>Do you want to come in as a rookie (new hire) and suggest restoring servers from backup?
I did:-)
My premise was correct: The backups that they had, were mostly useless.
One of the very first things I did was to establish a backup regime, including offsite storage, nearline rotations and so on, and every new hire in IT learns how it works, how to verify what is backed up, how it is retained, how it is restored, and how to recover a server or a workstation with one of several standard configurations.
Lost data for a single day could expose the company to regulatory liabilities, and could severely impact customer business to the tune of grounded aircraft (commercial and military) so it's a pretty big deal.
Coming in as a non-management role, or as a new guy in a shop where the procedures are already very sound and operating well, that's different. Then I have to wonder why the last guy got fired...
>That seems a bit risky. I cannot see any manager worth his salt giving authorization to purposely destroying data "to >see if the backup works".
We do it routinely, but it's not chaotic or risky like your choice of words makes it sound. OTOH we have invested a lot of money and brainpower into getting the redundant system we need to have in order to fail over a production system, tear one down, build it up again, verify it and put it back into production. That costs money... and probably not something the IT manager that had to be "fired under duress" actually accomplished.
Unless you can deploy your standard configuration with nothing but the LTO tape from Iron Mountain and a charge account at your server vendor, you don't have a Disaster Recovery plan. (A fire in our facility probably takes out 4 city blocks. We seriously take this under consideration, and we do drill for it.)
People are getting stuck for long enough to create cottage industries for villagers. I guess those drivers who are lucky enough to be stuck near a village are the ones getting food and water.
Here is a quote that raised my eyebrows;
Wang, driving from Hohhot to Tianjin in a coal truck, had been on the Huai'an section for three days and two nights.
"We are advised to take detours, but I would rather stay here since I will travel more distance and increase my costs," Wang said.
"The number of roads from northwest China to Beijing are limited," he complained, asking "Why should I pay the toll fee?"
I think you underestimate the capabilities of PostgreSQL, and you're also not making a fair apples-to-apples comparison.
We could run Oracle on our "wimpy" Poweredge. (Quad Xeon, 32GB RAM, local SSD's, SAS-attached SAN). We don't make that choice -- everyone who works here has had years and years of experience with Oracle and no desire to repeat it.
In the price range, I'd love for you to show me hardware that makes my servers look "wimpy" though.
Worth noting that the prof whose own work is good enough to be used as a course textbook, is probably on your faculty for good reasons and has a pretty strong negotiating position by default.
If I could have taken a course from Donald Knuth or W. Richard Stevens, I would never have bitched about the price or the ethics of the teachers own book.
It is. For all the misconception about copyright (to wit, copyright being a good weapon to use against people distributing your work), copyright's main strength is that it can strongly protect you from someone else distributing your work, claiming it as their own, *and suing you* on the claim that YOU are the copycat. That direction of things is lost in the noise in all the copyright discussion, because it's neither common nor sexy nor a basis for a business model.
Long after finishing college, the Stewart calculus books are pretty much the only texts that remain on my bookshelf since then. The rest of that list is CS material that still gets referenced.
FWIW my last two real-world jobs have involved doing calculus on whiteboards, which I realize isn't all that common:-)
Here is what you do. Get into a professorship position where you have decision making authority on things like textbooks. (This is probably Regents-direct-reports level, so good luck getting there.) Then with this authority, make student-friendly decision.
The Stewart books are extremely good. The value is definitely there... something I can't say for a lot of college textbooks. A longtime slashdot poster whose name escapes me was a contributing editor for it; I remember thinking "small world" when it came up.
Yes, but I am (a) from Texas and (b) know plenty (plenty!) of people who have had DUIs and worse. And I've heard stranger things but never what the OP referred to.
The next time you visit your probation officer (who also gets a couple hundred bucks!) they get to check the log on the device. When it doesn't show what they want to see, you go to jail. Or, maybe you get a lecture about how you *could* go to jail, right that minute, by the person who has the handcuffs who could literally make that happen. It's not a mistake you would make a second time.
>I've never heard someone say "it's my right to drink and drive".
I have hear this plenty, but not since the early 1970s. Then there was outrage in the 1980s when they passed an open container law for the front seat. (Back seat passenger could have a full bar and a margarita machine...)
It's been a while, but I remember when you did indeed "have the right" to drink and drive -- by that I mean it was legal to drive down the road with an open beer, right up until you were at the BAC level that was legally defined as "intoxicated."
N.B., I think that was pretty stupid and I'm glad it's not allowed anymore!
Reading the Armorize blog, it sounds like this isn't just a tracking cookie dropper. They are showing a shell, a file editor, and a sql query runner. Also, they claim it reproduces itself which to my mind puts it into a narrower category of "malware" (the V-word).
Slashdot Mirror
>Do you want to come in as a rookie (new hire) and suggest restoring servers from backup?
I did :-)
My premise was correct: The backups that they had, were mostly useless.
One of the very first things I did was to establish a backup regime, including offsite storage, nearline rotations and so on, and every new hire in IT learns how it works, how to verify what is backed up, how it is retained, how it is restored, and how to recover a server or a workstation with one of several standard configurations.
Lost data for a single day could expose the company to regulatory liabilities, and could severely impact customer business to the tune of grounded aircraft (commercial and military) so it's a pretty big deal.
Coming in as a non-management role, or as a new guy in a shop where the procedures are already very sound and operating well, that's different. Then I have to wonder why the last guy got fired...
>That seems a bit risky. I cannot see any manager worth his salt giving authorization to purposely destroying data "to
>see if the backup works".
We do it routinely, but it's not chaotic or risky like your choice of words makes it sound. OTOH we have invested a lot of money and brainpower into getting the redundant system we need to have in order to fail over a production system, tear one down, build it up again, verify it and put it back into production. That costs money... and probably not something the IT manager that had to be "fired under duress" actually accomplished.
Unless you can deploy your standard configuration with nothing but the LTO tape from Iron Mountain and a charge account at your server vendor, you don't have a Disaster Recovery plan. (A fire in our facility probably takes out 4 city blocks. We seriously take this under consideration, and we do drill for it.)
If your last IT manager had to be fired, you may have months or years of work to do before you can actually do that DR-bare-metal drill.
You didn't understand. Operating Systems cannot "know" something that isn't determined yet, and that cannot be determined by any formula.
Ok then, they cause you to fail to meet scheduled and/or synchronized commitments.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129395326
People are getting stuck for long enough to create cottage industries for villagers. I guess those drivers who are lucky enough to be stuck near a village are the ones getting food and water.
Here is a quote that raised my eyebrows;
http://china.globaltimes.cn/society/2010-08/566070_2.html
I think you underestimate the capabilities of PostgreSQL, and you're also not making a fair apples-to-apples comparison.
We could run Oracle on our "wimpy" Poweredge. (Quad Xeon, 32GB RAM, local SSD's, SAS-attached SAN). We don't make that choice -- everyone who works here has had years and years of experience with Oracle and no desire to repeat it.
In the price range, I'd love for you to show me hardware that makes my servers look "wimpy" though.
>it's very difficult to write off a home office
It's not. I've done it every year since 1996.
The cheap Chinese goods that go to Africa are different cheap Chinese goods that the ones that go to the US and Europe...
"Every country that's studied it has figured this out except the US. :-/"
Including the US, which raised speed limits from 55 to 75 MPH. 75 is pretty good, not just compared to 55.
It can't be worse than driving from Anaheim to Pasadena, can it?
Worth noting that the prof whose own work is good enough to be used as a course textbook, is probably on your faculty for good reasons and has a pretty strong negotiating position by default.
If I could have taken a course from Donald Knuth or W. Richard Stevens, I would never have bitched about the price or the ethics of the teachers own book.
>Sounds like a good way to get sued.
It is. For all the misconception about copyright (to wit, copyright being a good weapon to use against people distributing your work), copyright's main strength is that it can strongly protect you from someone else distributing your work, claiming it as their own, *and suing you* on the claim that YOU are the copycat. That direction of things is lost in the noise in all the copyright discussion, because it's neither common nor sexy nor a basis for a business model.
Long after finishing college, the Stewart calculus books are pretty much the only texts that remain on my bookshelf since then. The rest of that list is CS material that still gets referenced.
FWIW my last two real-world jobs have involved doing calculus on whiteboards, which I realize isn't all that common :-)
Here is what you do. Get into a professorship position where you have decision making authority on things like textbooks. (This is probably Regents-direct-reports level, so good luck getting there.) Then with this authority, make student-friendly decision.
The Stewart books are extremely good. The value is definitely there... something I can't say for a lot of college textbooks.
A longtime slashdot poster whose name escapes me was a contributing editor for it; I remember thinking "small world" when it came up.
Yes, but I am (a) from Texas and (b) know plenty (plenty!) of people who have had DUIs and worse. And I've heard stranger things but never what the OP referred to.
>Yup. The film that is most widely cited as the first 3D pornographic movie is Hot Skin from 1977
Stewardesses in 3D, 1969?
>What if the driver fails to comply?
The next time you visit your probation officer (who also gets a couple hundred bucks!) they get to check the log on the device.
When it doesn't show what they want to see, you go to jail. Or, maybe you get a lecture about how you *could* go to jail, right that minute, by the person who has the handcuffs who could literally make that happen. It's not a mistake you would make a second time.
>The only beef I might have with this is the 1/3 of the limit
"1/3 the limit" probably corresponds to "detectable given the economical design of the device."
On probation for DUI, the threshold for alcohol consumption is usually *zero*.
>I've never heard someone say "it's my right to drink and drive".
I have hear this plenty, but not since the early 1970s. Then there was outrage in the 1980s when they passed an open container law for the front seat. (Back seat passenger could have a full bar and a margarita machine...)
It's been a while, but I remember when you did indeed "have the right" to drink and drive -- by that I mean it was legal to drive down the road with an open beer, right up until you were at the BAC level that was legally defined as "intoxicated."
N.B., I think that was pretty stupid and I'm glad it's not allowed anymore!
>I had no idea they could do that before a conviction!
They don't always. Is there more to your neighbor's story than he told you, or you told us?
Reading the Armorize blog, it sounds like this isn't just a tracking cookie dropper. They are showing a shell, a file editor, and a sql query runner. Also, they claim it reproduces itself which to my mind puts it into a narrower category of "malware" (the V-word).
>If it has nothing to do with freedom, then what are you suggesting should be done?
Since we're talking about a commercial product, you have the power of the purse.
Don't buy the game. It's that simple.