is silly.
Personally I feel C# using Visual Studio Express is a good way to start out. You dont get bogged down by a myriad of (important but still) details before you can have a result.
If you are just starting out on programming an IDE that will tell you when you screw up and WHERE is very important. Getting it visually marked is even better. It helps with the
learning process.
Personally I hated my classes in C not because of the language... but because of the horrible tools we were forced to use. Being told using a frontend for the compiler would be cheating, and that using an "IDE" other than windows notepad was banned... yeah.... fuck it ;)
Are you a catholic priest by any chance? *inno*