I know this one admin from SF that's a real whiz about network security. They even fired him for it.
I still haven't gotten a read on how the community feels about this guy. Personally, I feel for him. He lived, breathed, and slept that network. It was his life, and the thing worked goddamned well.
It was only when a bunch of idiots that shouldn't have been muddling about in his routers started to that things got weird.
PHBs don't understand logical security. They'll let you spend millions building a secure data center complete with armed guards and several layers of biometric security, but cannot understand why you need the same amount of money to buy security devices that only take up small amount of physical space.
My suggestion is that you spend a couple million building three redundant clusters of the most expensive IBM boxes you can find all to run the basic things you need like OpenVPN.
they have consistently voted to turn this country into a surveillance state to a degree comparable to Communist Russia, or the very same current China that these very same elected officials reprimanded Google and Yahoo for complying with.
It must really suck to see the world like this.
Honestly, the world is NOT out to get you. Bush is NOT hiding under you bed. You might seriously have some psychological problems if you feel this way, I would suggest consulting a psychiatrist because it sounds like you a borderline paranoid schizophrenic.
I suggest less internet and more "talking to other human beings". You'll find that the world is actually a much more pleasant place that it appears from behind whatever filter you're watching it through.
I understand your fear, I just wish you'd talk to a professional about it instead of fucking with our civil liberties.
Okay, the vast majority of us either work or have worked in IT, right?
How many times have you been sitting at somebody's desk, and Outlook happily pops up a new message that came into the inbox, you SHOULDN'T BE READING THAT!!!! How many times have you looked through maillog and seen the to and from on a bunch of mail messages, thats private data, dude! Ever had to do recovery on a dead drive and seen some pictures that weren't explicitly sent to you? Ever been poking through a squid log and seen a few of the gets that people are doing?
The point is that sometimes you come across data that you're not supposed to see (or in this case, hear). Be it in IT, the us postal service, or anything inbetween you do what you're supposed to do and IGNORE IT. It happens. If you have a problem with it, move to another country with no infrastructure.
Dave, thank you for the well thought out, informative post. Sometimes the OMFG BUSH DID IT! people need a wake up call.
Stopping slowly = brake lights. Stopping quickly = flashers. I've always thought that a system of lights that get brighter, or illuminate differently (think of that thing you hit at the fair. the harder you hit it, the higher the lights go) the harder you press the brakes.
I once went on a photo scavenger hunt....one of the things I needed a photo of was in target. I (like an idiot) had a Nikon D40 with a massive freaking external flash mounted on the top.
I thought I was going to get thrown out or arrested, instead the store employees thought it was funny/a neat idea (the scavenger hunt, i mean).
So you never know. Keep in mind that most fo the clerks you encounter are, in fact, 17 year old kids.
If you have an abundance of Geniuses, then they will do what the need to and make a buck. They may design a better way to do it, but it will get done none the less.
Yeah, they might even do something like genetically engineer epsilons to do their bidding while they sit around snogging the women and munching on soma.
Impossible? You couldn't get a video camera and record the screen for purposes of the video presentation? Maybe you just didn't think of this, but I get annoyed, too, when people use the word "impossible" as a substitute for thinking of alternatives.
I'm hoping this was sarcasm.
I guess i didn't explain it well enough. Impossible = "impossible within the realm of practicality"
I can't tell you how many times i've been laying in bed on my blackberry in the middle of the night or the early early morning explaining something to somebody at work.
I can only guess that there used to be staff on-site 24/7 that could answer questions. The problem is PHB types just getting used to us doing things that go above and beyond. I just had my boss have a meltdown on me this monday (yes, labor day) because he came into my office asking me to do something that is impossible, and I informed him that it was impossibe. (he wanted to embed video from our security system's DVR in a power-point presentation. Unfortunately, the DVR (for whatever insane reason) uses a propriety codec and doesn't offer a way to transcode).
Our bosses get so used to us going above-and-beyond that when we DON'T it is grounds for firing.
Can you imagine calling one of the accountants in at 2:00am because somebody messed something up? It wouldn't happen. If it DID, the accountant would be hailed as a hero that is committed to their job and deserves a promotion.
how many times have you been sitting at dinner mentally working through a coding problem? Or a networking thing? We're in the process of building a satelite office right now and I interrupted date last night to make a Fry's run to buy a telco rack and some patch panels. (because i needed it this morning and the city where our satelite office doesn't have a place that sells this kind of stuff).
Luckily....the girl needed a ipod case so it worked out....but it just pisses me off that this sort of behavior is expected.
Code changes from year to year, and I doubt an electrical engineer is going to be up one specifics of what gauge wire is appropriate for a given number of electrical outlets to feed, or how far the circuit breaker must be from the gas line.
Who do you suppose writes those codes?
This is akin to saying "a bank manager would never be able to work as a loan officer because of the bank's constantly changing interest rates".
Here in Mexico E1 = $1600 dlls ( coaxial cable ) E3 = $5,000 dlls And no, there is not another option... 10/10Mbps with fiber at $1000 would be a dream
Where in mexico are you? I remember building an office in Mexico City and I don't remember paying NEARLY that much....
What benefits does a Linux like CentOS offer over something like OpenBSD? I used to be a strong Linux supported, but recently have started using OpenBSD everywhere I can. Ports is good, as good as any other package manager I have ever seen, the install is VERY simple, package availability is there...
Is there something that I'm missing that makes the Linuxes so much better than the BSDs? They definitely seem to be more popular.
I took a turkey out of the freezer and stuck it in front of a massive fan. I also took a bunch of empty beet bottles from around the house and filled them with cold water.
Oh, i get it...payster....haha thats funny. Its like psystar, except...you changed the letters around a bit to make it say PAYster...that was really clever!
IANAD, but I've heard people mention that he's getting the first signs of dimensia.
He's 71 years old. Its really really highly unlikely that somebody with the ammount of money he has (think nutrition, health care, etc.) is going to develop dimentia at his age.
I would suggest evaluating whether or not the person who told you he is getting dimentia is a valid source of information or not.
I think the parent is talking more about general viruses that are just sent out into the tubes with the intent of auto-rooting insecure boxen.
What you're saying is true "Any system with something desirable on it is at risk of getting wHacked", but one system with important information on it is not going to spawn a breed of viri meant to just root ALL of the boxes with that OS.
The biggest problem is that they don't have the equivalent of a command line "sudo", but then again, I'm one of the very few people who use a windows command line I'm sure.
This is my biggest grip also. The best workaround for it I can find is just to do right-click and Run As. Do this to internet explorer to get admin privs without needing to log out.
If psystar is successful, they will have destroyed what was making Apple the "fastest growing personal computer manufacturer".
Apple markets themselves as the chic, must have fashion accessory to your computering experience. Once/if psystar takes off, it basically makes apple into a company that builds cases and maintains a BSD distro.
I did a similar thing to this in college, except i didn't carry it around with me.
There was a brand of Olive Oil called "De Cecco" that I almost always had at my desk (i ate a lot of bread and olive oil).
The password for my email account was a combination of the name of the Olive Oil and the numbers in the barcode....say the bardode was "6066" my password was d6e0c6c6. I thought it was sweet....all I had to do was go to the store and buy a bottle of olive oil to log in to my email.
This worked until I moved to a place that no longer sells de cecco olive oil.
That was more than likely an attempt to enforce the "only one computer can be connected to this modem" policy (it used to be in the Eula).
The cable companies DO track the MAC address on your modem. That is why if you go and buy a new one you have to register it, and why the discourage buying used ones. If they weren't tracking by the MAC on the modem, messing with things would be as easy as the parent post suggests, which it isn't.
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I know this one admin from SF that's a real whiz about network security. They even fired him for it.
I still haven't gotten a read on how the community feels about this guy. Personally, I feel for him. He lived, breathed, and slept that network. It was his life, and the thing worked goddamned well.
It was only when a bunch of idiots that shouldn't have been muddling about in his routers started to that things got weird.
PHBs don't understand logical security. They'll let you spend millions building a secure data center complete with armed guards and several layers of biometric security, but cannot understand why you need the same amount of money to buy security devices that only take up small amount of physical space.
My suggestion is that you spend a couple million building three redundant clusters of the most expensive IBM boxes you can find all to run the basic things you need like OpenVPN.
Honestly, never.
Do you work helpdesk? Are you tier 1 tech support for AOL? Have you NEVER looked through a log file before?
Honestly, if you haven't seen any of this stuff, and you work in IT, then you probably aren't doing your job.
they have consistently voted to turn this country into a surveillance state to a degree comparable to Communist Russia, or the very same current China that these very same elected officials reprimanded Google and Yahoo for complying with.
It must really suck to see the world like this.
Honestly, the world is NOT out to get you. Bush is NOT hiding under you bed.
You might seriously have some psychological problems if you feel this way, I would suggest consulting a psychiatrist because it sounds like you a borderline paranoid schizophrenic.
I suggest less internet and more "talking to other human beings". You'll find that the world is actually a much more pleasant place that it appears from behind whatever filter you're watching it through.
I understand your fear, I just wish you'd talk to a professional about it instead of fucking with our civil liberties.
Okay, the vast majority of us either work or have worked in IT, right?
How many times have you been sitting at somebody's desk, and Outlook happily pops up a new message that came into the inbox, you SHOULDN'T BE READING THAT!!!! How many times have you looked through maillog and seen the to and from on a bunch of mail messages, thats private data, dude! Ever had to do recovery on a dead drive and seen some pictures that weren't explicitly sent to you? Ever been poking through a squid log and seen a few of the gets that people are doing?
The point is that sometimes you come across data that you're not supposed to see (or in this case, hear). Be it in IT, the us postal service, or anything inbetween you do what you're supposed to do and IGNORE IT.
It happens.
If you have a problem with it, move to another country with no infrastructure.
Dave, thank you for the well thought out, informative post. Sometimes the OMFG BUSH DID IT! people need a wake up call.
In mexico city they do something like this.
Stopping slowly = brake lights. Stopping quickly = flashers. I've always thought that a system of lights that get brighter, or illuminate differently (think of that thing you hit at the fair. the harder you hit it, the higher the lights go) the harder you press the brakes.
i'm not sure...
I once went on a photo scavenger hunt....one of the things I needed a photo of was in target. I (like an idiot) had a Nikon D40 with a massive freaking external flash mounted on the top.
I thought I was going to get thrown out or arrested, instead the store employees thought it was funny/a neat idea (the scavenger hunt, i mean).
So you never know. Keep in mind that most fo the clerks you encounter are, in fact, 17 year old kids.
If you have an abundance of Geniuses, then they will do what the need to and make a buck. They may design a better way to do it, but it will get done none the less.
Yeah, they might even do something like genetically engineer epsilons to do their bidding while they sit around snogging the women and munching on soma.
"no publicity is bad publicity"
Spoken like someone who knows nothing about marketing. One of the first things I was taught in my marketing classes is how that is a crock.
I think i just found the source of your problem.
Impossible? You couldn't get a video camera and record the screen for purposes of the video presentation? Maybe you just didn't think of this, but I get annoyed, too, when people use the word "impossible" as a substitute for thinking of alternatives.
I'm hoping this was sarcasm.
I guess i didn't explain it well enough. Impossible = "impossible within the realm of practicality"
I feel you man.
I can't tell you how many times i've been laying in bed on my blackberry in the middle of the night or the early early morning explaining something to somebody at work.
I can only guess that there used to be staff on-site 24/7 that could answer questions.
The problem is PHB types just getting used to us doing things that go above and beyond. I just had my boss have a meltdown on me this monday (yes, labor day) because he came into my office asking me to do something that is impossible, and I informed him that it was impossibe. (he wanted to embed video from our security system's DVR in a power-point presentation. Unfortunately, the DVR (for whatever insane reason) uses a propriety codec and doesn't offer a way to transcode).
Our bosses get so used to us going above-and-beyond that when we DON'T it is grounds for firing.
Can you imagine calling one of the accountants in at 2:00am because somebody messed something up? It wouldn't happen. If it DID, the accountant would be hailed as a hero that is committed to their job and deserves a promotion.
how many times have you been sitting at dinner mentally working through a coding problem? Or a networking thing? We're in the process of building a satelite office right now and I interrupted date last night to make a Fry's run to buy a telco rack and some patch panels. (because i needed it this morning and the city where our satelite office doesn't have a place that sells this kind of stuff).
Luckily....the girl needed a ipod case so it worked out....but it just pisses me off that this sort of behavior is expected.
Code changes from year to year, and I doubt an electrical engineer is going to be up one specifics of what gauge wire is appropriate for a given number of electrical outlets to feed, or how far the circuit breaker must be from the gas line.
Who do you suppose writes those codes?
This is akin to saying "a bank manager would never be able to work as a loan officer because of the bank's constantly changing interest rates".
Can we get a Godwin 2.0 rule, please? Anybody that mentions the Iraq war breaks the rule.
Here in Mexico
E1 = $1600 dlls ( coaxial cable )
E3 = $5,000 dlls
And no, there is not another option...
10/10Mbps with fiber at $1000 would be a dream
Where in mexico are you? I remember building an office in Mexico City and I don't remember paying NEARLY that much....
Admitted noob question:
What benefits does a Linux like CentOS offer over something like OpenBSD? I used to be a strong Linux supported, but recently have started using OpenBSD everywhere I can. Ports is good, as good as any other package manager I have ever seen, the install is VERY simple, package availability is there...
Is there something that I'm missing that makes the Linuxes so much better than the BSDs? They definitely seem to be more popular.
I once had the Air Conditioner go out.
In phoenix.
In July.
I took a turkey out of the freezer and stuck it in front of a massive fan. I also took a bunch of empty beet bottles from around the house and filled them with cold water.
It didn't really work, but it was really funny!
Oh, i get it...payster....haha thats funny. Its like psystar, except...you changed the letters around a bit to make it say PAYster...that was really clever!
IANAD, but I've heard people mention that he's getting the first signs of dimensia.
He's 71 years old. Its really really highly unlikely that somebody with the ammount of money he has (think nutrition, health care, etc.) is going to develop dimentia at his age.
I would suggest evaluating whether or not the person who told you he is getting dimentia is a valid source of information or not.
I think the parent is talking more about general viruses that are just sent out into the tubes with the intent of auto-rooting insecure boxen.
What you're saying is true "Any system with something desirable on it is at risk of getting wHacked", but one system with important information on it is not going to spawn a breed of viri meant to just root ALL of the boxes with that OS.
The biggest problem is that they don't have the equivalent of a command line "sudo", but then again, I'm one of the very few people who use a windows command line I'm sure.
This is my biggest grip also. The best workaround for it I can find is just to do right-click and Run As. Do this to internet explorer to get admin privs without needing to log out.
If psystar is successful, they will have destroyed what was making Apple the "fastest growing personal computer manufacturer".
Apple markets themselves as the chic, must have fashion accessory to your computering experience. Once/if psystar takes off, it basically makes apple into a company that builds cases and maintains a BSD distro.
I did a similar thing to this in college, except i didn't carry it around with me.
There was a brand of Olive Oil called "De Cecco" that I almost always had at my desk (i ate a lot of bread and olive oil).
The password for my email account was a combination of the name of the Olive Oil and the numbers in the barcode....say the bardode was "6066" my password was d6e0c6c6. I thought it was sweet....all I had to do was go to the store and buy a bottle of olive oil to log in to my email.
This worked until I moved to a place that no longer sells de cecco olive oil.
DAMNIT!
Will everybody please STFU about securing your wifi..
Cracking their wep when I'm on the road and without my gear is a pain in the ass!
agreed. In fact...that is sort of the POINT of a buffer. You heat up the paint, then move it across the scratch that you're trying to get rid of.
That was more than likely an attempt to enforce the "only one computer can be connected to this modem" policy (it used to be in the Eula).
The cable companies DO track the MAC address on your modem. That is why if you go and buy a new one you have to register it, and why the discourage buying used ones.
If they weren't tracking by the MAC on the modem, messing with things would be as easy as the parent post suggests, which it isn't.