I would suggest to anyone who thinks that USENIX conferences are solely for graybeards who walk around wearing suspenders, flipping nickels at people, then you should take a few minutes to read through the training program from LISA12.
Not only is there the old standard Linux stuff, there are also great classes on building AWS infrastructures, cloudstack, PowerShell, and tons more. It's really pretty great.
The neon sign parallel doesn't have the side effect of causing us to disregard women in booths, whether they're knowledgeable or not.
(and yes, I'm the author of the blog linked to)
Does anyone else find it ironic that they're using information obtained from a cracked server to determine that the weakest security is the password?
Anyway, I think the passwords are only weak because the users get to choose them, and *users* are the weakest link in the security chain.
If it's true about the OpenBSD vulnerability, and that Theo was unaware, then given their method (and apparent motivation), I don't see why it's unfeasible that they wouldn't have done it in multiple software stacks.
If the allegations against the FBI are true, and they had contractors successfully hide a weakness in a hugely successful open source project like OpenBSD, can't you at least conceive that it would be possible for them to have insiders at Microsoft that have done something similar?
Microsoft wouldn't have to be aware, as Theo apparently wasn't.
except I explain modern technology to Benjamin Franklin. It's a fun way to look at the modern world (and you learn to question your assumptions. Even tried to explain TV to an 18th century scientist?)
You can't just compare like that. You've got to look at volume.
For instance, you say cow farts are "natural" sources. Natural how? As in, because they're produced by animals? How would you explain the unnatural population of animals that we've bred into being, solely for consumption? All of those extra animals contribute, too, but can't be considered "natural", at least in the way you were meaning it.
The truth is that there is not, never was, and can't be, a single canonical "right" amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. We're living in a world that changes drastically over the course of 10,000 years. Millions of years ago, insects were the size of us, just because of a _slight_ change in the O2 percentage in the atmosphere. Was that wrong? Or was that right? How about a few millions of years before that, when CO2 was king, and plants evolved because it was the most plentiful, and they exuded a caustic gas, O2?
This biosphere adapts. The animals (including us) come and go, and change and adapt to the circumstances of thousands and millions of years, but there's no "wrong" or "right", there's only "right now".
Now, you could argue from the point of view that since we're the dominant form of life, most intelligent, and technologically advanced, we have a sort of noblesse oblige to "fix" things. Especially since there's evidence that we "broke" them.
There's a sort of universal guilt among the ecologically-friendly people that attempts to repent for their lifestyle. "Carbon credits", for one. Buying organic food, for another. People feel guilty for their "footprint" and try to buy the new age equivalent of indulgences. "I fly a lot, so I buy carbon credits". Great. I mean, not as good as not flying, but at least you feel better about yourself. "I buy organic because pesticides hurt the environment". Awesome. Unfortunately, you had to work nearly twice as much to pay for those organic foods, not to mention that it's unbelievably inefficient, and much more susceptible to disease than the cheaper, prettier, just-as-healthy food 20 feet down the row at the grocery store.
We need to get past the guilt for breaking our planet, because we haven't. It isn't broken. We might have changed our planet, but it's not broken. As soon as we change the terminology, we can stop focusing on the guilt, and start focusing on what's really happening. We want to change the planet again, but in the other direction. We want to change it, because it's going to be more comfortable for us like that. It's what we're used to. It's how we like it, and we (might) have the technology to do it. So stop concentrating on guilt, and start concentrating on the real goal. We're being selfish, by trying to adjust the planet for our own gain, and there's nothing wrong with that. We've been doing it ever since we killed the first snakes that lived under the rocks we were moved when we built the first house. It's only a matter of scale.
In enterprise computing (the target market for this tech), these processors will be used for one of two things:
Virtualization: You stuff a machine full of these processors, then run 50 guest machines on it. Three machines like that contain more processing power than my entire infrastructure did 3 years ago.
Niche: Stuff a machine full of these processors, then crunch numbers. I've got a pair of 12 core machines with 32GB of RAM apiece that do nothing but monte carlo simulations...and that's not even particularly big for a lot of people.
These multicore processors won't be running web browsers, unless it's because they're hosting a dozens of virtualized desktops that users are working on over the network.
Sorry, but if the project is cool and interesting, what's the problem? You get mad because someone submitted an interesting link to their project, and the editors agreed that it was interesting enough to warrant inclusion?
This really is interesting, though. The Fibonacci sequence shows up all the time in nature, but this is, to my knowledge, the first time in a non-biological function.
I don't think it's work ethic, either. It's just the approach. A good developer, just like a good sysadmin, needs a holistic approach. You don't jump in and implement something without considering the effects of that change.
Sure, I can't argue that. I've spent my career (almost 10 years) in small infrastructures, but I'm sick enough to like it. It can be frustrating at times, and it's often overwhelming, but I can't think of any other job that requires the breadth of knowledge of an IT Admin at a small company.
The trick is to think of your small infrastructure as an enterprise infrastructure. Consider that you've got the same goals that they do: maximize uptime while minimizing costs. Sure, they've got a few orders of magnitude more budget than you do (if you've got a budget at all!), but that's part of the challenge.
Implementing "best practices" as dictated by vendors is not feasible. We small shops can't afford that sort of thing, so we go with what we can do, which is frequently make it up as we go.
That's one of the reasons I'm writing a series of books. The series is Small Infrastructure Administration, and it's going to cover (among other things) vendor-neutral best practices that can actually be implemented by people with small shops.
I've got to assume that you aren't a sysadmin, from your tone. At least, if you/are/ a sysadmin, you haven't really thought too much about it.
Properly executed, systems administration is a far more difficult than the non-system admin (or even the casual sysadmin) realizes. Disaster and recovery planning, performance tuning, infrastructure design, these aren't small-brain tasks. There's a big difference between adding users and managing an infrastructure, and yet, sysadmins do both.
Don't knock the profession just because your experiences with them have been less than ideal.
Were they excellent developers or excellent programmers? There's a difference, in my opinion.
An excellent developer has a work ethic that would mesh nicely with an excellent sysadmin. That isn't necessarily the case with a programmer. You can be a wiz kid programmer, but not actually/develop/, you just write. Development is a much more in-depth process. You do things like document, you shepherd the code into maturity, and you manage it throughout its lifecycle. Again, that's a developer, not necessarily a programmer.
Off the top of my head, I don't know of a division of sysadmins that can be the same. Maybe "enterprise admin", versus a non-enterprise admin. If your goal is to build systems with a maximum availability, to be fault tolerant, and you build an infrastructure, not just servers, then you're probably an enterprise admin. If you just "admin a linux box", that's not quite the same thing.
I'm thinking the best way would be an overflow in an array that flips the most significant digit of the target zip code. But I'm not a coder, so someone else can steal my idea.
Slashdot Mirror
I would suggest to anyone who thinks that USENIX conferences are solely for graybeards who walk around wearing suspenders, flipping nickels at people, then you should take a few minutes to read through the training program from LISA12. Not only is there the old standard Linux stuff, there are also great classes on building AWS infrastructures, cloudstack, PowerShell, and tons more. It's really pretty great.
The neon sign parallel doesn't have the side effect of causing us to disregard women in booths, whether they're knowledgeable or not. (and yes, I'm the author of the blog linked to)
Does anyone else find it ironic that they're using information obtained from a cracked server to determine that the weakest security is the password? Anyway, I think the passwords are only weak because the users get to choose them, and *users* are the weakest link in the security chain.
If it's true about the OpenBSD vulnerability, and that Theo was unaware, then given their method (and apparent motivation), I don't see why it's unfeasible that they wouldn't have done it in multiple software stacks.
If the allegations against the FBI are true, and they had contractors successfully hide a weakness in a hugely successful open source project like OpenBSD, can't you at least conceive that it would be possible for them to have insiders at Microsoft that have done something similar? Microsoft wouldn't have to be aware, as Theo apparently wasn't.
There have been some interesting efforts toward this, like the road train autopilot system.
except I explain modern technology to Benjamin Franklin. It's a fun way to look at the modern world (and you learn to question your assumptions. Even tried to explain TV to an 18th century scientist?)
there are people who aren't using hootsuite?
Ticket closed. Resolution: Beer Acquired.
Na, it's cool. I've seen this one. They're allergic to water.
Meh, it's habitable because we grew up here. Anyone else might not like it so much.
Sort of like Jersey.
Unless they came for twinkies. Then we're hosed.
You can't just compare like that. You've got to look at volume.
For instance, you say cow farts are "natural" sources. Natural how? As in, because they're produced by animals? How would you explain the unnatural population of animals that we've bred into being, solely for consumption? All of those extra animals contribute, too, but can't be considered "natural", at least in the way you were meaning it.
The truth is that there is not, never was, and can't be, a single canonical "right" amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. We're living in a world that changes drastically over the course of 10,000 years. Millions of years ago, insects were the size of us, just because of a _slight_ change in the O2 percentage in the atmosphere. Was that wrong? Or was that right? How about a few millions of years before that, when CO2 was king, and plants evolved because it was the most plentiful, and they exuded a caustic gas, O2?
This biosphere adapts. The animals (including us) come and go, and change and adapt to the circumstances of thousands and millions of years, but there's no "wrong" or "right", there's only "right now".
Now, you could argue from the point of view that since we're the dominant form of life, most intelligent, and technologically advanced, we have a sort of noblesse oblige to "fix" things. Especially since there's evidence that we "broke" them.
There's a sort of universal guilt among the ecologically-friendly people that attempts to repent for their lifestyle. "Carbon credits", for one. Buying organic food, for another. People feel guilty for their "footprint" and try to buy the new age equivalent of indulgences. "I fly a lot, so I buy carbon credits". Great. I mean, not as good as not flying, but at least you feel better about yourself. "I buy organic because pesticides hurt the environment". Awesome. Unfortunately, you had to work nearly twice as much to pay for those organic foods, not to mention that it's unbelievably inefficient, and much more susceptible to disease than the cheaper, prettier, just-as-healthy food 20 feet down the row at the grocery store.
We need to get past the guilt for breaking our planet, because we haven't. It isn't broken. We might have changed our planet, but it's not broken. As soon as we change the terminology, we can stop focusing on the guilt, and start focusing on what's really happening. We want to change the planet again, but in the other direction. We want to change it, because it's going to be more comfortable for us like that. It's what we're used to. It's how we like it, and we (might) have the technology to do it. So stop concentrating on guilt, and start concentrating on the real goal. We're being selfish, by trying to adjust the planet for our own gain, and there's nothing wrong with that. We've been doing it ever since we killed the first snakes that lived under the rocks we were moved when we built the first house. It's only a matter of scale.
We'll just put them on a defenseless remote Pacific island and check up on them every year or so. Nothing bad will happen, I'm sure of it.
and risk zombie orphans? Are you crazy?!?
In enterprise computing (the target market for this tech), these processors will be used for one of two things:
Virtualization: You stuff a machine full of these processors, then run 50 guest machines on it. Three machines like that contain more processing power than my entire infrastructure did 3 years ago.
Niche: Stuff a machine full of these processors, then crunch numbers. I've got a pair of 12 core machines with 32GB of RAM apiece that do nothing but monte carlo simulations...and that's not even particularly big for a lot of people.
These multicore processors won't be running web browsers, unless it's because they're hosting a dozens of virtualized desktops that users are working on over the network.
Sorry, but if the project is cool and interesting, what's the problem? You get mad because someone submitted an interesting link to their project, and the editors agreed that it was interesting enough to warrant inclusion?
I'm not seeing the problem.
You're ALL irrational.
This really is interesting, though. The Fibonacci sequence shows up all the time in nature, but this is, to my knowledge, the first time in a non-biological function.
I don't think it's work ethic, either. It's just the approach. A good developer, just like a good sysadmin, needs a holistic approach. You don't jump in and implement something without considering the effects of that change.
I think we agree :-)
Sure, I can't argue that. I've spent my career (almost 10 years) in small infrastructures, but I'm sick enough to like it. It can be frustrating at times, and it's often overwhelming, but I can't think of any other job that requires the breadth of knowledge of an IT Admin at a small company.
The trick is to think of your small infrastructure as an enterprise infrastructure. Consider that you've got the same goals that they do: maximize uptime while minimizing costs. Sure, they've got a few orders of magnitude more budget than you do (if you've got a budget at all!), but that's part of the challenge.
Implementing "best practices" as dictated by vendors is not feasible. We small shops can't afford that sort of thing, so we go with what we can do, which is frequently make it up as we go.
That's one of the reasons I'm writing a series of books. The series is Small Infrastructure Administration, and it's going to cover (among other things) vendor-neutral best practices that can actually be implemented by people with small shops.
Sorry, why is parent modded as Troll? There's nothing trollish at all in there.
I agree, as well. 90% of my time spent when teaching my junior admin is teaching him how to think like a sysadmin instead of a hobbyist.
I've got to assume that you aren't a sysadmin, from your tone. At least, if you /are/ a sysadmin, you haven't really thought too much about it.
Properly executed, systems administration is a far more difficult than the non-system admin (or even the casual sysadmin) realizes. Disaster and recovery planning, performance tuning, infrastructure design, these aren't small-brain tasks. There's a big difference between adding users and managing an infrastructure, and yet, sysadmins do both.
Don't knock the profession just because your experiences with them have been less than ideal.
Were they excellent developers or excellent programmers? There's a difference, in my opinion.
An excellent developer has a work ethic that would mesh nicely with an excellent sysadmin. That isn't necessarily the case with a programmer. You can be a wiz kid programmer, but not actually /develop/, you just write. Development is a much more in-depth process. You do things like document, you shepherd the code into maturity, and you manage it throughout its lifecycle. Again, that's a developer, not necessarily a programmer.
Off the top of my head, I don't know of a division of sysadmins that can be the same. Maybe "enterprise admin", versus a non-enterprise admin. If your goal is to build systems with a maximum availability, to be fault tolerant, and you build an infrastructure, not just servers, then you're probably an enterprise admin. If you just "admin a linux box", that's not quite the same thing.
I'm thinking the best way would be an overflow in an array that flips the most significant digit of the target zip code. But I'm not a coder, so someone else can steal my idea.