The '20%' security model is imho just a load of bull from security vendors. Ever try reading those free magazines you get because you're an IT person? They're loaded with stuff like security programs that cost >100k per license and that don't ever offer more than an equivalent to Tripwire or a decently set up IPTables firewall.
Sure it's got a nice interface, but out of experience I know those companies only sell 10-100 initial licenses and some 'consulting' then the whole 10 programmers and 2 managers of the company split the profits and go on to another venture. When after about a year of messing around with it, it still doesn't work at the client, the whole company already cleared out.
Some companies dare to stay in business to resell consulting to their clients where gullible managers that are afraid to admit mistake keep buying into the magic mushrooms. Yes, I'm talking about you Peoplesoft, Microsoft and Infor. Really, did you ever notice non of those expensive ERP packages work as they are promised to and need about 10 in-house programmers and 20 consultants?
We already are screened before going to the USA, so we already lost that freedom, but why 72 hours? Do they have to manually punch in every single flyer? Or are their systems so overloaded that they can't clear you while you're checking in (I'm looking at you JetBlue with the 5-star rating on my boarding passes ALL THE TIME - random my @R$3)?
If the latter, then I would have to use a trick like this when I (finally) reproduce: http://xkcd.org/327/
Given that you are a small shop, you probably get a detailed energy bill on a monthly basis (not like you're buying bulk energy and nobody's really counting). A little bit of smart engineering would've made sure that you do have a separate counter for your datacenter or some kind of ampmeter where you can calculate what you're actually using (APC power switches in your racks have fairly accurate readings (always round up though)) since you're probably charging your customers depending on their usage.
Since you already HAVE a cooling system, you should know whether that size system was enough, too much or too little and then you can just see what to replace it with.
Hah, you're wrong. The PHB's will hear about Ubuntu's offering from their Dell sales rep and even though your app might not be supported on Ubuntu, they WILL buy it because Dell promoted it.
Remember, PHB's don't consider anything nor do they investigate. They just listen to whatever salesmen story sounds best and accept that. If Dell said that their servers that come with a turd (or a 6-ft tall Ewok) perform better than the ones without, they would also believe that even though the turd (or the Ewok) doesn't have anything to do with a computer.
You must be having an IT person for every 20-50 users or so to support all that crap.
E-mail filtering: Just some spamfiltering and clamav so we don't propagate virusses in case somebody decides to forward it Web content filtering: A big loss in $$$ since every single one of your employees WILL find a way around it which reduces security to even less since they'll be using less controllable techniques while having to look for it on Warez sites (which do have a lot of issues with random virusses etc.) Anti-virus: Sits in my e-mail, otherwise not necessary. Just in case I DO need it, I have ClamAV on stand-by to scan all user directories on my XRAID Firewalls: A single firewall cluster in front of my boxes (which all have a PUBLIC IP) will do, thank you, if you decide to have it on each box, see my comment on Web content filtering since they can't run any ol' program (even if it's just a game) Administering the products: Send false positives through with a TAG or even MIME-attached, strip the attachment if it contains a virus, SpamAssassin, ClamAV, Amavisd and Postfix CORRECTLY set up will do that for you. So far no false positives though.
Server for WSUS costs you that much money? Distributing packages doesn't cost me anything and I think an update service like that should come for free as courtesy for buying so much client licenses. I have Mac OS X Software Update (free with Server) and a local repository of relevant Fedora Core and Debian updates on the same server which I also use for developing and other stuff, it also does my tape library and backups at night. Ok, the hardware and license had to be bought and if you have a really large organization (+10,000) you might need a separate server to do that but I see many running really large (100's of GB) public repositories (look at all the Univ entries for any distro) and they run on one or two servers for constant >100MBit loads.
Wireless networking? Why worry. Rather worry about ANY laptop whether wireless or wired. Make sure the wireless clients don't get on your local network, use WPA with RADIUS (did I mention that's usually free and supported on every cheap or expensive wlan router) and treat them like you would any other VPN connection. What, you don't trust the computers on the VPN either do you? Why would you? Just because they're your laptops doesn't mean the employee's kids don't play with it once he gets home!
Successful blood transfusion has only been around for ~100 years. Before that there were attempts with usually deadly results and the practice to let your blood run out was practiced on a regular basis.
Even now, blood transfusions are only used by doctors in the most critical situation and yes, storage and transfer of blood as well as the necessary screenings make it very difficult to get a 1) cheap and 2) reliable source of blood.
Some doctors even don't use blood transfusions at all (there are even some hospitals that don't give any blood for any reason) and use substitutes like volume expanders or oxygen carriers to get what the body needs (either a larger volume of blood or more carriers so a subject doesn't asphyxiate) or they use only parts of the blood that are deemed necessary (for example to clot your blood faster) and that are more safe than blood.
Blood is considered an organ, with transfusions you get issues like rejection just like you get (often) with liver transplants and giving somebody a large amount of foreign blood could also result in shock or death.
Yes, there can always be more. We like MORE TLD's so domain squatters can spend MORE of their money on pointless domains up to the point it doesn't become profitable enough. Next to that, it's also easier to filter the net if you can tell Amavis to always add +5 to domains coming from asia, russia and china without having to query a freakin' GeoIP database.
Yes, Linux allows you to do it (Alsa or Jack), as does Mac OS X (CoreAudio). Most programs don't have it right in the GUI unless it's a media player of some sorts because it's (imho) a useless feature for any other program unless you're a power (audio) users and those know how to get it done correctly.
There are plenty of POS available, if not, they're not that hard to program yourself in your favorite programming or scripting language. Check out http://l-ane.net/ which I've seen in use or check sourceforge
A lot of interference on both Bluetooth and WiFi can be traced back to microwaves, cheap electronics and so forth. Why I say that? Simple: my neighbour starts cooking and I get interference on WiFi, I start cooking and I get no WiFi, I replace microwave with new model and WiFi is strong as ever. Everything that has something to do with waves or radiography these days is in the 2,4GHz band. It used to be the 433MHz band that wasn't useable, now it's the 2,4GHz band.
Especially cheap/sloppy electronics and landline wireless phones. Manufacturers think they can use the whole spectrum at full blast to just send an 8-bit code in serial to the receiver (those cheap 'radio' remote controls). If you look at the circuitry basically it's an excited crystal that is extremely amped up (which adds lots of sideband noise if you put it on a scope), somewhat filtered with a small capacitor and what we used to call either a resistor or coil is now just a little squiggle on the printboard. And for the wireless phones, I have seen those things eat up literally 6 WiFi channels at the same time every time it is used.
And yes, Bluetooth, WiFi and the likes are all on 2,4GHz and as long as the FCC keeps their thumb on and only gives us very little of the air (or ether if you're really old) to use. For the rest of the air you have to pay big licensing costs.
I am just done with 6 months of SharePoint integration in an MS shop. From a development and security standpoint: STAY AWAY FROM IT. 2003 seems to be an Alpha version, 2007 is still full of bugs (better than Beta but still) and it's also very, very slow (it's based on.NET). To work fairly good for 100 users it requires 1 SQL Server (MSDE will not work for non-development purposes), 2 Frontends and 1 loadbalancer/firewall based on Microsoft Forefront just for security purposes (since the built-in SharePoint requires a lot of stuff to be opened to all users). It's also expensive... 10k/server + CAL's for every user and that was in a big MS shop.
Next to that, there are a lot of caveats and as soon as you start modifying the layout (even though it's just the HTML) in SharePoint Designer, Microsoft Support will not help you (as if they could in the first place). Simple things like whitespaces in-between table structures can make your list workflows screw up (yes there is an actual opening with Microsoft Support for that very issue). A lot of things will not work either and require a nasty hack or workaround (like attachment upload on modified forms) and are known with Microsoft and have been known for the last 9 months.
I doubt we ourselves can make things that match or exceed our own capacity because then we would need to fully comprehend our own capacities which currently, we are far away from that (I work with brain research btw) AND replicate them in a correct matter.
Now say we DO hypothetically develop something (like this vision stuff) that exceeds our own capabilities then in the very early beginnings of research and testing of it we would look at the output it creates, see extra data that isn't there from our viewpoint and discard it or 'correct' it as it were an error.
You have to remember, humans inherintly think that everything that doesn't match a certain box or outline is wrong and should be destroyed, corrected and/or discarded in our goal for the ultimate perfection. This not only goes for science but also for other matters like society (racism is an example), religion (accept my god or die) and philosophies (the mass is always correct).
That is one sure way to do it. I usually buy my tickets electronically and then pick up the boarding passes while checking in my luggage. That usually get's you through the first layer of security pretty easy (the once that are randomly checking before you check in) and fast too (since they don't have any way to verify your information).
Then there is the check-in of luggage. I got my ticket, they tell me gate number and boarding time, so I head over to the security checkpoint where you go through the X-Ray (this was in JFK, 2004) and they verify your ticket and passport (I am not a US citizen) I went on the plane through the 3rd checkpoint, the one that is right at the gate, went to find my place in the plane and somebody was sitting in my seat. Argued, I looked over the ticket... it wasn't mine.
I'm serious, there was a different name on it. I went to the stewardess who escorted me off the plane and off course another security check because THAT was suspicious, got a new set of tickets within the terminal and away I went on another plane, no extra security checks were done. It was actually the only good experience I had with the security guards. They let me through quite easily (I usually get '5 security stars' printed on my ticket so short from an anal probe, I have to go through every single security measure including checking for gun residu and taking off belt, shoes, some guy looking down my pants, unpacking all laptops and electronics...
Just because the stakes are very, very high. If you control the process of creating such voting machines and you have the ability to hide whatever is running on it you have the ability to control the voting process and the results, to put it in laymen's terms: you are "root" without a syslog or bash_history in voting who gets to be in a certain office. Any politician would give (or have given) their soul for control over the voting process, look at the latest elections.
Something about power corrupts, absolute power...; the people that create these voting machines have absolute power over the political landscape of any given nation they sell their product to.
My previous boss was also a moron during the day and only when it was time to leave, came he up with a genius idea and called a meeting. Does that make him a cockroach?
And you actually climbed up all that way? I would have found a method that either involved a remote messaging system (IM on the oil rig) or if he just wants to throw the boot because of it, just attach a cord to it so you can hoist it up (maybe even with a little motor)... man, I'm lazy.
Well, if there is an established procedure for offsetting timings on any coil (as in chain of command), 'Terry' should call your supervisor, not you and then when you (technician) say it is dangerous, there should be a call back to 'Terry' and his supervisor.
Working in dangerous or otherwise critical environments is all about having established procedures mimicing the way public key infrastructures work. Both public (technicians calling each other) and private (supervisors calling each other) keys (commands) should match and be verified on both sides before anything is executed.
Yes, they're all the same. They're all POSIX compliant, most run on the x86 architecture (both 32-bit and 64-bit) and they have a similar kernel, similar hardware support etc.
The few reason you pick is because: useability out-of-the-box (I can't imagine someone new to Linux using Linux From Scratch or Gentoo), package management (do you like emerge, apt-get or rpm/yum?), available packages from vendor and stability/security thereof (one of the reasons people use Debian or Red Hat for servers and Ubuntu for Desktops)
But technically, taking general management of the boxes aside, most packages you can compile on any of those distributions and with some prerequisites (Processor architecture, Major library versions, Major kernel versions) you should be able to compile your binary and run it on any of those machines. Scripts and interpreted languages are even better since most of the time you don't even have to think about those prerequisites.
I think that is the biggest flaw in our current patenting system.
In my thinking, ONE should only be able to patent a single working and finished product that ONE will sell. I can patent the motor that runs the wiper if you want to keep the car analogy so that you can't manufacture the motor all by yourself and sell it for a lower price, but if you want to use the wiper motor in your car or your robotics experiment or in your wife's vibrator, you shouldn't have to pay me extra except for the price that I sell you the motor for. If I think your motor is too expensive, I will have to design my own motor that does the exact same thing (turn the axis around) with my specifications.
That would also do away with a lot of software patents. If I want to use a piece of your code, then you can sell me a piece of text with the code or a binary that I can then use or integrate in my program. You shouldn't be able to patent any wild idea that comes through your mind, if I later think of doing the same thing, I should be able to either a) write my own implementation or b) buy it from you if it's better.
Now, if I steal your design, blueprints, code or binary then that is called theft and/or copyright infringement, not something a patent will protect you from.
Actually once somebody gets over 40 years old they start to become a tougher bite and require longer roasting and more sauce. I prefer females between 15 and 20 years old, they are flavorful and tender although some of them excercise a lot and then their organs are the best parts. There was once this census maker, I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti...
Don't you dare touch my Altivec you insensitive clod. The newer systems don't support it because they're Intel. Currently running medical image processing on a cluster of machines, Altivec is a nice thing to have compared with other processors from the same era that didn't have it.
Well, I come from a country where it is not legal to sell phones into a contract, guess what, the price was the same as here (USA) for a locked in monthly contract + 199 (SonyEricsson)-599(Smartphones) for a decent phone.
I came here to the USA and everybody gets their phone for free. So I baited with Sprint/Nextel for 2 free phones and somewhat, well apparently one phone (the one with Bluetooth and internet) wasn't free. No, only after $250 in REBATES was it free and even then that amount was just divided by 24 and spread out over my bills, still had to pay it up front. And the combined cost to get out of the contract (yes they apparently take your phones into that amount too) is about $700.
And the phone is locked, I can't sync it with anything over bluetooth, internet or e-mail is extra, horrible and has neither java, flash, xhtml nor a browser, well 2 years ago that sounded like a decent deal and it was one of the better deals out there for multiple lines and coverage in my area. Since then I moved and apparently Sprint has no decent coverage anywhere in the middle of a very large city.
AT&T & Apple offer decent coverage here (my girlfriend has 5-bars everywhere), I pay 299 (go to the Apple Store for a reduced 4G) or 399 and a fixed fee of 59.99 a month and it has everything I want and more. Just as I can expect from Apple, all costs are upfront and AT&T... well, they're just another phone company with decent rates and getting out costs me only $150... WHERE DO I SIGN UP?
Stop complaining because it's not perfect. Read the little letters in your current phone plan and find out that you're bent over even further and ASKING for more
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The '20%' security model is imho just a load of bull from security vendors. Ever try reading those free magazines you get because you're an IT person? They're loaded with stuff like security programs that cost >100k per license and that don't ever offer more than an equivalent to Tripwire or a decently set up IPTables firewall.
Sure it's got a nice interface, but out of experience I know those companies only sell 10-100 initial licenses and some 'consulting' then the whole 10 programmers and 2 managers of the company split the profits and go on to another venture. When after about a year of messing around with it, it still doesn't work at the client, the whole company already cleared out.
Some companies dare to stay in business to resell consulting to their clients where gullible managers that are afraid to admit mistake keep buying into the magic mushrooms. Yes, I'm talking about you Peoplesoft, Microsoft and Infor. Really, did you ever notice non of those expensive ERP packages work as they are promised to and need about 10 in-house programmers and 20 consultants?
We already are screened before going to the USA, so we already lost that freedom, but why 72 hours? Do they have to manually punch in every single flyer? Or are their systems so overloaded that they can't clear you while you're checking in (I'm looking at you JetBlue with the 5-star rating on my boarding passes ALL THE TIME - random my @R$3)?
If the latter, then I would have to use a trick like this when I (finally) reproduce: http://xkcd.org/327/
Given that you are a small shop, you probably get a detailed energy bill on a monthly basis (not like you're buying bulk energy and nobody's really counting). A little bit of smart engineering would've made sure that you do have a separate counter for your datacenter or some kind of ampmeter where you can calculate what you're actually using (APC power switches in your racks have fairly accurate readings (always round up though)) since you're probably charging your customers depending on their usage.
Since you already HAVE a cooling system, you should know whether that size system was enough, too much or too little and then you can just see what to replace it with.
Hah, you're wrong. The PHB's will hear about Ubuntu's offering from their Dell sales rep and even though your app might not be supported on Ubuntu, they WILL buy it because Dell promoted it.
Remember, PHB's don't consider anything nor do they investigate. They just listen to whatever salesmen story sounds best and accept that. If Dell said that their servers that come with a turd (or a 6-ft tall Ewok) perform better than the ones without, they would also believe that even though the turd (or the Ewok) doesn't have anything to do with a computer.
Oracle does run on Ubuntu: http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/linux/install/xe-on-kubuntu.html
You must be having an IT person for every 20-50 users or so to support all that crap.
E-mail filtering: Just some spamfiltering and clamav so we don't propagate virusses in case somebody decides to forward it
Web content filtering: A big loss in $$$ since every single one of your employees WILL find a way around it which reduces security to even less since they'll be using less controllable techniques while having to look for it on Warez sites (which do have a lot of issues with random virusses etc.)
Anti-virus: Sits in my e-mail, otherwise not necessary. Just in case I DO need it, I have ClamAV on stand-by to scan all user directories on my XRAID
Firewalls: A single firewall cluster in front of my boxes (which all have a PUBLIC IP) will do, thank you, if you decide to have it on each box, see my comment on Web content filtering since they can't run any ol' program (even if it's just a game)
Administering the products: Send false positives through with a TAG or even MIME-attached, strip the attachment if it contains a virus, SpamAssassin, ClamAV, Amavisd and Postfix CORRECTLY set up will do that for you. So far no false positives though.
Server for WSUS costs you that much money? Distributing packages doesn't cost me anything and I think an update service like that should come for free as courtesy for buying so much client licenses. I have Mac OS X Software Update (free with Server) and a local repository of relevant Fedora Core and Debian updates on the same server which I also use for developing and other stuff, it also does my tape library and backups at night. Ok, the hardware and license had to be bought and if you have a really large organization (+10,000) you might need a separate server to do that but I see many running really large (100's of GB) public repositories (look at all the Univ entries for any distro) and they run on one or two servers for constant >100MBit loads.
Wireless networking? Why worry. Rather worry about ANY laptop whether wireless or wired. Make sure the wireless clients don't get on your local network, use WPA with RADIUS (did I mention that's usually free and supported on every cheap or expensive wlan router) and treat them like you would any other VPN connection. What, you don't trust the computers on the VPN either do you? Why would you? Just because they're your laptops doesn't mean the employee's kids don't play with it once he gets home!
Successful blood transfusion has only been around for ~100 years. Before that there were attempts with usually deadly results and the practice to let your blood run out was practiced on a regular basis.
Even now, blood transfusions are only used by doctors in the most critical situation and yes, storage and transfer of blood as well as the necessary screenings make it very difficult to get a 1) cheap and 2) reliable source of blood.
Some doctors even don't use blood transfusions at all (there are even some hospitals that don't give any blood for any reason) and use substitutes like volume expanders or oxygen carriers to get what the body needs (either a larger volume of blood or more carriers so a subject doesn't asphyxiate) or they use only parts of the blood that are deemed necessary (for example to clot your blood faster) and that are more safe than blood.
Blood is considered an organ, with transfusions you get issues like rejection just like you get (often) with liver transplants and giving somebody a large amount of foreign blood could also result in shock or death.
Is there really a need for more top level domains
Yes, there can always be more. We like MORE TLD's so domain squatters can spend MORE of their money on pointless domains up to the point it doesn't become profitable enough. Next to that, it's also easier to filter the net if you can tell Amavis to always add +5 to domains coming from asia, russia and china without having to query a freakin' GeoIP database.
Yes, Linux allows you to do it (Alsa or Jack), as does Mac OS X (CoreAudio). Most programs don't have it right in the GUI unless it's a media player of some sorts because it's (imho) a useless feature for any other program unless you're a power (audio) users and those know how to get it done correctly.
There are plenty of POS available, if not, they're not that hard to program yourself in your favorite programming or scripting language. Check out http://l-ane.net/ which I've seen in use or check sourceforge
http://thepiratebay.org/tor/3675199/Fantastic_Four_Blue-Ray_MPEG2_Remux_1080P_DTS-HD__HDTV_CHINA
Then play it with VLC or Mplayer...
And you thought that setting up a VCR was difficult... now try patching a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD player.
A lot of interference on both Bluetooth and WiFi can be traced back to microwaves, cheap electronics and so forth. Why I say that? Simple: my neighbour starts cooking and I get interference on WiFi, I start cooking and I get no WiFi, I replace microwave with new model and WiFi is strong as ever. Everything that has something to do with waves or radiography these days is in the 2,4GHz band. It used to be the 433MHz band that wasn't useable, now it's the 2,4GHz band.
Especially cheap/sloppy electronics and landline wireless phones. Manufacturers think they can use the whole spectrum at full blast to just send an 8-bit code in serial to the receiver (those cheap 'radio' remote controls). If you look at the circuitry basically it's an excited crystal that is extremely amped up (which adds lots of sideband noise if you put it on a scope), somewhat filtered with a small capacitor and what we used to call either a resistor or coil is now just a little squiggle on the printboard. And for the wireless phones, I have seen those things eat up literally 6 WiFi channels at the same time every time it is used.
And yes, Bluetooth, WiFi and the likes are all on 2,4GHz and as long as the FCC keeps their thumb on and only gives us very little of the air (or ether if you're really old) to use. For the rest of the air you have to pay big licensing costs.
http://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=2993
Looks kinda like the eye of Sauron...
I am just done with 6 months of SharePoint integration in an MS shop. From a development and security standpoint: STAY AWAY FROM IT. 2003 seems to be an Alpha version, 2007 is still full of bugs (better than Beta but still) and it's also very, very slow (it's based on .NET). To work fairly good for 100 users it requires 1 SQL Server (MSDE will not work for non-development purposes), 2 Frontends and 1 loadbalancer/firewall based on Microsoft Forefront just for security purposes (since the built-in SharePoint requires a lot of stuff to be opened to all users). It's also expensive... 10k/server + CAL's for every user and that was in a big MS shop.
Next to that, there are a lot of caveats and as soon as you start modifying the layout (even though it's just the HTML) in SharePoint Designer, Microsoft Support will not help you (as if they could in the first place). Simple things like whitespaces in-between table structures can make your list workflows screw up (yes there is an actual opening with Microsoft Support for that very issue). A lot of things will not work either and require a nasty hack or workaround (like attachment upload on modified forms) and are known with Microsoft and have been known for the last 9 months.
I doubt we ourselves can make things that match or exceed our own capacity because then we would need to fully comprehend our own capacities which currently, we are far away from that (I work with brain research btw) AND replicate them in a correct matter.
Now say we DO hypothetically develop something (like this vision stuff) that exceeds our own capabilities then in the very early beginnings of research and testing of it we would look at the output it creates, see extra data that isn't there from our viewpoint and discard it or 'correct' it as it were an error.
You have to remember, humans inherintly think that everything that doesn't match a certain box or outline is wrong and should be destroyed, corrected and/or discarded in our goal for the ultimate perfection. This not only goes for science but also for other matters like society (racism is an example), religion (accept my god or die) and philosophies (the mass is always correct).
That is one sure way to do it. I usually buy my tickets electronically and then pick up the boarding passes while checking in my luggage. That usually get's you through the first layer of security pretty easy (the once that are randomly checking before you check in) and fast too (since they don't have any way to verify your information).
Then there is the check-in of luggage. I got my ticket, they tell me gate number and boarding time, so I head over to the security checkpoint where you go through the X-Ray (this was in JFK, 2004) and they verify your ticket and passport (I am not a US citizen) I went on the plane through the 3rd checkpoint, the one that is right at the gate, went to find my place in the plane and somebody was sitting in my seat. Argued, I looked over the ticket... it wasn't mine.
I'm serious, there was a different name on it. I went to the stewardess who escorted me off the plane and off course another security check because THAT was suspicious, got a new set of tickets within the terminal and away I went on another plane, no extra security checks were done. It was actually the only good experience I had with the security guards. They let me through quite easily (I usually get '5 security stars' printed on my ticket so short from an anal probe, I have to go through every single security measure including checking for gun residu and taking off belt, shoes, some guy looking down my pants, unpacking all laptops and electronics...
Hey, don't talk like that about idiots. They're usually much nicer than RIAA lawyers.
Just because the stakes are very, very high. If you control the process of creating such voting machines and you have the ability to hide whatever is running on it you have the ability to control the voting process and the results, to put it in laymen's terms: you are "root" without a syslog or bash_history in voting who gets to be in a certain office. Any politician would give (or have given) their soul for control over the voting process, look at the latest elections.
Something about power corrupts, absolute power...; the people that create these voting machines have absolute power over the political landscape of any given nation they sell their product to.
My previous boss was also a moron during the day and only when it was time to leave, came he up with a genius idea and called a meeting. Does that make him a cockroach?
And you actually climbed up all that way? I would have found a method that either involved a remote messaging system (IM on the oil rig) or if he just wants to throw the boot because of it, just attach a cord to it so you can hoist it up (maybe even with a little motor)... man, I'm lazy.
Well, if there is an established procedure for offsetting timings on any coil (as in chain of command), 'Terry' should call your supervisor, not you and then when you (technician) say it is dangerous, there should be a call back to 'Terry' and his supervisor.
Working in dangerous or otherwise critical environments is all about having established procedures mimicing the way public key infrastructures work. Both public (technicians calling each other) and private (supervisors calling each other) keys (commands) should match and be verified on both sides before anything is executed.
Yes, they're all the same. They're all POSIX compliant, most run on the x86 architecture (both 32-bit and 64-bit) and they have a similar kernel, similar hardware support etc.
The few reason you pick is because: useability out-of-the-box (I can't imagine someone new to Linux using Linux From Scratch or Gentoo), package management (do you like emerge, apt-get or rpm/yum?), available packages from vendor and stability/security thereof (one of the reasons people use Debian or Red Hat for servers and Ubuntu for Desktops)
But technically, taking general management of the boxes aside, most packages you can compile on any of those distributions and with some prerequisites (Processor architecture, Major library versions, Major kernel versions) you should be able to compile your binary and run it on any of those machines. Scripts and interpreted languages are even better since most of the time you don't even have to think about those prerequisites.
I think that is the biggest flaw in our current patenting system.
In my thinking, ONE should only be able to patent a single working and finished product that ONE will sell. I can patent the motor that runs the wiper if you want to keep the car analogy so that you can't manufacture the motor all by yourself and sell it for a lower price, but if you want to use the wiper motor in your car or your robotics experiment or in your wife's vibrator, you shouldn't have to pay me extra except for the price that I sell you the motor for. If I think your motor is too expensive, I will have to design my own motor that does the exact same thing (turn the axis around) with my specifications.
That would also do away with a lot of software patents. If I want to use a piece of your code, then you can sell me a piece of text with the code or a binary that I can then use or integrate in my program. You shouldn't be able to patent any wild idea that comes through your mind, if I later think of doing the same thing, I should be able to either a) write my own implementation or b) buy it from you if it's better.
Now, if I steal your design, blueprints, code or binary then that is called theft and/or copyright infringement, not something a patent will protect you from.
Actually once somebody gets over 40 years old they start to become a tougher bite and require longer roasting and more sauce. I prefer females between 15 and 20 years old, they are flavorful and tender although some of them excercise a lot and then their organs are the best parts. There was once this census maker, I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti...
Don't you dare touch my Altivec you insensitive clod. The newer systems don't support it because they're Intel. Currently running medical image processing on a cluster of machines, Altivec is a nice thing to have compared with other processors from the same era that didn't have it.
Well, I come from a country where it is not legal to sell phones into a contract, guess what, the price was the same as here (USA) for a locked in monthly contract + 199 (SonyEricsson)-599(Smartphones) for a decent phone.
... well, they're just another phone company with decent rates and getting out costs me only $150... WHERE DO I SIGN UP?
I came here to the USA and everybody gets their phone for free. So I baited with Sprint/Nextel for 2 free phones and somewhat, well apparently one phone (the one with Bluetooth and internet) wasn't free. No, only after $250 in REBATES was it free and even then that amount was just divided by 24 and spread out over my bills, still had to pay it up front. And the combined cost to get out of the contract (yes they apparently take your phones into that amount too) is about $700.
And the phone is locked, I can't sync it with anything over bluetooth, internet or e-mail is extra, horrible and has neither java, flash, xhtml nor a browser, well 2 years ago that sounded like a decent deal and it was one of the better deals out there for multiple lines and coverage in my area. Since then I moved and apparently Sprint has no decent coverage anywhere in the middle of a very large city.
AT&T & Apple offer decent coverage here (my girlfriend has 5-bars everywhere), I pay 299 (go to the Apple Store for a reduced 4G) or 399 and a fixed fee of 59.99 a month and it has everything I want and more. Just as I can expect from Apple, all costs are upfront and AT&T
Stop complaining because it's not perfect. Read the little letters in your current phone plan and find out that you're bent over even further and ASKING for more