"That's retarded. They're not training to be IT people."
But still they try to use the computer as if they were IT people. They try to securize it themselves; they try to install and configure apps themselves and, just as expected, they try -and get, to f* it themselves.
There will be a time when computers will be absolutly comoditized (and by then, they probably will be general purpouse appliances no more, as this very article suggests: the main point of it is using the PC not as a general purpouse computation device but as a oneway device to show what other people want to sell you -quite like the XXI century TV set) but by now, PCs are complex and hard to setup and maintain so better you have at least a basic knowledge about how they work or suffer the consequences. It is not as if that's the first time in history something like this happens: TVs were upon a time about valves, frequencies and fine tuning; cars were about adjusting carburators by hand and even had a slider to adjust the sparking point; mills had their own electricity stations... about all emerging technologies suffered that and computers are no less.
"On a real filing cabinet, what she did was perfectly acceptable"
It wasn't. Your closest would be going to a full *shared* cabinet and in order to make some space she starts throwing away other people's things since she doesn't have a use for them and then being surprised because her father became angry when he knew she threw away his photo albums. She knew it was a shared cabinet: she knew some Microsoft guy used that cabinet too.
On the other hand, analogies are analogies and they are good... up to a point. And, you know, just writing down "analogy" on Slashdot makes absolutly unavoidable thinking about cars, so here I go.
A computer is a complex machine, nobody doubts it and less than anyone the ones not expert with them which tend to think not only that it is complex but that there must be some witchery within.
But I don't see absolutly anyone, no matter how unsavvy, trying to dismantle his engine's car to make space when the trunk is full.
"Basically, to tell if you have this phobia imagine that this post contained your (yes, you) name, DOB and address. If you felt scared by that idea, you have the phobia. If I did post your details, nobody would care. Nothing bad would happen."
And then, to make your point even more clear you don't dare to tell us your own details and post this as an Anonymous Coward.
"So you do agree that there are other factors than the speed limit that could explain the difference in death toll between American highways and the Autobahn."
No. What I agree with is that it is impossible that speed limits are o can be by themselves a key explanatory factor on death rates due to car accidents, as too many politicians want to make us believe.
"How does this invalidate the statement that ODF's arguments against OOXML were incomplete"
Because that was only part of the statement. The complete statement is more in the lines of "OOXML standard is incomplete *beyond repair*": like in "this has to be implemented the way Word 6.0 did it" or "and here comes a magic binary blob".
"Doesn't seems strange to you that only Microsoft handle it very differently?"
You can't and shouldn't go for that. Of course Microsoft must handle it very differently if they want to offer a closed-source product or else they would be pretty near to be sued for license violation. And even then, that's not a bad thing by itself: consumer's benefit lies on competition, both among companies and among different implementations.
But then, it's been said once and again: for anything more complex than a whistle, specifications *will* be lacking. That's why you not only should ask for "open standards" but for an open sourced implementation of such standards so you can point your finger to them and say "that's what I mean" when need arises.
Compare the cases of CIFS or even PDF to that of SMTP or TCP/IP. The first two more or less open standards with closed-source reference implementations. You don't have CIFS; you have Microsoft's as you don't have PDF but Adobe's. Whenever some other product disagrees with them, no matter how well they follow the specs and/or understands them to the user's benefit, it's still the product's fault if it doesn't behave exactly the way of Windows Server or Acroread. On the other hand, you have SMTP or TCP/IP with early open source implementations (Sendmail or BSD's). It's terribly hard to "embrace and extend" those niches (specially Microsoft tried it) since then it works the other way around. Whenever a mail server didn't work the expected way (as it was the case, for instance with early versions of Exchange) you *know* where exactly the problem is and you can say "look at this code: that's the way it should work".
"Different distribution of car models (lots of BMW and Mercedes"
That might be a reasonable difference but then, is more or less the same distribution you can find in the rest of Europe.
"I was not the one who made a rather far-reaching and counter-intuitive conclusion based on the assumption that the all conditions are exactly identical in Germany and USA, so the burden of proof is certainly not mine."
I'm now generalizing. Highway engineering is more or less the same around first world; the kind of cars you can find are about the same too, but then, you have politicians in so many of those countries assuring people the best tactic to reduce casualties is limiting speed and expending a lot of money pursuing those beyond legal speed and they *NEVER* say nothing about the glaring evidence that Germany has to offer against their position. Are they the fools or do they really think we are so fool?
"how do you explain that accident rates are even lower in Sweden or the Netherlands"
"Of course, the lower accident rate on highways that went to 75mph instead of 55, or the lower death toll on the the Autobauhn than on many American highways confuses them too.
Well, what was that thing about correlation and causation again...? Surely, the only difference between Autobahn and American highways is the speed limit. "
Basically yes: same tarmac, same lane width; same radius on turns; same rates of climbing... Or do you have other information you can share with us?
" I am not saying your math is wrong. But if water is that much better at cooling. Why is the earth (75% water) suffering from Global Warming."
I know you were joking, but anyway.
Earth mass is about 5.9742×10^24Kg, where all the oceans' watter mass is about 1.4×10^21Kg, or about 0.023% of the Earth's total mass, so the Earth as a whole is basically a very dry rock.
On the other hand, global warming is, of course, a surface effect: water is that much better at cooling because it's that much better at exchange (and collect) heat that air, which you can have it both ways. That's what you can get both ice ages and greenhouse ages.
No, sir. Passive cooling means, as its name itself implies, no active means for cooling. That means no induced-moving parts, be them either fans, or pumps or anything else (passive-moving parts, like a turbine on a vehicle at a speed would be OK).
"It would be pretty stupid to have a water loop with stagnant water"
But it would be pretty clever using, i.e. the temperature gradient itself to move the water by means of convection on a closed circuit from the hot to the cold spot, wouldn't it? And exactly *that* is what it takes for a passive cooling system to stay passive.
"I doubt anyone would call such a system remotely "cooling"."
Anyone... but anyone with a barnish of engineer-101.
"I know a clear case in a factory, the put a heat electric generator to reuse the wasted head from a ceramic oven, in the numbers efficiency can be seen low"
In the numbers it won't seem low, either: they went from a situation where they lost *all* that energy to a situation where they lose just a *part* of it. Clearly advantageous.
"In the case of 2 [best fuel efficiency], you get the most mileage out of the fuel, however it's harder on the engine and doesn't burn the fuel as well causing more pollution Than 3."
So you get best fuel efficiency by NOT completely burning fuel? I don't see so much common sense on the rest of your post, but that peaks everything else. Higher power means almost minimal emissions? Tell that to F1 engineers. Getting best mileage, completly burning fuel, will give you worse emissions? since gas holds almost no solids, hard to believe: heavy metals will go to the pipe/catalizer complex no matter what, apart of this, perfect combustion gives you CO2 and water on the pipe; less than perfect combustion will give you... CO2, water, an a variable amount of nasty aromatic compounds).
"Why is the BSA even surveying countries which recently had a major war, are having battles with rebels or are suffering hyper inflation to the point their economy is broken?"
BSA is about piracy, isn't it? Well, I'd say high seas and recent war scenarios are the most suitable for pirates, don't you think so? Arrrrh!
"But do you agree that, considering the type of data being archived, perhaps the cost/benefit curve optimizes at some point short of all the fine requirements you listed?"
If you have a look at my previous post you will see the "unchecked" points are mostly procedural whith minimal (and mostly labour) costs. Is that really such a problem that you have, say, a wiki documenting recovering procedures, order of such recovering, servers involved and their layout, etc. and have them printed on paper, a copy on your home and another copy on your bosses'? Is it really so costly leaving apart some time monthly for a recovery test to confirm your backups are in good shape?
On a side note, you said that was your procedure for some "IT security systems" but you didn't say why they are simply not integrated on the usual "operations systems" backup procedures. For your explanation it doesn't seem they would mean a significant adittion to the bulk of the backups. Might it be because backup procedures for "production facilities" are even in worse shape than IT's?
"Insurance for a business only pays for replacement of things and not time that I'm aware of."
Insurance pays for anything your contract says it covers. It can be hardware replacement, but it too can be time (x money for off-lined day, up to y days), salaries (up to x money to hire temporal replacement people), etc.
"I agree with most everything you say but there are a few factors that you are not addressing, most of them centering around cost and benefit analysis."
True: I did it on purpouse. There's a difference between a "backup strategy" and a "cost-effective backup stratagy". Anyway, if due to cost restrains you don't follow my above points, you migth end with a valid solution (not that I think so) but still you wouldn't be entitled to call it a "backup strategy".
"Recovery costs - Do offsite backups actually fit into a disaster recovery plan that works for your company? Can you replace your production network and hardware quickly?"
Again, a "backup strategy" is not a "disaster recovery plan" nor a "contigency plan", while it is a key part in them.
"you can't treat everything like it is mission-critical finance data for a global bank."
True, but that shouldn't mean you don't follow the basic stated guidelines. Probably Tom Allensworth thought that (well, my systems are not "mission-critical finance data for a global bank") and surely thought, "well, my solution is well suited to meet the needs of the environment" though he didn't follow my stated guidelines. Well, he knows now how wrong he was.
Let's see. I outlied on a different post what the bare minimumns for a backup are. Let's check against then:
* There has to be no less than two complete data sets non connected with the systems being protected: checked; you have the first line with rsync and the second one on tar.
* There has to be no less than one complete data set off-sited from were the systems being protected "live in": checked; east coast servers data are off-sited to your west-coast facilities.
* There has to be no less than one current copy of the documentation needed to redeploy from barebones the protected systems off-sited from the facilities were the systems being protected "live in": UNCHECKED. You don't say nothing about it, so what happens if you get under the paradigmatic bus -or your east coast facilities get fired with you in?
* At the very least two people -the backup responsible and her direct superior, have to know where the above mentioned documentation lives and they must have the ability to recover it: UNCHECKED; see point above.
* If you haven't tried restoring from it, it isn't a backup: on my previous post I marked this only as a "side note", but thanks to rtfa-troll that offered a clear way to say it, I think I'll raise this to the "needed" condition. So, it goes as your third UNCHECKED. You think your data will be recoverable, but you won't know till the need arises.
And then there are some more questions. You don't say nothing about your west coast facilities. Are they needed for making bussiness? If so, are you backing up then? You told you are using some form of rsync. That probably will suffice for data, but what about the systems themselves? Will you be able to recover from barebones? What about apps, filesystem layouts, recovering order, etc? The need to maintain current recovering procedures docs are there for a reason.
Regarding money, you said "We had zero budget": what about your labour costs and those of the data lines and physical assests like the backup host? On the other hand I have zero respect for companies that leave "zero budget" for their disaster recovery plans. The only way for a "zero budget" to be sensible is if corporate data's value is zero too, not a company one would want to work in. Of course, there's no real chance for that to be true, so the only other possibility is that management is -almost criminally, moronic which, again, doesn't make it a place one would want to work in.
Slashdot Mirror
"That's retarded. They're not training to be IT people."
But still they try to use the computer as if they were IT people. They try to securize it themselves; they try to install and configure apps themselves and, just as expected, they try -and get, to f* it themselves.
There will be a time when computers will be absolutly comoditized (and by then, they probably will be general purpouse appliances no more, as this very article suggests: the main point of it is using the PC not as a general purpouse computation device but as a oneway device to show what other people want to sell you -quite like the XXI century TV set) but by now, PCs are complex and hard to setup and maintain so better you have at least a basic knowledge about how they work or suffer the consequences. It is not as if that's the first time in history something like this happens: TVs were upon a time about valves, frequencies and fine tuning; cars were about adjusting carburators by hand and even had a slider to adjust the sparking point; mills had their own electricity stations... about all emerging technologies suffered that and computers are no less.
"On a real filing cabinet, what she did was perfectly acceptable"
It wasn't. Your closest would be going to a full *shared* cabinet and in order to make some space she starts throwing away other people's things since she doesn't have a use for them and then being surprised because her father became angry when he knew she threw away his photo albums. She knew it was a shared cabinet: she knew some Microsoft guy used that cabinet too.
On the other hand, analogies are analogies and they are good... up to a point. And, you know, just writing down "analogy" on Slashdot makes absolutly unavoidable thinking about cars, so here I go.
A computer is a complex machine, nobody doubts it and less than anyone the ones not expert with them which tend to think not only that it is complex but that there must be some witchery within.
But I don't see absolutly anyone, no matter how unsavvy, trying to dismantle his engine's car to make space when the trunk is full.
"Basically, to tell if you have this phobia imagine that this post contained your (yes, you) name, DOB and address. If you felt scared by that idea, you have the phobia. If I did post your details, nobody would care. Nothing bad would happen."
And then, to make your point even more clear you don't dare to tell us your own details and post this as an Anonymous Coward.
"Metal wrapped in flesh can be transported."
Then build the damn time machine and wrap it on roast-beef.
"If you have a time machine that only goes backwards, made of metal that can't be transported back with you"
Still it is perfectly able to transport all that iron on your blood, duh!?
"So you do agree that there are other factors than the speed limit that could explain the difference in death toll between American highways and the Autobahn."
No. What I agree with is that it is impossible that speed limits are o can be by themselves a key explanatory factor on death rates due to car accidents, as too many politicians want to make us believe.
"How does this invalidate the statement that ODF's arguments against OOXML were incomplete"
Because that was only part of the statement. The complete statement is more in the lines of "OOXML standard is incomplete *beyond repair*": like in "this has to be implemented the way Word 6.0 did it" or "and here comes a magic binary blob".
"Doesn't seems strange to you that only Microsoft handle it very differently?"
You can't and shouldn't go for that. Of course Microsoft must handle it very differently if they want to offer a closed-source product or else they would be pretty near to be sued for license violation. And even then, that's not a bad thing by itself: consumer's benefit lies on competition, both among companies and among different implementations.
But then, it's been said once and again: for anything more complex than a whistle, specifications *will* be lacking. That's why you not only should ask for "open standards" but for an open sourced implementation of such standards so you can point your finger to them and say "that's what I mean" when need arises.
Compare the cases of CIFS or even PDF to that of SMTP or TCP/IP. The first two more or less open standards with closed-source reference implementations. You don't have CIFS; you have Microsoft's as you don't have PDF but Adobe's. Whenever some other product disagrees with them, no matter how well they follow the specs and/or understands them to the user's benefit, it's still the product's fault if it doesn't behave exactly the way of Windows Server or Acroread. On the other hand, you have SMTP or TCP/IP with early open source implementations (Sendmail or BSD's). It's terribly hard to "embrace and extend" those niches (specially Microsoft tried it) since then it works the other way around. Whenever a mail server didn't work the expected way (as it was the case, for instance with early versions of Exchange) you *know* where exactly the problem is and you can say "look at this code: that's the way it should work".
"Different driving culture"
That's hardly to adscribe to highways themselves.
"Different distribution of car models (lots of BMW and Mercedes"
That might be a reasonable difference but then, is more or less the same distribution you can find in the rest of Europe.
"I was not the one who made a rather far-reaching and counter-intuitive conclusion based on the assumption that the all conditions are exactly identical in Germany and USA, so the burden of proof is certainly not mine."
I'm now generalizing. Highway engineering is more or less the same around first world; the kind of cars you can find are about the same too, but then, you have politicians in so many of those countries assuring people the best tactic to reduce casualties is limiting speed and expending a lot of money pursuing those beyond legal speed and they *NEVER* say nothing about the glaring evidence that Germany has to offer against their position. Are they the fools or do they really think we are so fool?
"how do you explain that accident rates are even lower in Sweden or the Netherlands"
Basically two words: weather and topography.
"Turning off WebDAV might be a good option if you are not using it or can live without out until we have a security update available"
Of course, not turning it on to start with, if you don't use it or can live without it is out of consideration.
"Of course, the lower accident rate on highways that went to 75mph instead of 55, or the lower death toll on the the Autobauhn than on many American highways confuses them too.
Well, what was that thing about correlation and causation again...? Surely, the only difference between Autobahn and American highways is the speed limit. "
Basically yes: same tarmac, same lane width; same radius on turns; same rates of climbing... Or do you have other information you can share with us?
"Well, I have hundreds of thousands of miles of driving experience. I've been in a few accidents. All were low speed accidents."
Or else you probably wouldn't be here to tell.
So you really, really know what FUD exactly means, don't you?
" I am not saying your math is wrong. But if water is that much better at cooling. Why is the earth (75% water) suffering from Global Warming."
I know you were joking, but anyway.
Earth mass is about 5.9742×10^24Kg, where all the oceans' watter mass is about 1.4×10^21Kg, or about 0.023% of the Earth's total mass, so the Earth as a whole is basically a very dry rock.
On the other hand, global warming is, of course, a surface effect: water is that much better at cooling because it's that much better at exchange (and collect) heat that air, which you can have it both ways. That's what you can get both ice ages and greenhouse ages.
"Passive cooling means no fans"
No, sir. Passive cooling means, as its name itself implies, no active means for cooling. That means no induced-moving parts, be them either fans, or pumps or anything else (passive-moving parts, like a turbine on a vehicle at a speed would be OK).
"It would be pretty stupid to have a water loop with stagnant water"
But it would be pretty clever using, i.e. the temperature gradient itself to move the water by means of convection on a closed circuit from the hot to the cold spot, wouldn't it? And exactly *that* is what it takes for a passive cooling system to stay passive.
"I doubt anyone would call such a system remotely "cooling"."
Anyone... but anyone with a barnish of engineer-101.
"I know a clear case in a factory, the put a heat electric generator to reuse the wasted head from a ceramic oven, in the numbers efficiency can be seen low"
In the numbers it won't seem low, either: they went from a situation where they lost *all* that energy to a situation where they lose just a *part* of it. Clearly advantageous.
"In the case of 2 [best fuel efficiency], you get the most mileage out of the fuel, however it's harder on the engine and doesn't burn the fuel as well causing more pollution Than 3."
So you get best fuel efficiency by NOT completely burning fuel? I don't see so much common sense on the rest of your post, but that peaks everything else. Higher power means almost minimal emissions? Tell that to F1 engineers. Getting best mileage, completly burning fuel, will give you worse emissions? since gas holds almost no solids, hard to believe: heavy metals will go to the pipe/catalizer complex no matter what, apart of this, perfect combustion gives you CO2 and water on the pipe; less than perfect combustion will give you... CO2, water, an a variable amount of nasty aromatic compounds).
"Basically now Obama can do whatever he wants. He's playing all the hands himself."
And in this case is an easy bet: he is promising by 2012 what anybody in the rest of the world is achieving *now* (50mph? WTF?).
"Why is the BSA even surveying countries which recently had a major war, are having battles with rebels or are suffering hyper inflation to the point their economy is broken?"
BSA is about piracy, isn't it? Well, I'd say high seas and recent war scenarios are the most suitable for pirates, don't you think so? Arrrrh!
"Why isn't this illegal"
Because they made it legal by passing it on a Totally Unrelated Bill.
"Extramdura."
Extremadura, not Extramdura.
And don't forget Andalucía. They have their own big Linux desktop deployments both in government and public school.
"But do you agree that, considering the type of data being archived, perhaps the cost/benefit curve optimizes at some point short of all the fine requirements you listed?"
If you have a look at my previous post you will see the "unchecked" points are mostly procedural whith minimal (and mostly labour) costs. Is that really such a problem that you have, say, a wiki documenting recovering procedures, order of such recovering, servers involved and their layout, etc. and have them printed on paper, a copy on your home and another copy on your bosses'? Is it really so costly leaving apart some time monthly for a recovery test to confirm your backups are in good shape?
On a side note, you said that was your procedure for some "IT security systems" but you didn't say why they are simply not integrated on the usual "operations systems" backup procedures. For your explanation it doesn't seem they would mean a significant adittion to the bulk of the backups. Might it be because backup procedures for "production facilities" are even in worse shape than IT's?
"Insurance for a business only pays for replacement of things and not time that I'm aware of."
Insurance pays for anything your contract says it covers. It can be hardware replacement, but it too can be time (x money for off-lined day, up to y days), salaries (up to x money to hire temporal replacement people), etc.
"I agree with most everything you say but there are a few factors that you are not addressing, most of them centering around cost and benefit analysis."
True: I did it on purpouse. There's a difference between a "backup strategy" and a "cost-effective backup stratagy". Anyway, if due to cost restrains you don't follow my above points, you migth end with a valid solution (not that I think so) but still you wouldn't be entitled to call it a "backup strategy".
"Recovery costs - Do offsite backups actually fit into a disaster recovery plan that works for your company? Can you replace your production network and hardware quickly?"
Again, a "backup strategy" is not a "disaster recovery plan" nor a "contigency plan", while it is a key part in them.
"you can't treat everything like it is mission-critical finance data for a global bank."
True, but that shouldn't mean you don't follow the basic stated guidelines. Probably Tom Allensworth thought that (well, my systems are not "mission-critical finance data for a global bank") and surely thought, "well, my solution is well suited to meet the needs of the environment" though he didn't follow my stated guidelines. Well, he knows now how wrong he was.
"Tell me where I'm wrong."
Let's see. I outlied on a different post what the bare minimumns for a backup are. Let's check against then:
* There has to be no less than two complete data sets non connected with the systems being protected: checked; you have the first line with rsync and the second one on tar.
* There has to be no less than one complete data set off-sited from were the systems being protected "live in": checked; east coast servers data are off-sited to your west-coast facilities.
* There has to be no less than one current copy of the documentation needed to redeploy from barebones the protected systems off-sited from the facilities were the systems being protected "live in": UNCHECKED. You don't say nothing about it, so what happens if you get under the paradigmatic bus -or your east coast facilities get fired with you in?
* At the very least two people -the backup responsible and her direct superior, have to know where the above mentioned documentation lives and they must have the ability to recover it: UNCHECKED; see point above.
* If you haven't tried restoring from it, it isn't a backup: on my previous post I marked this only as a "side note", but thanks to rtfa-troll that offered a clear way to say it, I think I'll raise this to the "needed" condition. So, it goes as your third UNCHECKED. You think your data will be recoverable, but you won't know till the need arises.
And then there are some more questions. You don't say nothing about your west coast facilities. Are they needed for making bussiness? If so, are you backing up then? You told you are using some form of rsync. That probably will suffice for data, but what about the systems themselves? Will you be able to recover from barebones? What about apps, filesystem layouts, recovering order, etc? The need to maintain current recovering procedures docs are there for a reason.
Regarding money, you said "We had zero budget": what about your labour costs and those of the data lines and physical assests like the backup host? On the other hand I have zero respect for companies that leave "zero budget" for their disaster recovery plans. The only way for a "zero budget" to be sensible is if corporate data's value is zero too, not a company one would want to work in. Of course, there's no real chance for that to be true, so the only other possibility is that management is -almost criminally, moronic which, again, doesn't make it a place one would want to work in.