All of the solutions thus far are terrific, and I heartily endorse both the purchasing of really, REALLY nice furniture and the installation of as much free food and caffeinated (and non-caffeinated!) beverage solutions as possible to support the staff. Also, pack a storage room with some simple folding cots, surplus Army blankets, and washable pillows: during multi-day emergency response ops (we did one a few years ago for a snowstorm), the ability to tap out and take a nap for a bit will be highly prized. Remember to provide space for said nap, (optionally) earplugs/eye-masks for getting to sleep, and a laundry service to make sure everything gets sanitized after use.
Something that I considered quite intelligent for the secure monitoring facilities at work was the use of electronically-tintable glass for all of the viewing windows into the SOC. There will be times when your staff are working frantically on an emergency just as a tour group is coming through, and the last thing you want is anyone worrying about what's visible and what isn't and whether any of that is sensitive. It's far easier for the tour guide to see the red light next to the door and the glass tinted and explain that the SOC is in lockdown right now than it is to explain why an employee is viewing hacker sites with porn popups in order to snag extra information on the current worm.
Another good step was the installation of a large conference room right next to the SOC, with a full videoconferencing solution built into the room and table. When the excrement hits the spinning blades, one of the first things the executives like to do is open a bridge call to keep everyone updated. By making the videoconference (with individual mics at each seat at the boardroom table) in a room adjacent to the SOC *but not actually inside it,* the SOC employees are free to continue working without listening to the executive blather, but are easily able to pop out to the conference room and update the execs or just jump on the call from their desks to pass in update information. Even just a separate large conference room with a board-room table, speaker phones, and a projector/videoconference system (I like an HDTV with cable feed and a Mac mini with a good mic and camera for a quick solution) would be fine.
Finally, since you mentioned monitoring physical security systems like fire and patrols, you should look at some of the Radio-to-VoIP gateway solutions out there. That will enable field techs and patrol officers to communicate easily with the SOC without requiring separate radio comms setups, and you'll be able to write scripts to automatically notify them of issues by sending text-to-speech updates via their radios.
Rands suggests the FriendDA for approaching friends about ideas without requiring an entire, legally-vetted NDA. His post about it can be found on his blog, but the long and short of it is a short agreement that your friend signs agreeing not to screw you over by stealing your idea.
A young systems engineer named [redacted] Was urging the NSA to look at some [redacted]
He [redacted] the [redacted],
so they [redacted] in [redacted], and [redacted] the [redacted] in [CLASSIFIED DUE TO MATTERS OF NATIONAL SECURITY].
Seems like one obvious use for a system like this would be in emergency response services, where you'd want a phone infrastructure that doesn't depend on any towers being in place. If you had a fleet of these phones to start handing out (or, heck, turning on and dropping in various places to act as nodes) after something like a Katrina, you'd be able to coordinate large numbers of responders without having to have the cell network back online first.
We've been looking for something similar: a calendaring solution that allows for us to collaborate on scheduling site visits with our internal groups. We've settled on Zimbra so far, but it's only OK for what we need: the calendar has no ability to publish an unauthenticated web page for other internal groups to see, and the notebook/documentation features are extremely weak. It's functional, but we're having to build a wiki to do a bunch of other stuff that it just won't do for us, and only use the calendaring features in it.
I've been Googling (and freshmeat-ing, and SourceForge-ing, and all manner of other searches) and only the web services seem to do this properly. We'd *LOVE* to use Google Calendar for this, because it's exactly what we're looking for, but like all of the other similar services, it's purely predicated on the "you give us your data and we'll keep it nice and safe for you" model. We *can't* do that with this data, so that lets out all of the best implementations. For internally-managed solutions, everyone seems to defer to Exchange these days (or try to re-implement Exchange, as Zimbra and openXchange do), and that just...sucks. Here's hoping Apple's Calendar Server will bring something new and different to the fray.
phpiCalendar isn't bad, but be aware that, like a lot of calendars, it makes no visual distinction between an event that spans four days (like a business trip) and an event that recurs daily on four days (like a daily meeting).
You might try Plans if you're willing to do some CSS hacking to make it look a little nicer--it's closer to the mark, at least.
No, the Symantec link is right...for the Zotob family of worms. The RBOT family, which uses "wintpb.exe", is a different family of worms exploiting the same vulnerability.
These are just two different exploits for the same vulnerability--woe to those who wind up with both on their network at once, particularly since Symantec and others have focused so heavily on Zotob that they seem to have missed the development of the RBOT variants and are only now catching up...
I'm particularly interested in the reverse, actually, as are (I'm sure) a number of other people. OS X as a VMWare guest OS (i.e. VMware running OS X under Windows) is useful for server hosting, but VMWare running Windows under OS X has even more possibilities for opening Apple to the enterprise client/desktop market. Forget dual-booting (which really isn't an option for most corporate desktop users), now you can have your OS X environment and still be able to run the few Windows apps you can't [afford, be bothered to] port.
That, combined with Rosetta, means people can start moving to OS X even faster, and won't have to wait for Windows versions of their applications to be ported to OS X.
I'm not completely sold on mine either, but some quick off-the-cuff responses to (some of) your complaints:
# Talking on it without the earpiece sucks Agreed. A good earpiece makes a big difference with it.
# The natural place where you hold the device is also the button to end a call True, although you have to hold that button down in order to end the call. I've found a loose grip and/or moving my thumb slightly to grab the housing rather than the button works fine for me, but obviously YM she is much V.
# It is too easy to answer a call and put the person on hold True. If I have one complaint, it's the "push-to-select" function for the wheel, which invariably causes me to roll one option up or down while pushing in.
# If I am using any PDA functionality and a call comes in my work is lost Have you tried Alt-Esc to switch functions? Frequently it looks like it lost stuff when in fact it has just switched applications. Alt-Esc works like Alt-Tab, but not so convenient (you then have to hold Esc while scrolling the wheel with your thumb-tip to select another application to open--very annoying).
# Sometimes the keyboard lock unlocks without my input Setting a password on the device, as annoying as it can be sometimes (employer requires it) solved this--it now won't unlock without the password, which is pretty difficult to enter by random chance.
# Deleting email on the Blackberry doesn't delete it in my mailbox This is, I think, just a sync setting: change the sync setting on your desktop manager (if you're using a BES) and deletions on one will be reflected on the other, or so I understand. For me, this is a feature--takes me five seconds to delete stuff that I've blown off the BB, and that means when I read it on the BB and don't need it, I can delete it without worry.
+1 to the comments about obtaining a lawyer: remember that legal advice on/. is worth what you pay for it.
To add from my own experiences, DON'T just go making amendments to the contract and expect the company to sign it without talking to them first: most contracts of this type that I've signed contain a clause that indicates that changes made to the document are invalid unless specifically agreed to by both parties. This may (IANAL, depending on location, etc.) mean that they can sign the document with your changes on it and send it back, but your changes will not be valid and can be ignored, because they didn't agree to them specifically.
My $0.02: talk to them first, see what can be done, hire an attorney if you're going to make changes (or at least have their proposed changes reviewed by one). Good luck...
|Fifty men have their members examined by a doctor and their length recorded. |You then get brought out in Times Square and the doctor puts you in order by smallest to largest. |I wonder how much money it would take for the average person to participate.
#include std_new_reality_show_from_Fox_joke.h
More seriously, the study indicates that those who think their private information is more sensitive (i.e. potentially more embarrassing) are less willing to reveal it. Is this a surprise to anyone? "Only those who have something to hide are worried about revealing it" is still a true statement; the fact that it makes a lousy mission statement for the Department of Homeland Security is beside the point.
These were terrific, and they gave rise to a classic prank: the rotating mouse pad!
On the Sun opticals, anyway, the mouse pad had to be oriented just so (Sun logo upright, in the lower...right-hand corner?) or the mouse wouldn't work: it would either refuse to track at all, or would begin hopping around the screen randomly. Great fun to watch people try to figure out what was wrong--just go through the lab and rotate each mouse pad...
I'll be watching the answers with interest. A couple of albums that leap to mind:
* Harry James: The King James Version. Great big-band swing from a master of the art; James is a terrific trumpeter. This and the other two discs by him on Sheffield Labs are worth having for the sound alone: recorded direct-to-disc (no editing) using two microphones, the stereo imaging is so precise you can place individual instruments.
* Buddy Rich: Class of '78. Also released as "The Best Band I Ever Had", this is a tight band doing some funk-inspired jazz. The trio version of Chick Corea's fiesta shows off Rich's drumming and pianist Barry Keiner's solo on the track is amazing. It's just been re-released on SACD as "The Best Band...", so you can grab it off most common music sites.
* The previous post about the GRP All-Star Big Band recordings was spot on: they're terrific, especially the Live! album, which has some terrific arrangements. They're a little polished and studio-sounding, so if you like rougher or more edgy stuff you might look elsewhere, but the solo work is terrific.
* Wynton Marsalis, Ellis Marsalis, and Branford Marsalis. Wynton may be an a$$ with some of his musical opinions, but you can't dispute these guys as great jazz musicians. Try the "Standard Time, Vol. {1,2,3}" series, or the recently-released "Marsalis Family" album that features all of 'em.
For those musicians and recording folks who use Apples (like me), this would be a perfect excuse to try an Xserve. A 1.33GHz single-proc with a gig of memory and 2 60GB ATA drives would come to $3574, with the ATI video card and two free PCI slots for inserting digital audio cards.
A little pricey, perhaps, but it would make one heck of a core for a digital recording studio, especially if you paired it with one of their RAID arrays for storing digital audio.
For those less-expensively-inclined, a dual-1.42 GHz G4 Desktop with a 120GB drive and a gig of memory would run you $2949, and you can buy a rackmount kit for it from Marathon Computer for around $200...
> Criminal background check.
> "other checks as necessary".
> That one, "other" I specifically crossed out when I signed my "permission' to do those.
Be careful about crossing out or making alterations to contracts and agreements like these. Most of them nowadays have a final clause that indicates either that any alterations are null and void (i.e. if you make changes on the document, they don't count) or that any alterations have to be approved by the company. In the latter case, if the company doesn't approve the changes but instead just approves the document without changes, Bad Things(tm) may happen.
IANAL, but having negotiated a few of these tidbits in employment contracts before, I've fought over those "alterations are null and void" clauses more than once.
Choice in OS's is indeed a good thing. To paraphrase the folks on in a certain unnamed Usenet space, "If OS/2 is dead, then the necromancer animating the corpse is doing a mighty fine job..."
Phun with Physics
on
Science Askew
·
· Score: 3, Funny
The chemistry/physics folks who worked with lasers at the college I attended had a large sign on their laser lab:
CAUTION: DO NOT LOOK DIRECTLY AT LASER WITH REMAINING EYE
I realize this is an old story, but I thought I'd pass along, since no one else had mentioned it, that Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) offers a weekly breakfast with her constituents, available by reservation to *any* resident of the state of CA who is in Washington, DC. (Details at http://feinstein.senate.gov/breakfast.html)
I would urge any and all California residents to take her up on this offer and bring this to her attention, if you happen to be in the DC area. Might be a long shot, but how often do you get to bend the ear of a Senator in person?
Slashdot Mirror
All of the solutions thus far are terrific, and I heartily endorse both the purchasing of really, REALLY nice furniture and the installation of as much free food and caffeinated (and non-caffeinated!) beverage solutions as possible to support the staff. Also, pack a storage room with some simple folding cots, surplus Army blankets, and washable pillows: during multi-day emergency response ops (we did one a few years ago for a snowstorm), the ability to tap out and take a nap for a bit will be highly prized. Remember to provide space for said nap, (optionally) earplugs/eye-masks for getting to sleep, and a laundry service to make sure everything gets sanitized after use.
Something that I considered quite intelligent for the secure monitoring facilities at work was the use of electronically-tintable glass for all of the viewing windows into the SOC. There will be times when your staff are working frantically on an emergency just as a tour group is coming through, and the last thing you want is anyone worrying about what's visible and what isn't and whether any of that is sensitive. It's far easier for the tour guide to see the red light next to the door and the glass tinted and explain that the SOC is in lockdown right now than it is to explain why an employee is viewing hacker sites with porn popups in order to snag extra information on the current worm.
Another good step was the installation of a large conference room right next to the SOC, with a full videoconferencing solution built into the room and table. When the excrement hits the spinning blades, one of the first things the executives like to do is open a bridge call to keep everyone updated. By making the videoconference (with individual mics at each seat at the boardroom table) in a room adjacent to the SOC *but not actually inside it,* the SOC employees are free to continue working without listening to the executive blather, but are easily able to pop out to the conference room and update the execs or just jump on the call from their desks to pass in update information. Even just a separate large conference room with a board-room table, speaker phones, and a projector/videoconference system (I like an HDTV with cable feed and a Mac mini with a good mic and camera for a quick solution) would be fine.
Finally, since you mentioned monitoring physical security systems like fire and patrols, you should look at some of the Radio-to-VoIP gateway solutions out there. That will enable field techs and patrol officers to communicate easily with the SOC without requiring separate radio comms setups, and you'll be able to write scripts to automatically notify them of issues by sending text-to-speech updates via their radios.
Terrific! A little hacking, and you can follow the status of my junk on Twitter directly. That oughta save me some typing.
Rands suggests the FriendDA for approaching friends about ideas without requiring an entire, legally-vetted NDA. His post about it can be found on his blog, but the long and short of it is a short agreement that your friend signs agreeing not to screw you over by stealing your idea.
A young systems engineer named [redacted]
Was urging the NSA to look at some [redacted]
He [redacted] the [redacted],
so they [redacted] in [redacted],
and [redacted] the [redacted] in [CLASSIFIED DUE TO MATTERS OF NATIONAL SECURITY].
Seems like one obvious use for a system like this would be in emergency response services, where you'd want a phone infrastructure that doesn't depend on any towers being in place. If you had a fleet of these phones to start handing out (or, heck, turning on and dropping in various places to act as nodes) after something like a Katrina, you'd be able to coordinate large numbers of responders without having to have the cell network back online first.
We've been looking for something similar: a calendaring solution that allows for us to collaborate on scheduling site visits with our internal groups. We've settled on Zimbra so far, but it's only OK for what we need: the calendar has no ability to publish an unauthenticated web page for other internal groups to see, and the notebook/documentation features are extremely weak. It's functional, but we're having to build a wiki to do a bunch of other stuff that it just won't do for us, and only use the calendaring features in it.
I've been Googling (and freshmeat-ing, and SourceForge-ing, and all manner of other searches) and only the web services seem to do this properly. We'd *LOVE* to use Google Calendar for this, because it's exactly what we're looking for, but like all of the other similar services, it's purely predicated on the "you give us your data and we'll keep it nice and safe for you" model. We *can't* do that with this data, so that lets out all of the best implementations. For internally-managed solutions, everyone seems to defer to Exchange these days (or try to re-implement Exchange, as Zimbra and openXchange do), and that just...sucks. Here's hoping Apple's Calendar Server will bring something new and different to the fray.
phpiCalendar isn't bad, but be aware that, like a lot of calendars, it makes no visual distinction between an event that spans four days (like a business trip) and an event that recurs daily on four days (like a daily meeting).
You might try Plans if you're willing to do some CSS hacking to make it look a little nicer--it's closer to the mark, at least.
No, the Symantec link is right...for the Zotob family of worms. The RBOT family, which uses "wintpb.exe", is a different family of worms exploiting the same vulnerability.
These are just two different exploits for the same vulnerability--woe to those who wind up with both on their network at once, particularly since Symantec and others have focused so heavily on Zotob that they seem to have missed the development of the RBOT variants and are only now catching up...
I'm particularly interested in the reverse, actually, as are (I'm sure) a number of other people. OS X as a VMWare guest OS (i.e. VMware running OS X under Windows) is useful for server hosting, but VMWare running Windows under OS X has even more possibilities for opening Apple to the enterprise client/desktop market. Forget dual-booting (which really isn't an option for most corporate desktop users), now you can have your OS X environment and still be able to run the few Windows apps you can't [afford, be bothered to] port.
That, combined with Rosetta, means people can start moving to OS X even faster, and won't have to wait for Windows versions of their applications to be ported to OS X.
I'm not completely sold on mine either, but some quick off-the-cuff responses to (some of) your complaints:
# Talking on it without the earpiece sucks
Agreed. A good earpiece makes a big difference with it.
# The natural place where you hold the device is also the button to end a call
True, although you have to hold that button down in order to end the call. I've found a loose grip and/or moving my thumb slightly to grab the housing rather than the button works fine for me, but obviously YM she is much V.
# It is too easy to answer a call and put the person on hold
True. If I have one complaint, it's the "push-to-select" function for the wheel, which invariably causes me to roll one option up or down while pushing in.
# If I am using any PDA functionality and a call comes in my work is lost
Have you tried Alt-Esc to switch functions? Frequently it looks like it lost stuff when in fact it has just switched applications. Alt-Esc works like Alt-Tab, but not so convenient (you then have to hold Esc while scrolling the wheel with your thumb-tip to select another application to open--very annoying).
# Sometimes the keyboard lock unlocks without my input
Setting a password on the device, as annoying as it can be sometimes (employer requires it) solved this--it now won't unlock without the password, which is pretty difficult to enter by random chance.
# Deleting email on the Blackberry doesn't delete it in my mailbox
This is, I think, just a sync setting: change the sync setting on your desktop manager (if you're using a BES) and deletions on one will be reflected on the other, or so I understand. For me, this is a feature--takes me five seconds to delete stuff that I've blown off the BB, and that means when I read it on the BB and don't need it, I can delete it without worry.
+1 to the comments about obtaining a lawyer: remember that legal advice on /. is worth what you pay for it.
To add from my own experiences, DON'T just go making amendments to the contract and expect the company to sign it without talking to them first: most contracts of this type that I've signed contain a clause that indicates that changes made to the document are invalid unless specifically agreed to by both parties. This may (IANAL, depending on location, etc.) mean that they can sign the document with your changes on it and send it back, but your changes will not be valid and can be ignored, because they didn't agree to them specifically.
My $0.02: talk to them first, see what can be done, hire an attorney if you're going to make changes (or at least have their proposed changes reviewed by one). Good luck...
|Fifty men have their members examined by a doctor and their length recorded.
|You then get brought out in Times Square and the doctor puts you in order by smallest to largest.
|I wonder how much money it would take for the average person to participate.
#include std_new_reality_show_from_Fox_joke.h
More seriously, the study indicates that those who think their private information is more sensitive (i.e. potentially more embarrassing) are less willing to reveal it. Is this a surprise to anyone?
"Only those who have something to hide are worried about revealing it" is still a true statement; the fact that it makes a lousy mission statement for the Department of Homeland Security is beside the point.
These were terrific, and they gave rise to a classic prank: the rotating mouse pad!
On the Sun opticals, anyway, the mouse pad had to be oriented just so (Sun logo upright, in the lower...right-hand corner?) or the mouse wouldn't work: it would either refuse to track at all, or would begin hopping around the screen randomly. Great fun to watch people try to figure out what was wrong--just go through the lab and rotate each mouse pad...
I'll be watching the answers with interest. A couple of albums that leap to mind:
* Harry James: The King James Version. Great big-band swing from a master of the art; James is a terrific trumpeter. This and the other two discs by him on Sheffield Labs are worth having for the sound alone: recorded direct-to-disc (no editing) using two microphones, the stereo imaging is so precise you can place individual instruments.
* Buddy Rich: Class of '78. Also released as "The Best Band I Ever Had", this is a tight band doing some funk-inspired jazz. The trio version of Chick Corea's fiesta shows off Rich's drumming and pianist Barry Keiner's solo on the track is amazing. It's just been re-released on SACD as "The Best Band...", so you can grab it off most common music sites.
* The previous post about the GRP All-Star Big Band recordings was spot on: they're terrific, especially the Live! album, which has some terrific arrangements. They're a little polished and studio-sounding, so if you like rougher or more edgy stuff you might look elsewhere, but the solo work is terrific.
* Wynton Marsalis, Ellis Marsalis, and Branford Marsalis. Wynton may be an a$$ with some of his musical opinions, but you can't dispute these guys as great jazz musicians. Try the "Standard Time, Vol. {1,2,3}" series, or the recently-released "Marsalis Family" album that features all of 'em.
Enjoy!
For those musicians and recording folks who use Apples (like me), this would be a perfect excuse to try an Xserve. A 1.33GHz single-proc with a gig of memory and 2 60GB ATA drives would come to $3574, with the ATI video card and two free PCI slots for inserting digital audio cards.
A little pricey, perhaps, but it would make one heck of a core for a digital recording studio, especially if you paired it with one of their RAID arrays for storing digital audio.
For those less-expensively-inclined, a dual-1.42 GHz G4 Desktop with a 120GB drive and a gig of memory would run you $2949, and you can buy a rackmount kit for it from Marathon Computer for around $200...
> "other checks as necessary".
> That one, "other" I specifically crossed out when I signed my "permission' to do those.
Be careful about crossing out or making alterations to contracts and agreements like these. Most of them nowadays have a final clause that indicates either that any alterations are null and void (i.e. if you make changes on the document, they don't count) or that any alterations have to be approved by the company. In the latter case, if the company doesn't approve the changes but instead just approves the document without changes, Bad Things(tm) may happen.
IANAL, but having negotiated a few of these tidbits in employment contracts before, I've fought over those "alterations are null and void" clauses more than once.
Choice in OS's is indeed a good thing. To paraphrase the folks on in a certain unnamed Usenet space,
"If OS/2 is dead, then the necromancer animating the corpse is doing a mighty fine job..."
The chemistry/physics folks who worked with lasers at the college I attended had a large sign on their laser lab:
CAUTION: DO NOT LOOK DIRECTLY AT LASER WITH REMAINING EYE
I realize this is an old story, but I thought I'd pass along, since no one else had mentioned it, that Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) offers a weekly breakfast with her constituents, available by reservation to *any* resident of the state of CA who is in Washington, DC. (Details at http://feinstein.senate.gov/breakfast.html)
I would urge any and all California residents to take her up on this offer and bring this to her attention, if you happen to be in the DC area. Might be a long shot, but how often do you get to bend the ear of a Senator in person?