Actually, several of the major US cable companies recently phased out analog signals from their networks. That alone is probably driving a percentage of the antenna sales given the increased cost of connecting additional TVs. Plus, there's no more "free cable" loophole for internet subscribers. I'm sure there's probably a few smaller cable companies out there still running analog signals.
Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.”
Ok, problem solved. Quick, some tell Elisabetta Barbi, Francesco Lagona, Marco Marsili, James W. Vaupel, and Kenneth W. Wachter! With all the free time they'll have now, maybe they can come up with a formula that explains why humans need sleep.
We wouldn't need to discuss this if the medical device manufacturers stopped using consumer-grade wireless radios and protocols. But of course that would cost more money to research and develop, yada yada yada. There's a cheap solution to this problem, however. Dispense with the tinfoil hats and go for a full-blown tinfoil body wrap. Problem solved!
Why is this modded offtopic? Ah yes, because some define "Trustworthy Computing" as exclusively meaning a platform that has gained trust by the user. But you have to look at the whole picture. Security was always the first "pillar" of the "Trustworthy Computing" initiative. Protected execution and secure I/O were features Microsoft desperately wanted to incorporate into their code - the thinking being if the code couldn't be modified in ways the programmers never intended, then users *could* completely trust it. Palladium (or Next-Generation Secure Computing Base) was hailed as the holy grail of locked down code, and "Trustworthy Computing" was one of the buzzwords used by Microsoft to market it. That is, until the anti-TCP campaign made it not cool to use those terms anymore. Why not take a stroll over to Microsoft's website circa 2002 and let me know what you find: http://www.microsoft.com/resou...
This is great news on one hand, but a sad reminder of how some of the core ideas behind this "technology" have advanced. I remember when the first bits of information on "Palladium", as it was called at the time, started to leak out. There was a lot of talk about how software companies could lock down their applications to restrict their use or make them disappear from the device on a whim. Also there was speculation about how the government could use it to track and watch everything done on the device. Well, look at what we have today - applications and data stored in datacenters that the government has easy access to. Downloaded apps can be disabled for reasons as silly as trademark disputes. And social networking websites are making billions tracking the activities of their users and selling the data.
Fortunately, some of the other nefarious goals have not come to pass. We still are able to use whatever device we want to connect to the internet and are not limited to a walled garden. We also can transfer media files between (most) devices without needing a license for each device. And encryption capabilities are easier to implement and for the most part protect our privacy instead of protecting the software companies' "intellectual property." We definitely owe a debt of gratitude to groups like the EFF and Free Software Foundation for standing up to the lobbyists that pushed the trusted computing platform.
Actually, the link does not apply since the unfortunate victim in that case jumped off an 80ft cliff into a quarry. I am not aware of any account where the original challenge, a bucket of cold water to the head, actually caused the participant to expire and go to meet his maker.
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/...
Anon - Why base your opinion on an experience back in 2008? This is six years later and the product has matured since then. The Zenoss Core (http://www.zenoss.org) open source project is bigger than it's ever been, it is very reliable, and is used by many large corporations today.
OP - For what it's worth, any open source monitoring software should play just fine with OpenVPN. However, the monitoring feature set should be simplified into a single interface, you don't want to have to be fixing scripts and maintaining the software all the time.
I actually used to deploy OpenVPN + Zenoss for remote site monitoring. In my case I needed to monitor multiple systems at the customer premises (using Zenoss Enterprise/Service Dynamics for the remote collector integration), but you should have it a bit easier since you only have one server to monitor. I found configuring OpenVPN to be a bit of a challenge, but once that part was done the rest was a piece of cake. It will be a lot of work with the sheer volume of 500 clients (with that amount of traffic you might even need to break it into two OpenVPN endpoints) but I'm sure you are already aware of that.
I would say definitely take a closer look at Zenoss Core. A side note, Zenoss Service Dynamics is their enterprise product with advance features, but for you the "technology stack" needs only to consist of Zenoss Core (free) + OpenVPN. Set up OpenVPN as you described so that the clients deployed on your remote servers can connect back through https - as long as they have an internet connection no holes need to be poked through your customer's firewalls. Drop Zenoss on the OpenVPN endpoint box(s). Then use the OpenVPN IPs to monitor the servers. For each individual server, configure the SNMP string if Linux, or set up WMI if windows (no need to configure traps, Zenoss polls the boxes at specific intervals). Use the wizard on the Zenoss web interface to add the host and model it. Away you go, you can now see the events in the Zenoss console for everything from ping status to CPU utilization. Events go to the console which you can monitor, or you can easily set up e-mail alerts to trigger. For example, say one of the disks throws a SMART error; trigger an e-mail you so you can ship the customer a new disk to install just like NetApp does.
As I mentioned, you can definitely use Zabbix or some other variant to do the monitoring part. I researched and played with many monitoring solutions (commercial and free) before I settled on Zenoss. What made the difference for me was that I found I was spending way too much time learning the quirks of the software (e.g. Nagios - config file to add a client, really! SolarWinds - Agent installation required, really!) and not enough time actually deploying monitoring to the targets. Good luck, hopefully this info helps you find the right fit for your environment!
This doesn't surprise me considering how far removed the US government is from understanding her primary function - to protect her own citizens. What's to stop them from declaring a leader of a political movement as dangerous, having “recently” been involved in “activities” posing a threat of a violent attack - for example, declaring that the government has no right to interfere with private enterprises, or even supporting 2nd amendment rights?
I used a little hyperbole to make a point about the passwords being a backdoor. Your argument is valid, absolutely; but that assumes The Man is efficient and crafty - none of which are generally equated with governments these days. This is a lazy man's backdoor, through a gate that appears to be normal both inside and out. On the other hand, a black hat implementing your proposed covert SSH backdoor would fit right in line with their known weapons of fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency.
Just a simple flaw? That's what they want you to believe. Hard-coded passwords are NOT a flaw, they are an intention back door for... company engineers... company spies... the government... Just sayin'!
I believe it's the first link in the summary, but I could be wrong: NYTimes, 7-Feb-2011
Thanks, I read that after I took a few seconds to bypass the paywall. I guess the NYT is a source, but unfortunately the story is very devoid of facts... only that one line on the theft (and an interview with a scrap metal guy and a politician unrelated to the incident)? Not one snippet anywhere else on any of the major news sites? Either I'm not looking hard enough (probably) or the theft was conjured up to add some drama to the story... anyone to disprove that silly theory?
Is there any source on the Pitcher utility line theft story? I can't find anything. I doubt the "blackout" was a very big deal considering that the town is a ghost town with only six residences remaining. The town has been basically dead since it was declared a superfund site, and then a tornado hit a few years ago and wiped away the rest. Kind of puts that part of the story in perspective...
It's pretty much common knowledge that cheaper substitute ingredients are almost always unhealthy. Did we really need scientists to tell us about it? Next they'll be spending federal funding to study how diet soda is making us fatter...
Why is it necessary that we go back and explore what was accomplished in the past? Call me stupid, but it seems like a rover on the moon could do something more useful than exploring a bunch of dusty boot prints and some used equipment. Anyone care to enlighten me?
Most, if not all, of the boards I've ever purchased from Newegg work perfectly with Linux. For instance, I know that the PC CHIPS A15G AMD board works with Fedora, Red Hat Linux, and Ubuntu. IMHO, almost any board that's more than a few months old will be supported by almost any Linux distribution... Linux has far greater hardware compatibility than, say, M$ Vista.
One good strategy I use is to pick out the board I want, then pick out the Linux distribution, and Google both of those together to see if there's any info available. If you don't find any results, then post in the distribution's forum and find out if there is support for the motherboard you picked out. Easy as that!
This doesn't come as a surprise to me... sometime around the version 1.6/1.7 release, a bunch of the DEVs were let go/fired/left (I don't remember specifics) and the game hasn't been the same since. I participated in the beta testing process at one point, and there were a bunch of great guys doing the testing and lots of reports of issues were being relayed to the developers. But it seemed that there were always issues slipping through the cracks because the Army was more interested in phasing in the overall "experience" or storyline of the game, rather than gameplay. I haven't been following the development of the game since a few years ago when the gameplay went south, and I imagine they've been losing lots of veteran players since then. Being the army, it should be easy to assume the DEV team was pressured with unrealistic goals and an unrealistic deadline for launch. Since the game is (obviously) targeted at young adults and they failed big-time on first impressions for many new players coming on board with this release, it's easy to see why someone's head was required on a platter even though the blame really lies with the Army officials. Typical bureaucracy at its finest. I hope the fired DEVs find good paying jobs with companies who don't require treading manure on a daily basis.
That said, I do hope that moving development into the military sector instead of the private sector ends up saving taxpayer money in the long run, IMHO the game as a whole isn't really an effective recruiting tool anyway. The only thing that's really useful is the virtual-reality training for our soldiers, and that should be the main focus of the development.
I'm a web designer, and this comes as good news to me; the sooner IE6 hits low use numbers, the sooner I don't have to waste time coding a zillon hacks to get stuff like PNG support to work. They should be pointing people to Firefox / Chrome / etc though, not IE7.
Good point, I didn't have an excuse not to reveal this information, which is why I made the previous post. But, I also didn't have a place to do it where people would actually listen; the places I posted to didn't care one iota, so I gave up.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, several of the major US cable companies recently phased out analog signals from their networks. That alone is probably driving a percentage of the antenna sales given the increased cost of connecting additional TVs. Plus, there's no more "free cable" loophole for internet subscribers. I'm sure there's probably a few smaller cable companies out there still running analog signals.
Genesis 6:3
Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.”
Ok, problem solved. Quick, some tell Elisabetta Barbi, Francesco Lagona, Marco Marsili, James W. Vaupel, and Kenneth W. Wachter! With all the free time they'll have now, maybe they can come up with a formula that explains why humans need sleep.
We wouldn't need to discuss this if the medical device manufacturers stopped using consumer-grade wireless radios and protocols. But of course that would cost more money to research and develop, yada yada yada. There's a cheap solution to this problem, however. Dispense with the tinfoil hats and go for a full-blown tinfoil body wrap. Problem solved!
Why is this modded offtopic? Ah yes, because some define "Trustworthy Computing" as exclusively meaning a platform that has gained trust by the user. But you have to look at the whole picture. Security was always the first "pillar" of the "Trustworthy Computing" initiative. Protected execution and secure I/O were features Microsoft desperately wanted to incorporate into their code - the thinking being if the code couldn't be modified in ways the programmers never intended, then users *could* completely trust it. Palladium (or Next-Generation Secure Computing Base) was hailed as the holy grail of locked down code, and "Trustworthy Computing" was one of the buzzwords used by Microsoft to market it. That is, until the anti-TCP campaign made it not cool to use those terms anymore. Why not take a stroll over to Microsoft's website circa 2002 and let me know what you find: http://www.microsoft.com/resou...
This is great news on one hand, but a sad reminder of how some of the core ideas behind this "technology" have advanced. I remember when the first bits of information on "Palladium", as it was called at the time, started to leak out. There was a lot of talk about how software companies could lock down their applications to restrict their use or make them disappear from the device on a whim. Also there was speculation about how the government could use it to track and watch everything done on the device. Well, look at what we have today - applications and data stored in datacenters that the government has easy access to. Downloaded apps can be disabled for reasons as silly as trademark disputes. And social networking websites are making billions tracking the activities of their users and selling the data.
Fortunately, some of the other nefarious goals have not come to pass. We still are able to use whatever device we want to connect to the internet and are not limited to a walled garden. We also can transfer media files between (most) devices without needing a license for each device. And encryption capabilities are easier to implement and for the most part protect our privacy instead of protecting the software companies' "intellectual property." We definitely owe a debt of gratitude to groups like the EFF and Free Software Foundation for standing up to the lobbyists that pushed the trusted computing platform.
Actually, the link does not apply since the unfortunate victim in that case jumped off an 80ft cliff into a quarry. I am not aware of any account where the original challenge, a bucket of cold water to the head, actually caused the participant to expire and go to meet his maker. http://www.snopes.com/horrors/...
Anon - Why base your opinion on an experience back in 2008? This is six years later and the product has matured since then. The Zenoss Core (http://www.zenoss.org) open source project is bigger than it's ever been, it is very reliable, and is used by many large corporations today.
OP - For what it's worth, any open source monitoring software should play just fine with OpenVPN. However, the monitoring feature set should be simplified into a single interface, you don't want to have to be fixing scripts and maintaining the software all the time.
I actually used to deploy OpenVPN + Zenoss for remote site monitoring. In my case I needed to monitor multiple systems at the customer premises (using Zenoss Enterprise/Service Dynamics for the remote collector integration), but you should have it a bit easier since you only have one server to monitor. I found configuring OpenVPN to be a bit of a challenge, but once that part was done the rest was a piece of cake. It will be a lot of work with the sheer volume of 500 clients (with that amount of traffic you might even need to break it into two OpenVPN endpoints) but I'm sure you are already aware of that.
I would say definitely take a closer look at Zenoss Core. A side note, Zenoss Service Dynamics is their enterprise product with advance features, but for you the "technology stack" needs only to consist of Zenoss Core (free) + OpenVPN. Set up OpenVPN as you described so that the clients deployed on your remote servers can connect back through https - as long as they have an internet connection no holes need to be poked through your customer's firewalls. Drop Zenoss on the OpenVPN endpoint box(s). Then use the OpenVPN IPs to monitor the servers. For each individual server, configure the SNMP string if Linux, or set up WMI if windows (no need to configure traps, Zenoss polls the boxes at specific intervals). Use the wizard on the Zenoss web interface to add the host and model it. Away you go, you can now see the events in the Zenoss console for everything from ping status to CPU utilization. Events go to the console which you can monitor, or you can easily set up e-mail alerts to trigger. For example, say one of the disks throws a SMART error; trigger an e-mail you so you can ship the customer a new disk to install just like NetApp does.
As I mentioned, you can definitely use Zabbix or some other variant to do the monitoring part. I researched and played with many monitoring solutions (commercial and free) before I settled on Zenoss. What made the difference for me was that I found I was spending way too much time learning the quirks of the software (e.g. Nagios - config file to add a client, really! SolarWinds - Agent installation required, really!) and not enough time actually deploying monitoring to the targets. Good luck, hopefully this info helps you find the right fit for your environment!
This doesn't surprise me considering how far removed the US government is from understanding her primary function - to protect her own citizens. What's to stop them from declaring a leader of a political movement as dangerous, having “recently” been involved in “activities” posing a threat of a violent attack - for example, declaring that the government has no right to interfere with private enterprises, or even supporting 2nd amendment rights?
I used a little hyperbole to make a point about the passwords being a backdoor. Your argument is valid, absolutely; but that assumes The Man is efficient and crafty - none of which are generally equated with governments these days. This is a lazy man's backdoor, through a gate that appears to be normal both inside and out. On the other hand, a black hat implementing your proposed covert SSH backdoor would fit right in line with their known weapons of fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency.
Just a simple flaw? That's what they want you to believe. Hard-coded passwords are NOT a flaw, they are an intention back door for... company engineers... company spies... the government... Just sayin'!
I believe it's the first link in the summary, but I could be wrong: NYTimes, 7-Feb-2011
Thanks, I read that after I took a few seconds to bypass the paywall. I guess the NYT is a source, but unfortunately the story is very devoid of facts... only that one line on the theft (and an interview with a scrap metal guy and a politician unrelated to the incident)? Not one snippet anywhere else on any of the major news sites? Either I'm not looking hard enough (probably) or the theft was conjured up to add some drama to the story... anyone to disprove that silly theory?
Is there any source on the Pitcher utility line theft story? I can't find anything. I doubt the "blackout" was a very big deal considering that the town is a ghost town with only six residences remaining. The town has been basically dead since it was declared a superfund site, and then a tornado hit a few years ago and wiped away the rest. Kind of puts that part of the story in perspective...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picher,_Oklahoma
I remember reading this at a popular news site over a year ago. Where could it have been? Oh, wait, here it is! http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/06/15/2020240/Airplanes-Unexpectedly-Modify-Weather
Is that you?
It's pretty much common knowledge that cheaper substitute ingredients are almost always unhealthy. Did we really need scientists to tell us about it? Next they'll be spending federal funding to study how diet soda is making us fatter...
To bad it's scanned and not digitally blacked out like those documents the government released before that could be easily be read...
Why is it necessary that we go back and explore what was accomplished in the past? Call me stupid, but it seems like a rover on the moon could do something more useful than exploring a bunch of dusty boot prints and some used equipment. Anyone care to enlighten me?
Most, if not all, of the boards I've ever purchased from Newegg work perfectly with Linux. For instance, I know that the PC CHIPS A15G AMD board works with Fedora, Red Hat Linux, and Ubuntu. IMHO, almost any board that's more than a few months old will be supported by almost any Linux distribution... Linux has far greater hardware compatibility than, say, M$ Vista.
One good strategy I use is to pick out the board I want, then pick out the Linux distribution, and Google both of those together to see if there's any info available. If you don't find any results, then post in the distribution's forum and find out if there is support for the motherboard you picked out. Easy as that!
This doesn't come as a surprise to me... sometime around the version 1.6/1.7 release, a bunch of the DEVs were let go/fired/left (I don't remember specifics) and the game hasn't been the same since. I participated in the beta testing process at one point, and there were a bunch of great guys doing the testing and lots of reports of issues were being relayed to the developers. But it seemed that there were always issues slipping through the cracks because the Army was more interested in phasing in the overall "experience" or storyline of the game, rather than gameplay. I haven't been following the development of the game since a few years ago when the gameplay went south, and I imagine they've been losing lots of veteran players since then. Being the army, it should be easy to assume the DEV team was pressured with unrealistic goals and an unrealistic deadline for launch. Since the game is (obviously) targeted at young adults and they failed big-time on first impressions for many new players coming on board with this release, it's easy to see why someone's head was required on a platter even though the blame really lies with the Army officials. Typical bureaucracy at its finest. I hope the fired DEVs find good paying jobs with companies who don't require treading manure on a daily basis.
That said, I do hope that moving development into the military sector instead of the private sector ends up saving taxpayer money in the long run, IMHO the game as a whole isn't really an effective recruiting tool anyway. The only thing that's really useful is the virtual-reality training for our soldiers, and that should be the main focus of the development.
Agreed. VIDEO FAIL!
I'm a web designer, and this comes as good news to me; the sooner IE6 hits low use numbers, the sooner I don't have to waste time coding a zillon hacks to get stuff like PNG support to work. They should be pointing people to Firefox / Chrome / etc though, not IE7.
They want their city back.
Sweet! Will we be able to run a Zune leap year simulation on it?
The character who said that was Frankie. That episode was hilarious!
Good point, I didn't have an excuse not to reveal this information, which is why I made the previous post. But, I also didn't have a place to do it where people would actually listen; the places I posted to didn't care one iota, so I gave up.