Yeah, they tend to be industrial units and they're often a little bit specialist, and a little bit expensive. But they do exist, and look pretty ideal when combined with stuff like this.
Trust me, throughput is still important if you're running these in a fileserver on a fast link (10Gb ethernet link, infiniband, fibre channel, etc). The read & write speeds of standard SSD's mean you need a whole bunch in parallel to prevent them becoming a bottleneck, which makes them hard to integrate into existing servers.
In contrast, a single fast PCIe SSD can drop right in. There's definately a market for high bandwidth SSD's in high end storage devices.
Yup, and people like myself would gladly have paid for a copy of those. If they'd made napster a licenced service, with record companies, napster, and the individual hosts taking a cut of each file shared it could have been huge.
No, TFA shows two sample pictures, and TFA didn't do any comparison at all, especially not any based on these particular pictures. The *doctors* compared wounds on ten patients and decided that the laser-bonded scars were healing better, which is what the article reports.
The point of the pictures isn't so *you* can second guess the doctors (who believe it or not know an awful lot more about this than you do). They are there to give a quick visual impression of what's going on, to complement the real detail contained in the text of the article.
If you really want to double check the results, go find the original research paper. However I think you'll find it's rather longer and not quite so interesting to read.
God, 9 years on and the record companies *still* don't have anything that's even close to Napster for ease of use and sheer range of music. My CD purchases probably have dropped off, but that's because for all that time I've been waiting for them to finally release a music download service that actually compares to the stuff I've already used.
What they perhaps don't realise is that myself and many others would gladly pay for the music we listen to, but I'm not going to be tied down to listening to it x number of times, or on x devices, or with it limited to x copies. I also don't want limits on what I can and can't listen to. If I'm going to sign up for a paid service, I want to be confident that I can download pretty much whatever I want.
Napster had all of that, and pretty much a monopoly on the download market. Makes you wonder what might have happened if the record companies had worked out a way of licensing tracks shared through it, instead of driving sharing underground.
Not only that, but they're getting free advertising off the back of it too. Slashdot have run the story at least twice, and I'll bet the other tech magazines covered it a few times too.
Right now Netflix execs are laughing all the way to the bank, and their competitors are kicking themselves that they never thought of this.
Somebody thoroughly deserves their bonus for thinking of this one.
If Google really can make Chrome a valid alternative it's going to be huge. As others have said above, I can't see Google supporting add-ons, if only because ad blockers are not something Google are going to be keen on.
However, a valid alternative to Microsoft's shoddy browser, with solid backing behind it could shake up the browser market. If Google get decent market share, it could force Microsoft to finally support web standards.
I'm also pretty sure that any major feature Google invent will soon be copied by IE and Firefox, so in another 6-12 months us techies who want add-ons, ad blockers, but still want separate processes for each tab will have all of that in Firefox. So long term, you could see pressure on Microsoft from two sides: Chrome eroding IE's market share for regualar desktop users, and Firefox remaining the browser of choice on Linux and for more advanced Windows users.
I'd mod you up, but somebody forgot to include +1 inspired:-)
I can just see it now, as the Scientists address the Intelligent Design fanatics: "Why yes, we do teach creationism. Of course they're usually past that stage by kindergarten..."
I'd disagree. Patching definitely isn't the easiest way to secure this network. If I don't have AV or firewalls, I then have to manage patches for over 100 applications to keep my network secure. By ensuring our internet access is heavily restricted, we have a hugely reduced window for viruses to enter the building, reducing the need to patch.
We have a two stage corporate firewall, e-mail filtering, and locked down workstations that in combination mean we:
- blocks access to non work related sites outside of lunch breaks
- block all executable content
- quarantine all questionable content (including office documents and pdf's), from all but a few trusted sites
- block all scripts, activeX controls, flash, and all similar functionality from all but a list of known trusted sites.
When I say my reaction to this alert was "meh", that was for a good reason. In the past two years there has been precisely one vulnerability report from Microsoft where we did not already have every single mitigating factor in place. For that patch we reacted quickly, and had it rolled out to all workstations within 24 hours. However, the vast majority of web based viruses require activex or scripting to infect your computer. With these disabled, there are very few infections that are capable of attacking our clients.
The overall effect is that instead of spending hours each week testing patches, rolling them out, and fixing the problems that the patches create, we spend maybe 4-5 hours a year on security patches, and probably 30 minutes a week authorizing downloads. It means we have a very stable network, that requires very little time to manage.
Of course we're not finished yet. Viruses are a big concern, and while I think we have a good setup, nothing is perfect, and I've dealt first hand with mass infections in the past. We have plans to improve our disaster recovery process so that we can recover from a site wide virus in an hour or two. Long term we intend to isolate key areas of the network to reduce the risk of an infection affecting certain departments, and we are also closely watching Linux and Solaris, to see if there is a way we can provide a mix of operating systems to our users, instead of relying on just one.
I saw all the fuss last week about this, so I went ahead and read the MS release. My reaction: "meh". Yes, we're running windows. About 100 desktops and 13 servers. No, we don't patch everything at the drop of a hat.
This patch will be rolled out here in 2-3 months, along with a bunch of other MS patches. Do we test everything thoroughly? No, that would be far too much time and effort. We wait a few months so that everybody else can do the bulk of the testing for us, then internally we simply roll patches out to IT first for a couple of weeks, then send them to the rest of the company. Sometimes we'll go 6-12 months between patches.
Do I worry about Viruses? Yes, I'm constantly aware of them, and I read most of the MS security bulletins, but it's not something that keeps me awake at night. In the last 2 years I've seen just one bug that actually had a chance of infecting our machines. Good firewall and e-mail security, and locked down workstations are a far better solution than patching all the time.
Most people don't seem to realise that it's actually pretty easy to secure windows, and to do so with minimal disruption. 99% of our users don't even know what we do. For the rest, the extra security adds a few minutes delay from time to time.
I just downloaded the crossover-pro and crossover-games packages at over 600Kb/s each. Whoever's running those servers knows how to handle their traffic.
If overproduction of CaMKII is enough to stop mice remembering, does limiting the production have the opposite effect?
I've always had a terrible memory, stuff like this makes you wonder if it's just that my brain's running a mix of chemicals that impair that particular functionality.
Watch Alien, then Aliens then try playing AvP (Aliens vs Predator) as a Marine.
The first 5 minutes, all you're doing is walking around thinking "please don't kill me, please don't kill me".
Then you get into the game, and for a while it's fun. Right until the motion detector starts up with it's "blip.... blip.... blip.. blip.bip.bip". I defy anybody to hear that without thinking "SHIT, I'M GONNA DIE..."
Come on folks, how exactly this is news? One of the major advantages of a central repository for software is that you do have that central control, so you can require programs to be of a reasonable standard and can also disable malware or abusive software that makes it on there. It's a big advantage distributions like Ubuntu have over Windows.
*If* Google were to abuse this like Apple have done then yeah, it'll be bad. Until then it's just common sense.
Ok, if they had released a statement saying they were investigating passenger electronics and nothing else, then yes, as you say there would be an argument that they were trying to shift the blame. However I defy you to find any such message coming from Quantas.
If you actually read the original article (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10536660), you will find that it's the NZ Herald who made the statement that Quantas were probing the laptop link. And even that looks like nothing more than a trumped up headline since it appears that the statement was actually made by a spokesman for the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), in response to what was looks to me like a leading question from the Courier Mail:
"Certainly in our discussions with passengers that is exactly the sort of question we will be asking - 'Were you using a computer?'," The Courier Mail quoted an Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) spokesman as saying.
So somebody at the Courer Mail asked the Australian Transport Bureau if they will be asking passengers about their computer use (which is probably a routine part of the investigation anyway), and somehow the ATSB's reply to that gets morphed into Quantas trying to shift the blame onto laptops....
From the summary: "not interference from passenger electronics, as Qantas had initially claimed"
Care to show me where Quantas claimed that? It seems to be all the rage to say that Quantas are shifting the blame, but so far I've seen nothing at all to indicate that was the case. What I *have* seen was a statement from Quantas saying they were investigating passenger electronics as a possible cause. Now I know it doesn't make such good news, but I'm afraid there's a world of difference between being investigating something and trying to place the blame on it. Unfortunately that's a distinction that appears to be lost on the crowd...
It took me a while to work out Chrome's bookmarks, but once I got it into my head, that bookmark toolbar is superb. Being able to show / hide it with a keypress, and organise bookmarks into groups while still having all of them at my fingertips was great.
The rest of chrome is still a little buggy for me, and I'm waiting for the Linux version, but so far I really like what I see.
Why? Because you can bet that Wallmart execs are not at all happy about having to pay for and run a bunch of servers that are no longer making them any money. You can bet that just opened their eyes to the downsides of DRM, and that some people at the top are now asking the music labels some tricky questions, namely "how long are we supposed to keep paying to run these damn things now?".
Wallmart will not want to be left in this position again, and I can see this causing them to put some real pressure on the music labels to drop DRM.
It also means that Wallmart, Apple and Amazon are all pushing for non DRM music. All together that's some pretty hefty leverage!
Looked into, and discarded as far too clunky. Protection Manager was software restriction on steroids. Far easier to produce the initial whitelist, and far easier to administer later on. For now we're having to stick with anti-virus software and good firewall / e-mail policies.
They may be updating the Sysinternals tools (after changing the EULA's on them all), but what about Protection Manager? That looked like a great product (and one we were planning to buy), but was conveniently buried the second Microsoft acquired Winternals & Sysinternals.
Protection Manager was launched in March 2006, and removed from the market by Microsoft in November that same year. It was the first thing I looked for when Microsoft acquired Winternals and while I wasn't surprised to see it removed, I've been waiting ever since in the hope that it would be re-launched. That has never happened, and my belief now is that Microsoft deliberately buried it, thinking it would hurt Vista sales.
Protection Manager was a program that gave system administrators a simple and effective way to whitelist the applications that could be run on their network. The idea was that you ran it for a few weeks to generate a baseline list of allowed applications, then turned on protection, after which non authorised programs would be stopped until approved by an administrator. It also allowed you to run individual applications with admin rights, making the management of legacy software far simpler.
A few choice quotes from MS: "the decision was made to withdrawal Winternals Recovery Manager, Defrag Manager and Protection Manager in their current form from the market effective November 17th 2006"
Q. What is the future of Protection Manager? A. Winternals Protection Manager has been withdrawn from the product line. Many Protection Manager usage scenarios are addressed by the new User Account Control feature of Windows Vista." source: http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/wifaq.mspx
Personally, I don't see that UAC offerse half the features Protection Manager did, and we have no desire to move over to Vista anyway. To me, it looks like Microsoft removed from the market a program that would have been genuinely useful to many of their customers, once again putting sales & marketing ahead of security and their customers.
Ok, forgive my ignorance, but what exactly is the problem here? It sounds like they can redirect my click, getting my browser to visit another page. Apart from being a slight nuisance, how is that going to cause a problem?
Surely it's only going to be an issue if you are also vulnerable to something else that allows the target site to install malicious software on your machine, and people being vulnerable to stuff like that isn't exactly news.
I mean, if I've already locked down javascript, plugins, active scripting, etc in IE (or just noscript in Firefox), surely the absolute worst this can do is redirect me to a site that try as it might, still can't infect my pc?
The summary and article sound like the sky is falling, but unless I've misunderstood, I don't even think I need to react to this. Sure, it'll be mildly irritating if I visit an affected site, but I'm already protected from anything worse.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, they tend to be industrial units and they're often a little bit specialist, and a little bit expensive. But they do exist, and look pretty ideal when combined with stuff like this.
A PCIe "hub".
You mean like this:
http://www.sonnettech.com/product/fusionraidexpander.html
or this:
http://www.dulcesystems.com/html/pro_ex.html
There's a company out there who do a whole range, including 13 slot expanders too, but I can't find them right now.
You mean like this: http://www.mars-tech.com/ans-9010b.htm
And the battery doesn't need to be huge either - it backs your data up to a flash drive if the power cut lasts more than a few seconds.
Trust me, throughput is still important if you're running these in a fileserver on a fast link (10Gb ethernet link, infiniband, fibre channel, etc). The read & write speeds of standard SSD's mean you need a whole bunch in parallel to prevent them becoming a bottleneck, which makes them hard to integrate into existing servers.
In contrast, a single fast PCIe SSD can drop right in. There's definately a market for high bandwidth SSD's in high end storage devices.
Yup, and people like myself would gladly have paid for a copy of those. If they'd made napster a licenced service, with record companies, napster, and the individual hosts taking a cut of each file shared it could have been huge.
No, TFA shows two sample pictures, and TFA didn't do any comparison at all, especially not any based on these particular pictures. The *doctors* compared wounds on ten patients and decided that the laser-bonded scars were healing better, which is what the article reports.
The point of the pictures isn't so *you* can second guess the doctors (who believe it or not know an awful lot more about this than you do). They are there to give a quick visual impression of what's going on, to complement the real detail contained in the text of the article.
If you really want to double check the results, go find the original research paper. However I think you'll find it's rather longer and not quite so interesting to read.
God, 9 years on and the record companies *still* don't have anything that's even close to Napster for ease of use and sheer range of music. My CD purchases probably have dropped off, but that's because for all that time I've been waiting for them to finally release a music download service that actually compares to the stuff I've already used.
What they perhaps don't realise is that myself and many others would gladly pay for the music we listen to, but I'm not going to be tied down to listening to it x number of times, or on x devices, or with it limited to x copies. I also don't want limits on what I can and can't listen to. If I'm going to sign up for a paid service, I want to be confident that I can download pretty much whatever I want.
Napster had all of that, and pretty much a monopoly on the download market. Makes you wonder what might have happened if the record companies had worked out a way of licensing tracks shared through it, instead of driving sharing underground.
Not only that, but they're getting free advertising off the back of it too. Slashdot have run the story at least twice, and I'll bet the other tech magazines covered it a few times too.
Right now Netflix execs are laughing all the way to the bank, and their competitors are kicking themselves that they never thought of this.
Somebody thoroughly deserves their bonus for thinking of this one.
If Google really can make Chrome a valid alternative it's going to be huge. As others have said above, I can't see Google supporting add-ons, if only because ad blockers are not something Google are going to be keen on.
However, a valid alternative to Microsoft's shoddy browser, with solid backing behind it could shake up the browser market. If Google get decent market share, it could force Microsoft to finally support web standards.
I'm also pretty sure that any major feature Google invent will soon be copied by IE and Firefox, so in another 6-12 months us techies who want add-ons, ad blockers, but still want separate processes for each tab will have all of that in Firefox. So long term, you could see pressure on Microsoft from two sides: Chrome eroding IE's market share for regualar desktop users, and Firefox remaining the browser of choice on Linux and for more advanced Windows users.
I'd mod you up, but somebody forgot to include +1 inspired :-)
I can just see it now, as the Scientists address the Intelligent Design fanatics:
"Why yes, we do teach creationism. Of course they're usually past that stage by kindergarten..."
Hahahah, +1 Pwn3d :-)
Here's a crazy idea: TURN OFF THE CAMERA AND COMPUTERS!!
Seriously, is it really that hard to read the meter every once in a while?
I'd disagree. Patching definitely isn't the easiest way to secure this network. If I don't have AV or firewalls, I then have to manage patches for over 100 applications to keep my network secure. By ensuring our internet access is heavily restricted, we have a hugely reduced window for viruses to enter the building, reducing the need to patch.
We have a two stage corporate firewall, e-mail filtering, and locked down workstations that in combination mean we:
- blocks access to non work related sites outside of lunch breaks
- block all executable content
- quarantine all questionable content (including office documents and pdf's), from all but a few trusted sites
- block all scripts, activeX controls, flash, and all similar functionality from all but a list of known trusted sites.
When I say my reaction to this alert was "meh", that was for a good reason. In the past two years there has been precisely one vulnerability report from Microsoft where we did not already have every single mitigating factor in place. For that patch we reacted quickly, and had it rolled out to all workstations within 24 hours. However, the vast majority of web based viruses require activex or scripting to infect your computer. With these disabled, there are very few infections that are capable of attacking our clients.
The overall effect is that instead of spending hours each week testing patches, rolling them out, and fixing the problems that the patches create, we spend maybe 4-5 hours a year on security patches, and probably 30 minutes a week authorizing downloads. It means we have a very stable network, that requires very little time to manage.
Of course we're not finished yet. Viruses are a big concern, and while I think we have a good setup, nothing is perfect, and I've dealt first hand with mass infections in the past. We have plans to improve our disaster recovery process so that we can recover from a site wide virus in an hour or two. Long term we intend to isolate key areas of the network to reduce the risk of an infection affecting certain departments, and we are also closely watching Linux and Solaris, to see if there is a way we can provide a mix of operating systems to our users, instead of relying on just one.
I saw all the fuss last week about this, so I went ahead and read the MS release. My reaction: "meh". Yes, we're running windows. About 100 desktops and 13 servers. No, we don't patch everything at the drop of a hat.
This patch will be rolled out here in 2-3 months, along with a bunch of other MS patches. Do we test everything thoroughly? No, that would be far too much time and effort. We wait a few months so that everybody else can do the bulk of the testing for us, then internally we simply roll patches out to IT first for a couple of weeks, then send them to the rest of the company. Sometimes we'll go 6-12 months between patches.
Do I worry about Viruses? Yes, I'm constantly aware of them, and I read most of the MS security bulletins, but it's not something that keeps me awake at night. In the last 2 years I've seen just one bug that actually had a chance of infecting our machines. Good firewall and e-mail security, and locked down workstations are a far better solution than patching all the time.
Most people don't seem to realise that it's actually pretty easy to secure windows, and to do so with minimal disruption. 99% of our users don't even know what we do. For the rest, the extra security adds a few minutes delay from time to time.
I just downloaded the crossover-pro and crossover-games packages at over 600Kb/s each. Whoever's running those servers knows how to handle their traffic.
If overproduction of CaMKII is enough to stop mice remembering, does limiting the production have the opposite effect?
I've always had a terrible memory, stuff like this makes you wonder if it's just that my brain's running a mix of chemicals that impair that particular functionality.
Watch Alien, then Aliens then try playing AvP (Aliens vs Predator) as a Marine.
The first 5 minutes, all you're doing is walking around thinking "please don't kill me, please don't kill me".
Then you get into the game, and for a while it's fun. Right until the motion detector starts up with it's "blip.... blip.... blip.. blip.bip.bip". I defy anybody to hear that without thinking "SHIT, I'M GONNA DIE..."
Great game. More fun as the Alien though :->
... now, hands down if you're a malware writer.
Come on folks, how exactly this is news? One of the major advantages of a central repository for software is that you do have that central control, so you can require programs to be of a reasonable standard and can also disable malware or abusive software that makes it on there. It's a big advantage distributions like Ubuntu have over Windows.
*If* Google were to abuse this like Apple have done then yeah, it'll be bad. Until then it's just common sense.
Ok, if they had released a statement saying they were investigating passenger electronics and nothing else, then yes, as you say there would be an argument that they were trying to shift the blame. However I defy you to find any such message coming from Quantas.
If you actually read the original article (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10536660), you will find that it's the NZ Herald who made the statement that Quantas were probing the laptop link. And even that looks like nothing more than a trumped up headline since it appears that the statement was actually made by a spokesman for the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), in response to what was looks to me like a leading question from the Courier Mail:
"Certainly in our discussions with passengers that is exactly the sort of question we will be asking - 'Were you using a computer?'," The Courier Mail quoted an Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) spokesman as saying.
So somebody at the Courer Mail asked the Australian Transport Bureau if they will be asking passengers about their computer use (which is probably a routine part of the investigation anyway), and somehow the ATSB's reply to that gets morphed into Quantas trying to shift the blame onto laptops....
Mob intelligence... don't you just love it. o_0
From the summary: "not interference from passenger electronics, as Qantas had initially claimed"
Care to show me where Quantas claimed that? It seems to be all the rage to say that Quantas are shifting the blame, but so far I've seen nothing at all to indicate that was the case. What I *have* seen was a statement from Quantas saying they were investigating passenger electronics as a possible cause. Now I know it doesn't make such good news, but I'm afraid there's a world of difference between being investigating something and trying to place the blame on it. Unfortunately that's a distinction that appears to be lost on the crowd...
It took me a while to work out Chrome's bookmarks, but once I got it into my head, that bookmark toolbar is superb. Being able to show / hide it with a keypress, and organise bookmarks into groups while still having all of them at my fingertips was great.
The rest of chrome is still a little buggy for me, and I'm waiting for the Linux version, but so far I really like what I see.
Now *this* is good news.
Why? Because you can bet that Wallmart execs are not at all happy about having to pay for and run a bunch of servers that are no longer making them any money. You can bet that just opened their eyes to the downsides of DRM, and that some people at the top are now asking the music labels some tricky questions, namely "how long are we supposed to keep paying to run these damn things now?".
Wallmart will not want to be left in this position again, and I can see this causing them to put some real pressure on the music labels to drop DRM.
It also means that Wallmart, Apple and Amazon are all pushing for non DRM music. All together that's some pretty hefty leverage!
Looked into, and discarded as far too clunky. Protection Manager was software restriction on steroids. Far easier to produce the initial whitelist, and far easier to administer later on. For now we're having to stick with anti-virus software and good firewall / e-mail policies.
They may be updating the Sysinternals tools (after changing the EULA's on them all), but what about Protection Manager? That looked like a great product (and one we were planning to buy), but was conveniently buried the second Microsoft acquired Winternals & Sysinternals.
Protection Manager was launched in March 2006, and removed from the market by Microsoft in November that same year. It was the first thing I looked for when Microsoft acquired Winternals and while I wasn't surprised to see it removed, I've been waiting ever since in the hope that it would be re-launched. That has never happened, and my belief now is that Microsoft deliberately buried it, thinking it would hurt Vista sales.
Protection Manager was a program that gave system administrators a simple and effective way to whitelist the applications that could be run on their network. The idea was that you ran it for a few weeks to generate a baseline list of allowed applications, then turned on protection, after which non authorised programs would be stopped until approved by an administrator. It also allowed you to run individual applications with admin rights, making the management of legacy software far simpler.
Most of the literature regarding the program has gone now, but this is a handy guide:
http://www.inuit.se/?page=130
A few choice quotes from MS:
"the decision was made to withdrawal Winternals Recovery Manager, Defrag Manager and Protection Manager in their current form from the market effective November 17th 2006"
Q. What is the future of Protection Manager?
A. Winternals Protection Manager has been withdrawn from the product line. Many Protection Manager usage scenarios are addressed by the new User Account Control feature of Windows Vista."
source: http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/wifaq.mspx
Personally, I don't see that UAC offerse half the features Protection Manager did, and we have no desire to move over to Vista anyway. To me, it looks like Microsoft removed from the market a program that would have been genuinely useful to many of their customers, once again putting sales & marketing ahead of security and their customers.
Ok, forgive my ignorance, but what exactly is the problem here? It sounds like they can redirect my click, getting my browser to visit another page. Apart from being a slight nuisance, how is that going to cause a problem?
Surely it's only going to be an issue if you are also vulnerable to something else that allows the target site to install malicious software on your machine, and people being vulnerable to stuff like that isn't exactly news.
I mean, if I've already locked down javascript, plugins, active scripting, etc in IE (or just noscript in Firefox), surely the absolute worst this can do is redirect me to a site that try as it might, still can't infect my pc?
The summary and article sound like the sky is falling, but unless I've misunderstood, I don't even think I need to react to this. Sure, it'll be mildly irritating if I visit an affected site, but I'm already protected from anything worse.
So far it's getting a "-1 Meh" from me.