The most striking example of their kiddie-ness is probably their spelling (both in French and English);
My God! Taco is really a Kiddie!
I know, I know, flaming someone on spelling isn't exactly glorious, but when the ratio goes above one spelling error per word (and I'm not making this up), you've seriously got to wonder.
Naw, it's just one of many ways to be a karma whore.:)
It still remains to be seen if the bondholders will come out ahead. They claim that the assets of Excite@Home alone are worth much more than AT&T's buyout offer of $307 million. I guess they're waiting for a better offer.
It's funny how things are only worth as much as people are willing to pay for them.
I always get annoyed when people say "Why does'nt america have cool cellular networks like europe etc."
because america is a big place and it costs money!
I hear ya... I used to do some web work for a Canadian travel company, and we had to put in some of the wierdest business alert rules you can imagine. Such things as "if you want to fly to Toronto, and rent a car to take a nice leisurely scenic drive to Vancouver, don't! It will take you 4 days to drive half-way across the country". It was a bit of a shock for European travellers to be in a country where you couldn't drive across the thing in 4 or 5 hours.
It should be noted that the Orion Server has been licensed by Oracle as the main J2EE component of their 9i Application Server, and does a great job in both performance and fault-tolerance.
When Oracle first started producing their appliance products, they were based on Sun's microkernel.
That has since changed. They are now using Suse Linux for all of their appliances. They work fairly well for what they are designed to do, which is to provide an administratively simple appliance... you don't deal with the OS, ony the Oracle admin interfaces.
Looking at my client list, 4 out of 12 of them are running various Oracle instances in Production on Linux, both Suse (the only officially Oracle supported Linux distro, if I'm not mistaken) and Red Hat. 9 of those 12 run Linux in development environments.
While the Linux deployment has usually been in a development environment, I've seen the trend start to move into Production environments. I think this can be attributed to a number of factors; the maturity/stability of Linux, the cost (hardware and software), the feature set (journalling file systems without having to pay through the nose for Veritas), and the hardware availability.
That and the fact that Oracle offers support for Suse. That is HUGE.
While the bigger companies are still using Solaris and HP-UX for their Oracle needs due to the hardware involved (I have yet to see an E10K run Linux, never mind in production), most of the smaller companies I deal with are running Oracle on Linux in some part of their company.
Also, a number of Oracle's newer integrated development tools (JDeveloper, Enterprise Manager, etc.) are being ported to be 100% Java so that they will (and do) run on Linux.
Tom Clancy, Frank Herbert (the White Plague), and a whole bunch more have long had scenerios like this in their stories.
Conferences are easy targets. People coming from all over the state/country/world meet in a single place, do stuff for a day or three, and then leave.
During that day or three it is very easy to rig up some sort of aerosol-delivered "bad thing". That guy at the booth spraying the "air freshener" every 10-15 minutes, for instance.
After the conference, people all fly back to their home and whaddayaknow, you've got stuff spreading all over the place.
And what's in that air freshener?
I think everyone's a little hyped up on the whole Anthrax thing, when there are a BUNCH more lethal, contageous, and readily accessbile critters out there; ebola, smallpox, the list goes on. Such critters are WAY easier to contract and spread.
While I applaud everyone's attempt to make people FEEL better with these various public displays of "security tightening", I believe that a lot of these measures only comfort the "soccer Mom" types. Jack said it best with "the truth? you can't HANDLE the truth!"
For instance, airport security here in Canada recently forced people to remove Poppies from their jackets because the little pin that held them on was "sharp and dangerous". Give me a fscking break!
Meanwhile, I'm boarding the plane with a number of even MORE dangerous "weapons" that the security people are clueless about. How about pens and pencils? Quite effective at stabbing people. How about my car keys? One of the first things my girlfriend learned when she took a self-defense course was how to grip her keys and rake them over or stab them into a would-be attacker's eyes. How about that laptop security cable I carry to lock down my laptop? Nice little garrotte, never mind my belt, shoe laces, etc. How hard would it be to sneak in some wire under/inside a belt? I've seen a number of big-assed country style belts set off a metal detector and then be passed through with only a swipe of the hand-help detector. Who knows what's really inside or underneath it? How about my eye glasses? Pop out a lens and you've got some pretty sharp objects. Never mind some of the frames from Oakly and company these days... they can be considered weapons in and of themselves.
And my personal pet peave; how does powering on a laptop prove that that is all that it is? The 60 year old lady at security making $6 an hour wouldn't know a functioning laptop if she saw it... a couple hundred bucks spent at Radio Shack would do well enough to fool her and even some somewhat "professional" or informed computer people. Besides, what's to say the entire laptop shell or case for that fully functional laptop isn't made of explosives? Talk about the ULTIMATE "blue screen of death".
The answer? I think we just gotta stop being paranoid and get to know our neighbours better. How many apartment buildings have untis in them that are full of "conspirators" whose neighbours go out of their way to NOT get to know them or what they're doing?
The best security force we could hope for right now is a bunch of nosy neighbours with lots of free time on their hands.:)
But most Solaris boxes I deal with are rackmounts through a Telnet session. Maybe I have just slept through the "Solaris as a desktop" revolution. Please someone fill me in on what I missed.
Same here. The only time I have to deal with a desktop of any sort is usually when I have to do an Oracle install. (--start rant-- where the hell did the non-Xwindows based command line install go!? --end rant--...but that's another issue that my therapist and I are working out)
I also do a lot of Canadian Government work, and it's mandated that all windowing capabilities not be installed on production servers (web/app/db).
People have been skipping ads, not only via VCRs, Tivos, and other timeshifting devices, but by flipping channels and leaving, for years.
I thought it was an accepted fact that advertisers are gambling that you will see an ad, and that the ad will have an effect on your buying patterns.
Damn straight... what better time to take a dump or head to the fridge than during a commercial?
Unless it's the SuperBowl. Why? Because those commercials are WORTH WATCHING! Too many advertisers treat the viewing public as simplistic morons that give a shit about feminine hygene products, and then wonder why we don't want to watch their little spots. Gee, go figure...
Make something that's creative/funny/entertaining, and it will be watched. And not just on TV... remember AdCritic.com?
The issue isn't whether or not Linux can handle it... I'm looking for the ENTIRE boot process (as in the BIOS, etc.) to be accessible. Your answer assumes that Linux boots successfully. What happens if Linux won't boot due to a disk issue? On my Sun box, I can deal with it and reboot the machine, and change any BIOS settings... all through the serial port.
That's the kind of functionality I'm looking for in the non-Sun world.
FYI, I haven't seen anything on their site regarding them dropping the cards, but at the same time they aren't providing any information for them either... they are merely giving you a phone number to call or an email address to write if you have any inquiries.
My bet is that they are not providing them any more and are concentrating on their IP products.
Personally, I use Promise SuperTrakSX 6000 IDE RAID cards. They work quite well, and offer just about any RAID config you want to use with IDE drives. They also support hot-swappable IDE drives, but require a special drive bay in order to protect electronic components from frying (motherboards, controller cards, drives, etc.).
Crixus said:"For the most part, all employers... corporations in particular, have declared war on their labor."
That's the exact reason I bailed and started my OWN company, bringing with me abunch of the other highly quality, excellent people that I was working with. It was one of those "hey, this sucks... wanna go do our own thing, work a bit harder, but have some fun in the process?" It's worked out great. We do Oracle/Java development for some of the biggest music companies in the world, so the perks and the "cool factor" are WAY up there.
I've found that most "un-fun" jobs are a direct result to the frustration felt with the management/corporate infrastructure, not the actual job itself. So, we ended up keeping the same job, just changed the infrastructure.
If anything, we may have come to appreciate, and therefor tolerate, that infrastructure a bit more by having become it.
It's quite funny (or sad, really) that most developers seem to think that just because information is encrypted or delivered through SSL that it's actually secure.
This is simply not the case.
What a LOT of people fail to understand is that in an automated process (such as an on-line transaction) where that sensitive information, such as a credit card number, is required to complete that transaction, there will more than likely be some automated process for getting that information from the database.
I've worked with developers that have utilized encrypted storage for credit card numbers, passwords, etc., and they seem really surprised when I hack into it. When asked how I did it, I said, "why waste your time on breaking the encryption when all you have to do is find the function you guys call that does just that?".
It comes down to the fact that it isn't the technology, it's the implementation.
In short, it could be summed up to say that most "secure" sites lock the front door, but leave the key under the mat.
Slashdot Mirror
The most striking example of their kiddie-ness is probably their spelling (both in French and English);
:)
My God! Taco is really a Kiddie!
I know, I know, flaming someone on spelling isn't exactly glorious, but when the ratio goes above one spelling error per word (and I'm not making this up), you've seriously got to wonder.
Naw, it's just one of many ways to be a karma whore.
It's funny how things are only worth as much as people are willing to pay for them.
I hear ya... I used to do some web work for a Canadian travel company, and we had to put in some of the wierdest business alert rules you can imagine. Such things as "if you want to fly to Toronto, and rent a car to take a nice leisurely scenic drive to Vancouver, don't! It will take you 4 days to drive half-way across the country". It was a bit of a shock for European travellers to be in a country where you couldn't drive across the thing in 4 or 5 hours.
Same thing goes for the wireless headspace.
LeVar Burton also seems to be directing his fair share of the new Enterprise series as well.
It should be noted that the Orion Server has been licensed by Oracle as the main J2EE component of their 9i Application Server, and does a great job in both performance and fault-tolerance.
I didn't know the Apple ][e game was in colour! I only played it in monochrome green.
And you can only guess how the beer was originally introduced into the mix...
Researcher A: Man! Another failure... what are we doing wrong?
Researcher B: I don't know... here... let's have a beer before we take off...
*sprrrt* of opening the can...
Researcher B: Hey! Watch where you're spraying it!
The rest is history.
Didn't know about it... I stand corrected.
:)
When Oracle first started producing their appliance products, they were based on Sun's microkernel.
That has since changed. They are now using Suse Linux for all of their appliances. They work fairly well for what they are designed to do, which is to provide an administratively simple appliance... you don't deal with the OS, ony the Oracle admin interfaces.
Looking at my client list, 4 out of 12 of them are running various Oracle instances in Production on Linux, both Suse (the only officially Oracle supported Linux distro, if I'm not mistaken) and Red Hat. 9 of those 12 run Linux in development environments.
While the Linux deployment has usually been in a development environment, I've seen the trend start to move into Production environments. I think this can be attributed to a number of factors; the maturity/stability of Linux, the cost (hardware and software), the feature set (journalling file systems without having to pay through the nose for Veritas), and the hardware availability.
That and the fact that Oracle offers support for Suse. That is HUGE.
While the bigger companies are still using Solaris and HP-UX for their Oracle needs due to the hardware involved (I have yet to see an E10K run Linux, never mind in production), most of the smaller companies I deal with are running Oracle on Linux in some part of their company.
Also, a number of Oracle's newer integrated development tools (JDeveloper, Enterprise Manager, etc.) are being ported to be 100% Java so that they will (and do) run on Linux.
Hmmm... in some wierd, sick, twisted way, targetting Comdex may do us all a favour.
Yeah, but it's a great way to get out of work for a day with some techie buddies.
Even if all you do is cut up all the people in the booths, it's still fun to get out and mingle and kill a day.
Tom Clancy, Frank Herbert (the White Plague), and a whole bunch more have long had scenerios like this in their stories.
:)
Conferences are easy targets. People coming from all over the state/country/world meet in a single place, do stuff for a day or three, and then leave.
During that day or three it is very easy to rig up some sort of aerosol-delivered "bad thing". That guy at the booth spraying the "air freshener" every 10-15 minutes, for instance.
After the conference, people all fly back to their home and whaddayaknow, you've got stuff spreading all over the place.
And what's in that air freshener?
I think everyone's a little hyped up on the whole Anthrax thing, when there are a BUNCH more lethal, contageous, and readily accessbile critters out there; ebola, smallpox, the list goes on. Such critters are WAY easier to contract and spread.
While I applaud everyone's attempt to make people FEEL better with these various public displays of "security tightening", I believe that a lot of these measures only comfort the "soccer Mom" types. Jack said it best with "the truth? you can't HANDLE the truth!"
For instance, airport security here in Canada recently forced people to remove Poppies from their jackets because the little pin that held them on was "sharp and dangerous". Give me a fscking break!
Meanwhile, I'm boarding the plane with a number of even MORE dangerous "weapons" that the security people are clueless about. How about pens and pencils? Quite effective at stabbing people. How about my car keys? One of the first things my girlfriend learned when she took a self-defense course was how to grip her keys and rake them over or stab them into a would-be attacker's eyes. How about that laptop security cable I carry to lock down my laptop? Nice little garrotte, never mind my belt, shoe laces, etc. How hard would it be to sneak in some wire under/inside a belt? I've seen a number of big-assed country style belts set off a metal detector and then be passed through with only a swipe of the hand-help detector. Who knows what's really inside or underneath it? How about my eye glasses? Pop out a lens and you've got some pretty sharp objects. Never mind some of the frames from Oakly and company these days... they can be considered weapons in and of themselves.
And my personal pet peave; how does powering on a laptop prove that that is all that it is? The 60 year old lady at security making $6 an hour wouldn't know a functioning laptop if she saw it... a couple hundred bucks spent at Radio Shack would do well enough to fool her and even some somewhat "professional" or informed computer people. Besides, what's to say the entire laptop shell or case for that fully functional laptop isn't made of explosives? Talk about the ULTIMATE "blue screen of death".
The answer? I think we just gotta stop being paranoid and get to know our neighbours better. How many apartment buildings have untis in them that are full of "conspirators" whose neighbours go out of their way to NOT get to know them or what they're doing?
The best security force we could hope for right now is a bunch of nosy neighbours with lots of free time on their hands.
You mean Pixar is getting into making databases as well?
Same here. The only time I have to deal with a desktop of any sort is usually when I have to do an Oracle install. (--start rant-- where the hell did the non-Xwindows based command line install go!? --end rant--
I also do a lot of Canadian Government work, and it's mandated that all windowing capabilities not be installed on production servers (web/app/db).
Silly me... I thought Leonardo was a mutated turtle that beat the crap out of people.
Damn straight... what better time to take a dump or head to the fridge than during a commercial?
Unless it's the SuperBowl. Why? Because those commercials are WORTH WATCHING! Too many advertisers treat the viewing public as simplistic morons that give a shit about feminine hygene products, and then wonder why we don't want to watch their little spots. Gee, go figure...
Make something that's creative/funny/entertaining, and it will be watched. And not just on TV... remember AdCritic.com?
All I know is that the last time I called my girlfriend a "karma-whore" she didn't get it, but hit me anyway.
Then, to top it off, after I explained it to her, she hit me again!
*sigh*
Thanks...
:)
They look like what I'm looking for.
:)
Just to confirm, though... is the entire boot process redirected to the serial port should a keyboard/mouse/monitor not be attached?
The issue isn't whether or not Linux can handle it... I'm looking for the ENTIRE boot process (as in the BIOS, etc.) to be accessible. Your answer assumes that Linux boots successfully. What happens if Linux won't boot due to a disk issue? On my Sun box, I can deal with it and reboot the machine, and change any BIOS settings... all through the serial port.
That's the kind of functionality I'm looking for in the non-Sun world.
FYI, I haven't seen anything on their site regarding them dropping the cards, but at the same time they aren't providing any information for them either... they are merely giving you a phone number to call or an email address to write if you have any inquiries.
My bet is that they are not providing them any more and are concentrating on their IP products.
Personally, I use Promise SuperTrakSX 6000 IDE RAID cards. They work quite well, and offer just about any RAID config you want to use with IDE drives. They also support hot-swappable IDE drives, but require a special drive bay in order to protect electronic components from frying (motherboards, controller cards, drives, etc.).
Use a diskette and carry a magnet with you.
:)
Can't wait for the obligatory "pull my finger" issuance.
That's the exact reason I bailed and started my OWN company, bringing with me abunch of the other highly quality, excellent people that I was working with. It was one of those "hey, this sucks... wanna go do our own thing, work a bit harder, but have some fun in the process?" It's worked out great. We do Oracle/Java development for some of the biggest music companies in the world, so the perks and the "cool factor" are WAY up there.
I've found that most "un-fun" jobs are a direct result to the frustration felt with the management/corporate infrastructure, not the actual job itself. So, we ended up keeping the same job, just changed the infrastructure.
If anything, we may have come to appreciate, and therefor tolerate, that infrastructure a bit more by having become it.
But at least it's on our own terms.
It's quite funny (or sad, really) that most developers seem to think that just because information is encrypted or delivered through SSL that it's actually secure.
This is simply not the case.
What a LOT of people fail to understand is that in an automated process (such as an on-line transaction) where that sensitive information, such as a credit card number, is required to complete that transaction, there will more than likely be some automated process for getting that information from the database.
I've worked with developers that have utilized encrypted storage for credit card numbers, passwords, etc., and they seem really surprised when I hack into it. When asked how I did it, I said, "why waste your time on breaking the encryption when all you have to do is find the function you guys call that does just that?".
It comes down to the fact that it isn't the technology, it's the implementation.
In short, it could be summed up to say that most "secure" sites lock the front door, but leave the key under the mat.