Quick, someone get a honeypot up in the.ru domain. Then we can all see exactly how the FBI hacks.
Better yet, VPN a subnet back to the US from Russia so that the system simply appears to be on a really bad connection in Russia, but in reality is an American system. FBI breaking into computers on American soil would be a great story, especially doing it without a search warrant simply because they THOUGHT it was somewhere else. That would be worth a few million dollars in constitutional rights violations and would learn them a lesson. The only way to know would be that extra delay, which could be attributed to a slow connection domesitcally in Russia.
Is there any sort of law that would make it an "international" system simply because traffic leaves the United States but returns to reach it?
You already do have to show your papers. I don't know where you are from, but where I come from, when a cop asks to see some ID, he expects to see it. If he doesn't he can do things like "hold on to you until we learn who you are" and such. The truth is you already need to carry papers at all timed.
No, still in the United States you can walk down the street and refuse to show proof of ID. The only way it can cause you problems is if the police officer has a description of someone who (very) recently committed a crime nearby and you match it. That is probable cause. Without it the search is unlawful and subjects the police and municipality to all kinds of nasty things. (Like lawsuits, but someone at the DoJ should pursue federal criminal proceedings against gross violations... Now it's just written off as an overzealous cop when it is in reality a pattern of unconstitutional behavior effectively like fishing.)
Re:Has to be for anti-terrorist stuff
on
The Unblinking Eye
·
· Score: 1
Does anyone know if they use this on a large scale in U.S. Customs, or in airports? I'm sure the much bigger risk is in foreign terrorists slipping across the border undetected, but this could close off one avenue (except for the guy who's not in the system to begin with).
I've wondered about that since my last return via Detroit. I walked up to the gentleman at passport control and laid my declaration and passport on the counter. He picked up my declaration and asked how I was doing. I told him I was glad to be home. He told me to move on. Never touched my passport.
I also had a similar experience on the Mexican border. I had walked into Mexico to do some shopping and on my return was merely asked if I was an American. No one there had their passport examined so it really doesn't count.
But the troubling part is that I reentered the United States without having my passport examined. Is that perhaps because they already knew who I was when I approached the counter? Or was it that I was unmistakably American? Or, beyond that, did NW provide Customs with a list of passangers upon our departure from Osaka for Customs to preclear? They found no one on the flight they were interested in talking to so went easy on us?
The problem is that it is too late for our current government and laws, but yet too early for revolution so what we are stuck with is a slowly degrading set of freedoms that have degraded enough to piss off 15% of the population, but not yet enough to piss off more.
What is comes down to is that we keep sacrificing small parts of our freedom for "safety" thinking that just a little more will do it. If that's true then why was the Assualt Weapons Ban passed in 1994, most of those weapons were already regulated under the National Firearms Act of 1968. What about civil forfetiure? I think drug users are one of the dumbest life forms, but I believe civil forfeiture is an even more immoral wrong, and that's who it applies to most.
We've been sacrificing freedoms since the twenties and thirties thinking we could create a better and more safe society when all we've really been doing is trying to protect ourselves from the dumb and irresponsible. The people too dumb to save money for themselves (the New Deal, Great Society and the like) and irresonsible (NFA, Assault Weapons Ban, Speed Limits!) are just part of the problem.
What is your IQ? Take a look around, what is the IQ of the people you're friends with? If you're on Slashdot, chances are its high, as in 120+. Now, go to McDonald's, Arby's, KFC, Taco Bell, or the gas station. Give the person working there (choose someone who is not a high school student, students are just working a part time job) simple instructions as to how you would like your food. See how often they fuck it up. That's $5/hr labor, that's average intelligence. That's an IQ of 90-110. Scary, isn't it?
And these are the people who have discovered that it is much easier to have the government provide for them instead of making it for themselves. I read a quote in O'Reilly's book, "Why do we have to pay for it with taxes? Why can't the governemnt pay for it?"
Where does the goverment get its money? Taxes. And there a lot more people who make a little money who are willing to vote to take a larger chunk of the money the sucessful bring home and give to themselves through entitlements, a product of the New Deal and Great Society programs foisted on us by DEMOCRATIC prezs. These are the same people who will give aid to someone making $11,999 but won't give a dollar to someone making $12,000. Those people are told to quit their jobs and then the government will *give* them everything they need.
It's time to sit back and wait. The revolution is coming, not soon, but it is coming. And just like during the riots in LA, the liberals will find out why waiting periods to buy guns are a bad idea.
Because CLECs sell channel services instead of bandwidth. It's like buying a POTS phone line... the telco is "required" to have the switch capacity to handle every line. (That only means you get dialtone from the switch everytime you pick up the phone. Interswitch capacity can and does cause failures -- "all circuits in use".)
This isn't necessarily true. Case in point, our local university used to have quite a dialup system running off a miniswitch on campus tied to the CO downtown. One day the Prez of the university picked up his phone and had to wait 10 seconds for dial tone.
Needless to say, that problem was promptly resolved by moving most of the dialup system to the CO itself, then to a CLEC.
Which then brings us to your second point, interswitch capacity. The CLEC had only turned up one DS3 to the local ILEC tandem, and when all the students came back to school from summer break suddenly no one could call the dialup, and business customers of the CLEC couldn't call anywhere other than inside the switch. Guess that's what happens when you've got capacity on one side for about 2000 dialup users, and the 40,000 users on the other, and only 670 or so channels inbetween.
Why is it that people try to focus on W's perceived lack of intelligence? I would prefer to have a smart person be president who surrounds himself with some of the most brilliant people in the world, than someone who claims to be brilliant, but obviously is too dumb to realize he lost. Look at the brilliant minds Bush Sr had around him. People like Powell, Cheney, Greenspan, Baker.
Even under Gore's rules, with the terribly unfair recounts in three democratic counties, Bush still won. Do you honestly think this guy, who can't admit he lost, should be president?
Wrongo. Philadelphia has a mass transit train meeting the airport. I was stuck in PHL for four days last year and used the train to go downtown and buy new clothes. Almost tried to take Amtrak home, but the closest station to home is 30 miles away and there was no guaruntee I would make it due to the ice.
My company has both satellite and terrestrial circuits to India. Our satellite circuit has a round trip delay of about 660 ms on a good day, the terrestrial is 249 ms, still higher than it should be. There's something magical about getting it down below 200 ms, and that's the ability to provide toll quality voice service over the connection without inducing so much delay as to create a half duplex conversation. Might they want to provide some sort of voice service over this at some point they will need to bring delay down.
This is why I'm waiting for Teledesic using LEO satellites.
Once they get the phone bill they won't be Discount brokers for long... heh.
"Why are there 100,000 calls here all listening to a duck quack?"
If they have any sort of real phone contract they won't pay much more than a few thousand dollars for this.
Look at the 1992 elections... Clinton had 41%, Bush 37%, and Perot had 19%. Now it is widely known that if Perot would not have been in the race that Bush would have won hands down.
But that's not even the good part. A full 59% of the voters did not want Clinton as President! I think we should have a runoff election the first Tuesday in December between the top two candidates selected at the national level by popular vote, and dump the electoral college. This could even potentially help third party candidates as all they have to do is garner a larger popular vote than one of the two big parties for an opportunity to win it big. All the electoral college does is accomplish a method for a president to win without winning the popular vote.
Everything I have read speaks like TDMA, IS-136, and GSM are going to converge to a very GSM like technology. At least that sounds like the best idea, then we end up with a very large GSM network in the US, albeit on the "wrong" frequency.
I was sitting here thinking about how the FBI could wiretap an encryted satellite connection with the opposing downlink in a country outside of their jurisdiction...
But I realized that to operate the satellite in the US, the user would need FCC approval, and I doubt that would be given if the FBI couldn't wiretap the connection...
No satellite company ever relies on a single bird. There's so much redundancy that the loss of one spacecraft is not likely to result in major problems.
Remember Galaxy-4? No pagers for millions of people for days. No backup for that. (Week ending May 22, 1998)
While I do agree that there is some misplaced anger and zealotry going on, the guy who wrote the article does seem to require some sort of clue enhancement. His comment: (Found in his first article)
Windows 98, for example, is a high-quality product, because Microsoft has been fixing problems in Windows since 1990.
outlines the very reason why he is not credible as an editorial source of information. He fails to mention that in 1990 Windows was 8-bit (I think) and pretty rudamentary, but with constant enhancement (cough) and advances in hardware is now (3)2-bit and much more usable for Joe User.
Please note I am not in any way advocating Microsoft. I believe each OS has its own place. For me, Win98 on my desktop, with Linux and Netware for servers keeps my headaches to an absolute minimum.
People advocating Linux need to pick important battles and win them. Going after somebody who destroys his own implicit credibility as an editorial writer is not one of them.
There are so many ways that fraud could be combated, but are we willing to pay the price in time? For example:
Visa sets up a system which you authorize yourself to Visa, using some sort of information that only you should know, and they provide you a hash that you then use for the next 30 minutes or so at a particular online merchant.
I dunno, but if merchants can't be trusted with holding your ccnums, Visa and the issuing banks won't let them have them. How Visa implements that system will be interesting.
Misconfiguration? Security holes? Yes, I'd like to put my NT server with all my corporate information onto @home's network.
It sounds like you are saying that instead of securing your own server against attack you would prefer your ISP provide a sterile network for you, without your providing additional compensation for that service? Is @home specifically less secure than another ISP? While @home could arguably be the target of more DoS style attacks, I don't see how chosing @home over, say uunet, makes your network any more secure, as far as regular internet service is concerned. The Internet is the Internet, all unfiltered connections are equivilent in their security. @home, from what I understand, does do some basic filtering, please correct me if I am wrong.
Your statement makes a point, however, if you use your ISP to handle some of the essential and regular network services. Personally, I much rather prefer a nice server of my own rather than one at my ISP, especially because I don't trust anyone else with my corporate data, even if I am compensating them for a 'secure' set of servers. One of our local ISPs used the ECPA of 1986 as an excuse to peruse email, and apparently got away with it.
I live in State College, Pennsylvania, home of the Pennsylvania State University. Now in this fine town there is also a company named University Orthopedics.
The University decided they didn't like that and sued University Orthopedics, and, well, lost.
The judge ruled that University doesn't necessarily imply that they are associated with the University, and on this point I am unsure, but may have ordered University Orthopedics to include a disclaimer stating they are not associated with Penn State.
What does this mean for your case and Purdue? Well, probably not a whole lot, considering University is a generic term, and even the main campus here is actually named University Park, even though it is most commonly referred to as part of State College. However, the situation may provide some ideas. For one, if Purdue is not trademarked by the University, and you are specifically disclaiming that you are in no way associated with the University (Other than tithing large amounts of money for an alleged education), you may have a good leg to stand on. The question is how strong of a billy club does the University have to knock you down?
I checked out your website, and it is very cleanly designed, and looks nice, but I am left to wonder why the University isn't providing the two services you are. I can understand the university not providing webmail, but what about a student directory? Penn State provide access to a ph server for that kind of information. I would have to question Purdue's intentions if they do not have such a directory available online themselves. Might they be trying to shut you down to remove that directory from the public realm?
I realize your comments are made completely in jest, however, as far something like hijacking an airplane, an open discussion forum would provide all kinds of ideas to the people responsible for the security of our air system, if they only took the time to pay attention.
True, it would give ideas to those who are less than stable, but if the information is in the open they will be forced to secure against it. Much like when an exploit is released.
If I am incorrect about the security rating, thank you for correcting it. It used to be that the C2 test tool would ask you to disconnect the network upon commencing the test on an NT system. Kinda useless with no network. Further, as to other operating systems not meeting C2 or a similar security rating, I don't think any else made that claim. And, other than DoD, and their contractors, who is spending time to determine if their network or workstations are C2 compliant?
As far as other comments as to my experiences with NT, these were stock NT installs on hardware identical to some of our *nix servers, with MS SQL server and IIS installed. We would come in after a few days of one running to find it locked up, displaying the blue screen of death, or services stopped.
Anecdotal stories are one thing amongst friends, but if a consultant (agh!) or an 'experienced' person recommends against NT for a business application due to their experience, is it still anecdotal? Would it be anecdotal if the endorsement were for NT over Linux?
I just find it interesting that Microsoft seems to label advice or conveyance of experiences as anecdotal stories. In the same point of view, can I label their marketing campaign (howericdidit.com, and others like it) as anecdotal stories?
Microsoft seems confused as to just what Linux really is. They make reference to the 'Linux Community' but then later refer to Linux as though it were a corporation:
therefore Linux has yet to demonstrate their capabilities as a database server.
They then later state:
Myth: Linux is more reliable than Windows NT Reality: Linux Needs Real World Proof Points Rather than Anecdotal Stories
I don't know about most people, but I don't need PC Week or Ziff-Davis to tell me Linux is more reliable than Windows NT. I refuse to run NT on my network, and my servers have uptimes exceeding 100 days, and in a few cases, 180 days. Our test NT servers never made it past 7 days.
Then this, which is disinformation (as our ceo calls it):
Linux lacks a commercial quality Journaling File System
What about the fs that SGI is contributing?
And the best comment:
Every member of the Windows NT family since Windows NT 3.5 has been evaluated at either a C2 level under the U.S. Government's evaluation process or at a C2-equivalent level under the British Government's ITSEC process.
ONLY IF YOU DO NOT CONNECT IT TO A NETWORK!
Microsoft is going to try to win the battle in the only forum they can compete with Linux in, the PR forum. The are not very many major Linux promoters, Red Hat probably being the closest to Microsoft that Linux has. Becuase Microsoft cannot out innovate or even out perform, they are resorting to FUD and PR tatics to convince people that Linux is a Bad Thing (tm). Kinda like the Ministry of Peace.
I was under the impression that SONET was designed to help avoid this kind of problem. I haven't seen any problems yet today, I'm on uunet in Pittsburgh tho.
What happened to the idea of redundant links and multiple paths? Sounds like whomever is on this fiber has some explaining to do as to why their OC-x networks were not or do not have fault tolerance as advertised, or even diversified paths. Even in my little town (State College, PA) I know where the OC-3 into my office goes, and there is only one section of about 2000' where all four fibers are on one cable, from my office to the road!
Sounds like the telcos should be held responsible for not building resilience into their networks. As more fiber is laid, and we depend on it increasingly, an outage will be more and more costly. Much cheaper to have the fiber going the other way too.
Its kinda crazy that we assume that because the key is named NSAKEY that it belongs to our beloved NSA. Would the NSA really trust Microsoft to make sure no one finds out about it? Come on, they've got to be smarter than that. If they did, why would they allow their infamous initials to appear in it. I would think if the NSA had anything to do with it that they would have been the ones to test it and ensure that it wouldn't be detectable. I'm not saying that it isn't possible, just a little hard to fathom that the NSA would allow such a blatent reference to themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
Better yet, VPN a subnet back to the US from Russia so that the system simply appears to be on a really bad connection in Russia, but in reality is an American system. FBI breaking into computers on American soil would be a great story, especially doing it without a search warrant simply because they THOUGHT it was somewhere else. That would be worth a few million dollars in constitutional rights violations and would learn them a lesson. The only way to know would be that extra delay, which could be attributed to a slow connection domesitcally in Russia.
Is there any sort of law that would make it an "international" system simply because traffic leaves the United States but returns to reach it?
No, still in the United States you can walk down the street and refuse to show proof of ID. The only way it can cause you problems is if the police officer has a description of someone who (very) recently committed a crime nearby and you match it. That is probable cause. Without it the search is unlawful and subjects the police and municipality to all kinds of nasty things. (Like lawsuits, but someone at the DoJ should pursue federal criminal proceedings against gross violations... Now it's just written off as an overzealous cop when it is in reality a pattern of unconstitutional behavior effectively like fishing.)
I've wondered about that since my last return via Detroit. I walked up to the gentleman at passport control and laid my declaration and passport on the counter. He picked up my declaration and asked how I was doing. I told him I was glad to be home. He told me to move on. Never touched my passport.
I also had a similar experience on the Mexican border. I had walked into Mexico to do some shopping and on my return was merely asked if I was an American. No one there had their passport examined so it really doesn't count.
But the troubling part is that I reentered the United States without having my passport examined. Is that perhaps because they already knew who I was when I approached the counter? Or was it that I was unmistakably American? Or, beyond that, did NW provide Customs with a list of passangers upon our departure from Osaka for Customs to preclear? They found no one on the flight they were interested in talking to so went easy on us?
The problem is that it is too late for our current government and laws, but yet too early for revolution so what we are stuck with is a slowly degrading set of freedoms that have degraded enough to piss off 15% of the population, but not yet enough to piss off more.
What is comes down to is that we keep sacrificing small parts of our freedom for "safety" thinking that just a little more will do it. If that's true then why was the Assualt Weapons Ban passed in 1994, most of those weapons were already regulated under the National Firearms Act of 1968. What about civil forfetiure? I think drug users are one of the dumbest life forms, but I believe civil forfeiture is an even more immoral wrong, and that's who it applies to most.
We've been sacrificing freedoms since the twenties and thirties thinking we could create a better and more safe society when all we've really been doing is trying to protect ourselves from the dumb and irresponsible. The people too dumb to save money for themselves (the New Deal, Great Society and the like) and irresonsible (NFA, Assault Weapons Ban, Speed Limits!) are just part of the problem.
What is your IQ? Take a look around, what is the IQ of the people you're friends with? If you're on Slashdot, chances are its high, as in 120+. Now, go to McDonald's, Arby's, KFC, Taco Bell, or the gas station. Give the person working there (choose someone who is not a high school student, students are just working a part time job) simple instructions as to how you would like your food. See how often they fuck it up. That's $5/hr labor, that's average intelligence. That's an IQ of 90-110. Scary, isn't it?
And these are the people who have discovered that it is much easier to have the government provide for them instead of making it for themselves. I read a quote in O'Reilly's book, "Why do we have to pay for it with taxes? Why can't the governemnt pay for it?"
Where does the goverment get its money? Taxes. And there a lot more people who make a little money who are willing to vote to take a larger chunk of the money the sucessful bring home and give to themselves through entitlements, a product of the New Deal and Great Society programs foisted on us by DEMOCRATIC prezs. These are the same people who will give aid to someone making $11,999 but won't give a dollar to someone making $12,000. Those people are told to quit their jobs and then the government will *give* them everything they need.
It's time to sit back and wait. The revolution is coming, not soon, but it is coming. And just like during the riots in LA, the liberals will find out why waiting periods to buy guns are a bad idea.
This isn't necessarily true. Case in point, our local university used to have quite a dialup system running off a miniswitch on campus tied to the CO downtown. One day the Prez of the university picked up his phone and had to wait 10 seconds for dial tone.
Needless to say, that problem was promptly resolved by moving most of the dialup system to the CO itself, then to a CLEC.
Which then brings us to your second point, interswitch capacity. The CLEC had only turned up one DS3 to the local ILEC tandem, and when all the students came back to school from summer break suddenly no one could call the dialup, and business customers of the CLEC couldn't call anywhere other than inside the switch. Guess that's what happens when you've got capacity on one side for about 2000 dialup users, and the 40,000 users on the other, and only 670 or so channels inbetween.
Why is it that people try to focus on W's perceived lack of intelligence? I would prefer to have a smart person be president who surrounds himself with some of the most brilliant people in the world, than someone who claims to be brilliant, but obviously is too dumb to realize he lost. Look at the brilliant minds Bush Sr had around him. People like Powell, Cheney, Greenspan, Baker.
Even under Gore's rules, with the terribly unfair recounts in three democratic counties, Bush still won. Do you honestly think this guy, who can't admit he lost, should be president?
Wrongo. Philadelphia has a mass transit train meeting the airport. I was stuck in PHL for four days last year and used the train to go downtown and buy new clothes. Almost tried to take Amtrak home, but the closest station to home is 30 miles away and there was no guaruntee I would make it due to the ice.
My company has both satellite and terrestrial circuits to India. Our satellite circuit has a round trip delay of about 660 ms on a good day, the terrestrial is 249 ms, still higher than it should be. There's something magical about getting it down below 200 ms, and that's the ability to provide toll quality voice service over the connection without inducing so much delay as to create a half duplex conversation. Might they want to provide some sort of voice service over this at some point they will need to bring delay down.
This is why I'm waiting for Teledesic using LEO satellites.
Once they get the phone bill they won't be Discount brokers for long... heh. "Why are there 100,000 calls here all listening to a duck quack?" If they have any sort of real phone contract they won't pay much more than a few thousand dollars for this.
But that's not even the good part. A full 59% of the voters did not want Clinton as President! I think we should have a runoff election the first Tuesday in December between the top two candidates selected at the national level by popular vote, and dump the electoral college. This could even potentially help third party candidates as all they have to do is garner a larger popular vote than one of the two big parties for an opportunity to win it big. All the electoral college does is accomplish a method for a president to win without winning the popular vote.
Everything I have read speaks like TDMA, IS-136, and GSM are going to converge to a very GSM like technology. At least that sounds like the best idea, then we end up with a very large GSM network in the US, albeit on the "wrong" frequency.
I was sitting here thinking about how the FBI could wiretap an encryted satellite connection with the opposing downlink in a country outside of their jurisdiction...
But I realized that to operate the satellite in the US, the user would need FCC approval, and I doubt that would be given if the FBI couldn't wiretap the connection...
Too bad the constitution is ignored anymore.
Remember Galaxy-4? No pagers for millions of people for days. No backup for that. (Week ending May 22, 1998)
sl
Windows 98, for example, is a high-quality product, because Microsoft has been fixing problems in Windows since 1990.
outlines the very reason why he is not credible as an editorial source of information. He fails to mention that in 1990 Windows was 8-bit (I think) and pretty rudamentary, but with constant enhancement (cough) and advances in hardware is now (3)2-bit and much more usable for Joe User.
Please note I am not in any way advocating Microsoft. I believe each OS has its own place. For me, Win98 on my desktop, with Linux and Netware for servers keeps my headaches to an absolute minimum.
People advocating Linux need to pick important battles and win them. Going after somebody who destroys his own implicit credibility as an editorial writer is not one of them.
Just my opinion.
sl
There are so many ways that fraud could be combated, but are we willing to pay the price in time? For example:
Visa sets up a system which you authorize yourself to Visa, using some sort of information that only you should know, and they provide you a hash that you then use for the next 30 minutes or so at a particular online merchant.
I dunno, but if merchants can't be trusted with holding your ccnums, Visa and the issuing banks won't let them have them. How Visa implements that system will be interesting.
sl
It sounds like you are saying that instead of securing your own server against attack you would prefer your ISP provide a sterile network for you, without your providing additional compensation for that service? Is @home specifically less secure than another ISP? While @home could arguably be the target of more DoS style attacks, I don't see how chosing @home over, say uunet, makes your network any more secure, as far as regular internet service is concerned. The Internet is the Internet, all unfiltered connections are equivilent in their security. @home, from what I understand, does do some basic filtering, please correct me if I am wrong.
Your statement makes a point, however, if you use your ISP to handle some of the essential and regular network services. Personally, I much rather prefer a nice server of my own rather than one at my ISP, especially because I don't trust anyone else with my corporate data, even if I am compensating them for a 'secure' set of servers. One of our local ISPs used the ECPA of 1986 as an excuse to peruse email, and apparently got away with it.
sl
I live in State College, Pennsylvania, home of the Pennsylvania State University. Now in this fine town there is also a company named University Orthopedics.
The University decided they didn't like that and sued University Orthopedics, and, well, lost.
The judge ruled that University doesn't necessarily imply that they are associated with the University, and on this point I am unsure, but may have ordered University Orthopedics to include a disclaimer stating they are not associated with Penn State.
What does this mean for your case and Purdue? Well, probably not a whole lot, considering University is a generic term, and even the main campus here is actually named University Park, even though it is most commonly referred to as part of State College. However, the situation may provide some ideas. For one, if Purdue is not trademarked by the University, and you are specifically disclaiming that you are in no way associated with the University (Other than tithing large amounts of money for an alleged education), you may have a good leg to stand on. The question is how strong of a billy club does the University have to knock you down?
I checked out your website, and it is very cleanly designed, and looks nice, but I am left to wonder why the University isn't providing the two services you are. I can understand the university not providing webmail, but what about a student directory? Penn State provide access to a ph server for that kind of information. I would have to question Purdue's intentions if they do not have such a directory available online themselves. Might they be trying to shut you down to remove that directory from the public realm?
Just some food for thought.
I realize your comments are made completely in jest, however, as far something like hijacking an airplane, an open discussion forum would provide all kinds of ideas to the people responsible for the security of our air system, if they only took the time to pay attention.
True, it would give ideas to those who are less than stable, but if the information is in the open they will be forced to secure against it. Much like when an exploit is released.
sl
As far as other comments as to my experiences with NT, these were stock NT installs on hardware identical to some of our *nix servers, with MS SQL server and IIS installed. We would come in after a few days of one running to find it locked up, displaying the blue screen of death, or services stopped.
Anecdotal stories are one thing amongst friends, but if a consultant (agh!) or an 'experienced' person recommends against NT for a business application due to their experience, is it still anecdotal? Would it be anecdotal if the endorsement were for NT over Linux?
I just find it interesting that Microsoft seems to label advice or conveyance of experiences as anecdotal stories. In the same point of view, can I label their marketing campaign (howericdidit.com, and others like it) as anecdotal stories?
Just some food for thought.
therefore Linux has yet to demonstrate their capabilities as a database server.
They then later state:
Myth: Linux is more reliable than Windows NT
Reality: Linux Needs Real World Proof Points Rather than Anecdotal Stories
I don't know about most people, but I don't need PC Week or Ziff-Davis to tell me Linux is more reliable than Windows NT. I refuse to run NT on my network, and my servers have uptimes exceeding 100 days, and in a few cases, 180 days. Our test NT servers never made it past 7 days.
Then this, which is disinformation (as our ceo calls it):
Linux lacks a commercial quality Journaling File System
What about the fs that SGI is contributing?
And the best comment:
Every member of the Windows NT family since Windows NT 3.5 has been evaluated at either a C2 level under the U.S. Government's evaluation process or at a C2-equivalent level under the British Government's ITSEC process.
ONLY IF YOU DO NOT CONNECT IT TO A NETWORK!
Microsoft is going to try to win the battle in the only forum they can compete with Linux in, the PR forum. The are not very many major Linux promoters, Red Hat probably being the closest to Microsoft that Linux has. Becuase Microsoft cannot out innovate or even out perform, they are resorting to FUD and PR tatics to convince people that Linux is a Bad Thing (tm). Kinda like the Ministry of Peace.
I was under the impression that SONET was designed to help avoid this kind of problem. I haven't seen any problems yet today, I'm on uunet in Pittsburgh tho.
What happened to the idea of redundant links and multiple paths? Sounds like whomever is on this fiber has some explaining to do as to why their OC-x networks were not or do not have fault tolerance as advertised, or even diversified paths. Even in my little town (State College, PA) I know where the OC-3 into my office goes, and there is only one section of about 2000' where all four fibers are on one cable, from my office to the road!
Sounds like the telcos should be held responsible for not building resilience into their networks. As more fiber is laid, and we depend on it increasingly, an outage will be more and more costly. Much cheaper to have the fiber going the other way too.
Just my thoughts.
Its kinda crazy that we assume that because the key is named NSAKEY that it belongs to our beloved NSA. Would the NSA really trust Microsoft to make sure no one finds out about it? Come on, they've got to be smarter than that. If they did, why would they allow their infamous initials to appear in it. I would think if the NSA had anything to do with it that they would have been the ones to test it and ensure that it wouldn't be detectable. I'm not saying that it isn't possible, just a little hard to fathom that the NSA would allow such a blatent reference to themselves.